In some circles, as we observed last month, it has become fashionable to maintain that the missionary task of the church is completed. The church was sent into the world, it is true, once upon a time. Then we got the job done. From now on, we may stay at home.
In other circles, it has become fashionable to maintain that everything is mission. The mission of the church, it is reckoned, has become everything we do: Sunday school and confirmation, adult education and worship, ushering, small group ministries, staff retreats, property improvement, bulletins and newsletters… everything.
Both of these fashions, in my estimation, do damage to our practice and understanding of Christian mission. In the first kind of circles, the missionary task seems simply obsolete. In the second kind of circles, the missionary task of the church becomes impossibly diffuse and generic. If everything is mission in general, nothing is mission specifically.
But the Great Commission of Jesus in Matthew 28 is very specific indeed.
This passage hinges on one clear, imperative verb: make disciples. The verb envisions a clear and specific target: all nations. The sequence is supported by a cluster of detailed participles, as we saw last month: “going about,” “teaching,” and “baptizing.” So here is the basic idea: “…as you are going about, make disciples of all nations, through teaching and baptizing….” (Matthew 28:19).
It is important to note that the word often translated “nations” has little to do with the geopolitical entities you see outlined on maps. The original is “ethne” – from which we derive words like “ethnic” and “ethnicity,” and so on. It means “ethnic groups,” literally. The word appears in Abraham’s mandate: “All the ethne shall be blessed in you” (Galatians 3:8; cf Genesis 12:1-3). It appears in John’s vision of the redeemed at the end of time: “a great multitude… from every ethne” (Revelation 7:9). These are not political nations; they are simply the peoples of the world.
It is estimated that there are approximately 12,000 “people groups” in the world today. Of this number, approximately half are fewer than 2% Christian, and have no viable church among them. They represent approximately 2 billion of our human family – about one third of the race.
The Great Commission of Jesus envisions making disciples of the people groups who are not yet made disciples – these 6,000 unreached peoples, specifically. It is far from completed: approximately half of this number are altogether unengaged – more than 3,000 people groups with no sustained missionary activity among them. Engaging the world’s remaining unreached represents the specific missionary task of the church.
Let me refer once again to Lutheran missiologist James Scherer:
“Churches draw up ‘mission statements’ which are often little more than declarations of organizational goals, e.g., how the church as an institution can survive, and even improve its performance. It is not unusual to hear that some particular activity of the church – e.g., its preaching, worship, education, or stewardship – has been designated as ‘the church’s mission.’ Such loose references to ‘mission’ as designating either the total work of the church or some particularly favored activity are not wrong, but they have the effect of blurring the issue.
“Mission as applied to the work of the church means the specific intention of bearing witness to the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ at the borderline between faith and unbelief…. The entire life of the church has a missionary purpose, to be sure. But the heart of mission is always making the gospel known where it would not be known without a special and costly act of boundary-crossing witness.” (Gospel, Church and Kingdom, pp.36,37)
Martin Luther himself described a similar perspective. “The message has gone out… but is still under way” (WA 10 III, 140, 6). “It is necessary always to proceed to those to whom no preaching has been done, in order that the number [of Christians] may become greater” (WA 16, 216, 1). God wants to bless, “not two or three nations but the whole world” (WA 31 I, 339, 18ff.).
God’s heart is set on “the whole world” – not two or three nations, but every people group in the world. Reaching the unreached among them is the specific target of Christ’s Great Commission; it remains, as always, the clear heart of our mission in the world.
Other posts in this The Task Remaining series: