Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

EVANGELISM EXPLOSION: AN OVERVIEW

Evangelism Explosion International (EE) began in 1962 by Dr. D. James Kennedy as a response to his rapidly declining church plant in Fr. Lauderdale, FL, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. It is both an evangelism equipping program and evangelism technique that is similar to Romans Road or Four Spiritual Laws. After launching his evangelism equipping program, attendance soared from 246 to 3,134 in 1974, largely due to the intentional evangelism efforts of EE. During this time, Dr. Kennedy realized he also had the opportunity to train pastors in his techniques, resulting in 582 trained pastors and lay leaders in 6 clinics during this same period. By 1975, EE had gone global, holding clinics in Saskatchewan, England, South Africa, and Australia. On March 17, 1996, Coral Ridge Presbyterian church celebrated a milestone in the the history of this 34 year old ministry: Evangelism Explosion was now in every nation training its people in personal evangelism. In fact, by 2000 the EE material was in every territory and translated into 70 languages. The scope of EE and its global reach makes it an ideal case study for reflecting on a post-colonial worldview of mission. Obviously, God has used the Dr. Kennedy and this ministry for His glory, and He will continue to do so well after his death, so my critique comes after much appreciation.

Considering how drastically the world has change over the last 46 years since EE’s inception, how does Evangelism Explosion International fare when evaluated against a post-colonial worldview of global missions? If much of the Western world has shifted into a post-modern cultural condition and the global South and East embrace post-colonialism in their struggle for identity in the aftermath of the colonial experience, is this thoroughly Western evangelism model relevant and effective (or even appropriate) given much of the non-Western worlds post-colonial condition? While I could give lengthy critique on the theological and biblical problems with this method, I am using EE as a case study only to evaluate the program missiologically and ecclesiologically. Therefore, the next few pages will explore EE in light of our post-colonial world and evaluate this evangelism method through a post-colonial worldview.

EVANGELISM EXPLOSION AND A POST-COLONIAL WORLDVIEW OF MISSIONS

Given the post-colonial shift in the global South and East, in addition to the postmodern shift within Western culture, how does EE compare to a post-colonial worldview of missions? As a certified EE trainer who both (briefly) taught and used this evangelism model in the United States, there are aspects of the international component I affirm and others that are concerning as I consider this enterprise in light of a post-colonial worldview. First, I appreciate EE’s commitment to proclaim Jesus’ good news to the whole world and indigenize that proclamation. As Tom Stebbins explains in his book on EE, “Although adhering to non-negotiable, controlling principles, EE adapts to the culture of every nation, territory and people group…” As I said in my worldview statement, God is truly global and interested in saving all tribes and nations, which they affirm. Secondly, the model is centered upon training pastors to equip their own people with the tools to proclaim the good news of Jesus through the local church. In true multiplication form, EE representatives hold clinics for pastors in countries for pastors to train their own people to evangelize. Both the commitment to adapt to cultures and train pastors to equip their own people are good starting places in a post-colonial era.

I do wonder, however, how helpful it is to export a thoroughly Western model of evangelism to non-Western nations. By their own admission, the original EE material has been translated into 70 languages. My concern, then, is why they believe exporting a Western framing of the gospel and God’s Redemptive Story is proper, especially considering they have recently revised this same material for use in postmodern Western nations due to its changing cultural landscape. Post-colonialism calls the Western Church to dissect itself from Christian spirituality as it engages a world that seeks to operate beyond the categories and models of the West. If Evangelism Explosion has realized it needs to revise the way it communicates God’s Redemptive Story to postmodern Western nations, why does it think a one-size-fits-all approach is appropriate for non-Western countries? As a Western model, the original EE was extremely propositional and logical to the core in its delivery. The “presenter” gave a 20-30 minute monologue to the “prospect” (their words, not mine) about why heaven was a free gift and how they could receive that free gift. At the end, the prospective gift receiver answered “yes” or “no” to whether he or she would like to receive the gift of eternal life. In the presentation (not conversation), there is no place for dialogue (it is discouraged all together, because it “distracts from the presentation of the gospel.”), assuming the prospect has nothing to offer to the conversation on their spirituality. If this method no longer works in the West, then why would they assume it is appropriate in non-Western nations. Paulo Freire provides a scathing indictment and convicting commentary on the need for dialogue: “Dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world. Hence, dialogue cannot occur between those who want to name the world and those who do not wish this naming–between those who deny others the right to speak their word and those whose right to speak has been denied them. Those who have been denied their primordial right to speak their word must first reclaim this right and prevent the continuation of this dehumanizing aggression.” Frankly, EE denies the Other the right to speak in the spiritual conversation. By default it is monological, which does not bode well in a post-colonial era nor does it appreciate the diversity inherent within God’s Creation.

As a last point of evaluation, while I realize any ministry can only do so many things, I have always found it odd that EE emphasizes proclamation rather than discipleship. While it claims to be “friendship evangelism,” the entire emphasis of the EE method is on evangelism and proclamation, neither of which were emphasized by Jesus in His commission to His disciples. Instead, He called His followers to embed themselves in the lives of the Other and show (not simply tell) the Way of Jesus. And if, according to Paulo Freire, we are to become solidary with those who are presently spiritually oppressed and who have been ethnically oppressed in the past in order to bring liberation, we must stop regarding the oppressed as an abstract category, stop making pious, sentimental and individualistic gestures and risk acts of existential love; the Western EE (and Church) should move beyond simply proclaiming to incarnationally being Jesus, because true solidarity is found only in the plentitudes of acts of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. The fourth stage of worldview is Recreation, both God’s future Recreative Act of the entire Creation and the small bits of Recreation accomplished through the Church. A proper, post-colonial worldview of mission must move beyond individual acts of pious proclamation and embrace solidarity centered in life discipleship and loving praxis as eschatological communities.

In the end, there are aspects of Evangelism Explosion International that are healthy and conform well to a post-colonial worldview of mission. Just like Christ’s Act of Rescue was indigenous and for all people, EE’s reach is entirely global and fairly indigenous, training local churches in every nation and adapting to the variety of tongues and tribes. I question, however, their insistence on exporting a Western version of Christianity to a world that doesn’t identify with the categories of the West nor any longer appreciates its superiority. Furthermore, the monological design of the model is neither contextually appropriate given the history of oppression by the West nor biblically sound since it is centered on proclamation rather than discipleship and solidarity. Instead of a Western model dressed in non-Western clothing, the global South and East need a narrative retelling of Jesus’ story of Rescue. Rather than detached monologues, the tribes and people of non-Western nations need dialogue and discipleship. Given the nature of EE and mass exportation of this methodology, I would conclude that it falls far short of a post-colonial worldview of global missions. Hopefully, just as EE has adapted its entire model for postmodern cultures, it will do the same for the post-colonial condition, too.

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

TOWARD A POST-COLONIAL BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW

Abraham Kupyer gave the Church a beautiful model for understanding the biblical worldview: a Creation-Rebellion-Rescue-Recreation paradigm. As the Western Church re-thinks how She should approach global missions in the 21st Century, She should use Kuypers paradigm to construct a post-colonial biblical worldview of global missions.

Through Creation, we see a creative God who pronounced His Creation good. While only two Humans are depicted in the Creation narrative, the sheer diversity of Beings within the created order, from fungus to maple tree and swan to whale, suggests Humanity would not escape the diversely, creative hand of Elohim, either. In fact, anyone can sense that tribal and national diversity are embedded within the very blueprint of the Human structure. Asian expressions of life are different from African expressions. European cultures differ from South American societies. Even within continents there are varying ways in which people live and breath through history. This embedded diversity within the fabric of Humanity exists within the Body of Christ, too. Rather than shun differing expressions, the Western Church should celebrate the variety of created Humanity within the Global Church. A post-colonial worldview of global missions begins with an embedded diversity in the Created Order. It begins by affirming and celebrating the Otherness found in Humanity and recognizes that this diversity is derived from the Triune Creator God who is Himself diverse in Persons, though one in essence. Traditionally, the West began with itself as the arbiter of what was good and proper, rather than Creation; Western global missions has assumed the primacy of the West resulting in excessive confidence, rather than starting with and appreciating the variety of Humanity in Creation. This must change if we are to restore the effects of rebellion within Creation and share His redemption.

While the Genesis narrative explains how we find our Being in the Creator God, it also explains why the world is so broken and disrupted. Though they were created to exist in an eternal relationship defined by mutual love with their Creator, free Humans chose to rebel instead. That rebellion plunged all of Creation into brokenness, resulting in what French lay theologian Jacques Ellul called, “The Great Rupture.” Primarily, our relationship with God ruptured, but our relationships with each other have, too. Not only do we not love God as we ought, we do not love other Humans as we were originally designed. Even though we were made for each other, made to live together and created to find our meaning and purpose not simply in ourselves but in one another, we find doing so is incredibly difficult.
Thus, almost every generation in every part of the globe has experienced for itself a Crusade, the Conquistadors, Trails of Tears, Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur; on every part of the globe The Great Rupture is evident in broken, oppressed Human relationships between tribes and nations. Additionally, Creation itself is broken, resulting in famine, massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and drought. No part of Creation’s original shalom has not been disrupted. As Paul writes, every corner and crevice of Creation groans in anticipation of Rescue. Thankfully, the Creator launched the greatest rescue operation known to man; through the death of God’s Son Jesus Christ, the consequences of Rebellion and evil powers are conquered and God’s rescue operation for the whole cosmos can be unrolled and put into dramatic operation.

Despite the Human Rebellion against the Creator, all was not without hope. For even at the beginning the Father intended to Rescue His Creation by sending His Son to restore Humans to relationship with Himself and the Other, while eventually restoring all Creation. Jesus is the Rescuer, the Victorious Obedient Substitute, who through His Redemptive Act rescues and restores Creation in this way: Through His Life, Jesus obeyed God perfectly after the First Adam did not, while demonstrating how we are to live as Humans; through His Death, Jesus paid the final penalty to God for Rebellion on behalf of all Humans through a final sacrifice, thus restoring Humans to relationship with God; through His Resurrection, Jesus defeated the Dark Powers to liberate all Humanity from Satan’s control and free us from the bondage of Evil and Sin. Through this Rescue operation, the Creator intended to Rescue and eventually Restore all of Humanity. Thus, in coming to Earth, Jesus intended to redeem all of Humanity through His Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; His Redemptive Act is sufficient for all Humans and effective for everyone who will eventually embrace Jesus as Lord. And a post-colonial worldview of missions will realize that God is truly global and Jesus’ Redemptive Act is also global, allowing people from all tribes to bow before Jesus Christ and confess Him as Lord.

Furthermore, this Rescuer incarnated Himself as a Human among Humans; God the Son dwelt among us by embedding Himself in the world as a real Human. Like Jesus, the Western Church must embed Herself within particular global cultures by incarnationally living, eating, and working closely with its surrounding community to build strong links between Christians and not-yet-Christians. And like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Western Church is called to bringing the full weight of the identity and mission of the Church as a community of adopted Sons and Daughters to bear upon global cultures in order to articulate the gospel and ethical implications of the Kingdom of God. While the identity and mission of the Church is as a discipling community, the Body of Christ is also an eschatological community that embodies the good news of Jesus Christ and Reign of God within particular contexts, just like Jesus. And as the Church we are called to join in with God’s Act of Recreation now.

The final ‘act’ of God’s Story and a post-colonial biblical worldview of global missions is Recreation. Through Jesus Christ, God is making all things new, a Recreation that began with Jesus’ announcement of the in-breaking of the Reign of God and continued with the commissioning and establishment of the Church. Just as God set apart a group of people (Israel) to be a blessing to the world around it by testifying to the one true God, He chose the Church to bear prophetic witness to the salvation and restoration found in the Reign of God through Christ; by way of choosing, calling and sending a particular people to be the bearer of blessing for all, God is uniting the whole cosmos through his plan of shalom restoration. A post-colonial worldview of missions will be centered on the articulation of the moral and ethical truths of this Reign to all nations by using it’s prophetic voice, while also influencing the tribes of the world in such a way that they pattern their lives and lifestyle after Jesus, to cause the nations to be pupils and disciples of the Son of God. As an eschatological community, the Church represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God by giving a foretaste of God’s ultimate act of Recreation while pointing people toward this better way of being Human and living together on Earth. Through a post-colonial worldview, Western global missions will truly be this community for the entire world, for the glory of God.

A post-colonial worldview of missions, then, affirms and celebrates the diversity of Creation in Humanity and the Other, grieves over the oppression and fractured relationships between and within the nations, embraces a furious love of God that extends to all tribes through the death and resurrection of Jesus, and lives embedded within these tribes as an eschatological community that offers Life in Jesus and represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God, giving a foretaste of what is to come. Because God is global, not simply Western, the Body of Christ must be global. And a worldview of global missions in an era of globalization must embrace and celebrate the Otherness of Creation by being post-colonial. Consequently, a post-colonial posture toward global missions will affect how the Western Church does both theology and missions.

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

THE POST-COLONIAL ERA AND ECCLESIOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

While post-modernism is the condition of the West, post-colonialism is the condition of the South and East; the West is grappling with an existence beyond the values and metaphysics of modernism, while Asia, South America and Africa are all dreaming of an existence outside and beyond their collective colonial history and colonizers. Most non-Westerners prefer to use the term post-colonialism to describe their struggle for identity in the aftermath of the colonial experience. Postmodernism deconstructs the dominant narratives as being simply one of many competing reality-defining stories, hence Jean-Fransçois Lyotard is incredulous towards metanarratives. Furthermore, Michael Foucault’s critique birthed the deep hermeneutic of suspicion of institutions that characterizes our postmodern culture. Consequently, any institution that attempts to control belief and behavior is viewed as repressive and domineering. In fact, there is a deep sense that institutions in and of themselves are structures of domination. Thus, postmodernism is an ally of sorts of post-colonialism; those who seek to come to terms with the experience of colonization and its long-term effects see in postmodernism not only the possibility of an alternative discourse that affirms and celebrates Otherness, but also a strategy for the deconstruction of the concept, authority, and assumed primacy of the category of ‘the West.’ In other words, just as postmodern thought disrobes the differing values and authorities within the West as simply one story over another, post-colonialism asserts that the West itself is one narrative among many, a narrative whose authority and primacy is no longer simply so. That the West does not exclusively define reality is a seismic development, indeed!

The reality of our post-colonial era has great implications for the Western Church. First, the Western Church must dissect the West as a category from the narrative of Jesus. In other words, Christian spirituality and God’s Redemptive Narrative can no longer be defined by Western values and sentiments. In his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paul Freire explains that there comes a time when the oppressed as divided, unauthentic beings develop their own pedagogy of liberation, a development that must be rooted in their own existential struggle for freedom, rather than in models presented to them for emulation from the oppressors. In other words, those who have been oppressed by the West in times past will not seek liberation from the West and its institutions, including Christianity. Rather, they will find freedom in their own indigenous examples. Whether those examples are renewed tribal spiritualists or alternative religions to Western Christianity, post-colonial sectors of the world will assert themselves against all things Western, which calls for indigenous discipleship.

After Jesus’ resurrection He commissioned His disciples as agents of His new Kingdom-movement to share the good news of the Kingdom. Interestingly, where you would expect Jesus to use the word “preach/proclaim” or “bear witness,” a slower, lower profile verb is used, an almost scholastic, schoolish word, “disciple.” This verb literally means, “to cause one to be a pupil or disciple,” which is the controlling word for the Church’s mission. In addition to dissecting the narrative of Jesus from the West, post-colonialism calls for solidarity through indigenization. Solidarity with the non-West requires that one entire the situation of those whom one is solidary; if what has characterized the global South and East is their subordination to the West, true solidarity with the post-colonial South and East means discipling them in the Way of Christ at their side in order to transform their objective reality. Thus, because the post-colonial condition requires hyper-indigenization, the Western Church would do well to begin bleeding Western categories from God’s Story, while also rethinking our concepts of the Other.

As the West rethinks its categories and pays closer attention to indigenization of God’s Redemptive Story, it must not fall into the trap of what Edward W. Said calls the “phenomenon of Orientalism.” According to Said, Orientalism is the notion that the categories “Orient” (which would be modern-day Asia, particularly China) and “Occident” are man-made categories that contributed to a European system of knowledge about the Orient, an idea of Europe that flowed from “a collective notion identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against all “those” non-Europeans.” Embedded within the idea of the Orient was an identity of European superiority in comparison to all the other non-European peoples and cultures, creating a hegemony of ideas and overriding the possibility that more independent, skeptical thinking people might have differing views. This facet of the colonial–post-colonial narrative struggle is intriguing for two reasons: it precludes Western Church theological dominance and hegemony, because the post-colonial struggle is precisely set against the type of Western identity that led to Orientalism; and more pragmatically it requires the West to revise nearly all of its categories for the global Other, realizing that they have been largely deduced through a foggy 18th century-esque romanticism that generated who and what was an Oriental, who or what was an Other.

While I hardly scratched the surface of everything post-colonial a few things should be clear: Otherness is celebrated and affirmed over against the West; Western institutions likeChristianity and the Church are skeptically viewed as extensions of colonial years gone by; solidarity with the global Other requires a radical indigenization as the formerly oppressed seek an identity and solutions apart from their oppressors, and embedded within their own forgotten narratives; and the Western phenomenon of Orientalism (or even Afrikanism) must give way to more nuanced, respectful categories of the non-Western Other. Obviously, our post-colonial global reality requires a drastic shift in Western global mission efforts. But before those efforts can shift, Western global missions as an entity needs to rethink the worldview underpinning those efforts.

Series
1-Introduction
2-The Post-Colonial Era and The Church
3-Toward A Post-Colonial Worldview
4-Post-Colonial Theology and Missions
5-A Case Study – Evangelism Explosion International

In the Fall of 2006, I had the opportunity to work for a national upscale department store after working for over four years on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.. Our store was located in one of the wealthiest and diverse counties in the country, resulting in a mosaic tapestry of tongues, tribes and religions. My department alone included six Muslims, an Orthodox Jew, a Sikh, a Buddhist, a few non-Western Christians and others who were spiritual, but non-religious. Ethiopia, Morocco, Somalia, Gabon, India, Afghanistan, Japan, Columbia and Pakistan were all represented, creating an amazing work environment and cross-cultural learning experience. It was in this context that a clash of national heritages occurred. One afternoon my Gabonian co-worker asked me, “Is your name African?” As a thoroughly white midwestern American (in the strictest WASPian sense of the description) I could not help but laugh out loud at his question! Obviously, my African co-worker got a kick out of it, too. He was curious about my family heritage, because he came from a part of the world where my ancestors were apart of something I could only touch and feel at movie length. You see, my last name, Bouma, is Dutch and the Dutch Empire used its naval and military might to colonize parts of western and southern Africa, including Gabon where my African friend was from. Through such trading companies as the Dutch East Indies Company and Dutch West Indies Company, the Kingdom of The Netherlands used its might to leverage trade in newly discovered lands outside of Europe. And it was through the Dutch West Indies Company that my family name spread from European to African. Thus began my introduction to the realities of colonialism.

Like me, most Westerners are incredibly removed from the colonial experience and its consequences. Though the hundreds of Native American reservations plagued by rampant alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide are mini-colonial dystopias in our very own backyard, Americans scarcely encounter the effects of colonialism. And though some commentators may attempt to paint the Bush Administration as colonialist militants wrapped in peace keeping garb, for all intents and purposes the Age of Colonialism is over. Through colonialism, European nations extended their sovereignty over territory beyond its borders, dominated the resources, labor and markets of the indigenous peoples of Asia, South America and Africa, and imposed socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered populations.
Though, nation states no longer overtly exploit other people groups in this sort of manner, the struggles of a post-colonial era are just beginning.

Within former European colonies and nations of the global South and East, there is a growing desire for self-assertion, self-expression and self-rule that was formerly gutted at the hands of White Europeans. Likewise, the West has been quick to make recompense for past imperialistic misdeeds and accommodate that self-assertion. In the United Nations, for instance, the developing world insisted in 1961 that a non-Western be elected Secretary General. As a result, U Thant from Burma (now Myanmar) served this global agency for a decade, while a Peruvian, Egyptian, Ghanan, and now South Korean have served the United Nations since 1982. In addition to this political paradigm shift, the world has seen economic ones, too. Globalization grants the South and East unprecedented opportunities to begin enjoying the luxuries and technologies the West has enjoyed for centuries. Nations like Brazil, China, India and even Kenya are now economically linked to the West and benefiting from that interconnectedness at unprecedented levels. So not only is the South and East asserting themselves like never before, and rightly so, the West has begun to value and incorporate the cultures of these non-Western nations into their ethos, rather than insisting they conform to Western sensibilities.

Despite the post-colonial shift in the secular West, however, the Church has been slow to incorporate this important global paradigm shift into Her interactions with the world, especially Her worldview of global missions. In light of the post-colonial condition, the time has come for the Western Church to shed Her colonialist impulses and embrace a post-colonial posture toward global mission enterprises. Particularly what’s called for is a worldview reorientation toward a post-colonial worldview of global missions. This blog series (based on a paper I wrote for a global missions class) seeks to make the case for such a worldview shift, arguing globalization begs a different posture by the Western Church toward the rest of the world. Such a worldview will inform how we do both theology and missions in the 21st century. To explain how a post-colonial worldview of missions would look in a global context, this paper will examine Evangelism Explosion International as a case study in light of this worldview. In the end, I hope the Western Church will begin to see how it should relate to the rest of the world, a relating that is post-colonial at its core.

Over the weekend I participated in an online dialogue for my online class Global Impact. For the class we’re required to post two posts each week in response to a forum question. This weeks questions was: What is the role of the Western Church in 21st Century mission? I already posted a fairly extensive paper on my overall view, but in one of my posts I said we the Western Church need to make way for Other voices. Here is what I said:

As the Western Church seeks to “do missions” in our 21st Century context, it must do so post-colonially. To do so, She must start by giving way to other voices, especially theologically. While our version of Christianity is decidedly Western, mainly because the theological discourse has passed through the West and out to other parts of the world, a post-colonial worldview of missions must make way for African Christological categories or Asian undersandings of pneumatology. Are we so threatened and fearful of that these voices might just be better and replace our own understandings that we will try and stifle them with the great ‘H’ word (heresy)? I hope not!

This response generated a fair amount of dialogue on the forum. One of my virtual classmates took some issue with my assertion that we should not be so quick to break out the ‘H’ word when Africans give us different Christological categories, for instance, saying: “However, if we go so far as to say that there is no such thing as heresy (which I am not sure if you are saying or not) than haven’t we just claimed that all roads lead to God? What-ta-ya say?”

What-ta-I-say? Here’s what I said:

but then the question remains: WHO decides what is heresy? Is it the West, the East, the South…all ‘voices’ as one other student said? And please dont tell me the Scriptures decide heresy because that’s pretty lame…when we all know real humans (mostly Western White Men) are the ones who make decisions about what Scriptures say, thus what is orthodox and what is heresy.

So thats the real question: WHO decides what is orthodox and heresy…in addition to probably more important one: HOW do we decide. The question of WHAT is orthodox and heresy simply has lost any credibility as a viable quesiton…for the time being at least.

Given the volatile nature of what is happening within American Evangelicalism right now with the emerging church movement and confusion regarding what theology/doctrine/dogma from History do we keep and toss, I see these two questions being central to contemporary theological and ecclesiological discourse.

Who decides what is orthodox and what is heresy?

How do we decide what is orthodox and what is heresy?

“The global image of the US has significantly deteriorated over the past 12 months, as the chaos in Iraq has deepened. And in 18 of the countries that were involved in previous polls, the slide in America’s standing has steepened.” This was the verdict of a BBC article reporting on a BBC World Service Poll which found widespread discontent among most of the world population toward the United States of America. While the US government may think it is offering the world Pax Americana through particular foreign policy efforts, those policies are viewed with contempt by the rest of the world and have resulted in a crisis of confidence in the American government, diluting its ongoing ability to influence the world. Already its mass exportation of American culture has pricked the ire of many Arab nations, resulting in such events as the USS Cole Bombing, 9/11, and the Iraq insurgency. With so much discontent with America in general, it is no wonder that the American Church’s influence is also waning, especially when it comes to missions. Rightly or wrongly, Christianity is linked with the West and specifically the United States of America. And as America continues its pseudo-colonialist endeavors in the interest of ‘national security’, the American Church’s influence will continue to dwindle unless it embraces a post-colonial posture toward the emerging South and East. As the Western Church grapples with Her role in global missions, She must be post-colonial in theology and missions if She is to make a continued difference in the world for Jesus Christ.

TOWARD A POST-COLONIAL POSTURE

“Colonialism is the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizing nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.” During the glory days of European colonialism, nation states ventured to distant places to wrest land, resources, and manpower from the ‘savage,’ all the while saving him from himself and his own damnation. These later religious efforts were based upon the ethnocentric belief that the Christian morals and European values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized, efforts which claimed the use of force was necessary to ‘help’ the colonized understand how superior those morals and values were. These Western Christians never seemed to question, however, whether they had received the God-given right to take the lands and resources of people in the non-Western world, nor did they seem to doubt whether their European culture was superior to the savages of the unknown world. An excessive confidence dominated the Western ethos, a confidence that has lived on to this day. The response to this attitude is post-colonialism, a condition which celebrates the Other, deconstructing the assumed authority and primacy of the West and insisting these voices of non-Westerners be given a seat at the table of worldwide discourse.

As I explained in my first essay of the course, previous and current missions tactics were and are often similar to 19th and 20th century colonial efforts; contemporary Western global missions efforts are often like crossing borders into enemy territory to settle and claim people for our kingdom, dominating all of the emotional, intellectual, and verbal capital in an effort to make the Other our own. Furthermore, we often insist that we hold the trump card to all things spiritual and theological, that our morals, spirituality, and theology are more superior to our fellow Southern and Eastern humans, ultimately thinking they have nothing to add to the conversation. In response, I suggested the Western Church needs to shift from colonial mission efforts to a model similar to economic sustainable development that is post-colonial. We are called to step into the cultures and languages and customs and lives of real people to show and tell them a better way of being human by showing them Jesus and telling them of God’s Kingdom Reign.

In the same way that those who are committed to sustainable economic development enter the lives of people groups indefinitely for the purpose of showing them a better, more sound way of growing food, filtering water, or organizing an economy, we are called to step into the lives of people indefinitely to show them a better way of being Human in Jesus and explain the significance of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Just as sustainable development is about the individual (rather than the group thats doing the developing), efforts at reaching non-followers through global missions are about them and their life, not us and our church or group. In the same way sustainable development equips people to better grow food or better manage a local economy, Western global outreach must be about indigenously equipping the Other to follow Jesus and obey His teachings in their own context, while respecting their own spiritual heritage. Rather than colonize and conquer through outmoded mission tactics, the Western Church must develop people through discipleship by incorporating post-colonial attitudes that embrace the “otherness” of the Other, because this was at the heart of the mission Jesus which He gave His own disciples. While the world has shifted, the church and its agencies continue to act as if nothing has changed.
Doing Western mission in global context through a post-colonial posture will not only rethink missions, but will rethink (and begin with) theology, too.

POST-COLONIAL THEOLOGY

As America’s influence around the world wanes, so too the time of Western dominance in theology is over. No longer is there an “assumed primacy…of the West” in general, let alone specifically in the area of theology. In a post-colonial era where the voices of previously suppressed non-Western nations are exerting their influence on the world stage like never before, so too is the South and East beginning to come into their own in the theological discourse. Because the Western versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years are no longer viewed as connecting with this time and place, the time is ripe for such emerging voices to enter the theological conversation. Thus, as the Western Church approaches global missions, it must unbundle the ‘package’ of the Jesus Story from Western Civilization and allow the Church in emerging global contexts to frame that Story in their own language.

For example, just listen to the voice of the Masai people in Kenya and Tanzania:

We believe in one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on earth…We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day he rose from the grace.

“The hyenas did not touch him.” What a wonderful way to express the resurrection of our Lord and communicate the majesty and glory of the Story of God using their own language! Notice what sort of language was not included: Trinity; sovereignty of God; election; determinism; the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God; and other Western theological constructs. In other words, these African people crafted a theological credo that was contextual to their expression of faith in Jesus. The expression of faith in theology is never universal, anyway, but is in fact very particular; our dogmas and doctrines of God, of humanity, or Jesus, of sin, of salvation are firmly embedded in the Greco-Roman context of another time and in some ways have become meaningless in even our own postmodern Western context. Imagine, then, how those Western, Greco-Roman theologies and doctrines appear in an Asian or African context. The Aristotelian Unmoved Mover concept of God, which is shared by many contemporary Western Christians, just will not translate to the Masai people.

The Western Church, then, needs to contextualize the theology of Christian spirituality within other tribes, but She also must allow those tribes to inform the contemporary theological discussion. “Theology in a postcolonial context is a highly political affair. Postcolonial theologies will not settle for a position at the margins of their Western counterparts. Rather, they serreptitiously seek to turn the margin into the centre, thereby disrupting the serenity grounded on the assumption that Western formulations are self-evident.” And there is the rub: why must ‘Western formulations’ be entirely self-evident? I certainly understand and would agree that the Zeitgeist of God’s Story has helped formulate our theology and preserved truthful understandings of His Reality, but must they be the sine qua non of theological discourse? Why cannot the West learn from African Christological expressions? How could Asian understandings inform our understanding of pneumatology? Or why cannot the Western Church learn from the Eastern (Orthodox) Church’s understanding of worship and prayer? We’ve already recognized the Western understanding of the gospel has been too often truncated, shallow, thin, bland, anemic, privatized, personalized, polarized, and compromised. Perhaps our more globally integrated era will help further expose weaknesses in our thoroughly Platonic, Enlightenment theology.

But maybe that’s the fear: “Evangelical faith, which has hitherto been articulated and formulated in the stable idiom of Western rationalism that guaranteed its sameness, suddenly finds itself confronted with other idioms that disturb both the stability of classical formulations and the appeal of sameness. Will the evangelical faith break or stretch? Therein lies the question.” Many Western theologians, especially of the evangelical variety, will balk at the idea of making space for the theological voices of the global South and East, suggesting that our understanding of God is settled. That arrogance, however, will not only hinder global missions efforts, but will also keep the Western Church from growing in its understanding of God and living out its Reformation creed: “the church always reforming.” While the West certainly provides a tether to historical theological categories (e.g. Trinity and the dual nature of Christ), we must be able to learn as students from the global Church if we are to both contextualize God’s Story and partner with our overseas brothers and sisters in missions.

POST-COLONIAL MISSIONS

How exactly does missions look from a post-colonial posture? If we are to do missions in a postmodern context from a post-colonial perspective, we must first recognize that the Other does not need to conform to our Western morals, values, and customs. In fact, it might be best to encourage Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish seekers to not become members of the Christian religion at all given how closely Christianity is linked to the West. In his book, Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren explains, “Although I don’t hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.” While this suggestion may seem radical and have a slightly universalist tinge to it, we need to understand that the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ carry with them much baggage and Western, especially American, connotations. In the previous paragraph Brian affirms the need to become “humble followers of Jesus, whom I believe…to be the Son of God, the Lord of all, and the Savior of the world.” Missions outreach, then, must be rooted in the notion of “following Jesus” over against other religions, while permitting the Other to remain embedded in their cultural and spiritual traditions.

Rooting our post-colonial mission efforts in “following Jesus” as opposed to “becoming a Christian” is not only important to the Western Church’s efforts at global missions, it is also biblical. It’s called discipleship and, of course, finds its meaning in Jesus’ Great Commission and model of sustainable development. It means embedding ourselves in tribes of the Other, learning their customs and spiritual heritage, and committing to the long process of helping them become students of Jesus, rather than simply Christians. But as Dallas Willard wrote, “non-discipleship is the elephant in the church!” While the Western church is woefully inadequate at discipleship in its own Western context, global missions needs to shift to this more “sustainable development” model. Through this model Western global missions would include these elements: we must embed ourselves among the Other and first embody and demonstrate the Way of Jesus by being disciples ourselves before proclaiming the gospel of Jesus; we must consciously seek to make disciples, to bring others to the point where they are daily learning from Jesus and follow Him with their lives and lifestyle, instead of winning converts through evangelistic colonialist endeavors; like economic sustainable development, we must take the time to change whatever it is in their actual belief system that prevents them from placing their confidence in Jesus as Master of the Universe, while connecting their existing belief system to God’s Redemptive Story as found in Jesus; and finally, while we do not want to syncretize Jesus with Buddhism or Hinduism, we must allow space for the following of Jesus as Lord without embracing a Christianity that is rooted in the West nor American culture.

Finally, the Western Church needs to begin partnering with the Church of the global South and East to reach all nations with the good news of Jesus Christ. Ironically, already African nations are sending missions to North America. For example, the Anglican Church of Rwanda planted a church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Church of the Resurrection. Another movement within American Anglicanism, called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, is a missionary effort from the Church of Nigeria to shepherd disaffected former Episcopal churches who have left the American Anglican communion over several biblical and ecclesiastical issues. These and other stories illustrate that the vital centers of missions are dispersed throughout the world today, and could be multiplied with deliberate Western Church partnerships. Such partnerships, however, must flow from a spirit of mutuality of authority and unity of purpose. Just as theology must shift from a Western centric posture to a global discourse, including the tribes at the margins of our world, so too must missions shift toward an arm-locking posture with our Asian, African, Indo-Philippino, and South American brothers and sisters as coequals for the sake and purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

CONCLUSION

The authority and voice of the Western Church is dissipating, in no small reason due to the waning authority and power of the United States of America. In times past, America and Europe were the dominate sending organizations of missionaries to the global South and East, now the Two-Thirds world sends the majority of people on missions throughout the world, including to both Europe and America.
It is very encouraging to see our fellow African and Asian churches provide leadership to the global church and global mission efforts. But while I certainly applaud the missions efforts of my African, Asian, and South American brothers and sister who are owning the commission of Jesus to make disciples, there is still a place for the West to join in with these other churches in fulfilling the Great Commission. Gone are the days, though, when the West is the sole leader and authority on theology and missions. In our 21st century global context, we the West must make room for indigenous theological expressions of God’s Story and voices of leadership in missions. The West certainly can ground and tether the South and East to the historical development of theology and missions, but that once ultimate authority must give way to partnership. While the time for dominance of the Western Church maybe over, the time for quitting is not. The Southern and Eastern Church has much to learn from us as much as we do them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BBC News. ‘Listen More’ Is The World’s Message To US. Available from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6288933.stm. Retrieved 7 June 2008.

Donovan, Father Vincent J., Christianity Rediscovered. Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 2005.

Engle, James F., and William A. Dyrness, Changing The Minds of Missions. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL, 2000.

Mabiala, Kenzo. Evangelical Faith & (Postmodern) Others. Available from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/iceman.shtml. Retrieved 7 June 2008.

McLaren, Brian, “Church Emerging: Or Why I Still Use The Word Postmodern But With Mixed Feelings,” Pages 142-151 in An Emergent Manifesto Of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.

McLaren, Brian, A Generous Orthodoxy. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2004.

Pagitt, Doug. A Christianity Worth Believing. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2008.

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Updated 22 July 2004, 10:55 UTC. Encyclopedia on-line. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism. Internet. Retrieved 7 June 2008.

Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy. HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, 1998.

At no other point in the world’s history has Humanity been as interconnected and interdependent as it is at the start of the 21st century. Bomb blasts in Nigeria bring Grand Rapids commuters to their knees with a spike in gas prices. Droughts in the South Pacific force rice rationing in California. Chrysler cars are produced in The United Mexican States, while Honda cars roll off assembly lines in the State of Ohio. People of Buddhist, Muslim, and Sikh faiths are no longer thought of (entirely) as a “them” across two oceans, but rather live just over privacy fences from Maine to Kansas to New Mexico. Furthermore, through internet social communities, like chat rooms and MySpace, these other “faith stories” have crowded out the Christian story, preventing any one faith from legitimately claiming to be the sine qua non of reality defining stories. Welcome to the 21st century world on the steroids of globalization!

Globalization is can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together through the economic, technological, socio-cultural and political forces of the world. It is through these processes that the world has become hyper-connected and hyper-dependent. How, then, should the 21st century Church respond to globalization and “do missions” in this context? We must root our answers in an understanding of God as One who globally cares for all Creation and nations. Furthermore, that Global God sends the Church to all nations to woo them to relationship with Himself by discipling them in His Ways and prophetically witnessing to the values of the Reign of God through testimony and embodiment. This will happen, though, only when She realizes the full scope of globalization and discovers the form and substance of mission in a world that has rejected the power and influence of Western nations.

THE GLOBAL GOD

At the heart of the question of globalization and the church is the realization that God is truly global: through the great reality made known through in Jesus Christ, we see in the Creator an ocean of infinite love overflowing to all of Creation, including all nations. This historically biblical understanding of God’s movement in History was largely disrupted through the doctrine of election in the Reformation, a doctrine that skewed this biblical understanding of God in History. Through the writings of such Reformers as John Calvin, it was postulated that the once Global God was now a European God who embraced and forgave only a select group of people, opening His Kingdom to a narrow slice of the nations. But while the Reformers could postulate an election that completely excluded those who could not be touched by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, mostly because great swaths of the world were considered unknown, the Church cannot do so in the Age of Globalization. Those who were once considered savages and “Others” are now our neighbor. In fact, the Book of Jonah prevents us from restricting God’s embracing love.

In the Jonah parable we see a man who acts as a mouthpiece and poster child for a group of hyper-nationalists who said YHWH’s forgiveness and mercy should only extend to His people and never to those outside of that elected group. God, however, is “a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity,” even toward pagans like the Assyrians who turn from their wickedness in repentance. That’s what they did and that’s what God did: Through Jonah’s prophetic witness, the people of Nineveh repented of their wickedness and turned toward the true God; God saw how they turned from their wicked ways and had compassion on them and relented from sending calamity. Even though they were not among the elected clan of the Israelites, God bestowed His grace! In the Age of Enlightenment and Discovery it was easy for European Reformers to easily dismiss the faiths of the Other as pagan, primarily because they offended their European cultural sensibilities not simply because they denied the exclusivity of Jesus. In the Age of Globalization, however, these people groups cannot be dismissed so easily, especially since God does care for all people.

Not only does our Global God desire that all should be restored to relationship with Himself and discipled in His Way, He is also the God of the oppressed and constantly presents to Israel a “humanitarian vision” for community. In the Book of Deuteronomy, for instance, God instructs His people to care for the alien, orphan, and widow, not simply as social welfare causes, but because their circumstances warranted such care. Just as support for the Levites was a normal rhythm of the life of this community, God expected His people to embody His own care for the marginalized by caring for them. The character of this Global God is also reflected in the early Church as described by Luke in the Book of Acts. In fact, in describing how there were no poor among the early followers of Christ in 4:34, Luke deliberately invokes Deuteronomy 15:4, implying that he saw the early Christian community as being governed by Deuteronomy’s vision. So both through the Israelites and the Church, we see God’s heart for the global poor and marginalized reflected in His commands to His people. No greater insight in the global nature of God is evident, however, than in the incarnation of God in Christ.

In the person of Jesus Christ, we see a truly Global God. Though He originally appeared and ministered to a small group of people, the children of Israel, we see a person who accepts and embraces everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. In fact, He viewed His mission in this embracing framework: He was sent to the socially marginalized to preach good news; He came to bring healing to the blind; He came to release the captives and oppressed; and finally He was sent to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor for all the world. Of particular interest is the special emphasis on bringing release, which is emphasized elsewhere in Luke-Acts in three ways: The forgiveness and release from sins for the world, which had both spiritual and social ramifications for Jews and Gentiles alike; release and healing from the binding power of Satan, both diabolical and social; and release from debts, drawing on the Jubilee legislation of Leviticus that command the freeing of slaves, cancellation of debts, fallowing of land, and return of land to the original distribution under Moses. So prophetically, He came to testify to and embody the in-breaking of the Reign of God, while teaching us a better way of Being Human. It is this last task that begins the mission of the Church as a community sent to disciple the nations in God’s Way.

GLOBAL DISCIPLE-MAKING

In response to this Global God the Church is sent to the entire world as an apostle; the Church is sent by the Global God on behalf of the Reign of God to influence the nations to follow Jesus with their lives and lifestyle. The manner in which the Church must go, however, must be tempered by the realities of globalization and our pluralistic world. While previous disciple-making endeavors colonialistically sought to replace the social and cultural values that governed people’s thinking in Asia and Africa with Enlightenment values of the West, contemporary efforts must be more conversant with these faiths and find points of connection where God is already at work. For instance, Kosuke Koyama suggests the Church has a major opportunity and challenge to enter into dialogue with Buddhists over their four major ethical issues: the source of authority in religious belief and ethics, the nature and role of the “self” as an ethical agent, the importance of community in encouraging moral action, and the religious and ethical place of government in society. A close look by the Church would reveal a common link between the ethical standards of Jesus Christ and those of the Buddhist faith, providing a clear starting point for discipleship in the Way of Jesus and redemption in His sacrifice. This dialogue, however, cannot be moored in pluralism, but must move toward Jesus.

While dialogue with the world religious faiths is healthy in our pluralistic society, the conversation must move from talk of global religious stories to the climax of our world’s story in Jesus Christ. Lest the focus of our conversation shifts from Jesus to “who will be saved at the end?”, the goal of missions and discipleship must be the glory of God and posing this question: “What is the meaning and goal of this common human story in which we are all, Christians and others together, participants.”
Thus, our contribution to this dialogue will simply be telling and retelling the story of Jesus, because as Paul says the Story itself is the power of God for salvation. And in retelling the Story of Jesus in constant relational dialogue with the Other, we make space for the Spirit to move in their hearts. Again, the purpose is not sifting out who is in and who is out of the Kingdom of God, but sharing the Story of Jesus in the context of committed relationships with the Other and letting His Story be our Story, for the glory of God.
Discipleship in the era of globalization cannot begin in the trenches on either side of no-man’s-land, but rather must start in the space between the creeds. Because as Newbigin correctly asserts, “The Christian who enters dialogue on the basis of his or her own ‘confession’ must recognize that others will do the same.” Because every religion will come to the table to dialogue from their own creedal position, Christians cannot come to colonize brandishing their own doctrines, but must partner with what God is already doing among other faiths in an effort to ultimately point people toward Jesus Christ. Ultimately, we must equip the Church to understand and encounter such faiths so that these encounters will not be marked by prejudice, paternalism, and pride, but will rather be characterized by empathy, compassion, and honest dialogue.

GLOBAL PROPHETIC WITNESS

Recent headlines have revealed the consequences of globalization in a fallen world, consequences resulting in the exploitation of people for the sake of pure economics. On November 26, 2007, The New York Times reported the deplorable working conditions of men in India who make manhole covers for the New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection. As the article explained, the men were shirtless, barefoot, sweaty, and whip-thin, working without even basic humane safety standards. The week before, fresh revelations surfaced in the same country that Gap Inc. continues to use contractors that employ child labor, with kids as young as ten years old stitching together cute little polos for suburban ten year olds in America. Finally, contractors for yet another corporation, Victoria’s Secret, force their Jordanian workers to work up to 105 hours a week, while receiving just $.04 compensation per knitted $14 bikini. The question remains, though: Where is the moral outcry of the Body of Christ? In the face of this injustice and inequity, where is the Church’s prophetic witness?
In attempting to speak prophetically into the global capitalistic system, one Christian author and professor, John A. Schneider, wrote how the Church should understand and bless the economic system of capitalism as a means by which God is ushering in His “cosmic good” for His global Creation. He insists that God originally desired Humans to acquire and enjoy a good, affluent existence brimming with the good stuff of life, and for good reason. But while he does make a fairly convincing case that the basic form of capitalism can contribute to this global cosmic good, like many Christians he fails to acknowledge the global harm consumer capitalism has caused the non-privileged developing world in an era of globalization. Corporations that drive the American economy, and thus feed the privileged developed American consumer appetite, have built themselves on the backs of the Global Brown Man, with little thought given to the consequences of their construction efforts. If prophet witness is the articulation of moral truth, surely the Church has words to breath into the volatile globalization conversation.
If the Church were to take Her mission as prophetic witnesses seriously we might ask: When a Christian grandmother purchases a sweater at Gap made by an Indian 10 year old for her teenage grandson, is she not at least somewhat complicit in that Indian child’s suffering? Or when a Christian college student buys a pound of Guatemala Antigua Blend coffee from Starbucks for $12.95 for his late night study sessions, does he not in someway pronounce a blessing upon the Mighty Siren for the $.20 a pound they gave the Guatemalan farmer which perpetuates his life of poverty? What we the hyper-globally connected First World should consider is how our interactions with and use of the global poor differ in spiritual and moral quality than the exploitation and oppression Israel’s ruling class bore upon their own poor. And if Western multinational corporations and nations have built their entire businesses and economies upon the cheap labor and products of the underdeveloped world, are we not responsible to those people? Furthermore, does not the Church bear the responsibility to raise the voice of moral outcry to these greedy corporations on behalf of our global neighbor?

The principle of moral proximity should govern our understanding of Christian prophetic witness, an idea that mirrors the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings on subsidiarity, which says the social unit closest to a social problem is most responsible and best able to bring solvency. Moral proximity says that our moral focus should normally be on the problems and issues that are nearest, that we best know and care most about the local problems. According to Schneider, moral proximity has bearing on this discussion, because most ordinary Western Christians are so far removed from the actual oppression and injustice wrought upon the developing world to warrant any condemnation or divine judgement. But in light of the reality of our global economic system, it is incredibly difficult to dismiss the Christian responsibility to the global poor. There should be a more nuanced, exhaustive discussion of our redemptive responsibilities toward those whom we are economically linked. Redemptive, prophetic witness should include questions that challenge Christian abundance and affluence, including: Why do we Americans believe we have the right to two homes when others in Mexico stuff five families in a one room shack? Why do we Americans believe we have the right to a $120,000 Lexus when people in India earn less than $2.00 a week? Why do we Americans believe we have the right to 12 pairs of shoes when gypsies in Romania don’t have a source of water in their village?

In each of these countries, goods are produced that American Christians consume en masse: Mexico produces the Chrysler P.T. Cruiser, India produces GAP clothes, Romania gives us Puma shoes. We are much more connected than Schneider and others care to admit. Because I buy beans from Starbucks, am I not morally connected to the farmer in Kenya who is paid barely $.40 a pound? Is that just compensation? Does that provide a decent wage and source of abundance for him and his family? If I buy clothes from GAP, am I not morally culpable for the ten year old who slaved 90 hours one week to piece together my new outfit? Transnational corporations are incapable of providing the robust image of human worth needed to reform these economic practices. The prophetic voice of the Church, however, can bear witness to the worth and dignity of all humans by continuing to question American economic practices, questions that sit at the heart of a discussion of how the church should respond to globalization.

CONCLUSION

We serve a Global God who has called the Church on a global mission in the context of globalization. God is active among all nations, working on behalf of their oppression and desiring that all come to faith through Jesus Christ. Likewise, He has sent the Church to all nations to disciple them in the Way of Jesus and bear prophetic witness on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized. Because of the technological advancements of the last decade, the Church is primed to reach more nations than ever before and truly realize the apostle John’s vision of all tribes, tongues and people group’s bowing before the throne of the Lamb shouting, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” This task will not be easy, though. The Age of Globalization requires great care and respect on the part of every Christian as they engage the faiths of the Other in the discipleship process. Additionally, our hyper-connected economies no longer allow Christians to claim ignorance and turn a blind’s eye from the injustice wrought at the hands of the American consumers. Globalization has reduced the size of the world and created an interconnectedness like never before. Now is the time to respond by following our Global God into that world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dearborn, Tim, “Christ, The Church, and Other Religions,” Pages 139-141 in The Local Church In A Global Era. Edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Tim Dearborn, and Scott Paeth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000.

Green, Joel. B. The Gospel of Luke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997.

Guder, Darrell, Missional Church. Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids, 1998.

Koyama, Kosuke, “Observation and Revelation in Dialogue: Towards a Christian Theological Approach to Buddhism,” Pages 142-154 in The Local Church In A Global Era. Edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Tim Dearborn, and Scott Paeth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000.

Newbigin, Lesslie, The Gospel In A Pluralist Society. Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids, 1989.

–––––––– The Open Secret. Eerdmans Publishing: Grand Rapids, 1995.

Schneider, John R. The Good of Affluence. Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2002.

Schweiker, William, “The Church as an Academy of Justice,” Pages 26-38 in The Local Church In A Global Era. Edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Tim Dearborn, and Scott Paeth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 2000.

Timmons, Heather. 2007. “New York Manhole Covers, Forged Barefoot in India.” The New York Times 26 November, A1.

Vogt, Peter T. “Social Justice and the Vision of Deuteronomy,” The Journal of Evangelical Theology 51, 1 (2008): 35-44.

Wallis, Jim. God’s Politics. HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, 2005.

Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Updated 22 July 2004, 10:55 UTC. Encyclopedia on-line. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/globalization. Internet. Retrieved 31 May 2008.

In his landmark book on the Church, Chuck Colson cast a convincing, hopeful vision for the Body of Christ. Throughout his book, Being the Body, Dr. Colson explored who the Body of Christ is and how She is the manifestation of God’s hope for the world. During this exploration, though, he also laid down a scathing indictment: the Church has lost Her effectiveness and must recapture an understanding of Her biblical identity. He is right. The 21st century American Church’s fascination with crafting slick worship events (complete with fog machines and rock-star quality light shows), building $93 million facilities (complete with a bookstore, cafeteria, gym, and Starbucks™) and fighting petty, alienating “culture wars” (complete with fear-mongering political attack ads) has seriously warped the Bride’s understanding of Her identity and mission. And in light of the postmodern, post-Christendom cultural shift the Western world is experiencing, we not only need to recapture our identity in general, but need to answer the specific question, “What has God called us to be and do in our current cultural context?”

In this post, I aim to help correct this understanding of the Church’s identity by addressing the question, “What is the mission of the Church?” The obvious starting point for this question is Jesus, who birthed the Church and commissioned Her for a specific function. Beyond the incarnation, though, we will also examine the mission of God and how the established organism of the Church fits into the Trinitarian framework of God’s missional, redemptive plan for Creation. Subsequently, the paper will examine a dual understanding of the Church’s mission as rooted in disciple-making and prophetic witness. In short, we will see how the mission of the Church is to be a community in which people are discipled in the Way of Jesus and embody and bear witness to the Reign of God within a Trinitarian framwork. And because the Church is the hope for the world, I hope this understanding of mission will help Her faithfully live as the organism through which God is accomplishing His mission for Creation.

A TRINITARIAN ORIGIN

Let’s make one thing clear at the beginning: the Church is not a mere collection of individuals, cultural construct, human institution or political interest group. The Body of Christ does not have its origin in the institutions of Man, but rather claims Her origin, and thus Her mission, from the Divine. The first mention of the ekklesia (Church) is in Matthew 16, where Jesus is recorded saying, “I will build my gathering of called-out ones (church), and the Gates of Hades will not over come it.” And consider the entire ministry of Jesus: Throughout His ministry Jesus set out to raise up and form a group of people for the purpose of sending them on mission when He ascended to the right hand of the Father. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, a messianic community was Jesus’ goal. It was not an after thought or even simply a result of Jesus’ teachings. Calling out a gathered people was deliberate because they would (we would) carry forth His mission, a mission that was from the Father.

As the Father has sent Jesus, so Jesus has sent us, the Church. And Jesus’ mission becomes our mission, because the Father uses Humans to accomplish His work. “They may, and often will, fail him and disappoint him, but their role is crucial to the achievement of His mission, for it is through this flawed and vulnerable group of people that God’s kingdom will be established.” The Father entrusts the proclamation of His Kingdom-movement to a particular group of people whom He has chosen for the sake of the whole world. And what is this group to proclaim? They are to proclaim the Reign of God, the fact that God whom Jesus knows as Father is the sovereign ruler over all people and things, and this reality is no longer something remote, but rather is an impending reality that now confronts all men and women for a decision.

And in true Trinitarian form, the mission of the Church is from the Father, given through the Son, and accomplished by the Holy Spirt. While our mission to announce the Reign of God is from the Father and given to the Church through Jesus by Him establishing the Church through gathering together a group of people, the Spirit is the Person who helps Her accomplish this mission. Like Jesus’ own coming, the works and words of the Church are connected directly with the power of the Spirit. This active Agent of Mission is a power that rules, guides, and goes before the Church to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation and restoration of the world to its completion. So the Church is not left to Her own devices to accomplish Her mission, but is guided and empowered by the Spirit. Furthermore, the mission of the Church is not Her own nor is it of Human origin. Rather, the mission of the Church is from the Father, given to Her by the Son, and accomplished by the Spirt, a realization that should undergird any understanding of the particulars of Her mission and identity.

DISCIPLE-MAKING

I have a confession to make: I hate evangelism. Well, not evangelism, per se, but rather the word, and how it is used to define the mission of the church. The word evangelism stems from the Greek euangelion for “good news,” which is a noun not a verb. The problem is an entire theology of mission has been built on this single word, which was never used for the commission of the church in the first place. When the word was originally used by Jesus of the Kingdom of God, He described the invasion of God’s Kingdom-movement in the world as good news, and called people to turn from their own Rhythm of Life and believe in this Kingdom by following Jesus into it. After His resurrection He commissioned His disciples as agents of this new Kingdom-movement to share the good news of the Kingdom. Interestingly, where you would expect Jesus to use the word “preach/proclaim” or “bear witness,” a slower, lower profile verb is used, an almost scholastic, schoolish word, “disciple.” This verb literally means, “to cause one to be a pupil or disciple,” which is the controlling word for the Church’s mission.

The key to the mission of the Church is not “evangelism” but discipleship; we are not to evangelize, but to influence someone in such a way that they pattern their life and lifestyle after another. In our case, our goal should be to influence people to follow Jesus as Messiah, Redeemer, and Restorer. Now to be sure, in this process we will proclaim, explain, and bear witness to the amazing news that is found in Jesus and His teachings on the Kingdom of Heaven, but the mission of the ekklesia is to step into someone’s life and show them a better way of living and being Human through Jesus, not simply to talk at them about their sin, Jesus’ death and resurrection, and possible future heavenly bliss.

The differences between these two notions of mission are incredibly stark: While evangelism is monological, discipleship is dialogical; evangelism seeks to win people, discipleship seeks to shape people; when we evangelize, we posture ourself as a sage on the stage, with discipleship our posture is a guide on the side; evangelism is an ephemeral event, discipleship is an on-going, progressive effort. I liken evangelism to Colonialism and discipleship to Sustainable Development.

“Colonialism is the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizing nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.” Similar to 19th and 20th century colonial efforts, are not evangelistic tactics often like crossing borders into enemy territory to settle and claim people for our kingdom? When we enter the conversation with another don’t we usually dominate all of the emotional, intellectual, and verbal capital in an effort to make that individual our own? And just as colonialism was often based on the ethnocentric belief that the morals and values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized, don’t we often insist that we hold the trump card to all things spiritual, that our morals and spirituality are more superior to the friend or co-worker, ultimately thinking they have nothing to add to the conversation?

Rather than colonizing, we are called into Sustainable Development: We are called to step into the cultures and languages and customs and lives of real people to show and tell them a better way of being human by showing them Jesus and telling them of God’s Kingdom Reign. In other words, we are called to disciple. In the same way that those who are committed to sustainable economic development enter the lives of people groups indefinitely for the purpose of showing them a better, more sound way of growing food, filtering water, or organizing an economy, we are called to step into the lives of people indefinitely to show them a better way of being Human in Jesus and explain the significance of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Just as sustainable development is about the individual (rather than the group thats doing the developing), efforts at discipling non-followers are about them and their life, not us and our church or group. In the same way sustainable development equips people to better grow food or better manage a local economy, discipling non-followers must be about equipping them to follow Jesus and obey His teachings, not simply getting to heaven. Rather than colonize and conquer through evangelism, may we sustainably develop people through discipleship, because this was at the heart of the mission Jesus, which He gave His own disciples.

PROPHETIC WITNESS

Prophetic witness is the articulating of moral truth. Like the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Church is called to bringing the full weight of the identity and mission of the Church as a community of adopted Sons and Daughters to bear upon an embedded culture in order to articulate the gospel and ethical implications of the Kingdom of God. While the identity and mission of the Church means She is a discipling community, the Body of Christ is also an eschatological community that embodies the good news of Jesus Christ and Reign of God. And as Darrell Guder wrote, the absence of the gospel Jesus preached in the gospel the church has preached has woefully impoverished the church’s sense of mission and identity. In other words, the how the Church defines and tells the gospel is often very different than how Jesus defined and told the gospel, resulting in a misunderstanding of mission and identity.

Whether it is the Four Spiritual Laws, Romans Road, or Evangelism Explosion, evangelistic tools used to communicate the gospel typically point people toward accepting Jesus to receive forgiveness of sins to go to heaven. While experiencing both forgiveness (and might I add liberation) from sin and eternal existence with God are pieces of the good news found in Jesus, framing the gospel in these terms is woefully inadequate and foreign to Jesus’ own definition. For Jesus, the immanent Reign of God was the good news that needed to be proclaimed in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the world, a reign that most certainly arises as God’s mission to restore all Creation through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And while the Church must not be equated with the reign of God, She is both spawned by it and directed toward it; the Body of Christ is the result of the breaking forth of an alternative Rhythm of Life, and is in humble service to that Reign by bearing witness to it.

Just as God set apart a group of people (Israel) to be a blessing to the world around it by testifying to the one true God, He has chosen the Church to bear prophetic witness to the salvation and restoration found in the the Reign of God through Christ; by way of choosing, calling and sending a particular people to be the bearer of blessing for all, God is uniting the whole cosmos through his plan of shalom restoration.
And how does the articulation of the moral and ethical truths of this reign look? Firstly, the Church must embed Herself within particular cultures by incarnationally living, eating, and working closely with its surrounding community to build strong links between Christians and not-yet-Christians. Secondly, the mission of the Church in preaching the good news of Jesus must never be separated from action for God’s justice, because doing justice and mercy in concrete situations has always been at the heart of God’s deliberate movement and mission in History. Thirdly, the Church represents the values, authority and Way of the Reign of God, giving a foretaste of what is to come while pointing people toward this better way of being Human and living together on Earth. Ultimately, though, the Church stands in witness to the powerful, restorative work displayed on the cross through the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus and final defeat of Death for all individuals within the World, which is its true hope.

CONCLUSION

At the conclusion of his book, Chuck Colson encouraged the Church to “fear not!” In fact, he says, the risen Lord of the Church tells His people 366 times throughout the Scriptures to not fear, and for good reason. Colson says the Church need not fear because as we live out our identity as His Body, God will use us for His purpose; “As we exhibit the characteristics of His Church throughout the ages, consuming the Word of God, celebrating the sacraments, loving one another in holy purity, the world around us will be changed.” The world will change and God’s mission will be accomplished, however, only when the Church lives out Her mission as a set-apart community sent to disciple people in and bear witness to the Way of Jesus and Reign of God. Unfortunately, the Church sells Jesus like aluminum siding, rather than disciple people in His Way, and pursues political ambition, rather than prophetic witness. Despite the extra love affairs of the Bride of Christ, though, we need not despair. We should not fear because the Church has its origins in Jesus Christ, and He is sustaining and building Her well into the future.