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Contemporary Issues in Missions, Question 3

Posted by Anthony Adams on

Posted by Anthony Adams

Continuing in a series of questions about world mission, posed to me by Stephen Murray, church planter in South Africa.

3. You work with an organization that puts a lot of emphasis on the local church. How central do you see the local church to mission and especially foreign mission?

I think it is very central. It’s not that I think there is no other way to do it, but there are reasons why I think that church-based mission is normally better. The main reason is because of my understanding of church, from the bible. I don’t believe church is a social convenience. Often, subconsciously, most of us think it is. In an individualistic western culture especially, we think that what is important is ‘me living my Christian life day by day’, and that the church is there to help me do that; to equip me to live out my faith. Now church is not less than that, but it is so much more than that! Community is key in biblical thought, as is shown by words like ‘city’ and ‘family’. Other images like the ‘body’ include the idea of many parts. And God himself is in community in his very being. Church (a gathering!) is meant to be the same, and as such communicates something by its very existence. God is building a new community; a new humanity, and part of our witness to others is that new community seen in the life of a local congregation of believers, living out their lives in a gospel-centred, counter-cultural way. That’s why Jesus says ‘this is how all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love you have for one another’. That statement was less about organizational unity (beloved of ‘Churches Together’ type groups) and more about the visible expression of God-at-work in our lives as a rag-tag and bob-tail group of different people who are, implausibly, united by ties of deep love, rooted in the gospel. So my point? When church community is seen in a locality, in a long-term relational way, that is hugely significant. Mission at its best is not a quick in-and-out event from a visiting team, but an ongoing process where people live amongst those they are seeking to reach. Visiting teams from other countries are important for lots of reasons, and providing they work with local churches, or are seeking to plant churches, they are still working ‘with the grain’ of the local church community witness. It is sometimes said that any group of Christians getting together to reach out could be called ‘church’, but though that could be argued, it is church devoid of elders and the accountability and the discipline that is supposed to bring. Sometimes churches are a pain in the neck, and so visionaries especially, can think it is easier to just by-pass them, apart from for the purposes of recruitment, but I do believe that something is lost when that happens – the ongoing witness of a local Christian community that people can observe, and point to and say ‘see how they love one another’. Its also worth saying, that many of the issues of ‘expertise’ are resolved if the local church is engaged. We can be criticized for saying local churches should do it because it is said ‘they don’t have the expertise’, but who better to go and link to then, than the local church pastor who lives out there. I suspect he knows his own set-up better than the expert in Britain or wherever….

 

Tags: world missions

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