A Fresh Perspective - May 22, 2009
It is time for evangelical Christianity to rethink its mission. In Luke's version of the call of the first disciples Jesus tells them that from now on they will be "catching people" (Luke 5:10). Jesus is not giving a mandate for a triumphalistic missionary enterprise that seeks to impose a particular set of beliefs and culture on people who have a different set of beliefs and culture.
The kind of fishing for people that Jesus expected his disciples to do was the kind he himself practiced. Disciples of Jesus learn from Jesus what to do and how to do it. Jesus' mission, as Luke outlines in 4:18 - 19 (grounded in Isaiah 61:1 - 2), was a mission to the poor, the disadvantaged, the oppressed, and the spiritually blind. Jesus was concerned about the total person. Jesus realized that spiritual oppression from sin could not be separated from economical, political, and social oppression from the powers that be. It was all one piece.
Jesus' vision for humanity was that of a world under God's rule where peace, compassion, and distributive and restorative justice prevails. When a crowd of people tried to get Jesus to stay in their town Jesus said, "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God (God's vision for the world) to the other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose" (Luke 4:43).
Jesus intended his community of disciples (the church) to be an outpost for the kingdom, reflecting the values and characteristics of God's new world. But the church is not the kingdom, though it is part of the kingdom. The kingdom of God is much broader and wider than the church. So catching people into the net of God's kingdom may or may not involve catching them into the net of the church.
The kingdom of God as it pertains to humanity is about human beings becoming more truly human; that means becoming the persons and communities God intended for us to be. It is not about propagating a particular brand of belief or doctrine. For Christians, Jesus is the representative, quintessential, revelatory human being on what it means to be human.
For Christians Jesus is the way that leads to truth and life; though he is not exclusively the way for all people. A God of love would not be so stingy as to exclude vast numbers of humanity who happen to be born into non - Christian cultures.
The mission of the church is to proclaim, teach, manifest, and work for the kingdom of God, not get people to believe what we believe about Jesus. And yet, as Christians, we invite people to be disciples of Jesus because we know that by following Jesus, God's dream for the world can be realized.