Christian Mission and Poverty

Introduction

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Much like I am hesitant to reduce people to the designation “the poor,” I also recognize that the phrase “Christian mission” has often been wedded to harmful ways of thinking, abuses of power, and colonial conquest. 6 However, followers of Jesus are still called to participate in the mission that Jesus gave to his disciples: 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. While that mission was first given to the Jewish disciples who brought the good news to those of us who are “the nations” (the ethnos ), all followers of Jesus are commissioned to join God in God’s mission in the world. What is that mission? We are to make disciples as we are going. What does it mean to be his disciples? As disciples, we follow Jesus by doing what Jesus did. We proclaim salvation from sin in Jesus’ name. We proclaim the revolutionary and liberative good news of the kingdom. We proclaim that the last are first and the first are last. We proclaim a new society and a new creation in Jesus. We join Jesus in proclaiming his mission: ~ Matthew 28:19–20

6 To read more about these claims, see Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University, 2010), Andrew T. Draper, A Theology of Race and Place: Liberation and Reconciliation in the Works of Jennings and Carter (Eugene: Pickwick, 2016), and Love L. Sechrest, Johnny Ramírez-Johnson, and Amos Yong, eds., Can White People Be Saved? Triangulating Race, Theology, and Mission (Missiological Engagements) (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2018).