Word Made Flesh “Position Papers” do not necessarily represent the opinions of the entire WMF community, but seek to articulate alternative positions on issues of mission and spirituality. The starting points for these papers are the WMF identity statements and WMF’s commitment to living out these principles in daily life and ministry.
What Do We Mean By Mission?
Mission has become a ubiquitous idea in our world today. Businesses, non-profit organizations, and even individuals have mission statements that define their main objectives and reasons for existence. However, the concept of mission seems to be more problematic for Christians. Does mission mean evangelizing in another country? Is mission a particular calling for the few? Should our mission involve sharing or even imposing the Gospel on those of other cultures and religions? Does mission veil motivations of heroism, guilt, and quests for the exotic or our own extravagant lifestyles? Does mission merit the cost of learning a new language and culture and moving to an unknown place? Is mission possible in the face of personal debt, the task of raising support, needing visas, economic insecurities, and moving to places of danger and difference? In addition to the questions that may impede involvement in missions is also the historical baggage of how Christian missions have been carried out.
Missions and the idea of sharing the Gospel with the whole world has been a part of my life since before I, Ariel, was born. My grandparents responded to the call to serve overseas, and later my parents were called into missions as well. In fact, I was born outside of the United States, already immersed in the environment of missions. I grew up attending mission conferences and aware of the deep imperative to share the Good News with others. However, as I grew, I also had to reckon with the realities of church history and the many ways the idea of “missions” has been misused and abused around the world. My parents were very honest about the history of missions, including the negative actions and effects that Christian missions had on the world and on my adopted country as well. As I write this, I am once again a part of a mission organization, Word Made Flesh – though instead of a “missionary,” I would call myself a “cross-cultural worker.” Thankfully, I have found a place in a missional community that has a different understanding of mission than the one that has been traditionally used. In this article, we want to outline what we mean by “mission.” It is a global, holistic vision of hope, with an open invitation for you to join in.
We could not presume to talk about an open invitation to missions without briefly recognizing some of the very deep failings of the missional movement and how this abuse continues to impede cross-cultural missions today. In my own experience, as I, Ariel, grew older and saw the deep needs in the communities around me, I could not reconcile the exclusive focus on spiritual well-being with the lack of regard for physical needs or the failure to address the deep-rooted injustices in society. For all the good intentions and desires to share the Gospel, to meet people’s needs, and to transform systems, we still see the persistence of racism, nationalism, colonialism, excessive spiritualization, and sexism. Worse, these realities are often ignored or even perpetuated through missions – something that causes many to want nothing to do with missions at all. The problems of over-spiritualizing and holding one church tradition or church culture as the standard is perhaps most easily seen in the failings to follow the mantra of the Lausanne Movement: “the whole Church taking the whole Gospel to the whole world.” As Lausanne also recognizes, the mantra reveals significant shortcomings in missional practice. The whole Gospel was truncated into a message of conversion and a ticket to heaven. The whole Church served as a cover for a certain tribe and tradition that excluded other church traditions and thought little about church unity. The whole world may have focused on people or “unreached peoples” but failed to consider God’s vision for other creatures, for societies, and for ecologies.
Another problem facing cross-cultural missions is power. As an American citizen, I, David, have been able to travel the world because I have a U.S. passport and access to the American middle-class. My citizenship and money made it possible to go. Just as the “modern” missionary movement, which began in the 15th century, followed the routes paved by colonizers, so our missionary efforts were often made possible by the power of our countries of birth. The dynamics of power imbalance are further deepened when we consider historical mission structures that supported foreigners’ cultural privilege, maintained ethnic hierarchies, and perpetuated sexism. An oft-used example helps demonstrate this point: the Southern Baptist Convention would not ordain female pastors in the United States, but would commission single, white female missionaries to share the Gospel among “other” ethnicities outside of the United States. This not only illustrates this denomination’s gender dynamics, but also the belief in the racial superiority of the “sending” culture.
Power is not only an issue of the past but remains a problem in missions, even as the demographics of the global church are changing. Today there are more Christians outside of the West in what has been named “the Majority World.” The majority of Christians are now in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, rather than Europe, North America, and Australia (see Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom). This may cause us to think that the need for cross-cultural missions is over. If there are churches all over the world, then why go? By asking the question, we betray our view of mission as an activity of the West and as one of choice based on our power and prerogative. It also reveals our assumption that if we have a church “here,” then there is no need for mission here. Instead of raising a “mission accomplished” banner, we see the need to join the global church in both receiving missionaries from other cultures and sending Christians to other contexts. As Justo Gonzalez says, mission is, “from every nation to every nation.”
The reality that the Church is present throughout the world may also lead us to believe that the problem of colonialism is diminishing in contemporary missions. However, we need to recognize the long-term effects of colonial systems: the issues of ethnic churches in the diaspora (the lack of united, multiethnic congregations), prosperity preaching (the quest for blessing apart from Jesus’ way of the cross and the spiritualization of people’s physical needs), business as mission without a critique of capitalism (conversion to the market as a means for conversion to Christ), and being moved by the currents of globalization (increased consumption, movement, and diversity without the intention of sharing the Gospel) and its isolationist reaction (the “other” or those unlike us represent a threat to our identity and way of life). All these continue to point to the colonial ingredients that are baked into our understandings and practices of church and mission.
Recognizing a reductionist understanding of mission and the abuses of power in mission may lead us to fearfully withdraw altogether from engaging in mission. This is especially true for those who follow the Hippocratic Oath of “Do no harm,” made popular for those involved in mission as International Development by the book When Helping Hurts. The authors’ purpose is to help Christian missions avoid unwittingly creating dependency through development programs. Contrary to the authors’ intentions, the title has left some thinking: “I don’t want to hurt, so I’m not going to help.” While we must recognize and seek to avoid and mitigate potential injury, the risk of harm should not debilitate our missional actions.
We have only briefly sketched some of the major issues facing missions today, but we can thankfully explore the extensive work that theologians, academics, and especially our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Majority World have carried out in order to bring to light the many problems in our history of missions. They also provide corrective proposals and create spaces for restoration after harm. We are indebted to them and must continually learn from them. We include a list of resources at the end of this article that exemplify this work. While we have named some of the major issues that must be addressed as we do missions, our desire in what follows is to describe a vision for Christian missions that is not only corrective of the past but also active in discerning God’s joyful work in the world and, together with the global Church, joins in. Our prayer is that you too sense the invitation and find your place within God’s mission.
Mission is participating in the love of the Father, who sends the Son and the Spirit (Jn 3:16; 14:26). Missions are firstly understood as this trinitarian sending (missio). From the superabundance of infinite love, God, through the Word, creates the cosmos, where God makes God’s home, and where the cosmos finds its home in God (14:23). God’s creation of the heavens and the earth and making of humans is a sending forth (of something other than God), a resting in (Sabbath), and dwelling with (sharing walks in the cool of the day) (Gen 1-2:2, 3:8). Humanity participates in God’s sending by being fruitful, filling, and stewarding creation (1:28), by cultivating and tending to the earth (2:15). God’s making home with humanity culminates in the coming of God as human, fulfilling the intimate sharing of God’s love with all of creation.
Mission has always been God’s plan. After the Fall and the distortion of the cosmos, God’s mission of love takes the form of healing, redeeming, reconciling, and renewing. It is important to note that mission is not a reaction to the Fall. John Piper has famously said that mission exists because worship does not. This is false. Mission is not a Plan B; it is not a clean-up project. According to many in the early Church, it was always the will of the Father to send the Son and the Spirit into the world, to make God’s home with creation, to be our God, and for us to be God’s people. In a fallen world, God’s mission does not only include the Son’s joyful presence in the world but also takes the form of crucifixion and the paying of any price for the sake of love. In mission, we are not simply responding to the Fall, sin, and idolatry but, more fundamentally, we are compelled by love, even when costly, to be part of God’s original vision for creation for communion (2 Cor 5).
Mission is the Missio Dei. Traditionally, mission was considered to be the task of the Church. This, however, reveals our messianic complexes or the strategies to build our own kingdoms, evident in our church planting schemes, in our claims for human development, and in our competition with other churches or Christian organizations. Instead, we recognize that mission is God’s. The Church is sent out as a participant, discovering what God has already been doing in each location. We as individuals are also participants in God’s work in the world. To use the idea Jesus used, we are invited to be a part of the Kingdom of God on this earth and that involves an allegiance to Christ as opposed to earthly rulers, and a way of life that follows Christ and not the values of the world.
Mission is the life of the church. Emil Brunner said that the church exists by mission as fire exists by burning. It is easy for a church to sit fixated on its own internal programs and problems, thinking that when those are settled, then they will get involved in missions. But mission is the outreaching love of God through every Christian. Invitations to a church service is mission (centrifugal). Explaining to workmates why we give to those in need, forgive those who hurt us, and pray for our enemies is mission (centripetal). While the term “missionary” may hold more baggage than we might think is worth carrying, in a certain sense, every follower of Jesus is a missionary. Mission is not the select call to the few, but rather the vocation of everyone who follows the Father who sends the Son and pours out the Spirit.
Mission has in view all of creation. In the Gospel of Mark when Jesus sends the disciples into the world, Jesus says, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (16:15). It is not only peoples in view, but all of creation, which God loves and promises to renew (Rev 21:5). We are invited to witness to God’s filling of the earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Hab 2:14).
Mission involves creation care. Just as the invitation to God’s mission has all of creation in view, it is also an invitation to work in all of creation for restoration and beauty. We are increasingly facing environmental disasters that disproportionately affect those who are poor. While there are varying views among Christians about climate change, we cannot deny the missional mandate to care for creation. Creation is a gift from God to humanity for common flourishing and stewardship. Although stewardship today normally involves fencing off property for ownership and plundering the earth’s resources until there is nothing left, we are to reflect God’s purpose of stewardship as cultivating and restoring sustainable ecologies (Gen 1:28; 2:15). Another facet of this work is the seeking and creating of beauty. This involves caring for creation for creation’s sake and beautifying what has been objectified, diminished, and abandoned. In the words of N.T. Wright, cultivating beauty complements Christ-followers’ call to justice/rightened relationships: “Worship and stewardship, generating justice and beauty: these are the primary vocations of God’s redeemed people” (N.T. Wright After you Believe).
Mission is holistic. In mission, the love for and restoration of all creation is in view. Sadly, some missions have concentrated on “saving souls” or a segmented care for the spirit in contrast to the body. In response, we recognize that humans cannot be treated as fragments or as monads. That does not mean that missions must do everything. Rather, holistic mission is a perspective, a starting point, that has in view the whole cosmos in which we share Good News with all peoples. In addition, holistic mission is not something we only do abroad. We recognize that missionaries have often identified the social ills in their adopted countries but had little to say of the systemic racism in their home countries, or who so easily responded to deep material need elsewhere, while not recognizing the material inequalities in their sending contexts. Thankfully, there are models of the church engaging holistic mission. Black churches and Catholic charities in the United States, for example, have historically responded to social ills in deeper ways than the evangelical church. We are not simply called to an individual conversion to the ways of the Kingdom, but also to the participative work of reordering of all relationships and systems in and through Christ.
We are chosen for missional service, not just for salvation. We look to Abraham and Sarah who are chosen, not just for their own sake or experience with God, but for the sake of the world (Gen 12:3). They are chosen to be vessels of blessing to all peoples, and this identity is inherited by Israel (Is 42:6; 60:3). Israel’s identity is fulfilled by Christ through whom all nations are blessed and, in his Body, are chosen as a “royal priesthood” so that others can discover God’s promised blessings for them (1 Pet 2:9). As a royal priesthood, our missional service is to bring all creation before God and to witness to God before all creation.
Mission is “as you go.” The most frequently cited text to promote the idea of Christian missions is the “Great Commission” (Mt. 28:16-20). Jesus says, “All authority has been given to me, therefore go and make disciples of all nations…” A problem is that this translation misses the nuance of the New Testament Greek. A better translation is: “…as you go (and come), make disciples of all ethnicities…” This better reading corrects any notion of mission being unidirectional (i.e., from the West to the Rest) and instead fosters a vision for all Christians in all locations to engage in mission as they come and go. You may be a traveling teacher or salesperson, or you may only commute to the local grocer and gym. As you come and go and as you live as a pilgrim people, you are a missionary – an ambassador of Christ (2 Cor 5:20) – and you participate in the Missio Dei.
Mission is to the ends of the earth and the ends of society. Mission does imply a stepping into contexts different from our own. Jesus does have all in view: all ethnicities, all peoples, all generations, and all places. This entails engaging those with different epistemologies and worldviews and those inhabiting different digital spaces. Importantly, Jesus’ directive to the ends of the earth also prioritizes the ends of society: the marginal places where people are left out or forced out, forgotten and ignored. Jesus invites us to the margins, to the least, and to encounter him there (Mt 25:31-46).
Mission means being sent like the Son. “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” Jesus speaks these words while holding out his wounded hands and calling the Jesus follower to love even when it involves suffering for others (Jn 20:19-23). This contradicts the images of Christian models of leadership that emulate CEOs, celebrities, or even the good middle-class. Instead, we understand missions as faithful witness even in weakness or in the face of opposition, sharing a treasure in fragile clay vessels (2 Cor 4:7-9). “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). This does not simply mean martyrdom, but rather the sharing of life. As John says, “We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 Jn 3:16-17). Laying down our lives means sharing our resources. It means that mission is not a project that we complete and then move on. Rather, going forth is the ongoing sharing of our life in Christ.
Mission is being sent into all the world…in me. Biblically, human beings are understood as the culmination of God’s creation, bringing together in each person the worlds of angels and animals, spirit, and matter. As such, the early church often referred to the human being as a microcosm, a whole world in oneself. In this light, mission is also understood as a movement of the Spirit to the ends of our own personal worlds. God’s mission is not only for “them,” but also for “us.” In mission, we are not only sharing the Good News with others, but the depths of our own inner lives are being transformed by God through others. As one Catholic missionary priest said, “[We may come] a long distance to invite [others] to search for [God] with us…Maybe, together, we will find him” (Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, 36). As we participate in the missio Dei, God transforms us. This is seen throughout the Scriptures. For example, in the sending of Peter to Cornelius (Acts 10), Cornelius and his family were converted to Christ, and Peter was converted from an exclusivist Christ to the Christ who breaks down dividing walls. On mission, we receive, and we are continually converted to Christ – something depicted in the stories of our transformation that fill the pages of this journal, the Cry.
Mission is prophetic. The invitation to participate in God’s work calls us to a realistic recognition that all is not right or just in the world around us, specifically the suffering and oppression of the most vulnerable. Mission is an invitation to position ourselves alongside them, prophetically recognizing that their plight is not as God intends and also joining with them in holistic, transformative work. This may be especially difficult for those who benefit from the status quo, for those who are comfortable with the current reality. When social structures work for them, they do not tend to long for justice, restoration, or for things to change. Those who benefit from the current state of the world might want more things, experiences, status, but they rarely recognize the deep groaning of creation that is waiting to be renewed. In a prophetic posture, “not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23).
Mission reflects our future hope. There is no greater litmus test for what we believe about God’s future than how we participate in God’s mission. As we have outlined above, holistic participation in God’s work points to God’s promises of redemption and justice, reconciliation and flourishing of everyone and all things that God will complete through the coming of Christ. The participation in Missio Dei is an invitation to the hopeful work amidst great injustice and sorrow. In the words of the Oscar Romero Prayer we are “prophets of a future that is not our own.” We respond to the invitation of working for the Kingdom of God toward justice and reconciliation, understanding that we might not live to see the work completed but with the hope that in Christ’s Coming, all will be made new (Rev. 21:5).
Joining the global church. There are still places in the world in need of a local church, and the “going and coming” of Christians is cultivating Christian communities where they are not. But, unlike any other time in history, local churches are present all over the globe. Does this mean that there is no longer the need to go? No. Because the body of Christ is one, global mission means joining in the work of God through the local church (1 Cor 12:12-27). Joining the global church does not only mean planting a church but also involves connecting local church to local church, believer to believer. Our witness can be particularly poignant in a world unable to cultivate multicultural communities and that suffers from increased inequalities. Just as Paul took collections from local churches to care for the impoverished believers in Jerusalem, churches today should share with one another to diminish disparities and to live into our common fellowship (1 Cor 16:2-4; 2 Cor 8:1-4, 19-21). This connectivity not only responds to physical needs, but also learns with humility from others whose cultural perspectives are different from our own. Missions seek to express the Body’s unity through diversity in the pluriform gifts and various cultural expressions. For example, brothers and sisters from churches in more collectivist cultures can teach western, individualist churches much about hospitality and community. We not only learn from one another but are vessels of healing one another. Belonging to one Body that is growing into the full stature of Christ (Eph 4:13), we must humbly listen to the critique and correction of churches in other cultures who see our blind spots and failings, just as we humbly share with believers in other cultures from our perspective.
We at Word Made Flesh have told the story of our founding as a group of North American college students hearing God’s call and then going to radically serve among those suffering from poverty. It is true that we said “yes” to going to different and difficult places and, in our naivete, found ourselves part of a missional movement among the poor. However, when we take a step back, we can perhaps see and honestly confess our own inclinations to heroism, egoism, and messianic complexes. In reality, our mission is not just the vision of young Western adults. We were inspired by the preaching of Dr. Kamaleson, an Indian Christian leader who served as international vice-president for World Vision. He invited us to travel with him and to be mentored by him. Through his vision and wisdom, the ideas of intentional missional community, incarnational ministry, indigenous leadership, and a holistic approach brought Word Made Flesh into being. Dr. Kamaleson not only opened our hearts and minds to what God was doing in the world but also opened doors for us to build relationships with the global Church. As we have said “yes” to mission, we have increasingly discovered that mission is not ours. God has already been at work. We have simply been invited to join.
Each of us has a history, a culture, a matrix of relationships, skills, interests, and gifts that God has invested us with and that God desires to use in global mission – especially among those most in need. It is important to understand what we mean by mission because you are called into mission – something we are reminded of in the liturgy every Sunday:
And now, Father, send us out into the world to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.
Resource List
René Padilla, Integral Mission
Samuel Escobar The New Global Mission, The: The Gospel From Everywhere To Everyone
Jocabed Solano “The Meeting of Two Worlds: Searching for and Affirming our Christian and Indigenous Identity”
Christopher Wright The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative
Justo Gonzalez To All Nations from All Nations: A History of the Christian Missionary Movement
Ruth Padilla deBorst “‘Unexpected’ Guests at God’s Banquet Table – Gospel in Mission and Culture”
David Bosch Transforming Mission
Lesslie Newbigin The Open Secret
Sam George “Reimagining GO and SEND Mission Paradigms for an Age of Global Migration and World Christianity”
Ion Bria Go Forth in Peace!