I just came across the September-October 2014 edition of Mission Frontiers the journal of the US Centre for World Mission (who were represented at our 2013 LOI consultation). This very interesting edition focuses on “Ethno-Doxology : Worship and Mission for the Global Church”. In a number of well researched and well written articles the contributors address the issue of the link between worship and mission and how one remains true to Scripture and Christian tradition whilst still offering worship to God which is contextually appropriate and accessible to people of very different cultures.
My great surprise, however, was to discover that there seemed to be no reference to the Orthodox understanding of the missional nature of worship at all. Having read most of the contributions I could not believe this lack of reference to such a major stream of Christian experience so I did a word search. Sure enough when I entered the word “Orthodox” the result was “not found”!
I share this in the hope that one of my Orthodox friends might be stimulated to read the articles (the whole edition can be downloaded here) and then write a response and send it to the editor. Please don’t understand me as being critical of this edition of Mission Frontiers, a journal I regard highly, for it has some very good articles in it …. but despite this I do think evangelicals need to listen to the Orthodox understanding of mission and worship.