Come and see vs. go and tell

As I've stated recently, I summarize God’s mission like this: “God is on a mission to rescue people from sin, darkness and death and to bring them into his love and eternal life!”  Certainly there is a lot more to it than that: the glory of God as the ultimate reason for the mission, the centrality of Jesus and the cross to the mission, the sin and brokenness that necessitate the mission, the love of God that empowers the mission, etc.  But this one sentence helps me to grasp and communicate the essence of what God is up to in the world in a concise and relatable way.  

God is up to something, something so big that He became one of us, lived among us, and then died and rose for us.  In one sense, God’s work was finished in Jesus life, death and resurrection.  In another sense, the work still continues.  God has chosen to use the church as his instrument to accomplish his mission. 

We pick up on the nature of God’s mission throughout scripture.  Perhaps it is most clearly seen in Jesus’ Great Commission.  After his resurrection, Jesus left his disciples with the command to go 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” (Mt. 28:19-20).  This responsibility to make disciples of Jesus is the main thrust of the mission that God has called the church into existence to accomplish.  

We also catch a glimpse of this mission in 2 Corinthians 5.  Paul says, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.  We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (20).  Paul presents God as one reaching out to the world, making an appeal for reconciliation.  God is on a mission.  Yet God’s chosen means of reaching out to the world is, in the immediate context, Paul and the early church leaders, and by implication, the church down through the ages.  

Yet from my experience and observation, this mission of God to the world, through the church, has not been emphasized by many churches.  It seems that many churches have been content to reach the unchurched through attraction rather than through intentional mission.  Ed Stetzer writes, “For years Christians in North America had the luxury of depending on attractive churches and programs to be their proxy evangelist to our culture.  It is ‘bricks and mortar’ evangelism” (Transformational Church, 206).  In other words, many churches have focused much attention on those that come through their doors and little attention on those that don’t.  

Yet the place of the church in American society is shifting and is causing many to reevaluate their strategy for reaching the unchurched.  The cultural influence that the American church once held is lessening.  In light of this, Stetzer speaks of the need for churches to transition from a "come and see evangelist church to a post-Christendom go and tell missionary church” (206).  I believe that this renewed focus on the outward mission of the church is extremely important and is bringing some much needed correction and balance to our understanding of the church's role in society.  Our mission is less about getting people to come to our services and programs as it is looking for opportunities to become a part of their life and world that they might see the kingdom of God in action.