I found Willow’s Leadership Summit held at the beginning of August to be yet again an amazingly powerful and empowering experience. The Summit took some of the themes that surfaced at the Catalyst West Conference and pushed them further, with noticeably more octane than at Catalyst. One of the common issues to both was the call to a more wholistic practice of missions, locally and globally. After attending both conferences, let me list a few thoughts that have struck me on the missions front:
- You can’t get past the idea that our approach to missions locally and globally is shifting quickly and radically to a more wholistic approach where tangible actions are equal to words. It’s not either/or it’s both/and. One without the other is illegitimate.
- The word “gospel” itself, as found in the great commission in Matthew 28, is being broadened to reflect the words of Jesus in the prayer he left us, where “gospel” means “seeing God’s kingdom come, God’s will done increasingly on earth as it is in heaven”. The Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6) is being linked with the words of Jesus about how the “least of these” are being treated (Matthew 25), with the meaning of the great commission (Matthew 28). This is in no way diminishing the commitment to how the word “gospel” is used in the epistles (i.e. Romans 1:16), but the epistles are being increasingly interpreted through the eyes of the four Gospels and the words of Jesus himself.
- Organizations like World Vision and Compassion International that have been seen as on the edges (probably the left edge!) of the evangelical missions movement are now moving into the centre and taking the lead. Richard Stearns’ (World Vision) “The Hole in our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us?,” and Wes Stafford’s (Compassion International) “Too Small To Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most,” are rallying cries to tangibly “be” good news before and as we speak good news.
- Dave Gibbons from New Song Church in Irvine California is being lifted up as icon of a lead pastor who has helped his church make the paradigm shift to wholistic missions. His book, “The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church,” represents a significant paradigm shift in how local churches approach missions. Gibbons appears to be in line with, maybe even further along than Bob Roberts Jr., whose book “Glocalization: How Followers of Jesus Engage a Flat World,” paints an inspiring but radical picture of his churches commitment to wholistic mission locally and around the world.
Within my own church family, The Christian & Missionary Alliance, you can begin to see some shift in this direction, but it’s tough and slow and still very much on the fringes. Ironically we were far more wholistic in our founding than we’ve become in the last 100 years. Unfortunately that’s true of most of evangelicalism. Our current Canadian Alliance president, Dr. Franklin Pyles, has raised the issue eloquently at various times, but unfortunately appears to be significantly further ahead on this issue than the church family as whole. I’m praying for change!
Personally I’m ashamed to say that like many evangelicals, for decades I bought into the party line that depreciated the words of Jesus in passages like those found in Matthew 25, or the heart of God found in Isaiah 58, in favour of a narrower view of the Gospel that made “words” far more valuable than “deeds”. In the process I was part of a movement that promoted something that I’ve only recently come to understand as being less than the “gospel.” Sadly Canadians intuitively rejected this somewhat insipid gospel while continuing to say that they were impressed by the life and teachings of Jesus. Perhaps Canadians will be more responsive when we get back to a more biblically consistent wholistic gospel. I’m praying for that too!
I do apologize and repent of presenting less than the whole Gospel in years gone by. But now, as for me and any ministry I lead or am involved with, using the words of Richard Stearns, I will seek to live out and invite others to “both embody and proclaim the gospel, so that others can see, hear, and feel God’s love in tangible ways.”
