A friend of mine was asking about the mission studies conference I'm helping to organise, with the theme of 'Rethinking God and Mission within Australian Cultures'.

'Rethinking God, eh?', he said, with a raised eyebrow, as if to say that rethinking mission is necessary but rethinking God is rather radical.

I didn't know where to start. Theology, it seems to me, is deeply metaphorical. We need many metaphors to even begin to understand God. As some old metaphors die we need new ones that speak freshly to new contexts. Repeatedly throughout Christian history we've been rethinking God in conversation with the philosophy and social reality of our time.

Rethinking mission in a changing society will pose questions about how we see God. If Christian mission is joining God's mission then the way we understand God is fundamental.

In other words, there is no separation between who God is and what God's purposes are. As God is, so God does. And our understanding of the way God does things is hopefully reflected in the way we engage with the world.

If we see God in the classical monotheistic way, God exists in separate perfection. Metaphors such as king, general and judge are appropriate. Mission on behalf of such a God seeks obedience and homage. When Australians are asked what sort of God they don't believe in, it is often the almighty judge they are rejecting.

Mission in Australia continually lurches between the poles of God's love and judgement. Samuel Marsden, chaplain to Sydney in its early penal days, typified this tension in the way he preached God's love on Sundays and dispensed harsh justice as a magistrate on weekdays. The early settlers rejected his message then as Australians do today.

Some will see God in closer relationship as protective father, or perhaps an old man with a beard. But every day in the news we see Australians reeling from tragedy and asking why God didn't protect them. Australians, for the most part, reckon that the church is on a mission for a paternal but largely irrelevant figure in the sky.

Monotheism takes other metaphorical forms, too, such as 'the first cause'. God can be so transcendent as to be eternal, all-knowing and all-powerful-but incapable of suffering or change. This is a hard God to share on the street.

Or God cares a lot but is in eternal cosmic battle with evil personified. Mission then becomes a series of power encounters in the spiritual world, rather separate from the material world and doomed to permanent conflict.

Balancing all this 'beyondness' is a trend these days to see God more in terms of being 'within'. (Remember that even this is a metaphor.)

At its extreme it becomes pantheism. Some of my spiritual-seeker friends are adamant that we are God and the universe is God. In my experience Christian mission doesn't go there: salvation in this case would mean simply realising our divinity.

But the metaphor of God within as well as beyond (panentheism) has deep Christian roots as well as speaking to the mood of many spiritually seekers today.

Rethinking God so that God is seen and experienced intimately in creation and in our own being can lead to some fruitful theology and approaches to mission.

Of course, this rethinking isn't new, even though it has usually been drowned out by the dominant monotheistic tradition. God's creativity is expressed in creation. God's presence fills the earth. God becomes part of this creation in Jesus Christ. God's Spirit is at work in the church and in the world.

For mission this rethinking can mean that mutual discovery is as appropriate as telling others about Jesus. It can mean joining with God and others in seeking justice and peace. And it can mean seeking reconciliation in all dimensions of life, including our relationships with creation.

As it happened, my friend had to go before we'd even begun to open up the question. I wonder if he's able to rethink mission without rethinking God, or was that rethinking God without rethinking mission? That's the trouble with faith questions-they're all intertwined.

Ross Langmead

MISSION HORIZONS EDITORIAL, September 2005