An Ecumenical and Missiological ‘Outsider’ Perspective on Mission with Special Reference to the Diocese of Thyateria and Great Britain

From a protestant evangelical and charismatic perspective Orthodox approaches to mission and missiology over the past 30 years can seem limited given that the missional church movement in Anglo-American contexts has spawned an almost unbounded number of texts about the mission of the church. This paper begins by giving a Pan Orthodox survey of missiology based on the writings of both Eastern and Orientals gleaning what I consider to be the pertinent features of an Orthodox missiology and posing some questions. What I outline in this article is a generalised Orthodox missiology whilst making note of movements that were in fact missional in their nature but are mostly unknown to British evangelicals and charismatics.
The paper then proceeds to ask what mission in ecumenical perspective looks like from my ‘lived’ experience of interaction with the Greek Orthodox church leadership through my work as principal officer of mission and evangelism at Churches Together in England, the national ecumenical instrument. The appointment of Archbishop Nikitas as the head of Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain in the Ecumenical Patriarchate in June 2019 could be seen as a new era of openness and engagement in ecumenical mission. I offer this an atypical example of diaspora Orthodox mission.
Drawing on a speech from Archbishop Nikitas to the Group for Evangelization in October 2020, and my reflections on Nikitas, and a new generation of younger priests in the diocese I ask what missiological postures and themes are revealed as an embodied missiology in the Orthodox Diaspora. I identify this embodied missiology as rooted in transnational experience of border crossing, hospitality, and the pursuit of ecumenical relationality.

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