What mission means to us and why!

By S. Becky Prasad

Introduction

The word “mission” presupposes a sender, a “sendee” and a specific mandate.  There is God’s mission and there are the Church’s missions. Our self-understanding of these two will define our theology regarding Mission. The history of Mission, like the history of the Church is very extensive and gives us much to learn from. The nature and scope of God’s mission must come from a solid foundation of who God is and what His Church is becoming.  God and his church cannot be separated in identity nor in function.

Nature and scope of God’s mission

Church history shows us that inadequate foundation and ambiguous motives for mission will always lead to unsatisfactory mission practice. One cannot use the accomplishments of mission to under gird the foundation of mission. The foundation of mission is based on God’s self-revelation in the person of Jesus Christ, who loves the world and affords his church the honor of co-laboring with Him to extend his reign. Mission (singular) refers to primarily to the missio Dei (God’s mission). Then there is missions (missiones ecclesiae: the missionary venture of the church), which refer to particular ventures of the church in participation with missio Dei.[1] God reveals himself in both the Old Testament and the New Testament as the God of compassion and grace especially regarding the outcasts and the underprivileged. God reveals himself as Yahweh, the God of wills, ethics and righteousness2. Yahweh is the God of history, the past the present and the future. God does not send concepts, doctrines nor theology to the nations, he sends people. God becomes history in his disciples who are sent to others. God reveals himself as the humble suffering servant in Jesus Christ. In his suffering and death Jesus became the true missionary. The apostle Paul’s mission shows clearly his identification with the Cross and the Christ of the Cross. This is the self-revelation of God and the foundation of mission.

What were the missionary principles and concepts in the New Testament? The mission of the Church has its origin in the eternal trinity of the Godhead. The Church has been given a commission from the risen Lord himself. The mandate of the Church is go to the uttermost parts of the earth and disciple the nations. Jesus commissioned the Church with the same commission with which he himself was sent (John 20:21-22). The Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) gives a clear understanding of the nature and scope of our mandate.

Jesus said that the gospel of the Kingdom should be preached in His name to all nations (Luke 24:47, Matt 28:19). The word  ‘nations’ in Matthew 28:19 is translated from the Greek, ethnos from which the English ‘ethnic’ is derived3. Mark 16:15 speak of our mandate ‘to the uttermost part of the earth.’ According to Acts 1:8 the commission is to reach every people group in every part of the world. In Matthew 24:14, Jesus declared that ‘the gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all nations then shall the end come.’ The Apostle John exiled on the Isle of Patmos, had prophetic insight into the end. He saw the gathering from every tribe, tongue and nation around the throne of God (Rev 7: 9-10). The prophet Isaiah had a similar vision of the knowledge of God filling all the earth (Isa. 11:9).

Jesus sent out his twelve disciples in Matthew 10 to go out and preached the gospel of the Kingdom, to cast out demons and heal the sick. Later he also sent out seventy with the same commission. He specifically told them not to go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans but only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. However, after his resurrection his commission was to all people everywhere. We are called to be an extension of all that Jesus came to teach and do. Christ outlined his mission when he fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-2. He declared, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19). This is what distinguished Jesus and his apostles from all others.

Why and how we go?

Understanding why we go greatly influence how we go. It helps to know what conviction shapes our mindset. Our conviction is the sum of our belief and our experience. This is the working of the Spirit and the Word of God in us. Acts 4:24 – 30 records the prayer of the early church in the face of persecution. In this prayer, reference is made to Psalms 2 in verse 25. According to Psalms 2, the Father tells his Son, 'Ask of me, and I will surely give the nations as Thine inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Thy possession.’ Jesus came and he lived among humankind and paid the price for the nations. He ascended to the right hand of the Father after He commissions his disciples to go and make disciples and preach the good news of the Kingdom. Do the nations belong to Jesus? Yes! What does this have to do with mission? It has to do with our conviction. Why we go influence how we go and therefore our belief must be matched by our experience. The Spirit of God must use the Word of God to establish our conviction.

Remember Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchanezzar’s dream in Daniel 2?

“While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth” (Dan 2:34-35).

According to verse 44, "And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.” How is this connected to Acts 4? Is gives the context in terms of timing. The Roman Empire, the last of the four described by Daniel, was the setting for the birth of Jesus and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.  The disciples’ prayer in Acts 4 referenced Psalms 2 where the Father had already given his Son the nations as his inheritance. The Holy Spirit led the early believers in Acts 4, and this should cause us to see, at least some deliberate connection to Psalm 2. These combinations (Acts 4, Psalms 2 and Daniel 2) come alive and awaken the missionary nature of the church.