Chapter 6



MISSION

TIME TO BRING MISSION HOME

I should have been excited. I was studying mission in China as a doctoral student. But I was consumed by problems at home.

The forces of gentrification and migration had altered the landscape of my community. Yuppies and new immigrants were displacing families our ministry had served for years. It was as if the foundation had been ripped out from under us. How were we as a ministry to respond? Should the ministry move with the people being displaced? What were we going to do?

Far from being exciting, China felt like a distraction. “What am I doing here?” I agonized. “How can being in Hong Kong help address my problems back in teeny-tiny Denver?” (China makes most American cities look teeny-tiny.)

Toward the end of my time in China, the answer came: perspective. From within my community, I could see and feel changes coming at me, but I could not understand the what or the why. I could not see the forest for the trees. But from 7,000 miles away, I gained perspective.

From the vantage point of China (and with the help of professors such as Ray Bakke), I realized that I was experiencing what everyone on the planet was experiencing: the greatest global migration in the history of the world. People in the southern hemisphere were heading northward, the “have-nots” were moving toward the “haves,” and the phenomenon of gentrification had uprooted the poor in cities throughout the United States and the Western world. This great global shift was behind the tsunami engulfing my neighborhood. It had taken me and other urban leaders by surprise. But it had not surprised or stymied God. God knew exactly what was going on, because He has been behind all the great migrations of the world. Something big was happening. The global playing field was changing. And God was in it.

As I considered these things, I deeply appreciated the insights Ray Bakke shared about mission and what it is today. There was a time when mission was about the missionary—those brave souls who would leave the comforts of America to serve in foreign lands. Mission was something embarked on by the chosen few, and it happened “over there”—not locally, but somewhere far away.

But now the mission paradigm has shifted; God has brought the world to our cities. Now the foreigner is our neighbor; mission has come to us. “We have left the world of the missionary,” Bakke declared, “and entered the world of mission.”

This world of mission is one we should never have left.

We Are Witnesses

He [Jesus] said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.”

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:44-49).

Luke 24 is the final chapter of Luke’s “carefully investigated. . . orderly account” of the life of Jesus (Luke 1:3). Here he describes the post-resurrection encounter that led the disciples to full recognition that Jesus is the Christ. Luke also leads us, his readers, to a dramatic conclusion regarding Christian identity and purpose. That purpose is captured in the word “witness” (Luke 24:48). Jesus’ followers (then and now) are to be witnesses—missionaries— and will be empowered to do so after receiving “what the Father has promised” (i.e., the Spirit; see Luke 12:12 and Acts 1:8).

This “witness” is to the love of a God who is concerned for the whole person. Ray Bakke, reflecting on the early chapters of Genesis, notes that “God’s hands are in the mud.” Not only did He create mankind out of dirt, but He also chose to occupy human flesh Himself, both as the Messiah and through the Holy Spirit who indwells believers. “Christianity is the most materialistic religion on the entire earth,” Bakke writes. “It’s the only religion that successfully integrates matter and spirit with integrity.”1

This “witness” is to the love of a God who is urban. That’s right, Jesus was urban! The historian Josephus describes the Galilee of Jesus’ day as a heavily populated area, known for exporting wheat, olives and wine. It was 30 to 40 kilometers in diameter, with a population numbering between 200,000 and 300,000.2 The Bible tells us that Jesus went into the towns and villages throughout Galilee— an area encompassing 200 cities.

Why the disciples as apostles could transition so easily from Palestine to the cities of Rome’s empire can now be understood. The disciples were not so parochial or so “pale” as we might have supposed. They were prepared to follow Jesus in an urbanized world, because that is where and how they were discipled. They were multi-environmental people. . . .

Even Judaism in the Palestinian or Diaspora variety was far more pluralistic than we can possibly imagine today.3

Finally, this “witness” is to a loving God who is missional. In his book Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, David Bosch defines mission as the participation of the Christian community in the ongoing work of the living Christ, as witnesses and pointers to the love of God for the sake of the world.4 This understanding of mission has profound implications for the church:

      • The reign (Kingdom) of God is to be a central passion of the entire Christian community. Christ’s work is ongoing, and it is accomplished through the church—God’s people. When we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), we are not just asking God to make that which is up there (His reign, control, dominion) come down here. We are committing ourselves to active participation and effort toward that end.
      • Jesus’ ministry—and therefore the church’s ministry—has as its focus the bringing of God’s reign to those on the margins of society: the poor, the suffering, widows, children, “tax collectors” and “sinners.” It is a defining characteristic of the believer to have the marginalized on our radar. “Did not he who made me in the womb make them [the poor]? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?” (Job 31:15). Participating in Jesus’ ongoing ministry means that we too are to “bring good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).
      • To follow Jesus is to embrace a missionary discipleship. We are commissioned to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Luke offers some additional specifics: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Our identity as Christians is to be characterized by our commitment to bringing the good news of God’s transforming love to whatever part of the world we find ourselves in. When Jesus states: “You are the salt of the earth.     You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-16), the “you” is emphatic (“You and you alone are ”).

This, Jesus declares, is your purpose—your destiny.

A Post-Modern World

Bosch’s book was, for me, a perspective changer. Heady yet engaging, the text first guides readers through Matthew, Luke and Paul’s rich description of mission as the purpose of the church. Bosch then embarks on a careful critique of the succeeding ages (the Eastern Orthodox, Medieval, Protestant Reformation, Enlightenment and then-emerging post-Modern eras) and how the church’s purpose has been challenged—and at times compromised—by the societal pressures it faced.

Bosch highlights a sobering reality: No one chooses the time in which he or she lives. No one chooses his or her parents, relatives, culture or generation. But if you are Christian, you are purposed to be God’s witness within the community-culture-nation-world-generation-epoch in which God has placed you.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses [the faithful listed in Hebrews 11], let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Just as this cloud of witnesses referred to people from past generations, the exhortation reaches forward to every generation, including ours today. No matter the generation or culture, the church is mandated to fulfill its role as participants in the ongoing work of its Lord.

We live in a post-modern world. It is fair to say our society has grown increasingly nihilistic (rejecting religious and moral principles, instead believing that life is meaningless). The lines dividing order from disorder and right from wrong have been blurred. The view of life as having order and connectedness has been replaced by a view that treats life as snapshots, or situational short-stories. The result is a disconnect from truth, reason and stability. In the post-modern era, a concept of life as stable or per- manent has all but disappeared.5

This state of affairs can be discouraging. Yet with change comes opportunity. This was Bosch’s hope as he envisioned the missionary paradigm advocated by Matthew, Luke and Paul reemerging in a post-modern world.

    • In this paradigm, the church would see itself as essential- ly missionary—a pilgrim people bound together as witnesses and pointers to Jesus and to the kingdom of God.
    • In this paradigm, mission would no longer be viewed as one of many activities in the church, but as an attribute of God characterizing the entire church.
    • In this paradigm, mission would demand a more com- prehensive understanding of salvation, which includes both spiritual and physical renewal.
    • Inherent in this paradigm would be a quest for justice and social transformation. “There is no room. . . for a gospel that is indifferent to the needs of the total man nor of the global man,” said Carl F. H. Henry. Mission would require an authentic evangelism that flowed from an authentic lifestyle and included the preaching and practice of justice.6
Church Out of Context

Understanding the church’s purpose as essentially missional marks a dramatic shift in Western Christian thought. The New Testament is clear: No Christian is exempt from the task of obeying, in the here and now, the simple command to love your neighbor (see Luke 10:27). Yet as stated before, we in the West have tended to view mission as the calling of a few to foreign lands, not as applying to us within our communities.

Reasons for this are sad but simple. Creating theologies that accommodate self-interest and self-preservation has been a recurring theme throughout history. It wasn’t long ago that our na- tion justified the institution of slavery by deriving from the Bible a theological framework for its practice. Everyone—all manner of individuals, groups and cultures—has this tendency to see in the Bible only what they wish to see.

We are in the grip of one such human-contrived framework to- day: a framework designed to justify physical, social and economic isolation from society’s poor. This perspective effectively blinds us to our call to mission, and with it the Kingdom-advancing moment that stands before us. It is as subtle as it is devious: the simple subordination of the Great Command (“love God and love your neighbor”) to the Great Commission (“go and preach the gospel”). This wrong thinking is deeply embedded among evangelicals.

If you believe that people without Christ are going to spend eter- nity in hell, then sharing the gospel becomes the most important and urgent of Christian tasks. About this there is no dispute! Yet, as Robert Lupton, in his book Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, rightly observes, to allow the Great Commission to override the Great Command dangerously reduces people to “souls” in need of saving and compassion to an evangelistic technique.7 In effect, subordinating the Great Command to the Great Commission has a corrupting effect on both the command and the commission!

Ray Bakke writes:

Under the pressure of a billion “lost souls”. . . many overly pragmatic Western Christians  have  adopted  a  hierarchy of values—redemption over creation—for the sake of the evangelistic mandate. This hierarchy has created the great divorce (evangelism from social action) and resulted in a canon within the canon of Scriptures—that is, while they believe the whole Bible is the word of God, they treat certain parts as more valuable or useful than others.8

Think about it: This simple priority flip (elevating commission over command) has justified and fueled a church out of context— out of step with mission. We are certainly compelled to preach the gospel (see 1 Corinthians 9:16). But to share the gospel with some- one from whom we have isolated ourselves in every other way—culturally, economically, socially—casts a shadow on the truthfulness of our message! We have convinced ourselves that what we say excuses how we live—that God approves when we distance ourselves from a brother or sister in need with the words: “God loves you; now ‘go in peace; keep warm and well fed’” (James 2:16), and that the gospel need not be incarnated.

(This does not dismiss the many evangelistic efforts that are not incarnational. God has and will continue to use people like Billy Graham and Greg Laurie to reach the masses through their evangelistic campaigns. God can work through the use of gospel tracts to reach a stranger. But we do not live in stadia, nor should our lives consist solely of chance encounters. If we live in a neighborhood, we are commanded to love our neighbor.)

Years ago, prior to the great migrational changes we’re experiencing today, I would exhort my suburban friends to consider moving into the inner city. Most thought I was crazy; for many, their response was similar to that of the wealthy man when Jesus told him to sell his possessions and give to the poor: They went away sad. Moving into the city was just too much to ask.

More recently, suburban church communities have experienced a dramatic increase in immigrants from Latin America, Asia, Africa and other places around the world. So today my message is different: Don’t move! God has brought the poor of the world to you. Stay. Love your neighbors!

Many sincere believers fail to weigh the hundreds of references to the poor and cities in their daily reading of Scripture. Most Western Christians accept a commuter church lifestyle that allows them to drive by poor communities on their way to Sunday services and have minimal awareness or concern for the residents of those communities. As Emerson and Smith note in their book Divided byFaith, theological frameworks formed in isolation from diverse people groups can create behaviors that are diametrically opposed to stated beliefs (like believing in reconciliation while practicing homogeneity).9 John Perkins has often described the typical white American evangelical Christian as a functional schizophrenic: someone who believes the Word of God but who won’t do it. The Western church has grown out of step with mission.

Mission Values

Because I had been discipled in a foreign country, influenced by international leaders and missionaries, I found myself applying principles learned overseas to urban ministry in Denver. I moved into the city, making the urban community my home. Convinced that God was working either in (through the indwelling Spirit) or on (because God’s desire is that all be saved) each of the people in my new neighborhood, I saw my task as being not only to share the gospel, but also to get close enough to local youth to discern God’s activity and how to work in sync with it. Such convictions guided my actions, but in them I felt very alone. I was pioneering something I believed to be biblical, yet which seemed foreign to most ministry colleagues.

That is when I was introduced to John Perkins and his ministry philosophy.

John had already developed ministries in poor communities based on what he called the Three Rs of Christian Community Development. These Rs formed the core of his theological and mis- sional rationale for working among the poor.

The longer we worked in the community of Mendenhall, the more God unfolded to us the real power of the Body, that it’s not just a group. As Christians coming together, cemented by our central unifying commitment to Christ, we began to see how we could be transformed into cor- porate power, how we could corporately give our lives in the direction of evangelizing or economic development or relieving human need or justice and make a difference.

We must relearn what it means to be a body and what it means to continue Christ’s ministry of preaching the gospel to the poor. I believe there is a strategy to do this. We have seen three principles work that seem to be at the heart of how a local body of Christians can affect their neighbor- hood. We call them the three “R’s” of the quiet Revolution: relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution.10

I was thrilled to find someone whose ministry values seemed so closely aligned with the Scriptures, and whose philosophy and strategy were marked by integrity. The more I read John’s books, the more I realized that he had taken mission principles—convic- tions dear to me—and pressed them into a ministry model that was effectively changing lives in urban communities. I was struck by the stature of his character: His hunger for God fueled his passion for justice for the poor; his humility made him both credible and approachable. In response to my need, God had brought into my life someone who would become for me a life-long mentor.

The core values of Christian Community Development (CCD) are also foundational to transformational discipleship. Early in our relationship, John expressed a burden that would shape my life’s work. He asked: “How do we build incentive in inner-city youth? How can youth within broken families and communities be motivated toward Christ and a life of meaning and purpose? What will it take to do that?” I became convinced that the values of CCD would lead to answers to these questions.

So I took the guiding principles of CCD and treated them like a philosophical filter through which to examine youth and youth ministry. I pursued the question, “If I looked at youth ministry through the grid of CCD, what would it look like?”

Relocation

The initial intent of this value was to encourage youth indigenous to poor communities to get their college education and then return—relocate—back into their home communities. Later the concept broadened to encourage Christians from a variety of backgrounds to make poor communities their home.

This principle has been called the “linchpin” of CCD. It is what sets the CCD philosophy of ministry apart from other urban ministry approaches. It is also the value that has met with the greatest resistance. “God is not calling me to uproot my family and leave my safe community to serve the poor,” many have responded. “I can serve them just as effectively from here. I don’t have to live in their community.”

In the face of this assertion, I recall Kelly and his brothers’ response when I was robbed: “Now you understand. You are one of us now.” As time went on, my “understanding” would extend far beyond what it felt like to be robbed. Why? I had incarnated myself into the community. True, I grew up in a neighborhood similar to theirs; I already knew firsthand the dynamics of growing up urban. Yet there were things I learned about their lives that I never would have known had I not relocated to their community.

More important, because I shared their community, they knew that I knew, which afforded me a level of credibility that those outside the neighborhood did not possess.

As a kid, Charles attended some of our youth programs, but then he got caught up in gang life. A shooting left him paralyzed from the waist down. Later, when he was an adult, we reconnect- ed, and he shared something I never forgot: “Ted, you could talk to these guys [his gang member friends]. You know why? Because you’re black and you’re here.”

Through the CCD grid, what does youth ministry look like? It looks like a ministry that emerges from within the community, because its leaders have made the community their home. Relocation—living among the poor as neighbors—positions the church to fulfill its purpose as salt and light for the world (see Matthew 5:13-16).

Reconciliation

The central focus of Christian ministry, and therefore of CCD, can be summed up in a single word: reconciliation. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). Dr. Wayne Gordon, chairman of the Christian Community Development Association, writes:

Christian community development is concerned with rec- onciling people to God and bringing them into a church fellowship where they can be discipled in their faith. . . .

Can a gospel that reconciles people to God without rec- onciling people to people be the true gospel of Jesus Christ? A person’s love for Christ should break down every racial, ethnic and economic barrier in a united effort to solve    the problems of the community. For example, Christian community development recognizes that the entire Body of Christ—black, white, brown and yellow; rich and poor; urban and suburban; educated and uneducated—needs to share the task of loving the poor.11

To be a reconciler is to be a peacemaker—and to be a peacemaker is to be “blessed. for they will be called children of God” (Matthew

5:9). A peacemaker is burdened by the enmity that exists between two entities that should be united. The task of the peacemaker is to facilitate reunion—to point fallen people toward the relationship they were created to have with the living God and with one another. We are like our Father, Jesus says, when we live as peacemakers. And we are “blessed”—happy, connected, Kingdom people—when we do so.

The principle of reconciliation plays out in youth ministry in two dynamic ways. It begins by engaging in what Francis Schaeffer called providing “honest answers to honest questions.” Too often youth workers deny themselves the experience of directly applying God’s truth to felt needs. We spend more time asserting than listening! Taking time to grasp and address barriers keeping youth from a relationship with God means two things: dealing with misconceptions about the Christian faith, and sharing the gospel in ways it can be understood (in bite-sized pieces).

It is when youth (and the adults ministering among them) honestly address these barriers that a second important dimension of a reconciliation ministry emerges. At some point, a young person will share among their peers something of an intimate na- ture. It could be in the form of a confession or some other personal revelation. The moment that happens, I yell: “Stop! Did you hear that? [Name] just shared something personal. This stays with us; it doesn’t leave this room!!” This establishes the group as a safe place to be genuine and honest. It marks the first step toward establishing the social context of engaging God together. The group meeting becomes a place where reconciliation is actively pursued.

Through the CCD grid, what does youth ministry look like? It looks like a ministry engaged in peacemaking, and in sharing the good news of the gospel in ways that speak to young people’s deepest needs and encourage mutual growth.

Redistribution

Redistribution. . . brings new skills, new relationships and new resources and puts them to work to empower the residents of a given community to bring about healthy transformation. This is redistribution: when Christian Community Development ministries harness the commitment and energy of men, women and young people living in the community, and others who care about their community, and find creative avenues to develop jobs, schools, health centers, home ownership opportunities and other enterprises of long-term development.12

In transformational discipleship, redistribution manifests itself primarily in the area of capacity discovery among youth, and in the unleashing of those capacities in ways that benefit children—the following generation. It is putting the resources of youth to work for the good of the community.

The discovery and unleashing of adolescent capacity is rare in youth ministry. Even those ministries that value capacity discovery often fall short of creating avenues through which youthful ca- pacities can contribute in meaningful ways to the advancement of God’s kingdom. A significant reason why there are few young Davids or Esthers or Josephs in our world today is that the church has organized itself around the false assumption that youth cannot lead. The result is leadership development programs that provide classroom-like instruction but little meaningful experience.

Similarly, genuine leadership opportunities for young peo- ple are rare in academic settings. I remember asking Skye, a high school leader, “How does what we do here in Neighborhood compare with the leadership instruction you’re receiving at school?”

Her response was immediate and to the point: “There they talk about leadership. Here you do it.”

I knew we were making a difference when children came to me asking, “Can I do what they [the emerging leaders] do someday?” The seeds of redistribution were sprouting in our ministry.

Peering through the CCD grid, what does youth ministry look like? It looks like a ministry engaged in redistribution: the unleashing and nurturing of capacity in ways that invest in the long-term development of youth and children.

Mission and Transformational Discipleship

John Perkins’s Three Rs were eventually expanded to become the Eight Key Components of Christian Community Development. The added five elements are significant outgrowths of the first three. As John has said, relocation is incarnation; the incarnation is both God’s method and model of bringing salvation to a needy world. Redistribution leads to leadership development and empowerment. Reconciliation is a ministry given specifically to the church, hence the importance of church-based ministry. Such a ministry requires listening and applying the gospel to felt needs. This leads to a wholistic engagement with people.

God never intended His church to separate along racial or economic lines. Those lines do exist; homogeneity and class distinctions are realities in our world. But it was never God’s intent that we fol- low after or shape our theology around such divisions. No, union with Christ means a counter-cultural existence. That existence is expressed in the eight key principles of CCD:

    1.  We show special concern for the marginalized around us, and position ourselves to serve them (relocation).
    2.  We live as people who acknowledge, as did Job, that the same God who made the poor made us (reconciliation).
    3.  We see ourselves as stewards of God’s creation and treat possessions, both financial and human capital, as be- longing to God (redistribution).
    4.  We pursue among all people, youth in particular, the ma- turing of God-given capacity (leadership development).
    5.  As with Jesus and the woman at the well, the felt needs of others become the context in which the good news of the gospel is shared (listening to the community).
    6. We the church, God’s people, are charged to make a difference in society (church-based).
    7. As such, we position ourselves to touch every aspect of a person’s life (wholistic approach).
    8. In this way we empower people to be all God intended them to be (empowerment).13

Mission—participating in Christ’s ongoing work as witnesses and pointers to His love for the sake of the world—is the driving force behind transformational discipleship. This is as it was meant to be. In an exciting way, the phenomenon of the world coming to the city has given the church another opportunity to get mission right. Given the expanding reality of youth growing up urban, the recognition of mission as a driving force to reach the young and vulnerable in our cities is coming to us none too soon.

Notes

    1. Ray Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), p. 34.
    2. Rainer D. Riesner, “Galilee,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, eds. Joel B. Green, Scot McKnight and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), pp. 252-253.
    3. Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City, pp. 131-132.
    4. David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991).
    5. Dr. Mary Klages, Postmodernism, http://www.bdavetian.com/Postmodernism.html, last revision: April 21, 2003, accessed March 2010.
    6. Bosch, Transforming Mission, pp. 368-510.
    7. Robert Lupton, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2007), p. 128.
    8. Bakke, A Theology as Big as the City, pp. 34-35.
    9. Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
    10. John M. Perkins, A Quiet Revolution: The Christian Response to Human Need, a Strategy for Today (Waco, TX: Word Incorporated, 1976), pp. 217-218.
    11. Dr. Wayne L. Gordon, “The Eight Components of Christian Community Develop- ment,” in Robert Lupton, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: Rethinking Ministry to the Poor(Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2007), pp. 126-127.
    12. Ibid., p. 128.
    13. Ibid., pp. 123-135.


Questions for Thought

    1. Do you agree that mission is no longer an activity but an attribute of God characterizing the entire church? If so, how do you see this attribute reflected in your church?
    2. If you were to make loving neighbor the umbrella context of your youth ministry, what would change?
    3. In what ways does your ministry discover and unleash lead- ership capacity among youth? How can your ministry grow in empowering and equipping young people to lead?

Last modified: Tuesday, May 28, 2019, 10:26 AM