A THEOLOGY OF MISSIONS

Missions may be the main topic for Texas Baptists this year, and isn't it interesting that we are thinking seriously about missions at the outset of the 21st century? Our Texas Baptist leaders have been thinking overtime about missions this year, and we know some reasons. Nevertheless, do we know all of the reasons? I would like to talk about that a moment, because the context in which we do theology is always a key to doing a good theology.

One reason we are thinking about missions is change. Things are changing everywhere. The tributaries of history are carrying everything cultural, especially religion, to new places. This is true of the entire religious world, including the Christian and Baptist world. Random and spontaneous streams of change that seem out of control are carrying us. They are taking us from where we were to who knows where. So, it is because our world and lives have changed before our very eyes that we are focusing on missions. We are focusing on missions because we are forced to do so. We have this burden of knowing we are a missionary people. So much has changed, we do not know how to do what we must. Nevertheless, we have this calling, and we have to find out.

Another reason we are focusing on missions is that we are tied to the cussedness and falleness of our humanity. (If you did not know, one of those words is a West Texas word and the other is common in theological discussions). The crisis of conflict has forced us to rethink how we carry out the mission of our Lord Jesus on this earth. Out of sinful human nature resulting in conflict and broken relationships we have been cut off from much that we have known. We are looking around to see who is with us and what is before us. Thanks be to our gracious heavenly Father, we are thinking about his mission, hopefully, more than ourselves. It is about time. We are thinking about missions because our very life and future as a missionary Baptist people are at stake.

Focusing on missions leads us to high spiritual ground. I have read Joel 2:28 most of my Christian life, but never have I seen it so clearly demonstrated as in the days we are now living. I believe it is a missionary text: " ...I will pour out my spirit on all mankind, and your sons and daughters will prophesy. Then these words-- Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out my spirit in those days."

Veteran mission leaders are dreaming new dreams about missions while many young people and students are sensing a call to missions in unprecedented numbers. At almost every college campus in Texas, our young people are hearing a call to missions. What is it that is stirring our veteran leaders and heroes and our sons and daughters in a concurrent call from God? I believe we are focusing on missions as a work of God's Spirit. He is stirring our hearts to his glorious task of proclaiming the gospel to all neighbors and all nations.

We all could become missionaries at the outset of this 21st century. If this is happening, it is the providence of God. God's Spirit is moving among old and young Baptists. We have entered a remarkable time of a revisioning and recommissioning of his people to take the light of the gospel to all neighbors and all nations.

I am convinced that God is calling us to a new focus on missions and fresh empowering of the Spirit to go forth and take the gospel to the world.

We have a very old, and very new theology for our recommissioning. The substance has not changed, though our view of it must change, because it is our life and our future in Jesus.

Point one: reenvision the passion and adventure of God's call to missions. One mission's theorist (Leslie Newbigin) says that the Bible tells the story of missions in a process of narrowing. Out of all humanity, out of all nations, out of one nation, he calls one and then a few--and through those the entire world to himself.

The call came to Abram, one man and his family, to go from his country and kindred to an unknown land. God called and established a people to reach the people. It was a call to missions.

The call came to Moses, one man and a people. God wanted to deliver his people that he might prepare a way to deliver all of the people. It was a call to missions.

The call came to Isaiah. One prophet followed by other prophets. They would proclaim good news, a gospel word of a light to the nations and a new covenant in the hearts of those who would believe. It was a call to missions.

Then the call came through his only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The commission says: "...All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." This call has come to us.

Our theology begins with our call to follow our Lord's great commission. Can we hear it? Will we envision what he means by it and respond to it? Will we risk tradition, comfort and habit to be a new breed of Texas Baptists like the old breed? Who will break loose to do whatever it takes to share the gospel across Texas and on to the nations? The only way to get beyond the impasse that has a grip on us is to go where we believe God is leading us. I sense that we believe he is leading us. He is calling us as Texas Baptists to a new adventure in the Great Commission. What choice do we have but to rehear this commission and follow?

Our theology of missions is based in a calling that beckons us to make a simple choice. Go and share with all neighbors and all nations, or stay put. Texas Baptists need to be going. That is enough theology for a lifetime.

Point two: our theology of missions, based in the Great Commission, is about God. Too many have thought that it was more about us, but it is mostly about him. We may be preoccupied with talk about our money, agencies, channels of support, education programs and missionaries. As practical and necessary as these are, it is not about what we have done. It is not about our pragmatic genius, blessed of God. It is not about what we have done in our prosperity. Hear what one writer says (Newbigin):

"The one thing that can certainly be said about this chapter of human history is that it is over. For more than two centuries it has provided the framework in which the Western churches have understood their world missionary task. . . We are forced to do something that the Western churches have never had to do since the days of their own birth--to discover the form and substance of a missionary church in terms that are valid in a world that has rejected the power and the influence of the Western nations."

I think most know this is very true. Baptists need to learn that we are not in the driver's seat like we thought we were. The implications are even more personal.

It is not about us, and our great accomplishments, though incredible they have been. It is not about our rich heritage, which has shaped Baptists. It is not about our magnificent predecessors--women and men--our boards, agencies and our offerings. Our theology of missions needs to get much bigger than us and the practical genius that has guided our missions efforts in the past. It has to become greater to become as great as our Father. It has to be more about him, and less about us.

I have heard the criticism that someone can be so heavenly minded that they are no earthly good. I am aware of the criticism of idealism. When it is more about him and less about us we will no longer fret over letting go of the past. When it is more about him and less about us, we will no longer be anxious about revisioning our work and recommissioning our people. When it is more about him and less about us, we will pray the prayers of true exaltation and complete resignation of our lives. Don't you feel the longing to pray, "Father, you are so great and good, and I want to give you my life?" We will give our lives and resources at true levels of sacrifice again that we may glorify him among the nations.

Our theology of mission is about God. It is about his work--to establish his kingdom on this earth, a kingdom of righteousness and justice among and through his disciples living a new life at mission outposts called the church across the earth.

Third: our theology of missions naturally moves to a theology of the Son. It is about Jesus and his gospel. That is the heart of our life and our message. Jesus and his gospel must be the focus of our mission. When we displace Jesus, we get sidetracked and possibly idolatrous. We cannot put anything else front and center in our message and our mission. We have said rightly that pure doctrine cannot be put front and center to displace Jesus and his gospel. We cannot present our personal experience in Jesus' place. We can allow no pragmatic and organizational issues to displace Jesus and the focus of our mission.

Truth for Texas Baptists is, Jesus, and in a major sense only Jesus. He came to teach us. He died on the cross to save us. He arose to live in and through us. Our passion is to serve him. Our basic method is to preach Jesus and extend his love into every lost life and broken heart on this earth.

They have accused some who have not succumbed to recently appointed human ecclesiastical authorities of having a faulty theology. I believe we are right in saying he and he alone is truly Lord over our lives, the church, the scriptures, our programs and everything with a human dimension. We have no savior except Jesus. We have no Lord, only him. Our theology is about Jesus. Someone may try to accuse Texas Baptists of saying and believing too much about Jesus. They cannot justly accuse us of failing to focus our belief, our life and our mission on Jesus. It is about Jesus, our Savior and our Lord.

Fourth: our theology of missions is a theology of the Holy Spirit. I have long called upon the Spirit of God to fall daily upon my life, his people and his church. Newbigin says it clearly: "...the active agent of mission is a power that rules, guides, and goes before the church: the free, sovereign, living power of the Spirit of God. Mission is not just something that the church does; it is something that is done by the Spirit. The very life of the Lord is with us through his Spirit. We must have a theology of the Spirit. It is time, again, for we his people, in our weakness, to reach the world in his strength and his power.

We can do much in our strength. However, we will not reach our world by trying to muster the last ounce of our human means for the monumental task before us. Baptist people have never been strong enough, not even Texas Baptists, to reach the world in our strength. Through the empowering of his Spirit calling his people to mission, we can do all things. It is the Lord's Spirit that equips and infuses our hearts and the gospel message with supernatural power. Only through the conviction and the compulsion of the Holy Spirit, will we carry out the mission to which he calls us. Our theology is a theology of the Spirit.

Some say our denominational size and strength may have been a hindrance. I do not doubt it. The beginning of a true supernatural work of God would be to fall dependent on his Spirit. I have no doubt about that either. We must have not only a theology of the Spirit but a new submission to the Spirit's movement.

Fifth: our theology is a theology of the church. Many missiologists are calling for a renewal of the theology of the church as central to the mission task. This is not at the neglect and elimination of such things as education efforts, compassionate ministries and programs targeted to meet the growing desperation across the earth. The Body of Christ is God's way of establishing indigenous preaching and discipleship among the unreached.

The Body of Christ, the Church, manifests the presence and power of Jesus and his gospel that will penetrate every segment of society and culture around each church. The body of believers in each place will reach their own poor and their own children. Most of the world is lost, we know. Almost 50 percent of the world's people live in poverty. Children and youth make up half the world's unreached people (McKaughan, O'Brien and O'Brien, p. 11 and 26). Only the indigenous church will have the motivation in Christ to reach their poor and their children. These alone compel us to have a theology of the church. It is not the church in triumphalist mode. The mission church will bring a moratorium to any last vestige of triumphalist, know-it-all Baptists. Our theology of the church must lead us to be the servants we need to be. McKaughan and the O'Briens call for "servant facilitators and expediters," and so we must be.

I stood with my friend, Carlos Ramirez, in his city of Saltillo, Mexico, looking at the date, 1849, on the Primera Church facade. I will never forget the power of his simple remembrance, "That was when the gospel came to Saltillo, and Baptists brought the gospel." That church stands as a symbol of our mission as Baptists to preach, disciple and build the church as an enduring witness. Carlos took me several miles to the west to a little village of San Antonio del Javar. The pastor was a Mexican-American from Houston had trained as a chemical engineer. He had retired from a major company not long after a trip to this small village, his father's native home. He was just there to visit when he opened his Bible. He began to realize he was doing something unusual to them as a small crowd of people, many of them relatives, gathered and asked what he was doing. He was, in fact, bringing the first evangelical witness to that village. He stood and preached and 50 people were saved. He had a church on his hands. He retired and moved to San Antonio del Javar.

The church thrived as they preached the gospel and ministered Christ's love. They felt led to build adobe apartments for abandoned widows to the back of their church facility. People in mountain villages all around began to hear that these Baptists had something special because they loved people and were changed people. The last I heard, this pastor had called out young men in the village gatherings, and was helping send them into Saltillo for training. It was the church, and happened to be a Baptist church that is bringing the gospel and manifesting the presence of Christ in this section of Mexico. Our theology of missions has a theology of the church, because only faithful disciples gathered persist in doing the work of missions in the new frontiers.

The offering Paul took in Corinth for the church in Jerusalem is a model of cooperation in missions. We need to recover this simple picture. We must put the church in charge of missions again. We must do everything we can in our new missions strategies to facilitate that. The ideal for the future should be fluid and flexible cooperative structures, ever responsive to the Spirit working among the churches. We cannot leave missions frozen in monolithic structures. I do not believe the Spirit of God is leading our churches to funnel our prayers and efforts through outmoded structures that are not open to what the Lord is leading us to do. Our theology is a theology of the Spirit-led church empowered, and the Spirit-born church being established to carry out God's mission on this earth.

Sixth: our theology is one of a comprehensive missions call. Every Christian must be a missionary. Someone has done a good job with our students, because so many of them believe they are missionaries. A great failure of our evangelical heritage, and even our Baptist heritage, is that we have let our people off the hook. We are all missionaries to our neighbors and to the nations. The old are dreaming dreams and the young are having visions of a vast missionary movement from the world's congregations moving toward the lost. The "go ye" for Texas Baptists should be a "go ya'll." Let our generation make it so.

Seventh: our theology is a theology of the Word, and I mean the Bible. I believe the Bible. Texas Baptists believe the Bible. Our leaders believe the Bible. Jesus' authority is our supreme authority. The written Word of God is the tangible written authority for our life. Everything I have said I was Led to by God's Word. I would not say or do otherwise, and neither would you. It is God's Word to me, period.

Once that was good enough for all Baptists. It still is among the vast majority of Texas Baptists. Our theology is all about God, his work, his Son and his Spirit empowering his people young and old to step forward in our weakness for the greatest work, carrying out his mission to all neighbors and all nations on earth. Let this be who Texas Baptists will be.