SCM Studyguide: Christian Mission. Stephen Spencer
in mission.
Within each main chapter the book introduces a mission type in four ways. It looks at its sources within wider theological, philosophical and cultural movements. It presents a range of theologians, church leaders and movements who illustrate each one, choosing those who provide the most vivid examples. It presents other more recent examples of each type to show its continuing presence within the Christian community. Finally, it engages in some debate about which of them is the most consistent with the mission of Jesus as a predominant strand of contemporary biblical scholarship presents it.
This last task means there is an ongoing enquiry which runs through the book, an enquiry into which mission type is the most Christ-like within contemporary understanding. And the outcome of this enquiry will help those engaged in mission today to identify and inhabit that type. Some might argue that all the types should be adopted and inhabited by the contemporary Church. This may be possible at a regional or national level but at local level, where churches have limited resources and are best advised to do one thing well rather than six things poorly, choices must be made. This Studyguide is intended to help with the making of those choices. So, despite the opening sentence above, the book does have a practical application.
A student approaching the subject of missiology for the first time might feel bewildered by a subject that seems to be about every aspect of Christianity and, therefore, no aspect in particular. The first introductory part of the book seeks to prevent this by charting one of a possible number of routes into the subject. It draws on recent historical theology, systematic theology and biblical studies, arguing for a specific way of understanding and practising mission. It is intended only to open up the field of enquiry and to reflect the nature of a discipline which is currently in a provisional, unsettling but exciting place where God’s will must be sought amidst the questions and traumas of our time.
The writing of this Studyguide would not have been possible without the creative contributions of students in the Carlisle and Blackburn Diocesan Training Institute (between 1999 and 2003) and on the Northern Ordination Course (from 2003 until now) who have been members of my mission theology classes and have helped form my thinking in this broad discipline. I would like to record my immense gratitude to all of them for their contributions.
Christopher Burdon and Stephen Platten have provided invaluable help in reading drafts of different chapters and suggesting corrections and improvements. I am very grateful to them and take responsibility for all the errors and obscurities that remain in the text.
I would like to record my thanks to Barbara Laing and the editorial board at SCM Press for providing the opportunity to write this Studyguide and for the encouragement to do so.
My wife Sally has helped me understand and appreciate parts of the Christian tradition which otherwise would have remained misunderstood and unappreciated. She has also read through the entire book suggesting corrections and improvements. In gratitude for this and for much else these pages are dedicated to her with love.
Part 1. Orientation
There is in God – some say –
A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.
(Henry Vaughan, ‘The Night’)
1. Mission in Crisis
It is fifty years since Mrs Rosa Parks, a black tailor’s assistant in a city centre department store in Montgomery, Alabama, in the deep south of the United States, boarded a bus and took a seat. When the bus filled up the driver ordered Mrs Parks to stand so that a white man could sit down. She refused to move: ‘She’d gone shopping after work, and her feet hurt. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to stand all the way home. The driver, of course, threatened to call the police. Go ahead and call them, Mrs Parks sighed. And she thought how you spend your whole life making things comfortable for white people. You just live for their well-being, and they don’t even treat you like a human being. Well, let the cops come. She wasn’t moving’ (Oats 1982, pp. 64–5).
Mrs Parks was arrested and charged. She found support, though, from the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), and especially from one of its leaders in Montgomery, a young Baptist minister called Martin Luther King Jnr. He and other members of the association decided to call for a boycott of the bus company by the black community. Over forty church ministers and community leaders met in one of the city churches and gave their support to the idea. The boycott was launched a couple of days later and the response from the black community was unanimous – the buses were empty the following morning.
This was the start of a protracted campaign, involving legal battles in court and rallying calls to the community to maintain the boycott. The campaign reached far into 1956, stirring up intense opposition in sections of the white community and periods of worry in the NAACP that the campaign would fail. King himself was arrested and fined at one point. But he was quite clear from the start that the protests were to be peaceful and to ‘be guided by the deepest principles of the Christian faith. Love must be our regulating ideal . . .’ The response from the black community was emphatic and the campaign became the defining moment of King’s life. He became a national celebrity, travelling across the United States to speak about the protest and drum up support. But the authorities in Montgomery were as defiant as ever and in early November succeeded in getting a judge to rule that the car pool, which black people had been using instead of the buses, was ‘a public nuisance’ and therefore illegal. After almost twelve months it seemed as if the protest had failed. But, at that very same moment, the Supreme Court in Washington ruled that the local laws in Alabama requiring segregation of races were unconstitutional. It was victory at last, a turning point in the way black people were regarded in the south and, indeed, across the country. The implementation of the ruling would take further struggle, especially when some black churches were blown up by white supremacists, but a threshold had been crossed.
Mission as social action
Why remember these events on their fiftieth anniversary? One reason is that at a time when many in the churches are looking for new ways to give mission expression (in response to ongoing decline in church attendance), these events vividly embody one form of missionary engagement. When many churches are drawing up mission strategies and action plans it is possible that Rosa Parks, the NAACP and Martin Luther King suggest an inspiring (and challenging) way forward.
According to this view mission is about the coming of the kingdom of God, with its peace and justice and healing, to the dark places of the world. The work of the Church is to assist this wider mission in whatever ways it can, such as through supporting the civil rights movement in 1950s America. It is about Christians coming out of their bunkers and marching alongside others for an end to poverty and oppression. Whether or not the Church grows or declines is secondary to this. In words often attributed to Archbishop William Temple, the Church of God is the only institution that exists to serve the needs of those who are not its members, so Christian mission is about assisting with what God is doing in the world: mission is human development.
But is this the right approach? How can God’s mission be assisted if there does not already exist a vibrant Church to do the assisting? How can his mission even be identified if his people are not gathering in church week by week to hear that mission described in the reading of Scripture? If significant energies are not devoted to building up the internal life of the Church how will it avoid losing itself in the struggles of the world? (See Chapter 9 for further discussion of this approach.)
Mission as church growth
A different outlook is found in the recent Church of England report Mission-Shaped Church. In its longest and most detailed chapter it provides a description of different kinds of congregational church life, which it describes as ‘fresh expressions of church’. It lists among others the following: alternative worship communities, café and cell churches, churches arising out of community initiatives, mid-week congregations, network churches, school-based congregations, church plants and traditional forms inspiring new interest. The report suggests that