In the end, what do I think about mission?

We've been reading Ecclesiastes with the kids at breakfast time recently, and some of the Teacher's closing words seemed appropriate as a title for my final (possibly not final...) post on The Mission of God. Just before those words, there is another well known line:

'Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.'

So upbeat... but the Teacher was not wrong. I don't really want to add to the many books, nor to your weariness! You have to wonder though, if you're being honest, whether (a) it was worth me reading the book (b) it was worth me (rapidly) writing these posts (c) it was worth you reading them and (d) whether The Mission of God was worth being written! (Not because it's a bad book, but because it's a book!)

Anyway, before I dive too far down a rabbit hole of introspection, here are some brief points as to why I think it was worth reading the book.

1. God's mission really matters. Chris Wright is right when he says the Bible is a book about mission, and that a missional theology of the Bible is perhaps a better way to think about it rather than a biblical theology of mission. 

2. God gets to define what mission is about - his mission, our mission, the mission of the church - whatever angle you want to take on it, he defines it. We are not at liberty to do that.

3. There is lots of talk but also lots of confusion about what mission is today. I think some or perhaps a lot of that talk is off the mark.

Here's my main point (bluntly, because I don't want to write a book): 

God's mission is to redeem for himself a people - the church across all ages and in all nations. 

It's been my view for a while, and it's firmer now, and it's unapologetically narrow and specific. God's mission is to build his church. I also think it would be ok to say that the mission of the church is to build the church.

It's so limited that it needs unpacking - because I imagine that many people would instinctively think it is too narrow, too limited, too reductionistic, too truncated, and surely God's mission and the church's mission is way more multi-faceted than that tiny sliver of activity.

I want to suggest that this narrowly-defined, seemingly-limited view of mission actually opens up the widest sphere of activity in the world, but in a way that makes sense of what God himself has revealed about his people in his world, and makes action and activity clear and focused, not to mention liberating.

The church is built by the gospel word being proclaimed, people believing that word and thus becoming part of his people.

This redeemed people is to live in the world in the way God wants, doing good in all ways possible, until the Lord returns and the new creation is revealed.

Let me state it another way. 

I think we can - and perhaps should - understand God's mission as something that God wants his church, his redeemed people, to set out to do. Other things will and must happen as a result of that (see in a moment), but I am sure that the big picture of the Bible takes us clearly in one direction - one mission - with a myriad of results.

Let me put it still another way.

This whole subject touches on what has become a debate about a spectrum, it seems to me. At one end of the spectrum - the right hand extreme, let's say! - you have the position which says that the only thing that matters is winning souls for heaven, therefore the only mission that really counts as God's is evangelism. At the other end, the left hand end, you have the position that says that God cares about all things and is not only interesting in populating heaven - all creation awaits redemption - therefore mission is about bringing good news to all things. A holistic gospel for a holistic mission - and this is where Chris Wright's framework takes him. That's not to say his position is extreme - it really isn't. I'm not touching on the 'extreme left', which says evangelism isn't part of mission because that's clearly ridiculous and no one who takes the Bible remotely seriously will say that.

The 'traditional' view affirms the centrality, or the primacy, or the urgency of evangelism because forgiveness from sin is the main need of all people and so what God wants his people to be mostly, or primarily, or even entirely about is telling people about Jesus.

This traditional view has been displaced from much of mainstream evangelicalism in recent decades - and I must say for good reason. It is a limited view of life, ministry and the world that says that all God is interested in when the rubber hits the road is people being converted. As our creator with the stated aim of the redemption of all creation, it's clearly nonsense to say that he is only interested in saving souls. 

However, it is quite another thing to extrapolate from that that our mission, or the church's mission, or God's mission, means all these other things - pursuit of social justice, caring for creation, economic and psychological and emotional well-being, environmental activism and so on. 

The problem in saying that, and the problem with raising a dissenting voice - in my limited experience - is that it sounds like you're saying God doesn't care about those things, and the good news is merely forgiveness from sin and a ticket to heaven.

The problem with holding the traditional view - or at least the caricature of it sketched here - is that clearly evangelism can't be the only thing that counts. You don't have to be the world's most attentive Bible reader to know that God obviously cares about much more than me just telling my friends and neighbours and random passers by the good news, however faithfully and lovingly I tell it. So how do we decide where on the spectrum we ought to stand?

How about this for a solution: there is no spectrum.

We aren't in the position of having to decide how important or central any given issue is, or to assign relative amounts of time or priority or importance to various issues. I am convinced that Scripture gives us the way to decide what's most important, and that allows us to work out how much time or energy or money or teaching or staff or publicity or whatever we give to any activity, either as churches or as individuals.

There is no spectrum.

There is, if you like, the single, unique task given to the church because it is the single, unique task to which God is committed. That task is the task of building the church. This task operates from a plane on its own. There is no other item on the agenda.

Below this plane there are many, many other things which are all good and important and essential things to be doing. But none of them belong on the same plane as the one, over-arching, under-girding, all-encompassing aim. However, this one task, given to the church, to build the church, ought to have the most wide-ranging results possible.

In his letter to Titus, Paul writes about the work on Crete. It's only a small letter to a small church in one small part of the Mediterranean, but it distills this huge subject quite nicely I think. (I noted in one of my brief posts that Wright did not mention the part of Titus that I'm about to refer to). 

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

In 2:11-14 we see a summary of the gospel (which, by the way, is most certainly a declaration of good news that is to be communicated verbally). But what does this good news do? It saves people for God. This verse explicitly shows God's plan. Why the gospel? Why the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus? To redeem a people for himself. For what purpose? To do good. All kinds of good.

In Ephesians 3 there's a little phrase tucked away that also gives us a big paradigmatic view of God's mission: 'so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known...'
It's the church that, through being in Christ, is the focus or the epicentre of God's eternal plan for the cosmos.

This seems to me to make sense of the big picture of the whole Bible. God begins with a man, and then a couple. He calls a people in Abram out of all the nations, he redeems that people out of the nation of Egypt and names them as his own holy people, and in Christ he redeems his people from all nations, with the same priestly calling among all the nations.

This work all has its climax and fulfilment and achievement in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the one man, the one faithful man Jesus, in whom all who trust him find their place in God's people, and because of whom and in front of whom will one day all joyfully bow. 

It is God's mission from first to last page of all our Bibles to be the God of his people. And the proclaimed good news is the way that people comes into being. And I suggest that this is the bottom line of God's mission: that the good news about Jesus is proclaimed by the church, in order to build the church.

However, that is not the end of the story, because the church is created in order to live a certain way - as Titus is told: to be zealous for good works. Or in Ephesians terms, to walk as children of light, or walk in a worthy manner. Or in Mosaic terms, to live out the terms of the covenant. Or in a way the prophets might say, to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly.

So think about this issue at the level of activity. Those who have a more holistic mission paradigm in mind would say that many activities that Christians must be committed to belong in the category of fulfilling God's mission. I suggest that these activites belong in a category of ...

[WHAT WAS I GOING TO SAY????] Maybe along the lines "activities that the church established BY God's mission should be actively pursuing?