Missiology and Ecclesiology

Last night I was talking with an acquaintance of mine, and in the course of the discussion, we got on to both the topic of missionary/evangelistic activity and the liturgy of the church. He's a Catholic, and he happened to mention that he had read somewhere that even if the Bible were to disappear, in theory, the liturgy of the Catholic church retained everything necessary for faith. It's apparently supposed to present the Gospel in both an outreach and proclamation manner, thus fulfilling the idea of the constant calling to repentance and the proclamation of the Gospel to believers.

Now, I'm not about to become Catholic by any means, and he even admitted that the reality rarely matched the ideal, but it got me thinking. To what extent can we say that about our ecclesiology, and the method in which we worship? If we're not to make the Bible into our God, and set the written scripture above the message of God, would we still be able to say that we are proclaiming the Gospel even when we don't quote it?

I think this is maybe connected to the idea of "lifestyle evangelism" popular in evangelical churches, but I mean more than that. I'm not just talking about evangelism, for one – I'm also meaning the general proclamation of the Gospel for its value even to the believer. And I'm not saying it's just a personal thing. It's very much a corporate thing, the how we do church.

I seem to remember Karl Barth writing something about missions being the assignment of the church. John Flett notes that missionary societies arose because the ecclesiologies weren't sufficient. There's a pretty good consensus, as far as I've read, that missions are supposed to happen within the context of the church. Does how we do church play a role in that (obviously, but I mean more than cultural expression vs. exporting western styles)? Do we "do missions" by "doing church?" If we do, are we proclaiming the Gospel in how we "do church?" In what a church is? In the liturgy and forms we choose?

I don't know enough about the topic to say definitively, but I would tentatively say, probably yes. What it means to "be church" and "do church" isn't the most popular field of study in modern times, but I think it's something we might need to focus a bit more on, if we're living out the theology we claim to believe.

Maybe, if I have time, and can figure out the right resources, this will become an article at some point, but for now, it's just my questioning out there.