From Curiosity to Participation

What kind of person should do theology?

Gregory of Nazianzus begins his first theological oration with a striking restriction: theology is not for everyone, not for every audience, not at every moment, and not without limits. To contemporary ears, his words can sound unnecessarily exclusive. Theology, we might object, belongs to the whole church. Every follower of Jesus should seek to know God and speak truthfully about him.

Gregory would not disagree. Indeed, he insists that we should remember God more often than we breathe. His concern is not whether Christians should know and love God. His concern is the character of those who presume to speak about God and the spirit in which they do so.

For Gregory, theology is not a contest of clever ideas. It is not religious entertainment, public argument, or casual speculation. Those who undertake it should be examined, formed in contemplation, and purified—or at least undergoing purification—in soul and body. Moreover, theology should be practiced when a person is free from the kinds of disturbance that cloud perception and turn inquiry into conflict. The theologian must be appropriately formed, inwardly attentive, and capable of approaching the mystery of God with reverence.

This is not a rejection of theological learning. It is a description of theological maturity.

Gregory wrote amid intense doctrinal controversy. He knew that serious theological questions mattered. Yet he also understood that a person can argue for what is true in a manner that distorts the truth being defended. One may speak about God while exhibiting pride, hostility, or ambition. One may possess theological vocabulary without theological wisdom. One may win an argument and still fail to bear witness to the God about whom the argument was supposedly concerned.

That ancient warning remains timely. Much contemporary theology is produced amid noise, haste, controversy, and the pressure to react. Missions can be similarly driven by urgency, strategy, and measurable outcomes. In both settings, the person doing the work can disappear behind the work itself. Gregory brings the person back into view. Before asking, “What theology should be articulated?” or “What strategy should be implemented?” we must also ask, “What kind of people are we becoming as we seek to know God and participate in his mission?”

That question brings us to missiological spirituality.

More Than Knowledge, Experience, or Activity

Missiological spirituality is the lifelong rhythm of being in communion with and participating in the life and mission of the Triune God. It cannot be reduced to the acquisition of theological knowledge, the cultivation of private spiritual experience, or the performance of ministry tasks. It holds together knowing, encountering, discerning, and participating.

Theology often leans toward abstraction. Spirituality can lean toward interiority. Missions often leans toward strategy. Each has an indispensable contribution, but each becomes distorted when separated from the others. Theology without spiritual formation can become intellectualism. Spirituality without faithful engagement can collapse into emotionalism. Mission without communion and discernment can become activism or, worse, a mechanism for producing predetermined results.

Missiological spirituality resists these separations through an ever-deepening rhythm:

Curiosity → Discovery → Reflection → Wonder → Participation

This is not a five-step method. It is not a technique for obtaining spiritual results. It is a way of describing how a person, and a community, learns to attend to the God who continually speaks and acts. Each movement flows into the others, and participation awakens fresh curiosity. The rhythm is therefore better imagined as an ascending spiral than as a straight line. We revisit the same questions, but we do so with greater humility, maturity, and attentiveness.

Curiosity: Learning to Ask

Missiological spirituality begins with curiosity. This is not skepticism for its own sake, nor a restless desire for novelty. It is the humble recognition that we do not yet see fully. Holy curiosity refuses to assume that our inherited categories, familiar methods, or immediate interpretations exhaust what God may be saying and doing.

Curiosity asks questions. What is happening here? How are people making meaning? What fears, hopes, loyalties, and longings are shaping this community? Where is the gospel being heard clearly, and where might our cultural assumptions be obscuring it? What is God saying? What is God doing?

Such curiosity requires conversation. The New Testament term dialegomai suggests reasoning and engaging in dialogue, not merely delivering conclusions. The curious practitioner listens before prescribing. The curious theologian enters dialogue not simply to defend a position but to understand faithfully. Curiosity becomes an act of humility because it acknowledges that God is already present and active before we arrive.

Discovery: Learning to See

Curiosity leads to discovery. If curiosity asks, discovery attends. It looks carefully at Scripture, people, culture, history, and the movement of God in the world. It requires the disciplined posture of theōreō: observing, perceiving, and considering what is before us.

Discovery is more than gathering information. Data can be accumulated without anything truly being seen. Missiological discovery asks us to notice both what God says and what God does. God’s words interpret his works, and his works illuminate his words. Scripture teaches us how to perceive the activity of God, while attentive presence in the world sends us back to Scripture with questions we may not otherwise have learned to ask.

This kind of discovery requires appropriate formation. Gregory’s concern for those who have been tested and matured is relevant here. Education matters not because academic credentials make someone spiritually perceptive, but because careful study can discipline our assumptions, correct shallow interpretations, and teach us to distinguish insight from impulse. Yet education alone is insufficient. The person who discovers must also be becoming the kind of person capable of seeing truthfully.

Reflection: Learning to Discern

What we discover must be reflected upon. Reflection turns observation toward discernment. It asks not only, “What have I seen?” but also, “Why do I see it this way?” Our perceptions are shaped by culture, experience, tradition, theological education, wounds, loyalties, and expectations. Reflexivity invites us to examine those influences without surrendering confidence in biblical truth.

This work takes place within us, but it cannot remain private. The isolated interpreter is especially vulnerable to mistaking personal preference for spiritual perception. Missiological reflection therefore belongs within a hermeneutical community—a community in which Scripture is read, experience is tested, assumptions are exposed, and discernment is shared.

The church in Acts could say, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.” That language does not suggest uncertainty about the Spirit. It expresses the humility of a community discerning together. Personal reflection is enriched and corrected through communal listening. The mature theologian is not simply one who has answers, but one who has learned how to listen—to Scripture, to the Spirit, to the church, and to the people among whom the church bears witness.

Here Gregory’s insistence that theology not be practiced amid inner disturbance or contentiousness becomes especially important. Conflict narrows perception. When we theologize primarily to defeat an opponent, protect our status, or secure our position, discernment gives way to self-defense. This does not mean theology must avoid difficult questions or serious disagreement. It means that conflict must not become the spiritual condition from which our theology arises.

Wonder: Learning to Worship

Faithful reflection should lead us beyond explanation to wonder. Wonder is the worshipful recognition that the Triune God continually exceeds our understanding. We may speak truthfully about God, but we never speak exhaustively. We may recognize his activity, but we never master his mystery.

Wonder protects theology from becoming merely academic. It reminds us that the object of theology is not an object at all, but the living God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who draws us into communion. Wonder transforms knowledge into worship. It receives revelation not as possession but as gift.

This is why awe matters for missions. Without wonder, God can become instrumental to our programs. Prayer becomes preparation for the real work rather than participation in God’s life. Scripture becomes a source of principles. People become projects. The mystery of God is reduced to a strategy for achieving outcomes.

Wonder interrupts that reduction. It draws our attention again to the beauty, holiness, and freedom of God. Yet wonder cannot become a resting place detached from the world. If it does, spirituality turns inward and awe becomes emotionalism. The God who evokes wonder is the God who sends.

Participation: Learning to Join God

So, naturally, wonder leads to participation. The goal is not simply to know more about God or even to experience God more deeply. The goal is communion expressed in faithful participation in his mission.

Participation begins by recognizing that mission belongs to God. We do not initiate it, manage it, or possess it. The Triune God is already speaking and acting in the world. The Spirit is already at work. Our calling is to discern that activity and enter it faithfully.

This changes the posture of missions. We do not merely work for Christ as though he were absent from the work. We participate with Christ. We bear witness, form communities, serve neighbors, cross boundaries, pursue reconciliation, and announce the good news as people drawn into the movement of God’s own life.

Participation, however, is not the end of the rhythm. Once we enter what God is doing, new questions arise. People surprise us. Contexts resist our assumptions. Scripture confronts us afresh. Our participation exposes both grace and limitation. We become curious again, and the spiral begins another turn.

Becoming People Capable of Participation

Gregory of Nazianzus reminds us that theology concerns more than the accuracy of our statements. It concerns the formation of those who make them. Missiological spirituality extends that insight into the life and mission of the church. If perichoretic mission describes the movement of the Triune God, missiological spirituality describes the kind of people capable of recognizing and participating in that movement.

They are people whose curiosity remains humble, whose discovery is disciplined, whose reflection is personal and communal, whose wonder becomes worship, and whose participation is responsive rather than self-initiated. They are not people who have arrived. They are people being formed.

Perhaps, then, the most important question is not whether we are theologians, spiritual people, or missional practitioners. The question is whether our theology, spirituality, and mission are being held together in a life attentive to God.

• Are we curious enough to ask what God is saying and doing?

• Are we patient enough to discover before deciding?

• Are we humble enough to examine our perceptions with others?

• Are we attentive enough to be led into wonder?

• And are we willing, finally, to participate in what God reveals?

This is the rhythm of missiological spirituality. It is not mastery of God, but maturity before God. It is the lifelong formation of a people who remember God more often than they breathe—and who, in reverence and communion, join the mission that is already his.

See Gregory of Nazianzus, “The First Theological Oration” (Oration 27), especially sections 3–4.