Two Missions

When we begin our thinking about missions with biblical concepts and language, we can come away with two distinct missions. First, there is the missio Dei, the mission of God. Second, there is the mission that God has given to His children while they are in this world, awaiting their perfect heavenly home.

In the twentieth century, missiologists began to recognize that biblical and theological thinking about missions was primarily regarded as a peripheral matter. Only people who specialized in missions were talking about missions, and it was largely absent from most theological discussions. A correction was introduced that saw the global mission of the church as an extension of God’s mission.[1] The missio ecclesiae originated in the missio Dei. God the Father sends God the Son and Holy Spirit into the world:

John 17:20–22, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,”

John 20:21, “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

This is vitally important for understanding the nature of the mission that God has given to the church. We can compare and contrast the church’s mission with God’s mission. There are ways in which the church imitates God’s mission, but there are ways in which they are two wholly different enterprises. We can make too little of the church’s mission if we do not see it extending from God’s mission, but we can also make too much of the church’s mission if we conflate it with God’s mission too closely. 

Here are some ways in which the church’s mission is an extension of God’s mission:

1. God sends and the church sends too. God takes initiative. He actively works. He creates. He has a purpose, and He is not idle. The church imitates God in these ways.
2. God’s highest purpose is to bring glory to Himself, and that is our purpose too.
3. God speaks His word, and that is the content of our mission as well.
4. God seeks and saves the lost. Like the good shepherd who leaves behind the 99 searches for the one, so too the church goes out to find the lost sheep.
5. God, and the angels of heaven with Him, rejoice at one sinner who repents of his sin.
6. God called Abraham to begin reversing the Tower of Babel, always with a heart for blessing all nations of the world through him. The church too, inaugurated at Pentecost, goes to every tribe and language in the world.

If you want to add to this list, please do so in the comments section. But we need a warning here too. Just because the church participates in what God has been planning since before creation and working out through all of time, that does not mean that everything that God is about doing is what the church should be busy with. Here are some ways that God’s mission is unique to God and the church’s mission is limited. Again, if you can add to this list, please do so below:

1. God is sovereign over the entire universe, and God is actively behind everything. Yet we do not come even close to being in control of everything.
2. God’s purposes are whatever He desires them to be. Our purposes are given to us by God.
3. God’s word is final and authoritative. Our words are only authoritative insofar as we are speaking God’s words.
4. God’s deeds are perfect. We are sinful from birth and only do good by God’s grace and His Spirit working through us.
5. God is unlimited, and He has limited us to a specific task He has asked us to accomplish.
6. God is dependent on no one. We are dependent not only on God but on each other as the body of Christ.
7. God never fails, but we often do.
8. God is not slow to fulfill His promises. He is outside of time, but we have a short life to live.

I could go on and on with this list, but I think you get the point. So, let’s be more specific. What is the limited, specific task that God has given to the church? The Great Commission is the authoritative, cross-culturally aimed, making of disciples by the church, baptizing them into the Trinity-worshipping community, to grow into maturity in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Disciple-making churches multiply disciple-making churches to the end of the earth. Yes, Christians can be busy with a whole host of activities that give God glory and employ them for good works in the world. However, the focus of Christians gathered in the church must be the specific activity of the Great Commission. It is dangerous to claim that God has called us to a mission beyond this narrow and very specific task. God may give us employment in many things, but those are not the Great Commission. As it has been said better elsewhere, if everything becomes missions then missions means nothing.[2] Everything that God does is the missio Dei, but only obedience to the Great Commission is the missio ecclesiae. 

[1] See David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, 20^th anniversary ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), 9-10.

[2] Denny Spitters and Matthew Ellison, When Missions is Everything. (Bottomline Media, 2017)