Missiology of Influence

The Church’s Experience

AN IMOKE ’85 ZOOM LECTURE
by
Very Rev. Dr. Ifechukwu U. Ibeme
http://www.scribd.com/ifeogo
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Missiology of Influence – Outline
• Appeal
• Introduction
• Definitions
• Missio Dei
• The Challenge of Missiology
• Ancient Missiology sought the sanctity of the Gospel
• Middle Ages and Modern Missiologies disregard the sanctity of the Gospel
• Process Missiology
• Target Sphere Missiology
• Counter-missionary Reactions
• Conclusion
Missiology of Influence – Appeal
• As I appeal to all to bear with my choice of topic as
one who belongs to the Church’s ordained Clergy, it is
important to understand that the views expressed
here are based on the saving wisdom found in the
God-inspired Scriptures and shared together with the
age-old and time-tested theological studies and
experiences of the Church all through the generations.
 Missiology of Influence – Introduction
• Another word for “influence” in this context is “redemptive leadership’
toward the divine purpose of sanctifying transformation or
transformative sanctification, because missiological influence is toward a
divine goal. So, Missiology of Influence in the society could also be
understood as Missiology of Spiritual Leadership in the secular society.
• Missiology discusses or studies the meaning of “missioning” or “being
sent”, its methods and purposes toward fulfilling the assignment for
which one lesser (the Church) is sent on mission to the world by One
greater (Christ). For Christians and indeed all humanity who are God’s
image and vicegerents on earth, this Greater One is the Heavenly God
Himself, Who made and owns us all, and all creation is subject to His
Heavenly Dominion and Rule or “Kingdom”.
 Missiology of Influence – Introduction
• Missiology of Influence in this perspective is about what and how
those saved through Christ need to bring that saving influence for
which God has made and saved, sanctified and sent them to do in a
corrupt and condemned world, so that God’s world would be restored
to God’s originally intended goal (Eph 2:10; 1Pet 2:8-9), as God has
exclusively revealed in the Scriptures through Christ, His Apostles and
the Prophets.
• In her mission, the Church must never lose sight of the fact that she
has been made holy in order to rescue a world which is utterly lost!
The world may never understand they are lost but the Church must
never forget they are holy.
Missiology of Influence – Definitions
• In Christian theology, Missiology is meant to study the work
of the Church in the world; whereas Ecclesiology is the study
of the Church, the origins of the Church of Christ, its
relationship to Jesus, its role in salvation, its polity, its
discipline, its eschatology, and its leadership calling.
• Missiology has an important role to play in turning
congregationally minded churches from being inward looking
for members, to also become missional churches, churches
that exist for non-members; indeed, Missiology helps
practical theology to learn anew what it means to be the
Church of Jesus Christ in the context of God’s world.
Missiology of Influence – Definitions
• Missiology as a theological study stands true on this premise: if it
is true that God has sent His Church on Divine Mission (missio
Dei) to bring God’s redemptive Kingdom influence on His world,
then the Church must study to ensure that the influence she
brings must be that for which she has been sent according to
God’s Word.
• Both Social Reformation (or Christianization of the society from
paganism and inhumanity) through strategic presence, as well as
Spiritual Regeneration (or Salvation of the soul from depravity
and damnation) through evangelistic preaching have always
been the commission of the Church in the world.
Missiology of Influence – Definitions
• However, as the Church lost her ecumenical unity in their
interpretation of God’s Word (after the Early Church) they
became less scriptural and more cultural, and later as
denominations lost their national unity in their
administration of God’s mission (after the Reformation) they
became more and more fragmented by eccentric separatism
and ministerial privatization.
• That is why missiological attention gradually drifted away
from outward-looking Missiology toward the society to
become more focused on inward-looking Ecclesiology
toward the congregation.
Missiology of Influence – Definitions
• Thank God, in the 20th Century, the Church is coming to realize again
that missiology should broadly be committed to the whole mission of
God (missio Dei) for His whole creation – souls and societies of every
nation, but not narrowly be concerned with only evangelistic mission
for the salvation of souls or expansion of a Church denomination to the
unreached or with merely be misconstrued for cross-cultural expansion
of Western civilization to the unwesternized world.
• The only mission which carries the same power with God’s Mission to
which the Apostles were committed, is that mission which propagates
and perpetuates what is purely scriptural not what is cultural.
Missiology of Influence – Missio Dei
• God’s mission (missio Dei) is comprehensively understood by the
Church as the full divine commission to the world:
➢ for which God first sent all humanity on earth (at our CREATION in
the innocent Adam) on God’s creation mandate or culture mandate
mission to be fruitful and fill the earth, to subdue, have dominion
and tend the earth as God’s vicegerents; but
➢ for which He secondly sent all believers in the Church (at our
REDEMPTION in the Divine Christ) on God’s Gospel mandate or
Kingdom mandate mission to make disciple of all nations for doing
God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven as God’s ambassadors.
Missiology of Influence – Missio Dei
Matthew 28:18-20
(18) And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth.
(19) Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:
(20) Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I
am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Luke 4:18-19
(18) "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to tell the good news
to the poor. He has sent me to announce release to the prisoners and recovery of sight
to the blind, to set oppressed people free,
(19) and to announce the year of the Lord's favor."
 Missiology of Influence – Missio Dei
• It is good to know and seek what acts God is committed to work on earth, but it is more
important to yield our hearts to walk in God’s ways rather than harden our hearts to devise
our own revised ways for doing those divine acts. Yielding to God’s Word by diligently insisting
on knowing God and following His pure way (God’s why and God’s how) for doing those His
powerful acts would avoid error and disaster.
• The deep mystery is that we could only do God’s work properly if we do them only
according to God’s Word.
Psalms 103:7
He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.

Psalms 95:8-11
(8) Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of trials in the
wilderness:
(9) When your fathers tested me, tried me, and saw my work.
(10) Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in
their heart, and they have not known my ways:
(11) Unto whom I swore in my anger that they should not enter into my rest.
Missiology of Influence – The Challenge of Missiology
• Escaping syncretism is the difficult challenge facing Gospel Missiological influence
in dealing with the powerful grip of ungodly “strongholds” (i.e. unbiblical
worldviews, cultures and agencies of pagan societies) on the way people see, think
and do things among themselves (1Cor 10:3-5). Christian Gospel missiological
influence shall be in vain except the Church insists on wrestling against these
demonic spirits (Eph 6:12) and resisting the depraved cultures they engender (Eph
4:17-20). Christians should also seek to mortify impiety and sinfulness of the flesh
and walk in piety and holiness of the Spirit (Gal 5:16-18; Col 3:5-8; 1Thes 4:3-5).
• Yet, the Scriptures clearly identify both the Church (Eph 1:22-23) and the State
(Rom 13:1-7) as divinely instituted but distinguishes them for different purposes
that are both being corrupted and thwarted by human depravity. According to Nate
Humphries, who was writing on Separation of Church and State in Pursuing Biblical
Doctrine website:
Missiology of Influence –
The Challenge of Missiology
•
Missiology of Influence – The Challenge of Missiology
• “Relations between Church and State have been notoriously controversial
throughout the Christian centuries. To oversimplify, four main models have
been tried –
1. Erastianism (the State controls the Church), e.g. Zaire where the State controls
the Church, which Nigeria is tending to with CAMA 2020.
2. Theocracy (the Church controls the State), e.g. The Vatican or Iran where the
Pope or Ayatollah controls the State.
3. Constantinianism (the compromise in which the State favours or defends the
Church and the Church accommodates to the State in order to retain the State’s
favour or protection) [also called Caesaropapism], as obtains in England and
Wales, and
4. Partnership (Church and State recognize and encourage each other's distinct
God-given responsibilities in a spirit of constructive collaboration), as constituted
in founding the United Sates of America.”
 Missiology of Influence – Ancient Missiology sought
the sanctity of the Gospel
• The old Church’s success did not come by formulating a revised critical theology of Mission
or Missiology, but through concerted ecumenical effort to resist the world’s syncretistic
encroachment into the Church. That was why the worldwide Church united together and
diligently sought:
➢ to maintain local unity by remapping the world into organized Diocesan Episcopacy that
shared one local leadership and local liturgy in succession to the Apostles;
➢ to ensure worldwide unity based purely on faithfulness to the full Apostolic Doctrine
through Ecumenical (or Catholic) Councils of all known Diocesan Bishops in all
metropolitan cities, dioceses and provinces in the Greco-Roman world (particularly
Nicaea 325 AD, Constantinople 381 AD, Ephesus 431 AD, and Chalcedon 451 AD); and
➢ to preserve generational purity of the Gospel Truth by circulating all Scriptures
ascertained as Apostolic and by sharing ecumenically only those Creeds and Canons and
Constitutions which accurately agree with pure deposit or ordinances (paradosis) as they
were received and handed down from the Apostles.
 Missiology of Influence – Ancient Missiology
sought the sanctity of the Gospel
• The missiological goal of the Early Church was to maintain the purity of their
foundation in Christ and the Scriptures in order to retain their salt and light as the
sure basis for bringing true Christian influence on every community. To do this they
set to ensure the sacredness of the Church as holy, the unity of the Church
universally (i.e. ecumenically/catholically) and to validate the purity of the Gospel
solely on apostolic authentication. They believed that the four true Marks of the
Church on earth were ONENESS, HOLINESS, UNIVERSALITY (catholicity/ecumenicity)
and APOSTOLICITY as Christ prayed in John 17:18-21.
• Despite tensions and tendencies to do otherwise, they persevered on these
stringent strategic measures of resisting the world from eroding the true Faith and
syncretizing into the Gospel, because they stood on the principles that for the Church
to be True, she must be doctrinally Apostolic, distinctly Holy, and Universally (or
ecumenically/catholically) United.
Missiology of Influence – Ancient Missiology
sought the sanctity of the Gospel
•
Missiology of Influence – Ancient Missiology
sought the sanctity of the Gospel
•
Missiology of Influence – Middle Ages and Modern
Missiologies disregard the sanctity of the Gospel
• Modern missiology has refocused on going into the world to influence the
world, but unlike the Church Fathers and the Reformers persevered to do,
we have totally lost sight of preventing the world from coming into the
Church to corrupt the purity of the Church! In fact, it has turned out that
today’s Church is seeking after the cultures of the world rather than
spreading Scriptures of God!
• In the name of so called modern “contextualization” and “repackaging"
today, the Church has ended up failing to save the world from filth and fire,
but rather getting herself stained by filth and scorched by fire! It is like
treating COVID-19 patients without being vaccinated and without using
personal protective equipment! Or rescuing fire victims without fire
extinguishers and fireproof equipment!
Missiology of Influence – Middle Ages and Modern
Missiologies disregard the sanctity of the Gospel
• Gospel missio Dei to all humanity is about fully bringing the heavenly
influence of Christ’s sacrosanct Gospel (Gal 1:6-9) of salvation to all
the earth – “Thy will be done earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6:10).
• Sadly, after the Early Church of the Apostolic and Nicene Fathers had
succeeded in their mission toward the Greco-Roman or Western
world, she suddenly began to backslide into weakness and
worldliness by heretical revisionism, innovative controversies,
inventive compromises, subjective liberalism, and infighting that led
to divisions and confusions.
 Missiology of Influence – Middle Ages and Modern
Missiologies disregard the sanctity of the Gospel
• The Apostles would admonish, that our compassion must distinguish the faith and
when love moves us to pull others from fire of sin, we must hate being stained with the
evil of the flesh (Jude 21-23). Some misunderstand Paul’s “becoming all things to all
men to win some” (1Cor 9:22) to mean compromising the Faith to contaminate it with
the world! Yet, the context of that Scriptures shows clearly that it is actually about
empathizing with people’s conditions by forfeiting his rights, but not about
compromising the standards of the Gospel to forgo what is right (1Cor 9:19-23; Gal
1:10; 1Thes 2:4).
• The Truth of the Gospel as found in the Scripture is sacrosanct above all traditional,
trending and tendentious cultures (Eph 4:17-20), above all men and above all angels
(Gal 1:6-9) as well as above all other revelations and other records (2Thes 2:1-3; 1John
4:1-3), such that it saves from all things to the uttermost (Rom 8:37-39; Heb 7:25).
Missiology of Influence – Middle Ages and Modern
Missiologies disregard the sanctity of the Gospel

•
Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• Process missiology describes missions through Church Planting
processes. The thought of Europeans daring to go on missions to
distant lands arose from recent 500 years of international socio-
political changes that made such missions possible. Much of the
appalling historical facts from the fall of Rome till the Renaissance and
Reformation is subdued by historians in the West as the “Dark Ages”.
• In 476 AD, Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Caesar, was deposed
in a Germanic barbarian overthrow to mark the Fall of Rome. From
then, the provinces Western Roman Empire were carved up and
disintegrated into feudal kingdoms by ethnic chiefs and kings, war
lords, peasant leaders and bandits.
Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• This resulted in the era called the Dark Ages or Middle Ages (500-
1500 AD) which are mostly kept in the dark in school history because it
was an era when the Western world was mostly decimated, subjugated
and humiliated by non-Romans and non-Europeans while the Church
went into coldness and backsliding.
• Some worthwhile spots of the Dark Ages were the time of
Charlemagne (774-814 AD) and the abysmally failed but grossly
exaggerated Crusades escapades which were fought for a narrow
access to the Holy Land (1100-1300 AD).
Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• This resulted in the era called the Dark Ages or Middle Ages (500-
1500 AD) which are mostly kept in the dark in school history because it
was an era when the Western world was mostly decimated, subjugated
and humiliated by non-Romans and non-Europeans while the Church
went into coldness and backsliding.
• Some worthwhile spots of the Dark Ages were the time of
Charlemagne (774-814 AD) and the abysmally failed but grossly
exaggerated Crusades escapades which were fought for a narrow
access to the Holy Land (1100-1300 AD).
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• The Middle Ages was a thousand years (500-1500 AD) of decline and disorder or
“Dark Ages” for the Greco-Roman Europe and Christendom, but a period of rise or
“Golden Age” (c. 740-1517) for Islamic Caliphates that held economic and military
sway over the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle-east, but also made scholarly
advances in algebra, calculus, geometry, chemistry and astronomy. The Islamic
Golden Age prospered from Abbasid Bagdad (740-1256), then from Mamluk Egypt
(1261-1517) – at which time the Ottoman Turks usurped it.
• The humiliated and backslidden Europe of the Dark Ages only began to recover its
classical glories of knowledge, wealth spirituality and power during the intellectual
Renaissance socially (1400-1600) and the magisterial Reformation spiritually (1500-
1600) accompanied by their Age of Discovery socially and Age of Awakening
spiritually leading respectively to expeditions as well as missions to new distant lands.
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• Before the Middle (or Dark) Ages, Europe of the Greco-Roman era
was ecumenical, neither nationalistic racist nor xenophobic since the
focus then was for anyone from any continent to be regarded as Greek
or Roman irrespective of one’s native nationality.
• However, after suffering the many centuries of racial terrorism and
supremacism from Islamic Caliphates, Europe seems to have
reemerged retaliatorily from Islamic subjugation of the Dark Ages
with racist, supremacist, and xenophobic paranoia! They began to go
everywhere as conquistadores to subdue and pillage, or as colonialists
for annexation and exploitation.
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• After they recovered from 1000 years of the trans-Mediterranean slavery
by armies and pirates of the Islamic Caliphates, Europeans began in 1444
(first by Portuguese and Benin Kingdom in Lagos) to perpetrate trans-
Atlantic slave trade in turn!
• Thank God that the Church after acquiescing to civil and political trend of
slavery for a while gradually built up to rise against such trendy culture on
the basis on proper meaning of the Scripture. This Abolitionist (anti-slavery)
movement (from 1780s) led by spiritually minded Christians, like Thomas
Clarkson and William Wilberforce was crowned with the Abolition of the
slave trade in Britain (1807), in America (1808), in Spain (1811) and
internationally enforced (1833).
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• The Church of this generation need to rise from their acquiescence to many
culturally justified and legalized paganism so that they bring similar
transforming missiological influence over many ravaging unbiblical vices today
like racism, human-trafficking, chemical-abuse, abortion, perversion,
promiscuity, terrorism and totalitarianism.
• It is often overlooked but cannot be denied that missionary work by the Church
to native Africans followed the Abolition as a means to stopping native Africans
from slave-raids and slave-trade among themselves. Following the Abolition of
Slave Trafficking, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Sierra Leon sought to
enhance their missions with their “Bible and plough” approach propounded by Sir
T. F. Buxton, and propagated by Rev J. F. Schon and Rev S. A. Crowther, in order to
counter the evils of slave trade through “Christianity, Commerce and Civilization”.
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• Such comprehensively emancipative, evangelistic, empowerment and
educative approach to missions aimed to ensure that the new indigenous
Churches in Africa would be civilized (i.e. educated and economically viable)
enough to be Self-governing, Self-supporting and Self-propagating.
• In West Africa for instance, the missionaries who were mainly returned freed
slaves who worked with Crowther (Adolphus Howells, Simon Jonas, John C.
Taylor, James Johnson, who are today mistaken to be Whites because of their
names) sought to replace the longstanding slavery and war culture in their
native communities by preaching peace for safe movement and introducing
varieties of profitable food and cash crops for free enterprise. However, much
of these missiological realities are revised by modern historians in the course
of the racial polemics of today.
Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
•
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• By the 17th Century European immigrants (Christians and non-Christian) began to settle
as colonist of the British government in North America, while in the 19th Century (1870s
till 1914) the “scramble for Africa” got all of Africa subjugated as annexed colonies to
European nations!
• These historical upheavals reawakened the Church on the need for missions to these
newly discovered and colonized distant lands. The 18th and 19th century Missionary
Awakening for both Protestants and Roman Catholics was built on theology of Christian
missions (missiology) to the world for two purposes which are:
1. preserving the purity of biblical Gospel proclamation for sure spiritual conversion and
Church Planting (evangelism and discipleship usually based on Mat 28:18-20), and
2. pursing the principles of missiological strategic influence for effective social
transformation and Social Action (local presence and involvement, health and
educational service, agricultural empowerment, human rights advocacy,
statesmanship and civil service engagements, often based on Luk 4:16-19).
 Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
• In the 1980s, drawing from the Ecumenical Missionary trends
reinvigorated through the World Evangelical Alliance (founded 1846), the
Lausanne Conference (held 1974), and World Council of Churches
(founded 1948), the worldwide Anglican Communion pulled all the
thoughts into the strategic missiological process which is studied today as
the Five Marks of Mission (Tell, Teach, Transform, Tend and Treasure).
• The purpose of the Five Marks of Missions is to lay out the principles of
strategic missiological processes by which the Church today could
influence both souls and societies for godly transformation and
reformation of policies and practices for all nations in a way that ensures
moral rectitude, social justice and humane policies at all levels of society.
Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
•
Missiology of Influence – Process Missiology
•
 Missiology of Influence – Target Sphere
Missiology
• Target Sphere missiology discusses missionary transformation of societal
structures. By 1975, the focus by Apostolic Reformation and Pentecostal
Churches in America shifted to an alternative paradigm of targeting seven
spheres or agencies/structures of the society (faith, family, education,
government, business, media, and entertainment).
• These are called the Seven Spheres/Pillars/“Mountains” of Society often
associated with Isa 2:2-3/Mic 4:1-2).
Micah 4:1
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house
of the LORD shall be established on the top of the mountains, and it shall
be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.
Missiology of Influence – Target Sphere
Missiology
•
 Missiology of Influence – Target Sphere
Missiology
This alternative target sphere approach arose when it was realized
that in the modern world setting, these Seven Spheres exert
powerful influence on every person in every society and culture.
Loren Cunningham of “Youth With A Mission” (YWAM – a
worldwide missionary movement founded in 1960 to train and
send missionaries worldwide), was the first to begin the Seven
Spheres approach to missiology in 1975 as pillars on which the
Church should target her mission in order to take over the cities
through social transformation.
Missiology of Influence – Target Sphere
Missiology
•
 Missiology of Influence – Target Sphere
Missiology
Nevertheless, this modern alternative approach which complements the
older missiology seems to rather seek for activist invasion with innovative
strategic methods to take-over the society by targeted sphere domination
– which has not yet had enough time to have much success with the
Church. The older Church had rather been used to ethical infiltration with
the divine Truth of the Gospel as light and salt (Mat 5:13-16) to make-over
the society by Church Planting and reformation – which has had some
success in the past until the Church began her backsliding. One caveat in
missiology is to watch against unbiblical conversion and syncretic methods
of contextualization which would turn out to be counterproductive.
 Missiology of Influence – Counter-missionary
Reactions
• Over the centuries many counter-Christian reactions and resistance backlashes have
come up against Scriptural Truth and the Church’s Mission in many forms and on many
fronts, attacking from both outside and within the Church such as:
1. Streets (physical Social Chatter and virtual Social Media) – Warped/distorted
narratives and worldly/depraved tendencies used for all forms of hyped bashing and
bullying of the Church, or rampant scoffing and scorning of Christianity.
2. Schools (Academia) – Philosophical and Scientific scholarship geared toward
innovative Revisionism and aggressive disinformation as well as agnostic and atheistic
skepticism.
3. Statism (Governments) – Secular and civil systems and actors ranging from Monarchy
to Aristocracy, Autocracy to Democracy pushing and pulling the Church with trendy
pressures and tyrannical policies.
4. Spiritism (Religions) – Syncretistic contamination with unbiblical Heresies, idolatrous
Deviations demonic Occultism and esoteric Mysticism (from European Paganism,
African Paganism, and Eastern Paganism) seeking to syncretize with and antagonize
the Gospel.
Missiology of Influence – Conclusion
• For the Gospel Faith, Religion and Society are only true and fruitful if they are
done according to divine institution revealed in the inspired Prophetic and
Apostolic Scriptures. Otherwise, they are vain and futile. The Church should awaken
to insisting seriously on bringing to the world that pure biblically based
missiological influence and to strategize on discipling her members for transforming
the society, else the Church would cease to be scripturally true but becomes a
culturally trendy Church made false through syncretism. Such a drift would mean
that by the time Christ comes again, he would hardly find any true and pure faith
on the earth.
Luke 18:8
I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man
comes, shall he find faith on the earth?
Missiology of Influence – Conclusion
• This same verse of the Scripture had inspired Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, in about 250
AD to write:
“But if there be among us, most beloved brother, the fear of God, if the maintenance
of the faith prevail, if we keep the precepts of Christ, if we guard the incorrupt and
inviolate sanctity of His spouse, if the words of the Lord abide in our thoughts and
hearts, when he says, "Thinkest thou, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find
faith on the earth" then, because we are God's faithful soldiers, who war for the faith
and sincere religion of God, let us keep the camp entrusted to us by God with faithful
valour. Nor ought custom, which had crept in among some, to prevent the truth from
prevailing and conquering; for custom without truth is the antiquity of error. On
which account, let us forsake the error and follow the truth, …” (Cyprian; EPISTLE
LXXIII
https://www.andrews.edu/~toews/classes/sources/early/Cyprian%20Epistles.htm)
The grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ be with you all.
Amen.
Last revised: February 14, 2022
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