‘The Church lives by mission as a fire lives by burning.’ The Christian Church is called by God to play a crucial part in God’s saving purposes for the world. Scripture reveals that God’s eternal plan is to reconcile all things to himself through Christ and to gather them together in him (Colossians 1.20; Ephesians 1.10). This gracious design is an expression of the mission of God (missio dei) which is nothing less than the unceasing outpouring of God’s life and love into the world and human history. The Church is constituted by the mission of God and commissioned to be an agent and instrument of that mission.[1]
The fundamental commissioning of the Church is described in ‘the Great Commission’ of Matthew 28.16-20, where the risen Christ charges his apostles with the triple task of making disciples, baptising and teaching. This threefold commission encapsulates the core tasks entrusted to the Church and its ministry: to preach the gospel and teach the Christian faith, to baptise believers and to minister pastoral care and oversight.[2]
So mission is clearly a matter that concerns the entire Church and the particular churches; it is therefore an ecclesial issue and should not be divorced from individuals and freelance or ‘parachurch’ organisations engaged in mission, even though these may sometimes appear to make up for deficiencies of churches themselves with regard to mission. The nature of the Church, as the body of Christ and as the pilgrim people of God, is related to the purpose of the Church, as the agent and instrument of God’s gracious purposes in the world. The Church cannot be considered apart from the mission that has been given to it and Christian mission cannot be separated from the Church. Though a narrowly institutional view of Church is not in view here, ecclesiology and missiology should go hand in hand.
In all its activities, therefore, the Church can never for a moment forget those outside its community who have not yet come to know Christ as their Saviour and Lord, have not yet been gathered by baptism into the body of Christ and have not yet come to share in the privileges of communion with God and the people of God. Like the Good Shepherd himself, pastors and people will long to reach out to those who are outside the fold. They will not rest until all those within their reach have been touched by the gospel in word and deed and helped to make the journey of repentance and faith back to God and have been gathered into the Church. While Jesus spoke of the ninety-nine who were safely gathered in and of the one lost sheep that needed to be rescued (Luke 15.3-7), the proportions today, in a society that has wandered far from Christian commitment, are almost reversed: there are comparatively few in the fold, and the great majority are scattered on the mountain side, thus presenting a huge challenge to the pastoral mission of the Church.
- First, then, the Church needs to be motivated for mission by obedience to the Lord’s command in Matthew 28.16-20, by compassion for those who are like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6.34) and a burning desire that others should come to know God’s redeeming love in Christ and share in the Christian Way with all his disciples today.
- Second, the Church needs to be geared for mission, organised in such a fashion that churches, acting individually and together, can make the widest and deepest impact within their communities, ensuring both continuity, which builds essential qualities of trust, and flexibility to respond to changing contexts.[3]
- Third, the Church also needs to be equipped for mission through the education and training of its members and ministers in all the skills and knowledge that they need to be effective in their task, to be biblically and theologically resourced for mission. A special extension of ‘equipping the saints’ for mission is the fostering and training of evangelists.
- Fourthly, there is an extended sense in which the Church needs to be conscious it is engaged in mission in a committed and sustained way on behalf of the gospel. This implies engagement, not only with individuals and households, but with whole communities and with the institutions and organisations that make up civil society, and at the level of the state, for example, in relation to public policy. Such an understanding of mission is plainly predicated on a model of the Church which necessarily involves engagement with and participation in society and culture, rather than an ecclesiological model that is inwardly focussed and/or separationist in outlook.
[1] The definitive work of missiology is David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991).
[2] For fuller exposition of this theme see Paul Avis, A Ministry Shaped by Mission (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005).
[3] See Mission-Shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context, (London: Church House Publishing, 2004).
