THE CHURCH AS MISSIONARYToday as we think about a strategy for Africa’s mission future in the Church of the Nazarene, it is an interesting proposal to think about the mission of God in such a complex continent as Africa. As I speak with people like you who know the complexities of Africa and know the stories of Africa, it is evident that what I am proposing is not completely new to those who call themselves Nazarene in Africa. I would, however, like to discuss how the concept of the church being a sent church would apply to any global context and give us a framework for the work we will be doing later today.
1. The first aspect of the missional church is 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, then 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 essence of being Christian.
The global Church of the Nazarene engaged in missions in the 21st century must begin with the reality that mission is God’s nature and God’s activity (missio Dei), and that the church is the missionary that is sent. The ‘business’ of the church then, is to live in the balance between drawing near to God within a worshiping community which leans into God’s holiness in such a way that the church shares relationship with the triune God and with one another. As this happens, it is natural that a worshipping community also shares God’s passion to restore relationship with those outside of the worshipping community in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.
Missionary Lesslie Newbigin provides a great example of this type of a sent Church. Newbigin served as a missionary in India and developed a plan for building the Church, educating leaders, and developing churches as sent communities. 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”(Goheen, 36). Newbigin commented that if this statement was made from the first day onward – that being a Christian community is about living as a sent community – then the Gospel would spread. If one denies this responsibility to the young church, then it does the church irreparable harm. In this sense, therefore, it is natural that as God breathes the church toward himself in worship He immediately breathes the church outward to His mission, and returns with others in worship in such a way that the very life of the church depends upon these two aspects of being a transformed people who are God’s ambassadors.
All of this implies that mission is the life of the church which is not done just by churches from one part of the globe, or when a church is large enough, wealthy enough, or even after a church has built their own building. Mission emerges as a part of the life of the church from the very beginning. A part of our DNA is that as people who are called unto Holiness, God breathes us into his Holy nature and breathes us out into His mission.
There is a great quote by Mother Teresa who said:“Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.” That perception of calling, or vocation, proves crucial for us. Missionaries are not missionaries because they have a salary or a contract any more than a church is a missionary church just because it has a missions program. We all are mission 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,” and there is no holiness outside of relationship with God and relationship with others.
2. The second characteristic of the missional church is that it is incarnational.
It is difficult to imagine God’s strategy of incarnational mission in the current environment of missions. If we were God, we would not have sent Jesus as a baby. If we were God, we would have been in a hurry to save humanity. Within three years, we would have devised a plan to save humanity. If we were God, we would have had Jesus dazzling crowds of thousands at a very early age and we would have saved humanity in just a few years. In our way of looking at missions and church growth, the way God did it was too slow, too low tech, too dangerous, and too wasteful of time. Having Jesus come as a baby, spending three years as an infant, spending years as a child and years as an adolescent as well as a young adult while the world was waiting to be saved, is in our perspective, a sign of a lack of visional clarity. The fact that Jesus lived as a young adult in his twenties and said nothing about his mission would be in our thinking a sign of poor product placement. It just does not seem right for us that God would send Jesus to the world in poverty and born to a peasant family when God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. In the logic of our world, the answer to reaching the world is more money, and more power. In our minds, it just seems that God did not understand marketing and use of branding. We would have sent the Messiah as a King, rich and powerful. We would have announced his arrival by demonstrating it on the billboards, at His entry the major news stations would have covered it live. It would have been digitally synchronized by satellites around the world. We would have reached the world at once. And if the news media was not available, at least we would have demonstrated an awe inspiring show in the sky that would make the whole world stop and look up into the sky. If we were God, salvation would have come in a mere few weeks and we may have even done it without a cross.
But I am not God and neither are you. God’s way, God’s strategy was (and is) the way of incarnation. In light of God’s mission and in light of our Wesleyan heritage, we must examine how we are doing missions today and how we have done it over the last 100 years. In a mission conference in Iguazu, Brazil, Peruvian missiologist Samuel Escobar made the bold statement that missions from the United States has become so managerial and mechanical in nature that it relies on technology and strategy more than it relies on the Holy Spirit. We must examine our desire for fast solutions and our belief that more money or power is the answer. We must examine the idea that if we only had more money, technology and power we could get the job done. At this crucial time in history we must come to the realization that mission is God’s and that any strategy which is more dependent on money than God is simply our limited strategy. Too often we have been in a hurry and we believe that creating more development and more institutions is the answer to missions. Too often power that is expressed in control of the mission or colonialist notions of forming others into our image instead of God’s image have accompanied the good news of the Gospel. And too often our idea of missions is simply a matter of building a business instead of working out our own salvation through building a Christian community. The methods which are contrary to incarnational mission are methods which are quick, clinical and easy. This is what some have called “helicopter missions” which is more focused on the task than the person who was created in the image of God. A great danger we face is the tendency to think that the organization is eternal and that people are expendable and temporary instead of realizing that it is people and relationships that are eternal and the organization is just a temporary tool. At the heart of incarnational mission is the notion that any method or strategy we use should lead us into relationship with people and should lead us into making disciples instead of religious business clients. Should we use technology, money and evangelistic tools? Yes, of course, but the greatest tool that we have is the messenger who embodies the message. Our challenge is to find creative ways in which technology, money and tools can be used in incarnational ways that lead us into community and relationships which will make disciples.
This is not our mission and God did not choose to just get the job done. God chose to put on humanity and he chose to be a pilgrim with us. In the words of John 1: 14, “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.” God did not choose to just send a message; he chose to make the messenger the message in Jesus Christ. Theologians have a word for this. It is incarnation. The Gospel is not a mission strategy or a mission tool, the Gospel is Jesus Christ. God did not have a mission program to be supported, God Himself is the message – He is the mission.
Today as we look toward a strategy for the future, our path must be that of following the mission of God into incarnational mission which can often be a slow, difficult and dangerous path.
Listen to the following words:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature[a] God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature[b] of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.This has enormous implications for any of us who call ourselves Christian. I have often wondered if sending missionaries was the most effective way for missions. If you read through the history of missions in the Church of the Nazarene, you will find a partial story which is primarily told of the European or North American man who carried out the mission of the church. Stories are told of the Schmelzenbachs in Swaziland, the Kiehns in China, the Tracys in India, John Diaz in Cape Verde Islands, and the Winans in Peru. These stories are stories of hardship and determination. In nearly all of the early missionary stories, it took years to learn language. Much of their time was spent in adaptation to a drastically different context, and in most cases these early missionaries saw very few people come to Christ.
As we think about the next steps for missions in Africa, we don’t look back on the past and say, “they had amazing strategies” or “they had amazing evangelistic tools that they brought from other places.” As we look on the past, however, we must acknowledge God’s strategy which was the same as when he sent his Son. It is the same strategy God has used throughout the history of the Christian church to incarnate His message in the messengers of his sent church which included people like these early missionaries, and people whose names we may never know, but representatives of the sent church who are willing to decrease so that Christ may increase. These are people in the spirit of John the Baptist whose life did not draw people to himself, but whose life pointed to Christ. The calling that the sent church has today is a calling unto holiness first and foremost.
There are many lessons that we can learn from past generations of missionaries, and the stories that we tell and retell of God’s grace which went ahead of missionaries who came from other continents to Africa as well as those from within Africa who followed God’s calling are stories that we should tell to our children and our grandchildren. These are our heroes in the faith, and as we tell these stories we must remember that the story isn’t just about individual missionaries, but it is a story of a church, a denomination which was a sent church.
At this point, let me just say that as we think of strategy that some of the things that we learn from the past are also things that we will not want to repeat as we move forward. The tendency in many areas is for people to repeat strategies, even if they don’t agree with them. Many times in the past, the church did not have the best strategies. The colonialist approach to missions, paternalistic patterns, dependence on money, pride, power, and many other approaches are all approaches that we must not repeat. As you develop African mission strategies, however, it is quintessential that incarnational mission which develops the church to be messengers who do not consider their own comfort and rights something to be grasped or held onto but instead takes the role of a learner who enters into relationship with others.
3. To be a missional church means that the whole church is sent to make Christ-like disciples. Mission history books normally focus on the individual or couple who left their home country and went to a new area to establish the church. It would be very difficult or impossible to tell the whole story of missions, but when pioneer missionaries were sent, they did not go alone. They came from congregations with a passion for God’s mission who supported and prayed them. In history texts about the early missionaries to Africa, it is told how the first churches supported them with food and taught them the culture and language (see Parker). In this sense, it was the community of Christ from two continents, working together toward one mission as it supported those who were representatives of one church in two continents. It is with this understanding that we can rightly say that we are a sent church as we prepare, send and collaborate with those who give their lives to go to the cultures and people who are very different than themselves. With this understanding, however, it remains that it is the church that is the missionary as it is sent. Mission is not an individualist activity, mission is the whole community working together toward God’s mission. As we think today about how the Church of the Nazarene in Africa is a sent church, we must think about ways that each congregation will work together to be sent through individuals and couples who go as part of the missionary church to cultures and contexts to which God is leading us. There are many things that can be included in equipping people for this task, but the primary objective of the sent church is to make Christ-like disciples as we go.
To make Christ-like disciples is different from making religious customers of our particular organization we call the Church of the Nazarene. Large numbers of people coming to know Christ is a great thing, and we are to be about God’s task of redemption. We must, however, remember that the goal is not simply more people for a larger organization. The primary goal is always about making Christ like disciples.
In the past, there were times in which many Christian groups formed strategies in order to grow faster which focused on principles of church growth such as the homogeneous unit principle which built on the fact that a church will grow faster if the people in the congregation are similar in ethnicity or other aspects. The balance in which we work is that our primary identity as Christians is not ethnicity, skin color or political affiliation. Ethnicity as a social construct, on the other hand should not be ignored and we need to celebrate the unique aspects which we have as individuals as well as social groups, but only as they are subservient to the values of the Kingdom of God which we inherit as a new ethnic identity. “The issue is not how to make the world safe for cultural homogeneity. It is how to balance or rightly order two different identities –our social identity created by our culture, history, and social location and our spiritual identity informed by values of the Kingdom of God.”(Whiteman 2006:60) Too often we are more American, Korean, Kikuyu or Telugu than we are Christian.
In recent history we have seen what happens when ethnic specific religion degenerates into tribalism and racism as we have seen in the deaths of hundreds of thousands in many places around the globe.
If anything these examples from recent history reminds us that that the great commission is to make disciples, not just converts, and that these disciples must grow deep in understanding Jesus’ mandate to love and forgive our enemies. The disciple in a territorialized world must not only be taught to look upward to Jesus but also outward in love to those around them whom Jesus loves. If any group has a response to the terrorized and war torn sections of our globe, it is the Church of the Nazarene as it proclaims the optimistic and radical Gospel of reconciliation and relationship with God and with “others”.
Tribalism challenges us to build up holy disciples who know how to break down the barriers, the “dividing walls of hostility” through Christ.
The sent church must be first and foremost engaged in making Christ-like disciples who gather around Christ and not around marketing strategies or ethnicity.
4. It means that mission is the nature of the church wherever it may exist. Communities of believers in any part of the globe who are transformed by the Gospel will naturally engage in God’s mission.
For individuals within the church in Africa to think of being sent to “others” is not a new concept for Africa. In a recent conversation with Dr. Charles Gailey, former missionary to Swaziland and missiologist, I discovered that there has been a long history of the church responding to God’s mission which occurred spontaneously as a result of a strong sense of Christians living into the missio Dei and evangelizing to the lost.
One example which Dr. Gailey told me is Alice Khumalo of Swaziland. In the 1940's she obeyed God's call to go with American missionaries George and Jeanette Hayse to the Pedi people group in South Africa. In an interview at her home near the end of her life, she shared with Gailey with great gusto how she had learned the different customs and language of the Pedi people. Suddenly she bolted to her bedroom. She came back holding a well-worn Bible written in the Pedi language. She then recounted wonderful victories as the Pedi people had responded to her preaching from that very Bible. Her fluency in the language was evident. In fact, Gailey comments, “I suspect that her use of the language far exceeded the expertise of the contracted missionaries that she worked with.” In the traditional understanding of the term missionary, Alice Khumalo was a missionary.
Another example is Juliet Ndzimandze who was born in a little mountain hamlet in Swaziland. Although not a missionary with a contract, she certainly ministered as a cross cultural witness in many areas of the world. In 1963-64 she taught and preached in Malawi. Later she evangelized throughout Africa, the British Isles, the Netherlands, Germany, and America. She was a blessing cross-culturally to many throughout the world.
If we had all week to sit and tell stories, I am sure that we would hear many similar stories throughout Africa of people like Alice Khumalo or Juliet Ndzimandze who do not appear in the mission history textbooks or who are not under contract with Global Mission, but people who are in a traditional sense of the word “missionary.” Today, we should celebrate these people and we should also tell their stories to our children and grandchildren as our heroes in mission.
Even as we celebrate these people, however, we must think of missionary terms of a sent church and think beyond the framework of missionaries being people working alone or strictly people who go to a far away culture. As a church, we must think of new strategies which embrace ways that the whole church in any place that they may be located embraces the whole mission of God.
The challenge for us today is to think about the mission of God in terms other than geographic terms. Where you live has absolutely no bearing on participating in God’s mission. If God has transformed your life and you are a part of body of Christ, then you are mission people.
This way of thinking about mission implies models of interdependence where we see the whole Church involved in the whole mission to the whole world. The Kingdom of God is not divided by political or ethnic boundaries. There is not an African mission; a European mission or a North American mission, there is only God’s mission that we all participate in. I challenge you today to think in creative ways of forming a model for missions that will be a model for the whole church in which you build on the incredible mission force of people throughout Africa, but also join with Nazarenes throughout the world. I challenge you to think of the church as missionary – a church that is sent to nearby communities as well as faraway lands.
5. A missional church is interdependent with other Christians. We have often separated ourselves from other Christian groups with the objective to “keep the faith” by defending our specific emphasis of holiness. Our calling, however, is not to defend holiness, or to battle other Christians, but to be holy people who are being transformed daily and who desire nothing more than to reflect the nature of God. With a perspective that the mission is God’s mission and not ours, the greatest enemy that we face 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. Developing collaborative initiatives in which we can work together with others who have a similar passion for the mission of God demonstrates that the mission belongs to God.
The Church of the Nazarene has a specific reason to exist. The various groups which have formed the Church of the Nazarene believed that God had called us to be a people who live and proclaim holiness. If we do not live and proclaim holiness, the Church of the Nazarene as a denomination, has no reason to exist. I would go further to say that our Wesleyan understanding of scripture and theology also lead us to a specific way that we approach mission. For us to live and proclaim holiness, however, does not mean that we are a sect which is isolated from other Christians. We are a part of the larger body of Christ. If anything, holiness should lead us to find ways to be a sent church within the larger body of Christ in such a way that we maintain our reason to exist and also find ways to work together with brothers and sisters of other denominations.
