Being, Becoming, and Doing in the Missio Dei

Every person who follows Jesus into the world as a witness carries something invisible into every conversation: a deeply held conviction about what makes life meaningful. You may not have given it a name, but it shapes how you spend your hours, what you consider success, and even how you relate to the people God has placed around you. Missiologists and cross-cultural researchers call this your activity value orientation — the motivating framework that answers a surprisingly personal and profound question: “What generates meaning in my personal activity?”

Researchers in cross-cultural studies, including the foundational work of Florence Kluckhohn and Fred Strodtbeck (1961) on value orientations, identify three primary modes of human activity: Being, Being-in-Becoming, and Doing. These are not personality labels or productivity categories. They are windows into the soul’s deepest convictions about what it means to be human. And for anyone engaged in the personal, conversational witness that is at the heart of God’s mission, understanding these orientations is not optional — it is essential.

This article explores each orientation through the lens of Scripture, systematic theology, and the Missio Dei, offering both personal reflection and practical guidance for those called to bear witness to Jesus in ordinary life.

 

The Question That Shapes Everything

Before we examine each orientation, it’s worth sitting with the question itself. “What motivation generates meaning in my personal activity?” is not a productivity question. It is a theological one. It asks: What do I believe I am for? What makes a day worthwhile? What gives my efforts their weight?

The Apostle Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, frames human activity within a remarkably bold theological horizon: “Whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ” (Col. 3:23–24, NKJV). Every form of personal activity — mundane or magnificent — can carry transcendent meaning when it is rightly oriented. The question is not whether your activity has meaning, but where that meaning is anchored.

In the context of personal witness — those ordinary, Spirit-led conversations in which we share what we have seen and heard of Jesus — this question becomes even more urgent. The person you are speaking with also has an activity orientation. When your frameworks collide without understanding, the gospel can get lost in translation. When you understand them, the gospel can find its way into the very heart of what they most deeply care about.

 

Being: The Witness of Presence

The Being orientation finds meaning in spontaneous expression, immediate presence, and authentic relational engagement. It is not laziness or passivity — it is a conviction that the most important things happen not through achievement but through encounter. The Being-oriented person trusts that simply showing up, fully attentive and unhurried, is itself a form of faithfulness.

Being in Scripture

The archetypal Being moment in Scripture is Moses at the burning bush (Exod. 3:1–14). Moses was not seeking God; he was tending sheep. The encounter interrupts his routine, reframes his agenda, and confronts him with the most radical Being statement in all of Scripture: “I AM WHO I AM.” God does not introduce himself through accomplishment or program — He introduces himself as pure, undivided presence. All subsequent Mosaic activity flows from this moment of reception, not initiation.

Psalm 46:10 offers one of the most counter-cultural imperatives in the biblical text: “Be still, and know that I am God.” The Hebrew verb translated “be still” (raphah) carries the sense of releasing, letting go, ceasing to grasp. This is not emptiness but a particular quality of presence — attentive, receptive, unhurried. It is, in the deepest sense, a form of meaningful activity.

Perhaps no single narrative captures the tension between Being and Doing more vividly than the story of Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38–42. Martha’s Doing is not wrong in itself; it is the anxiety and self-referential busyness that Jesus gently confronts. Mary’s “unproductive” sitting at Jesus’ feet is declared “the good portion.” The narrative makes a theological statement: presence to the person of Jesus is not supplemental to mission — it is its source.

Being and the Witness in Conversation

For those engaged in personal witness, the Being orientation provides an essential missiological corrective. Presence-based mission — sometimes called “incarnational witness” — recognizes that the gospel must be inhabited before it can be announced. John 1:14 frames the entire Incarnation in these terms: the Word “dwelt among us” (eskenos, “tabernacled”). Jesus did not appear, deliver a message, and depart. He moved into the neighborhood.

In practical terms, the witness who carries a Being orientation understands that a conversation about Jesus is not primarily a data transfer. It is a relational encounter. Listening before speaking, being genuinely curious about another person’s experience, and resisting the urge to prematurely close a conversation with a presentation are all expressions of Being faithfully applied to witness. The apologetic power of this is significant: in a culture of burnout, distraction, and performance anxiety, simply being fully present is itself a proclamation of an alternative reality.

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well (John 4:1–42) is a masterclass in Being-oriented witness. He was tired (v. 6), but he stopped. He asked a question (v. 7). He listened. He did not deploy a programmatic gospel presentation but engaged a specific human being in her specific story. The result was one of the most explosive episodes of personal witness in the Gospels. Presence preceded proclamation.

The apologetic entry point for Being-oriented individuals and cultures is the gospel of rest. Matthew 11:28–30 speaks directly to those exhausted by performance and achievement: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” This is not an escape from activity but a reorientation of identity — from what you produce to who you belong to.

 

Being-in-Becoming: The Witness of Transformation

Being-in-Becoming generates meaning through self-development, growth, and progressive transformation. It is a teleological orientation — the conviction that persons are on a journey toward something, and that the journey itself is meaningful. This orientation is deeply embedded in Scripture’s understanding of sanctification and discipleship.

Being-in-Becoming in Scripture

Jacob’s night of wrestling at the Jabbok ford (Gen. 32:24–30) is one of the most visceral Being-in-Becoming narratives in the entire scripture. Jacob arrives grasping; he departs limping. He enters as a schemer; he leaves with a new name. The painful, embodied transformation is not incidental to the story — it is the story. This is what becoming looks like: costly, disorienting, and ultimately constitutive of a new identity.

A single verse — Luke 2:52 — quietly bears enormous theological weight: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Even the incarnate Son, fully divine, is described in developmental terms. The Being-in-Becoming orientation is not a concession to human limitation; it is sanctified by the pattern of Jesus’ own earthly life. Growth, formation, and maturation are themselves God-honoring activities.

Paul’s autobiographical statement in Philippians 3:12–14 is the New Testament’s most explicit expression of Being-in-Becoming: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own.” Paul does not claim arrival. He claims direction. The motivation generating meaning is not past accomplishment but ongoing transformation — the process of being “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29).

The vine-and-branches metaphor of John 15:1–8 frames the entire Christian life in Being-in-Becoming terms. Fruitfulness is not produced by autonomous activity (Doing) but emerges organically from abiding union with Christ. The Father prunes — a painful process of formative reduction — not to punish but to produce greater fruitfulness. Meaning is generated through the process of remaining and being shaped, not through discrete achievements.

Being-in-Becoming and the Witness in Conversation

For personal witness, the Being-in-Becoming orientation opens powerful conversational doors, particularly with seekers, post-modern individuals, and those steeped in therapeutic or progressive self-improvement cultures. These are people who resonate deeply with the language of journey, growth, and becoming. They want transformation, not just information.

The witness who understands this orientation can engage the converser’s own narrative of aspiration and ask the deeper question: “Where is your journey of becoming taking you? And does the framework you’re using have the resources to sustain the transformation you’re longing for?” The gospel’s answer — that real transformation requires a new birth, a new nature, and union with the One who is the author of all becoming — speaks directly to this longing.

Bryant Myers, in his influential work on transformational development, argues that authentic holistic mission cannot be reduced to either proclamation alone or social action alone — it must pursue the transformation of whole persons and whole communities over time (Myers, 2011). This maps directly onto the Being-in-Becoming orientation and gives the individual witness a framework for patience, process, and long-term relational investment.

The theological language of sanctification — the Spirit’s ongoing work of conforming believers to Christ (2 Cor. 3:18) — is the church’s doctrinal articulation of Being-in-Becoming. What distinguishes Christian transformation from secular self-improvement is precisely its source: not human effort alone but cooperative yielding to the Spirit’s transforming work. As the witness, you can offer not just a better philosophy of growth but an actual agent of transformation — the living Christ.

 

Doing: The Witness of Purposeful Action

The Doing orientation generates meaning through goal-setting, achievement, and the purposeful pursuit of outcomes. It is the orientation most at home in Western, achievement-oriented cultures, but it is by no means merely a cultural artifact. The Doing impulse is embedded in the very structure of creation.

Doing in Scripture

Genesis 1:28 — the so-called “cultural mandate” or “creation mandate” — establishes Doing as intrinsic to human identity as image-bearers: “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” The verbs are active and goal-oriented. The Doing orientation is not a product of the fall or of Western modernity; it is built into the fabric of what it means to be human. The problem is not Doing itself but Doing that is unmoored from divine commission and community orientation.

Nehemiah’s reconstruction of Jerusalem’s walls (Neh. 2–6) is perhaps the Old Testament’s most sustained portrait of Spirit-directed Doing. Nehemiah identifies a God-given mission, conducts reconnaissance, plans strategically, mobilizes a community, manages opposition, and completes the project in fifty-two days. Meaning is generated at every step by the alignment of personal activity with a divine commission. Nehemiah’s Doing is never self-referential; it is always embedded in the purposes of God for his people.

The Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25:14–30) confronts any spiritualizing of Christian life that retreats from purposeful activity. The master does not reward the servant who “did not want to risk it”; he rewards those who deployed their entrusted resources and produced outcomes. The buried talent is not humility — it is fear masquerading as caution. Meaningful Doing requires risk, investment, and accountability.

The commissioning of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch (Acts 13:1–3) is a paradigmatic Doing moment in the early church. The Spirit speaks with specificity: particular persons, a particular mission, a particular deployment. The church fasts, prays, lays on hands, and acknowledges the Spirit’s sending. There is no ambiguity about the task. Doing in the Missio Dei is not frantic activity — it is apostolic obedience to a divine commission, executed in the power of the Spirit.

Doing and the Witness in Conversation

For personal witness, the Doing orientation creates a particular apologetic opportunity with goal-driven, purpose-oriented, and achievement-focused individuals and cultures. These are people who want to know: “Does this actually work? Can you show me the track record? What difference does it make?” They are not moved by appeals to subjective experience alone; they want evidence of fruitfulness.

The witness engaging a Doing-oriented person can meet them on their own terms by demonstrating the coherence and fruitfulness of the Christian worldview. This might involve pointing to the gospel’s historical track record of human flourishing, justice advocacy, educational development, and social renewal across cultures and centuries. It might involve engaging honestly with the question: “Does the Christian framework produce the outcomes you care most about?”

The Doing orientation also carries its own shadow side: the tendency to measure everything in outputs, to reduce mission to metrics, and to burn out when results are slow in coming. Luke 19:13’s imperative to “occupy till I come” frames all Christian Doing within an eschatological horizon. We are not managers of outcomes; we are stewards of faithfulness. The results belong to God. This frees the Doing-oriented witness from the anxiety of scorekeeping while preserving the urgency and intentionality of purposeful action.

 

Integration: All Three Orientations in the Life of the Witness

Healthy missional theology and faithful personal witness require all three orientations held in creative tension. The witness who only inhabits Being can drift into passivity, presence without proclamation, relationship without invitation. The witness who only inhabits Being-in-Becoming can become perpetually inward-focused, endlessly refining the self while the world waits. The witness who only inhabits Doing can become anxious, metrics-driven, and relationally impoverished — treating people as targets rather than treasures.

John 15 holds the integration together beautifully. “Abide in me, and I in you” (Being) — the source of the witness’s life is relational presence with Christ. “Every branch that bears fruit he prunes” (Being-in-Becoming) — the witness is in a continuous process of formation, correction, and growth. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit” (Doing) — there is a commission, a mission, an expectation of fruitful outcome.

The Missio Dei — God’s own mission in the world — integrates all three dimensions. God’s presence with his people (Being), his ongoing redemptive work of transformation in history (Being-in-Becoming), and his sovereign, purposeful advance toward the consummation of all things (Doing) are not competing stories. They are one story, and the faithful witness is invited into all three movements of it.

 

Knowing Your Neighbor’s Orientation: Cross-Cultural Witness

One of the most practical applications of understanding activity value orientations is in cross-cultural and cross-worldview conversation. Missiologist Paul Hiebert argued persuasively that effective witness requires deep cultural understanding — not to compromise the gospel but to communicate it with clarity and integrity (Hiebert, 1985). Activity orientation is one of the most significant cross-cultural variables in witness contexts.

A Doing-oriented witness operating in a Being-oriented culture will consistently generate friction without understanding why. Arriving with an agenda, pressing toward a conclusion, and measuring relational success by whether a conversation “produced something” will undermine trust in contexts where relationships develop slowly and presence is valued above productivity. The gospel does not change in these contexts, but its incarnation — the manner of its embodiment in witness — must adapt.

Conversely, a Being-oriented witness in a Doing-oriented context may be perceived as vague, uncommitted, or lacking conviction. Goal-driven people want to know what the gospel asks of them and what it promises to produce. They need to see that faith is not merely an experience but a framework for action with real-world implications.

The skilled witness learns to ask excellent questions that reveal another person’s activity orientation without reducing them to a type. Questions like: “What does a meaningful day look like for you?” or “What are you most working toward right now?” or “If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?” each create openings into the Being, Doing, and Being-in-Becoming frameworks respectively. These are not manipulative techniques — they are expressions of genuine curiosity about what God has already written on another person’s heart.

 

A Word to the Witness: Know Thyself First

Before we can fruitfully engage another person’s activity orientation in witness, we must be honest about our own. What generates meaning for you? Are you motivated by the quiet of receptive presence, the journey of ongoing formation, or the satisfaction of goals reached and tasks completed? Most people carry a dominant orientation, often shaped by family of origin, culture, personality, and spiritual formation history.

Self-knowledge here is not navel-gazing; it is missiological preparation. The witness who does not know their own default orientation will unconsciously project it onto every person they encounter — and will be perpetually frustrated when the gospel doesn’t land the way they expect. Augustine’s ancient dictum, “Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee,” speaks to all three orientations simultaneously: the restlessness of ungrounded Doing, the longing of incomplete Becoming, and the deep craving for presence that only Being-with-God can satisfy.

The good news is that the gospel is large enough to speak to all three orientations with integrity and power. To the exhausted achiever it says: “Your identity is not your output.” To the restless seeker it says: “The transformation you are longing for is real, and its author is the one who began a good work in you and will bring it to completion” (Phil. 1:6). To the purpose-driven activist it says: “What you do matters eternally, not because of your effort but because you are building on the foundation of One whose purposes cannot fail” (1 Cor. 3:10–15).

 

Conclusion: Activity in the Service of the Mission of God

What generates meaning in your personal activity? The answer to that question shapes every conversation, every relationship, and every act of witness you will ever undertake. The biblical narrative refuses to collapse human activity into a single mode. It holds Being, Becoming, and Doing in a rich, dynamic tension that reflects the fullness of who God is and the breadth of what it means to be made in his image.

In the Missio Dei — God’s own mission in and through and for the world — all three orientations find their deepest ground. We are called to be present with people as Christ was present (Being), to be agents of genuine transformation in the lives of those we accompany (Being-in-Becoming), and to engage with purposeful, courageous obedience in the tasks God assigns us (Doing). These are not competing callings. They are dimensions of a single vocation: to participate, in our ordinary conversations and relationships, in God’s redemptive movement toward all people.

The witness who understands activity value orientation is equipped to ask better questions, build deeper trust, engage more honestly with the specific contours of another person’s worldview, and introduce the gospel not as an abstract system but as the living answer to the motivational questions that already animate every human life. Go, abide, become, and do — all for the glory of the One who is, who was, and who is to come.

Sources and Further Reading

• Augustine of Hippo. (397 CE). Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Bosch, David J. (1991). Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
• Flemming, Dean. (2005). Contextualization in the New Testament: Patterns for Theology and Mission. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• Hiebert, Paul G. (1985). Anthropological Insights for Missionaries. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
• Kluckhohn, Florence R., & Strodtbeck, Fred L. (1961). Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.
• Myers, Bryant L. (2011). Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development (rev. ed.). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
• Newbigin, Lesslie. (1989). The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
• Tennent, Timothy C. (2010). Invitation to World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-first Century. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic.
• Wright, Christopher J. H. (2006). The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• Biblical quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV) unless otherwise noted. Thomas Nelson, 1982.