It's Trendy to Talk About Mission

Dear Pastors

Former Carey Baptist College Principal, Brian Smith said to me back in the late 80’s, ‘if everything is mission then nothing is mission’. He said this at a time when the conversation about what it means to be a missional local church (or a church on mission) was starting to get some traction. He was worried that if we put too much church outreach activity into the ‘missions bag’ then we at best dilute the word and at worst we are left with nothing that is distinctive let alone biblical. And I agreed with him then and I still do now.

In my circles there is still a lot of talk about what it means to be a missional church……a lot. The question for me at the heart of this issue is what constitutes ‘mission’ as the Bible defines it? Is a yard clean up, mission? Is taking a meal across the street, mission? Is inviting a non-Christian to your house, mission? Is doing a hospital visit or even a prison visit, mission? Is mentoring a misbehaving youngster, mission? Is providing a house for a needy family, mission? I say no, these things in and of themselves are not mission. They are acts of kindness or good deeds and of course that is both valid and important. Jesus did lots of good deeds¹. But what’s interesting to me is that even in the doing of good deeds He did them in such a way that they were redemptive in nature. Jesus had a ‘knack’ to turn people’s attention to spiritual realities and onto Himself even in the giving of a cup of water.

The Latin word missio, like the Greek word apostelein, refers to sending or being sent. A missionary as I understand it, means (a) sent (b) across a boundary to where the gospel is not known, (c) to see a church planted that (d) can reach that region with the gospel once the missionary leaves. When everything is missions and everyone is a missionary, this task is obscured or forgotten, surely.

But here is the bigger challenge I think. In the last 30 years churches have started Charitable Trusts left right and center. These have been started to create a vehicle for outreach, evangelism and mission. I like to refer to them as ‘bridges’. In other words building a bridge from the local church into the community so that church members can walk over that bridge into the community (neighbourhood) and do some kind of social service with the hope that folks from the community whom they meet in the process would walk back over the bridge to join the church family. Nothing wrong with the idea. However and sadly the reality is that the walk back has been a lonely walk as very few folks have taken the walk from the community to the church even after spending millions of dollars in the doing of good work.

During this very same period of time ALL social statistics in NZ have gotten worse. You name it! Homelessness, poverty, domestic violence, family dysfunction, suicide, teen drinking, STD’s, addictions and on and on. Additionally, our conversion rate is the lowest since the 1960’s. For all the talk about mission and all the so called mission activity we have undertaken the results aren’t flash not by any stretch of the imagination.

I would like to suggest that this is our (the whole church) biggest challenge by far in 2019.

Blessings

Alan

¹ Jesus came to seek and save those who are lost and in doing so ministered in ‘word, sign and deed’. Perhaps we should do likewise.

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Alan Vink is currently the Executive Director for LeadershipWorx. Prior to this role he has been the Executive Director of Willow Creek Association NZ (WillowNZ), a Baptist pastor (23 years), Bible College teacher, and church consultant.