Mark 9 – A Church Committed to Missions – of 13 Marks of a Faithful Missional Church in the 21st Century American West
Sully Notes are meant to provide you with direct quotes from some books I've read in the last year, so you can get a taste of the overall theme of the book and then begin to chew on what your life might look like if you applied what you read.
This series of special Notes are touching on a subject growing in recognition and discussion within the 21st century American church. What is the missional church? Is it something we do or who we are? What does a church look like that is living out the mission of God in their cultural context? How does a church remain faithful to the good news of Jesus, the Spirit of God, the Scriptures, the church throughout human history and around the world, and the mission of God that the church is called to join, while also meeting the questions, needs, and desires of the people God is sending us to in the cultures and contexts we live in today? I have found no better book to answer these questions than in Michael Goheen's A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story.
For these 13 posts, my goal is to share the final chapter of the book – Chapter 9: What Might This Look Like Today – with you. In this chapter, Goheen shares from his pastoral and professional experience in answering the question, "Ten Things I'd Do Differently if I Pastored Again." The list grew from ten to a lucky thirteen. I think all thirteen are essential for considering how Emmaus City will be a faithful church for our city – Worcester, MA.
Each blog post will feature one mark that will take about 5 minutes to read. Here is the full list featuring links to the previous posts:
- Mark 1: A Church with Worship That Nurtures Our Missional Identity
- Mark 2: A Church Empowered by the Preaching of the Gospel
- Mark 3: A Church Devoted to Communal Prayer
- Mark 4: A Church Striving to Live as a Contrast Community
- Mark 5: A Church That Understands Its Cultural Context
- Mark 6: A Church Trained for a Missionary Encounter in Its Callings in the World
- Mark 7: A Church Trained to Evangelism in an Organic Way
- Mark 8: A Church Deeply Involved in the Needs of Its Neighborhood and World
- Mark 9: A Church Committed to Missions
- Mark 10: A Church with Well-Trained Leaders
- Mark 11: A Church with Parents Trained to Take Up the Task of Nurturing Children in Faith
- Mark 12: A Church with Small Groups That Nurture for Mission in the World
- Mark 13: A Church That Seeks and Expresses the Unity of the Body of Christ
Mark 9: A Church Committed to Missions
"Lesslie Newbigin makes an important distinction between mission and missions. One might wonder about a distinction made with only one letter. Yet we may be reminded that in the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325) one letter protected the gospel from deep compromise. Homoousion expressed that Jesus was God, while the alternative homoiousion meant that Jesus was very much like God. The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-94), author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, mocked the spectacle of the church fighting over a dipthong. Yet that letter guarded something essential to the gospel. Likewise, Newbigin believes that one letter preserved something indispensable in the church's mission. Judging from the absence of this aspect of the church's mission from much missional church literature today, this is very much needed indeed: often mission and eclipsed missions.
Mission is the whole task of the church as it is sent into the world to bear witness to the good news. As such mission is literally a perspective on all of life: the whole life of God's people both as a gathered and a scattered community bears witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ over the entirety of human affairs. Missions is one part of this bigger role that the church plays in God's story. Its task is to establish a witness in places where there is none. Usually missions will be cross-cultural. But missions is not only an essential part of the church's mission; it is also the ultimate horizon. The mission of God's people to make known good news has as its ultimate horizon the ends of the earth.
One problem that continues to weaken the church's missionary commitment is the separation between missionary societies and congregations. This separation has led to a mission that does not claim to be the church and a church that is without a mission to the world. Yet in the New Testament the church is the only mission body established by God. It is therefore essential that each congregation begin to take its part in missions, the task of erecting a witness to Christ in areas and places where none exists.
Yet this involvement must counter a widespread misunderstanding. The use of cross-cultural resources is still shaped by a colonial mind-set from the past. During that time the mission of the church was reduced to missions: mission was geographical expansion in taking the gospel from the Christian West to the non-Christian non-West. Mission was anything overseas. The response today is sometimes business as usual: missions is still defined by geography and therefore remains anything that crosses cultural boundaries, whether it is establishing a witness to the gospel where there is none or cross-cultural interchurch support. This state of affairs has led Bryant Myers to call the disproportionate allocation of mission resources a scandal. Just over 1 percent of financial and only 10 percent of personnel resources devoted to cross-cultural work actually serves the purpose of missions: establishing a witness in unevangelized areas. The rest is used to build up already well-established churches in other parts of the world, churches that are sometimes stronger than the sending church. This kind of interchurch aid is not unimportant; indeed, it is an expression of the ecumenical nature of the church. The scandal is in the disproportionate allocation of resources and relative neglect of missions in unevangelized areas.
As the church takes up its task to be engaged in missions, there will be a reflexive effect. As the church develops a vision for and begins to become involved in missions to the ends of the earth, the more likely it is that the church will also be a missional church near to home. Missions has the potential to revitalize a missional vision for the whole world, including the neighborhood." – pgs. 218-220
Tomorrow's post: 13 Marks of a Faithful Missional Church – Mark 10 of 13: A Church with Well-Trained Leaders
Mission is the whole task of the church as it is sent into the world to bear witness to the good news. As such mission is literally a perspective on all of life: the whole life of God's people both as a gathered and a scattered community bears witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ over the entirety of human affairs. Missions is one part of this bigger role that the church plays in God's story. Its task is to establish a witness in places where there is none. Usually missions will be cross-cultural. But missions is not only an essential part of the church's mission; it is also the ultimate horizon. The mission of God's people to make known good news has as its ultimate horizon the ends of the earth.
One problem that continues to weaken the church's missionary commitment is the separation between missionary societies and congregations. This separation has led to a mission that does not claim to be the church and a church that is without a mission to the world. Yet in the New Testament the church is the only mission body established by God. It is therefore essential that each congregation begin to take its part in missions, the task of erecting a witness to Christ in areas and places where none exists.
Yet this involvement must counter a widespread misunderstanding. The use of cross-cultural resources is still shaped by a colonial mind-set from the past. During that time the mission of the church was reduced to missions: mission was geographical expansion in taking the gospel from the Christian West to the non-Christian non-West. Mission was anything overseas. The response today is sometimes business as usual: missions is still defined by geography and therefore remains anything that crosses cultural boundaries, whether it is establishing a witness to the gospel where there is none or cross-cultural interchurch support. This state of affairs has led Bryant Myers to call the disproportionate allocation of mission resources a scandal. Just over 1 percent of financial and only 10 percent of personnel resources devoted to cross-cultural work actually serves the purpose of missions: establishing a witness in unevangelized areas. The rest is used to build up already well-established churches in other parts of the world, churches that are sometimes stronger than the sending church. This kind of interchurch aid is not unimportant; indeed, it is an expression of the ecumenical nature of the church. The scandal is in the disproportionate allocation of resources and relative neglect of missions in unevangelized areas.
As the church takes up its task to be engaged in missions, there will be a reflexive effect. As the church develops a vision for and begins to become involved in missions to the ends of the earth, the more likely it is that the church will also be a missional church near to home. Missions has the potential to revitalize a missional vision for the whole world, including the neighborhood." – pgs. 218-220
Tomorrow's post: 13 Marks of a Faithful Missional Church – Mark 10 of 13: A Church with Well-Trained Leaders
– Sully
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