Whether the Church of England remains the ‘established’ Church of the land or not – and some doubt it -- it must continue to have a concern for the people among whom it is placed, and its mission to the nation as a whole must remain a top priority. But what exactly is that mission? At a time of continuing change, and when influential reports on the Church’s mission have recently been published and debated, it seems to me that we need to take stock.
The first thing to affirm is that we depend wholly on God in our mission. It is his mission, not ours, and it is God who enables us to say and do what we need to say and do. In my experience, I know how God can overrule human weakness and speak directly to people’s hearts and minds.
There are two aspects to mission and evangelism. One has to do with how God has revealed himself and shown us of his will and purposes, supremely in the Holy Scriptures. Such a revelation is not at all arbitrary but concerned profoundly with the nature of the world and its flourishing as well as our well-being. We need, therefore, to bring this revelation into contact with the world as it is. Taking the context seriously is the second aspect of mission which is so important.
The good news which God reveals about himself, specifically in Jesus, has to be translated into the idiom, the thought forms and even the values of any culture or context in which we find ourselves. This task of faithfully interpreting the Gospel in our context, be it local, national or global, is vital to mission and evangelism. It cannot be replaced by anything else and we cannot plead that we have other things to do.
It is important to stress that upholding the uniqueness of Christ in the context of an increasingly and consciously ‘multi-faith’ public ideology is central to our mission. Christ is our point of departure in making sense of the world and our sensitiveness to culture cannot be simply a wholesale endorsement of it.
Elsewhere, I have written about the two ‘poles’ of mission that are ‘embassy’ and ‘hospitality’.
‘Embassy’ is about going out with the good news, both in words and in deeds. One of the things that Christians do with great profit in a society like ours, for example, is to offer people friendship. A very searching book on this subject is called simply Friendship: A Way of Interpreting Christ, written by Liz Carmichael, who is the Chaplain of St John’s College, Oxford.
There is also the remaking of broken lives by providing the material, spiritual and mental necessities of life for people who are ‘on the margins’ and need our help. Not that we should ignore others in need – a need that is sometimes well hidden. Front doors and gated courtyards can conceal a great deal of need and brokenness, and our mission has to involve addressing that need as well.
