Mission

Illustration of a Healthy Church

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment
Church on Mission

If our congregation were to be a church with the gospel, plus a group that enjoys being together in community, but we were not on mission to reach out to our neighbors and the Nations, for the sake of advancing Christ’s Kingdom, then we would just be another social club for people to attend.

Gospel + Community – Mission = Club

If we were to be a church with the gospel, and we were actively engaged in mission to our neighbors, but not together in community, then we would  be like a bunch of silos that aren’t truly showing off the body of Christ. We could not be considered like a city on a hill.

Gospel + Mission – Community = Para-Church

If we were to become a church actively on mission, serving together in community with one another, but we had no gospel, or we were careless about the truths of the gospel, we would then merely be just another non-profit organization.

Community + Mission – Gospel = Non Profit

To be the church, to be what Jesus calls us to be, what he created us to be, is a Gospel-centered, missional, gathering of people living life together, sharing one another’s joys and pains, serving together in various ways for the good of our city, expecting nothing in return, all for the glory of Jesus, the joy of being together, and love for our neighbors.

We must be a church that is gospel centered, on mission in community so that we can be the organism, the family, the church that Christ gave the Spirit to empower, and of which he said could not be stopped. (Matthew 16.13-18)

Gospel + Community + Mission = Church

What If We Omitted Gospel, Community, or Mission?

/ Dennis Griffith / 3 Comments

The refrain from an old song says: “Two out of three ain’t bad.”  But would this be true for a church, or a Christian, who incorporates 2 out of 3 of the core values: Gospel, Community, Mission?

Consider these thoughts, framed as a mathematical equation:

Gospel + Community – Mission

If we have a Gospel Community, without the mission or ‘sent’ aspect in our DNA, then we become a church that is all about ourselves.  We may love the gospel, and love that the good news has impacted our minds, and even desire to live that out with other people like us.  But living as ‘sent ones’ to our neighborhood seems too difficult.  When this happens a Christian ghetto surrounds the church, and an “us vs them” mentality is created.  This misses the entire point of the “go” in Christ’s great commission. (Matthew 28.17-21)

Such communities of believers are often very good at living as gospel families.  They take care of each other well: they provide for one anothers’ needs, and they draw very close to one another. But the lack of  engagement with the world, and and absence of multiplication,  is  vividly evident.  Sometimes such an inward focus is even worn as a badge of honor, since it may be believed by our isolation we are not being ‘polluted’ by the world.

Such communities usually have a heavy emphasis on bible studies, men’s groups, women’s group, children’s programs, etc.  The groups will usually have an “open invitation” to those on the outside. But because they don’t believe they are “sent” to their community, they rarely see disciples made of the un-churched people around them.   Numerical growth typically comes from like-minded people moving into their area, or through having children, or stealing the members from other churches that may offer fewer activities or which may be going through some turbulent times.  Rarely will they be faced with the general public pushing into the Kingdom, because they never engage general public with the gospel message outside the walls of their church building.

The overall goal is usually to prompt a great understanding of the Word and theology, but it is often intellectually gluttonous and missionally starved… because the reason for the Word and theology is to drive us to glorify God and show us our role in God’s redemptive drama.  If it’s not being used towards that end then it’s being misused.

Continue reading →

Can Mission Become an Idol?

/ Dennis Griffith / 7 Comments

“There is a first-rate commitment to a second-rate mission.” That is what Roger, a leader in global church planting, said as he looked at the rock climbers ascending a cliff in the Alps. Many of us called into ministry feel the same way. Rather than giving our lives to climbing a rock, building a business, or amassing a fortune, we are committed to what really matters; a first-rate mission – advancing the Gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ.

But what if we’re wrong?

Roger spent decades serving Christ by planting churches on four continents. But after reflecting on his labors for the kingdom of God, his confession surprised many of us. “I’ve given most of my energy to a second-rate mission as well,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. Church planting is important. But someday that mission will end. My first calling is to live with God. That must be my first commitment.”

What Roger articulated was a temptation that many of us in ministry face. To put it simply, many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God. Before exploring how this shift occurs in church leaders, let me take a step or two backwards and explain how I have seen this tendency within the Christian college students I’ve worked with in recent years.

Is impact everything?

The students I meet with often worry about what awaits them after graduation. This is a reasonable concern for any young adult, but for many of them the worry extends far beyond finding a job with benefits. They fixate, and some obsess, about “making a difference in the world.” They fear living lives of insignificance. They worry about not achieving the right things, or not enough of the right things. Behind all of this is the belief that their value is determined by what they achieve. I’ve learned that when a student asks me, “What should I do with my life?” what he or she really wants to know is, “How can I prove that I am valuable?”

When we come believe that our faith is primarily about what we can do for God in the world, it is like throwing gasoline on our fear of insignificance. The resulting fire may be presented to others as a godly ambition, a holy desire to see God’s mission advance–the kind of drive evident in the Apostle Paul’s life. But when these flames are fueled by fear they reveal none of the peace, joy, or love displayed by Paul and rooted in the Spirit. Instead the relentless drive to prove our worth can quickly become destructive.

Sometimes the people who fear insignificance the most are driven to accomplish the greatest things. As a result they are highly praised within Christian communities for their good works. This temporarily soothes their fear until the next goal can be achieved. But there is a dark side to this drivenness. Gordon MacDonald calls it “missionalism.” It is “the belief that the worth of one’s life is determined by the achievement of a grand objective.”

Continue reading →

Mission: The Fourth Mark of the Church

/ Dennis Griffith / 2 Comments

A number of years ago, when the well-known conference speaker Ralph L. Keiper was preaching at a missions conference in Deerfield Street, New Jersey, he told about a little girl who had come to see him early in his ministry. She was about eight years old.  She had been to the church’s daily vacation Bible school. And when she came into his study she asked, “Mr. Keiper, is it all right if I commit suicide?” 

 The young pastor was startled. But he had learned never to give a quick Yes or No answer to a child’s question without first discovering why the child is asking the question. So he countered,“Mary, why would you ever want to commit suicide?” 

 “Well,” Mary said, “it’s because of what I learned in Bible school this morning.” 

 Keiper wondered to himself, “What was this child told?” 

She said, “We were taught that heaven is a wonderful place – no fear, no crying, no fighting, just to be with the Lord. Won’t that be wonderful! We were taught that when we die we will be with Jesus. Did I hear it right, Mr. Keiper?” 

“Yes, you did, Mary. But why would you want to commit suicide?” 

“Well,” she said, “you have been in my home. You know my mother and daddy. They don’t know Jesus. Many times they are drunk. So we have to get ourselves up in the morning, get our own breakfast and go to school with dirty clothes. The children make fun of us, and when we come home again we hear fighting and things that make us afraid. Why couldn’t I commit suicide?” 

It is clear that Mary did not believe in theoretical theology; she believed in practical theology, and she was facing a very practical problem. What she was really asking is why are we in this world anyway. If this world is such a sin-cursed place and heaven is such a blessed place, why do we have to stay here? Why does God not take us to heaven immediately upon our conversion? Or, failing that, why do we not all take our own life and so speed up what is an inevitable ending anyway?

Keiper answered by saying, “Mary, there is only one reason in God’s world why we are here. And that is that through our testimony, by life and by word, we might have the privilege of bringing people to the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus.” He then indicated that, as Mary did this, it might be in the Lord’s providence that her parents would come to know the Lord as their Savior. Later, her mother did. 

Keiper’s story is important in light of the fourth mark of the church.

Up to this point we have been talking about those things which concern the church itself or which concern individual Christians personally. We have looked at joy, holiness and truth. But while these are important and undoubtedly attainable to a large degree in this life, nevertheless it does not take much thinking to figure out that all three of them would be more quickly attained if we could only be transported to heaven. Here we have joy; that is true. But what is this joy compared to the joy we will have when we see the source of our joy face to face? The Bible acknowledges this when it speaks of the blessedness of the redeemed saints, from whose eyes all tears shall be wiped away (Rev. 7:17; 21:4). Again, in this world we undoubtedly know a degree of sanctification. But what of that day when we shall be completely like him (1 John 3:2)? Or again, here we are able to assimilate some aspects of God’s truth and know truly. But in the day of our final redemption we shall know fully. “Now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then, face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). If this is true, why should we not go to heaven immediately? 

The answer is in the mark of the church to which we come now. For the church is not only to look inward and find joy, to look Christ-ward and find sanctification, to look to the Scriptures and find truth. The church is also to look outward to the world and there find the object of her God-given mission. 

The word “mission” comes from the Latin verb mitto, mittere, misi, missum, which means “to send” or “dispatch.” A mission is a sending forth. “But to whom is the church sent? Where are we sent as Christian missionaries?” The answer is, into the world. Jesus says quite clearly, “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world” (v. 18). 

Here is why the evangelical church in the U.S. is not as much of a missionary church as it claims to be. It is not that the evangelical church does not support foreign missions. Rather it lies at the point of the evangelicals’ personal withdrawal from the culture. Many seem afraid of their culture. Hence, they try to keep as far from the world as possible lest they be contaminated or polluted by it. Thus they have developed their own subculture. As some Bible teachers have pointed out, it is possible, for example, to be born of Christian parents, grow up in that Christian family, have Christian friends, go to Christian schools and colleges, read Christian books, attend a Christian country club (known as a church), watch Christian movies, get Christian employment, be attended by a Christian doctor, and finally, one may suppose, die and be buried by a Christian undertaker on holy ground. But this is certainly not what Jesus meant when he spoke of his followers being “in the world.” 

What does it mean to be in the world as a Christian? It does not mean to be like the world; the marks of the church are to make the church different. It does not mean that we are to abandon Christian fellowship or our other basic Christian orientations. All it means is that we are to know non-Christians, befriend them, and enter into their own lives in such a way that we begin to infect them with the gospel, rather than their infecting us with their worldliness, which is the wrong way around. 

The second thing the text talks about is the character of the ones who are to conduct this mission. The point here is that we are to be as Christ in the world. This is made clear both in verse 18 and 19, for Jesus compares the disciples to himself both in the area of his having been sent into the world by the Father and of his being sanctified or set apart totally to that work. He says, “As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” In other words, we are to be in our mission as Jesus was in his mission. We are to be like the One whom we are presenting. 

Perhaps you are saying, “I do not know if I am like Jesus or not. In what areas should I be like him?” Obviously we are to be like him in every way. In other words; as his life was characterized by joy, so is our life to be characterized by joy. As he was sanctified, so are we to be sanctified. As he was characterized by truth, so are we to be. 

We are also to be like the Lord Jesus Christ in our unity. The world is fractured in a million ways. It is the logical outcome of the work of Satan, one of whose most revealing names is the disrupter (diabolos). If Christians would win the world, they must show a genuine unity which is in itself desirable and winsome and which at the same time points to the great unity within the Godhead, which is its source. 

Finally, the church must be marked by love, if it is to be as Christ in the world. Jesus loved the world; he really did. It was out of love for it that he died. Consequently, if we would win the world, we must love the world too – not the world’s system or sin, of course, but rather those who are in it. 

Once my family was eating in a restaurant, and my youngest daughter knocked over her glass of coke for about the thousandth time. I was visibly annoyed, as I always am (since we never seem to get through a meal without the identical accident). But we cleaned up and shortly after that left the restaurant. My daughter walked along in silence for awhile; but then she said, “You really hate it when we spill our cokes, don’t you?” I replied that I certainly did. She looked serious, but then she brightened up as if a particularly happy thought had just passed through her mind. She threw her arms around me in a big hug and added, “But you love me!” 

She knew the difference between love of the sinner and hatred of sin. And so will we if we look to Jesus. We must be like him in love, knowing that if we are, the world will see it and be drawn to him.  

********

This is the fourth in a series of six posts by Dr James M. Boice concerning the characteristics of a healthy church.