27 Aug 2024

Reflections from the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation (INFEMIT) in Light of Lausanne’s State of the Great Commission Report (SOGCR)

by admin | posted in: News | 60

Various stakeholders in the INFEMIT community have reviewed the SOGCR, and we were quite impressed with its depth, width, and breadth. The massive report is a treasure trove of statistics, range of issues, and global voices. We applaud all those involved in putting this report together.

However, our review has also caused us to reaffirm certain values–two in particular–that we found wanting in the SOGCR. We articulate them, yes, as a gentle critique of the SOGCR, but more importantly as a call of the global church to God’s whole mission (missio Dei), which spans all areas and all arenas of life. These two values are: 1) Missional Humility (is there a difference between human achievement and the Spirit’s fruitfulness?); and 2) Integral Mission (do we have the right to prioritize ministries within God’s whole mission?) The SOGCR is certainly not devoid of these two elements, as they can be found in several articles.¹ However, the overall effect of the Report did not convey them as foundational to mission. Is humility–a necessary posture for a broken people in need of God’s grace–in the DNA of the church in the world? Is integral mission–compassion, justice, and reconciliation ministries along with evangelism–part of the crust of the missional pie, or is it a mere slice?

Missional Humility

Missional humility is based on the conviction that it is ultimately God who saves, transforms, and matures people in the faith. God invites us to bear witness to God’s saving work by doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly in the world (Mic. 6:8), and by making disciples (Matt. 28:18-20). Further, Jesus tells his disciples that we are to bear much fruit (Jn. 15:8). These actions, however, do not save; they bear witness. Admittedly, it would be easy to interpret any fruit that has been produced from such efforts as the result of the Church’s doing, when in reality, it is the result of God’s doing in, through, and sometimes in spite of the Church’s missionary efforts. It is not up to us to save the world; we bear witness, and imperfectly at that, to the love and power of God who alone can and will save the world.

This is more than theological hair-splitting. On the contrary, believing it is God and not us who ultimately does the saving can make the difference between maintaining a posture of genuine missional humility (even as we engage in mission vigorously) or one of missional saviorism (“without us, there is no hope for you or your situation”).²

Indicators that we have inadvertently assumed a posture of missional saviorism include:

Speaking of gospel work in terms of reaching or advancing the goal of world evangelization
Believing that world evangelization is quantitatively possible if the church implements the right strategies
Believing that MORE–more churches, more people in those churches, more money, and so on–always indicates that we are on the right track
Believing that the church can accelerate world evangelization and therefore accelerate the return of Christ
Believing that only a part of the Body of Christ (only certain traditions or churches) is called to do God’s bidding
Borrowing the language and tactics of the market–slogans, bottom line, products, consumption, etc.–for the task of world evangelization
Utilizing the language and tactics of the military–conquest, base and field, furlough, target, etc.–for the task of world evangelization
Overemphasizing the church as an instrument of God at the expense of understanding the church as the beloved community of God
Prioritizing evangelism over compassion and justice ministries and other missional activities.

By inadvertently assuming a posture of missional saviorism, we usurp the work of the Holy Spirit who alone transforms hearts, produces fruit in believers (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control), and empowers us to live lives of holiness, justice, and service.

Furthermore, missional saviorism can prevent us from being self-critical, evaluating our work in terms of successes and failures based on the sole criterion of evangelization while neglecting equally crucial issues that face humankind, including environmental degradation, human trafficking, the plight of the Palestinians (in Gaza and the West Bank), Christian Zionism and nationalism, the poverty/wealth gap, racism, and the list goes on.

Missional humility is engaging in God’s mission “with fear and trembling,” as we live out the call to bear witness to what God has done, is doing, and will do. This is not a call to timidity; on the contrary, it is a call to practice what missiologist David Bosch calls, “bold humility.” As the Triune God sends the church to bear witness to the good news in word, deed, and life, we do so with conviction, tenacity, and perseverance. The basis of our boldness, however, is the solid and trustworthy work of Christ on the cross and nothing less. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we bear witness to the healing of the nations, even as we ourselves are being healed.

Missional humility is expressed in a number of ways including:

Cultivating a spirituality that results in constant dependence on the Holy Spirit
Being sensitive to cultural dynamics in the crosscultural reality of mission
Learning from those with whom God has called us to partner in mission
Sharing the power to shape church and mission in any given context
Paying special attention to “the least of these” instead of pandering to those who hold positions of power, prestige, and wealth
Being constructively self-critical for the purpose of greater faithfulness in mission

Such expressions of missional humility resemble the lives of children–faith, trust, lifelong learning, sharing, etc. It is no wonder therefore that Jesus taught, “Unless [we] change and become like little children, [we] will never enter the kingdom of heaven… whoever takes on the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.” (Matt 18:3-5). What would it look like if the Church took its cues from children as it practices mission around the world? In short, to conflate human success with fruitfulness would be a mistake of enormous proportions. The Great Commission is about being faithful in bearing witness to what God is doing and will do in Christ’s name and by the power of the Holy Spirit, trusting that God is with us always, to the very end of the age.

Integral Mission

At the heart of integral mission is the conviction that God intends to redeem all of creation, and indeed has already begun this reconciliatory work through the cross of Christ (Col. 1:20). Of course, this comprehensive, cross-shaped reconciliatory work includes the redemption of people from every tribe and nation. The good news of the reign or kingdom of God is that, in Christ, complete redemption has come and will come in its fullness, from the cosmos to the created order, to the nations of the world, to cities and neighborhoods, to the deep crevices of the human heart. God’s agenda spans the width and breadth of all that was shattered and lost in the Fall. Commitment to integral mission reflects this holistic view of God’s intentions, which will be fulfilled at the end of time, to reconcile all things in Christ.

What this means practically is that the missional practices of evangelism, spiritual formation, church planting, compassion and justice, peacemaking, healing, reconciliation, creation care, and so on bear witness to the good news of the kingdom of God in Christ. The gospel serves as the hub–the center–for the various spokes necessary for the wheel of mission to go forward. No spoke is greater than the other. Integral mission then refers to the Church’s participation in God’s mission through proclamation of the good news, service among the poor, oppressed, marginalized, and traumatized, and demonstration through the life of the Christian community.

As such, to prioritize certain missional practices over others, to claim that one spoke is superior to other spokes, makes little to no sense. To say, for example, that proclamation is more important than feeding the hungry, or community building is more important than church planting, or spiritual formation is more important than doing justice and making peace–these attempts to prioritize aspects of the mission violate the fact that everything these practices address is vitally important to God. God’s agenda is nothing less than the redemption and transformation of everything! That said, one ministry might take priority over the other depending on the situation and the context, but this would be a practical determination, not a theological posture.

Prioritization as a theological posture violates the integral nature of reality–reality being more organism than machine. The soul, for example, is not a mechanical part among other mechanical parts that can somehow be removed, fixed, and reinstalled. We cannot treat the soul as separate as if the soul can be saved without seriously taking the body into account. The human person is a body-soul unity in community, an integrated whole that God longs to save.

Furthermore, human persons are social in nature, created for community. Individuals cannot be the target of evangelism without seriously taking the social context of these individuals into account. God longs to save persons and the socio-cultural and political contexts in which individuals find themselves. God longs to redeem both souls and societies.

Further still, souls and societies interact with the whole created order. Human beings and the cultures and nations they create are part of an ecosystem that is also very much included in God’s scope of redemption. God’s agenda is to reconcile ALL things in Christ. If our missional agenda is anything less, or if we prioritize the agenda based on something less than “the reconciliation of all things,” then the church’s mission falls short of God’s redemptive vision. As Lausanne’s Cape Town Commitment states, “We commit ourselves to the integral and dynamic exercise of all dimensions of mission to which God calls his Church.”

Integral mission requires both/and thinking. Individual and society. Body and soul. Church and world. Local and global. People and the rest of creation. This world and the world to come. Theology and practice. Evangelism and justice. Proclamation and demonstration.

We stand firm on the profound truth that God so loved the whole world that God gave the Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life (Jn. 3:16). All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:16). We look to him who, though being himself God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but took on the role of a servant (Phil. 2:6-8). We follow him who was sent not to the traditional centers of power, but to the margins, where he lived and ministered. We marvel at him who wore a crown of thorns and hung on a cross for the sake of the world. We place all our hope on him who rose from the dead and who has promised to return again to make all things right. We join him who cultivated a timeless community of the redeemed and empowered to bear witness to the kingdom of God until he returns.

Summary

These two values of missional humility and integral mission describe respectively the spirit and scope of the Great Commission. Reducing Matthew 28:16-20 to a humanly-achievable goal of world evangelization fails to reflect God’s whole mission. Broader paradigms, such as Missio Dei and the Cultural Mandate point to the full scope of God’s mission into which we are invited. Adopting these broader biblical paradigms in addition to the Great Commision is one viable way to affirm integral mission; for as the Cape Town Commitment says, “The whole Bible reveals the mission of God to bring all things in heaven and earth into unity under Christ, reconciling them through the blood of his cross” (I.10). The whole Bible, not just Matthew 28, should be taken into account to define the Church’s mission. The SOGCR affirms this when it views the famous Matthean passage as, “…the climax to a summons issued by God in the Old Testament, which dates back to the call of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3.”

Another way to affirm integral mission is to interpret the Great Commission broadly to include ministries of justice, peace, reconciliation, creation care, and so on, alongside evangelization. As a response to Lausanne’s “The State of the Great Commission Report,” our reflections here have taken this route since the SOGCR seems to have assumed that the Great Commission covers the entirety of God’s mission. Rather than to question this assumption, we urge Lausanne, and all who make up the worldwide Church, to embrace the entire wheel of mission and to do so with bold humility. For the call of Matthew 28 is to make disciples, baptizing them into a vibrant community that aspires in the Spirit to live out everything Jesus taught, exemplified, and died for.

Benediction

We bow down to Jesus Christ, liberator of the oppressed, healer of the sick, and savior of the world, and we engage in mission accordingly. In the final analysis, integral mission seeks to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love all our neighbors as ourselves.

May INFEMIT, the Lausanne Movement, and all Christian representative entities around the world reaffirm the Church’s participation in the 2000 year old movement of Jesus Christ to redeem the whole of the created order. And let us do so with a renewed commitment to missional humility and integral mission.

See, for example,”Radical Politics,” by Melba Maggay, Kosta Milkov, and Jack Sara; “Creation Care,” by Dave Bookless, Jasmine Kwong, Seth Appiah-Kubi & Jocabed Solano; “Integrity and Anti-Corruption,” by Manfred Kohl, Lazarus Phiri & Efraim Tendero; “Ethnicism” by David Chao, Soojin Chung & Alice Yafeh-Deigh; “Mental Health” by Karen Bomilcar, Esther Malm & Edmund Ng. ↩︎
As an example of inadvertent missional saviorism, the following statement is one among several which was found in promotional materials in preparation for the Lausanne IV: “The Lausanne Movement is excited to assume the mantle of leadership that is needed within the global Church. We are prepared and ready to take the lead in developing a global strategy leveraging cutting-edge technology to accelerate the Great Commission.” ↩︎

Read Lausanne’s State of the Great Commission Report here.

You are welcome to sign your name below to endorse this response and share your own reflections.

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