This article is in response to Chris Howles’ article ‘Mercy ministries: mandatory or misguided?’
I have wrestled with the dichotomy around ‘word and deed’ or ‘proclamation and action’ or ‘evangelism and social responsibility’ since the 1980s, when I first stumbled into the divide as a naïve new believer.
So, I found Chris’ piece a breath of fresh air. How helpful to be reminded that the debate ‘may be more a product of Western philosophy than a global theological dilemma’. I remember moving to the global South and experiencing relief that such compartmentalisation didn’t seem to exist. Oh that ‘this conversation will [perhaps] one day be relegated to the margins of mission chat’ as Chris suggests!
And yet – for now, the conversation continues and can be clarifying. Chris lands his piece around the challenge of ‘learning to hold [evangelism and social action] together in a way that reflects the fullness of the gospel’. But how do we do that in practice? How do they connect biblically? Does one follow behind the other?
It’s a great opportunity for a re-set and re-think – but not a time to go back to the modern views of bringing those two components together, as helpful as they were at points (e.g. the much earlier Lausanne work and the ‘two wings of a bird’ type analogies). Instead, it is a chance to move forward and find different pictures altogether. For example, a target with a centre to it: Jesus and his gospel. Colossians 1:17 tells us that ‘in [Jesus] all things hold together’. This is not simply a convenient ‘proof-text’ but a reminder that Jesus is the centripetal force here. He is centre-stage, and we are to work outwards from him.
I’ve found a few things helpful recently when teaching on this. Firstly, Jesus’ words at the end of Matthew could not be more holistic:
‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’ (Matthew 28:18-20, italics added)
Jesus puts disciple-making at the heart of it all, but this is never to be done in a vacuum. The disciples are called to live out Jesus’ teaching in full, being ‘salt and light’ for example.
Secondly, off the back of this, I’ve found a piece by Keith Ferdinando insightful and imaginative. In ‘Mission: a Problem of Definition’1 he draws attention to what are often treated as four compartmentalised ways of defining mission: disciple-making; social action; creation care; and God’s grand mission (I have tweaked his labels for clarity).
But instead of thinking of them as hermetically sealed boxes, Ferdinando encourages us to view them as concentric circles with disciple-making at the heart. There’s no need for competition or exclusivity if Jesus and ‘his redemptive mission to call a people for his own glory among whom he will dwell’ is at the centre. Jesus ultimately controls and critiques and coheres everything else.
Finally, where do we see what this looks like? Firstly, we look to Jesus, to the apostles and the life of the New Testament churches. But I have personally found it inspirational to look back to the ministry of theologian and missiologist, Lesslie Newbigin.
Newbigin was a prolific leader and writer, with an extraordinary scope to his work, but he could not have been clearer on the essential need for the verbal proclamation of Jesus. He both put this into practice in his personal life, while also incorporating it into the wider mission of the church2.
Of course, none of us can fulfil it all individually, or as one congregation or organisation or missionary society. But God calls each of us to play out part. He will call us to deliberate reflection in at least two senses: reflecting on the mission of God’s people and reflecting that faithfully in the different aspects he calls us to.
1 Keith Ferdinando, Mission: a Problem of Definition. Themelios 33.1, 2008. (Accessed at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/mission-a-problem-of-definition/)
2 If you’d like to read further, Michael Goheen’s work as Newbigin’s interpreter is especially helpful. For example, dive into Chapter Three, ‘The Missionary Church and its Vocation in the World’, in The Church and Its Vocation: Leslie Newbigin’s Missionary Ecclesiology, Michael Goheen (Baker Academic, 2018).
