Foundations for Christian Mission, Mentor's Guide, MG04

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F O U N D A T I O N S F O R C H R I S T I A N M I S S I O N

The Vision and Biblical Foundation for Christian Mission: Part 1

Welcome to the Mentor’s Guide for Lesson 1, The Vision and Biblical Foundation for Christian Mission: Part 1 . The overall focus of the Foundations for Christian Mission module is to help your students understand some of the major biblical motifs of Christian mission, and in particular, reflect on the meaning of the city and poor in connection to it. Our motivation is to provide the students with a broad based perspective on the notion of mission as it has unfolded in the Old and New Testament, with a particular focus on the Christ-centered nature of all mission and ministry. The notion of mission is corollary to the concept of redemption, that God has come in Christ to redeem the world from the tyranny of the devil and the condemnation of sin. In one sense, no discussion of the one is appropriate or satisfying without the discussion of the other. We want to stretch the vison of our students from considering these questions in the context of their own personal lives to a picture of redemption as related to the entire world. Oswald Chambers makes this point clear: There is a presentation of Christianity which is sentimental and weak and unworthy of God; the Christianity of the New Testament is something “angels desire to look into.” God has paid the price of redeeming a race that had become degenerate; He is not going to redeem it, He has redeemed it. The Gospel is just that—good news about God, that He has redeemed the human race. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. . . .” Is the Gospel, as it is popularly presented, good news about God, or is it a misrepresentation of God? It is not good news about God unless it presents the revelation that God has put the basis of human life on Redemption. The Redemption means a great deal more than my personal salvation and yours, that is a mere outcome; pseudo-evangelism is apt to make it the great thing. The great thing according to the New Testament is not that the Redemption touches me, but that it avails for the whole human race. The Cross is not the cross of a martyr: it is the mirror of the nature of God focused in one point of history. If I want to know what God is like, I see it in the Cross. Jesus Christ is not Someone who leads me to God: either He is God, or I have none.

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~Oswald Chambers. Biblical Ethics . (electronic ed. of the 1947 ed.). Hants, UK: Marshall, Morgan & Scott: Hants UK, 1996.