Issues

Thinking about Church and Mission

The church is missionary by its very nature. It is not only to be where God's blessing is experienced and celebrated, but also exists as God's agent to bring that blessing to the world.

• The Mission of God
• The Church of God
  Church and Culture
• The Mission of the Church

Listening to the voice in the wilderness
In the west, the church takes a particular cultural form which, by an unhealthy alliance with the wealth and accompanying power of the church in the west, is being exported by means of books, seminars, and now the internet, all over the world. Yet it takes with it, even today, much cultural, political, economic, social, and religious baggage which is at best culturally bound, and at worst a distortion of the gospel.

We need to hear the prophet's message to the church today, speaking to the church in the west about our compromise, calling us back to God. We need to listen to the voices from the margins - the voices crying in the wilderness, the voices of the poor, of the oppressed, of the church in the non-western world. We need to let these voices challenge us prophetically about the church in the west today.

Mission on the hoof
We develop our ecclesiology and missiology in a context of interaction between theological reflection and practice, not in the isolation of the ivory tower. The debate at the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is interesting for many reasons. It was the first major crunch time, a discussion of church and mission as the gospel spread from the Jewish culture to the Greek. The process of decision-making was prompted by the practical realities of mission, and carried forward by this dialogue between experience and theological reflection.

These are just a few thoughts as starter points as we think about what shape church and mission should take in the world today. The basic summary is

1. Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but God's Mission - the purpose he has for the world. This is therefore bigger than and prior to the church.
   
2. The church is called to be both an earthly colony of the kingdom, living under its rule, and the emissary of the kingdom, bringing its blessing to the world.
3. Therfore the church must be both worship-orientated and mission-shaped, expressed in consecration to God, and service to his world.

The Mission of God

• God has a purpose, a mission, in the world. This is often called the Missio Dei, which simply means God's Mission. Discovering God's purpose in the world is what gives definition to our own existence, and to the identity and mission of the church.
• God's purpose in the world is the kingdom of God. This is much bigger than just 'getting saved for a personal relationship with God' although that is a part of it. It has to do with God extending his rule of peace, justice, and blessing to all people everywhere.
• God's purpose is Christ-centred. It is in Christ that God brings in his reign and blessing. We see through Christ the impact of the kingdom of God upon the world, in setting people free from the destructive power of sin and sickness and oppression, bringing joy and peace and righteousness. It is in Christ that we begin to live out the privileges and purposes of God's kingdom.
• The church is not the end or final goal of God's purpose, but included within God's greater purpose or mission in the world, which is the kingdom of God. It is not so much that he gives the church a mission, but that he calls us to get involved in his mission in the world. Missions (in the plural) and what is traditionally called missionary work are in fact specific aspects of Mission, which is God's purpose in the world.
• God's nature, and therefore mission, are essentially xenophilic. That is, he is a lover of the outsider, and his purpose is tied up with reaching out to do good to those outsiders. The church's identity and purpose therefore should likewise express this xenophilia, in being essentially other-centred, not self-concerned.
• There is however a balance to be recognised that the church is supposed to be both the recipient of God's grace, and the channel of it to the world. It should be both an outpost of the kingdom of God in the world, and the agent for bringing the kingdom to the world. This double-sided nature is found even in God's blessing of Abraham, promising both that he would be blessed and that all nations would be blessed through him. He calls us both to be with him and to go out.

The Church of God

The church is therefore both a colony and the mediator of the kingdom of God. As a colony or outpost of God's kingdom, the church is heir to the blessings of the kingdom, but also a community that acknowledges and is subject to its rule. We are called to be an alternative community, living an alternative lifestyle with different values - the values of the kingdom of God. We are a community of people defined by three sets of relationships accompanying our incorporation into Christ:

• Relationship with God. We have become his children in Christ. We express this relationship in love and celebration, and in separation and devotion and obedience to him by the life of the Holy Spirit within us. This is our Worship.
• Relationship with other believers. We have become one family, one community. We express this relationship in loving and serving one another. This is our Fellowship.
• Relationship with the world. We have become priests to the world. We express this relationship in love and service to the world. This is our Mission.

The whole is of course neatly summed up by Jesus' appeal to the two greatest commands: to love God with all you've got, and to love your neighbour as yourself. Church is not primarily about structures or meetings, but about working out these loving relationships. Structures are valid inasmuch as they facilitate true worship, fellowship, and mission in the expression and mediation of the kingdom of God in the world.

• Worship. Celebrating and honouring God, becoming separated to him in Christ by the Holy Spirit. Worship includes obedience and separation from the destructive habits of sin and from the idolatry of self-indulgence. This godliness means demolishing the triple idolisation of pleasure, possessions, and power. Instead, we worship through the cross - worship by self-denial, sacrifice, and servanthood.
• Fellowship. We are called to be a multicultural community, united in our diversity, loving one another, using our gifts and resources to serve, strengthen, and help one another. This militates against individualism, racism, sectarianism and celebrity cult. Jesus expected the unity of the church in love to be the hermeneutic of the gospel. This unity in diversity must be seen in how we treat the weak, the different, those with whom we disagree, those of other cultures, the awkward.
• Mission. The church must be mission-shaped. In a real sense the church exists for mission - not just for a narrow idea of 'missionary work' but for the purpose of God in the world. The church's shape and focus must be xenophilic, with structures built to focus on God's purpose to bless the outsider. All should be welcome in the house of God.

The church is cross-shaped. The cross speaks of mission - of self-denial in obedience to the purpose of God and for the good of others. The cross calls us to kill selfish goals and the misuse of power. It leads us to further the kingdom of God through accepting suffering in serving others. To follow Jesus, we are called to take up the cross daily. We do church - worship, fellowship, and mission - by taking up the cross. And it is through the cross, through the death of self, that we find the life that God gives, the new life, the resurrection life of the kingdom of God.

Church and Culture

The incarnation teaches us that there is both affirmation and confrontation between God's kingdom and the world. Christ took on human flesh and culture of a particular people. He partook of the human experience, spoke their language, sang their songs, celebrated their wedding parties, wore their clothes. But he also lived and taught the kingdom of God in ways that confronted the values of the culture. He became weak, honouring and identifying with the poor, criticised the abuse of religious power, welcomed society's rejects, and demonstrated by this the nature of the kingdom of God, where all men find equality at the feast.

In the same way, the church needs to incarnate the kingdom of God to the world, to be in the world, but not of it. Too often we are different in ways that we should be similar, and similar in ways that we should be different. The goal is to make Christ accessible to people so that they can meet him and experience the kingdom of God among them. This means we need to:

• Recognise and repent where we have followed the world's system of individualism, self-centredness and the exaltation of prosperity, pleasure, and success. We need to restore worship of the true God in sacrificial separation to him.
• Recognise and remove the artificial barriers we put before people that stop them meeting Christ. We need to live in and serve the world around us, taking the church out into the community, clothing her in local dress to celebrate, feast, and serve.

The Mission of the Church

But, as well as an earthly colony of the kingdom of God, where people live under God's rule and blessing, the church is also emissary of the kingdom of God to the world, extending this rule and blessing to all. As salt and light, the church fulfils this role in three main ways:

• Sign: demonstrating the nature of the kingdom by the love and values of the Christian communion.
• Herald: Proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, calling people to salvation through faith in Christ.
• Mediator: Bringing kingdom blessing - healing, peace, justice, freedom - and opposing the works of darkness in the world.

The xenophilic love and purpose of God is our motivation: the desire to do good to all people. This is necessarily holistic, touching every area of human existence, seeking to promote justice, peace, healing, freedom and goodness, and to oppose injustice, oppression, suffering, and wickedness.

This is what we see in Jesus. He not only saved people from sin. He also healed the sick, spoke out against abusive use of power, fed the hungry, set people free from demonic powers, and taught people how to live in the new kingdom that had arrived. He sat with the prostitutes, embraced the lepers, welcomed the refugees, blessed the children, and feasted with the poor. And he did this whether or not those people chose to follow him and join his little community. He proclaimed and demonstrated the arrival of the kingdom of God, and welcomed all who would come to feast with him in it. He did this because the xenophilic heart of God is the motivation of God's mission in the world to do good to all people.

To limit the mission of the church to the proclamation of a personal spiritual salvation alone is to deny the validity of the whole-life ministry of Christ, and to quench the love and compassion of God that reaches out to a lost and hurting world. Jesus' illustration of what it means to love your neighbour was spending your time, effort, and money to give practical help to someone who despises you when he's in need.

The mission of the church therefore includes:

• Sign: Going. Being present in all parts of the world and all areas of society as salt and light, incarnating the presence of God in culturally accessible, but spiritually provocative ways. Demonstrating the kingdom of God by our love, unity, compassion, justice, equality, generosity, purity, welcoming and identifying with the outcast, the oppressed, the poor, the refugee, the sinner, the failure, the weak. Discipling people into the new life of the kingdom of God, as followers of Christ, carriers of the cross, and into the worship, fellowship, and mission of the church, loving God and neighbour in the power of the Holy spirit.
• Herald: 'Preaching the gospel' - Proclaiming the good news of forgiveness and salvation in Christ, and calling people to repentance and faith in him.
• Mediator: Healing the sick, delivering from demonic oppression, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, speaking and acting for righteousness and justice in society, challenging structures of injustice and liberating the oppressed.