On Wednesday nights, I had attended a class at my church in which we studied missions, both domestic and foreign. I'm not going to get into whether the great commission ¹ was a specific command to the disciples present at the time or a command for all time. Specifically, whether those particular verses are eternal or temporal is irrelevant. It's clear from the rest of the new testament (not to mention all manner of indications for God's plan for Israel in the old) that the message is to spread, the conduit is the people of God.
In the class, we're looking at the Zambian mission we support as an example, but one that is applicable even within the bounds of our own city. One problem encountered in earlier mission work - specifically U.S. (and European) mission efforts - is that aside from bringing bazillions of diseases into areas with no immunity to them, they also brought in U.S. (or European) Christianity. They considered the people to be 'churched, converted and civilized' when they had church buildings (as we have), wore "Sunday clothes" (as we do) and gave up everything considered "savage" -- often including their native languages.
We've come a long way since then, but there's still a lot of work to be done. Many in the class have a hard time with the idea that "church" will simply look different in Africa than in Tennessee - as it's different in Brazil, Uganda, England, Canada, Russia, China, and any other corner of the world. And this is where I (finally) get to the point:
It's simple arrogance on our part. We seem to forget that we are nothing like the world into which the gospel came. Yes, we struggle with many of the same temptations and sins - including all manner of idolatry -- but our differences are great. We apparently don't understand that we are a "mission church."
Somehow our own adaptation is acceptable and theirs is not. I find it fascinating that we can become convinced that to convert is to normalize people to our standards of civility when our culture is so alien to the biblical mind. If God can essentially proselytize us -- and do so within the workings of our culture -- why it's so hard to understand the implementation of that elsewhere?
To paraphrase a book by Rubel Shelley and Randall Harris, ² if the church is the body of Christ, then the function of the church is to carry on the life Christ would live if he were still physically present. As his body, we're to do the things he would do, meet the needs he would meet and care for the ones he cares about. And that won't always look the same everywhere.
¹ Matthew 28:19 - 20, Mark 16:15 - 16, and alluded to in Luke 24:47
² Second Incarnation, Rubel Shelley and Randall Harris
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