Global Mission

The Responsibility of the Church

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Lesslie Newbigin, in his book The Reunion of the Church, challenged the Church to be on mission:

“The responsibility of the church is to declare to each generation what is the faith… This is always a fresh task in every generation… No verbal statement can be produced which relieves the Church of the responsibility continually to re-think and re-state its message. No appeal to creeds and confessions can alter the fact that the Church has to state in every new generation how it interprets the historic faith, and how it relates it to the new thought and experience of its time… Nothing can remove from the Church the responsibility for stating now what is the faith. It belongs to the essence of a living church that it should be able and willing to do so.”

NOTE: Those unfamiliar with Newbigin may appreciate this article by Bruce Ashford: How A Man Named Lesslie Changed the Way I Think.

Mission @ the Heart of God

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

There are the five parts of the Bible:

  • The God of the Old Testament is a missionary God, calling one family in order to bless all the families of the earth.
  • The Christ of the Gospels is a missionary Christ; he sent the church out to witness.
  • The Spirit of the Acts is a missionary Spirit; he drove the church out from Jerusalem to Rome.
  • The Church of the epistles is a missionary Church, a worldwide community with a worldwide vocation.
  • The end of the Revelation is a missionary End, a countless throng from every nation.

So I think we have to say the religion of the Bible is a missionary religion. The evidence is overwhelming and irrefutable.

Mission cannot be regarded as a regrettable lapse from tolerance or decency. Mission cannot be regarded as the hobby of a few fanatical eccentrics in the church. Mission lies at the heart of God and therefore at the very heart of the church. A church without mission is no longer a church. It is contradicting an essential part of its identity. The church is mission.

~ John R. W. Stott, from Authentic Christianity