Embracing God's Mission: A Task for Every Believer
As a Church, we recognize that our priority must be to participate in extending God’s kingdom. However, we struggle to remember or follow up on getting involved in this mission. Although the church engages in many ministries, many church members believe that Christian mission and evangelism are reserved for those who work in Christian ministries and dedicate their lives to cross-cultural missions. Consequently, while the church participates in various ministries, its primary focus is not on mission and evangelism. Moreover, the church sometimes unintentionally replaces mission and evangelism with different ministries and initiatives. Therefore, we need to understand why this perspective influences the church and examine how this idea is manifesting within it.
Christian history teaches us a valuable lesson about Christendom, which hinders the church and its members from engaging in missions to grow. Alan Kreider & Eleanor Kreider state that the meaning of Christendom is that “In Christendom, in which the reign of Christ was actualized, human potentates played a prominent role in the central act of the civilization, the worship service, the Mass.”[i] Furthermore, in the Christendom community, the church practices baptism without requiring conversion, and worship remains the primary focus of the church’s activities. Consequently, Christian mission became unnecessary and rarely discussed. In other words, “the church’s purpose was not to spread the faith to new lands; it was to ensure the eternal salvation of people already Christian and to buttress the orderly functioning of Christendom societies.”[ii]
During the Christendom period, mission is understood as owned by the church, leading to the intention of the church regarding mission becoming, ‘you can do it if you want, but if you do not want to, it is unnecessary.’ As a result, Christian mission has become a largely forgotten topic in the church, and mission and evangelism have been replaced by different names of social services ministries. Thus, engaging in mission is an activity of the church, similar to any other activity its members undertake when they choose to do so. Therefore, Darrell L. Guder firmly asserts that “In the ecclesiocentric approach of Christendom, mission became only one of the many programs of the church.”[iii]
Moreover, Guder claims that “Mission boards emerged in Western churches to do the work of foreign mission. Yet even here the Western churches understood themselves as sending churches, and they assumed the destination of their sending to be the pagan reaches of the world,”[iv] where people need the gospel and civilization development. This has combined with a culture that promotes a form of professionalized mission, whereby mission and evangelism are primarily carried out by specialists who receive financial support from church members. Additionally, churches often believe that financially supporting mission organizations is engagement in mission. This situation has resulted in a widely held view that mission and evangelism are only done by specialists, undermining the focus of the Great Commission given to all believers. This is another contributing factor to the decline of mission and evangelism in churches. Furthermore, evangelism and mission become specific projects to be managed rather than integral parts of the daily practices of all believers.
Therefore, we should examine how the concepts of Christendom align with the objectives of our church mission and evangelism. If we cannot analyze our mission tasks honestly, Christian mission will be perceived as belonging to the church, merely an activity or program of the congregation, and carried out by specialists. Specifically, mission and evangelism will disappear enormously in the church, leading to a cessation of renewal within the church.
[i] Eleanor Kreider and Alan Kreider, Worship and Mission After Christendom (Herald Press, 2011), 24.
[ii] Kreider and Kreider, 39.
[iii] Daniel L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eerdmans, 1998), 6.
[iv] Guder, 6.
Christian history teaches us a valuable lesson about Christendom, which hinders the church and its members from engaging in missions to grow. Alan Kreider & Eleanor Kreider state that the meaning of Christendom is that “In Christendom, in which the reign of Christ was actualized, human potentates played a prominent role in the central act of the civilization, the worship service, the Mass.”[i] Furthermore, in the Christendom community, the church practices baptism without requiring conversion, and worship remains the primary focus of the church’s activities. Consequently, Christian mission became unnecessary and rarely discussed. In other words, “the church’s purpose was not to spread the faith to new lands; it was to ensure the eternal salvation of people already Christian and to buttress the orderly functioning of Christendom societies.”[ii]
During the Christendom period, mission is understood as owned by the church, leading to the intention of the church regarding mission becoming, ‘you can do it if you want, but if you do not want to, it is unnecessary.’ As a result, Christian mission has become a largely forgotten topic in the church, and mission and evangelism have been replaced by different names of social services ministries. Thus, engaging in mission is an activity of the church, similar to any other activity its members undertake when they choose to do so. Therefore, Darrell L. Guder firmly asserts that “In the ecclesiocentric approach of Christendom, mission became only one of the many programs of the church.”[iii]
Moreover, Guder claims that “Mission boards emerged in Western churches to do the work of foreign mission. Yet even here the Western churches understood themselves as sending churches, and they assumed the destination of their sending to be the pagan reaches of the world,”[iv] where people need the gospel and civilization development. This has combined with a culture that promotes a form of professionalized mission, whereby mission and evangelism are primarily carried out by specialists who receive financial support from church members. Additionally, churches often believe that financially supporting mission organizations is engagement in mission. This situation has resulted in a widely held view that mission and evangelism are only done by specialists, undermining the focus of the Great Commission given to all believers. This is another contributing factor to the decline of mission and evangelism in churches. Furthermore, evangelism and mission become specific projects to be managed rather than integral parts of the daily practices of all believers.
Therefore, we should examine how the concepts of Christendom align with the objectives of our church mission and evangelism. If we cannot analyze our mission tasks honestly, Christian mission will be perceived as belonging to the church, merely an activity or program of the congregation, and carried out by specialists. Specifically, mission and evangelism will disappear enormously in the church, leading to a cessation of renewal within the church.
[i] Eleanor Kreider and Alan Kreider, Worship and Mission After Christendom (Herald Press, 2011), 24.
[ii] Kreider and Kreider, 39.
[iii] Daniel L. Guder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Eerdmans, 1998), 6.
[iv] Guder, 6.
Posted in Getting on Mission
No Comments