I was perusing my stats this morning and saw that someone stumbled across this post I had written nearly three and a half years ago. I’m not sure why I wrote it or how it came about (it seems like it came from a paper I wrote…), but I thought it was a pretty sweet post (modest, I know!) so I thought I would re-post it this morning. This question regarding the mission of the church has been on my mind again lately, so it’s timely for me at least. I would love your feedback and would love for your to answer the question yourself in the comments—What is the mission of the Church?

INTRODUCTION

In his landmark book on the Church, Chuck Colson cast a convincing, hopeful vision for the Body of Christ. Throughout his book, Being the Body, Dr. Colson explored who the Body of Christ is and how She is the manifestation of God’s hope for the world. During this exploration, though, he also laid down a scathing indictment: the Church has lost Her effectiveness and must recapture an understanding of Her biblical identity. He is right. The 21st century American Church’s fascination with crafting slick worship events (complete with fog machines and rock-star quality light shows), building $93 million facilities (complete with a bookstore, cafeteria, gym, and Starbucks™) and fighting petty, alienating “culture wars” (complete with fear-mongering political attack ads) has seriously warped the Bride’s understanding of Her identity and mission. And in light of the postmodern, post-Christendom cultural shift the Western world is experiencing, we not only need to recapture our identity in general, but need to answer the specific question, “What has God called us to be and do in our current cultural context?”

In this post, I aim to help correct this understanding of the Church’s identity by addressing the question, “What is the mission of the Church?” The obvious starting point for this question is Jesus, who birthed the Church and commissioned Her for a specific function. Beyond the incarnation, though, we will also examine the mission of God and how the established organism of the Church fits into the Trinitarian framework of God’s missional, redemptive plan for Creation. Furthermore, we will consider a dual understanding of the Church’s mission as rooted in disciple-making and prophetic witness. In short, we will see how the mission of the Church is to be a community in which people are discipled in the Way of Jesus and embody and bear witness to the Reign of God within a Trinitarian framwork. And because the Church is the hope for the world, I hope this understanding of mission will help Her faithfully live as the organism through which God is accomplishing His mission for Creation.

A TRINITARIAN ORIGIN

Let’s make one thing clear at the beginning: the Church is not a mere collection of individuals, cultural construct, human institution or political interest group. The Body of Christ does not have its origin in the institutions of Man, but rather claims Her origin, and thus Her mission, from the Divine. The first mention of the ekklesia (Church) is in Matthew 16, where Jesus is recorded saying, “I will build my gathering of called-out ones (church), and the Gates of Hades will not over come it.” And consider the entire ministry of Jesus: Throughout His ministry Jesus set out to raise up and form a group of people for the purpose of sending them on mission when He ascended to the right hand of the Father. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, a messianic community was Jesus’ goal. It was not an after thought or even simply a result of Jesus’ teachings. Calling out a gathered people was deliberate because they would (we would) carry forth His mission, a mission that was from the Father.

As the Father has sent Jesus, so Jesus has sent us, the Church. And Jesus’ mission becomes our mission, because the Father uses Humans to accomplish His work. “They may, and often will, fail him and disappoint him, but their role is crucial to the achievement of His mission, for it is through this flawed and vulnerable group of people that God’s kingdom will be established.” The Father entrusts the proclamation of His Kingdom-movement to a particular group of people whom He has chosen for the sake of the whole world. And what is this group to proclaim? They are to proclaim the Reign of God, the fact that God whom Jesus knows as Father is the sovereign ruler over all people and things, and this reality is no longer something remote, but rather is an impending reality that now confronts all men and women for a decision.

And in true Trinitarian form, the mission of the Church is from the Father, given through the Son, and accomplished by the Holy Spirt. While our mission to announce the Reign of God is from the Father and given to the Church through Jesus by Him establishing the Church through gathering together a group of people, the Spirit is the Person who helps Her accomplish this mission. Like Jesus’ own coming, the works and words of the Church are connected directly with the power of the Spirit. This active Agent of Mission is a power that rules, guides, and goes before the Church to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation and restoration of the world to its completion. So the Church is not left to Her own devices to accomplish Her mission, but is guided and empowered by the Spirit. Furthermore, the mission of the Church is not Her own nor is it of Human origin. Rather, the mission of the Church is from the Father, given to Her by the Son, and accomplished by the Spirt, a realization that should undergird any understanding of the particulars of Her mission and identity.

DISCIPLE-MAKING

I have a confession to make: I hate evangelism. Well, not evangelism, per se, but rather the word, and how it is used to define the mission of the church. The word evangelism stems from the Greek euangelion for “good news,” which is a noun not a verb. The problem is an entire theology of mission has been built on this single word, which was never used for the commission of the church in the first place. When the word was originally used by Jesus of the Kingdom of God, He described the invasion of God’s Kingdom-movement in the world as good news, and called people to turn from their own Rhythm of Life and believe in this Kingdom by following Jesus into it. After His resurrection He commissioned His disciples as agents of this new Kingdom-movement to share the good news of the Kingdom. Interestingly, where you would expect Jesus to use the word “preach/proclaim” or “bear witness,” a slower, lower profile verb is used, an almost scholastic, schoolish word, “disciple.” This verb literally means, “to cause one to be a pupil or disciple,” which is the controlling word for the Church’s mission.

The key to the mission of the Church is not “evangelism” but discipleship; we are not to evangelize, but to influence someone in such a way that they pattern their life and lifestyle after another. In our case, our goal should be to influence people to follow Jesus as Messiah, Redeemer, and Restorer. Now to be sure, in this process we will proclaim, explain, and bear witness to the amazing news that is found in Jesus and His teachings on the Kingdom of Heaven, but the mission of the ekklesia is to step into someone’s life and show them a better way of living and being Human through Jesus, not simply to talk at them about their sin, Jesus’ death and resurrection, and possible future heavenly bliss.

The differences between these two notions of mission are incredibly stark: While evangelism is monological, discipleship is dialogical; evangelism seeks to win people, discipleship seeks to shape people; when we evangelize, we posture ourself as a sage on the stage, with discipleship our posture is a guide on the side; evangelism is an ephemeral event, discipleship is an on-going, progressive effort. I liken evangelism to Colonialism and discipleship to Sustainable Development.

“Colonialism is the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizing nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.” Similar to 19th and 20th century colonial efforts, are not evangelistic tactics often like crossing borders into enemy territory to settle and claim people for our kingdom? When we enter the conversation with another don’t we usually dominate all of the emotional, intellectual, and verbal capital in an effort to make that individual our own? And just as colonialism was often based on the ethnocentric belief that the morals and values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized, don’t we often insist that we hold the trump card to all things spiritual, that our morals and spirituality are more superior to the friend or co-worker, ultimately thinking they have nothing to add to the conversation?

Rather than colonizing, we are called into Sustainable Development: We are called to step into the cultures and languages and customs and lives of real people to show and tell them a better way of being human by showing them Jesus and telling them of God’s Kingdom Reign. In other words, we are called to disciple. In the same way that those who are committed to sustainable economic development enter the lives of people groups indefinitely for the purpose of showing them a better, more sound way of growing food, filtering water, or organizing an economy, we are called to step into the lives of people indefinitely to show them a better way of being Human in Jesus and explain the significance of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Just as sustainable development is about the individual (rather than the group thats doing the developing), efforts at discipling non-followers are about them and their life, not us and our church or group. In the same way sustainable development equips people to better grow food or better manage a local economy, discipling non-followers must be about equipping them to follow Jesus and obey His teachings, not simply getting to heaven. Rather than colonize and conquer through evangelism, may we sustainably develop people through discipleship, because this was at the heart of the mission Jesus, which He gave His own disciples.

PROPHETIC WITNESS

Prophetic witness is the articulating of moral truth. Like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Church is called to bringing the full weight of the identity and mission of the Church as a community of adopted Sons and Daughters to bear upon an embedded culture in order to articulate the gospel and ethical implications of the Kingdom of God. While the identity and mission of the Church means She is a discipling community, the Body of Christ is also an eschatological community that embodies the good news of Jesus Christ and Reign of God. And as Darrell Guder wrote, the absence of the gospel Jesus preached in the gospel the church has preached has woefully impoverished the church’s sense of mission and identity. In other words, the how the Church defines and tells the gospel is often very different than how Jesus defined and told the gospel, resulting in a misunderstanding of mission and identity.

Whether it is the Four Spiritual Laws, Romans Road, or Evangelism Explosion, evangelistic tools used to communicate the gospel typically point people toward accepting Jesus to receive forgiveness of sins to go to heaven. While experiencing both forgiveness (and might I add liberation) from sin and eternal existence with God are pieces of the good news found in Jesus, framing the gospel in these terms is woefully inadequate and foreign to Jesus’ own definition. For Jesus, the immanent Reign of God was the good news that needed to be proclaimed in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world, a reign that most certainly arises as God’s mission to restore all Creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And while the Church must not be equated with the reign of God, She is both spawned by it and directed toward it; the Body of Christ is the result of the breaking forth of an alternative Rhythm of Life, and is in humble service to that Reign by bearing witness to it.

Just as God set apart a group of people (Israel) to be a blessing to the world around it by testifying to the one true God, He has chosen the Church to bear prophetic witness to the salvation and restoration found in the the Reign of God through Christ; by way of choosing, calling and sending a particular people to be the bearer of blessing for all, God is uniting the whole cosmos through his plan of shalom restoration.
And how does the articulation of the moral and ethical truths of this reign look? Firstly, the Church must embed Herself within particular cultures by incarnationally living, eating, and working closely with its surrounding community to build strong links between Christians and not-yet-Christians. Secondly, the mission of the Church in preaching the good news of Jesus must never be separated from action for God’s justice, because doing justice and mercy in concrete situations has always been at the heart of God’s deliberate movement and mission in History. Thirdly, the Church represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God, giving a foretaste of what is to come while pointing people toward this better way of being Human and living together on Earth. Ultimately, though, the Church stands in witness to the powerful, restorative work displayed on the cross through the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus and final defeat of Death for all individuals within the World, which is its true hope.

CONCLUSION

At the conclusion of his book, Chuck Colson encouraged the Church to “fear not!” In fact, he says, the risen Lord of the Church tells His people 366 times throughout the Scriptures to not fear, and for good reason. Colson says the Church need not fear because as we live out our identity as His Body, God will use us for His purpose; “As we exhibit the characteristics of His Church throughout the ages, consuming the Word of God, celebrating the sacraments, loving one another in holy purity, the world around us will be changed.” The world will change and God’s mission will be accomplished, however, only when the Church lives out Her mission as a set-apart community sent to disciple people in and bear witness to the Way of Jesus and Reign of God. Unfortunately, the Church sells Jesus like aluminum siding, rather than disciple people in His Way, and pursues political ambition, rather than prophetic witness. Despite the extra love affairs of the Bride of Christ, though, we need not despair. We should not fear because the Church has its origins in Jesus Christ, and He is sustaining and building Her well into the future.