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Why Mission is More than Evangelism

There is a growing trend in the UK church to equate mission with local evangelism. This worries me for several reasons:

  1. It seems to me that God's mission is much broader than evangelism, in that it includes liberating the poor i.e. the whole socio-economic side of mission is left out if we reduce it to evangelism. Exodus.
  2. On top of that it ignores the environmental side of God's mission - green ethics. Genesis 1-2.
  3. It forgets what is probably the main thing - God's mission is to the nations. That was the whole point of Abraham's calling (the beginning of God' redemptive story). Genesis 12.
If we reduce mission to local evangelism we are back to the divide that used to exist between spiritual and physical dimensions (materialism), between one nation and another (nationalism), and between us and the rest of God's creation (anthropocentrism). 

As Chris Wright has pointed out, it's not that God has a mission for the church in the world, it's that God has a church for his mission in the world. That mission includes the whole of creation, all levels of society, and all nations. For more information please read this journal article by Chris. By the way, he also says that mission isn't something we find a basis for in the Bible, but that the Bible exists as a result of and in the context of God's mission to the world. 
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  1. Adam9 November 2018 at 10:48

    Excellent article. Are you affiliated with a missions organization? Where are you based? I am searching for like minded people regarding missions. I have a blog called "Worshipping the Missionary God", but it is offline as of today because I need some answers to some hard questions. Thanks for your help.

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