Many of us have heard the famous statement made by John Wesley, "the world is my parish." Interestingly, Wesley's bold claim was a response to an attack upon the early Methodists for not toeing the line with regard to how things had always been done in Anglicanism. Smudged coal miners were not welcome in proper churches of Wesley's day. Even Wesley himself saw his first day of overt mission in England as an open-air preacher to the down-and-out in an interesting light. He said of that first outreach, "Today, I submitted to be more vile…" which gives us some idea of the way things were with regard to mission even in the 18th century.
Most institutions, even our church at times, need to be sure that the structure is not inhibiting the very nature of Christian existence, which is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in every nation, tribe, and tongue. Institutionally and theologically, mission is at the core of what it means to practice what Wesley called "scriptural Christianity."
But oddly, there seems to be a reservation in those who claim to be God's
people to go outside ourselves all down through the ages.
Missing God's Call to the "Others"
The history of Israel reveals a call to be a blessing to all peoples (Genesis
12:1-3, Exodus 19:4-6, Isaiah 56:3, 6-8) but the response of the Israelites
was not an enthusiastic one. It was nicer and neater and simpler to be God's
chosen without all those "other" people to deal with. In his day,
Jesus faced the same sort of opposition to the full claims of the covenant
God desired to make with all peoples. In fact when he cleansed the temple
(Mark 11:15-19) he quotes from Isaiah 56, indicating that one of the reasons
for his anger was that the temple was closed off to the people who really
needed access to God's truth and life: the foreigners. Even the attitude
and sometimes embarrassing responses of his own followers indicate that
they had no intentions of going to those people. We often fail to remember
that every time Jesus went to the other side of Galilee for prayer or retreat
he was taking the twelve into pagan territory, places they would never have
gone unless they really wanted to follow their rabbi. Even when Jesus went
off for spiritual refreshment he was thinking of others, and that must have
really galled the disciples. They thought everything he did was meant solely
for them.
Gladly, in the history of the Church there was a remarkable change of heart, all of which Jesus promised when they came into a full personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. One of the beautiful results of the spirit-filled life in the book of Acts (Acts 2) is the willingness of the disciples to go into foreign cultures with the saving message of life in Christ. Whether a sorcerer (Acts 8:9 ff), an Ethiopian official (Acts 8:26 ff), an Italian centurion (Acts 10), or most of the European Roman empire (Acts 14-28) each missionary/disciple was called out of institutional and personal comfort into the thrilling and compelling call of Christ to see the whole world as their parish.
What are some of the reasons for a Christian, or more specifically for
United Methodists, to be mission minded?
The Lost Need Jesus
One is the spiritual need of all humanity. The biblical term for any person
without Christ is that they are lost (Luke 15). They are alienated from
God, from others, and from their true personhood (Ephesians 2). The results
of sin include massive implications for physical problems including disease,
oppression, and emotional or psychological damage. Only the gospel of Christ
can bring any real and lasting wholeness to the one who is lost. Wesley
was convinced that people needed Christ. At one point he underscored it
by the use of a hymn which read, "'Tis all our purpose here below to
cry 'Behold, the Lamb."' As the first ordained Methodist missionaries
boarded the boats which were to bring them to America in the late 1760s,
it was under one clear-cut mission, "Offer them Christ." For Methodists,
the need for mission has never been unclear-people need salvation from sin
and its effects, and that salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone.
The Loving Nature of God
Another reason for missions resides in the nature of God. It is the Father
who sent the Son to die that all persons might have life (John 3:16, 17).
It is the Son who sends his Spirit to communicate truth and life (John 14:15,
16:12-14). It is the Spirit who powerfully enables us to be sent like Jesus
into the world (John 20:19-22). We believe that all missions are based upon
the triune God's missionary heart. When we share the light of the Gospel
we are sharing the very nature of the God who loves every person who has
ever existed. We are not imposing a culture or a political orientation when
we respond to God's call, we are simply inviting people to come to know
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3).
The Incarnation of Christ
A final reason for Christian mission is the incarnation of Christ. The
only way to bring human need into actual contact with the nature of God
was for God to become a man. Methodists believe that Christ is not a man
who became a god but the only begotten Son of God, a divine Man. His coming
to be like us is God's promise of love, even for the most rebellious and
damaged by sin. If he had to cross the barriers of geography and economy
and language to come to us, how is it that our purpose could be any different
from his? His nature, his life is what fills our souls, and it is a missionary
nature.
The incarnation is also the reason why there is so much creativity in the forms which missions take. The history of United Methodism is a remarkable example of the variety of ways in which a Christian can become involved in ministry. Our earliest Methodist forebears were creatively involved in feeding the poor, enabling the destitute, providing health, education, and economic opportunities. They provided these services and many others, not out of duty or civility but out of an inner divine propulsion-the all-encompassing love of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:14-20). This love energetically and creatively encounters every single human need, and the only ones to bear those burdens are the ones who bear the image of the Savior in their lives. Creativity can soon become irrelevant faddishness if it is not constantly checked by the person and work of the Creator who came to redeem completely.
Wesley once said, "Give me one hundred men who hate nothing but sin and love nothing but God and we will change the world." Many of us focus on the personal side of this bold statement, but if you'll notice, God never does anything in an individual that does not have almost immediate results for the world.
If you were to summarize the Wesleyan tradition it might generally be seen
as a dynamic and personal commitment to the following, "the whole gospel
for the whole world." But if you were to take this apart it might look
something like the summary of Philip Watson:
1. All people need to be saved.
2. All people can be saved.
3. All people can know they are saved.
4. All people can be saved to the uttermost
(i.e., from having to sin volitionally
and continually).
That is the core of Methodist missions: free salvation for all sinners, and full salvation from all sin.
As believers in Christ in the Wesleyan tradition, we are world Christians. And by "world" we mean everything beyond the confines of our home and church. I have often heard missionaries plead that we in the pews should pray, or give, or go. As I look at Scripture and at my inheritance as a Methodist, I do not think we are free to distinguish between these three too radically. Jesus would ask me today, not if I will pray but how much I have prayed; not will I give, but how am I strategizing to give more, and not if I am willing to go, but where am I now investing my life for the redemption of the world, his world.
Wesley's rules for Christian living are often reduced to nice clichés, but they are actually radical calls to mission, to ministry, to evangelism, and to discipleship.
Do All the Good You Can,
By All the Means You Can,
In All the Ways You Can,
In All the Places You Can,
At All the Times You Can,
To All the People You Can,
As Long as Ever You Can!
May the Lord bless every motive and effort as you give, and pray, and go to wherever and to whomever he is sending you.
Bill Ury is professor of systematic and historic theology at Wesley Biblical Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. Dr. Ury was raised in Taiwan where his parents served as missionaries with the United Methodist Church.
This article was published in Good News magazine (November/December 1996).