Relationship - the Purpose and Method of Missions

March 23, 2026

Andrew Hedinger

"Trees use mushroom roots to share nutrients and water. According to the National Forest Foundation, “In healthy forests, each tree is connected to others via this (mycorrhizal) network, enabling trees to share water and nutrients.”¹ I love thinking about this tangled, complicated network of roots and rhizomes because I think it offers us a picture of a bigger reality. God created the world and humans to exist in a network of relationships with Him and with each other. At CultureBound, this relational reality is foundational to what we do and how we do it. We believe missions is relational; it is built on God’s very character, which is relational, and it acts in the world based on the necessity of relationship with God and with others. 

Central to Christian theology is belief in the Trinity. God is one, yet He is also three distinct persons. Reflecting on this mind-boggling reality, Dennis Kinlaw says, “God in his inner life is one, and yet that oneness is a communion of other-oriented, self-giving love.”² He goes on to say, “The window of the incarnation and the cross gives us a picture of the inner being of God as a communion of free, other-oriented persons living in a dialogue of self-giving love.”³ The reason the world is built around complex networks of relationship is that God Himself has lived in perfect relationship for all eternity.  

That God is relational means that when He created humanity, He created us for relationship with Him and with each other. In Let’s Start with Jesus Kinlaw states that,

“The fact that the Holy One desires a personal, intimate relationship with his creatures inevitably creates tension. The purpose of creation was for God to have persons with whom he could fellowship in love… the creation was to find its fulfillment in a fellowship of trusting, self-giving love.”⁴

Unfortunately, we chose to reject God’s love and to seek our own way. This sin of self-love and self-reliance separated us from God. The work of Jesus, dying on the cross in our place, is a work of restoring relationship. In Jeremiah 31:33-34, God promises that He will make a new covenant with His people,

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (ESV) 

Note the relational language in this promise! “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” “They shall all know Me, from the least to the greatest.” God’s purpose for creation and for redemption was to create a people for Himself, who would live in intimate relationship with the Trinity through the saving work of Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. “A sense of identification and intimacy with God, latent in the covenant before Christ came, now through Christ has become every believer’s privilege.”⁵ 

What does this relationship focus mean for missions and for missionary training?

First and foremost, it defines the purpose of missions. The result of the new covenant is relational, the creation of a people who will say to God, “you are our God,” and to whom He says, “You are my people.” As the Creator, God is in continual relationship with all creation, but He is seeking those who will enter into a right relationship with Him, through the saving work of Jesus. To riff on John Piper’s observation that missions exist because worship doesn’t; missions exist because right relationship doesn’t. When right relationship is restored between God and humans, it is marked by worship. The apostle Paul described his ministry by saying, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Cor 5:20 ESV)." Missionaries leave the comfort of their home culture and language in order to declare to those who have never heard the gospel, that reconciliation with God is available through Christ.  

But relationship is not just the goal of missions; it is also the method. At CultureBound we teach cross-cultural workers the attitudes, skills, and knowledge they need to learn cultural patterns different than their own. Why? Because in learning the cultural patterns of another people group, we develop the ability to enter into genuine, loving, relationships with those who are different from us. Jesus “emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (Phil 2:7 ESV)." He entered into our cultural patterns. Missionaries enter into the cultural patterns of other peoples so they can build genuine relationship and through those relationships act as ambassadors for Christ, appealing to people that they can be reconciled to God.  

To enter a culture different than our own and to successfully share the Gospel in that culture would be impossible if it were not for one other reality. God is already in relationship with those to whom missionaries go. Jesus promised us that if He left, He would send us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit would, “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgement… (Jn 16:8 ESV)." As missionaries, we are in relationship with God, the Holy Spirit working through us to glorify the Father and make Jesus known; but the Holy Spirit is also at work in those who hear our message. He is convicting of sin and righteousness, calling to Himself those who will be His people.  

I love thinking about the tangled mass of roots and mushrooms that carry nutrients beneath our feet because it reminds me that I am involved in an even more intricate and glorious network of relationships. Relationship with God through Christ, relationship with brothers and sisters in Christ, across time and space in His global church, and relationship with those who do not know the Lord, but with whom I can share the hope I have in Christ, knowing that God himself works in our heart to bring us to salvation. This network of relationships is the foundation on which CultureBound’s work of training cross-cultural missionaries is built.  

¹ “Underground Networking: The Amazing Connections Beneath Your Feet,” National Forest Foundation, accessed March 6, 2026, https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/underground-mycorrhizal-network. 

² Dennis F. Kinlaw, Let’s Start with Jesus: A New Way of Doing Theology (Zondervan, 2011), 28. 

³ Kinlaw, Let’s Start with Jesus, 30. 

⁴ Kinlaw, 39. 

⁵ Kinlaw, 42. 

Andrew Hedinger grew up as a missionary kid in central Mexico. He now lives with his wife and children in Portland, Oregon where he serves as the Director of Admissions for Western Seminary.