THE PRIORITY OF MISSION
By R. Keith Parks

LONDON—Final question to a candidate trying for qualification as a Bobby (policeman): “You hear a car crash and turn the corner to find the Police Inspector unconscious alongside an unconscious women who is not his wife. As you try to decide what to do you see an escaped prisoner walking down the street. You struggle with your options when a man rushing out of a nearby flat (apartment) calls for help for his wife who is in labor. Your effort to set priorities is interrupted by a shout from a nearby canal where a child is going down for the third time. What would you choose as your first priority for action?”

After a brief reflection the candidate declared, “I would take off my uniform and blend into the crowd and forget about becoming a policeman!”

Many Baptists have decided to forget about missions, and just blend into the culture. “It’s too complex; there are too many choices; I don’t know what to believe about mission programs that I once respected; I’ll just do my own thing in my own church, doing my own kind of missions and forget about working with others to reach the world strategically.”

The problem with that attitude is that it is unchristian, unbiblical and self-defeating. A sincere, obedient Christian does not have that option!! Missions is an essential priority for every Christian and every Church.

I. MISSIONS IS GOD’S PRIORITY

God is a Missionary God by nature, by plan and by action. He created us for fellowship with himself knowing that we would misuse our freedom of choice. His first post-sin act was a missionary act. Prior to creation he had fashioned a missionary plan of profound simplicity. He began revealing it in the Garden and stated it clearly in calling Abram through whom divine blessing was to to all those made in his image. Through symbol, sign, ceremony, ritual and prophecy he unceasingly defines his missionary priority. Confidently, he asserts the eternal assembling of people from every race, language and ethnicity who will fulfill this priority. God’s nature; his image in us; our choice of sin; combine to require missions as God’s priority.

II. MISSIONS IS CHRIST’S PRIORITY

Christ, as Word/human provides the perfect model of missions priority. This priority is found in his first sermon as he declares Messianic fulfillment of Is. 61 promising to meet physical and spiritual needs of all people. It’s found in the “whosoever” of John 3:16. This priority is in the imperative to go to Samaria; to the “villages beyond” despite local response; to the Gadarene; to the tax collectors and to the “sick” rather than the “well”. It was in his all power promising; all humanity encompassing mandate to all obeying followers for all times. Missions is, was and will be Christ’s priority.

THUS, THE BIBLE IS NOT A BOOK THAT JUST INCLUDES MISSIONS… IT IS MISSIONS!

III. MISSIONS IS THE ECCLESIA’S PRIORITY.

At Christ’s first recorded mention of ECCLESIA and before there was self-awareness; kingdom keys are promised and earthly activity defined by heavenly agenda. It is understandable that they had little understanding of what he intended. But it is inexcusable that with all the biblical and historical evidence of two centuries that we do not yet understand and practice this priority!

This missions priority answers the question asked on the Ecclesia-birthing, Spirit-empowering Day of Pentecost: “What is happening and why?”

Read Acts 2:I-12.

In this explosive fulfillment of the first unrestricted coming of the Holy Spirit the Ecclesia has breath, life and definition. This coming out of the ecclesia was neither secret nor subtle. Rather, this first activity of the post-ascension, spiritually present Head of the ecclesia clearly demonstrated the missions priority by preaching in all the major languages of that part of the world. This missions priority of the ecclesia was dramatically demonstrated before there was mention of pastor, deacons, name, charter, constitution, choir, Sunday School, VBS, building or Wednesday night prayer meeting. This was and is the ultimate and primary reason for the existence of the ecclesia.

Christ’s purpose is to extend his kingdom to all peoples—that is an acceptable definition of missions—his plan is to do this through his ecclesia. There is no one else on earth and no other plan to accomplish this priority.

The call of God is unto all the nations. Let the Church in any land limit this call by imperfect obedience and the power of God in any full measure becomes unnecessary for its life. The experience of the Holy Spirit comes in the encounter of the church with the world. Where that encounter is partial, either in extensity or intensity, the encounter with the Holy Spirit is partial also.

The church exists by mission (Gen. 12:2,3). But the Children of Abraham misconstrued their calling. They looked upon their blessing as a privilege and refused to recognize their mission. God called and recalled them to their specific responsibilities as his people, but they would not hear. Israel rejected Christ because it would not expose the riches of its heritage to the strain and stress of missionary endeavor.

The church is holy because it is the instrument of God’s mission to the world. Let the church cease to be missionary and it ceases to be holy. It ceases to fulfill the purpose for which it was wrought.

This effort to recapture the original priority of the ecclesia is demonstrated in the Victory Family Centre in Singapore. This cell church is 25-years-old with 4000 members. Missions is the dominant DNA of this group. Currently, 316 of their members are in 1 or 2-year missionary teams all over the world. In their 25-year history they have started 430 churches in 50 nations. They are not the only mission-minded church among the 450 in this island nation. Together, they support 454 international missionaries.

The ecclesia of China is a multi-faceted enigma. Anything you hear about it could be true, somewhere in China. However, there are many uninformed rumors. There is one intriguing, repeated report that describes the mission priority of one part of this ecclesia. In 1944, three separate groups of church leaders had the same vision. They were to have a major role in “walking the gospel” along four major branches of the old silk road back to Jerusalem. They only reached their national borders before WWII and Communism intervened. Some of those aged leaders along with a new generation have recaptured that same vision. Missionaries, maybe as many as 100,000, are being trained to take the Gospel down those old silk roads back to the place of origin. Several thousand have already started out. They do not expect ever to return. Thousands more are in training. They have no human support. They are being taught how to pray: how to share the Gospel cross-culturally; how to earn a living; how to suffer for Christ; how to escape from captivity, how to die and how to witness to their executioners.

A pastor demonstrated the priority of missions in another church. About a dozen of us sat in a church building in a Muslim country. A well-educated, winsome man of about 40 told of walking away from his role as pastor of one of the leading churches in the capital city. His two teenage daughters and his wife agreed that they would live on his wife’s salary as he gave himself as a missionary to the majority Muslim population of his country. He seeks to cross racial and religious barriers to a people who are forbidden by law to become Christians.

The security police monitor his moves. He uses pre-paid cell phones only a week before discarding them.

Cautiously he had agreed to meet some local people who claimed they had become followers. He was going to a neighboring country to lessen the risk.

As he was eating lunch with us, a call came saying that a car had hit his daughter who was accompanying the group.

An accident, or something else? He wondered if it was a trap. It was not wise for him to go to his daughter. A friend called a doctor he knew at that hospital to help the daughter. Gripped by a mission priority, he described these events as casually as we discuss the weather.

IV. MISSIONS IS THE CHRISTIAN’S PRIORITY

Gradually the early Christians understood this priority. Scattered by persecution, they extended the Kingdom. The First Baptist Ecclesia of Antioch bypassed the Jewish connection and became a first generation Christian model. It is no coincidence that this uncluttered understanding of their identity resulted in the sending forth their best leaders as missionaries. Their priority was missions. They understood that they were the ones through whom the kingdom would be extended. From that small seed the kingdom did grow and touched people of many nations. Currently, about 33% of the world is registered as Christians. The more knowledgeable researchers estimate about 14% are truly born again. How can that be, if our priority is missions? Many Christians seem to assume Christian growth is inevitable and irresistible.

As a matter of fact growth is not automatic. From 1900–2000 the following Christian attritions occurred: Iraq moved from 35%–5%; Iran, 15%–2%; Syria 40%– 10% and Turkey 32%–0. 2%. How could this be? Or look at the center of Christian growth that moved from Jerusalem to Antioch, to Rome, to Germany, to England, to the Northeast U.S, to the Bible Belt. That movement has not stopped! Will it move on in our children’s lifetime? Will it go to Southern Africa, South America, East Asia, Southeast Asia or perhaps China?

Philip Jenkins, a scholar of religion and history at Pennsylvania State University, wrote for the October 2002 Atlantic Monthly. He was referencing his book, The Next Christendom. He argues that Americans are all but unaware of one of the most important shifts in the 20th century: the explosive growth of Christianity in the Southern Hemisphere. He asserts that the center of gravity of the Christian world has shifted from Europe and the United States to the Southern Hemisphere and, Jenkins believes, it will never shift back.

What causes the power center of the Christian faith to move? What force can cause it? There is only one force that can cause this. It is not Satan, nor any religion. Nor any philosophy. The only force that can cause the Christian faith to lose its dominance is Christians. Although there are many varying and complex factors that can be cited, none is more significant than the lose of the missions priority!! The principle of losing life to gain it applies to the corporate as well as the individual Christian.

The truth is that the Christian’s priority is missions whether we act like it or not. When we don’t act like it, God moves on to find someone who will.

Our spiritual ancestors declared in 1845 that missions was the priority around which they joined. But, beginning in 1979 current SBC leadership began insisting that doctrine, not missions is the controlling force. This conviction is being demonstrated in regrettable ways. This unfortunate shift not only departs from heritage but also puts in jeopardy the wholesome future of one of the largest, current missions efforts. The fulfillment of this God-given missions priority for those of our persuasion is not possible within that system. A greater grief is that our children of like convictions do not have the acceptable options that we had.

But our course of action is not found in recrimination, accusation nor bitterness. Nor is it found in the course of some who withdraw from this urgent priority. The antidote is to claim our heritage and to focus on our mission priority—christian-by-christian, church-by-church and state-by-state in cooperation with all who share this biblical priority and celebrate the God-given variety of convictions, gifts and methods.

CONCLUSION

I sometimes wonder if the missions priority can be actualized among a people whose Christianity has absorbed so much from a “friendly” culture. Is it possible for us to recognize that the American standards of success measured by prosperity, position, pleasure and power conflict with this priority? Is it possible for those of us in such a comfortable ecclesia to be counter cultural? The vigorous growth and mission

expansion of the church most often occurs under persecution. An American Christian said to an Iranian co-worker in a relief ministry: “We pray for your people because of the suffering and persecution that you endure.” The startled Iranian replied, “You pray for us? We fervently pray for you.” The now shocked American asked why. “We pray that your riches will not keep you from God.” Is it possible to prioritize missions without persecution or sacrifice or opposition?

In a large Muslim country, from 1998 to 2001, there were 10,207 Christians killed— about 10 per day. From 1995 to 2001 there were 825 Church buildings destroyed— about 1 each 2.5 days. It is no mere coincidence that a pan-denominational group began to pray, study and strategize in 1996. Their concern was the 128 Unreached People Groups in that land. Only 21 had any witness. In the following years, over 100 multinational individuals and 95 denominations had studied and prayed that a witness would be present in every group. By 2002 the witness among the 21 had become a witness among 94 of the UPGs— over a fourfold increase in six years.

One increasing sign and one that supports the shift of Christianity’s center of gravity is the explosion of multi-national, multi-denominational missions networks. Last October over 300 Christian leaders, of varied beliefs, from 40 nations gathered in Taiwan at a Global Summit of the Cell Church Mission Network. They sought better ways to advance missions among the unreached. A Chinese from Hong Kong stood to acknowledge with Paul that they were debtors to missionaries from other nations for bringing them the Gospel. He said, “We are going to pay that debt, we will begin to pay it now.”

So must we, also, pay our debt to Christ and our spiritual ancestors and reclaim our priority. We must be God’s people with the priority of missions at this time and place.

Keith Parks is the former president of the SBC’s Foreign Mission Board, former coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Global Missions Network, and a member of BGCT’s World Missions Network.

April 2003