Mitch Lewis

In his recent book on "justification," N. T. Wright complains that we have taken a perfectly good Biblical word with a limited set of meanings and tried to use it do describe the whole of the Christian theology and life experience. You can do that, he says, but you need to realize that your meaning of the word "justification" encompasses a lot of things for which the Biblical authors used different words - or didn't think about at all.

I feel much the same about the word "mission."

Mark Roberts is a Presbyterian pastor whose postings I read regularly. In a series of posts revisiting John Stott's Christian Mission in the the Modern World, Roberts says something with which I disagree:

“Mission” describes rather everything the church is sent into the world to do.

Now the word "sent" there does imply mission of some sort. Based on Robert's excerpts, however, Stott's concept of mission includes everything that Christians - corporately and individually - in the church and in the world - are to be and do. Coming out of evangelical Anglicanism, Stott has an admirable purpose: to convince Christians that being a "missionary" isn't the only important vocation for serious, committed Christians. So far, I agree. But not every Christian virtue, aspiration, function and practice is best described as the mission of the Church.

First of all, to speak of the mission of the Church is to speak of the mission of the corporate body. "Church" and "Christian" are not interchangeable words.

Secondly, not every virtue or practice is part of the corporate mission, as important as important as these virtues and practices may be.

The other world in which I live - the Army - knows something about mission statements. We live by them; they focus our actions. The Army values are Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Selfless Service, Honor and Personal Courage. But courage is not the Army's mission. Neither is respect is not the Army's mission. We live by these values as we accomplish the Army's mission. Our individual  actions and organizational functions contribute to the mission. Our "off duty" life also has an impact on the mission. None of these things, however, is the mission itself.

"Mission" is not, by the way, a New Testament word. The New Testament frequently speaks of being sent, but it does not use the word "mission" in connection with that activity. Most translations describe Paul's journey as a "mission" in Acts 12:25, but the word is "diakonia," probably better translated as "ministry" or "service."

Within the church, I think it is best to use the word mission in its ordinary sense, to give focus to our actions. The more domains we try to incorporate into our concept of mission, the less helpful the word becomes.

There are not enough military chapels or chaplains to provide separate, distinctive worship opportunities for every member of every Protestant denomination in existence. By one count, there are over 8000 Protestant denominations.

In general, most military installations offer a number of non-denominational Christian services - sometimes called General Protestant or Collective Protestant - in a variety of worship styles.  By non-denominational, I don't mean "independent non-denominational," which itself describes one particular stream within Christianity. Ecumenical or multi-denominational might be a better way of describing them. Baptists, Pentecostals, independents and so-called "Mainline" Christians worship side-by-side. Individual Protestant congregations usually get tagged with labels like "traditional," "gospel," "contemporary," "multicultural"  or "liturgical." The distinctions are more stylistic than strictly theological, although there is some correlation between the participants' theology and the services they choose to attend. Some smaller installations might only be able to offer one or two styles of Protestant services; larger installations can offer more choices. Larger installations may also have a Lutheran congregation (mabye LCMS, maybe ELCA), an Episcopalian congregation and a lay-led LDS group. In general, all the other non-Catholic and non-Orthodox Christians attend one of the "Protestant" congregations (if, that is, they attend worship on post).

Anyway, that's all background for sharing with you the mission statement of one Protestant congregation that I served as senior pastor:

The mission of the Soldier Memorial Chapel Protestant Congregation is to be the church of Jesus Christ. Our congregation serves as the temporary spiritual home for a wide variety of Christians brought together in this place by military service. We welcome the diverse gifts that our constituents bring to our congregation from their various Christian traditions.

We proclaim the good news of Christ crucified and risen for the salvation of the world. We expect to experience the grace and power of God in our common life. We challenge each other to live lives of deeply committed discipleship. We humbly covenant together to hear God’s word in Holy Scripture. We seek to grow in faith - and in Christian love for each other and for the community in which we live.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs--we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?" Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine." Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: "Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. (Acts 2:7-14)

On the day of Pentecost, the Lord fulfilled his promise given in Acts 1:8. The disciples received power to be Christ?s witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Just what kind of power would the disciples need for their international mission?

The Power to Communicate

Obviously, if you are going to be a messenger to people of other nations, you need the power to communicate with those to whom you bear your message. A miracle of communications took place on the day of Pentecost. The disciples spoke in other tongues or languages which they had not learned. The technical term for this miraculous phenomenon is xenolalia. Devout people from throughout the world heard and understood these unlearned disciples as they ?declared the wonders of God? in the people's native languages.?The day of Pentecost, then, anticipates and sets the stage for the entire book of Acts which recounts the movement of gospel from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Never again do we find such a miracle of language in the book of Acts, but God?s people are still empowered to communicate God's message.

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Part Six of The Holy Spirit in John

Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." (John 20:21-23)

On the Sunday I preached on this passage, the spring breeze was filled with what looked like small pieces of cotton. The air was so thick with them that it looked like it was snowing. What the wind was carrying was life. The small, cotton-like filaments were the seeds of trees that had fallen into the sleep of dormancy in the fall. With the warming temperatures of spring, the trees had awakened from their sleep, blossomed and flooded the atmosphere with their cottony seeds. The wind took the seeds and spread them throughout the countryside, enabling the trees to propagate. By means of the wind, the trees reproduce and spread their own life throughout the land. It seems to me that is a useful image of Christ's intent in giving the Holy Spirit.

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When it comes to foreign missions, there's one question that always comes up for those of us in uniform. When the government sends us out into "all the world" to fight or keep the peace, can we or should we use that opportunity to be part-time secret missionaries to the local population? For the most part, I think not.

We have chosen - and, I believe, have been called by God - to serve God and the cause of peace by taking up arms and serving our nation in uniform. Our first duty to both God and country is to do the job that comes with wearing that uniform: to keep or establish peace as part of a military force. In many (perhaps most) places, that means that we leave the job of evangelizing the resident population to others. Confusing the roles of "armed agent of a national government" and "agent of the eternal Christ" can be detrimental to both the cause of evangelism and the cause of ordinary peace.

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In the early history of United States, the "next towns" of the frontier were evangelized by circuit-riding preachers and tent-meeting revivals. Some Christians, however, wanted to take the message of Christ not just to the next town in the next valley, but to the next town on the next continent.

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw an explosion of "foreign mission" interest among Protestant Christians in Europe and the United States. Some of the reasons for the "foreign missions" movement were theological impulses that were born in 17th and 18th centuries. It was 19th century western technology (ships and railroads), however, that made the idea of global movements by large numbers of missionaries feasible. Unfortunately, some missionaries confused the Christian gospel with the western way of life.

The Christian faith is always on the move. Jesus' closing words in the Gospel of Matthew are "Go into all the world" and The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of the faith moving out of Judea and Galilee into Syria, Africa, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece and Rome. Philip Jenkins' The Lost History of Christianity recounts a time when the global center of Christianity was in the middle east, spreading east into what is now Iraq, Iran, the "stans," India, and China - south into Nubian Africa - as well as west into the Byzantine empire and what was left of Latin Rome. Only later did Christianity come to predominate in Europe.

The global center of Christianity is now moving south and east to South America, Africa and East Asia. This movement of the gospel is now fueled not just by western missionaries, but by missionaries and indigenous church leaders from throughout the globe. One advantage of Asian and African missionaries is that they change the perception that Christianity is a "western" religion.

In Korea

The first Protestant missionaries came to Korea in the 19th century and Protestant churches have been involved with the life of the Korean people through all the tumultuous events ever since. The first Catholics arrived in the 16th century. Approximately 25% of Korea is now Christian, and today the missionary movement in Korea is growing tremendously. In 1979, Korean churches had 21 mission sending agencies with about 93 missionaries worldwide. There are now over 177 sending agencies, with over 16,000 missionaries in more than 150 countries. Korea sends out more foreign missionaries than any other country in the world except one.

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