God's Mission: past, present, and future
An article by Harvey Kwiyani exploring how the past impacts the future of mission.
Posted on 26 June 2023 by Global Connections
God has been at work in mission in the world, tending for God's creation and drawing all of humanity to God's Glorified Son, Jesus the Anointed One, through the work of the Holy Spirit. We, all followers of Christ, join God in this mission.
Christ calls us all to share God's love with the world.
The Spirit, sent into all the world before us, draws us to others around us and across the seas, to make disciples for Christ. In God's mission, then, there is neither black nor white, neither male nor female and, of course, neither rich nor poor. We are all members of Christ's one Body and we partake in God's one mission.
As humans participating in the mission of God, our portion of the work is riddled with mistakes and failures though, of course, God has often used us to transform societies around the world. The spread of Christianity around the world could not have happened without humans being carriers of the Gospel. Some great things have happened as men and women partnered with God in mission. Nevertheless, in all honesty, since the 1500s, the work of God's mission has been closely connected to European expansionism. The Christian faith has been used to justify the domination of huge parts of the world by the people of Europe. The gospel itself has been used, knowingly and unknowingly, to rationalise slave trade and colonialism.
We have to be honest about this past, admit where some of our ancestors did wrong, and seek to do well in the world today.
This is important because we live, today, in a world where Christians can be found in every country in the world. This means, without a doubt, that God has called all nations to partake in God's mission in the world. We all ought to be involved in the mission of Jesus in the world wherever God locates them, and this may in our own neighbourhoods or halfway across the globe. As it happened with the Western missionary movement in 19th and 20th centuries, which was greatly enhanced by the migration of millions of Europeans to other parts of the world, the future of mission involves millions of followers of Christ on the move, from one region to another, one country to another or, indeed, one continent to another. Christian diaspora communities exemplify for us the practice as well as the implications of the globalisation of mission in the 21st century.