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January 30 - February 2, 2021
Timothy C. Tennent, president of Asbury Theological Seminary, recently welcomed incoming seminary students by saying, “Welcome to life on the fastest growing mission field in the world: North America.”1 Churches in North America and Europe are now witnessing a growing number of people who are radically unchurched.2 In the United States alone, there are around 180 million who have no connection to a local church, making it one of the fastest growing mission fields in the Western Hemisphere.3 It is estimated that six hundred and sixty to seven hundred thousand people leave the traditional church
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there is no place where the church cannot go to reach people for Christ.
Christians needed to rediscover that the mission of the church can only be rightly understood, “if we see it as the work of God who has sent His Son and given His Spirit, as a sharing through the spirit in the obedience of the Son to the Father, as a participation in the spirit who enables us to know God as Father and to confess Christ as Lord, and to wait with assurance and patience for the coming of His Kingdom.”
Newbigin also argued, “Mission is not just something that the church does; it is something that is done by the Spirit, who is himself the witness, who changes both the world and the church, who always goes before the church in its missionary journey.”
A fresh expression is “a form of church for our changing culture, established primarily for the benefit of people who are not yet members of any church.”
In 2003, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams called for a “mixed economy” of church that would include both traditional and fresh expressions of church to meet the new challenges of a post-Christian and post-modern context. In his own words, “We have begun to recognize that there are many ways in which the reality of ‘church’ can exist… These may be found particularly in the development of a mixed economy of Church life.”
According to the Census, the USA will become “minority white” by 2045.35 That means the future of the church in North America will be increasingly multiethnic and diverse. With more than 337 languages represented, the United States has become the most multicultural and multilingual nation on earth.
As we witness the globalization of North America, the nations on continents such as Africa, Asia, and South America are beginning to send missionaries to re-evangelize the West through church planting! British author Martin Robinson talks about some of these church planters from developing countries who are now coming to the West.
The Five Marks of Mission are: 1.To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom 2.To teach, baptize and nurture new believers 3.To respond to human need by loving service 4.To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation 5.To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth
Emil Brunner said, “The church exists by mission just as fire exists by burning.”
The Catholic dimension by itself can lead to ritualism. The Evangelical dimension by itself can lead to fundamentalism. The Broad Church dimension by itself can lead to liberalism. The Charismatic dimension by itself can lead to Charismania.
John Stott argued for comprehensiveness without compromise. He proclaimed, “The way of separation is to pursue truth at the expense of unity. The way of compromise is to pursue unity at the expense of truth. The way of comprehension is to pursue truth and unity simultaneously, that is, to pursue the kind of unity recommended by Christ and his apostles, namely unity in truth.”
