Intro­duc­tion

For many years the evan­gel­i­cal church in Canada has seen itself as pas­sion­ate about mis­sion. We have sent large sums of money over­seas to sup­port inter­na­tional mis­sions while at home the local church sel­dom moved out­side of its own walls. Domes­ti­cally, the church devel­oped pro­grams designed to invite those who had drifted away from the church to return. In addi­tion fundrais­ers gen­er­ated money for para­church work among stu­dents, the inner city poor and new immi­grants. In recent decades, how­ever, as the local church began to suf­fer, funds allo­cated to over­seas work have dwin­dled. In order to jus­tify the fund­ing cut­back the local church devel­oped a “mis­sional” focus.

The mis­sional church move­ment argued that mis­sion can only be under­stood as actual engage­ment. With­out action our global engage­ment is reduced to cheque writ­ing or altru­is­tic tourism that lacks trans­for­ma­tive power. Mis­si­ol­o­gists are there­fore ask­ing how domes­tic mis­si­ol­ogy can lead to global involve­ment. They pose a vital ques­tion that is usu­ally over­looked in the ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions of the mis­sional church move­ment. This arti­cle will endeav­our to sug­gest some start­ing points from which to address the issue of a truly global mis­sional vision.

The First Step

As a first step we need to agree on and clar­ify what we mean by the “mis­sional church”. In essence we need to define the nature and mis­sion of the church. With­out a clear under­stand­ing of who we are and what we are meant to do, the church will be prone to unthink­ingly fol­low cul­tural trends. We there­fore need to be par­tic­u­larly vig­i­lant against pure prag­ma­tism or sim­ply re-​​branding exist­ing pro­grams using fash­ion­able, cul­tur­ally rel­e­vant language.

Learn­ing to Fol­low Networks

In Matthew 28: 18–20 and Acts 1: 3–8 we learn that the flow of mis­sion is from Jerusalem to Judea, then Samaria and finally to the rest of the world. The apos­tles model this move­ment in the book of Acts and we are called to emu­late their pat­tern. It calls us to engage our neigh­bour before mov­ing out into for­eign territory.

For the 1^st cen­tury church mov­ing from famil­iar envi­rons to the gen­tile world was extremely dif­fi­cult. In the 21^st cen­tury we, how­ever, live with the legacy of Chris­ten­dom which gives rise to dif­fer­ent con­cerns. We are more appre­hen­sive about engag­ing those around us with the gospel than going to unfa­mil­iar areas. Con­sis­tent char­ac­ter is vital if we are to invite our neigh­bours to watch our lives. Such a call­ing com­petes with pri­mary cul­tural val­ues like indi­vid­u­al­ism and pri­vacy. As a result, our pref­er­ence is to sim­ply bypass our neigh­bours. The Chris­ten­dom assump­tion that local evan­ge­lism is sim­ply reclaim­ing back­slid­ers there­fore has tremen­dous appeal. In this con­text mis­sion is reserved for cross­ing a bor­der and both local and over­seas out­reaches are approached by means of appro­pri­ate programs.

Mis­sion, how­ever, works best when we fol­low net­works. Rod­ney Stark argues that Paul’s pri­mary mis­sion strat­egy was to ini­ti­ate a con­tact and then nur­ture the net­works that devel­oped as a result. “Although the very first Chris­t­ian con­verts in the West may have been made by full-​​time mis­sion­ar­ies, the con­ver­sion process soon became self-​​sustaining as new con­verts accepted the oblig­a­tion to spread their faith and did so by mis­sion­iz­ing their imme­di­ate cir­cle of inti­mates” (Cities of God, 14). As a result of this strat­egy, Paul was free to advise and men­tor while local ama­teurs led the church. In these early years of the church we see no reflec­tion on mis­si­ol­ogy as such. The process was always one of being sent out and enter­ing into the lives of others.

We see this strat­egy con­tinue into the 2^nd and 3^rd cen­turies. Nowhere is an inten­tional mis­sion­ary pro­gram evi­dent. The good news was spread intu­itively but inten­tion­ally as peo­ple went out, pro­claim­ing and enact­ing the gospel. For this approach to work the char­ac­ter of those announc­ing the good news had to match the mes­sage. Records indi­cate that the counter-​​cultural free­dom, jus­tice and joy wit­nessed in the lives of the con­verts attracted peo­ple. Ori­gen wrote that peo­ple joined those early com­mu­ni­ties because Chris­tians were attrac­tive peo­ple. “The churches of God which have been taught by Christ, when com­pared with the assem­blies of the peo­ple where they live, are as ‘lights in the world” (Con­tra Cel­sum, 3:29). Justin Mar­tyr reports that people’s hes­i­ta­tions were over­come “by observ­ing the con­sis­tent lives of their neigh­bours, or not­ing the strange patience of their injured acquain­tances, or expe­ri­enc­ing the way they did busi­ness with them” (1 Apol. 16).

These obser­va­tions were made in the con­text of sig­nif­i­cant dis­in­cen­tives to con­vert. Some of these pres­sures came from the larger soci­ety that viewed the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties as ille­gal and imposed seri­ous penal­ties on them. Other demands were self-​​imposed to dis­cour­age cheap con­ver­sion. Because there was great con­cern for the way believ­ers lived, con­verts were required to take part in a lengthy cat­e­chet­i­cal process by means of which their char­ac­ter was formed in con­for­mance with the gospel. The goal of the cat­e­chism, Hip­poly­tus writes, was to form peo­ple whose lives “may shine with virtue, not before each other [only], but also before the Gen­tiles so that they may imi­tate them and become Chris­tians” (Canons of Hip­poly­tus 19). In addi­tion, the objec­tive was to keep the believ­ers to their com­mit­ments to “attrac­tive deviance” (2 Clement 13).

Learn­ing new Skills for Deci­sion Making

I believe that to accom­plish its mis­sion in the 21^st cen­tury the church will need to give up many of the traits adopted from the mod­ern era. At the heart of this task is releas­ing the desire for con­trol, sym­bol­ized by reliance on long range strate­gic plan­ning. Rather, plan­ning needs to be grounded in a capac­ity to lis­ten to God col­lec­tively. The task of the peo­ple of God then becomes learn­ing to dis­cern what God calls us to and to become a group of peo­ple who are sent out and who enter into the lives of oth­ers in order to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. Under these cir­cum­stances the move out­ward occurs very nat­u­rally because the focus is on God.

Tim Dickau of Van­cou­ver has devel­oped a way of reflect­ing on mis­sion based on a series of tra­jec­to­ries (these are from a forth­com­ing book). His work exam­ines how the dis­cern­ment process might work on the ground. The first tra­jec­tory moves from iso­la­tion to com­mu­nity and finally to rad­i­cal hos­pi­tal­ity. We under­stand the first step, but the last one is more dif­fi­cult to grasp. Hos­pi­tal­ity in scrip­ture is always two-​​way process, involv­ing both giv­ing and receiv­ing. We like to give because it allows us to main­tain con­trol. Jesus, how­ever, received as well and usu­ally from the most mar­ginal and despised in the soci­ety. The sec­ond tra­jec­tory con­cerns mov­ing from homo­gene­ity to diver­sity to inte­grated mul­ti­cul­tural liv­ing. Open­ing our com­mu­ni­ties makes sense to us, but we expect that they will become com­mu­ni­ties of diverse back­grounds where ulti­mately the new­comer will become like us. Learn­ing to live in a way in which we are truly recep­tive to the gifts brought by those who join us is much more chal­leng­ing. Thirdly char­ity needs to turn into friend­ship and advo­cacy, finally lead­ing to free­dom in Christ and seek­ing jus­tice for the least. We have long lauded cheque writ­ing as valid mis­sion. Our next step is to move into deep per­sonal involve­ment and speak­ing on behalf of the least, in par­tic­u­lar the enemy. Finally, Dickau describes the tra­jec­tory of con­fronting idol­a­tries and repen­tance lead­ing to pur­suit of deeper par­tic­i­pa­tion in the work of God. We too often get caught at repen­tance because we fear what we think might be the arro­gance of liv­ing in part­ner­ship with God. The inten­tion­ally cul­ti­vated tra­jec­to­ries that Dickau describes actively engage the stranger and alien, rede­fine the neigh­bour and draw us into global networks.

My expe­ri­ence as a pas­tor cor­rob­o­rates Dickau’s the­ory that if we are fully com­mit­ted to local mis­sion we will even­tu­ally engage glob­ally. It is, how­ever sel­dom a smooth tran­si­tion. Dur­ing the 1980s our con­gre­ga­tion started build­ing rela­tion­ships with refugees from Soma­lia. As friend­ships grew and became more rec­i­p­ro­cal, we found our­selves begin­ning to pray for and help sup­port their fam­i­lies in Soma­lia and in the refugee camps. Even­tu­ally mem­bers of the con­gre­ga­tion began to travel to Soma­lia to live among and care for the com­mu­ni­ties from which our friends had come. In the process our con­gre­ga­tion was trans­formed. Local friend­ships led to a deeper aware­ness of a vul­ner­a­ble mar­ginal com­mu­nity in our back­yard which in turn gen­er­ated global engage­ment as we fol­lowed the net­works inher­ent in these rela­tion­ships. In order to sus­tain this type of work we started hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with mis­sions groups with expe­ri­ence in Soma­lia thereby expand­ing our local connections.

As I men­tioned the trans­for­ma­tion did not pro­ceed smoothly. As we dis­cov­ered the need of the local Somali com­mu­nity we began to re-​​allocate funds from our global projects which ini­tially dimin­ished our con­tri­bu­tion to inter­na­tional mis­sions. As the con­gre­ga­tion how­ever began to travel and build rela­tion­ships over­seas, global engage­ment received a new level of buy-​​in and finan­cial sup­port started grow­ing again. The process took time and required patience but it resulted in a much deeper com­mit­ment to mis­sion in general.

Con­clu­sion

There needs to be inten­tional wrestling with ten­sions between local and global mis­sions to over­come the ten­dency toward trib­al­ism that lurks in our hearts. Fear of the other is increas­ing in our Cana­dian cities and the Church too seems to favour homo­gene­ity. As we, how­ever, inten­tion­ally move out into our neigh­bour­hoods we have an oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice rad­i­cal hos­pi­tal­ity that wel­comes the stranger and alien, break­ing down the walls that sep­a­rate us. As we build deep rela­tion­ships and fol­low the net­works they draw us into, we will find the line between domes­tic and global mis­sions blurred and come to realise that a truly domes­tic mis­si­ol­ogy must by its nature be global.

Bib­li­og­ra­phy

• Stark, Rod­ney. Cities of God : the Real Story of How Chris­tian­ity Became an Urban Move­ment and Con­quered Rome. San Fran­cisco, CA : Harper­San­Fran­cisco, 2007.

For fur­ther reading

For some work­ing def­i­n­i­tions of the “mis­sional church” visit:

• http://www.tyndale.ca/sites/default/files/What%20is%20Missional.pdf