“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” This saying summarizes one of the ideas from Lewis Carroll’s classic children’s tale, Alice in Wonderland. Having a road and defining your destination is crucial if you want to arrive there.
There is a biblical version of that saying in Proverbs 11:14: “Where there is no guidance, a nation falls” (NRSVue). Guidance, direction, road, destination – all those words are implied in another word that is sometimes misunderstood and historically problematic but with plenty of theological content: mission.
In the book God’s People in Mission: An Anabaptist Perspective, I define mission as everything the church is and does, bearing witness to Jesus Christ in her ministry of reconciliation. Let me expand this definition a bit more:
Everything that the church is and does
- The church is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God.
- The church as a message implies her very presence. Any mission that is not communal and interdependent is weak.
- The church does not have a message. She is the message.
- The church’s presence announces the gospel of Jesus Christ through words and deeds, thus promoting reconciliation.
- The church’s action in its testimonial work includes everything it does: worship, pastoral care, teaching, evangelism, service, peacebuilding and health ministries, among other things. What the church does or does not do, and how it does it, is part of its message.
bears witness to Jesus Christ
- Through its words and deeds, the community’s message is delivered as a witness, affirming their experience and testimonial knowledge. This implies an approach that is not imperialist (as if they were the master and keeper of the absolute truth) and is not delivered from positions of human power. Instead, it is sharing “from below,” with steadfast humility, our faith experience.
- The message is about Jesus Christ, so it must be communicated from a position of vulnerability and service, just as Jesus did. This requires sacrificial surrender and a cruciform lifestyle that practices ministerial strategies consistent with Christ’s life and work.
- Considering the divine incarnation and Christ’s identification with discriminated persons, bearing witness to Jesus requires a serious contextualization of the message and an intentional identification with those excluded, ignored or victimized by society.
in her ministry of reconciliation
- The ministry of reconciliation has been entrusted to the church. This implies that the new life in the community, thanks to the Spirit, makes it possible to experience reconciliation with God and among humans.
- The ministry of reconciliation seeks not only the salvation of the soul in the distant future but also the re-establishment of an entire relationship with the Spirit of God and a life of just relationships which allow us to enjoy the peace which the same Spirit makes possible in the new creation.
From an Anabaptist perspective, how you arrive at your destination – the road – is crucial. That is why our understanding and practice of mission are so important. At Mennonite World Conference (MWC), we want to organize ourselves (structure) and our work (road) in a way that shows what we understand by mission.
The MWC Mission Commission brings together a network of agencies from all over the world to work interdependently in a multicultural way. By belonging to the Mission (GMF) and Service (GASN) networks of the MWC Mission Commission, agencies affirm their identity as church organizations, as missional expressions of the church. Through their work, they bear witness to Christ in several areas of specialized ministry, such as church planting and social development. That is what this issue of Courier is about. Let’s join our agencies and MWC networks to follow Jesus, live out unity, and build peace!
—César García, MWC general secretary, originally from Colombia, lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
Read César García’s chapter, “The fulfillment of our mission” and 9 other chapters on the Mission Commission’s 10 statements in God’s People in Mission: An Anabaptist Perspective, edited by Stanley W. Green and Rafael Zaracho, ©2018.