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FEBRUARY 16, 2017 BY ED STETZER

Being Local Missionaries Without

Neglecting Global Mission
The call to be missionaries where we are, to be “missional,” too often results in churches that
neglect the global mission of the church. We’ve made a lot of strides in the right direction, but
we aren’t there yet. Why are so many missional Christians uninvolved in God’s global mission?
Why are we so locally minded that we aren’t any globally good?

There are five reasons I think we struggle with this:

1) In rediscovering God’s mission, many have only discovered its personal dimensions.
I don’t mean they have somehow localized mission into their interior, “private” life– that would
make little sense. Rather, the encouragement for each person to be on mission (to be
“missional”) has trended toward a personal obligation to personal settings, rather than toward a
global obligation to advance God’s kingdom among all the nations.

“Missional” has merged with privatized Christianity to serve as the reason for personal projects
carried out in personal spheres. This is not bad, necessarily. But when the missional impulse is
not expanded to include God’s global mission, it results in believers moved only to minister in
their own Jerusalems with no mind toward their Judeas, Samarias, and uttermost parts of the
earth (Acts 1:8).

2) In responding to God’s mission, many have wanted to be more mission-shaped and

have therefore made everything “mission.”

Missions historian Stephen Neil, responding to a similar surge in mission interest (the missio dei
movement of the 1950s and following), explained it this way: “If everything is mission then
nothing is mission.” Neil’s fear was that the focus would shift from global evangelization (often
called “missions”) to societal transformation (often called “mission”). He was right.

John Piper has echoed these same concerns, differentiating between evangelism and missions.
He reminded us that when “Every Christian is a missionary” equals “missional,” then we have
diluted the need for and specialness of missionaries to foreign lands. (Although I would want to
nuance John’s language a bit, I agree with his point.)

Inviting people to church and cleaning up the church are noble endeavors, but passing them for
“missional” and “service” is ministerial naïveté at best. It demonstrates the fuzziness that creeps
in when labels become catch-alls. And as the outer edges of the missional label gets fuzzy so
does mission to the outer edges of the world.

3) In relating God’s mission, the message increasingly includes the hurting but less
frequently includes the global lost.
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One only needs to watch the videos to see the emphases: global orphan projects, eradicating
AIDS, Christmas shoeboxes, etc. All of these causes now have advocacy groups, and rightly so,
as they are important. However, their vocabulary and frames of reference do not frequently
make room for evangelizing the very people they touch. The message of world evangelism,
actually, seems more common in legacy/traditional churches than in missional churches.
Missional churches seem to speak more of unserved peoples rather than unreached peoples.
As we engage to deliver justice, we must also deliver the gospel regardless of anyone’s status
in a culture.

4) In refocusing on God’s mission, many are focusing on being good news rather than
telling good news.

St. Francis allegedly said, ”Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.”
Interestingly enough, Francis never actually said this, nor would he have done so due to his
membership in a preaching order. But it is a pithy quote tossed into mission statements and
vision sermons in missional churches all around my country. Why? It seems that many in the
missional conversation place a higher value on serving the global hurting rather than
evangelizing the global lost. Or perhaps it is just easier.

I am not urging a dichotomy here, only noting that one already exists. It is ironic, though, that as
many missional Christians have sought to “embody” the gospel, they have chosen to forsake
one member of Christ’s body: the mouth.

5) In reiterating God’s mission, many lose the context of the church’s global mission and
needed global presence.

For whatever reason–the admirable one of commitment to the local church or the ignoble one of
commitment to personalized consumeristic Christianity–we have lost the grand scope of the
entire family of God. While Christ calls people from all tongues, tribes, and nations, we have
become content with our own tongue, tribe, and nation. Many churches are wonderfully
embracing the missional imperative, but as they seek to “own” the mission by adapting their
church into a missional movement in their local community, some inadvertently localize God’s
mission itself and lose the vital connection all believers share together. A hyper-focus on our
own community results in a, have lost vision for the communion of the saints.

So how do we put “Mission” back into “Missional?”

Four principles we needed to consider…

First, recognize it is God’s mission, and we need to be passionate about the mission as He
describes it. We don’t own mission and it is not ours to define. A church vision statement is fine,
but God’s mission is better and bigger. Our first task is to submit to God’s mission.
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Secondly, evangelicals have understated the call to serve the poor and the hurting and need a
stronger engagement in social justice. This sounds counterintuitive if we are seeking to
remedy the loss of concern for articulated evangelism. But social engagement entails relational
engagement, and relational engagement entails opportunities to share the gospel. The
successes and experiences in our communities should awaken hearts and minds to global
needs. We just need to maintain the reason for social justice: the glory of God in the worship of
Jesus.

Third, share God’s deep concern about His mission to the nations–that His name be
praised from the lips of men and women from every corner of the globe. Feel the Great
Commission in your bones. Ask God to turn your heart to those you cannot see. As Paul did,
develop ways to “struggle personally” (Colossians 2:1) for those far away. The current political
conversation about refugees should be a helpful reminder that our hearts have to be gripped
for the mission both locally and globally.

Fourthly, churches that are serious about joining God on his mission will obey his commands
to disciple the nations. The end product of missional endeavors should be a thriving Christian
ready to produce more thriving Christians.

It appears to me that many missional churches are missing the Great Commission in the name
of being missional. That makes zero sense. It is a huge (but historically common) mistake.

If we are truly interested in being local missionaries–in joining God on His mission–our efforts
should actually reflect His stated mission. We are bound to the Great Commandment as the
fullest human expression of God’s love. But the Commandment is not hermetically sealed off
from the Great Commission. Rather, the Great Commission provides the what of mission, while
the Great Commandment provides part of the how. Answering the age-old question of “Who is
my neighbor?” should result in the desire to “make disciples of all nations.”

Ed Stetzer
Ed Stetzer holds the Billy Graham Distinguished Chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton
College, is Executive Director of the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism, and is interim pastor of Moody
Church in Chicago.