Mission as Missio Inter Gentes: From Everywhere For Everyone
Mission as Missio Inter Gentes: From Everywhere For Everyone
SVD Mission in Contexts: Creative Responses in a Wounded World
Antonio M. Pernia, SVD
“From Everywhere for Everyone” is the theme of the celebration of the 150th founding anniversary in 2025 of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD). This theme expresses, I believe, a new mission paradigm, namely, mission as missio inter gentes. As Stephen Bevans, in a talk given at the Second National Mission Congress of the Philippines in April 2022, put it: “Mission ad gentes in our time is no longer carried out simply ad gentes, but inter gentes.”[1] Further, he stated:
The new direction of mission ad gentes in our day is to understand it as inter gentes. The more traditional understanding was one that moved from already Christianized countries to those who still needed to hear the gospel, or be strengthened in their fragile faith and fragile church structure. It was an understanding that emphasized the superiority of Western culture and ways of thought over all others. It was an understanding that went hand in hand with colonialism and with white privilege and racism. Understanding mission ad gentes in terms of inter gentes starts with the fact that mission today is “from everywhere to everywhere,” and “by everyone to everyone.” The frontiers of our time are not the frontiers of place, but the frontiers of people.[2]
The notion of “missio inter gentes” contains a number of nuances related to the different matrices from which it has emerged in missiological discussion. Three of these nuances in particular are relevant to mission in our time, namely: (1) first, the Local Church as the subject of mission; (2) second, multiculturality as the context of mission, and (3) third, dialogue as the mode of mission. The aim of this essay is to explore these different but interlocking nuances of “missio inter gentes” and draw out their missiological implications.
[1] Stephen Bevans, “New Directions of Missio ad Gentes in the Changing Mission Frontiers of our Time,” in Gifted to Give: Proceedings of the Second National Mission Congress of the Philippines, ed. Fr. Andrew Recepción and Fr. Antonio M. Pernia, SVD (Manila: Episcopal Commission on Mission of the CBCP [Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines], 2023), 20.
[2] Bevans, “New Directions of Missio ad Gentes in the Changing Mission Frontiers of our Time,” 31.
