What’s NOT the Mission of the Church? 4

I’ve been analyzing the biblical and theological arguments in Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s new book on the mission of the church What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission. Their thesis is the church’s mission is singularly proclamation and worship. As they stated:

The mission of the church is to go into the world and make disciples by declaring the gospel of Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit and gathering these disciples into churches, that they might worship the Lord and obey his commands now and in eternity to the glory of God the Father (62, emphasis mine).

The church’s mission in the world, according to DeYoung and Gilbert, has nothing essentially to do with the enactment of justice, mercy, truth and faithfulness in the world. While these may be outcomes from individual disciples as they scatter into the world outside the church, these activities, while good, are not central to the church’s commission in the world. The church’s mission is not to “change the world” or to “Transform the city” (129-30). The desire is commendable, but not only is it overly optimistic, but more than that, it represents at best a peripheral concern for the church.

It comes as no surprise, but I take a different view of things. And while I hold much in agreement, I think the points of disagreement are extremely significant. Primarily what I think is wrong with this book is what DeYoung and Gilbert deny. If it was simply a matter of bringing the proverbial pendulum back to center, in light of recent attempts to make the mission of the church simply faithful presence, I’m all for that. I agree that we need to reaffirm the necessity of proclamation in the church’s witness in the world. But this book goes well beyond that by attempting to lay out a biblical vision for a church mission that is concrete-less, intangible. A church that only secondarily or accidentally transforms the world within which it exists.

That kind of a mission may be something, but it is NOT the biblical mission of the church.

In my view, Jesus sent his disciples (and by extension the post-resurrection disciples) on mission to perform a number of actions in the world. Jesus tells his disciples:

As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near (“so repent” is implied [4:17]).” Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give. (Matt 10:7-8).

There are three observations to make here.

1) Notice that the list is not in an order of priority or hierarchy. The proclaiming activity in this list is coordinate with the activities of healing, raising, driving, and giving. Central to the mission of followers of Jesus are proclaiming task and a set of procuring tasks.

2. This dual task of mission (to announce and actualize) is consistent with the activities of the early apostles and disciples. While it is not explicitly stated in Matthew 28:19-20, or the other commissioning statements of John 20 or Acts 1, this dual task of mission is implied and carried out.

3. Furthermore it is not justifiable to appeal to Paul’s missionary efforts for support of a “proclaim” only mission. This argument which I’ve heard recently goes something like this: After the resurrection and ascension and after the so-called “birth” of the church (Acts 2) the mission of the disciples changed from that of Jesus as confirmed by the Acts. In Luke’s presentation of Paul’s missionary efforts in the Roman world we can see that he’s not interested in tasks related to faithful presence. He doesn’t concern himself with the tasks of justice, mercy and truth and faithfulness in the cities he visits. His only concern is the gospeling of pagan Gentiles and his Jewish compatriots. Therefore, as the argument goes, the church’s mission is to be more like Paul’s than like Jesus’.

This argument is suspect for two reasons. First, it is hermeneutically naïve and, second, there is counter evidence that doesn’t fit this model.

To take this view is to read the Bible flatly. Such a view doesn’t take into account Paul’s unique task within the wider church’s mission. Paul is not the primary model for the church’s work in the world. He was the apostle to the Gentiles (Gal 2) and was called uniquely to fulfill that particular role. Paul describes his role in 2 Corinthians 2—3 comparing his New Covenant ministry to Moses’ Old Covenant ministry. Our model for church mission, if we can find such a thing in Acts and Paul’s letters, should not be Paul, but the communities Paul left behind.

Nevertheless, Acts does in fact present Paul conducting the dual-task mission. Two examples will suffice to make the point. In Lystra and Derbe on Paul’s first missionary journey, Paul heals a lame man who had been listening to his gospeling. When hailed Roman gods Zeus and Hermes Paul and Barnabas  say:

We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heavesn and the earth and the sea and everything in them (Acts 14:15)

Then again Paul’s three-year stent in Ephesus recorded in Acts 19 provides another example. Here besides “arguing persuasively in the synagogue” and teaching two years in the lecture hall of Tyrannus with the result that “all of the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord”, Paul performed, rather God through Paul, “extraordinary miracles” of healing and casting out demons (19:8-10).

From these examples, it seems Paul too conducted the same dual-task mission which Jesus gave to the disciples. I might add, lest someone wrongly assume, Luke does not present these miraculous deeds simply as authenticating signs, validating Paul’s message. While they would have no doubt accomplished this, these acts of mercy and justice were part of his mission.

Another place where one might find this dual-task mission implied is in Galatians 2:10. The so-called pillars, James, Cephas, and John, have recognized the task entrusted to Paul to be an apostle to the Gentiles and have extended to he and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship in the gospel mission. The only other thing they asked of Paul was “that we should continue to remember the poor”. A request, Paul adds, was “the very thing I had been eager to do all along”. What should we make of this reference to the poor? Since it does not seem to be a metaphor describing the “spiritually poor”, it must be a reference to real poor people. But if Paul was not pursuing the dual-task mission what do poor people that have to do with his mission?

Finally, I want to point to one piece of evidence that may be overlooked as an expression of the church’s mission in the world; the household codes in Ephesians and Colossians. One relevant aspect that I want to highlight is the way Paul’s exhortations in these code lists revolutionize the societal structures. It is worth remembering that the ancient household and the ecclesia overlapped and essentially one and the same social space in the early decades of Christianity. The church was not a separate social space segmented from the wider society in the way it is in our Western social and political contemporary context. The authority of the Empire Augustus established reached even into household. Augustus legislated the roles within the household and defined familial decorum. In Paul’s letters the structures are maintained, but the relationships within these structures have been transformed. Paul’s Gentile believing communities were transforming the household of the Roman Empire.

I have attempted to plot out what I think the mission of the church is which consists in the dual task of announcing and actualizing the kingdom of God. In the next post, I will reflect on DeYoung and Gilbert’s understanding of the Kingdom of God, which as it turns out is the most definitive element in their biblical vision of the mission of the church.