Challenging Times

So why should we make mission the organising principle of the Church?

The first, most important, most central reason Mike Frost gives is that God himself is a missionary.

The Father sends his Son to be the saviour of the world (1 John 4:14).

The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit into the World.

And then the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, sends us into the world. So Jesus can say (in one of the most important missional texts in the Bible) ‘In the same way as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.’ (John 20:21)

The point is that mission isn’t some kind of ‘bolt-on’ activity that gets added to God. Mission defines God’s character. If this wasn’t so, there wouldn’t be any hope for any of us. If you could somehow take mission out of God, you wouldn’t be left with the same God, but doing one less thing. You’d be left without God at all, in terms of how the Bible accounts for God.

There’s a whole lot more that I could say about this. Fortunately, other people have already said it better than I could.

One of those other people is Chris Wright, in his massive book ‘The Mission of God.’ The cover blurb says:

‘Most Christians would agree that the Bible provides a basis for mission. Chris Wright believes that there is actually a missional basis for the whole Bible – it is generated by, and is all about, God’s mission.’

‘In order to understand the Bible, we need an interpretative perspective that is in tune with this great missional theme. We need to see the ‘big picture’ of God’s mission and how all parts of Scripture fit into its grand narrative.’

OK. It’s more than five hundred pages long, which will put some people off reading it. Still, if you’re involved in any kind of Bible teaching ministry, you need to read this book.

Order from the UK

Order from the USA

If you really don’t have the time or inclination to read ‘The Mission of God,’ there’s a Grove booklet by Chris Wright that covers the same ground – and it’s only 28 pages long.

‘We may be accumstomed to citing Bible texts which show how important mission is. But do we realise that the Bible itself is a phenomenon of mission?’

‘Chris Wright’s fascinating study puts much traditional thinking about the Bible and mission on its head…’

Go here to buy ‘Truth With a Mission’ (also available as an e-book)

Mike Frost’s visit to the UK is over. In the coming months and years, I’m going to spend quite a bit of time digesting what he said, and some of that digesting will happen right here on this blog.

Probably the most important single idea he talked about is the ‘organising principle’ of the Church.

If you ask ‘What is the Church for?’ most Protestant / Evangelical / Charismatic Christians will come up with some kind of list of four or five or six functions that the Church must fulfill. Mike’s list includes:

• Worship
• Fellowship / community (koinonia)
• Discipleship / formation
• Mission

Mike then implies that in a less-than-ideal world, one of these functions is always likely to become the ‘organising principle’ which governs the others. It doesn’t mean that this is more important than the others, or that we leave out the others – just that we organise around one function.

So during the long dark night of Christendom, worship became the organising principle – worship seen mainly not in terms of the whole of our lives, but in terms of our gathering together to pray and praise God.

Thus the main way we ‘do’ community in a church where worship is the organising principle is by gathering together in our worship services.

The main way we ‘do’ formation is for people to sit in worship services and listen to sermons.

And the main way we ‘do’ mission or evangelism is by inviting people into our worship services (perhaps slightly re-configured as an evangelistic service, but still – a service, nonetheless).

OK, I know these are sweeping generalisations. Most churches do all kinds of home group and short-course stuff to help people grow as Christians. And we do Alpha or Christianity Explored for evangelism. And we have fellowship informally over tea or coffee after the service as well as in the service. Still, I think Mike has got hold of something valid and important about this organising principle thing.

And he poses the question: what would it look like if we made mission, rather than worship, our organising principle?

… If we worshipped in the context of being sent out on mission?

… If we did our spiritual formation through ‘on the job training’ of those sent out in mission?

… If our fellowship grew out of sharing a common task in mission?

I find this quite challenging.

Of course, one question is why mission should be the organising principle. I’ll come back to that.

I also think there are some weaknesses in terms of the whole ‘organising principle’ idea. I’ll come back to those too.

Meanwhile, it’s food for thought…

When someone goes to work in a foreign country as a messenger for Christ and his Church, we understand that there are certain things they have to do if they are to be effective (learn the language, live with the people, understand the culture). Yet somehow, we take it for granted that the same rules don’t apply to us ‘back home.’ Here, we think we can get away with expecting people to come in to us and hear the message on our terms. Changing this default way of thinking is the biggest challenge that the Church in the UK must face if it is going to survive. Eddie recently blogged a talk by one of his friends in Switzerland about this:

When I returned from the field to live in Switzerland I was perplexed at the lack of relevance of the Church in peoples’ lives. I really felt we were on the sidelines, not on the pitch in the midst of the game. It took me about 7 years to start a journey towards an understanding of where we were at. And it took even longer, another 5 years, to become conscious of the fact that what I had as my ideal for the people we worked among on the field, I did not practise back in Europe (Switzerland), and as far as I could see, neither did the Church. Somehow in Europe we had a model of “evangelism” (making a foray into the world to leave it with a message, then retreating back into the safety of Church), whereas for missionary work we had a model of incarnation.

This whole post is worth reading. Go here for more.

I’ve just received a review copy of the New Living Translation Study Bible – my thanks to Mark at Tyndale House Publishers for this.

Unfortunately, it’s arrived at the start of an extremely busy ten days, with Mike Frost’s visit to the UK beginning with a conference in Southampton that kicks off this evening. So it may be a while before I get round to reviewing it in detail.

My initial impressions are positive: nearly two and a half thousand pages, with a wide range of book introductions, background articles, maps and verse-by-verse notes. I’m already fairly sure that its pages will become well-worn in the next few years.

And at a UK price of just under £25, this looks like excellent value for money.

But for me, one of the biggest up-sides isn’t the Study Bible itself at all: it’s the online subscription that comes with it. This lets you access the NLT Study Bible online, anywhere, anytime.