Discovering the Mission of God E-Book

• Herausgeber: IVP Academic
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 1103

Beschreibung

Biblical Foundations Book Award "God cannot lead you on the basis of information you do not have." —Ralph Winter What is God's mission in the world? For anyone passionate about discovering God's heart for the nations, Discovering the Mission of God will reveal his plans for you. Written by 21st-century field workers, scholars and church leaders, this book weaves together the basic components of God?s global mission and challenges readers to identify where they fit in the mission of God. Discovering the Mission of God explores the mission of God as presented in the Bible, expressed throughout church history and in cutting-edge best practices being used around the world today. Drawing from a new generation of scholar-practitioners, this comprehensive reader provides global perspective, recent missiological research, case studies, recommended further readings and relevant discussion questions at the end of each chapter. Contributors include: Bryan E. Beyer Karen O'Dell Bullock R. Bruce Carlton Gary R. Corwin Don Dent Robert Edwards Nathan Evans David Garrison H. Al Gilbert Kevin Greeson Jim Haney J. Scott Holste R. Alton James Patrick Lai William J. Larkin Christopher R. Little Alex Luc Stan May Clyde Meador A. Scott Moreau D. Kurt Nelson Howard Norrish Meg Page John Piper Robert L. Plummer Jerry Rankin Nik Ripken Tom Steffen Ed Stetzer John Mark Terry LaNette W. Thompson Greg Turner Preben Vang Joel. F. Williams Christopher J. H. Wright William R. Yount Discovering the Mission of God is an indispensable resource for anyone wanting a better picture of what God is doing in the world and how to find one's place in God's global plan.

Leseprobe

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Discovering the Mission of God

Best Missional Practices for the 21st Century

Mike Barnett, Editor Robin Martin, Associate Editor

www.IVPress.com/Academic

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InterVarsity Press P.O. Box 1400 Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426 World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com E-mail: [email protected]

© 2012 by Mike Barnett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press® is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA®, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Chapter 3 is excerpted from John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad! Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2003. Used with permission.

While all stories in this book are true, some names and identifying information in this book have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Interior design: Beth Hagenberg

ISBN 978-0-8308-5985-6

Contents

Preface

Jerry Rankin

Acknowledgments

Mike Barnett

Introduction: Discovering the Mission of God

Mike Barnett

Part One: The Mission of God in the Bible

God’s Mission

1. Word of God and Mission of God

Christopher J. H. Wright

2. The Missionary Message of the New Testament

Joel F. Williams

3. The Supremacy of God in Missions Through Worship

John Piper

4. The Kingdom of God and His Mission

Alex Luc

5. God’s Great Commissions for the Nations

Jeff Lewis

God’s Method

6. Jesus Christ—the Living Word—and the Mission of God

Bryan E. Beyer

7. The Heart of the Task

Zane Pratt

8. The Church in the Mission of God

Preben Vang

God’s Power

9. The Power of the Gospel

Robert L. Plummer

10. The Passion of Christ and the Martyrs

Jerry Rankin

Part Two: The Mission of God in History

Ancient Eras

11. The First Decades of the Mission of God

William J. Larkin Jr.

12. The Ante-Nicene Church on Mission

John Mark Terry

13. The Gospel Goes East

Zane Pratt

Missionaries and Movements

14. Monastics on Mission

Karen O’Dell Bullock

15. Post-Reformation Missions Pioneers

R. Alton James

16. The Great Century

Howard Norrish

17. The Global Century

Mike Barnett

Part Three: The Mission of God Today

The Task

18. The State of the Spread of the Gospel

Jim Haney

19. Finishing the Task

J. Scott Holste

20. Spiritual Warfare and the Mission of God

Jerry Rankin

21. Apostles Even Now

Don Dent

22. Strategic Prayer for God’s Mission

Mike Barnett

Communicating the Gospel Across Cultures

23. Cultures and Worldviews

Stan May

24. Tell His Story So That All Might Worship

LaNette W. Thompson

25. Comprehensive Contextualization

A. Scott Moreau

26. Effective Bridging and Contextualization

Kevin Greeson

27. Back to Basics

William R. Yount

Through the Church

28. Church-Planting Movements

David Garrison

29. Measuring Progress in the Mission of God

Gary R. Corwin

30. Breaking Bad Missiological Habits

Christopher R. Little

31. Multiplying Leaders on Mission with God

R. Bruce Carlton

32. Creative-Access Platforms

Tom Steffen

33. Biblical Lessons from the Persecuted Church

Nik Ripken and Kurt Nelson

Co-Laboring

34. Women on Mission with God

Meg Page

35. Caring for God’s Missionaries

Robert Edwards and Nathan Evans

36. The Trouble with Our Jerusalems

Ed Stetzer

37. The Local Church and the Mission of God

H. Al Gilbert

38. Where Do You Fit in the Mission of God?

Clyde Meador

About the Contributors

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Endorsements

The following additional chapters are available in the Discovering the Mission of God Supplement original e-book.

1. Israel’s Mission to All Peoples

Timothy M. Pierce

2. The Love of God

Gordon Fort

3. The Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit

James M. Hamilton Jr.

4. Letter from the Field

Brother John

5. The Business of Building Bridges

Patrick Lai

6. God’s Mission Today Through Prayer

Natalie Shepherd and Peter Hawkins

7. Equippers for God’s Mission

Marty Glickman

8. Jesus Christ: The Way, the Truth, and the Life?

Brad Roderick

9. The Left Side of the Graph

Clyde Meador

10. Breaking Old Habits

Rebekah A. Naylor

11. Principles and Practices

Mike Barnett

12. Measuring Church Planting Progress at Avant

Scott Harris

13. Human Needs Ministries for God’s Mission

J. Jeffrey Palmer

14. Preach and Heal

Charles Fielding

15. Church and Agency Co-Laboring

Jerry Rankin and Mike Edens

16. Eleven Implications for the North American Church

J. D. Payne

Preface

Ignoring or misunderstanding the mission of God has resulted in a church that has lost its spiritual vitality and ability to impact culture and a contemporary world with a life-transforming message. We seldom think in terms of a sovereign God who is actively “on mission,” for to do so would compel his people with the priority of being aligned with his divine activity. Pressed on the issue, one might define the mission of God as his eternal plan to redeem a lost world. Yet we often relegate that mission to the time-defined event of Jesus coming to earth to die to bear the sins of a lost world and be raised again.

The mission of God is not an afterthought when Jesus, having completed his earthly ministry, gathered with his followers on a hillside in Galilee and decided to send them out to make disciples of all nations. It was not in a moment of spontaneous inspiration that he decided the good news of the kingdom should break out of a narrow Jewish context and be declared to the whole world. No, this is something that was born in the heart of God before the foundation of the world. Certainly, it centered in the redemptive act of Christ dying on the cross and the glorious resurrection morning that followed, when sin and death were conquered once for all. But it was not just that moment that split time and opened the door to eternal life that defined the mission of God.

From the creation of the world the mission began to take shape. A glimpse of where it was going was given in the call to Abraham to leave his home and family so that all the families of nations would receive the blessing of being reconciled to God. The mission gained intensity as God raised up a special people, Israel, to declare his glory and to tell of his salvation. But once salvation had been assured by the cross and an empty tomb, the mission was empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the born-again people of God became the instruments through which the mission was to be fulfilled.

To miss the overview of a big-picture perspective is to reduce the mission of God to whatever we choose to do in ministry and witness on his behalf. Classical mission scholars have defined “missions” as the activities of the church to fulfill God’s mission, but the “mission” belongs to God. We need to rediscover the scope and vision of what God is doing and where he is going as he moves at an accelerated pace to reach every tribe, people, language, and nation with the gospel.

Discovering the mission of God helps bring all of our programs and activities into perspective. Too much of what we do has become ingrown and self-centered, feeding the fellowship of the redeemed, occasionally bringing an outsider into the kingdom, but seldom focused on the task of impacting a lost world to the ends of the earth.

There is a great deal of literature on the mission of God, but most of it is rather dated; written in a different era, applications are irrelevant to a contemporary world and God’s activity today. Even the innovative challenges of more recent missiologists such as Donald McGavran and Ralph Winter are several decades removed from the dizzying global changes and visionary advances seen in the twenty-first century. Most historians would agree that there was greater advance toward global evangelization in the last decade of the twentieth century than in all two hundred years of modern missions since William Carey went to India in 1793. However, it appears that even that era has been superseded by the first decade of the new millennium as God moves through wars and ethnic violence, political upheaval, social chaos, economic instability, and natural disasters to turn the hearts of a people to search for spiritual answers that can be found only in Jesus Christ.

Discovering the Mission of God is an exciting compilation of writing and reflections by contemporary actors who are involved in the divine activity that is moving toward that elusive objective when all peoples have the opportunity to hear, understand, and respond to the gospel in their own cultural context. Modern-day missionaries are undeterred by closed doors, government restrictions, antagonistic religious worldviews, and hostility toward a Christian witness. They are discovering creative access to resistant people, identifying with a hurting world, and offering hope in spite of personal risk and danger.

With the assistance of the International Mission Board, Dr. Mike Barnett has compiled and edited a comprehensive array of essays and insights, primarily from the perspective of a younger generation of scholars and mission leaders. The reader will find fresh insights into traditional biblical passages as doctrinal and theological positions reinforce the mission message. What happened to the mission of God from the New Testament for more than a millennium? How did it gain momentum from the Reformation and finally grow to prominence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? A reading of the historical section will serve to prepare one for the exciting insights into contemporary practices that reflect a God moving in providence and power to fulfill his mission.

A subtle impression emerges out of the multiplicity of writers contributing from diverse backgrounds and experiences to this volume from a biblical, historical, and contemporary perspective—it is an understanding that the mission accrues to the glory of God himself who alone is worthy of all praise, worship, honor, and glory. Discovering the Mission of God will challenge the church and motivate God’s people to adjust priorities and personal agendas to become aligned with what God is doing to fulfill his mission today.

Jerry Rankin, President Emeritus

International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention

Acknowledgments

This project would have been impossible without the support and endorsement of the International Mission Board. For years now, IMB has actively encouraged strategic partnerships with like-minded “Great Commission Christians” for the purpose of finishing the task of the mission of God to reach all nations with the gospel. It was with this end in mind that IMB encouraged and endorsed this volume. Special thanks go to Jerry Rankin and Clyde Meador for their vision, leadership, and advocacy throughout the project.

Thank you, authors! To the experienced writers and missiologists who carved out time to write a chapter, thank you. May God continue to use you to teach and write in order to equip the next generation of missionaries and champions for the mission of God. To the young, field-based, often inexperienced writer-missionaries, well done! You brought a freshness and “cutting edge” ethos to the work.

Appreciation also goes to my graduate students and others who handled a variety of administrative and editorial services. Thank you, Matthew Rennells, Joanna Schiestl, Allison Cox, Christy Herman, David Mauger, and Zach Hoffman. We would not have crossed the finish line without you. Special thanks to Joanne Lu and Nathan Poole who did some heavy lifting as proofreaders throughout the project. Keep using your literary gifts for the Lord, Joanne!

Thanks to my associate editor, Robin Martin. I volunteered you without your permission, Robin. Thanks for persevering to the end. You are a special lady. Your professional writing background and years of field experience say it all.

Finally, those who know me know that God’s greatest gift to me has been Cindy. Without my beautiful, godly, servant-hearted wife, none of this would have been possible. Thank you.

Mike Barnett

Introduction

DISCOVERING THE MISSION OF GOD

Mike Barnett

What is the mission of God? You might think this is a simple question that requires no answer. After all, most of us know about the mission of God. Or do we?

Most readers of this book already have an interest in missions. You have read the Great Commission that Jesus gave the disciples (Matthew 28:18–20). You have prayed for God’s missionaries. You have written checks for mission projects or programs of the church. Perhaps you have been on one or more mission trips in your homeland or even abroad. You are mission-minded lay people.

Others sensed a call to serve in the mission of God. You attended seminary, studied missiology, signed up as a candidate with a mission-sending agency, and are preparing for your first term of service.

And yes, some of you already serve faithfully as long-term career missionaries.

Some readers consider themselves barely novices in this mission of God stuff. You are a Christian—a follower of Christ—but you don’t know much about God’s mission. A friend encouraged you to attend a meeting or sign up for an overseas trip. You are just a normal person working in the marketplace of the world—a school teacher, accountant, businessperson, or technology consultant—certainly not a missionary. Sure you are interested, curious about God’s mission; but you really don’t have too much time to spend on this missions stuff. In fact, how did you get yourself into reading this book anyway? Hold that thought.

Perhaps a handful of you are not even sure you believe in the mission of God. Maybe you’re not really sure you believe in God. For you this is another test, an examination of God and what he is about. Reading this book might be a life-changing experience for you.

All of us, regardless of our specific circumstances, are on a journey: a journey of discovery—discovering the mission of God. For me, it is a familiar journey. I keep coming back for more. But I recall the first time I really dug into the meaning of missions. On my first serious trek into the mission of God, I was already one of those career missionaries, thoroughly equipped and engaged in God’s mission work. Or was I? My first journey was almost an accident. It began as a reading assignment—John Piper’s book Let the Nations Be Glad—given by my field leader. It ended with my shock and embarrassment that I knew so little about the real mission of God.

The purpose of this book is to take you on your journey into the mission of God. We will set the agenda and keep you on track, but you are free to experience this mission of God in the way he intended for you. Follow his Spirit as you journey.

The Briefing

Before we begin the journey, we need some basic orientation and answers to a few foundational questions about the mission of God.

Whose mission is it? The phrase “mission of God” answers this question quite literally. But do we usually think of the mission as God’s? As early as the 1930s, theologians like Karl Barth began to speak of mission as “an activity of God himself.”[1] In 1952, at a missions conference in Willingen, Germany, the phrase “mission of God,” or missio Dei, became the term of preference. Mission was being seen less as an activity of the church and more as “an attribute of God.” The mission to preach and teach salvation to the world wasn’t the church’s idea—it came from God. As one theologian put it, “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church. . . . Mission is thereby seen as a movement from God to the world; the church is viewed as an instrument for that mission. There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.”[2]

So it is not really the church’s mission. Neither is it primarily the missionary’s mission, nor just the mission agency’s mission. It is God’s mission. As John Stott writes, “The living God of the Bible is a sending God. . . . [He is] a missionary God!”[3] God ultimately accomplishes his mission. He has chosen followers of Christ as his instruments. But the mission of God does not exist because of the church; the church exists because of the mission of God. This reality is both comforting and disturbing. We should take comfort in the fact that the redemption of all nations does not depend on us because it is God’s job, God’s mission. On the other hand, we should be both humbled and disturbed by the fact that God has chosen the church as his instrument, his agent, in accomplishing his mission.

The apostle Paul wrote about this mysterious strategy of proclaiming “to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 3:10, emphasis added). This mission of God is a big mission. In fact, it not only impacts all nations on earth but it affects and transforms the heavens, the universe, and the entire creation of God. And the church is a key player in this cosmic drama. Though it is God’s mission, followers of Christ must take seriously this design and God’s call upon the church to be agents of his redemptive plan. This is serious business, this mission of God.

What is the mission of God? We acknowledged that it is God’s mission, but what exactly is it? The Latin word missio means a “sending” of someone with a purpose or duty to perform. It was often used to describe the task of a soldier sent out to perform a military function. So what is God’s task? God describes his mission throughout the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. In fact, the subject of his mission pervades Scripture. That makes the fact that we so often miss it that much more perplexing.

Though it is mentioned earlier in Genesis, God clearly reveals his mission in chapter 12 in a conversation with Abram, soon to be known as Abraham: “The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you’” (Genesis 12:1–3).

This is the mission of God: “All peoples on earth will be blessed.” A theme that flows throughout Scripture, it begins here with a promise to Abraham. And it ends in Revelation, as the heavenly hosts sing to the Lamb, “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9–10). Everything between Genesis and Revelation is directly related to this mission of God, this sending of himself and his people to bless all the peoples on earth.

Why this mission? This is a fair question. If followers of Jesus Christ—the church—are to be, by design, agents of the mission of God, then surely we have the right to know why. Why is God so focused, so preoccupied as it were, on a blessing for all the peoples? This is the part that embarrassed me fifteen years ago when I first realized what God’s mission was all about. It is an overused expression, but this mission of God is about God. The answer to “Why this mission?” is, simply put, God’s glory. Again, this theme oozes out of Scripture. How can we miss it? Time after time God reveals to us how serious he is about his glory.

We teach and preach that the exodus event is all about God saving Israel from Pharaoh. But a closer look reveals the greater purpose, or mission, of God in that event. God tells Moses time after time to instruct Pharaoh to let his people go. This is the popular message of the book of Exodus. “Tell Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go!’” But why? So they might worship him (Exodus 9:13). It is true that God is rescuing Israel—but not for Israel’s sake. God desires that Israel worship him. That is the “why” behind the exodus event. That is the “why” behind the mission of God.

Listen to God as he instructs Moses what to tell Pharaoh:

This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. (Exodus 9:13–16)

God saved the Israelites so they would know he was still their God and so they would worship and serve him. God saved the Israelites so Pharaoh and all the nations would know that he was the one, true, living, and all-powerful God. His plan worked. He saved the Israelites from Pharaoh, and the nations shuddered and trembled (Exodus 15:14–16). He saved the Israelites from Pharaoh, and hundreds of years later the Messiah sprang from this seed of Abraham. He saved the Israelites from Pharaoh, and we are still reading and telling his glorious story to the nations today. This is the reason for the mission: God’s glory.

God reveals this purpose throughout Scripture. One of my favorite examples is in Isaiah 48. Once again God reveals the reason for the mission. He patiently deals with the Israelites’ short memory, and their lack of faith and obedience seems to have pushed God into a kind of strategic corner. Should he rescue them once again? The prophet projects God’s voice in a kind of first-person soliloquy: “For my own name’s sake I delay my wrath; for the sake of my praise I hold it back from you, so as not to destroy you completely. See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this. How can I let myself be defamed? I will not yield my glory to another” (Isaiah 48:9–11).

God’s mission is that all families on earth would be blessed. The substance of this blessing is that they would know, worship, and serve God. The effect of this blessing is a full and meaningful life for them today and eternally. The ultimate result of this blessing is the lifting up of God’s name, reputation, honor, and glory before the entire universe. This is the reason for the mission.

Where do we see it? As God goes about accomplishing his mission, shouldn’t we be learning from him? How can we do that? Where do we look to learn about the mission of God?

The Bible. The first place to look for the mission of God is in the Scriptures. We look to the Bible not just as a proof text for missions—i.e., simply to justify our programs, trips, budgets, and agendas. God’s mission is bigger than that. In recent years biblical scholars and teachers have rediscovered the missional basis of the Bible. Where we once searched the Bible for reasons for mission, today we understand that the mission is the reason for the Bible!

Christopher J. H. Wright captured this transforming concept in his book The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. For years Wright taught a course titled “The Biblical Basis of Mission.” The more he studied God’s mission, the more he realized a better title would be “The Missional Basis of the Bible.” Wright concluded that the Bible did not merely include references, endorsements, and mandates for God’s mission, but indeed “the writings that now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of and witness to the ultimate mission of God.”[4] Wright summarizes his view in chapter 1 of this volume.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Back to the briefing.

This concept that the Bible itself exists because of God’s mission is truly transformational. If the Bible exists because of the mission, the same must be said about the church. If this is true, then all that we do as Christ-followers must point toward the mission of God. Everything the church (and parachurch organizations) does should connect with the mission of God. This concept is not merely the product of the missionary zeal of a few Bible scholars. It is the testimony of the Bible itself. We trust that readers of this book who embrace the missional basis of Scripture will thrive in this journey of discovery. We hope those readers who doubt it today will find evidence to support it tomorrow.

A word of caution. This renaissance of “missional” awareness sometimes results in the co-opting of God’s specific mission into a kind of vague, generic, and all-encompassing definition of church, ministry, and mission. In other words, once we are faced with the reality that the Bible is missional and we should all be about this mission of God in all that we do, there is a temptation or tendency to justify whatever we are doing today as definitively missional. The result is the claim that every ministry of the church is missional and every member a missionary. Indeed, this may or may not be so. Beware of this assimilation and potential watering down of the mission of God. Look to the Bible first and foremost for the definition and delineation of the mission of God.

To summarize, first we learn about the mission of God from the Bible. It is our record of God accomplishing his mission yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It begins with God’s vision, records how he goes about his mission, and concludes with the mission accomplished. It tells us whose mission it is, and why. It includes his mandate for us to be engaged in his mission. It reveals that God uses us, the church, as his instruments. It displays his power as he works throughout history among all the peoples on earth. It motivates and empowers us to boldly serve and worship him. It inspires us to be on mission with God—to know where we fit in his mission.

History. Second, we learn about the mission of God by studying history. God continued to fulfill his mission after biblical times. According to his mission plan, he used Christ-followers working through the church among the nations. As we study how God worked in the past through peoples, politics, societies, economies, nations, and churches around the world, we learn lessons for tomorrow. Sometimes these lessons teach us how to be on mission with God. They highlight historic best practices for discipling all nations. They affirm our best strategies or redirect our worst ones. They inspire us as we celebrate through history the successes of God’s people and the church on mission with him. Sometimes, however, these lessons teach us how to not be on mission with God. Our study of the history of God’s mission is frequently messy and heart-sickening. It includes “the good, the bad, and the ugly” aspects of disciplers and the church. It teaches us—if we will listen and learn—not to repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before us.

When students of God’s mission struggle with the reality that many of the great moments and personalities in the history of God’s mission are characterized by frailty and failure, it is time to go back to the Bible. We find these same messy and sometimes ugly moments in the biblical accounts as well. We shake our heads and wonder why God continued to use people as his primary instruments. We wonder how he employed such a corrupt and sometimes even evil church as the vehicle. And then we remember that the glory of God is the reason for the mission. As God uses people working through the church, in spite of their failures and imperfections, he transforms them and their world. Then he receives the glory. The nations see that only he could have made it happen. He is the ultimate missionary. He is the one who accomplishes the miraculous, the supernatural.

The mission of God today. Finally, we learn about God’s mission by studying how he is accomplishing it today. We listen to testimonies from missionaries, mission agencies, and new believers from around the world; and we learn more about God’s mission. We analyze the challenges and trends of twenty-first century missions, and we learn more about where we fit. We celebrate the progress of God’s mission, and it inspires us to serve him. God teaches us all about his mission through the Bible, history, and his mission today.

How does God do it? How does God accomplish his mission? We know to look to the Bible, history, and missions today. But what do we learn when we look there? What principles dominate these accounts of the mission of God? What plans do we see God and his followers making? How do they serve his mission? What practices can we learn?

God’s love. God blesses all peoples through his love. God loves us into his blessing and his kingdom. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). But this method of God’s mission, this love of God, isn’t one-sided—i.e., just him to us. Jesus taught, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). And it doesn’t stop there. This love of God flows throughout the mission of God: from him to us; from us to him; and, yes, from us to each other. “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). God’s method begins with his love. As you read the following chapters, look for the love of God in the mission of God. It is everywhere.

People-to-people. God extends his mission to people through people. I tell my students that if God had contracted me as a strategy consultant when he was drawing up his plan, I would have advised against depending on people to accomplish his mission. Think about it. With the universe at his disposal, God could have used so many other resources. Indeed, he could have spoken into being the blessing for all the peoples. He could have marshaled heavenly powers and beings to complete his mission. But he chose to work through people. Remember the promise to Abraham: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3). Through Abraham and his descendants (those who are his spiritual descendants, whether Jews or Gentiles), God reaches the nations. He connects with, transforms, and empowers people to reach people with the good news of his mission through his Son, Jesus Christ. As you study the Bible, history, and God’s mission today, look for the people-to-people dynamic. Learn from God.

Discipling all peoples. Though we misuse and abuse the word disciple, it remains a foundational, biblical, and missional word to describe the method of God. It was Jesus’ word. Many younger followers of Christ have abandoned the term “discipleship” because of its confused meaning. The academic community divided it into at least three distinct categories: evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Seminaries offer degrees and faculties in each specialty. Publishers carefully categorize their titles, and practitioners become specialists in one field or the other. Consequentially, churches call leaders who specialize in one of these “ministries.” No wonder our “twenty-something” church leaders are giving up on the term “disciple.” If only we could recapture Jesus’ simple yet powerful meaning when he commanded his followers to disciple all nations (Matthew 28:18–20).

The “Great Commission” of Christ to his disciples was as much instruction as commandment. He told them to go into the world and “disciple all nations.”[5] Then he told them how to do it. We disciple by baptizing new believers in the name of the three-in-one God and teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded. The genius of this job assignment is subtle. By teaching each other how to obey all that Jesus commanded, we insure our continued involvement in the mission of God. By mentoring each other to do more than know the words of Christ—indeed, to live them—our lives are transformed and we recognize our call to be a part of God’s mission.[6] We learn how to work in his mission by observing how he accomplishes it. We rely on his power (“And surely I am with you always”), we ultimately discover where we fit, and we go for it. This is discipling all nations. This is how God does it, this mission of his.

Equipping the saints. Paul briefs us on training in his letter to believers in Ephesus. We regularly teach and preach these “equipping” verses (Ephesians 4:9–13), but seem to struggle with their application. Could it be that what has been missing in our thinking is the mission of God? Paul says that Jesus intends some of us to be equippers of the ones who do the bulk of the work of the church. Some are to be apostles—sent ones, going to those who have yet to hear. We think of our missionaries. Some are to be prophets—gifted proclaimers or “forth-tellers” of the gospel truths. We think of our preachers. Some are to be evangelists—those most effective defenders of the faith whom God uses to attract others. We think of our most active outreachers in church and parachurch ministries. (All believers are to be witnesses, per Acts 1:8, but some are especially gifted to share the good news of Christ with those who have never heard.) Some are to be pastors or shepherds who protect and lead our churches. We think of our church staff pastors and their associates. And some are to be teachers—who clearly communicate the Word of God. We think of Bible teachers, teaching pastors, and educational leaders.

But here is the key to these equippers: they are to coach all disciples to do the work and ministries of the church and its assignment in the mission of God. Most Westerners (and Western-influenced churches) have turned this best practice of God on its head. We employ “equippers” to teach and lead us, but we also expect them to do the bulk of the work and ministry of the church as well. When we think of this tactical approach outside the context of God’s mission, it seems possible to get it wrong. After all, a good-sized staff of professionally trained ministers can handle all the tasks of a church—preaching, teaching, hospital visits, Christian education, worship, weddings, funerals, and community service. They lead the way and we lay people passively plug in if and when we are able. But if the context for this assignment of “equippers” is the mission of God to reach all peoples on earth, then it becomes obvious that we cannot train and hire enough professional “equippers” to do the work. Indeed, everyone must do the work. The church must be indigenous, or home-grown, and dependent upon grassroots workers rather than elite equippers. Thus, the genius of God’s method—equippers coaching “the saints” to get the job done—makes perfect sense. Look for the equippers and the workers in God’s mission.

Through the church. One last practice of God on mission clarifies the role of the church. I came to Christ through the Jesus movement of the early 1970s, an antiestablishment movement of young believers. We were passionate about the Bible and a personal relationship with Jesus, but we weren’t so excited about the church. Many of us avoided the organized church and sought authentic Christian community in student groups or informal Bible studies. We were “Lone Ranger” followers of Christ. We were twentieth-century versions of a “churchless Christianity.”[7] How ironic that many significant organized churches and parachurch organizations today are led by those same recalcitrants who met Jesus through the nonconforming Jesus movement. God does have a sense of humor!

The bottom line is that we cannot be long-term Lone Rangers or churchless Christians and be on mission with God. It simply is not his plan. Sure, he can use an individual and disconnected believer as a witness and catalyst for his mission. But ultimately we are to be catalysts for the multiplication of his church—the primary and nonnegotiable instrument of his mission. The teachings of Christ and the letters of the apostles clearly define this vital role of the church. As Paul summarizes it, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Ephesians 3:20–21).

By what power? In the text above, Paul uses the phrase “according to his power.” Where does this power of God to accomplish his mission come from? This may be the most profound but least understood aspect of his mission. It comes from the gospel. Paul says more than once that the gospel is powerful (Romans 1:16; Colossians 1:6). If you have ever shared the good news of Jesus with one who had never heard it, you probably know about this power. Are we so accustomed to the gospel that we’ve lost our sense of its power? I hope not. Of course, the power to understand God’s Word and act accordingly comes from the Holy Spirit, our coach along the journey of God’s mission (Matthew 28:20; Acts 1:8). The power also comes from the passion, or suffering, of Christ. Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ demonstrated this. Hollywood’s rendition of the last days of Jesus’ life and his death on a cross profoundly impacted unbelievers and believers alike around the world. Do you sense this power? This is the power for God’s mission. Read about it in the chapters that follow.

Where do we fit? The last question in our briefing asks where we fit in the mission of God. Clyde Meador’s chapter will focus on this question, but the entire volume seeks to inform and challenge us on this point. After discovering the mission of God, we no longer can say that we do not fit. We are unable to pass the responsibility to missionaries or mission pastors. We are all called by God to participate in his mission of blessing all the peoples.

The Layout

This discovery journey follows three major themes: “The Mission of God in the Bible,” “The Mission of God in History,” and “The Mission of God Today.” Each theme builds on itself in order to lay a foundation of understanding about God’s mission and where we fit. We do not apologize for the directness of this approach. This volume of discovery intends to challenge each reader to make a personal and prayerful assessment of where he or she best fits in God’s mission and to commit wholeheartedly to that task.

We’ve enlisted a mix of highly acclaimed authors and younger, emerging writers in the field of missions. Readers will notice that almost all our authors are experienced in living and working cross-culturally, and about half are still field-based. We seek reports and observations from the leading edges of the mission of God. There is risk in this approach, but we hope for fresh thinking from field strategists and practitioners without sacrificing well-reasoned and well-developed principles and strategies. Our authors come from a variety of church and missions backgrounds, all of which are “Great Commissional” in nature. The message of this volume is intended for the broader community of Great Commission Christian workers and their constituencies.

In addition, the Discovering the Mission of God Supplement e-book includes sixteen extra chapters that supplement the content of the printed book. The Supplement is intended as a companion to this main book to provide even more resources for going deeper into God’s mission. See www.ivpress.com for more information.

Our greatest regret is that we do not have more authors from the non-Western world. With this in mind, many of our sidebar case studies highlight their lives and work.

Bon Voyage

This is a journey of discovery of the mission of God. As you begin this literary trek, remember God’s mission of a blessing to all the peoples on earth. This is a survey of its past, a briefing on its present, and a glimpse into its future. God’s mission dominated his relationship with Israel. It came to a climax with the birth of Emmanuel (“God with us”)—Jesus Christ’s life, work, crucifixion, and resurrection. It is completely and finally fulfilled in Revelation. Mission accomplished. May this journey of discovery be life-changing and work-changing! May God’s Spirit lead you every step of the way for the sake of his mission and glory forever!

Discussion Points

What do we mean when we say this is God’s mission?What category of reader are you—missionary, student, missional lay person, seeker? What do you expect to get out of this discovery journey?Which question in the briefing spoke to you? Share your insights.Do you know where you fit in God’s mission? What is your role today? What do you see on the horizon?

Further Reading

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Winter, Ralph D., and Steven C. Hawthorne. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, 3rd ed. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1999.

Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006.

Part One

The Mission of God in the Bible

In the beginning was the Word. . . . The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1,14). The mission of God is as basic as this—God sent his Son, the Word, to reveal himself to his creation. He outlines this mission throughout his written revelation: from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation. Why do we so often miss this primary message of the Bible? How can we overlook this preoccupation of God to be on mission to reach all peoples on earth? Perhaps, at its core, this is a function of our self-centeredness. Like the Israelites before us, we pilfer the mission of God and make it our own.

As you read these chapters on the mission of God in the Bible, remember that this is God’s mission, not ours. He is the one on mission. Learn from him. What is his mission? How does he accomplish it? What patterns repeat themselves throughout this mission of God? Where does the power for the mission come from? And how do these lessons from the Bible inform our role in God’s mission today? The Bible is our best textbook, our primary training manual for the mission of God. Learn your mission lessons well in this first part of your discovery journey.

See also the following e-chapters in theDiscovering the Mission of God Supplemente-book:

Israel’s Mission to All Peoples—Timothy M. PierceThe Love of God—Gordon FortThe Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit—James M. Hamilton Jr.Letter from the Field—Brother John

1 Word of God and Mission of God

Reading the Whole Bible for Mission

Christopher J. H. Wright

A Short Personal Journey

I remember them so vividly from my childhood—the great banner texts around the walls of the missionary conventions in Northern Ireland where I would help my father at the stall of the Unevangelized Fields Mission, of which he was Irish Secretary after spending twenty years in Brazil. “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature,” they urged me, along with other similar imperatives in glowing Gothic calligraphy. By the age of twelve I could have quoted all the key ones: “Go ye therefore and make disciples . . .” “How shall they hear . . . ?” “You shall be my witnesses . . . to the ends of the earth.” “Whom shall we send? . . . Here am I, send me.” I knew my missionary Bible verses. I had responded to many a rousing sermon on most of them.

By the age of twenty-one I had a degree in theology from Cambridge, where the same texts had been curiously lacking. At least it is curious to me now. At the time there seemed to be little connection at all between theology and mission in the minds of the lecturers, or of myself, or, for all I knew, in the mind of God. “Theology” was all about God—what God was like, what God had said and done, and what mostly dead people had speculated on such questions. “Mission” was about us, the living, and what we’ve been doing since Carey (who, of course, was the first missionary, we so erroneously thought). Or more precisely, mission is what we evangelicals do since we’re the ones who know the Bible told us (or some of us, at least) to go and be missionaries. “The Bible” was somewhere in the middle—the object of critical study by theologians and the source of motivational texts for missionaries.

“Mission is what we do.” That was the assumption—supported, of course, by clear biblical commands that were taken seriously by at least some people in the church. Mission was a task that some specially called folks got involved with. I had little concept at that time that mission should have been the very heartbeat of theology and the key to knowing how to interpret the Bible (hermeneutics).

Many years later, including years when I was teaching theology as a missionary in India, I found myself teaching a module called “The Biblical Basis of Mission” at All Nations Christian College, an international mission-training institution in England. The module title itself embodies the same assumption. Mission is the noun, the given reality. It is something we do, and we basically know what it is. And the reason why we know we should be doing it—the basis, foundation, or grounds on which we justify it—must be found in the Bible. As good evangelicals we need a biblical basis for everything we do. What, then, is the biblical basis for mission? Roll out the texts. Add some that nobody else has thought of. Do some joined-up theology. Add some motivational fervor. And the class is heartwarmingly appreciative. Now they have even more biblical support for what they already believed anyway, for these are All Nations students after all. They only came because they are committed to doing mission.

There is the task (mission). Here are some folks who are going to do it (the missionaries). And here are the bits of the Bible that might encourage them (the missionary texts). That is what everybody seemed to mean by the biblical basis of mission.

This mild caricature is not in the least derogatory in intent. I believe passionately that mission is what we should be doing, and I believe the Bible endorses and mandates it. However, the more I taught that course, the more I used to introduce it by telling the students that I would like to change its name from “The Biblical Basis of Mission” to “The Missional Basis of the Bible.” I wanted them to see not just that the Bible contains a number of texts which happen to provide a rationale for missionary endeavor, but that the whole Bible is itself a “missional” phenomenon.

The Bible as the Product of God’s Mission

A missional understanding of the Bible begins with the Bible’s very existence.[1] For those who affirm some relationship (however articulated) between these texts and the self-revelation of our creator God, the whole canon of Scripture is a missional phenomenon in the sense that it witnesses to the self-giving movement of this God toward his creation and toward us, human beings who have been made in God’s own image but who are wayward and wanton. The writings which now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of, and witness to, the ultimate mission of God.

The very existence of the Bible is incontrovertible evidence of the God who refused to forsake his rebellious creation, who refused to give up, who was and is determined to redeem and restore fallen creation to his original design for it. . . . The very existence of such a collection of writings testifies to a God who breaks through to human beings, who disclosed himself to them, who will not leave them unilluminated in their darkness . . . who takes the initiative in re-establishing broken relationships with us.[2]

Furthermore, the processes by which these texts came to be written were often profoundly missional in nature. Many of the biblical texts emerged out of events, struggles, crises, or conflicts in which the people of God engaged with the constantly changing and challenging task of articulating and living out their understanding of God’s revelation and redemptive action in the world. Sometimes these were struggles internal to the people of God themselves; sometimes they were highly argumentative (polemical) struggles with the competing religious claims and worldviews that surrounded them. So a missional reading of such texts is definitely not a matter of first finding the “real” meaning by objective interpretation (exegesis), and then cranking up some “missiological implications” as a sermon (homiletic) supplement to the text itself. Rather, a missional reading will observe how a text often has its origin in some issue, need, controversy, or threat that the people of God needed to address in the context of their mission. The text in itself is a product of mission in action.

This is easily demonstrated in the case of the New Testament.[3] Most of Paul’s letters were written in the heat of his missionary efforts: wrestling with the theological basis of the inclusion of the Gentiles, affirming the need for Jew and Gentile to accept one another in Christ and in the church, tackling the baffling range of new problems that assailed young churches as the gospel took root in the world of Greek polytheism, confronting incipient heresies with clear affirmations of the supremacy and sufficiency of Jesus Christ, and so on. And why were the Gospels so called? Because they were written to explain the significance of the evangel—the good news about Jesus of Nazareth, especially his death and resurrection. Confidence in these things was essential to the missionary task of the expanding church. And the person to whom we owe the largest portion of the New Testament, Luke, shapes his two volumes in such a way that the missionary mandate to the disciples to be Christ’s witnesses to the nations comes as the climax to volume one and the introduction to volume two.

But we can also see in the Old Testament that many texts emerged out of the engagement of the Israelites with the surrounding world in the light of the God they knew in their history and in covenantal relationship. People produced texts in relation to what they believed God had done, was doing, or would do in their world. Genesis presents a theology of creation that stands in sharp contrast to the polytheistic creation myths of Mesopotamia. Exodus records the exodus as an act of Yahweh that comprehensively confronted and defeated the power of Pharaoh and all his rival claims to deity and allegiance. The historical narratives portray the long and sorrowful story of Israel’s struggle with the culture and religion of Canaan. Texts from the time of the Babylonian exile of Israel, as well as postexilic texts, emerge out of the task that the small remnant community of Israel faced to define their continuing identity as a community of faith in successive empires of varying hostility or tolerance. Wisdom texts interact with international wisdom traditions in the surrounding cultures, but do so with staunch monotheistic disinfectant. And in worship and prophecy, Israelites reflect on the relationship between their God, Yahweh, and the rest of the nations—sometimes negatively, sometimes positively—and on the nature of their own role as Yahweh’s elect priesthood in their midst. All of these are themes and conflicts that are highly relevant to missional engagement between God’s people and the world of nations.

The Bible, then, is a missional phenomenon in itself. The writings which now comprise our Bible are themselves the product of, and witness to, the ultimate mission of God. The individual texts within it often reflect the struggles of being a people with a mission in a world of competing cultural and religious claims. And the canon eventually consolidates the recognition that it is through these texts that the people whom God has called to be his own (in both Testaments) have been shaped as a community of memory and hope, a community of mission, a community of failure and striving.

In short, a missional hermeneutic proceeds from the assumption that the whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of God’s purpose for the whole of God’s creation. Mission is not just one of a list of things that the Bible happens to talk about, only a bit more urgently than some. Mission is, in that much-abused phrase, what it’s all about.

Reading the Scriptures with the Risen Jesus and the Apostle Paul

The Risen Jesus. Now to say, “Mission is what the Bible is all about,” is a bold claim. I would not expect to be able to turn any phrase that began, “The Biblical Basis of . . .” around the other way. There is, for example, a biblical basis for marriage; but there is not, I presume, “a marital basis for the Bible.” There is a biblical basis for work, but work is not “what the Bible is all about.” However, I take some encouragement for my claim from an impeccable authority: it seems to me that Jesus comes very close to saying, “This is what the Bible is all about,” when he gave his disciples their final lecture in Old Testament hermeneutics. “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46–47). Now Jesus is not quoting a specific text here, though we would love to have been able to ask which Scriptures he particularly had in mind (doubtless the two from Emmaus could have filled in the gaps). The point is that he includes the whole of this sentence under the heading “This is what is written.”

Jesus seems to be saying that the whole of the Scripture (which we now know as the Old Testament) finds its focus and fulfillment both in the life, death, and resurrection of Israel’s Messiah and in the mission to all nations which flows out from that event.

Luke tells us that with these words Jesus “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” Or, as we might put it, he was setting their interpretive (hermeneutical) orientation and agenda. The proper way for disciples of the crucified and risen Jesus to read their Scriptures is messianically and missiologically.

For Jesus, then, the Old Testament was as much about mission as it was about himself. Or rather, the two are inseparable parts of the same fundamental reality: the saving mission of God. If you know who Jesus is from the Scriptures (that he is the Messiah of Israel who embodied their identity and their mission); and if you know what Israel is from the Scriptures (called into existence to be a “light to the nations”); then to confess Jesus as Messiah is to commit yourself to his mission to the nations. You can’t have one without the other—not if you believe the Scriptures and read them as Jesus taught his disciples to. The necessity of mission is as rooted in the Bible as the identity of the Messiah.

The apostle Paul. When we turn to Paul, we find the same inte­gration of mission and the [Old Testament] Scriptures. As I said above, if we inquired about the biblical basis for Christian mission, traditionally we would be pointed to the familiar words of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20) and related New Testament texts. But for Paul the scriptural basis for mission went much further back. And of course, in any case, the “Great Commission” in its present form in the text of the canonical Gospels did not yet exist in the early decades of Paul’s mission.

Paul had to justify both his mission practice and his mission theology on the basis of the Scriptures we now call the Old Testament. But that was no problem, for throughout those Scriptures he found a rich and deep theology of the mission of God for the world and the nations, and he built his own mission theology on that foundation. Here are just a few examples:

Paul goes back to creation—and sees the mission of God as bringing the whole of the created order to liberation along with the children of God (Romans 8:18–27). Thus Paul proclaims the resurrection of the Messiah as the firstfruits of that new creation, and can affirm that when any person is “in Christ” that new creation has already begun (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Paul goes back to Abraham—and sees the mission of Israel as the people called into existence as the covenant people of God with the express purpose of being the agent of God blessing all nations (Galatians 3:6–8). So crucial is this foundation block of Paul’s theology that he speaks of God announcing the gospel “in advance” to Abraham—that is, the good news that God intends to bless the nations (and always had, from the very call of Abraham).

Paul goes back to the prophets—and sees God’s purpose for the gathering in of the nations to become part of Israel and of Israel itself coming to renewed faith and restoration, so that by this means all Israel will be saved, as Torah, Prophets, and Psalms all declared (Romans 9–11).

So for Paul, then, the clear message of the whole of the Scriptures was the salvation of the nations and the renewal of creation through the mission of God through Israel and Israel’s Messiah. His own personal mission as “apostle to the nations” was thus grounded in the Bible. For Paul, biblical theology was mission theology—the mission of God.

Though he was not present for Jesus’ Old Testament hermeneutics lecture on the day of resurrection, Paul clearly had his own way of reading the Scriptures radically transformed with the same double focus. Testifying before Festus, he declared that he was saying “nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen—that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles