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A recent conversation about global ministry among the poor provoked me to further thinking about missions and compassion. A certain Western Christian humanitarian missionary in an impoverished Majority World context described herself as called to be the “hands and feet” of Jesus, in extending mercy to the least, the forgotten, and the marginal. To that extent, she is a wonderful model—she extends the compassion of the Good Shepherd by way of (physically) rescuing, housing, feeding, and educating vulnerable children and orphans.
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us… Since we have the same spirit of faith… we also believe, and so we also speak.”
–2 Corinthians 4:7, 13
“For although there may be… many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—yet for us there is one God, the Father…and one Lord, Jesus Christ.”
–1 Corinthians 8:5-6
A recent conversation about global ministry among the poor provoked me to further thinking about missions and compassion. A certain Western Christian humanitarian missionary in an impoverished Majority World context described herself as called to be the “hands and feet” of Jesus, in extending mercy to the least, the forgotten, and the marginal. To that extent, she is a wonderful model—she extends the compassion of the Good Shepherd by way of (physically) rescuing, housing, feeding, and educating vulnerable children and orphans.
But this missions practitioner reportedly went on to deny the legitimacy of calling those she was serving from the Majority World (African, Indian, Asian, and so on) to turn from sin and to Jesus. Apparently, she assumed that the proclamation of the gospel across cultural or religious boundaries is inappropriate, and is actually in violation of genuine mercy—coercive, not compassionate.
I am convinced that the architecture of her missions paradigm is problematic. It’s problematic on logical grounds, and problematic especially in terms of a Christian worldview. Of course, we must readily endorse her passion to tangibly embody the mercy of God to society’s least and lowly. But we must ask, “What about ‘the mouth’?” In setting up an opposition between mercy and message, she sets up a false dichotomy—compassion or proclamation—which we will take as the point of entry to our discussion.
In truth, there is neither need nor biblical warrant for separating the ‘living out’ of the gospel from the ‘sharing’ of the gospel. The apostles and the Early Church were an amazingly powerful force in the ancient world, expressing the agape and power of God in vibrant communities of faith across lines of division, prejudice, and oppression (Jew/Gentile, male/female, free/slave). The mercy of God unleashed for people at all levels of pagan society—including those on the margins—was remarkable and transformative, even socially revolutionary.
THE GOSPEL brought forth
the renewed people of God we call the Church.
Yes, the early Christians were marked out by their love, humility, mercy, and acts of service. But, the point is that all this happened only as a result of the gospel proclaimed. It is out of the improbable announcement that a Jew from distant Nazareth had been crucified and raised to life as Lord of all that these radical new communities of faith were born. The gospel brought forth the renewed people of God we call the Church. The gospel proclaimed is a community-forming word. So, once again, we must ask, “What about the mouth?”
The Christian humanitarian mentioned above advocates for what we might call a “merciful, but muted” approach to ministry. Her position evokes a widespread ambience among educated and world-engaged people in our day. It is to this ‘mood’ that I am trying to respond, especially to the extent that this spirit would subtly impact Christian mission. The underlying vibe might be expressed thus:
The affluent West can and should help peoples of other cultures and religions when it comes to physical or material needs, but at the same time, we [especially Western Christians] must never ‘preach’ to them. We dare not try to change others or to impose our view. Such acts of persuasion or proclamation are a throwback to colonial narrowness, oppression, and ethnocentrism.
Such a mentality has fair claim to being the reigning orthodoxy in our post-colonial world. A substructure of worldview relativism undergirds this view. According to this paradigm, when reaching out across cultural and religious boundaries, what one absolutely must not do is to offend by proselytizing—by seeking to persuade and change convictions, or by presenting claims that in any way conflict with or challenge indigenous worldviews. Any of that, it is claimed, would be moral, cultural, or spiritual imperialism. (Interestingly, this enlightened paradigm is often held with an uncompromising intolerance for dissent that itself may well be described as fundamentalist.)
In fact, there are many logical, historical, and philosophical reasons why this pervasive stance ultimately collapses in on itself and is finally incoherent. To take one example, an anti-proclamation stance with respect to cross-cultural encounter usually involves the claim that we cannot argue for the absolute or universal applicability of our faith in the face of a pluralistic world, a world of contradictory and competing faith claims.
However, proponents of this way of thinking often absolutely insist that there can be no absolutes. Much more could be said, but this is not the place to discuss these problems in detail. I am here mainly concerned to remind us within the community of Jesus that this regnant cross-cultural paradigm is inappropriate and inadequate as a Christian stance on cross-cultural ministry.
Mission as Proclamation, Mission as Action
In terms of gospel work across cultural and religious boundaries, one way to get at this issue is to ask, “How, in fact, are we to construe mission?” Do we see (a) mission as proclamation or (b) mission as action—as embodied justice and mercy? The fact of an inter-connected and yet deeply divided human family hones the question to an acute edge.
Thankfully, in the Church we do have recourse to the voice of the New Testament, and the model of the early Christians is also an instructive resource for us. Of course, our historical circumstances are not parallel to those of the Early Church in every respect. However, giving due attention to the hermeneutical gap, we ought to look back, listen, and learn before moving ahead.
THE EARLY CHURCH was a dynamic community
whose humility, sacrifice, and unity-in-diversity
were in many ways a shocking thing in their world.
The Early Church was a dynamic community whose humility, sacrifice, and unity-in-diversity were in many ways a shocking thing in their world. Yet, what was it, in those early centuries, which caused so much attention, commotion, joyful transformation, and also violent opposition as the people of Jesus fanned out into the Roman world?
Certainly, one way in which the Jesus people stood out so dramatically from the world around them was their values and virtues, their love and humility, and their acts of compassion. But the cause of the aggressive response and even violence the Early Church faced from the surrounding cultures cannot be reduced to their good works.
The faithful, suffering believers were not persecuted because they were simply too nice, too kind, or too compassionate. There were many ways in which the distinctive lives of the early Christians triggered the attention and sometimes irritation of the pagan world around them, but ultimately they were persecuted because of one primary and essential distinction: their unbending insistence on the gospel—on the announcement that Jesus alone is true Lord.
Michael Gorman has highlighted the counter-cultural edge of the Pauline gospel in the face of the class-conscious, stratified Corinthian society: in gathering around the Lord’s table, the believers are called to a radical inversion of Roman norms—to be a community inclusive in terms of class and social status, and exclusive in terms of the worship of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (2014, Kindle 1470-1498). The early disciples were ruggedly determined and defiantly joyful in their commitment to Jesus in the face of opposition, even to persecution and death.
The first martyrs did not die because they were compassionate humanitarians—although compassion indeed overflowed from their midst. They died because they held fast to the central fact of their new lives in God: Jesus and him crucified was the message they shared and the creed they lived. The speaking and the acting go hand-in-hand. A gospel reduced and limited to generic acts of mercy and compassion ultimately is evacuated of the Jesus at its center.
The mortal conflict on display between Jesus and his opponents in John 10 vibrantly highlights the dynamic in question. Jesus faces visceral and venomous opposition, not for any good work he did, but on account of his claims about his own identity. Of course, the sign-acts of might and mercy that Jesus accomplished did indeed flow out of his identity and mission; acts of mercy are integral to his identity (and ours). But the conflict centered on a struggle over Jesus’ words, his claims about himself and the authority those claims implied. These claims—this proclamation—was in no way negotiable; it was essential.
The story of Peter, John, and the lame man in Acts 3 and 4 is also evocative. An act of mercy and power, a healing, catalyzes the plot, but the tension lies in the fact that the healing is done in the name of Jesus. And the proclamation of that Jesus cannot be set aside—the apostles will, must, declare the message of that healer, and that in a rather contested and difficult context. The gospel is here articulated with a bit of a sharp edge, and the priestly council is not in a receptive mood.
Jesus as Model and Message
Christ is the model for our mission to a hurting world. However, he is no mere model, as if we might imitate him but dispense with proclaiming him. The apostles clung to Jesus—that is, to the offensive and misunderstood message of his cross and resurrection. They clung to, even “gloried in” (Gal. 6.14), the cross of Jesus and the good news that he was Lord and Christ. They carried out a cross-cultural mission announcing an executed Jewish king to societies and cultures—both Jewish and pagan—that were often predisposed to reject and oppose such “foolishness” and “obscenity” (1 Cor. 1.17-25; cf. Rom. 1.14-17; Gal. 1.6-10; 2 Cor. 2.15-16).
Note that in the larger context of 2 Corinthians 4, whatever else the “ministry of the new covenant” entailed for the apostolic team, it clearly entailed a proclamation, and one that was costly—“death at work” in Paul’s band, “life” for those who received the word. In the face of social and political opposition, in the face of spiritual darkness, across all sorts of political, ethnic, and religious boundaries, proclaiming the good news about Jesus in the New Testament era was a stark challenge.
To those who received the message, however, the gospel was in fact a breath from heaven and life abundant. When it comes to these particular dynamics (a gospel proclaimed in the face of considerable opposition), there is no reason to construe the reality today as fundamentally any different. Nor is there reason to presume the Church’s basic commission has been altered.
It is Jesus and him crucified who has brought us into forgiveness and new life, who has brought us into existence as the people of God. That message of reconciliation includes a relentless inner drive to be announced to a darkened world. Absent that message, there is no Christian faith and no people of God to express the mercies of Christ. If we are interested in reflecting the compassion of God as Christians, it cannot be accomplished by setting aside the message which itself made us.
It cannot be accomplished by muzzling the story of forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ, by setting aside the gospel of the cross. In the New Testament, there is no other Christ than the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. There is no other king than the one who disarms hell in dying on the tree, no other servant than the suffering servant who laid down his life for many. It is from this Jesus, and from his story known and shared, that the grace and compassion of God for all people emerges.
The New Testament presents the story of Jesus’ shocking execution and tortured humiliation as the paradoxical climax of God’s ancient and original design to heal the wounds of sinful humanity. The gospel of the cross is a mystery once hidden, now unveiled in the age of the Messiah.
Surely, God did not painfully and patiently shepherd the story of Israel from Genesis to the cross and Resurrection only to allow the story to go silent once again in our day. Surely, he does not want the narrative of his plan for human salvation—the gospel of forgiveness through the Son—now to be muffled by us, the recipients of his inexplicable grace.
Yes, of course, the gospel does have consequences beyond a simple “personal ticket to heaven.” Yes, the gospel has to be about something other than preaching so as to collect converts like so many embellishments to the résumé. There can be no doubt that where the gospel touches down there must be a sort of tangible social impact, because, after all, the gospel centers on the Lordship of the One who claims all creation and all humans as his own.
Yes, there must be a practical, ‘horizontal’ consequence when Jesus’ people live sacrificially—loving those who live across cultural, political, gender, or ethnic divides. Discipleship must certainly entail active love—tangible compassion for the neighbor, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan, or the “others” our culture might program us to exclude.
The gospel tells us that in Christ, God is definitively and uniquely laying claim to his world once again; his purpose is to heal a creation gone off-the-rails, and to judge and save a fallen humanity. There is none like the God we meet in the gospel, the God revealed in Christ. A message on this scale obviously has life-shaping and destiny-altering implications for the world writ large. Of course, the truth about Jesus extends beyond mere words and slogans. So, yes, indeed, we followers are called to a ministry of “the hands and feet.” Yet, this ministry cannot be less than words, either: hands, feet, and mouth.
The Gospel as Transforming Word
At least two basic points about the gospel are relevant here. First of all, the gospel is directly tied to words, speech, or communication; it is a message or ‘news’. Yes, the gospel certainly entails many claims on human life, values, and behavior. It does have social and ethical implications—to fail to love or to serve as our Lord did is a betrayal of the gospel.
Nonetheless, whatever else the gospel may imply, it remains at its core a message to be shared. It is the announcement that Jesus is Lord of all creation, and that in his cross and exaltation he brings hope of life, the healing of our world, and reconciliation to God for all peoples.
This brings up the second point about the gospel: If the words of the gospel, the message of Jesus’ Lordship, are anything like what I have just described, then the gospel is not only ‘news’. It is clearly news of a very particular sort. This announcement about Jesus cannot be described as “random information”; not even the categories of ‘fascinating history’ or ‘compelling religious belief’ will do.
No—the gospel is a royal proclamation of cosmic proportions: God has raised his Messiah to the highest station in the universe, never to die again, returning as Judge of the living and the dead. In Jesus, God has turned the ages, kept his ancient promises to Israel and humanity, is overthrowing hell and death, and is ushering in a New World, healing and reconciling our ubiquitous brokenness.
Christ is the watershed of all creation; the litmus test of all human experience. Before Jesus, all loyalties, commitments, values, politics, ideologies, and cultural identities will have to bow and give way.
The gospel then is not simply information to be accepted or not; it is not one possible ‘fact’ among many others to be set on a shelf like so many polished pebbles in a rock collection, nor is it one of many paths to the truth. Rather, this is news which conditions all other news and all other knowing. It demands a response: Jesus is Lord. Failing to respond is itself a (negative) response.
Given the truth about who Jesus of Nazareth is, given the extent to which God went to reclaim his broken creation, and given the crushing self-emptying of the Son on behalf of a broken world, the word about Jesus cannot be a casual or optional matter.
Some words are simply descriptive or informative, but some words are much more than that. Some utterances are performative, even transformative. They bring about the reality to which they point. (Think, for example, of the simple “I Do”s in wedding vows.) In a very real sense, hearing, believing, and entrusting ourselves to the message re-makes us. This is truth which conditions all other truths. As Christians, we consistently need a fresh encounter with our living Word, and such an encounter will renew our passion for the exalting of Jesus in his world.
Missions, the Nations, and Cultural Imperialism
Announcing the Jesus who loved and died for the world is not a self-serving project of hegemonic control, whatever oppositional messages of our culture emerge. Genuine proclamation is not imperialism, Western or otherwise. (It may be worth reminding ourselves here that most of the Global Church is not white, Western, or male, and thus, much of its ‘mission activity’ is not either.)
In bringing the gospel across political, ethnic, or even religious boundaries, we must not advocate on behalf of our culture or nation or interests. No—the gospel is actually good news for all.
The gospel is not our invention; faith in the Messiah is not a Western concept; it is a message that emerged first in the ancient Middle East, and is ultimately a message that resides in the heart of our Maker. The story of Jesus is about the might, majesty, and mercy of a King who conquers by suffering, serving, and dying—pouring out his life to the utmost for us. The ‘empire’ of Jesus is not that of the Crusader but the Lamb slain for the sake of his enemies. The gospel is good news for our world—for any and every culture and ethnicity and religious group. One can certainly reject this assertion, but one cannot reject this assertion and fairly claim to be a Christ-follower in any meaningful sense.
From one perspective, the gospel is a migrant or transplant into every culture (Hindu, secular, nominally Christian, Muslim, and so on). It comes to us ‘from the outside.’ On the other hand, the gospel is continually and ‘natively’ rooting itself in every culture and tongue—it is the word of life for which we were made. This renewing word is tailor-made to address the human condition, and to address God’s image-bearers.
Conclusion
My purpose here is by no means to call each Christian to be a firebrand evangelist. Rather, I hope to convey something of a shared vision for the community of Jesus. Collectively we express his love for the world, and this truth about Jesus essentially entails a message proclaimed. It is resounding, transforming, liberating, shocking, offending, life-giving news. It must be spoken and imparted, as well as lived.
Proclamation is not an optional add-on to the Christian faith: it is the heart of the Christian faith. This is not to say that words alone are the primary demonstration of love, nor sufficient grounds for true relationship. In Christ, the Word spoke loudest in laying down his life. When it comes to words and action, the framework must not be either/or, but both/and. There are multiple and creative ways to communicate both God’s unchanging truth and the relentless love of the Father in Christ.
At the heart of Christian truth is a story and an announcement about what God has done. The shockwaves of this story reverberate throughout the cosmos, and this good news changes us. Out of that transformation, we love, we serve, we sacrifice, and we pass on the news.
Reference
Michael J. Gorman. 2014. The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement. Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books.
Brent Neely and his wife have served in church and non-profit work in the Middle East for eighteen years. Currently, his ministry is focused on the Arabic-speaking refugees in Europe.
EMQ, Vol. 53, No. 4. Copyright © 2017 Billy Graham Center for Evangelism. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMQ editors.
