Issues Facing Missions Today: 7. Church and Mission in Mt. 5.13-16
Matthew 5:13-16 (NRSV) 3
"You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can
its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out
and trampled under foot. 14
"You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No one after lighting a lamp
puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to
all in the house. 16 In the
same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good
works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Jesus’ first teaching on the Church’s mission in Matthew’s
Gospel appears in Mt. 5.13-16. In these
four verses, we learn at least six things about the Church and its
mission. (1) Size does not matter. (2) Character is critical for mission. (3) Effectiveness comes because of purity.
(4) Mission entails having something significant to offer the world—God’s
reign. (5) Mission involves being a
community that draws people to itself.
(6) The goal of mission is that people will give glory to the Father in
heaven. Each of these points offers guidance for issues facing missions today.
1. Size Does Not Matter
In these few brief verses, Jesus delivers to his new
disciples a missionary calling. He uses
four images for this:
Be salt
Be
light
Be
a city on a hill
Be
a lamp
Each of these images is of something small in its environment. Each one suggests that just a little can make
a very big difference. A little salt can
turn a poor tasting soup into something quite nice. A little light can make all the difference in
darkness. A city on a hill, like
Jerusalem, can be seen easily and draw people to it from miles around. In fact, it did, and on a festival day one
could hear the songs of Israelites gathering from far and near as they made
their pilgrimage up to Mt. Zion.
Finally, a lamp can light up an entire room. Thus the first thing we realise from these
images for missions is that something small can make a big difference. You do not need a majority, and you do not
need power. So much of missions in the
19th and early 20th century from Europe came on the
coattails of Empire, of colonialism. But
missions is wrongly understood when it seeks the world’s power in order to be
effective. It is rightly understood when
it seeks God’s pleasure simply by being faithful.
A small church can be more effective in missions than a large
church, with all its money, members, and ministries. It is not the amount of kindling gathered
that makes the fire burn well but the mature logs that produce a steady flame.
2. Character is Critical for Mission
Just before these verses, Mt. 5.13-16, come Jesus’
beatitudes (Mt. 5.3-12). These are the
very qualities that make Jesus’ disciples to be the salt of the earth and the
light of the world. The qualities are to
be poor in spirit, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to be meek, to be
pure in heart, to be peacemakers, and even to suffer persecution. Such character means that one can stand out
from the crowd and make the sort of difference that draws others out of the
crowd to find Jesus, who Himself is poor in spirit, is righteousness, is meek
and gentle, is pure in heart, is a peacemaker, and who suffered and died. What we see in the beatitudes is Jesus’
conviction that the mission of the Church arises out of a community that seeks
God, not by a church that marshals massive resources to accomplish a project
for a season. The beatitudes remind us
that mission begins with a righteous character and firm desire for God. The fire that cooks is not the fire that
flames up fiercely, only to need a furious fanning moments later. Rather, the fire that cooks is the fire made
of hot coals.
3. Effectiveness Comes Because of Purity
If salt loses its saltiness, it becomes useless and is only
fit to be thrown out and trampled under foot.
Salt, of course, does not actually lose its own properties, but it can
become useless by being combined with something else. In Israel, salt was gathered from the Dead
Sea’s shoreline. If it was not collected
quickly enough, the salt would look like or combine with another element,
gypsum, on the seashore. The Greek word for ‘useless’ is actually
‘foolish’. Jesus would have been
speaking Aramaic, and the Aramaic word behind the Greek in our New Testaments
can mean either useless or foolish. Salt
that was not collected in time along the Dead Sea shoreline would seem to be
one thing but be another—and that could just as well be a definition of
‘foolish’. Someone who pretends to be
one thing but is another is ‘foolish’.
The person who is not true to him or herself is foolish. Christian witness can become foolish, like
salt, either because the church confuses itself with something else or because
it combines itself with something else.
Either way, it loses its saltiness.
Jesus is saying about the disciples’ mission that it should
be a mission that is true, is pure, is uncorrupted and therefore really has
something to offer the world. It is not
something that pretends to be useful but is not. It is not something that has let other
elements distort its identity. It is not
some duplication of what the world offers.
The disciples’ mission can become useless or foolish by becoming
combined with the world’s impurities or confused with other good projects that
fail to proclaim the reign of God.
This is, in fact, something we are witnessing today in
Europe and North America. The Church is
in many respects a salt that has become useless because it has been confused
with other elements in the culture. When
those outside the Church see nothing distinctive about the Church in their
culture, they see no reason to become part of the Church. It is just another political group or charity
or club, but it is no longer the salt of the earth.
Take, for example, the decline of the Church in the United
Kingdom. Where it has lost its purity,
it is losing its witness. The following statistics (collected in 2006 and needing to be updated) are rather sobering for one
of the countries that has stood out as a mission sending country in the history
of modern missions:
0.4%
decline each year in the size of the Church in the UK
4%
of children are in Sunday School in the UK, and less than 1 million
children are in Sunday School in England (2004)
1500
people are leaving the Church each week
By
2037 there will be no Methodists
By
2033 there will be no Church of Scotland
By
2020 the Church in Wales will be unsustainable
Some
statistics for the Church in the United States tell a similar story. In general, mainline denominations are
declining rapidly:
The
Presbyterian Church USA has been declining since the mid-1960’s and
will cease to exist at this rate of decline by the year 1947
or so.
The
UCC has lost members each year since 1965.
The
Evangelical Lutheran Church has been losing members since 1991, with
baptisms, confirmations, and attendance down as well.
The
United Methodist Church has seen membership decline each year since
1968.
Contrast this with the growth of Methodists in
Africa by 30% and in Eastern Europe by 3.5% in the early years of the 21st century.
Yet a denomination that seeks to be faithful to the Bible
first rather than likeable by the culture is not one that loses its saltiness,
its witness. Church growth is not by any
means an indication of faithfulness, yet the growth of churches that are
Biblically faithful over against seeking popularity in the larger culture
demonstrates that faithfulness is a strong witness. For example, the Assemblies of God reported a
growth of 34% between 1980 and 1990.
There are various reasons for such decline over the past
forty years. One reason that these
mainline denominations are on the decline is that they have lost their
distinctiveness from the culture and so have ceased to be the salt of the
earth. As Stanley Hauerwas has
written,
the
first social ethical task of the church is to be the church—the servant
community. Such a claim may well sound
self-serving until we remember that what makes the church the church is its
faithful manifestation of the peaceable kingdom in the world. As such the church does not have a social
ethic; the church is a social ethic.[1]
There
is a relationship between distinctiveness and effectiveness. This is why unorthodox groups, not just
Christian groups, are also growing (Mormons, e.g.). Mainline denominations have wanted to be
considered respectable in society, to be inclusive, tolerant and
non-judgemental—and these are not bad things to be in themselves. Yet they have wanted to be so without being
salt to our culture in upholding God’s holiness, they have lost the will and
the reason to evangelise, and they have failed to teach the commandments of God
to His people.
There
is an example of this in the person of Adoniram Judson, the first missionary
from the US to go overseas. He
eventually became salt and light by taking the Gospel to Burma, where he also
translated the Bible into Burmese. He
grew up in a Christian home—his father was a minister in the Boston area at the
end of the 17th and early part of the 18th century. Adoniram lost his faith in college,
however. He made choices to become
foolish, to lose his saltiness in the world.
He and his best friend at Brown University became atheists. Adoniram decided to set off to see the world
for himself after college and got as far as New York City. One night he checked into a hotel and was
given a room next to a dying man. He had
a terrible night, listening to the person groaning in the next room. He wondered what would happen to the person
if he did die that night, and he began to think about the faith of his
parents. In the morning, he found out
more about the young man in the next room, who did die in the early morning. He found out that this young man was none
other than his best friend from university.
This transformed Adoniram Judson’s life, and within the year he gave his
life to Christ. He became America’s
first missionary, along with his wife and two others sent out from Salem Harbor
in 1812. He who had become foolish now
became the salt of the earth in Burma.
4.Mission
Entails Having Something Significant to Offer the World—God’s Reign
Whether the image is of disciples being the salt of the
earth or the light of the world, the meaning is also that they have something
to offer the world. The Church does not
just offer the world anything, least of all what the world thinks it needs. The Church offers what it has been given to give others, the
message and ministry of the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s reign. Those churches that are convinced that they
have something worth offering people seem to be growing. The decline of the church or the growth of
the church is not a simple matter. But
the vibrant Christianity of churches in South America, Africa, and parts of
Asia testify to the fact that those who see that they can offer a needy world
something precious in Jesus Christ are churches that are growing. Consider some amazing statistics in our day
from Philip Jenkins’ book The Next
Christendom:[2]
Africa
25% growth in
1965, 46% in 2001
8.4 million new
Christians per year
23,000 new
Christians per day in Africa
16 million Roman
Catholics in Africa in 1955. Today, 120
million.
In Tanzania, since 1961,
there has been a 419% growth in the Catholic Church.
There are 70
million Anglicans in the world. 20
million are in Nigeria, 23
million in
Uganda (35-40% of the population)
In Botswana, ½
population is Christian. 30% are in
traditional churches,
7% are
Pentecostals, and 63% are in independent churches.
South America
450 million Roman
Catholics
1 million Protestants in 1960; today 50 million (6.4%
growth/yr.)
In Chile and Guatemala, Protestants now number ¼ the
population.
In Puerto Rico, Protestants number 35% of the
population.
In Mexico, 2% of the population were Protestant in
1970; today Protestants
are 6% of
the population (with notable conversions among the
Mayans and
people in the southeast)
In Brazil, 20-25 million Protestants.
Pentecostalism
Began in 1906—100
years ago this year. They now number 19
million per
year
worldwide.
80-90% of growth
among Protestants in South America is among
Pentecostals.
In Brazil,
Assemblies of God numbers about 12 million (2-3 million in USA)
Asia
Asia
In China, 20-100 million Christians (numbers are
uncertain given
persecution)
In Korea in 1920,
there were 300,000 Christians. In 2002,
there were about
10 to 12 million, a growth
of 25%. Presbyterians in Korea are twice
as large as in the US.
In Vietnam,
registered Christians number about 80 million (9 % of the
population). Unregistered Christians put this number far
higher.
Central Asia[3]
In Kazakhstan, there were 30
Baptist Churches in the 1930’s, 109 in 1991, 129 in 1992, and 281 in 2001
(11,605 members). In 2005 there were
10,774 Baptist church members, but there have been about 15,000 Baptists who
have emigrated.
In Kyrgyzstan
since independence from the Soviet Union, the Baptist churches have quadrupled.
There is, however, a concern to voice about growth. As any gardener would be quick to point out,
a garden needs to be nurtured. That is
exactly what Paul did: having established churches, he continued to instruct
them in person and through his letters that they would grow up into their faith
in Christ Jesus. Wild enthusiasm may be
destructive. Missions includes
instruction of disciples. In fact, in
Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sends his disciples out to all nations, baptising them
in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that Jesus had commanded them.
5. Mission Involves Being A Community that Draws People To Itself
Mission is certainly a centrifugal force going out with a message and
ministry to the world. Yet it is also a centripetal force pulling people in to a winsome community that offers something distinct
from the world. As John Howard Yoder
said,
The primary social structure through which the gospel works
to change other structures is that of the Christian community.[4]
The image of being a city on a hill not only offers yet
another image of something that stands out clearly for others to see; it also
offers an image of a community. Changing
the image yet again to a lamp, Jesus says, ‘that they may see your good deeds
and give glory to your Father in heaven’ (Mt. 5.16). Perhaps this city on a hill in Jesus’
teaching is an allusion to Is. 2.2-5 (cf. Mic. 4.1-5), where the nations stream
to the mountain of the Lord’s house to learn righteousness from God. If so, Jesus develops the idea somewhat by likening
his disciples to the city where the people can come and learn righteousness
from God. The early church in Jerusalem,
living communally, modelled the kind of community of God’s people that others
wanted to join. Mission is not simply
about calling individuals to repent and be saved; it is also about joining a
community—the church—that witnesses to the reign of God.
According to Robert E. Webber,
In the postmodern world evangelism is shifting away from
Enlightenment individualism to the more communal model of the early
church…. Evangelism is therefore not
only a conversion to Christ, who has won a victory over the powers of evil, but
a conversion into a community.[5]
The early church spoke of the church as the ‘womb’ in which
the new convert would be formed, and conversion was a process culminating in
baptism (Webber, p. 148).
Jonathan Edwards, the primary figure in the Great Awakening
that began in New England in America in the 1700s, said,
If God’s people in this land were once brought to abound in
such deeds of love, as much as in praying, hearing, singing, and religious
meetings and conference, it would be a most blessed omen. Nothing would have a greater tendency to
bring the God of love down from heaven to earth; so amiable would be the sight
in the eyes of our loving and exalted Redeemer, that it would soon as it were
fetch him down from his throne in heaven, to set up his tabernacle with men on
the earth, and dwell with them (Thoughts
on the Revival, p. 527).
Mission involves ‘deep discipleship,’ by which the larger
culture is itself changed in significant ways.
As Richard Lovelace wrote,
Christianity has saturated the Western world for a thousand
years; even the calendars and the economic patterns of Western nations bear
constant witness to the lorship of Christ.
What comparable witness has been born in the Islamic world, among the
Chinese and the many other hundreds of millions who live only in the meager
starlight of gospel witness? Is
preaching of the good news to the nations limited to flying over once or twice
in a gospel blimp and dropping tracts?[6]
Of course, the Church can easily overestimate its influence
on the culture—just as it can misrepresent its true membership through
statistics. Operation World listed
statistics for Rwanda in 1993, just before the genocide, that reported that the country was
80% Christian. Protestants were growing
at a rate of 9.2%. 7th Day
Adventists were the second largest Protestant group in terms of churches in the
country, with 770 congregations, and the largest group in terms of members,
with 208,000 members listed.
Evangelicals amounted to 20.2% of the population. These sorts of statistics tell us very
important things about missions: (a) do not take statistics too seriously; (b)
churches and church memberships are not strong representatives of the strength
of the church; (c) evangelism, as in Mt. 28.19-20, has not only to do with
baptisms but also with being taught to obey all that Jesus commanded.
6. The Goal of Mission is that People Will Give Glory to the Father in
Heaven
Finally, doing good deeds is by no means an end in
itself. There is, to be sure, no
separating doing good deeds from mission.
There is no separating doing good deeds from the community that is
itself the result of mission and that is engaged in mission. Yet the goal of the people engaged in God’s mission
is to lead people to declare the glory of the Father in heaven.
Conclusion
Six points regarding the Church’s mission have been
identified in what Jesus says in Mt. 5.13-16: (1) Size does not matter. (2) Character is critical for mission. (3) Effectiveness comes because of purity.
(4) Mission entails having something significant to offer the world—God’s
reign. (5) Mission involves being a
community that draws people to itself.
(6) The goal of mission is that people will give glory to the Father in
heaven. Of these, the last is what
guides mission from start to finish: what is done is done that God the Father
might be glorified.
[1]
Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom,
p. 99.
[2] J.
Philip Jenkins, ‘The Next Christendom:
The Coming of Global Christianity,’ 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
[3] See Rollin G. Grams and Parush R.
Parushev, eds., Towards an Understanding
of European Baptist Identity: Listening to the Churches in Armenia, Bulgaria, Central
Asia, Moldova, North Caucasus, Omsk and Poland, (Prague, CZ: International
Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006).
[5]
Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith:
Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Baker, 1999), p. 143.
[6]
Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual
Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press,
1979), pp. 424f.