EMQ » July–September 2022 » Volume 58 Issue 3
Global Mobilization
The global Church is on the cusp of an explosion of focused mobilization across denominations, organizations, and individual local ministries. To see this realized, every believer and local ministry needs to be empowered and released to do what is already in their hearts.
By Ryan Shaw
The global Church is in a transition time of significant change – a paradigm shift – progressing us from what has been to what is coming. It is Jeremiah 1:10 on display in the Church, “To root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down, to build and to plant” (NKJV).
It is necessary to think differently, ask new questions, and respond to the Lord’s invitation in Jeremiah 33:3: “Call to Me, and I will … show you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (NKJV) Though we often think we have a handle on mission mobilization, in reality we have barely scratched the surface. There are new models and patterns of ministry, new understandings to discern which emphasize mobilizing local ministries for reaching unreached people groups.
Contending for an Explosion of Mission Mobilization
The global Church appears positioned as never before for a strong push in mission mobilization. She has never had a larger number of believers in almost every country, never had such volume of teaching and training, never so much light on biblical strategies, and never so many resources.
Some may object, citing statistics of cross-cultural mission engagement declining in recent years. Yet it can be argued that while traditional mission concern is trending downward, this creates a vacuum for a broader, more comprehensive outlook on global mobilization to emerge. May the traditional give way to the Spirit-led, biblical understanding of mobilization across the global Church, as we seek to develop a biblical missiology of mobilization.
I believe the global Church is on the cusp of an explosion of focused mobilization across denominations, organizations, and individual local ministries. More mobilization-focused ministries, courses, tools, and trainings have sprung up globally in the last decade than ever before in history.[1] An emphasis on mobilization appears to be accelerating globally and will culminate with time in the global Church walking in her core identity as God’s missionary people. This requires redefining and rethinking mission mobilization beyond the status quo to the broad, comprehensive, holistic intent on God’s heart.
Comprehensive mobilization acceleration is not limited to Western nations. In 1800 the global Church was primarily located in Europe and North and South America.[2] By the 1990s, the body of Christ had expanded to almost every country on earth.[3] This means local ministries today in Pakistan, India, Malawi, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and many more traditionally receiving nations are empowered now as mission senders.
Today’s global Church has been entrusted with stewarding the fulfillment of the Great Commission. This requires the Church in every nation doing their part – mobilizing and equipping their own. More organizations and money are not what is needed. Instead, every believer and local ministry needs to be empowered and released to do what is already in their hearts by compulsion of love for Christ. The result will be a widespread global mobilization movement becoming realized.
Global Mission – Our Core Identity
A primary transition God is seeking to root in his corporate people toward this end is core identity. Identity is fundamental to humanity and to the body of Christ. It is possible to read the whole Bible from the viewpoint of the global mission of God, as Christopher J. H. Wright reveals.[4] Doing so enables the corporate people of God to find their core identity. This is at the center of the global Church’s calling in mission mobilization. All the portions and doctrines of the Bible, from the Old and New Testaments, come together around God and his glorious purpose – filling the earth with his glory. God’s global mission, realized through the delegated mission of his people, binds the Bible together from beginning to end.
By rooting ourselves and local ministries in the central purpose of God’s Word, we recognize the singular truth, suggested by David J. Bosch, that global mission is not merely an activity of the global Church, but an attribute of God himself.[5] God is a missionary God, Jesus a missionary Messiah, and the Spirit a missionary Spirit. Therefore, mission mobilization starts with God himself, who is on global mission, aligning his body with the priority purpose on his heart. We do not mobilize the Church to merely good works, but to come into alignment with the heartbeat of God.
As such, according to Charles Van Engen, global mission is the global Church’s primary task, not one of many.[6] It is common to lump mission together as one of a handful of projects the Church or individual believers care about. In doing so we make something out of global mission God never intended.
Abraham is one of the most important figures in God’s biblical narrative of mission. In Paul’s own ministry, it was Abraham’s calling as a “blessing to all the nations of the earth” (Genesis 12:3) that motivated him. In fact, Paul’s life mission statement is summed up in Romans 1:5, “for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name” (NKJV). His words similarly describe God’s promise to Abraham. For Paul, Abraham revealed God’s agenda for redeeming the whole world, extending the scope of impact to every nation, producing children as stars from all ethnic peoples.[7] This is why mission mobilization matters – helping the global Church become rooted in her core identity.
The Coming of the Spirit at Pentecost
To further grasp our core identity as the universal global Church, we return to the Church’s birthplace. Acts 2 is the root of the great tree of the Church that has sprung up in every nation over the last twenty centuries. The global Church was birthed through the coming of the Holy Spirit as a completely new, unique entity (a mystery in New Testament language). Its purpose was to enable the people of God to walk in a profoundly new era of the historic people of God (unseen by the Old Testament prophets), aligning with God’s will.
G. Campbell Morgan asserts Acts 2:1–4 provides a complete event within itself – the Holy Spirit’s coming on the day of Pentecost. Morgan reveals that a dramatically new era in salvation history hinged on this event. It is easy to overlook this. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit did not fill people – living within them. He periodically came upon specific people, particularly prophets and priests, but did not abide within them.
This is an entirely New Covenant phenomenon, as Ezekiel 36:26–27 confirmed, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you … I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (NKJV). Ezekiel was looking forward hundreds of years to a time when Messiah would usher in a new era, officially inaugurated on the day of Pentecost.
Jesus was aware that only by his leaving would the Holy Spirit be given to his people. This subsequently made the work of the global harvest he commanded until the end of the age possible. Acts 2:5 and following move into the results produced through the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. The new corporate body of Christ multiplied from one man (Jesus), to 12, to 500, to 3,000, 5,000 and then exponentially across the centuries, transforming every culture, socioeconomic, and status level. The key event on that day was the Holy Spirit filling the people of God, relating with them in a brand-new way never before experienced. This is the foundation on which the Church – and her progress in her core mission – was birthed and empowered.[8]
The Purpose of the Filling of the Holy Spirit
The filling of the Spirit had specific purpose, as it does for every believer since. A simple interpretation of the Spirit’s filling is for the purpose of revealing God. Wherever a believer goes, whatever they do, the primary purpose of the Holy Spirit’s filling is enabling us to reveal and manifest God to others.
The primary purpose of the Holy Spirit’s filling is enabling us to reveal and manifest God to others.
Using this simple definition, we conclude the primary reason for the Holy Spirit’s coming is empowering a corporate people who reveal God, as he is, in and through Jesus, to the world. The global Church – God’s Spirit-filled, missionary people – exists to reveal God to all the ethnic peoples of the world. This brings glory to Jesus as he draws multitudes to himself, restoring them to what they were created for.
Just as Jesus did not come to be served but to serve, giving his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), so do Spirit-filled believers serve the world’s peoples in words and demonstrations of spiritual power. We lay down our lives willingly, even joyfully, as humble servants of the one who has done so much for us. As God’s missionary people, we also represent God to the world, attract others to God, and live so that he may be worshiped, obeyed, and glorified in the earth.
The Correlation of Church and Mission
Therefore, the body of Christ globally, made up of millions of individual local churches and ministries all over the world, exists as a missionary people. This is our core identity and the corporate purpose God has put within us. Local ministries – with a thriving vision, mobilizing, and equipping their own, and influencing unreached people groups – are God’s primary strategy in mission. Every local ministry, no matter its size, possesses a responsibility before God in the Great Commission, realized through effective mission mobilization.
Yet as Charles Van Engen insinuates, this correlation of Church and mission has in practice not fared so well.[9] For the majority of Christians, Church and mission refer to two different, often conflicting, entities.[10] Lesslie Newbigin suggests Church is generally understood as devoted to worship and spiritual care, while mission is the propagation of the gospel through which new converts join existing churches.[11] This situation developed in part because mission organizations and church structures tend to function separately from one another.
Over the centuries scholars and theologians have debated the relationship between church and mission. Most today understand the biblical correlation as crucial, and that separation does great damage to Scripture. The Church’s nature cannot be defined apart from its mission and mission cannot be defined as separated from the Church’s life in the world.
Johannes Blauw has said, “There is no other Church than the Church sent into the world, and there is no other mission than that of the Church of Christ.” [12] John Stott affirms the same, stating, “The Church cannot be understood rightly except in a perspective which is at once missionary and eschatological.”[13] This is why an understanding of mission mobilization as calling the Church to her core identity is so necessary.
Before Jesus ascended to the right hand of the Father, he gave his disciples the Great Commission. Luke records a particular piece in Acts 1:8, not included in the commission passages of the four Gospels. Jesus tells the disciples, “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth” (NKJV). This verse has been interpreted in many ways over the years supporting all kinds of diverse mission positions. What if Jesus was simply clarifying the nature of the soon to be birthed Church. Jesus is telling disciples they are to be a certain kind of people – God’s ever-widening and multiplying missionary people.
Jesus appears to be laying out a blueprint in this verse. Revealing his true Church would be continuously spreading outward in ever wider concentric circles. The Church universal and every local ministry is an evolving organism, never static or stale, always growing to “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13 NKJV). She is consistently changing, growing, and developing into what God intends her to be. What the universal Church and an individual church are is not defined by what they always have been. The Church is dynamically adapting and responding to the Holy Spirit, aligning in a fresh way with the mission heartbeat she was always meant to possess.
A group of young men stand by a soccer goal on the campus of a cross-cultural ministry training school in Brazil. As a part of their curriculum, students learn how sports can be used as a missions strategy. PHOTO BY ELYSE PATTEN / COURTESY OF WGA
Limitations of Common Mobilization Understanding
Why does all this matter? Because at the core of seeing the global Church operating as intended is adequate mission mobilization within individual local ministries that educate, inspire, and activate them in the mission of God. Yet over time, I have come to see how limited mobilization actually is in the global Church.
It is the overlooked core of the mission movement. Without it, mission itself cannot become all God intends. Of course, it is given lip service across denominations, organizations, and church networks, and cited in mission and vision statements. Maybe a ministry has a conference every few years, a periodic mission speaker, an outreach to a neighboring village, or a prayer session for the nations every once in a while. Many leaders, including mission mobilizers themselves, talk about mobilization in these limited ways.
Yet a holistic, comprehensive vision for mobilization remains wanting. Local ministries talk enough about mission to make believers aware it exists, while neglecting to go deep enough for active engagement. Barna Research Group indicates only 17 percent of believers can even describe what Jesus’ Great Commission is,[14] while over 50 percent say they have never even heard about the Great Commission in their churches.
This travesty reveals a lack of adequately understanding the gospel across the Global Church. These statistics call into question how the modern, Global Church is defining discipleship, confirming the need for comprehensive, wholistic, biblically based mobilization, education, inspiration, and activation the Church in her core identity.
This article has been adapted from the author’s new book called Rethinking Global Mobilization: Calling the Church to Her Core Identity. The book seeks to lay foundations of a Biblical missiology of mobilization while providing a practical framework to mobilize and equip the global Church in mobilization. The publisher, IGNITE Media, has given permission for portions of the book used in this article. Order copies at Amazon.com and find more info about the book at RethinkingMobilization.com
Ryan Shaw (rshaw@globalmmi.net) is international lead facilitator of the Global Mission Mobilization Initiative (GMMI), a resourcing ministry equipping the Church for mission mobilization through tools, teaching, training, and strategies. A fourth-generation message bearer, Ryan graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA) with a master’s in intercultural studies. He has traveled in a mobilization capacity to over 65 nations and lives with his family in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where GMMI has its International Base and Global Mobilization Institute.
NOTES
[1] Some of these include Let’s Mobilize His Church (Latin America), Mission Campaign Network (Kenya), Global Mobilization Network (International), Center for Missionary Mobilization and Retention (USA), and Global Cast Resources (International). Many more have been around longer than a decade and continue to gain clarity and focus in mobilization. Some of these include Center for Mission Mobilization, Simply Mobilizing, Perspectives, and GMMI. In addition, almost all of the major global mission networks like the Lausanne Committee (international), COMIBAM (Latin America), MANI (Africa), WEA Mission Commission (international) now have mobilization tracks and departments which they did not have before.
[2] Patrick Johnstone, The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities (IVP Books, 2011), 57.
[3] Johnstone, The Future, 94.
[4] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Zondervan Academic, 2010), 38.
[5] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), 389–390.
[6] Charles Van Engen, The State of Missiology Today: Global Innovations in Christian Witness (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016), 4.
[7] Wright, The Mission, 63.
[8] G. Campbell Morgan and Jill Morgan, The Birth of the Church: An Exposition of the Second Chapter of Acts (F. H. Revell Co., 1968), 13.
[9] Charles E. Van Engen, God’s Missionary People (Baker Publishing Group, 1991), 27.
[10] Van Engen, Missionary People, 28.
[11] Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (New York: Friendship Press, 1954), 164–65.
[12] Johannes Blauw, The Missionary Nature of the Church: A Survey of the Biblical Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1974), 121.
[13] John R. W. Stott, One People (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1971), 17.
[14] “51% of Churchgoers Don’t Know of the Great Commission,” Barna, March 27, 2018, https://www.barna.com/research/half-churchgoers-not-heard-great-commission/.
EMQ, Volume 58, Issue 3. Copyright © 2022 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
