Square Mile

 Writing over thirty years ago, John Stott said this,

"I may see spiritual need (sin, guilt, lostness) and have the gospel knowledge to meet it. Or the need I see may be disease or ignorance or bad housing, and I may have the medical, educational or social expertise to relieve it. To see need and to possess the remedy compels love to act, and whether the action will be evangelistic or social, or indeed political, depends on what we 'see' and what we 'have'."¹

The heart of integral mission is not so much about balancing in our lives a particular list of activities, it is about being the people of God in the midst of a world in need. What we will actually do of course depends on what we have, and the needs we see, but the point is that our mission activity flows not from some theoretical checklist of activities, but rather from being and doing as Christ would be and do in the context of need. The relevance of this is that it means that even when we are in the middle of our evangelistic activity, we do not ignore the social needs that may be surrounding us. Similarly, when engaged in social action, we do not pretend that the people we are serving do not also have spiritual needs that we can help meet. In short, we love as Christ commanded us to love: mind, heart, bodies and soul.

This applies, though, just as much to churches as it does to individuals. There is sometimes a danger that churches becomes so wedded to programs and activities that they lose sight of their primary calling to be the people of God in the midst of the world. Consider, for instance, the far from hypothetical scenario whereby a church takes someone from their workplace or neighbourhood who is living out the full-orbed gospel - loving their neighbours and colleagues, sharing Christ, practising hospitality, influencing society - and encourages them instead to head up 'the mercy ministries team', or 'the evangelism team' or whatever. When this happens we may end up removing people from effective ministry in order to run our less than effective program.

Vinoth Ramachandra has said,

"When Jesus was asked to sum up what God required of us, he did not answer in terms of either a set of 'projects' to be performed or a set of 'doctrines' to believe. Instead we are called to love God with our whole being, and to love our neighbour in the same way we love ourselves."²

If, both individually and corporately, we loved like that - then we would see integral mission, and so build 4D churches.

¹ Stott, John, Christian Mission in the Modern World (Downers Grove: IVP, 1975) p28.
² Ramachandra, Vinoth, What is Integral Mission?