The risen Jesus said to the eleven disciples: “… Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20 (The “Great Commission”)

Dear Saints,

A goal identifies “the purpose toward which an endeavor is directed.” (American Heritage Dictionary) Concrete, specific goals for a church can provide a reality check, testing whether we believe what we say about our mission and purpose. This spring the Vestry and I agreed on 4 goals for our work together, one of which is “to raise awareness of missions through a process of learning and doing.”

In the seminary I attended, a number of my classmates and neighbors were either experienced missionaries taking a study furlough, or new missionaries preparing to go abroad for the first time. I prayed every week with the Missions Fellowship and helped organize the annual Missions Fair. Two friends– a faculty couple who trained missionaries– greeted me every day with the question: “How’s your missionary heart?” As my graduation drew near, another friend, whose job was to recruit and send missionaries to South America, told me he was praying that I would not find placement in any diocese in the United States. He had the “perfect” assignment in mind for me. Meanwhile, my bishop told me: “If you think God is calling you to be a missionary, that’s all very fine, but get another bishop to ordain you. I ordain for Connecticut.” (As it turned out, he ordained me a deacon, but I never served as a member of the Connecticut clergy.)

I came away from seminary convinced that the Church of Jesus Christ is by definition a missionary Church. Every one of us is called to support missionaries financially, as we are able, and with our prayers. More of us than we suppose are called to serve as missionaries.

If there is one part of the Catechism you know by heart, it might be this: “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 855) Mission starts, not with the Church, but with the character of God, the overflow of God’s love and joy from the heart of the Trinity. The One God we worship is a loving Society of Three Persons. It is the nature of this God to give of himself, to give away the best he has, to create, call, and send. We see evidence of this love in the creation of the universe, in the creation of human beings as bearers of his image, in the gift of God’s Son, Jesus, and in the Church.

Christian mission, (to borrow an image from theologian Lesslie Newbigin), is the good, life-giving fallout of a “vast explosion.” Jesus Christ, sent by the Father, rejected and crucified by human beings, has been raised from the dead and is alive today. This is better news than anything we can imagine. We do not have to be commanded to bear witness to it. “Gossiping the Gospel” should be as natural to us as breathing.

This message can’t be separated from the Body of Christ. The spread of the Gospel brings a community into being. In the book of Acts, the apostles don’t have to “cram religion down people’s throats.” Usually there was something “different” about the behavior of the community of believers that made other people curious to know about Jesus. The quality of relationships within that community, and the transformed lives of its members, was the evidence that made the Gospel believable.

When I speak of “missions” or “a mission,” I mean a marriage of witness and service in loving, obedient response to God’s mission. The New Wineskins Missionary Network offers this working definition of mission: “Any cross-cultural endeavor outside your local congregation to obey the Great Commission by proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, making disciples, and gathering those disciples into local churches.” You can have a “cross-cultural endeavor” without crossing an ocean. Trying to communicate between generations, or going to an urban community, can be a cross-cultural experience. We have encounters like these every day, unaware that we might be missionaries sent by God.

Intentionally crossing some boundary to share the Gospel has the potential to strengthen and purify the faith of the one who steps out. Some things that we thought were essential to the Gospel message are exposed as merely our culture’s way of “packaging” the Gospel. We learn to observe and honor the ways in which the Lord has been active, preparing the way, before we ever got there. Working and worshiping with Christians in another part of the world enlarges our understanding of what the Church is. On returning, we see our local congregation’s relationship to its environment from a new perspective, with a more realistic appreciation of the barriers to sharing the Gospel– barriers in our own “host culture,” in ourselves, and in the behavior of the Church.

Now that we have adopted this goal, people are asking me for my “master plan.” “Master plan” language runs the risk of ignoring the Master. Goals mean nothing if we’re not praying about them. We don’t “send” ourselves, or dictate the terms by which the Lord calls and sends. Our authority and our equipping for mission is in our having died and been raised with Christ, and in our preparedness to share in his sufferings.

The Ferrari company sells a high-powered sports car that accelerates from zero to 62 miles per hour in under 3.7 seconds. Getting up to speed in missions will take us a lot longer than that. My vision of “up to speed” would be a congregation where the priority of missions and evangelism is reflected in our prayers, budgeting, scheduling, education, and stewardship of the gifts we have received from the Lord. “Up to speed” might mean a companion relationship between this congregation and a congregation overseas (or on the other side of some identifiable “boundary”); annual mission trips in which members of this congregation participate together; and some parishioners, with the support of the congregation, discovering long-term vocations as missionaries.

If we are genuine about this new commitment to missions, it might take 3 to 6 years to get “up to speed.” Now the Vestry’s task, and mine, is to return to this agreement month by month, clarify expectations, fine-tune our plan as we go, and invite you, the congregation, into this “process of learning and doing” with us. Who we are as a congregation– our past histories, our resources, our spiritual and natural gifts, and our passion– might supply clues to discerning the mission emphasis to which the Lord is calling us.

I have agreed to accompany the Hancock County Medical Mission to Ecuador next February. It travels under the flag of Medical Missions International, a Christian organization. Although sharing the Gospel is not an explicit purpose of the mission, I have been invited to go because some in the group wanted a Christian pastor to participate. By attending the monthly planning meetings, I am learning the logistics involved in putting a mission trip together. On some days, I say my prayers and read the Bible in Spanish (a language I’ve never formally studied).

In addition to your prayers, I’m hoping that some members of the congregation will join with people we know and to take part in short-term missions already in the works for next year. For example: Tremont Congregational’s mission to Belize; Solar Light for Africa; Maison de Naissance (the birthing home in Haiti); the Diocesan youth mission to the Dominican Republic; and opportunities to help with hurricane relief and rebuilding in the Gulf Coast region. I can supply more detailed information to anyone who asks.

So… how’s your missionary heart?

Faithfully,

Chuck Bradshaw +