The words that follow belong to David J. Bosch, the renowned South African missiologist, who initially had them published in the December 1979 issue of the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa. This is the kind of thing that simply electrifies me.

As Lord, Jesus was given 'all power in heaven and on earth' (Matt. 28:18). He is therefore repeatedly referred to as 'Saviour of the world' (John 4:42; 1 John 4:14). 'All things were created by him, and all things exist through him and for him,' says Paul (Rom. 11:36). It is the purpose of God to bring all creation together, everything in heaven and on earth, with Christ as head (Eph. 1:10).

All this means that the Kingdom of God (or the Lordship of Christ) is without boundaries. Christ is Lord of all. Naturally, his Lordship his not yet openly and finally manifested. The ultimate is yet to come. We live in the penultimate. We still wait for the day of which Rev. 11:15 speaks, when, as it affirms 'the kingdoms of this world are to become the Kingdom of God,' when God 'will be all in all' (1 Cor. 15:28). For the time being Christ's Lordship over the universe is anonymous; he is not recognised and acclaimed as Lord.

We should, however, not deduce from this that God has handed the universe over to the counter-forces. He is not an absentee Lord whose estate is being ransacked by his enemies during his absence. To be sure, the enemy is active in God's world, extremely active, but we should never allow ourselves to accept that this world belongs to the enemy. If areas of the universe indeed appear to be enemy-occupied territory, let us never for one moment forget that they are occupied illegally, by a usurpur. Satan does not belong in this world. The earth is the Lord's.

If we forget this we commit the same mistake as those Christians who argue...that we had better withdraw from the world into a religious enclave. The terrible thing these Christians are doing is to grant legality to the spurious claim of the enemy that this world belongs to him, not to God! And when Jesus said to Pilate, 'My Kingdom is not of this world', his words should not be understood as meaning that his Kingdom is entirely other-worldly. It should rather, within the context of John's gospel, be understood to mean, 'My Kingdom does not operate according to the rules of this world which have been adulterated by Satan. My Kingdom is unique. But this does not make it other-worldly.' Did Jesus not, after all, teach his disciples to pray, 'Thy Kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?' Therefore, if we Christians surrender this world to Satan, we play right into his hands. And we betray the Lordship of Christ.

I will leave you to draw out the practical implications of Bosch's excellent words. They are legion.

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Some of my more recent posts have made mention of Michael Goheen, who I was privileged to study under during college. Some time ago, Anthony Stiff posted the link to the audio of a conference in San Diego that Goheen spoke at, which I have also linked to recently. Although a lot of the material I had heard before in the classes I took with him, I felt like it got me more excited than it had the first time I heard it. Here are the links to the talks. I encourage you to download them and listen to them for yourself. It will not be wasted time.

In the courses I took with him, I read his dissertation on the missionary ecclesiology of J.E. Lesslie Newbigin, as well as David Bosch's monumental work, Transforming Mission. Both were very influential in shaping my thinking about the nature of the Church. Coming into Goheen's classes, I was not aware of any preconceived ideas I had about the Church, but what he taught as well as the things I read in the readings he assigned to us, shattered those ideas enough to realize that even if I wasn't aware of it, I actually did have preconceived ideas.

It would be a challenge to sum up the message he tried to convey in those classes and in the more recent conference, but the essence of it is this: If the gospel is about the restoration and renewal of the whole of human life and all of creation, then the Church's mission is as wide as creation. The calling of the Church is to make known the good news, as Jesus did. When Jesus was on earth he announced the coming of the Kingdom repeatedly with his words and deeds. He said that if we heard his words and saw his deeds, we would see the Kingdom. Then he commissioned his disciples: "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you." The commission was to proclaim the Lordship of Christ wherever they went, to declare that this is his world and it all belongs to him. So the mission of the Church then is to embody in its life and announce with words that the whole of the world belongs to Christ.

Although earlier conceptions of mission were rooted in the idea of going out and doing something, we need to steer away from these. Because the fact is that the mission of the Church is what defines us, it is our identity. When Christ commissioned the Church he did not give it a task, but was establishing an identity. Newbigin says,

The Church cannot be defined simply as that which is constituted by the event of the preaching of the Gospel and the administering of the sacraments. It belongs to its true nature that it is a continuing historical society, that society which was constituted and sent forth once for all by Jesus Christ (The Household of God, 60).

This is where our ecclesiology must begin.

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J.E. Lesslie Newbigin, one of the most prominent figures in the field of missiology, has argued that there are many reasons for the doctrine of the church to occupy a central place in our thinking. Among these reasons is this:

One phase of the breakdown [of Christendom] has been the dissolution of ties which bound men and women to the natural communities of family, village, or working group, to which they had belonged. I do not need to labor this point, which is the constant refrain of the social diagnostician. Western European civilization has witnessed a sort of atomizing process, in which the individual is more and more set free from his natural setting in family and neighborhood, and becomes a sort of replaceable unit in the social machine. His nearest neighbors may not even know his name. He is free to move from place to place, from job to job, from acquaintance to acquanitance, and--if he has attained a high degree of emancipation--from wife to wife. He is in every context a more and more anonymous and replaceable part, the perfect incarnation of the rationalist conception of man. Wherever western civilization has spread in the past one hundred years it has carried this atomizing process with it...myriads of human beings, loosened from their old ties in village or tribe or caste, like grains of sand fretted by water from an ancient block of sandstone, are churned in the whirlpool of the city--anonymous, identical, replaceable units.

In such a situation it is natural that men should long for some sort of real community, for men cannot be human without it. It is especially natural that Christians should reach out after that part of Christian doctrine which speaks of the true, God-given community, the Church of Jesus Christ. We have witnessed the appalling results of trying to go back to some sort of primitive collectivity based on the total control of the individual, down to the depths of his spirit, by an all-powerful group. Yet we know that we cannot condemn this solution to the problem of man's loneliness if we have no other to offer. It is natural that men should ask with a greater eagerness than ever before such questions as these: 'Is there in truth a family of God on earth to which I can belong, a place where all men can truly be at home? If so, where is it to be found, what are its marks, and how is it related to, and distinguished from, the known communities of family, nation, culture? What are its boundaries, its structure, its terms of membership? And how comes it that those who claim to be the spokesmen of that one holy fellowship are themselves at war with one another as to the fundamentals of its nature, and unable to agree to live together in unity and concord?' The breakdown of Christendom has forced such questions as these to the front. I think there is no more urgent theological task than to try to give them plain and credible answers.

If you do not know anything of Newbigin, you will probably be surprised to discover that those words were spoken in 1952. That is one of the reasons he remains so prominent in the study of missiology. His insights are deep and profound, and as I think will come to be seen in the future, timeless. I first came into contact with Newbigin in college under the instruction of Michael Goheen, whose doctoral thesis was on the subject of Newbigin's missionary ecclesiology.

Engaging in that study subsequently had a profound effect on my ecclesiology. Newbigin, even in this short passage touches on some of the most essential things the Church must be--communal in its nature (the Church, after all, being a body and not a building), and rooted firmly in Jesus Christ, its source and life. The tendency of the Church in our time (and its members) is to seek the service and satisfaction of individual needs and wants. Just as this is ultimately destructive for society and culture, so it is for the Church.

The Church is not a means to an end, but instead, it is to be the incarnation of Christ, the enduring presence of the Kingdom of God on earth. As the Father has sent Jesus, so he sends us. Let us take up our calling with faithfulness.

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One of the members of our teaching team for adult Sunday School at church just wrapped up a great series on the mission of the church. One of the questions raised was where we should focus our mission. Recent missiological thought has helped the church get out of the mindset that mission is "over there," something in which we send people and money to different parts of the world to reach the unreached. Now we realize that the heart of our own culture in the West is devoid of the Gospel, as we see missionaries from other parts of the world coming here, and so we are refocusing our efforts to our own doorstep.

This, of course, is good. But God's children are a diverse family with hearts for different peoples and places. Much of the focus today is on our cities, but that is not to discredit those who still feel a burden on their hearts for other places around the globe. We still need those people. The gospel still needs to be heard in a myriad of places. I use Näätämo only as an example of the many cities, towns, and villages that do not have churches or where the gospel is not present. For some time a desire to see the gospel take a firm rooting in Europe, and the Scandinavian countries in particular, has been on my heart.

All this is to say, if you feel a burden to go somewhere, then go! Missiological trends and perceived needs should not completely dictate where we carry out the work of Christ's kingdom. No doubt they are very helpful, and must be given due attention. But follow your heart. God uses each of us in different ways in different places, and he leads us by his Spirit to fulfill his purposes. Is your desire to bring the gospel to Näätämo? Then go. They need it just as much as the people in your city.

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This past semester I took a course at school on the Foundations of Mission. It was a very good course, from which I learned a lot and was thoroughly challenged. One of the areas I was challenged in is what characteristics a church should have, or what it should look like. Our professor, Mike Goheen, brought this to our attention after pointing out the rapid urbanization of this world. He gave us a list of nine factors marking effective urban churches:

1. The church thoroughly understands the culture and dynamics of the city.
2. The church is devoted to prayer (like the early church in Acts).
3. The church identifies with and is concerned for the poor.
4. The church places a high priority on fellowship by way of small cell groups.
5. The church places a strong emphasis on training good leaders.
6. The church understands and applies the principle of contextualization.
7. The church places a high demand on congregational involvement.
8. The church has strong discipleship programs for new Christians.
9. The entire church is mobilized for mission.

These are some pretty tall standards to live up to. My perception of what a church should be like was quite drastically revised. These principles have put me into deep thought, specifically on where I might end up later on. This is really quite different from anything I've ever known, and I'm not sure I've yet seen a church that embodies all these characteristics.

I guess Dr. Goheen wanted to emphasize the importance of the average layman getting involved. He gave us this quote: "A church is like a football stadium. There are 30 people on the field in desperate need of rest, and 60,000 in the stands in desperate need of excercise."

It's really a wonder the church hasn't picked up on the urban "crisis" (if you will) yet. Why are our churches moving out of the inner city into the suburbs? The failure of the church lies in relocation and abnegation. We have to go back into the cities. It's where the work is to be done. It has been said that in the cities is where the battle will be won or lost.

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