When we think of the word "mission," at least in the Christian context, we are conditioned to think of being sent by God somewhere for some specific purpose. As emphatically reminded to us by Dr. Charles E. Van Engen during my MC520 Biblical Foundations for Mission course back in 2010 at FTS, "If everything is mission, then nothing is mission." This word mission then, denotes a divine mandate, a series of tasks, in the order of something very specific that God is accomplishing. This is also known as Missio Dei. But it occurs to me that this mission that we speak of can be both explicitly religious or conspicuously irreligious. This of course, beckons the herald, calling out for a false dichotomy since, the Jews of the Old Testament did not view life in such compartments, to all good Jews, there wasn't this segmenting of a religious life vis-à-vis the mundade (or profane) life.In the mission of God, there is a sending. God sends out his agents to proclaim of the Truth. (not "a" truth, but "The" Truth: an absolutist claim that is exclusive) And this message encompasses a reality that many, if not most people are not aware of. And this reality is not of a conditioned perception of a finite spectrum, by a lifespan limited by our accepted understanding of life and its physicality, or as some may still called it "philosophical materialism".
But rather than simply discharging duties unto angelic mediators, envoys, prophet messengers, we see God involved in direct intervention through interaction: between epochs defined by their crises, and His response: 1) Adam and Eve came to know evil through disobedience, the remedial action was mortality, this is to say exile from Eden to prohibit them from the Tree of Life. (Having taken from the Tree of Knowledge: Of Good and Evil, to be able to live forever by taking from the Tree of life between that gap of Sin may be tantamount to hell); 2) The condition of humanity focused on evil continually, Genesis 6 - God opts to unleash His act of anti-creation, spare Noah and his household; 3) Shortly after that, when humanity engages in an elitist endeavor to reach the heavens through their crude architecture, ie. the Tower of Babel, confounding of speech averts some cosmic disaster that is unrecorded, precisely because of this intervention.
So what makes sense, is to read the Bible in search of God's actions through biblical historiography because it is likely that His actions, continual interventions or, His mission as we will call it, is ongoing, and we may find patterns there that may help us discern the features of what is truly His mission. What is God's mission? Before we ask ourselves the question: "If God is so good how come there is so much evil?" Let us ask ourselves, "Where and how is God working?"
To revisit the assumptions from one of the fundamental courses at Fuller (if they have not been revised in five years...)
1. God
is foremost interested in the relational redemption and reconciliation of His
children, and the Bible is primarily an account of God’s missionary effort to
reach all of humanity. (See John Stott’s article in the reader – “The Living
God is a Missionary God”)
2. Mission
is the People of God heralding God’s reconciliation with humanity and God’s
healing of interpersonal relationships in the present and coming Kingdom of
God, and often involves the intentional crossing of barriers.
3. The
motivations, means, goals, scope, and meaning of mission derives from the heart
of God, the missio Dei, God’s
self-revelation in Jesus Christ, through the working of God’s Spirit through
the Church and in the world.
4. The
Church’s reason for being, and the source of her constant renewal, is found in
her participation in God’s universal mission in the world.
5. The
mission of the Church today is the continuation of the participation of the
People of God in God’s mission which has its origins in the nature of God,
takes early shape in the Old Testament, and is given fullest expression in the
New Testament.
6. The
unity of the world Church is intimately connected with the mission of the Church
in the world.
7. The
Church today is in great need of new, clear, and contextualized theologies of
mission which will build upon but also reform the colonial, Western, and
triumphalistic patterns of 19th – and early 20th-Century mission.
8. The
future strength of the Church lies in the congregations and denominations which
intentionally foster ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and economic diversity
within their faith communities and consciously open themselves to the
evangelization and incorporation of new converts.
9. The
world is ever more a stew-pot of pluralistic society where people of very
diverse cultures, religions, and world-views work and live side-by side.
10. The
greater the socio-cultural barrier to communicating the Gospel, the greater
must be the intentionality, energy, cost, and administrative creativity in
crossing the barrier.
11. Everywhere
in the world the local body of believers is the primary agent and locus for
crossing cultural barriers and experiencing reconciliation in Christ.
It is a good point in my ministry career to stop and look behind because it has been five years since I graduated from Fuller, and I have to be reminded why I am here and where I might be going in the next five. As a very wise man once said:
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.
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