Can a Spirit-empowered Church Make a Difference in the World?
And so there
is the call to renewal, a renewal by the Spirit that allows the church to come
out of its shell and look to the needs of the world we live in. Looking at this world through the eyes of
God, we see in the world something God deeply loves. This love is the basis of our ministry. This world, its institutions, its systems,
its people, they are worthy of redemption, of transformation. Our ministry is not bounded by ethnicity or
geography, though it is respectful of the differences inherent in the world’s
diverse cultures. Born in the Near East
it became the dominant religion in Europe and in a major way became
domesticated.
Today many people speak of
Christianity as the religion of the western world. But that is not true. Though it has had a tendency to act in
imperialistic and triumphalistic ways, the church has from its origins in Jerusalem
had a universal vision. It saw its
message of God’s reign applying not just to a few, but to the many. So, today the greatest point of expansion and
growth is not Europe or North America, but Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Korea, a country that little more than
century ago received its first Protestant missionaries, has a population that
is more than thirty percent Christian.
This new reality is not only remaking the face of the church, the
mission sending and receiving countries have become reversed. Europe is now receiving missionaries from
countries it once sent them. Our
mission, therefore, is not that of civilizing the natives, but of bringing a
message of healing grace that speaks to political, social, and economic
conditions of the people.
The story or our engagement with the
world begins in the first chapter of the book of Acts where we read Jesus’
commission to the church. He calls on
this movement that is hunkered down in Jerusalem to envision a ministry that
will touch the “ends of the earth.”
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
The church,
the temple of the Holy Spirit, is the bearer of the blessings of God’s
presence. The church as an institution
is very human, but it carries a divine mandate and the promise of God’s
presence by the Spirit. With this
promise, the church begins its mission of bearing witness to the Gospel
beginning in Jerusalem and will not cease until it reaches the ends of the
earth.
Though the church began in Jerusalem
as essentially a small Jewish sect, but even in the gospels we get the sense
that the mission of Jesus would not end with there. His encounters with the centurion, the
Samaritan woman, and the Syro-Phoenician woman, all suggest a larger mission,
one that transcends religion, ethnicity, economic status, gender, and
geography. In Christ, Paul tells us,
“there is neither Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female.” Instead we are all one in Christ (Gal.
3:28). Peter’s dream at Joppa reminds
us that what God declares clean is clean (Acts 10). All our walls of separation, they are
falling down, which means that our mission has no boundaries. This message that we carry to the world is an
inclusive one, a message that builds bridges where chasms once existed.
This vision of church life seems to
have been first experienced in the church of Antioch, where a community that
was diverse in ethnicity and culture gathered in the name of Christ. It was this church that being attentive to
the Spirit of God heard a missionary call.
Composed of both Jews and Gentiles, it caught the vision of taking the
gospel to Asia Minor and beyond (Acts 13:1-3).
It also took seriously the call to care for the neighbor, gathering
supplies to send to famine-stricken Jerusalem (Acts 11:27-29).
If
the mission begins in Jerusalem and extends outward through Antioch, this
missionary endeavor will not be completed until all things are taken up into
Christ (Phil. 2:9-11). With the age of
Christendom over in the West and people no longer going to church simply
because it is there, the church has the opportunity to return to its missionary
origins. Although the degree of
religiosity in America appears to be much great than Europe’s, it’s appropriate
to question the depth of this spirituality.
Reports of attendance at religious services appear to be greatly
exaggerated, and even if a majority of us believe in God, we don’t always live
as if this is true. This may seem like bad news, it is really good news for a
church that is open to the movement of the Spirit. If the church is full of Spirit endowed and
gifted people, then it is capable of making a significant difference in the
world. What it takes is a new vision of
its place in the world. Instead of being
a temple that never moves it is a tabernacle that moves with the people
bringing blessing or judgment (whichever is needed at the time) wherever it
goes.
(Excerpted from my book mss. Gifts of Love)
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