The Church as The Missionary

by David Wesley

Mission is the most identifiable aspect of the body of Christ. Mission is not a program or plan of the church, neither is it a slogan or mission statement which gives administrative direction. Mission is the very nature of the church. It flows directly from God. A living relationship with the God of mission is what distinguishes the Church as a living organism as opposed to a mechanical (secular) organization. It is also the reason why it is possible to say that the church does not support a program of missions, but that the church is the missionary.
Words often change and adapt in popular understanding. Few words have changed more in recent history than the word missionary. Currently, the word missionary is open to a wide range of definition and interpretation. Uninformed media coverage and popular novels portray missionaries as colonialist destroyers of culture . As a result the word missionary is not a positive term in many parts of the world. In other places, a missionary is defined as any Christian who does anything in any part of the world for any reason. A third perspective is a missionary defined in professional terms. An example of this in Church of the Nazarene is the large number of volunteers and professionals who minister in another culture through their occupation. Some of these are even sent from a local church for this specific purpose. Yet, the manual of the Church of the Nazarene, only defines a missionary as “a member of the clergy or a layperson who has been appointed by the General Board to minister for the church.” Such competing definitions show how mission-related terms are changing. It also emphasizes why there is a need to focus on a clear understanding of mission as God’s mission if we are to find a way forward.
My purpose is to offer a solution that is both true to our perspective of scripture as well as true to our theological identity within the larger Christian body. Nazarene missiologist Paul Orjala was years ahead of the church when, in 1984, he wrote a simple missionary book titled, God’s Mission is my Mission. In that book, Dr. Orjala began to wrestle with some themes which had been the subject of mission conferences of the World Council of Churches since 1952, and were being discussed in academic circles by authors such as David Bosch and Lesslie Newbigin, but had not yet been popularized to the larger Christian church. These themes definitely were not on the radar screen of the Church of the Nazarene at that time. Although Orjala didn’t completely develop a missional theology in this missionary reading book, he did establish a basis for understanding mission as God’s mission first and foremost. The term that was being used for this understanding was missio Dei which is the Latin term for “God’s Mission”.
The groundbreaking idea behind “God’s mission” or missio Dei is the understanding that mission always has its source in God. Missiologist David Bosch said that mission is God’s nature. Mission is not a program of the church that we do just on special Sundays or highlight occasionally at district mission events. In every part of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, it is clear that God is a missionary God. God’s love for “the nations” and the desire that his people share in His passion is not a secondary issue, but is at the very center of who God is and who God expects the Church to be. In the New Testament, the church sends apostles to people of varied ethnic groups, the church, however, did not limit mission to just a program of the church to “the ends of the earth”. The Church didn’t just have missionaries; the Church itself was the missionary in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria as well as to the ends of the earth. Another way to put this is to say that the church is not just a sending church, but it is rather a sent church. This understanding has enormous implications for the Church of the Nazarene as it works together with the greater Christian body at this point of time in history.
A great example of a sent church is described by Lesslie Newbigin. He served as a missionary in India and developed a plan for building the church, educating leaders, and developing churches with a perspective of them being a sent community. When Newbigin would confirm and receive people into full communion with the Church, he would announce: “Now you are the Body of Christ in this village. You are God’s apostles here. Through you they are to be saved. I will be in touch with you. I will pray for you. I will visit you. If you want my help I will try to help you. But you are now the mission”. Newbigin commented that when this was the statement that was made from the first day onward – that being a Christian community is about living as a sent community – then the Gospel spreads. If one denies this responsibility to the young church, then it does the Church “irreparable harm.”
Newbigin’s paradigm was not only concerned about local participation in mission; he was also concerned about participation in mission “to the ends of the earth”. Newbigin did not see mission as something that was done just by churches from one part of the globe, or when a church was large enough, wealthy enough or even after a church had built their own building, but as something that was a part of the life of the church from the very beginning. He maintained that “spiritual health depends on the broader vision of world evangelization.”
Churches that reflect these concepts are missional churches. They understand that mission is the very nature of the church from the beginning.
One of the most brilliant and practical people I have every met was the late Dr. Bruno Radi who was the Regional Director for South America. As we were thinking of how to minister to our neighbors in Argentina, he said that being a Regional Director was not his calling (or vocation). “My calling,” Bruno explained, “is to be a Christian witness to my neighbors.” That perception of calling, or vocation, is crucial for us. Missionaries are not missionaries because they have a salary or a contract any more than a church is missional just because it has an NMI program. We all are missional as we embrace our true vocation to be Christian, or in the words of earlier Nazarenes, as we realize that we are “called unto holiness.”
So what does all of this mean for us?
1) It means that first and foremost, we are called to be Christian. Before any emphasis on goals, programs and activities, we are called to draw into God’s Holy presence. If God’s nature is mission, those of us who partake in His nature will share that same nature of mission. In this sense, therefore, mission is not a program, but rather the very DNA of being Christian.
2) It means that the whole church is the missionary. We are all sent. In my own personal life it means that I will intentionally focus my activities during the week in such a way that I will be in contact with people who are not Christians. As a missional Christian I make it a point to learn their culture and to be a Christian witness as I go.
3) It also means that the whole church sends missionaries. A missional church is actively involved in prayer, giving and learning as members from the church (or other churches) are sent to be specialized missionaries to people of distinct ethnic groups around the world.
4) It means that the mission does not flow from just the West. Any community of believers, in any part of the globe, whose lives have been transformed by the Gospel are to engage in God’s mission.
5) It means that we must participate in what God is doing to restore His creation.
6) In many ways, it means a distinct way of being church. We have often separated ourselves from other Christian groups with the objective to “keep the faith” by defending our specific emphasis. With a perspective that the mission is God’s mission and not ours, however, the greatest enemy is not other Christians. Our greatest enemy is that we draw into ourselves and become a sectarian group with an inward focus on ourselves instead of outward to God and His mission.
Missiologist, Wilbert Shenk, said it well: “God does not have a mission for the church, but a church for His mission”. We live in a time of incredible opportunity in which the triune God has called the church to be the missionary and to join in His mission of seeking and saving that which is lost.