There is indeed a responsibility for the church to share the gospel in the world, but never at the expense of the church’s charity and mercy for those neighbors who are nearby.
Most Christians are probably familiar, by name or in theory, with world mission. Since the nineteenth century, Protestants have taken a strong interest in evangelism overseas – meaning beyond the bounds of Europe and North America. Today, world mission is normally associated with impoverished, unreached, or under-resourced peoples of the world. What was known during the Cold War as the Third World is now more politely referred to as the non-Western world, the Global South, or the Majority World.
The missionary impulse in Christianity extends further back, however, than nineteenth-century efforts. The earliest Christians brought the gospel with them to Asia Minor (today, Turkey), Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Think of Paul’s evangelism efforts detailed in the Book of Acts, culminating in Rome; or his planned journey to Spain mentioned in Romans 15. Some of the earliest Christian communities were in Ethiopia and Mesopotamia. Philip Jenkins, a historian of Christianity, has written about the expansion of the church in Central Asia, South Asia, and even China during the early centuries of the church. If you’d like to read about this often-neglected story, his book, The Lost History of Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2008), is an eye-opening introduction.
With European colonization of the Americas, the Atlantic slave trade, and sea trade links to Asia, Christians brought the gospel to previously uncontacted peoples now accessible to mission work. Indeed, the Catholic Counter-Reformation birthed one of the most zealous missionary movements in the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius Loyola. Jesuits established seminaries for training clergy and committed themselves to the indigenous peoples of the Western hemisphere and their conversion to Christianity. Though the methods of evangelism in the era of colonization are looked upon with suspicion today, their impact remains crucial for understanding Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada.
Today, many Christians believe that world mission is an imperative of the Christian faith, a mark of the church, or a necessary aspect of personal discipleship. Indeed, the so-called Great Commission at the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel is taken as a charter of the missionary imperative: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19–20a). There you have it: the apostles – and by extension, Christians today – have a duty to make disciples of Jesus in every nation on earth. If we are blessed to live in a largely Christian country, we ought either to go overseas or at least to financially support mission work in other countries.
Baptism is not an addition to being made a disciple; rather, one is made a follower of Jesus passively by the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness imparted in baptism.
However, this is a recent construal of Christ’s words before the ascension in Matthew’s gospel. For much of Christian history, these words institute the sacrament of Holy Baptism by which the name of the triune God is placed upon those washed by the water and the word (see Eph 5:26). A smooth rendering of Matthew 28:19 might read like this: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them…” Put another way, baptism is not an addition to being made a disciple; rather, one is made a follower of Jesus passively by the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness imparted in baptism.
An ingredient of Christian anxiety about world mission is the notion that evangelism is about pleading with people to make a decision for Christ. If there are unreached peoples in the world, then it’s on those of us who do know Christ to share the gospel with them and put them in a position to be able to make a decision to follow Jesus. If they refuse the offer Christ makes to them, that’s one thing; but it’s another if there are people who have never heard the gospel in the first place.
Now, a caveat is in order. Traditions like Lutheranism and Calvinism don’t reject evangelism just because they believe in predestination. God has, according to both traditions, chosen his elect from before the foundation of the world in Jesus Christ (Eph 1:4–5). But he has also ordained the means by which people come to faith in Christ. As the Augsburg Confession puts it, “So that we may obtain this faith [which justifies before God], the ministry of teaching the Gospel and administering the Sacraments was instituted” (AC V 1; Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions [St. Louis: Concordia, 2006], 33). Nevertheless, predestination is a comfort to the struggling Christian because it’s a relief to know that salvation rests wholly on God. Christ says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).
Many Christians were taught that their comfortable lives in Western countries with functioning economies were a danger to their souls. David Platt, an evangelical pastor of some notoriety, made a splash a few years back with his book Radical, which argued that Christians must give until it really hurts to fund foreign missions. Christians have internalized guilt about their own prosperity and bemoan the spiritual and material poverty of those around the world. I’m tempted to wonder if much foreign mission spending by American churches is an attempt to atone for this guilt. Not only does such an attitude confuse spiritual blessing with material prosperity, but it also confuses spiritual poverty and material poverty. The truth is that Christians are enjoined by Scripture to care for those in need – both bodily and spiritually. But when guilt is the motivation behind charity, rather than love, the gospel is needed. This is where Scripture’s comfort transforms hearts for true charity in Christian freedom.
There is another consolation for those burdened by the world’s need to hear the gospel. Paul comforts the Colossians in the opening chapter of his letter like this:
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing (Col. 1:1–6a).
Notice what Paul says: the gospel has gone into “the whole world.” He also says it is increasing, bearing fruit, of course. Even at such an early date, Paul thinks that the whole world has already heard the message of the gospel. He gives no indication that he means this metaphorically or partially. In this sense, world mission isn’t unnecessary per se; but it also isn’t something to be anxious about either. It’s not something for which we should guilt ourselves and others, creating theologies that glorify poverty and eschew prosperity. If you’re materially prosperous, you should at least feel bad about it – or so the theology of glory tempts us to think.
With his consolation in Colossians chapter 1, Paul frees the Christian to focus on the neighbors and needs closest in proximity. Christians should see their local congregation as the closest and most important organ of ministry and evangelism that they have. They should fund the life of their local church, including adequate compensation for their pastor, first and foremost. Even in the US, there are hungry, desperate, and forgotten people. Those neighbors matter to God as much as our neighbors on the other side of the globe. In addition, those in need closest to us are those we are best equipped to help.
Christians and their congregations ought to consider whether they spend too much on foreign mission. Are people in our neighborhood fed, clothed, and hearing the gospel? Is our pastor paid enough to comfortably look after a family and devote himself to the work of ministry? Do we overemphasize foreign mission without much sense of its effectiveness? These kinds of questions can help us see something that the original Protestant missionary movement of the nineteenth century also prioritized, but which we have forgotten: the inner mission. Though the inner mission was primarily a renewal movement inside of European Lutheran state churches, we can learn from this movement that foreign mission isn’t in competition with local mission, evangelism, and mercy.
There is indeed a responsibility for the church to share the gospel in the world, but never at the expense of the church’s charity and mercy for those neighbors who are nearby, and nearer than we often think. Christ is asked this question in Luke 10: “Who is my neighbor?” If our answer to this question is always distant or foreign, the church has neglected its responsibility.
