EMQ » January–March 2018 » Vol. 54 Issue 1
by Denny Spitters & Matthew Ellison
The last 24 months have been a tumultuous time for the evangelical community in America. The cultural and political fragmenting that were revealed in the 2016 presidential election have had ripple effects in the church, and the perennial debate surrounding the definition of the word “evangelical” has only intensified as some tribal lines defined by generational divisions, race, and political loyalty have become calcified and others have crumbled. “Evangelical” is not the only casualty of the postmodern battles waged over who gets to define the words that shape our understanding of the world. Consider words such as “gospel,” “marriage,” “male,” and “female”—each of which possesses a broad range of definition, depending on one’s theological and ideological presuppositions.
Although not laden with the same political and cultural baggage as the words above, we would argue that “missions” and “missionary” have faced similar definitional broadening—with eternal consequences. Just how much confusion is there in the Church about the meaning of these terms? Our combined experiences in working with hundreds of churches suggest the confusion is massive, and not just among churchgoers and members but church and missions leaders as well. If you were to do a quick survey of church leaders and mission-minded, missions-active people in your church, asking them just a couple of basic questions about the Great Commission, we are convinced that you would get many different and often conflicting answers.
Does the Bible provide any clear definitions for mission, missions, and missionaries? If these words aren’t even found in the Bible, how can we expect the Bible to tell us what they mean? Eckhard Schnabel is considered one of the world’s leading experts on missions in the New Testament and author of two 1000-page volumes on early Christian mission as well as the 500-page work Paul the Missionary. He says decisively, “The argument that the word mission does not occur in the New Testament is incorrect. The Latin verb mittere corresponds to the Greek verb apostellein, which occurs 136 times in the New Testament (97 times in the Gospels, used both for Jesus having been ‘sent’ by God and for the Twelve being ‘sent’ by Jesus).”[i] So mission-based words are in the Bible, and the core meaning has to do with being “sent.” But since definitions matter, how do we approach the multiple ways these words are used in the Church?
The terms missio Dei, mission, missions, and missional are used in many ways, and often not defined or clearly distinguished. But these terms are as different from one another as they are related and even interconnected to one another. Keeping Schnabel’s observations in mind, let’s take a closer look.
- Missio Dei translates as “mission of God” and is used to signify all that God does in the world and all that He is doing to accomplish His objective, the complete exaltation of the fame of His name: “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:10).
- Mission has a secular meaning; it often refers to either an underlying purpose (as in the term “mission statement”) or a specific campaign or objective (as in a military or diplomatic mission). But it is also used to define the scope of all that God has given His Church to accomplish within the missio Dei; it may include all that God has called the Church to do in the world.
- Missional, the most modern of the four terms, is an adjective used primarily to distinguish the ministry of the Church that happens beyond its four walls (as opposed to caring for its own). Some now use the term missional where they may have previously used mission or missions. This term has also been co-opted to describe a specific, progressive style of church, which is intentionally outreach-oriented (a missional church or a missional community).
- Missions may be used as a synonym, perhaps a clunky or outdated one, for any of the terms above, and our British brothers and sisters are among those who prefer the more graceful term “mission” without necessarily a switch in meaning between the two. But missions also has a narrower meaning. It is used to refer to the work of the Church in reaching across cultural, religious, ethnic, and geographic barriers to advance the work of making disciples of all nations.
Missiologist Gary Corwin, in the article “MissionS: Why the ‘S’ Is Still Important,” compares these four terms and one more: “In addition, establishing churches among those people groups and communities where Christ is least known has been distinguished over the last several decades as what frontier missions is all about.”[ii] Are all four terms needed? Despite the overlapping meanings, says Corwin, each has an important, particular emphasis, and when they are properly understood, each serves a useful purpose. The problem arises when the terms are used in ways for which they are inadequate and these emphases are lost, “To say, for example, that either the missio Dei and the mission of the church is synonymous, or that the mission of the church is all that one needs to focus on or be concerned about, runs the very real risk of simply defining everything as mission.”[iii]
In his book Commissioned: What Jesus Wants You to Know As You Go, Marvin Newell writes about the compelling unity of the five commissioning statements in the New Testament (John 20:21, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:15, Luke 24:44-49, and Acts 1:8), claiming that they contain all the essential ingredients for successful mission. Newell also makes the case that these commissions were given on five different occasions, in five different places, and each with its own emphasis.[iv] John 20:21 takes place immediately after the Resurrection, with the events described in Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:18-20, and Luke 24:44-49 coming next. Finally, Acts 1:8 takes place 40 days after the Resurrection, immediately before the Ascension. “Without question these five mission statements of Jesus make up the missional Magna Carta of the Church, from its inception, for today, and into the future,” says Newell.[v] Within this biblical narrative, who is sending and who is being sent? To answer this question well, it is imperative to begin with the alignment of our thoughts and attitudes to God’s master kingdom blueprint plan, the commission of His Church—starting with the end in mind.
God the Missionary
Revelation 7:9-10 provides the picture of the end of the mission. John’s vision ushers us right to the final scene of the triumphant reality: the enthroned King is adored and worshipped by people from every tribe, language, and people. The divine initiation of this mission centers on the Messiah first mentioned in Genesis 3:15, making God both the sender and the sent one. God has woven this thread through biblical history for every age. This seems to be the central plot and theme of the Bible—it is the story of a missionary God who is both the “sent” one and the one “sending out.” God has a mission. He Himself is the main character of the story—engaged as initiator and participant in the grand design of redeeming the greatest tragedy in history, the Fall of man, as He brings glory to Himself. He made the way for us to be reconciled and brought back into intimate relationship with Him by breaking the cycle of sin and judgment. God initiates by “sending out” the hope of redemption, His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus directly validates this plan and purpose in John 17: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
What an incredible amazing God, whose intentional design and purpose both provides His people with the final framing picture and supplies the means to its fulfillment through the person and work of His Son—the One being sent from the God who is sending. This story of redemption is at the heart of the missio Dei. But is there a difference between the mission of God and the mission of the church?
The Mission of God and the Mission of the Church
Is the Church’s mission everything God’s mission is, or are there distinctions and differences? Here we see the influence of Christopher Wright, whose books Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative and The Mission of God’s People tackle this question. We find much to agree with in The Mission of God. Wright supports the concept of reading the Bible within the structure of its grand narrative. Rather than shining a spotlight on various parts of the inspired Scripture to discover what missions is, he fully asserts, “The God who walks the paths of history through the pages of the Bible pins a mission statement to every signpost on the way.”[vi] He is clear that we must look to Scripture for our understanding of missions: “…not just that the Bible contains a number of texts which happen to provide a rationale for missionary endeavor but that the whole Bible is itself a ‘missional’ phenomenon.”[vii]
Even as Wright aggressively addresses postmodern thinking with the Bible, he however blurs biblical distinctions about the mission of God and the mission of the Church. “It is of course not just a single narrative, like a river with only one channel. It is rather a complex mixture of all kinds of smaller narratives, many of them rather self-contained, with all kinds of other material embedded within them—more like a delta.”[viii] Wright advances this concept by equating “all that God is doing in his great purpose for the whole of creation,” with “all that he calls us to do in cooperation with that purpose,” further expanding, “And it seems to me there are as many kinds of missions as there are kinds of sciences—probably far more in fact. … That is why I also dislike the old knock-down line that sought to ring-fence the word ‘mission’ for specifically cross-cultural sending of missionaries for evangelism: ‘If everything is mission, then nothing is mission.’ It would seem more biblical to say, ‘If everything is mission… everything is mission.’”[ix]
Though Wright seems to conclude that everything is mission, he provides little biblical hermeneutic to support his case. The Church was given a very specific mandate from Jesus, passed on to the disciples at His ascension; the Church is by no means equipped to carry out all that God does on the earth or in the universe. Though the mission of God, a divine gargantuan task, is assumed by Wright to be given to the Church, none of the early disciples or church fathers seem to have been occupied with this idea or this task.
Wright seems concerned that a Great Commission-based understanding of missions is too narrow. His view, in contrast, is surprisingly broad: “Holistic mission, then, is not truly holistic if it includes only human beings (even if it includes them holistically!) and excludes the rest of the creation for whose reconciliation Christ shed his blood (Colossians 1:20). Those Christians show they have responded to God’s call to serve him through serving his nonhuman creatures in ecological projects are engaged in a specialized form of mission that has its rightful place within the broad framework of all that God’s mission has as its goal.”[x]
It is a given that missions is not one-dimensional proclamation divorced from demonstration. Yet does Wright’s position go to too far in saying that creation care is an arm of holistic missions validated by “its rightful place within the broad framework of all the God’s mission has as its goal?” We would assert that God’s reconciliation of creation will not occur in the preservation of the earth through the endeavors of holistic ministry; God’s reconciliation of the earth will be its purification by fire and the creation of a new one (Revelation 21:1). Becoming a “missionary to creation” may reflect on the renewal-of-nature theme in the missio Dei, but can only be embraced by stretching the mission of the Church far beyond the focus provided in the parameters of Scripture.
For many in evangelicalism today, God’s mission of reconciling everything to Himself and the mission of the church are one and the same. Clearly the two must be connected. But we assert that they are not the same. God’s scope is from eternity to eternity. As His disciples, we have a specific sub-plot in the redemption story and a distinct role under the authority of Christ and the commission of His Church.
Modern missions history shows us this: Whenever the primacy of disciple making and church planting have been replaced with efforts to eradicate the world’s evil systems, diseases, and oppressions, the global disciple-making activities of the church have foundered. And, on the flip side, we can observe that the regions of the world that have seen the greatest democratic reforms and social welfare in the last 300 years are those where missionaries focused most on personal conversion through the preaching of the gospel and least on social transformation. Making disciples who birth the local church is the key to both evangelism and social transformation. Compassion ministry as missions—without the gospel as its primary vehicle for existence and expression—easily lapses into little more than humanistic accomplishment.
Centrality of Discipleship and the Nations
The historical, orthodox view of missions which has as its bulls-eye, its innermost circle, the making of disciples, has served the Church well—as is evidenced by the rapid world-wide expansion of Christianity during the past millennium. Careful observation of the book of Acts reveals that the primacy of making disciples of all nations and teaching them to obey all that Jesus had commanded them was the path the Church was to follow. Ferdinando emphasizes, “…There is a distinctive apostolic mission taking place in Acts which is an expression of explicit obedience to the great commission. Its focus is on winning people to the faith and to the way of life which that faith produces, and its method is proclamation of the word of Christ. It is also true that Acts portrays believers engaging in social action—caring for widows, for example—but that is a consequence of apostolic mission rather than its substance.”[xi]
A Case for Setting Priorities
Theologian and missiologist Christopher Little describes two positions held by evangelicals as “holism” and “prioritism.” Those who view mission holistically see evangelism, disciple-making, and church planting as no more important than ministries of social justice and humanitarianism, while those who hold the prioritist position say that they are. And, Little says, “Those who advance evangelism as the priority in the mission of the church are now in the clear minority among self-described evangelicals.”[xii]
While few evangelicals want to see a dichotomy between word and deed—believing the church should minister through both—the author points out that one cannot logically claim that both, “there are priorities” and “there are no priorities” in mission; “One must be true and the other false; there are no other options. Hence, a choice must be made.”[xiii] Little is also concerned that Christians in the West now give more to relief and development and other humanitarian causes than to foreign missions and are redefining the terms gospel, kingdom, and missions in unprecedented ways. These shifts in missions are largely unchallenged, but he sees them as a clear case of “mission drift.”[xiv]
Staying on the Path
We are unapologetic and ardent activists for a narrow, Great-Commission-focused definition of missions that will that keep the Church on the path of making disciples of all nations. Maintaining a narrow definition of missions will be a more useful tool for the Church in fulfilling her mission, and the overall thrust of Scripture readily supports this emphasis. To cross the barriers that missions requires, we must bring significant focus and special emphasis in the Church to making disciples resulting in churches. Without this regular and specific emphasis on “making disciples of the nations,” the needs and outreach of the local church will always, quite naturally, receive the greatest attention of our efforts and attention, while the voices of those with no access become a distant memory until next year’s “Missions Sunday.”
A sound biblical missions definition is crucial to the future of the evangelical Church. Defining missions in our relativistic, pluralistic era requires that we are committed to walking the path of God’s redemptive mission, culminating in the collective worship of the Lamb by all nations, peoples, tribes, and tongues. That is the bedrock path of missions to which we are called. No matter what process we use to define and carry out missions activity, this is the path our boots must travel.
(Article adapted from When Everything Is Missions (BottomLine Media, 2017)
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Denny Spitters, Vice President of Church Partnerships for Pioneers USA, has served in many church staff roles as worship, missions, and small group pastor and understands the significance of missions in the local church.
Matthew Ellison, President and Church Missions Coach at Sixteen: Fifteen, served as a missions pastor at a mega-church for nine years, helping them transition from a reactive approach to world missions to proactive one. Since 2004 he has been coaching churches across the United States, helping them to develop missions vision and strategy that fulfills the biblical mandate.
[i] Eckhard J. Schnabel, Paul the Missionary: Realities, Strategies, and Methods (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 27-28.
[ii] Gary Corwin, “MissionS: Why the “S” Is Still Important,” EMQ 53:2 (April 2017), https://emqonline.com/node/3643.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Marvin J. Newell, Commissioned: What Jesus Wants You to Know as You Go (Saint Charles, IL: ChurchSmart Resources, 2010), 23.
[v] Ibid, 28.
[vi] Christopher Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IVP Academic, 2006), 23.
[vii] Ibid, 47.
[viii] Ibid, 22.
[ix] Ibid, 61.
[x] Ibid, 416.
[xi] Ferdinando, “Mission: A Problem of Definition,” 55.
[xii] Christopher R. Little, “The Case for Prioritism, Part 1,” Great Commission Research Journal 7:2 (Winter 2016), 140, http://journals.biola.edu/gcr/volumes/7/issues/2/articles/139.
[xiii] Ibid, 148
[xiv] Ibid.
