A Church on God’s Mission

Why do Christians often view missionaries as superspiritual individuals but yet show little interest in the details of their work? Why is concern about missions frequently absent from church life, relegated to the occasional Missions Sunday or the job of a selected few with a “burden for missions”? Why are many Christians more interested in sharing the gospel than in exercising practical care for “the last, the lost, and the least”? Why is there often a big difference between how Christians worship on a Sunday and how they live the rest of their week?

While the reasons for these diverse issues are complex, they all share something in common. Behind each issue is an inadequate understanding of Christian missions, stemming from the limitations of the “standard” view of missions. In such a standard view, missions is the act of sharing the Christian gospel cross-culturally, usually through the activity of a commissioned individual (a missionary). In Abrahamic fashion, the missionary receives a call from God, leaves his/her home country, and goes to a foreign land to share the good news of Jesus Christ.

However, owing to this standard view, many errors of understanding arise, especially those stated above. Missionaries are viewed as a separate class of individuals, sent by the local church, but often not an essential part of that community. Missions is seen exclusively as evangelism, with no place for social concern. Missions is viewed as something done “out there”, rather than “in here” by the local church. The regular Christian sees little reason to incorporate missions—whatever that is!—into their daily living.

Such misunderstandings spell disaster for the Church. Taken as a whole, such perspectives in our local churches result in an inward-looking apathy which makes us neglect our mission from God. But He will not take such disobedience lightly; He will call us all to account.[1] Therefore, such erroneous views must be addressed with urgency. Jesus stands at the door and knocks!

To do so, the first step must be to advance a better understanding of the God-given mission of the Church—one that accurately corresponds to the broad biblical vision of God’s own mission to a hurting and broken world.

The holistic understanding of Christian mission known as integral mission does not deny the critical task of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ nor the urgent need to save souls from damnation. Nonetheless, it recognises that such acts are situated in God’s larger mission (the missio Dei) of “reconciling the world to himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). And if so, the Church’s mission cannot be narrowly limited to cross-cultural proclamation of the gospel because the “crossing of the frontier between faith and no faith” is wider and more comprehensive than that.

Due to its strong emphasis on Christ’s lordship over all of creation, integral mission insists that there should be no artificial divisions between Christians’ church life and the rest of their lives. As the Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper famously declared, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”[2] Our homes, schools, workplaces, and leisure places are all equally mission fields.

Integral mission is therefore not a task reserved for a missionary class. It is a demand that Christ makes on all His servants. Every Sunday service should therefore be viewed as a “Missions Sunday” since “the church exists to equip and mobilise men and women for God’s mission in the world”.[3] Sunday services are not a space to retreat from the world; rather, the local church ought to gather every Sunday to disciple one another for the sake of the world.