In the early hours of a Wednesday morning, you step outside and take a deep breath. The air is humid, the city’s hum has not yet begun. You open your notebook and scribble a prayer: “Holy Spirit, show me where You are already working today.” As you close the notebook, you realise: this is not a “quiet time” isolated from the world—it’s the start of a mission day. The call to the missio Dei—the mission of God—is not just for Sundays or church programs. It’s for every moment, every interaction, every breath.
In the course ELD1000 Intro to Missional Spirituality, you will explore how spiritual disciplines—traditionally quiet, reflective practices—can become dynamic tools for joining in God’s mission in the world. We learn how to integrate spiritual reading, experimentations, community reflections and incarnational living into theological competence, grounded in the gospel and shaped for global settings.
Why Spiritual Discipline and Mission Belong Together
When Scripture invites you to abide in the vine (John 15:4-5), or to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), it isn’t offering a luxury—it’s offering the framework for participation in the active mission of God. Discipleship and mission aren’t add-ons—they are foundational. Your lifestyle becomes the curriculum you didn’t know you were already following.
The gospel says: we are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9). Yet faith—when it is alive—produces actions. “Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:17) In ELD1000 you’ll see how spiritual practices aren’t just inward disciplines—they are outward invitations to the living water of Jesus to flow into the world.
God’s mission has always involved relationship, presence and transformation. We do not compartmentalise our “spiritual life” and our “missional life.” They are one. The Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is missionary at the heart of reality. In joining in the missio Dei, we share in the life of God, and our spiritual rhythms become missional rhythms.
Key Competencies in ELD1000
The course equips you with missional competencies such as:
- Reflective spiritual reading – engaging scripture, classic spiritual writings, and mission-themed resources with a posture of listening, not just learning.
- Missional experiments – short, practical tasks that take you into everyday spaces (coffee shops, playgrounds, markets) to live out your spiritual practices in context.
- Community formation and weekly reflections – you’re not alone in this. Through small-group reflection you grow in spiritual maturity and mission-readiness.
- Contextual awareness and incarnational living – understanding culture, environment, worldview so your spiritual practices are not foreign but rooted in people’s lived realities.
- Overcoming ethnocentrism – mission in global settings requires humility, openness, and a willingness to learn from people whose culture, language and rhythm differ from our own.
In your journey through ELD1000 you’ll quickly see: spiritual disciplines are not routines to master—they are seats of transformation, springboards into mission.
What Missional Spiritual Practice Looks Like
Let’s take some concrete examples.
Reading & Reflection: One week you might choose a short passage from John 4:13-14 where Jesus offers living water. You reflect on how that water might flow in your own context. Then you journal a one-page reflection answering: “Where do I see thirst around me? How can I offer living water?”
Missional Experiment: You plan a “listening walk” in your community. You walk without agenda for 15-20 minutes, simply noticing: people, spaces, rhythms, challenges. You carry your notebook and record two or three things you saw and one question you heard in your heart. The next day you share in your reflection group how this walk shaped your awareness of mission.
Community Rhythm: Every week you meet with 3-4 others in the course for 30 minutes. You begin with silence, then share your experiment, reflect on your reading, pray for each other’s contexts, and conclude with one actionable step for the coming week. These groups become small incarnational communities—micro-expressions of missional living.
Incarnational Presence: You choose one meal during the week where you invite a non-church friend, colleague or neighbour. Instead of using the time to “share the gospel,” you primarily listen, laugh together, serve, ask about life’s longings. Then you offer a simple prayer or invite reflection—with the goal being presence, relationship and authenticity.
Why This Is Crucial in a Post-Christendom World
In many parts of the world—urban centres, digital spaces, formerly Christian cultures—we live in a post-Christian (or post-Christendom) reality. Communities are no longer imbued with Christian norms. Faith is often seen as irrelevant, outdated, or alien.
That’s why spiritual disciplines alone, or mission strategies alone, aren’t enough. We need a missional spirituality—where discipline and mission are integrated, where presence and proclaiming go hand in hand. For example, consider the necessity of adapting the gospel for diverse worldviews.
In ELD1000 you’ll learn how to shape your spiritual life for this reality: how to pray for the unreached, how to sense God at work in public spaces, how to build discipleship that is rooted in scriptural tradition but expressed in culturally-relevant ways.
Practical Pathways for Transformation
Here are steps you’ll be encouraged to adopt:
- Daily anchor – Choose one verse that links mission and life (for example, Matthew 28:19-20). Begin each day by reading it, then asking: “How will I live this today?”
- Weekly experiment – Carry out a short task in your context (e.g., buy an extra meal for someone in need; invite a colleague for coffee; send a note to someone outside your usual circle). Use this as your missional discipline for the week.
- Reflection habit – Write one paragraph in your journal every Sunday evening: What did I see of God this week? Where did I resist flow? How will I adjust next week?
- Group accountability – In your reflection group, share your experiment, your reflections, and one step for next week. Pray for your contexts together.
- Context map – Every month, sketch your environment: who are key people, what cultural norms exist, what are local longings? Use this map to inform your spiritual experiments and community formation.
- Cross-cultural humility – Learn a short phrase in someone else’s language; ask a person from another culture about a local custom; listen without judgement. This builds the bridge between your spiritual discipline and global missional living.
Integration with Missional Congregation and Course Goals
Though ELD1000 focuses on spiritual formation, it is deeply connected to the broader mission-driven competencies at Missional University. You will see direct links between this course and others like ELD2200 Disciple-making Essentials.
By weaving spiritual disciplines with missional consciousness, you’re not only forming your personal life—you’re preparing to engage, lead and form communities that reflect the gospel in diverse settings. Missionally-driven congregations don’t just do good—they live out the presence of the Triune God, bear witness to the living Christ, and send out disciples into all nations.
Avoiding Ethnocentrism and Embracing Global Humility
One of the greatest challenges in missional spirituality is the temptation to export our own cultural forms rather than incarnate the gospel in local cultures. ELD1000 helps you to recognise and overcome ethnocentrism—assuming your culture is the model for mission. Instead, you are taught to live with open-mindedness, to learn from local practices, and to let your spiritual disciplines be shaped by the people around you, not merely by programmes or foreign models.
When you practise a “listening walk” in a South African township, an Asian metropolis, or a Latin-American favela, you enter the real missional context. You ask: What is the people’s longing? What spiritual thirst can I serve? Where is the living water already flowing? Then you join that flow—not impose your idea of faith from the outside. This is how you come to understand the Missio Dei is in, well, everything.
Conclusion: A Life of Missional Spirituality
As the course syllabus suggests, ELD1000 will not simply equip you for an exam—it will equip you for a way of life. A life where your prayers, your meals, your emails, your conflicts, your quiet times, your conversations all become windows of grace. You’ll realise that the living water of Jesus is not locked in church buildings—it flows, covers cracks and crevices, brings life everywhere it goes.
This is joining the missio Dei. It is recognising you are part of God’s redemptive movement, not just a consumer of it. It is forming your habits, your disciplines, your rhythms in such a way that your life becomes faithful, joyful, and missional.
So: pick up your pen, open your Bible, step into your community, listen, experiment, invite. Let your spiritual disciplines be missional pathways. Let your lifestyle become the curriculum you didn’t know you were already following.
Further Reading
- Bosch, D. J. (1991). Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Orbis Books.
- Wright, C. J. H. (2006). The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. InterVarsity Press.
- Missional University Catalogue (2025). ELD1000 Intro to Missional Spirituality. Retrieved from https://catalogue.missional.university
Eljoh Hartzer is combining theology and art to nurture faith journeys across generations. She is a masters-level practical theologian with the University of Stellenbosch. She is also a writer and editor in the niche of Christianity and children’s content and she illustrates children’s books. Eljoh resides in the Swartland area in the Western Cape province of South Africa. She is a staff writer at Missional University focusing on missional theology and practice.
