Participation and Common Witness: Creating a Future in Mission

ohn Naisbitt’s MegatrendF (1982, 1984) has evoked an observable effort among missiologists and practitioners to identify those elements J that are already at work in evolving the future shape of mission. The evolution that has occurred in the understanding of mission during the past 20 years, and the lack of readiness for the impact of that evolution, have made those involved in mission wary for the future, lest they be caught unprepared (Maryknoll Consultation, 1985). In these pages I will focus on two areas of experience which are in fact undergirding much of the present transition in mission and which even now shape the way we will go about mission in the years ahead. Both participation and common witness are issues found at the roots of ecclesiology and ecumenism respectively, and to some extent they overlap. We already have numerous examples of how these two issues are being articulated in lived experience, and an examination of some of the emergent features that can now be identified could be helpful toward developing a deeper understanding of the larger questions.