WHAT IS OUR MISSION? (1)

Before The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren held conferences on The Purpose Driven Church, one of which I attended in Houston. There is often confusion about our mission. What are we about – our purpose? What is our message? When I arrived at the Chapel in 2000 I asked the Governing Board what was the mission of the Chapel. We worked on developing a mission statement and later a vision statement. Every organization needs to know its mission otherwise it flails around doing whatever the latest need seems to be. If you try to do everything you end up accomplishing nothing. John Stott maintained that

“We are neither clear nor sure what we ought to speak. We say nothing because we have nothing to say. We lack either a thorough knowledge of the Gospel or a conviction about its truth or both. This has never been more apparent than it is today. Theological indecision is an obvious feature of contemporary Christendom. The chief cause of this dilemma is the rapidity with which modern life is changing.”

What is the human condition and the Gospel solution? What is the Church for?

“The gospel is about Christ, who came to save us. And his salvation is a comprehensive deliverance from all sin. It begins with our forgiveness and our reconciliation with God. It continues with our progressive liberation from the down-drag of indwelling sin and with our transformation into the image of Christ. It will be consummated at Christ’s return when we are given new bodies in a new world, from which all sin has been forever excluded. It is tragic beyond words that this high and holy purpose of God to save men through Christ has been frequently diluted by the Church. Instead of the faithful proclamation of this good news, evangelism becomes a pathetic exhortation to bad men to be good and (more often) supposedly good men to be better, or an attempt to induce people to come to church to worship.”

World mission is a central feature of the historical purpose of God according to Scripture and a responsibility which God lays upon all his people. The Old Testament basis for mission was to be found in the call to Abraham (Gen.11:31-12:4). God made a promise to bless Abraham, to make him a great nation, to make his name great, to bless him so that he would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The whole of God’s purpose is encapsulated in this promise. The context of this promise is that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. Therefore, his call to Abraham is a universal call, not confined to Israel. He is the one God, not a tribal god. This one God made all people. Yet the first chapters of Genesis chronicles moral deterioration, darkness and dispersal. Society steadily disintegrated. Yet God did not abandon the human beings he made in his own likeness. He chose Abraham to call people back to himself.

He promised that Abraham (‘father of a multitude’) would become the father of a multitude of nations. His descendants would become as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. He promised that he would be given a new homeland in a new country. He promised that his blessing would spill over upon all humanity. He established an everlasting covenant with Abraham, signified by circumcision. This promise was fulfilled in the life of the nation of Israel, in Christ and his church, and ultimately it would be fulfilled in the new heaven and the new earth (Hebrews 11:12). Matthew traces the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ to Abraham. His spiritual descendants would inherit the promise (Matt. 8:11-12). Peter applied the promise to all who would repent and believe in Jesus (Acts 3:25-26). Paul saw the fulfillment in terms of the Gentiles (Rom.9:6-7). In Romans 4 he claimed that neither physical descent from Abraham, nor physical circumcision as a Jew, makes a person a true child of Abraham, but rather faith (Galatians 3:6-9). The blessing is that of salvation. “If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Gal.3:29). The final fulfillment is the vision in Revelation of ‘the great multitude which no man can number’ before the throne of God (Rev. 7:9ff.). They are countless as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, composed of people from every nation.

God is the God of history. He is working out in time a plan in which Jesus Christ as the seed of Abraham is the key figure. We, if we are Christ’s disciples, are Abraham’s descendants and are beneficiaries of the promise made to Abraham. God is the God of blessing. God is the God of mercy who saves not a few people but a great multitude. God is the God of mission who blesses the world through Abraham’s seed by faith. He is the God of all the families of the earth whatever color or culture. That is the mission to which he calls us also.

(Ted Schroder, John Stott: A Summary of his teaching, pp.92-94)