Many organizations, whether non-profits or for-profit businesses, have a mission statement. The mission statement is intended to drive that organization’s activities. For example, IBM’s mission statement begins, “To lead in the creation, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems…” IBM’s leadership determines products to develop and sell based on this mission statement. Since the mission is focused on advanced information technologies, IBM is not particularly concerned with its customers enjoying ice cream. Dairy Queen, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with whether its customers enjoy ice cream. Its mission statement is: “To create positive memories for all who touch DQ”. Despite that being a bit obtuse, Dairy Queen’s focus is on ice cream and its other products and leaving customers with a positive memory for having eaten said ice cream and such. Basically, DQ wants its customers to enjoy what it sells. Unlike IBM, Dairy Queen does not invest a single penny on computer chip manufacturing facilities.
An organization’s stakeholders determine the organization’s mission. In non-profit and even for-profit organizations, the stakeholders are usually the board of directors. It may be the founder of the organization. This mission can change over time, but only with the consent of the stakeholders. In the church there is only one stakeholder. That stakeholder is not the Council of Elders. It is not the founding planter. It is not the congregation. The only one who calls a church into being is the Lord Jesus. He and he alone is the church’s stakeholder. Since a church exists by and for him and him alone, he alone determines a church’s mission—and that mission has not changed in 2,000 years. A local church may express that God-given mission differently from another, but if that church is not expressing the mission given by the Lord Jesus, that church is not on mission!
The problem for some is they will focus on an aspect of the mission and will assume it is the whole. Let me come back to that in a moment. I recently read a document in which a man was criticizing a particular church for its focus on the “one anothers” found in Scripture. The implication was a church that focused on loving one another and serving one another and bearing with one another and exhorting one another and teaching one another and encouraging one another was a church that was “ingrown”.
I toured a new church building years ago and a member of that church came up to me, not knowing me at all, and showed me the church’s new coffee bar. It was really nice! I have no problem with a church having a nice coffee bar. She said to me, however, “We deserve this.” She explained how for many years they endured their previous building—a building not unlike our building. As a reward for enduring this old building in a dense urban area, they deserved a shiny new coffee bar. This is what it means for a church to be ingrown. Had someone come along and exhorted this woman and encouraged this woman and taught this woman the truth of the matter, if someone had corrected her faulty thinking, this focus on these “one anothers” would not have been ingrown; it would have been obedience to Scripture.
In this document I read, the implicit criticism was that by focusing on the numerous “one another” commands in the New Testament, a church was not engaged in the mission of Jesus. The implication was that evangelism is the crux of the mission of Jesus, not discipleship. Evangelism is not the mission of God. It is a necessary part of the mission but if a church threw all its resources—time, energy, money, etc.—into evangelism that church would not be engaged in the mission of God. Let me illustrate this a couple ways.
Imagine a chef who focuses on locally-sourced ingredients. One day he hires a local farmer to collect morel mushrooms. On the following night’s menu he wants to put a variety of morel-based dishes so he tells the farmer he will need about 20 pounds of morels. The farmer assures him he can find that many morel mushrooms. The next morning he meets with the farmer to collect his mushrooms. The farmer tells him he found lots of morel mushrooms. He found the woods literally full of morel mushrooms! “Where are they?”, the chef asks. “Well, I haven’t picked them; I thought it was more important to find them.”
Finding mushrooms was not the task. Delivering morel mushrooms to the chef was the job given. This necessarily requires finding them, but harvesting the mushrooms and delivering them to the chef is the job the farmer was given.
The problem with the claim that a church that seeks to obey the Lord by engaging in the various “one another” commands of Scripture is becoming “ingrown” is it fails to understand the mission of Jesus. The mission given by the Lord to his apostles and by extension to us is to make disciples. This requires evangelism. This is how we get the “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” part of the Great Commission. These are new believers who come about through evangelism. The central thrust of the mission the Lord Jesus has given his church, however, is “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you”. To focus on evangelism rather than discipleship is to locate mushrooms but not harvest them and give them to the chef. This is where some begin to assume that one aspect of the mission is the whole of the mission.
In this particular analogy Jesus is the chef and he already knows where the mushrooms are. He’s demanding that we harvest them and deliver them to him. These “mushrooms” are disciples, men and women who actively follow Christ. This is Paul’s own claim in his letter to the Philippians. In that letter he begins by assuring them that the one who began a good work in them will be faithful to complete it (Phil 1:6). He tells them to do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but to count others as more significant than themselves. He goes on to tell them to be like Christ, who, though he is God in every way, “emptied himself” by coming to this world as a servant. Being in human form he further humbled himself by obeying his Father by dying on a cross (Phil 2:3-8). He reminds them once again they are to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, for God is the one who is at work in them (Phil 2:12-13). Then he says this:
Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.
Philippians 2:14-16 ESV
Notice that he is telling them how they, the church in Philippi, ought to live. They must not grumble or argue all the time. They must be blameless and innocent. They are children of God who stand out in the world. He tells them they “shine as lights in the world”. He doesn’t tell them to shine; he says they already shine. He adds they are “holding fast to the word of life”. That is the gospel of Jesus. This is what they cling to. Their lives are centered around Christ and his gospel. It infuses everything they do. It permeates every relationship they have. This is a statement of fact.
Then Paul gives the reason they must cling to these things: in the day of Christ he does not want to discover he had run in vain or had labored in vain. To say this another way, if the church in Philippi would become fully mature followers of Christ, then when the Lord Jesus returns Paul will have accomplished the mission the Lord Jesus gave him. The mission is not converts, but disciples. This brings me to my second illustration. The first one was about mushrooms. This second one is about evangelism directly.
I knew a man years ago who bragged about his evangelistic prowess. He literally bragged about it. He kept a running count in his head how many people “he led to Christ” that year. It was as if he were scratching “kills” on his spiritual gun. If he met another person who was an evangelist—or a church planter—he immediately wanted to compare kill counts—I mean, conversions. I discovered this about him because he came at me one day, demanding to know how “faithful” I had been in getting converts. He had dozens so far that year. I simply asked him where all those converts were being discipled. Which church was actively discipling all these new converts? He said something to the effect of, “We’re working on that.” He may well have found lots of mushrooms, but the chef was still waiting for them.
In Alan Kreider’s marvelous book, “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church” he, a church historian, points out the early church focused a lot on patience as a primary Christian virtue. Three treatises were written on patience, yet not a single one was written about evangelism. This doesn’t mean they did not engage in evangelism. It means they engaged in evangelism first by focusing on the actual commands of Scripture. One would be hard-pressed to read Paul’s letters and come up with a list of instructions for the church to engage in evangelism; these same letters are filled with the “one another” commands from the apostle.
In that book he points out the early Christians did not use their worship services to attract new people. Their worship was not the attraction. Rather, they focused on living faithfully. He cites the great church father Cyprian who declared Christians “do not speak great things but we live them”. Christians in the early church focused on holiness of life. The author cites Tertullian, a North African church father who lived in a time of persecution. Tertullian wrote one of the three treatises on patience. Kreider writes,
What a remarkable treatise Tertullian’s Patience is. We can read it as an essay on a virtue, which it clearly is, or as an essay on ethics. But it may be more illuminating for us to see it as a treatise on mission that helps us understand the “combination of relaxation and urgency” that characterized the early Christians’ approach to mission.
Alan Kreider, “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”
The “combination of relaxation and urgency” is the early Christians’ understanding that God is patient. They see this in God allowing persecution! They were not surprised at the rejection of the gospel by so many, for those pagans did not know the patience of God. Kreider writes,
Tertullian is closely in touch with this persecution, and he knows acutely how numerically insignificant the Christians were. But he doesn’t seem worried about this. He is not concerned about the future. He believes that God is at work and that patience is God’s means of drawing people to himself.
Alan Kreider, “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”
The patience he refers to here is the patience of Christians as they suffer and live righteous lives. He further writes,
But other outsiders, Tertullian observes, look at the Christians and their patient approaches to life and are intrigued. Patience, he asserts, “attracts the heathen”. And it poses questions for them. Why, the pagans wonder, do Christians live as they do? For this reason, Christians don’t need to feel frantic. … Christians do what they can to share their faith and to bring people through baptism into the life of God’s people. But Christians are not impatient. They entrust all things, including their own lives and the salvation of all people, to the God who patiently is making all things new.
Alan Kreider, “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”
He cites Justin Martyr who explained what Christian patience meant in practice. It affected how the early Christians engaged in business. They were, for example, slower to evict tenants for non-payment. They were unusually willing to lend money without interest. They were far more patient in the repayment of debt they were owed.
Early Christians, in large part due to their emphasis on patience, were feeding the poor and caring for widows. They loved their neighbors and the gospel spread, for unbelievers were intrigued at the strangeness of the Christians. Kreider summarized the early church’s strategy—or non-strategy?—for preaching the gospel:
How then did the church grow? Scholars have seen the church’s growth as coming about through something modest: “casual contact”. Contact could come about in innumerable ways through the translocal networks of family and profession in which most people participated. Masters interacted with slaves; residents met neighbors; and above all believers networked with relatives and work colleagues. In all these relationships, “affective bonds” were formed. The most reliable means of communicating the attractiveness of the faith to others and enticing them to investigate things further was the Christians’ character, bearing, and behavior.
Alan Kreider, “The Patient Ferment of the Early Church”
In short, the early Christians didn’t witness and testify to the power of the gospel with bumper stickers or social media posts. They didn’t force themselves on people or force conversations with them. Tertullian famously explained that Christians embraced the culture. They certainly critiqued what needed to be critiqued, but they shopped in the same stores and took baths in the bathhouses and dressed in similar fashions as others. He was quick to point out they do not indulge to excess! Still, Christians plow and harvest, they make clothing, they sail the sea, they engage in commerce. They were ordinary people who lived lives of faithfulness to the Lord Jesus, and through this the church grew.
When is the last time you heard someone speak about evangelism strategies by emphasizing holy living? Do you want to be faithful to share the gospel? Then be radically committed to holiness, to loving people like Jesus loves. Care for the poor. Love your neighbors. Seek ways to engage them in friendship. Rather be wronged than to be harsh and overbearing in business. This is what the apostle Peter was talking about when he wrote about the patient endurance of suffering.
Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.
1 Peter 3:8-16 ESV
For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”
Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”
Peter is describing the early church’s engagement in the mission of Christ! By their patient endurance and their love for one another and for their neighbors, by their insistence on holy living and faithfulness, they found opportunity to share the reason for the hope that is in them.
The early church did not have a program for this. They did not have a formal “ministry” for this. Instead, they sought to engage in the mission of Christ—that of making disciples who are fully committed to the Lord Jesus—by keeping the various “one another” commands in Scripture.
The idea that focusing on the “one anothers” is necessarily a lack of focus on mission and outreach is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the mission is actually accomplished. The mission is accomplished by focusing on holiness, by focusing on faithfulness, by seeking to offer up to the Lord Jesus fully mature believers in Jesus. This isn’t a distraction from the mission. This is the mission.
As we go about our lives faithfully, God himself raises up opportunities through the relationships we all have, whether family or friends, whether co-workers or neighbors, opportunities to proclaim the gospel of Jesus. We must seek these opportunities. We must pray for them. These opportunities, however, have always flowed out of a life of holiness and righteousness. As Cyprian said, we do not speak great things; we live them. He didn’t mean the gospel we must proclaim isn’t great. He means that what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ attractive isn’t our eloquence or our volume or our social media posts. What makes the gospel of Jesus attractive is the clear evidence of its power in our own lives. How do we get there, then? How do we actually live lives of faithfulness as a witness and testimony to the world? We focus on the “one anothers” in Scripture.
When we focus on evangelism as the center of the mission of Christ, we will inevitably focus on ourselves and what we do. We will inevitably begin to focus on metrics like the number of converts. The mission will change from making disciples—spiritually mature men and women who look like Christ—to making converts, which creates all sorts of problems and compromises. When we call one another to be like Christ, the focus is on Christ. When we think and act and love like Christ thinks and acts and loves, those around us take notice and God raises up opportunities to share the good news of Jesus. This is the mission given to his church.