Missionary Faith: A Statement of Definition, Purpose, and Belief by the [EMQ] Editorial Committee

by EMQ Editors

There is an urgent need in our day to define and witness to missionary faith. We have initiated Evangelical Missions Quarterly with the hope that in thoughtful and practical ways it will serve to meet that need.

There is an urgent need in our day to define and witness to missionary faith. We have initiated Evangelical Missions Quarterly with the hope that in thoughtful and practical ways it will serve to meet that need.

The definition of a faith that may be accurately and without apology described as missionary includes much more than the popular theme, theology of mission. Missionary faith comprehends and vitalizes the theology of the Church s mission in the world, so that it lives and works. You can have a theology of mission without missionary faith, but you cannot have missionary faith without a theology of mission. Faith believes the theology and does something about it. Missionary faith not only gives assent to doctrines and creedal statements about God and man, but loves and helps man to know and love God.

Missionary is a word that seems to need defense and definition in the face of contemporary doubts and discussions about its validity. However, it is superficial to think that the profound issues involved can be settled by a shift in ecclesiastical vocabulary. Those of us who are eager to define the nature and dimensions of Christian responsibility in terms of missions must admit that we have a series of non-Biblical terms (mission; missionary, and particularly foreign missions) at the heart of our statement of how the Church is to do the will of God in the world. But if we accept and act upon the

truths implicit in our evangelical theology, the inevitable result will be that as we confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour and obey Him, He will send us out to seek and to save the lost.

NO HASTY REVISION
Missionary is surely the word that most precisely and urgently defines such activity. For this reason the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association and the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association are not nervously proposing a hasty revision of nomenclature. Together we are seeking to express what is essentially Biblical about missions, and to purge away those practices and attitudes that sometimes have made the term foreign missions disreputable. In so doing, however, we do not forfeit the real "scandal" of the Gospel. We must reemphasize the basic Biblical nature of missionary faith, and reassert the essential servanthood of missionaries.

The foregoing leads to a vigorous reaffirmation of "the faith which was once delievered unto the saints." The two indispensable elements of missionary faith are faith as obedient belief in God, and faith as a careful statement of truth about the God in whom we believe. It is not just what we believe about God, man, Scripture, the Church and the age to come that matters; it is what we do in response to our belief. We evangelicals do not lack consent to orthodox formulations of doctrine. But we must see the result of such consent in active, passionate commitment to the will and purpose of the Person of whom we speak.

SUMMONS TO MISSION
The modern call for a theology of the world mission of the Church must be rephrased in terms of a summons to the mission that the best of our theology demands. The issue does not lie at the level of agreed statements of doctrine alone, but at the point where these truths are expressed in proclamation. This sense of mission is too often dismissed as narrowness and bigotry. Actually, however, it is the result of believing in the truth of our confessions of faith, and having been saved by the personal experience of this truth in Christ, to seek obediently and humbly to share this saving truth with others. This is faith on its proper and obligatory mission.

Faith as expressed in obedient witness has been an outstanding characteristic of IFMA and EFMA related missions. The faith principle has at times been equated improperly with only a method of financing operations. Faith has been clearly manifest in heroic efforts; many have gone forth to serve, looking only to God and abandoning dependence on anyhumanlyguaranteed resources. What was basic was not the procurement of living allowances and project funds, but unqualified commitment to God and a burning desire to do His will in the world.

Missionary faith is concerned almost entirely with supernatural values, principles and ideas. The real meaning of regeneration of men by the Holy Spirit can only be comprehended by faith. Missionary faith is willingness to live and die for truths that have little significance if one’s standards are solely those of natural reason and empirical observation.

FUNDAMENTAL PROPOSITIONS
We believe there is today a continuity of aim and purpose with apostolic missionary faith. EVANGELICAL MISSIONS QUARTERLY intends to advocate and support a missionary faith that is based upon the authority of the living Christ and the written Word of God. Following are Biblically derived propositions that we accept as fundamental to missionary faith. It is a faith that

• acknowledges God to be the creator of the universe and the Lord of history.

• believes that God has graciously designed to reveal Himself and His purposes to man.

• accepts the Bible, God’s inerrant Word of revelation, as the disclosure of His life and truth to men, and the final authority for faith and conduct.

• consents to the just decree of God, who is perfectly righteous, against all men as guilty sinners worthy of condemnation.

• confesses Jesus Christ as the only Lord and Savior, whose incarnation, sinless life, substitutionary death and victorious resurrection are the central theme of Biblical revelation

• relies upon the Holy Spirit to draw fallen men to repentance and faith through the proclamation of the Gospel.

• recognizes that all men everywhere are potential recipients of the saving message of Christ.

• receives with gladness the Good News of the Gospel of Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe.

• submits to the agonizing truth of Scripture that those who do not hear and receive the gracious saving Word of God will be justly judged and condemned.

• regards it to be the solemn responsibility of those who know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to make Him known to others.

• understands the Church to be the means God uses for His mission and witness in the world.

• conceives of "mission" in New Testament terms as the normal outreach of a church in bearing witness to Christ, which witness will result in the birth and growth of new churches.

• resolves to trust the Holy Spirit to nurture younger churches as part of the universal Body of Christ, so that all members of His Body serve with equal responsibility and privilege under His headship.

• holds it to be the primary obligation of every Christian believer to find his place in the world-wide mission of the Church, either as one sent by the Church or as the sender of others.

• has its hope in the coming again of Jesus Christ, to the eternal glory of the triune God, the consummation of history, and the fulfillment of the missionary purpose of God.

Our service must be in obedience to Biblical authority. Where the Holy Spirit inspires and guides, missionary faith will conform to the truth that He, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, has disclosed in Scripture. The living Spirit, not just Scriptural commands, makes missionary faith true and effective. Where we serve in the power of the Holy Spirit there will be humble and informed submission to the Word of God.

DYNAMIC AND UNDERSTANDING
With this dynamic and understanding we confront with confidence the demanding, bewildering and overwhelming needs of the modern world. We commit ourselves to confess this faith in the world, in co-operation with the younger churches. We dedicate ourselves to this unity of life and witness, and under the Lordship of Christ, we come to the world not with a nationalistic, Western faith, but with the living message of Jesus Christ that transcends the barriers of race, nationality, culture and geography.

Our urgent need for this hour is notonly toprofess a faith in missions, but to be possessed by a missionary faith that is derived from obedience to the Word of God and motivated by the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of our Lord Jesus Christ.

—–

EMQ, Vol. 1, No. 1. Copyright © 1964 Evangelism and Missions Information Service. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

Comments are closed.