The Church and World Mission

By Andy Martin

‘Eighteen mission agencies – including four of the world’s largest – have challenged local churches to partner with them in “Finishing the Task”, a strategy to nurture church-planting movements among unreached people groups.’ So begins an article in a leading missions magazine which has just landed on my desk. (Mission Frontiers, January–February 2006, p14).

Whilst we would completely agree with the cause, church planting among the unreached, why is it that churches need recruiting by para-church organisations to the very task God has given the church to do? The straight-forward answer is that down through history world mission has become separated from the local church. The reasons for this are varied and range from misunderstanding the role of the church in God’s global purpose to arguments that the complexities of world mission restrict the involvement of the local church.

However, God’s purpose is clear in Scripture that all the peoples of the earth are to be reached – through His people, the church.

A family to reach all families
In Genesis 12 God gives Abraham an amazing promise – huge in its size and scope. God says that not only will He make Abraham into a great nation but all peoples on earth will be blessed through him. ‘All peoples’ is literally ‘all families’; God was choosing a family to reach all the families of the earth.

Then much later, when Abraham’s descendants have become a nation, Israel, God reminds them of this purpose. In Isaiah 2 He says that in the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will become chief among the mountains and the nations will stream to it. As the New Testament makes clear the ‘last days’ is the Biblical term for the time between Jesus’ ascension and his second coming. So Isaiah’s prophecy applies to the time in which we live and promises that all the nations will come to the Lord’s temple, which is now the church (Eph. 2:19-22).

The outworking of these promises is now the task of the church today. It is estimated that there are over 13,000 distinct people groups in the world and of these at least 5,500 remain unreached, that is without a reproducing church. ‘Unreachedness is not defined on the basis of whether there are any Christians or not, or whether there are any missionaries working among them or not. It is defined on the basis of whether or not in that culture there is a viable, culturally relevant, witnessing church movement’ (Unreached People: What, Where and Why, Ralph D. Winter. An article in New Frontiers in Mission, P. Sookhdeo (ed.) Paternoster, 1987, p146 and 149).

The church, God’s mission agency
The very nature of each local church is to be mission into all the world. This can be clearly seen in the formative stages of God’s new community, the church, with Jesus and his disciples.

Either side of his crucifixion and resurrection Jesus uses a phrase that defines the church as a sent community; he says he is sending the disciples into the world as the Father has sent him. Here, right at the start of the church, its purpose on the earth is defined – mission. The promises in the Old Testament of the nations coming are fulfilled as the church is sent to the nations.

As Darrel Guder says ‘…mission is not just a program of the church. It defines the church as God’s sent people. Either we are defined by mission, or we reduce the scope of the gospel and the mandate of the church’ (Missional Church, Darrell L Guder, Eerdmans).

What is more, this mission is to be cross-cultural. Each local church should seek to fulfil Jesus’ commission to the disciples in Acts 1:8. First we are to go to Jerusalem, the equivalent of our own town or city, then to Judea, the surrounding region where more churches can be planted. Then we are to go to Samaria, representing those who are close geographically but different culturally. ‘The ends of the earth’ is sending people to the nations.

The outworking of the cross
But it is not only Jesus’ teaching that shows us the nature of the church is to be missional. Paul made sure that mission was part of the foundation of the churches he planted. In Ephesians 3:10 Paul says, ‘it is God’s intent to display his manifold wisdom through the church’. The context of this passage is mission. Paul is primarily writing about the outworking of what God accomplished on the cross through Christ among the gentiles, that is that through faith they are now included in the promises of God. The word used for gentiles is the same word as nations; in other words all the peoples of the earth are included.

We need to be careful that we don’t interpret this passage entirely as something that has already happened. Jesus’ work on the cross is complete but all the peoples of the earth are yet to be brought into the promises of God. This is one of the most mission-focussed passages of the New Testament but it is often taught as something that has already been accomplished. That was not Paul’s intent. He wanted local churches to understand not only the glory of Jesus’ death and resurrection but also the greatness of the task of that glory being worked out in the nations.

Obviously when Paul writes about the church he is referring to the whole body of Christ. But he is writing to a local church about God’s purpose for them and he expected them to hear it in this way. So we could read, ‘God’s intent is that through the church (local communities of His Spirit-filled people sent into the world to all peoples) His multi-faceted wisdom is displayed to the principalities and powers.’

God does not need a back-up plan. His purpose has always been that the good news of the kingdom will be taken to the ends of the earth by His church.

Apostolic ministry
New Testament mission is apostolic both in the sense that we are all sent and that it is led by men who are apostles called and gifted by God. It is in this area that there is much confusion today with people comparing ‘missionary work’ with the ministry of Paul. They argue that he and his team were separate from the local church, thus justifying the need for separate organisations today to do the work Paul did. However, with a correct understanding of the role of apostles and their relationship to the local church this confusion soon becomes clear.

In Acts 13, during a prayer meeting, the Holy Spirit tells the church at Antioch to set apart Saul and Barnabas to the work to which God had called them. So after further prayer and fasting they are sent. They travel, preach the gospel, heal the sick, plant churches, endure persecution and return to Antioch to report. Then they travel again, first visiting some of the church plants to appoint elders, then move on and plant more churches. This was the work they were set apart for, apostolic ministry.

Paul and Barnabas had an ‘apostolic call’ as distinct from a ‘missionary call’. We believe that every believer is ‘on mission’ as part of a missional local church, but clearly not every believer is called to be an apostle (Eph. 4:11).

This ‘apostolic call’ always involved others. Paul worked with a team and it involved local churches, but nowhere did it involve setting up a separate organisation to do this work.

Apostolic ministry and local churches
What we do see are more and more churches getting caught up in his mission. He writes to the church in Rome asking that when he visits they assist him on his way to Spain. The word used for ‘assist’ means financial and practical help (Rom. 15:24). The church in Philippi helped Paul financially in his mission to Thessalonica (Phil. 4:14-16). Paul also invited people from the churches he served to join his team; thus more people were recruited to church plant among the unreached.

Paul also planted churches with a view to them joining him in reaching the regions beyond them (2 Cor. 10:15-16).

So the nations are reached not by churches in isolation but rather by churches joined relationally to apostolic ministry. That is what we are endeavouring to be, with God’s help, a worldwide family of churches joined relationally to apostolic ministry on a mission together to plant churches all over the world.

It is important to underline that mission in the New Testament meant reaching the unreached by planting churches. There is much that goes under the name of mission today; care for the poor, medical care, literature distribution etc, but does not include church planting. Although many of these ventures are doing good work it is contradictory to the book of Acts to talk about mission separately from church planting. ‘The Christian message is not a disembodied piece of information that just needs to be circulated in massive campaigns, through print, film, video or broadcast media. It is the good news embodied and shared in the changed lives of individuals and communities that constitutes authentic witness’ (The Message of Mission, Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra, IVP).

Go…with the church
People don’t need to join another organisation to go on cross-cultural mission; they can go with the church.

As in the New Testament we are working this out in two main ways. First, apostolic spheres are taking initiatives to reach the unreached near to them. For example from Kenya Edward Buria is now working amongst the Karamojong people of Northern Uganda. Second, there are numbers of church planting teams pioneering among the unreached. We currently have teams working in Central Asia, Middle East, Far East, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa.

Most of these teams consist of people who have been trained and sent by their local church to another nation and are being overseen by apostolic ministry as they seek to plant a church in that culture. The style of the church will reflect local culture but the foundational values will reflect the apostolic input.

In some cases the work has advanced to a point where indigenous leadership is now being established and the members of the church planting team are either adjusting their own role accordingly or looking to move to another place and plant again. In time some of these indigenous leaders will emerge with apostolic gifting themselves and form their own church planting teams. Some will plant churches among their own people and some will go to another nation.

What about mission agencies?
We want to recognise all the gifts in the body of Christ and benefit from those who have many years’ experience of working cross-culturally. To that end we have built good working relationships with some agencies. This has been particularly helpful in getting into a new nation or for team members to gain experience and training in a particular area. A number of our teams are partnerships with agencies and we have greatly valued their input and help. The agencies involved have welcomed the opportunity to work together, recognising our church planting experience and understanding that we are responsible apostolically for laying the foundation as the church is planted.

In certain specialised situations we recognise that some agencies carry out work that local churches are unable to do and they do so in support of the church, Wycliffe Bible Translators for example.

The remaining task
Although I have listed a number of locations where we are working among unreached people we have only just begun. We need to see many more church planting teams raised up and sent not just from one or two countries but from the nations to the nations. We will need to overcome challenges of resources, both personnel and financial, and challenges of culture, language learning and persecution.

But we can take confidence and encouragement that the book of Acts begins with 120 believers in an upper room in Jerusalem and finishes with the gospel going to Africa, Europe and Asia, overcoming geographical, racial, linguistic, religious, cultural and social barriers.

The church is responsible for world mission
The unreached peoples of the world will be reached through church planting and churches are planted by apostolic ministry supported by local churches that send people, pray and give. As David Devenish says, ‘This, then, is why the church is in the world. It is here for mission, a mission to bring about the rule of God in the world, to start communities of God’s people from all backgrounds in every people group, to serve the world through social action and in their everyday employment, and to extend this to every people group on earth’ (What On Earth Is The Church For?, David Devenish, Authentic).

Recommended book:

What on Earth is the church for? by David Devenish (Authentic)

In an article like this it is only possible to give an overview of the key issues and highlight the main Biblical points. David’s outstanding book deals with the role of the church in God’s global purpose in much greater detail. It is written with both theological depth and everyday application, showing how the church is to bring about God’s kingdom on the earth.

The local church and mission, apostolic ministry, social action, culture and contextualisation are just some of the topics David deals with in detail, illustrating his arguments with examples and stories from around the world.
At a time when there is so much confusion regarding the church, with the current debate about ‘emerging church’ and then others seemingly giving up on the church, this book is essential reading. It brings clarity to the purpose of the church and how that purpose can be fulfilled.

I have heard of a number of church leaders making copies available for their teams and group leaders, saying that it is some of the best material they have come across for equipping people theologically and practically regarding the church.

But do not make the mistake that this is only a leadership book. Its accessibility means that anyone will benefit from reading it, gaining not only a comprehensive understanding of the topics but faith to see God’s purpose for the church fulfilled.

The Church and World Mission

By Andy Martin

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