Is There More to Mission?

Implementing church programs can be a bit of a pain sometimes, can’t it? Sure, there are many benefits and blessings that come out of programs, but they require a lot effort, energy, and resources. They can dominate the allotted church service announcement time. They can even distract from the main thing as people get caught up in making the programs work.

I’ve heard mission described as a program that can become a nuisance. If everything is about mission, it’s been said, then people may water down real theology in order to boost numbers, promote extraneous activities to get people in the doors, and veer away from the truth so everyone can feel good about meeting people’s needs.

There’s just one problem here: the paragraph above doesn’t accurately describe mission. Mission is not a program.

Mission is the Latin word for the Hebrew “shalach” and the Greek “apostello.” It means “to send,” as in God sending Himself, sending people, sending prophets, sending disciples, sending the Word, and sending the Word made flesh, Jesus! This is no extraneous, time-frittering, church-growth-fad word. This is the core of God’s nature, revealed to us in the Bible. This is the ball game.

Without mission, there is no Word of God. Without mission, there are no sacraments. Without mission, there are no creeds. Without mission, there is no liturgy. Without mission, there are no Confessions. Without mission, there is no Church. Without mission, there is no life and salvation. Without mission, there is no hope.

As Georg Vicedom said in his classic book “The Mission of God”:

“The mission is work that belongs to God. This is the first implication of missio Dei. God is the Lord, the One who gives the orders, the owner, the One who takes care of things. He is the Protagonist in the mission. When we ascribe the mission to God in this way, then it is withdrawn from human whims…The mission, and with it the church, is God’s very own work. We cannot speak of ‘the mission of the church,’ even less of ‘our mission.’ Both the church and the mission have their source in the loving will of God” (pp.5-6).

If that is true, what human whims might we be putting above The Mission as we assert that The Mission is merely a human whim?