EMQ » April–June 2019 » Volume 55 Issue 2
By Jon Fuller
William stood on the heaving deck looking out over the ceaseless rollers of the Atlantic Ocean. He’d left England with the hope that his sweetheart, Daisy, would soon follow him to Canada. Despite her father’s concerns about living amongst “the bears and Indians,” she too felt a call to serve the Lord wherever the needs were great. It was 1910 and the Methodist church in England were glad to send William as their missionary to the “colonies,” even though the China Inland Mission (CIM) had turned him down for “a lack of robust health.”
After years of church planting in Ontario, William and Daisy moved to the prairies, where they started a family. He broke his own horses to ride a preaching circuit in Saskatchewan. Later they ministered to the coastal lumber camps of British Columbia driving a motor launch through the islands. When the government required Chinese to move west away from the coast William offered to travel as escort. Here was his opportunity to minister to the Chinese, even if the CIM had not sent him to China. God had sent the Chinese to him.
Riding the trains inland brought William face-to-face with the spiritual conditions of the Canadian railroad workers, who faced many challenges and who had few opportunities to hear the gospel or be part of a church. Responding to this need, led him to start the Railway Mission of North America, which eventually became Christian Transportation, reaching out to a variety of transportation related communities.
Over the following years, William and Daisy saw their daughter Olive go to India to work with Amy Carmichael and the Dohnavur Fellowship. One son, Harold, joined SIM and served in Africa for many years. Another son, David, ended up in the Philippines with OMF, where I was born. William and Daisy were my grandparents, and models of mission for me.
Growing up with the stories of my grandparent’s mission journey helped form my understanding of mission as obedience to God’s calling to the hard places, where the gospel was most needed. As a child growing up in the Philippines, listening to our family’s journey across Canada from sea to sea, and to the ends of the earth, I think I grew up assuming that mission was also an essential part of what it meant to be Canadian. Stories of Prairie Bible Institute, my mother’s alma mater, and of People’s Church, Oswald Smith, and the “Faith promise,” only served to reinforce that understanding.
Mission and the Dominion of Canada
It’s not difficult to make a case that the notion of mission is part of Canada’s history, as long as one is willing to reflect carefully on what is meant by “mission” and to acknowledge that along with many positive examples of mission, there are also some terrible failures. Before Canada became a nation, at the London Conference in 1865, Samuel Leonard Tilley proposed that the confederation of different provinces of Canada be referred to as a “dominion,” taking the word from Psalm 72:8, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”[1] Psalm 72 is a wonderful Messianic psalm, proclaiming the promise that all nation’s will be blessed through the coming Messiah (v. 17), and that the whole earth will be filled with God’s glory (v. 19). Canada’s national motto “A Mari Usque Ad Mare,” found on all official documents, is usually translated as “From Sea to Sea” and has its roots in the same psalm.
Of course, few Canadians think about “the Dominion” today, except perhaps as a chain of Ontario groceries stores that have recently been rebranded. If Canadians do think of Canada as a “Dominion,” they probably think of the Canadian government’s sovereignty “from sea to sea,” rather than the sovereignty of Jesus the Messiah, who will “rule from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.” However, as a Canadian follower of Jesus, I see God at work through his people to establish our nation with a vision for his glory across our continent from sea to sea, and to the ends of the earth. My childhood assumptions about mission and Canada are consistent with that vision, and also with the history of the Canadian church and its mission engagement.
Reflecting on Mission in Canada Today
In his book, The Future of the Global Church, missionary statesman and respected researcher Patrick Johnston places Canada in the top ten countries for missionaries per sending church (Protestant, Independent, Anglican) ahead of the United States, UK, and South Korea.[2] The 2010 version of Operation World, acknowledges this history, but also raises questions about the future of the Canadian mission movement. “Missionary vision was once very strong but has steadily declined over the last 20 years.… Canada once occupied a pride of place in sending aid and peacekeeping forces and in having a strong missionary-sending tradition. The latter of the three has decreased markedly.”[3]
The latest information on the Canadian mission movement is from the 22nd Edition of the North American Mission Handbook, published in 2017. A close look at the data suggests that the North American mission community has remained stable, but is facing a time of significant global change. Looking at the twenty largest agencies in terms of income, the authors noted, “In almost every category we see significant growth or loss at particular agencies. While the overall missions community seems to have enjoyed a period of relative stability, there are certainly agencies that have weathered big changes.”[4] The loss of over 1,000 members through an early retirement option of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptists, the largest reporting agency would be an example of that.[5]
Using data from the 34 Canadian agencies that provided information for both the 2008 and 2016 surveys, the authors conclude that total income remained stable at roughly $68 million (adjusted for inflation) but income for international ministries dropped from $26 million to $23 million (adjusted for inflation).[6] This may reflect the importance of international migration, which the NAM Handbook authors noted as a significant new development resulting in a refocusing of international mission. “The phenomenon of the acceleration of international migration is bringing an increasing number of “diaspora” peoples to North America. These new arrivals come as migrant workers, immigrants (legal and illegal), international students, and refugees. North American mission agencies are increasingly intentional about reaching out to this segment of society.” The authors go on to note the significance of Canadian organizations in this sector, “not surprising given the immigrant nature of the Canadian population.”[7] There is some evidence here that the global changes are being felt more in the Canadian context than in the United States.
So how are Canadian mission leaders responding to these challenges? In June 2018, two consultations were convened in Toronto to respond to the changing face of mission in the Canadian context. The first, Our Common Calling, explored how mission language is used in Canada today. The second, Future Fit, brought together over sixty reflective practitioners in mission in an attempt to discern how the structure and strategy of Canadian mission engagement could be more relevant and effective in the changing global context.
During the Future Fit consultation, the delegates were asked to reflect on the Canadian Mission Movement in light of these changing dynamics. With reference to a challenging critique of global mission by Michael Stroop, Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition,[8] they were asked whether they agreed with Stroope that there is a need for us to “transcend mission” in Canada today by selecting one of the following options:
- Stay the course. God is still at work through the Canadian mission movement today. We don’t need to change.
- Correct the course. The world is changing, and we need to make adjustments, but our movement is fundamentally healthy.
- Redesign the ship. Our mission models are no longer fit for the purpose. We need new models.
- Rethink the voyage. We need to step back and ask fundamental questions about where we are going and why. We need to transcend mission.
Out of 59 respondents, 51% indicated a need to rethink the voyage, while 35% felt that the Canadian mission movement at least needs to consider new models. While this was only an informal poll, it does suggest that most Canadian mission leaders recognize the need for significant change and are open to exploring that further. One of the factors behind this desire for change, is a recognition that we need to look carefully at our own history with a posture of humility and repentance.
The Challenge of Repentance, Reconciliation and Renewal
At the Future Fit consultation, Dr. Ray Aldred told his story of growing up in a residential school, one of thousands of First Nations children who were the victims of a deeply flawed practice of mission. He challenged us to consider how we can engage in biblical mission without requiring cultural assimilation.
The tragedy of the residential schools is a stark reminder of what happens when we fail to practice mission as the Father sent Jesus. My great-grandfather’s fear of sending his daughter to the land of “Indians and bears,” not only reflects a lack of cultural understanding, but is also an example of how subtly but deeply, colonial ideas of subduing nature and bringing civilization to the uncivilized had come to define mission in the early twentieth century.
There is much to be admired in the dedication, sacrifice, and perseverance of the early missionaries to Canada, but there is much also for which we need to repent. The current national conversation about reconciliation with our First Nations peoples is also necessary and on-going in the church. While we must avoid being paralyzed by the failings of our past, we also need to be ruthlessly self-aware of our use of power, and in particular, its expression through wealth and privilege.
It is easy for those who have money and privilege, to be blind to its shaping influence amongst those who have less. Mission strategies that are developed and funded by the Canadian mission movement are difficult to resist in places of material need, even though they may be contextually unsuitable. Monies that flow into a context may disrupt and deform existing patterns of relationship, privileging those who have access to the finances. Further, it is possible that our fundraising communication may at times turn people into helpless recipients who need Westerners to save them. While generosity is to be applauded, it needs to be accompanied by humility, which values the knowledge, wisdom, and agency of the community that is being helped. Mutuality in partnership needs to be the guiding principle, especially when there is power (and monetary) asymmetry.[9]
Our Common Calling: Encouraging a Healthy Conversation about Mission
In 2016, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Canadian Missions Research Forum (a group of Canadian mission agencies) collaborated on a survey of mission engagement in Canada. The Canadian Evangelical Mission Engagement Study (CEMES) was the largest study of Evangelicals ever done in Canada, involving about 2000 Evangelical lay people and 1400 Evangelical pastors. The number of responses from pastors was unexpected and seemed to indicate a significant interest in exploring mission in Canada. The pastors were asked eighty-seven questions, but only one was a free-text question: “How do you define missions?” The question was intentionally simple, in order to allow the pastors to respond as freely as possible. More than 900 of the pastors responded to this question, with everything from a few words to paragraphs, expressing an encouraging, although diverse, passion for mission.
There is still much work to be done with this data, but an initial analysis of the 420 responses where geography was referenced, showed that 250 (60%) of those specifically mentioned both local and global mission. Over half of the pastors (488) used the paradigm of “Word / Deed” in some way as part of their definition. Of those, the majority (321 or 66%) indicated the importance of including both in their understanding of mission, with another 145 or 30% expressing a primary emphasis on “Word” in their definition.[10]
A significant number of survey responses reflected tension between what some referred to as the “traditional” model of “mission” or “missions,” as contrasted with a “missional” model. This tension was specifically addressed at the Our Common Calling consultation. During a panel discussion, one of the panelists made the comment that “Everyone is a missionary.” One of the leaders in the audience, responded that they did not agree with this because, “If everyone is a missionary, then no one is a missionary.” The ensuing discussion highlighted the concern that the traditional mission movement in Canada has “professionalized” mission to the point that many Canadian Christians do not see themselves having any part in the mission of God, something the Missional Church movement has helpfully challenged in recent years. At the same time, concern was expressed that least reached peoples (both in Canada and globally) will not hear the gospel without intentional, sacrificial, and strategic engagement. As one leader said to me, “It’s wonderful to see the Canadian church reaching out to the 20,000 Thai in Canada but don’t forget the 80 million in Thailand.”
The point of the Our Common Calling consultation was not to resolve these differences in the use of mission related language. Ultimately, the mission of God is beyond our ability to define, as David Bosch pointed out. “We may, therefore, never arrogate it to ourselves to delineate mission too sharply and too self-confidently. Ultimately, mission remains undefinable, it should never be incarcerated in the narrow confines of our own predilections. The most we can hope for is to formulate some approximations of what mission is all about.”[11]
The discussion at Our Common Calling was intended to affirm the importance of this mission conversation, help leaders better understand the nuances in the Canadian context of words like “mission,” “missions,” “missional,” and “missionary,” and encourage everyone to listen carefully to each other in a spirit of grace and humility.
Renewing Mission In, To, and From Canada[12]
The Future Fit and Our Common Calling conversations of the past year have raised a number of challenging questions about our theological and missiological frameworks. I am grateful for colleagues like Sam Chaise of the Christie Refugee Welcome Centre, and Aileen van Ginkel and Matthew Gibbins of EFC, along with many others in the Future Fit movement who continue to wrestle with these issues. We believe that our responses to the following questions will shape the Canadian practice of biblical mission in the years to come.
How can we renew our Biblical understanding of the God who sends?
When Jesus told the disciples that he was sending them “as the Father has sent me.” (John 20:21), he provided a model for Biblical mission. However, too often we have failed to send and be sent in the way of the Father. We have forgotten that we are sent first and that any sending we do is only a stewardship response of God’s first sending. In pride we have claimed God’s role as sender. We have taken on ourselves both the glory and the responsibility of sending, when those belong first and finally to God alone. We have failed to embrace Christ’s model of sending “as the Father sent me”, in weakness, poverty and dependence. Our sending has been tainted by Christendom and colonialism: the gospel has too often been hidden by our human powers and resources, revealing only our insufficiencies and failing to reveal his all sufficiency.
How can we renew our vision of mission flowing from the glory of God?
We have allowed our engagement with the challenges of our world, to define our mission when it should be defined by God’s glory. The incarnation teaches us that presence is essential, but also that God’s glory made flesh transcends geography. God’s people present in the world are called to reflect his glory. “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth” is not a strategy but a proclamation of God’s sovereignty, of God’s glory in and over all nations.
We need to reject false dichotomies in favour of the breadth of God’s glory. God’s sending, flowing from his glory comprehensively embraces local vs. global, word vs. deed, proclamation vs. demonstration, etc. Our view of God is too small. Language is an opportunity to enrich our expression of God and his mission, to explore the richness of God’s sending. Controversies over language should invite us into the breadth of God’s infinite glory, not mire us in the paucity of our limited vision. Conversation about mission should be a celebration of God’s glory first, which should then provoke us into action.
How can we renew mission emerging out of covenant community?
Christ’s sending was a Trinitarian expression of community in mission, of interdependence, mutuality and partnership in the gospel. Biblical mission is always mission in community. Biblical mission is theology, ecclesiology and missiology reflected in the right relationship of the Trinitarian God at work through his people in the world. In the Canadian context, we need to foster dynamic conversations between the agency, academy, assembly and agora (to use one but not the only model). These conversations need to embrace a diversity of mission language, expressed in grace with a clear view for God’s glory and our identity as ones being sent.
How can we renew our understanding of who we are in God’s created world?
We are sent into God’s world, where he is already at work. We expect to meet him in the fieriest of furnaces. We do not bring God to the world, but join him in his world.
Being sent as Jesus was sent requires the discipline of “double listening.”[13] Being sent means the discipline of listening to God who is the sender and also to the world into which we are sent. Biblical mission presumes intentional exegesis of the Word and the world.
God’s glory amongst the nations (including Canada) brings all cultures (including Canadian cultures) to the foot of the cross. The cross both confronts and consecrates culture. Being sent as the Father sent Christ gives us the incarnation and the cross as our models. The mystery of the incarnation positions us in the world with generosity and humility. The mystery of the cross compels us to urgency and sacrifice.
A Uniquely Canadian Contribution?
I have been privileged to live the majority of my life in Asia, so am still learning what it means to be Canadian. Since returning to Canada in 2013, I’ve been blessed with helpful companions on that journey, both in Canada and from outside. In 2017, I was invited to join a group of European mission leaders at a consultation in Amsterdam entitled Future Proof. The discussions there focused on how European mission agencies were responding to their changing context. I was encouraged that the issues with which they were wrestling were familiar: increased secularization, growing ethnic diversity, rapidly shifting technology, a new generation of leaders, and a church struggling to understand all of this. As I flew home, I remember thinking that, on many of these issues, in ten years Canada would be where Europe is now, and that the United States would follow.
Since then, I’ve had further conversations with North American leaders including Ellen Livingood of Catalyst Services and Eldon Porter of Missio Nexus, who have provided helpful outside perspectives on the mission movement in Canada. While affirming the challenges in Canada of increased secularization and declining church attendance, they have also celebrated the arrival of the nations in Canada’s cities and the opportunity that provides for polycentric mission. Many of the most dynamic centres of mission engagement in the Canadian church today are in churches with East Asian ethnic roots: Filipino, Chinese, and Korean churches. Diaspora mission in, to, and from Canada is a fast growing and exciting reality.
Ellen and Eldon both also pointed out the increased opportunity for collaboration that a smaller mission movement represents. Many of the key Canadian mission leaders live within hours of each other and are personally acquainted, creating the possibility for creative collaboration. The Future Fit consultation in June, 2018 capitalized on this, raising the intriguing possibility of an on-going national conversation amongst Canadian mission leaders, which is being nurtured by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Lausanne Canada.
From Sea to Sea, and to the Ends of the Earth
As I reflect on mission in Canada today, I find myself returning to the story of my grandparents. William and Daisy were obedient to God’s call, even when it took them across the sea and across a continent. They always had an eye for the neglected places, where the gospel was most needed, including lumber camps and railway cars. They were willing to go to China, but didn’t overlook the Chinese people God brought to their neighbourhood. They weren’t distracted by false dichotomies of local or global mission, but embraced both with passion. They practiced mission by going themselves, and sending their own children. Grandma Daisy spent the final years of her life bedridden, but my memories of her bedroom are of the world map on the wall across from her bed, and the stack of prayer letters on her bedside table.
Ultimately, the health of Canada’s mission movement comes down to the obedience of God’s people who have been blessed to share this land. It is up to us to proclaim and live out, Christ’s dominion across Canada, from sea to sea, and to the ends of the earth.
Jon Fuller and his wife Marilyn had the privilege of living in a Filipino Muslim community, where their daughters grew up knowing they were safe as long as they could see the mosque at the center of the village. Currently based in Toronto, Jon travels frequently, part of OMF’s commitment to be a global community of East Asian specialists. Both he and Marilyn have a passion to invest in the next generation, helping them become everything God has called them to be.
[1] “Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, April 23, 2015, https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-samuel-leonard-tilley.
[2] Patrick Johnstone, The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possiblities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 227.
[3] Jason Mandryk, Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation, 7th ed. (Colorado Springs: InterVarsity Press, 2010), 198.
[4] Peggy Newell, ed., North American Mission Handbook: US and Canadian Protestant Ministries Overseas, 2017-2019, 22nd ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2017), 83.
[5] Newell, Mission Handbook, 50
[6] Newell, Mission Handbook, 89, 90
[7] Newell, Mission Handbook, 74
[8] Michael W. Stroope, Transcending Mission: The Eclipse of a Modern Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), Kindle.
[9] Jon Fuller and Sam Chaise, “Our Common Calling” (unpublished paper in draft for the EFC).
[10] Jonathan Fuller, “Canadian Evangelical Missions Engagement Study: Mission Definitions” (PowerPoint presentation, Burlington, October 4, 2017), figs. 50, 60.
[11] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (New York: Orbis Books, 2000), Kindle location 571.
[12] Fuller and Chaise, “Our Common Calling.”
[13] John R. W. Stott, The Contemporary Christian: An Urgent Plea for Double Listening (Leicester: InterVasity Press, 1992).
