When I reflect on my early spiritual nurture in, what I would call a healthy, vibrant, growing Alliance church in the 1980s, as well as the education I received at Canadian Bible College in the same era, there are three distinct impressions I took with me based on the way I was trained in mission and evangelism. The first was that “mission” should broadly be understood as evangelism. Essentially, engaging in mission mostly meant the verbal proclamation (or sharing) of the gospel message with others. The focus was on providing articulation of the content of the “Gospel,” which was basically the theological concept of the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ, which could be summarized in four “spiritual laws.” Anything else potentially described as part of the Church’s mission, such as relief and development among the poor, caring for people with HIV/AIDS, offering hospitality to neighbours, etc., was deemed as good, perhaps even important work, but was definitely secondary to the verbal proclamation of some key ideas that we called “the Gospel.”
The second impression remaining with me is evangelism is mainly personal. I was trained in “personal evangelism” and given specific tools which would help me share my faith with others. This meant my job was to deliver the message of the good news of the Gospel to people. Delivery could be done one-on-one, in a small group, or even as a preaching event to a larger group. Still, it was mostly something I was personally responsible for as part of my Christian commitment. Whatever form it took, mission, as expressed through evangelism, was essentially a personal endeavour every Christian should be involved in as they took seriously Jesus’ commission to “go” into all the world and preach the Gospel.
The third impression I had was that there is a dichotomy between the Old Testament and the New Testament regarding mission. The distinction between the two testaments is real when it comes to how they present the mission of God in the world; however, my early training in mission left me with a sense there was not too much mission happening in the Old Testament (OT), and a lot of mission happening in the New Testament (NT). If you wanted biblical texts to inform your theology and inspire the mission of the Church, you had to look to the Gospels, the Book of Acts, and the Pauline epistles to get what you needed. The God of mission was not overly visible in the Old Testament.
Whether these are fair characterizations or not could be open for discussion. Yet, I think they accurately provide a glimpse into how the vision for the Church’s mission was cultivated and cast. 1 While this approach has some strengths, it fundamentally misses the biblical foundation of God’s mission as a collective task embodied in the communal life of a distinct group of people.
In this chapter, I want to explore how the formation of a missional community is at the heart of the Church’s mission because it captures the biblical vision for God’s mission in this world. After making a case for this perspective, I will look at some key practices of a missional community based on the epistle of 1 Peter and then conclude with some thoughts on ways church leaders can help to form a missional community.
Certainly, the way we think about and train people for mission and evangelism has changed since the days I have described above. But there is still much room for us to reflect more fully on the idea of mission not being an individual endeavour; instead, it is intrinsically communal. Additionally, the work of church leaders today is to provide a theological foundation and practical vision for what it means to be a missional community in their local context.
God’s People as Missional Community
The foundational biblical idea of God being a God of mission explicitly begins in Genesis 3 as He pursues Adam and Eve after their disobedience in the Garden of Eden.2 The foundational biblical idea of God choosing to work through a people to accomplish His mission explicitly begins in Genesis 12 with the call of Abram. God calls Abram to go on a journey with Him for the explicit purpose of him becoming the father of a great nation who will be a blessing to “all the families on earth” (Genesis 12:3). 3 From here, the narrative of scripture unfolds the story of God’s work in and through Abram’s offspring, the people of Israel, and subsequently the Church to accomplish His purposes of redemption.
For this reason, those in church leadership have the responsibility to do the work of forming a missional community in the people they work amongst. Just as the Apostle Paul worked and wrote to create such communities and the Apostle Peter did the same, so too must we. For some reflection on how we do this, we turn to the epistle of 1 Peter, which is addressed explicitly to a series of churches in first-century Asia minor who find themselves as a people living on the margins (1:2, 2:11). Peter wants to encourage the Church to see themselves as people who are to live with the mindset they are communities of people called to embody God’s mission in their individual and corporate lives.
The development of the plot of this story comes to a significant place at Mount Sinai, where God makes clear to His people that they are a unique people, chosen by Him to be “a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The language of priesthood clearly describes Israel as having a role in mediating the presence and work of God to the world.
This is reiterated and explained further in Deuteronomy 4:6-8 when Moses declares to the people of Israel they must keep the law of God so they may demonstrate to other nations the wisdom of their God and the quality of life resulting from being in relationship with this God. This obligation for the people of Israel to be a witness to the nations continues even after they are banished into Babylonian exile. The prophet Isaiah declares to the exiles they are to be “a light to the nations” (Isaiah 42:6-7).
This brief recounting of some key movements in the history of God’s people as depicted in the OT makes it clear Israel is established to be a missional community, a people who, through their life together, are to show to the world what it looks like to be in a relationship with the one true God.
This challenges the idea there is not much mission happening in the Old Testament. It demonstrates that Israel is a missional people who have been called for the good of the world and are responsible for depicting and declaring their God’s truth and goodness to all people.
This concept forms the foundation for the mission of the Church as well. Jesus establishes a group of disciples whom He commissions to collectively go “and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). The communal nature of the Church’s mission is dynamically described in the Book of Acts 2:42-47, where we read how the early Church in Jerusalem is functioning as a radically inclusive, sacrificial community, impacting the people around them so much the Church sees “day by day” the Lord adding to their number those being saved. The writings of the Apostle Paul and other New Testament letters are written to address the challenges the first-century churches were facing, ultimately to get them to live into their calling as the people of God so they can be the kind of community Jesus intends the Church to be in order to fulfill His mission (see especially 1 Peter 2:9).
As mentioned earlier, there has been, at times, a dualism created between mission in the Old Testament and mission in the New Testament. The mistake has been to understand mission as only a flickering flame in the OT while it becomes a burning fire in the NT. The distinctives are there, to be sure; the OT depicts a people set up in a particular land who are to use their political and geographical autonomy to develop a distinct nation. An alternative community embodying a faithful covenant relationship with God so the world will see His greatness and the wisdom of His ways and want to join in. On the other hand, a significant emphasis in the NT is the depiction of a sent people. A people who are explicitly going into the world to proclaim the good news of the Gospel of Christ with a definite desire to see men and women embrace this good news and put their faith in the God and Father of Jesus Christ.
In broad strokes, these distinct emphases have been described using the scientific terms; centripetal and centrifugal. A centripetal force draws things toward it. A centrifugal force directs things away from it. An OT theology of mission primarily describes the people of Israel as established to live in a way that draws the nations toward it. A NT theology of mission primarily describes people commissioned to go, to move out into the world to make more disciples. 4
While there is much truth in this as a broad description of how mission takes place in the eras of the OT and NT, perhaps what we need to acknowledge is these two approaches to mission both encompass the biblical presentation of how God goes about His mission in this world through His people. The mission is always anchored in a distinct people (Israel and the Church), and the group’s calling is to embody God’s will and ways and declare them to the world. Any faithful expression of mission today will include the act of “going” into the world and engaging with the people to declare the good news of Christ to them. But this “going” will always have its roots in the life of a local group of people who are called to demonstrate the power of the Gospel, offering themselves as a collective witness to the ways of God in this world. The formation and sustaining of this community give any outward initiatives their life and vitality, providing the greatest apologetic foundation for the gospel’s integrity by offering a picture of what the transforming work of Christ actually looks like in practice. As Leslie Newbigin said, the Church is the “hermeneutic of the gospel.” 5 This means the Church is a way of interpreting and understanding the Gospel. It is to be a living document providing people with a way to see and comprehend the message of Jesus, so it makes sense to them and appears attractive, offering a more authentic way to live one’s life.
Characteristics of Missional Community in 1 Peter
The epistle of 1 Peter does not provide an exhaustive list of practices that may be employed to cultivate missional community, but there are two significant ones worth exploring briefly here. Primarily the author of 1 Peter is interested in helping the communities he is writing to develop their identity as God’s people in the particular place they find themselves. Identity development is crucial to groups and individuals, especially when a group finds itself on the margins of society and strives to establish itself as a community within a cultural hegemony quite different from and much more powerful than its own intrinsic one. 6 First Peter offers at least two practices that must be cultivated so the Church can reflect its unique identity to the world.
Holiness Expressed Through Love
At the core of 1 Peter’s thinking about identity is the idea of holiness. Early in the epistle, he quotes Leviticus 11:44 to his audience, “you shall be holy, because I am holy.” Holiness is about being set apart, especially as the difference is informed by our relationship with Christ. Ultimately, for Peter, nothing is more central to expressing God’s holiness than love. It is the behaviour he calls his churches to cultivate most often. Four times in his short letter, he urges his people to love one another (1 Peter 1:22, 3:8, 4:8, 5:14). Of course, this is at the heart of Jesus’ words to His disciples regarding how love would be the clearest indicator of their relationship with Him (John 13:34-35). The love of the disciple’s community would reflect Jesus’ love for them and reflect their connection to the God of love (1 John 4:7-8), and thus be a demonstration of His nature to the world. Jesus also taught the fundamental truth regarding a life pleasing to God rooted in relational holiness centred on love for God and our fellow human beings (Matthew 22:37-40). 7
When we think about holiness, we often think about specific behaviours we should avoid. Often when the world thinks about the Church, it thinks of all the things the Church is against. However, Peter proposes a positive view of holiness, one rooted in love as the clearest expression of what it means to be set apart as God’s people. Church leaders must work at helping their congregations to become loving environments because a community of genuine love demonstrates to the world the holiness of God and makes the good news of Christ tangible to their experience. As already noted, when Jesus told His disciples they would demonstrate their attachment to Him by their love for one another, He was describing exactly what it meant for His followers to be the “hermeneutic of the gospel.”
Of course, Christian holiness is multi-dimensional and cannot be defined by one aspect. However, if the Church is to demonstrate the reality of Christ to the world through its life together, it will most certainly involve being a community whose distinctiveness is ultimately characterized by love. Love for each other and love for those outside of the Church. For Jesus, and as emphasized in 1 Peter, this is a primary marker of missional community.
Relationship with Outsiders and Insiders
Part of the practice of holiness marked by love is found in how the Church relates to those outside the Church and to one another within the family of God. In 1 Peter, the missional identity of the Church is played out primarily in the context of social relationships characterized by mutual submission. This concept of relational submission is emphasized within the epistle in several ways, encompassing many human relationships. These include submission to “every human authority” (2:13), slaves to masters (2:18), and wives to husbands (3:1). However, this submission demands reciprocity; His people are to “show proper respect to everyone” (2:17). This injunction applies to everyone; thus, everyone is called to demonstrate respect and give dignity to all people. Husbands are to treat wives as co-heirs of God’s grace (3:7), a radical idea in the first century that reiterates the reciprocal nature of the submission 1 Peter calls for. Relationships are to be characterized by love, humility, compassion (3:8), and mutual service (4:10).
In his instructions to church elders, Peter appeals to them based on his place as “a fellow elder” rather than as an apostle (5:1), indicating an egalitarian view of congregational life. These behaviours are designed to embody a quality of relational life that reflects the distinctive character of the Church. This kind of mutual submission in relationships with people inside and outside the Church is a priority for communities who want to model Christ to the world since Jesus acted in submission and suffered as a result, but His actions resulted in salvation for the world (2:20–25). Relating to all people from the posture of mutual submission is the mark of a missional community.
Practices for Forming Missional Community
These two characteristics of a missional community are not exhaustive, but they represent two foundational behaviours reflecting the intentions of God for His people to demonstrate His character to the world. The work of the missional leader is to help form such communities for the good of humanity, so these communities become gatherings of people who demonstrate how the Gospel has the power to transform not just individuals but whole groups of people and ultimately the world. To help nurture these communities, some specific practices have to take place.
Facilitating Mission
It may seem counterintuitive, but one of the best ways to build a close, meaningful church community is to get people out of the church. Nothing will forge relationships more deeply, encourage prayer, and get love flowing more quickly than putting people together in a situation where they are not sure what to do and are entirely dependent on the support of one another and the Holy Spirit. Mission can act as a catalyst for community because it often brings us into contact with situations and people, which draw us out of our comfort zone and into a context where we need the help of others. Joining a small group at your church does not do this. Going to another worship service will not accomplish this. Having more potlucks won’t do it.
Don’t get me wrong; I am not opposed to small groups, worship services, or potlucks (especially potlucks); they all have their place in community building and formation. However, it is when we embark on mission together, going into the world as ambassadors for Christ, seeking to serve our surrounding community, or even going into challenging places to test our patience, our endurance, and our faith, that we tend to bond with those who are engaged in the same experience. We learn to depend on each other, share more deeply, pray more authentically, and find Jesus more tangibly.
The missional leader helps to build a missional community by seeking ways to get their people engaged in mission. Often taking them outside their usual realm of experience and into places where dependence on God and others is essential.
Teaching and Modelling
It may seem obvious, but missional leaders have to prioritize teaching about missional community. Whereas the emphasis in my early Christian nurture was on the individual dimensions of mission and evangelism, the focus needs to shift to the corporate dimensions. Not by completely neglecting how we are all called to mission, and it will have individual expression at times, but rather by recovering an appropriate biblical theology presenting God’s idea of forming communities of people to embody His creational intentions for the sake of the world.
Thus, we need to teach about the call of Abram, the covenant at Sinai, the function of the law in the life of Israel as a nation, the teaching of Jesus and their communal implications, the epistles of Paul as acts of community development, as well as the other epistles too (1 Peter as perhaps the best example). More specifically, teach the Sermon on the Mount, teach through Ephesians with a view to communal application of each passage, and lead a series on Leviticus 19. There may not be a better chapter in the Bible on what it looks like to embody God’s holiness in relationship to our neighbour. Consistently teach with a collective vision. Apply to the community, not just the individual. Develop missional community by casting the vision for it explicit in scripture.
Conclusion
My early training in mission, where the individual aspects were emphasized, may have provided some valuable components, giving me perspectives and skills that have served me well in specific ways. However, the heart of mission is not found in one’s practice of it; instead, it is found in giving ourselves to thecultivation of a community of people who are committed to experiencing and developing the life of God and His Kingdom in their midst. This is the foundation for the missional enterprise of God’s people. It is rooted in God’s constituting Israel and subsequently the Church to be a people set apart for His purposes, a people who are in a relationship with Him and with one another in a way that depicts His person and enacts His mission of love in this world.
This is an excerpt from the book, On Mission Volume 5. Download your free copy today.
- I would argue that they are a fair, although perhaps not comprehensive, way to understand how the evangelical church taught about the mission of the Church in the second half of the twentieth century (and perhaps even before that).
- Implicitly the concept of God as a God of mission is rooted in the being of God as Trinity. However, that is a topic that lies outside the scope of this chapter.
- All scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
- See Michael W. Goheen’s use of these terms to describe a biblical theology of mission in A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011). 39, 115.
- Leslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmanns, 1989). 222-33.
- Lee Beach, The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom (Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity, 2015). 173.
- Beach, The Church in Exile, 188.