We must resist the urge to turn our churches into cozy clubs for the converted, and focus on bringing gospel transformation to those within and outside the church walls.
Photo via [link]Lausanne Movement[/link].
I have long been challenged by the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez’s words: ‘You say you care about the poor? Then tell me, what are their names?’ 1
His question often troubled and tested my claims to care for people. Do I know their names?
Knowing people’s names and faces makes compassion personal and real, rather than merely aspirational or professed.
To be sure, our omniscient Lord knows the name of every person in your street or city, poor or rich, including those who are downtrodden, oppressed, broken, and far from him today. Indeed, Jesus came to seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10).
In Matthew 9:36, we read that when Jesus saw the crowds, ‘he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd’.
The Greek word used here (splagchnizomai) captures the raw emotion Jesus felt. Literally, it means he was moved in his bowels, to the very pit of his stomach!
This was no fleeting pity.
And Jesus’ response was to call his disciples to two things:
First, they (and by extension, we) are to pray with great urgency and passion for laborers to bring in a harvest among them (Matt 9:37-38). Jesus taught that earnest prayer must be our first response to the lostness of our world.
Secondly, in Matthew 10, he appoints his disciples to a further task. The disciples were to go on mission, looking for people of peace who would hear and receive the kingdom message they were sent to bring.
Indeed, Jesus is the one who commissions them to do the same ministry he did himself (Compare Matthew 4:17, 9:35 with Matthew 10:1,7-8).
Those forays into short-term mission by Jesus’ disciples could well be seen as dress rehearsals for a greater call to come.
Not long after their initiation into Jesus’ mission, from a mountain in Galilee, the risen Jesus would give them (and, by extension, us) marching orders to a comprehensive, worldwide, enduring work of making disciples of every people, by baptizing into the name of the triune God and teaching all that Jesus taught (Matt 28:18-20).
As disciples in a long line stretching back to those very apostles, it is our shared calling to focus on those things Jesus focused on.
Consequently, our prayers, our proclamation, and our demonstration of God’s kingdom coming on earth are all meant to serve one purpose: that we might make disciples of all peoples. This is the proper milieu and context of our mission on earth.
The church must exist for the sake of others. We must resist the urge to turn our churches into cozy clubs for the converted and focus on bringing gospel transformation to those within and outside the church walls.
Indeed, Jesus has a far nobler and more comprehensive vision for his church: we are part of God’s great search-and-rescue team, sent out on mission with him into the world.
We are his transformative agents, called to reach and renew the earth for his purpose as salt and light in the world (Matt 5:13-14).
If we are to know him and make him known, our gospel will be more than simply a matter of personal salvation or treasured theological standpoints. It becomes the impetus for true societal transformation, one disciple made at a time.
As the late Timothy Keller once challenged, the good news of Jesus is not just a wonderful plan for ‘my life’, to the exclusion of God’s wonderful plan for the world. 2
We must be bothered enough that those around us hear and see the good news from our lips and lives in ways that make sense to them. Not that it will always be easy or straightforward.
My friend Mitsue taught me that. She was a Japanese student I got to know well while working in an international student ministry in England in the early 2000s.
She had begun attending one of our evangelistic Bible studies, but what she heard did not seem to make sense to her.
One day, she told me a story. She spoke of a person who had spent their entire life drinking tea, in a country where everyone drank the same and believed in its benefits.
Then, out of the blue, a stranger from a faraway place came into her community and began telling that person that coffee was a far better drink and that she ought to give up her tea for it.
Mitsue asked me, ‘What gave anyone the right to tell her that her culture’s tea was not good for her, and to say that their coffee was better?’
I understood the painful implications of her question. Praying silently for wisdom from the Holy Spirit, I eventually said to her, ‘With all due respect to the tea you have been brought up with, you will never know the difference or the truth of the claim that coffee is better until you taste it for yourself.’
The gospel of Jesus Christ and his kingdom, entrusted to every believing Christian, is good news for us and the whole world. God has a great plan for you and for your neighbor.
We are called to share this good news with others because, as it has been said, ‘A secret gospel ceases to be news and loses its goodness.’ 3
We are called then to go with him (and each other) on mission into the world, the proper theatre of his saving work.
We need to see people sensitively with new eyes and with God’s wisdom, trust him to use us, despite our brokenness and cultural blind spots, to mediate his love and truth to a world desperately in need of it.
We are called to be disciples who make disciples. It begins where you are and continues until the day you die.
We are all called to be disciples on mission into all the places he sends us, whether crossing oceans or the street outside your home.
The onus is on us to speak and demonstrate his gospel with all compassion, humility, clarity, and wisdom. The good news is that as we go, Jesus promises to go with us (Matt 28:20).
After all, as it was for Jesus, it will be for us: lost people will move us. They will matter to us, too.
And just as he knows their names, we, too, will know their names.
Manik Corea is a Singaporean leader of Sri Lankan and Indian heritage. He currently serves as National Director of the Singapore Centre for Global Missions (SCGM) and chairs the Singapore Lausanne Committee. In addition, he is a presiding elder at Crossroads International Church.
For over 27 years, Manik has ministered as a missionary and church planter in the UK, the USA, and, most recently, for 13 years in Thailand. He is ordained in the Anglican Church of North America and holds a Master’s degree in Intercultural Studies (Church Planting) from Asbury Theological Seminary.
His wife, Maple, who is from Taiwan, has served in children’s and international student ministries. They have a 17-year-old son, Josiah.
This article originally appeared in the Lausanne Movement webpage and is published here with permission. To receive its free bimonthly publication from the subscribe online at www.lausanne.org/analysis.
1. Michael Frost, The Road to Missional: Journey to the Center of the Church. (Ada,MI: Baker Publishing Group, 2011),110.
2. Tim Keller
3. Tite Tiénou, “Does The World Really Need to Hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ?” in John Akers, John Armstrong and John Woodbridge (eds.), This We Believe. (Grand Rapids,MI: Zondervan),183
Las opiniones vertidas por nuestros colaboradores se realizan a nivel personal, pudiendo coincidir o no con la postura de la dirección de Protestante Digital.
Si quieres comentar o