Part 2 - Africa Conference

A CHANGING WORLD
MISSION, MISSIONS, MISSIONARIES AND THE CHURCH


--David Wesley

Where is the mission field? As a boy growing up in the Church of the Nazarene in the United States, it never seemed like a difficult question. It was "over there," meaning anywhere outside my country. These were places captured in the slides of returning missionaries, locations like Papua New Guinea or Swaziland. We prayed that people would find Christ, we made pledges to give to the mission field, we took up offerings for the individual missionaries, and some of the older ladies in the church wrapped bandages for the mission hospitals, or collected clothing. Whatever form it took, one thing was absolutely clear: We are the ones who send, and they are the ones who receive.

Words often change and adapt as they need greater clarification. Few words have changed more in recent history than terms related to missions such as “missionary,” “mission,” “mission field,” and “missional.” Currently, the words “mission field” and “missionary” are open to a wide range of interpretation. Some media coverage and popular novels portray missionaries as colonialist destroyers of local culture . In some places a missionary is simply a foreigner who has access to money. As a result, the word “missionary” is not a positive term or is not meant for anyone other than North Americans or Europeans in many parts of the world. In other places, the term “missionary” defines any Christian who does anything in any part of the world for any reason, and the mission field is the place where this happens. A third perspective defines a missionary in professional terms. The Manual of the Church of the Nazarene defines a missionary merely as “a member of the clergy or a layperson who has been appointed by the General Board to minister for the church.” A fourth definition of missionary is primarily based on geography and culture and defines missionary as anyone who is doing something with a humanitarian or Christian emphasis in a different country or culture than their own. In this case, the mission field is usually defined as crossing salt water. These competing definitions show how mission-related terms continue to change. The variety of terms also emphasize that we need a clear understanding of mission as God’s mission for the whole church if we are to find a way forward.

Mission is the most identifiable aspect of the body of Christ. Mission is not a program or plan of the Church, it is not a slogan or mission statement which gives administrative direction, neither is it simply the ministry of an individual. Mission is the very nature of the Church which is seeking first God and His kingdom. Mission flows directly from God. A living relationship with the God of mission distinguishes the Church as a living organism as opposed to a mechanistic (and secular) organization. Because of this relationship it can be said that the Church does not simply support or receive a program of missions, but that the Church is the missionary.

Within the Church of the Nazarene there is a great need to clarify our understanding of the missional or missionary church and mission theology that remains true to Scripture as well as to our theological identity within the larger Christian body. In 1984, Nazarene missiologist Paul Orjala wrote a missionary book titled God’s Mission is my Mission . In the book, Dr. Orjala addressed themes that had surfaced in several mission conferences sponsored by the World Council of Churches since 1952 and drew from the writing of Karl Barth. Academic scholars and writers such as David Bosch and Lesslie Newbigin discussed these themes and challenged the way in which the West had traditionally framed the mission field as “over there.” For the most part, however, these topics remained an academic discussion, and had not yet been popularized to the larger Christian church. Neither did these themes at that time touch the Church of the Nazarene at large. While Orjala did not develop a mission theology in this missionary reading book, he did establish a basis for understanding mission as God’s mission first and foremost. The term he and others used for this understanding was missio Dei, a Latin term meaning “God’s mission.”
The groundbreaking idea behind missio Dei is that mission always has its source in God and not in the individual or an organization. South Africa Missiologist David Bosch asserted that “mission” defines God’s nature. Mission is not a program of the Church of the Nazarene that is carried out by those who have money or by those who happen to be born in a nation with money. And although we have great missionaries from many different nations who represent the sent church throughout the world, contrary to the manual, a missionary is not defined as simply an individual who has a salary and a contract with the Church of the Nazarene. In every part of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture makes it clear that God is a missionary God. God’s love for “the nations,” and God’s desire for His people to share in His passion, is never a secondary issue in Scripture that is limited to just a select few with a contract and a salary. This nature of love stands at the very center of who God is and who God expects the Church to be. In the New Testament, the Church is sent through those called apostle. The Church, however, did not limit mission to a denominational program of sending missionaries to “the ends of the earth.” The Church didn’t just have missionaries (or apostles); the Church itself was the missionary in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria as well as to the ends of the earth. Another way to state this perspective is to say that before the Church is a sending church, it is first a “sent” church. This statement has enormous implications for every group of believers in any part of the globe.

I would like to take the remainder of this paper to work toward an understanding of what a sent, missionary church might look like in 21st century Africa for those who are of the Wesleyan tradition. My intention is not to extract specific mission strategies for Africa. My experience and understanding is that successful strategies are those which are developed and implemented by those who are actively involved in a specific ministry location. My hope, however, is that those who know their context best will work from these foundational understandings to develop creative and sustainable strategies which are created by Africans for the African context.