17 Aug Charlottesville and the Mission of God
As tragic and horrific as the events of last weekend in Charlottesville were, I have been encouraged to see a nearly unified response to it from lawmakers in both parties, as well as many voices in the Christian world speaking against the evils of race-based nationalism, in this case white nationalism. For a couple of great articles, check out Tim Keller’s response or this one from Ed Stetzer at Wheaton College.
They say plenty of things in both articles I wholeheartedly endorse, including advocating for publicly speaking out against these evils and not remaining silent. White nationalism is a scourge we should not allow to grow. I would encourage you to read those articles and use your voice.
That being said, I would like to do something a bit different in this email, and I’ll begin this way:
Over the years, I have discovered plenty of folks who don’t want to talk about race and issues of race, and to be honest, it has irritated me somewhat in the past when people have said to me, “Why does Mosaic talk about racism? It only makes the problem worse.”
Dr. Michael Emerson, a devout evangelical Christian and one of the nation’s leading and trusted researchers on race and religion, has published his findings that that very sentiment isn’t just a common sentiment among white Americans, it has been an increasingly growing sentiment. In 2006, Emerson found that 51% of white people believe that “One of the most effective ways to improve race relations is to stop talking about race relations.” In 2012, that number had jumped to 69%! (https://www.willowcreek.org/en/blogs/south-barrington/willow-mosaic-race-and-religion)
So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that people feel this way, or that white people have left multiethnic churches because they feel this way. In the past, it irritated me that people would say this because of the sheer illogic of the proposition: it was tantamount to saying that the reason a married couple was having problems in their marriage was only because the wife was bringing up her husband’s treatment of her. What if a husband said, “We only have problems because we talk about them, and if you stopped talking about them, we could be happy”? Do you think that would solve their problems? The husband might be happier, but the marriage would be in more jeopardy than before. Why? Because a problem is a problem, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.
Patrick Lencioni’s intriguing book on relationships and group dynamics, called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, has shown the presence of conflict is not necessarily destructive, but the complete absence of conflict almost always is. So, it’s always healthier to talk about things rather than ignore them.
But, if that saying (talking about racial issues only creates the problem) has irritated me in the past, it upsets me now, and let me talk about why, and put it in the context of one of the values of Mosaic Church, our value of mission.
Mission is not just the sending of a team of people across the world to help those in need or share their faith, as crucial and Biblical as those things are. Nor is mission merely a sharing of the Gospel with individuals, as crucial and non-negotiable as that is. But, if we reduce mission to only trips and personal evangelism, we reduce the power of the Gospel itself, and open ourselves up to unforeseen blunders and error, as the history of mission work itself has shown us (see Ott and Strauss’ Encountering Theology of Mission or David Bosch’s Transforming Mission).
What, then is mission? Over the last 50 years, theologians of all stripes in the orthodox world have increasingly spoken of what, more accurately, the mission of God in the world is. The Mission of God, or Missio Dei—if you prefer the fancier Latin phrase—has been defined this way:
Dr. David Bosch, the late, great South African theologian, defined the Missio Dei as this:
“Mission is not primarily an activity of the church, but an attribute of God. God is a missionary God.”
In other words, we go into the world, because God has gone into ours! Mission isn’t the church’s idea, but God’s heart.
Therefore, before we begin any kind of “mission” and as we go about our “mission”, we should constantly be reflecting on the Missio Dei and asking ourselves, how does our mission, and how we do mission, clearly spring from this theological headwater?
Fine, you say, God loves the world and is involved in the world, but what kind of involvement does that mean we should undertake?
Well, to answer that, we should ask, and must ask what does God’s idea of mission look like, in the end? At the end of history, Revelation tells us, there are new heavens and a new earth.
There will be shalom—peace, because all things have been made new and all things have been reconciled to Jesus. Jesus came to do all this, not just to save souls, but to heal the universe itself!
Therefore, Biblical mission is to work now for what God’s desired future is for all peoples then.
And how we work now is always determined by where we live. If we lived in 15th century Europe, mission would look one way. If we lived in 10th century Africa, mission would look a certain way. If our church were in the Philippines (where I have visited), our church would look a certain way—if it were truly participating in God’s mission to reconcile all things to himself.
In the Philippines, poverty and corruption are rampant. Therefore, what does the church do there—in addition to Spirit-filled evangelism and discipleship—in order to participate in the Missio Dei?
In particular, it works to alleviate poverty, it focuses on leadership development, and our Every Nation sister church there now has almost 84,000 members, influencing Metro Manila in an unprecedented way.
But do you know what they don’t talk about much? Ethnic diversity and issues of race. Why not? Because it’s not nearly as much of an issue there, if at all.
In other words, and here’s my point: Context determines a great deal of our mission.
Paul preached one way to Jews—he began with the Hebrew Scriptures.
Paul preached another way to Greeks—he began with their idolatrous culture.
And where the churches had converts from different cultural backgrounds, Paul addressed the conflicts and created ways forward for something the world had never seen: a multiethnic faith group. Why? Because context matters.
To speak to a culture, and to do mission well, understanding our context is crucial.
In the U.S., when we speak about mission, we must acknowledge the history of our nation, our nation’s idols and struggles with certain issues.
What if Paul ignored the idols and power structures of Rome? Do you think he would have been successful? It’s unlikely, or at the very least, his influence would have been muted.
And if we ignore the idols of American culture—power, greed, sex and race-based exploitation of others—we do mission in a vacuum, in a way that has a hint of the Gospel’s power, because individuals can be converted to faith in Christ, but we effectively shut out its power on larger structures and systems.
Why would we do this?
We shouldn’t.
Doing mission for Mosaic Church, then, means to do it in light of the future and coming kingdom, where all peoples are reconciled, all barriers between people groups are erased, and we all celebrate the glory of one another’s cultural goodness, as Revelation shows us we will.
And that’s why we take mission trips, and that’s why do we do evangelism and that’s why the Gospel is preached and that’s why we talk about issues of race.
Diversity isn’t the only thing Mosaic is about, nor is it the ultimate thing we are about, any more than it was the thing any first century church doing multiethnic ministry was about.
But to not speak to the need for healing around the wounds and sins of the issues of race in our nation, with all that we see happening around us, and to not try to at least humbly fumble our way forward with one another is not only to ignore what is really there, it is to deny Jesus a chance to do something great in our midst!
Why do we talk about race and diversity?
For the same reason a husband and wife who really cared about each other would talk about their challenges:
We are just trying to give Jesus a chance.
Morgan