November 15, 2006
This is Part IV of the essay on our mission context inspired by the 2006 GRR Mission Conference
(e-Current 060125 was Part I, e-Current 060221 was Part II, e-Current 060523 was Part III). In this essay
I will address “Beyond Geography.” I apologize for getting so far behind.
Beyond Geography. Energized by the Great Commission, the modern missionary movement
was fused with the attraction of “going over there” for the sake of Christ. In other words, proper
“mission work” was defined by geography—that is, a place not close to my existing church.
Even the “home mission” movement was predicated on taking a trip. Every denomination
organized its mission efforts around geography.
There is no need to belittle (or romanticize) the work that was done under that paradigm. But it
is clear that the simplistic definition of missions as something done “over there” is crumbling. As
early as 1958, Lesslie Newbigin wrote: Livingstone’s picture of the smoke of a thousand villages
which had never heard the Gospel, provided that symbol in an age when the world was being
opened up by the white man [sic] … It does not now correspond to the realities of the world we
live in … there are no more unknown areas of the world’s surface. (One Body, One Gospel,
One World, 1958) Perhaps an exaggeration, but I have Google Earth at my fingertips.
Nevertheless, the romantic tug of exotic places remains a strong undercurrent in the missionary
movement. None of us is above it. I confess that my own “buttons” were pushed by mission
work in Haiti in the 70’s, Russia right after the collapse of the communist government, and more
recently Costa Rica. For most of our churches the only “real missionaries” remain those that go
to impoverished, disease-ridden, uneducated, “uncivilized” places—places coincidentally (!?)
populated by people of color who are the children of colonialism.
The purpose the critique is not to denigrate the faithful efforts of true heroes and heroines who
toiled, sacrificed and even died for the sake of the Gospel in places far from their homes. The
purpose is to escape the bonds of geography; to enlarge the missionary endeavor to which God
has called us; to actualize the cosmic dimensions of God’s love in Jesus Christ (Ephesians
3:14-21).
The geographical frontier can have meaning and evocative power for missionary obedience if it
is understood as a symbol—a symbol of the total mission of the one church to the one world.
The present task is to draw out the implications of the symbol in such a way that the whole
church, wherever it is locally manifested, becomes aware that it is the mission field and that it
has the missionary task of carrying the Gospel to any and all frontiers. (Keith Bridston Mission
Myth and Reality, 1965)
If we are compelled by the expansive love of Christ, geography is only one of the frontiers that
confront a missionary church. What are some of the others?
Immigration has created an environment in which those same persons whose
ethnicity/culture/language led us to identify them with “over there” are right now in our own
backyards. How is it possible to care about Thais in Thailand, but not those Thais that live
across the street from the church?
Secularization has stripped bare the spiritual poverty of our own country. It is not irrelevant that
a career missionary (Lesslie Newbigin) returned to his homeland after nearly 40 years and
noticed that the cultural changes in the West had become so great that the West had become a
mission field. (Foolishness of the Greeks, 1986.) We live in a world of competing stories.
And some of those stories are dangerous, even deadly. Yet we are reluctant to tell the story of
One who has the “words of life” to those right around us.
Ethnic diversity is shaping America like no other place on this earth. Yet we remain segregated
in our personal friendships and our faith communities.
Cultural differences in America boggle the mind. We have white collar, blue collar, no collar
lifestyles. We have educated elite and illiterate rejects. We have hard rockers, classicists,
rappers and country music enthusiasts. We have Socialists, Libertines, Republicans, and
Democrats. We have hawks and doves. Does the Gospel have anything to offer “them?”
Economics has created its own world. It seems evident that God has a special concern for the
down, out, and forgot about. But does that mean the middle class and the wealthy have no
need of the Gospel?
Truly, the United States of America is the third largest mission field in the world. It is a mission
field that is growing daily. Churches must become missionary regardless of their size, age,
ethnicity, worship style or location. Mission is fundamental to the nature of the church and it is
not bounded by geography, either literally or figuratively.
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