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Genesis 18:17-19

The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.“

This passage is set in the context of the Sodom – which represents the way of the fallen world. In Sodom, there is oppression, cruelty, violence, perverted sexuality, pride, and greed. Conversely, Abraham and his descendants (i.e. the nation of Israel) was God’s way to bring salvation to this fallen world. God wants to bring redemption & renewal to the WORLD through his people who are created & redeemed in Christ. In the Old Testament, is was Israel as a nation that demonstrated his character and love and in the New Testament, the church as the channel of God’s blessing. To be the missional church means we have received God’s redemption and blessing  - as it was promised to Abraham, through Jesus – and so we continue the task of reaching those who have heard about it. This includes our local communities and extends to the world at large.

3 Marks of a World Christian

1. Catch the World Vision: The first step in being a world Christian is not to simply go and do something; it’s to reach your own heart with the gospel before reaching others. Do you believe in the gospel? Do you believe that those without the gospel are lost? But that God provides his Son Jesus as the only way to receive salvation and blessing?  Ask God to open the eyes of heart. A World Christian is a day-by-day disciple for whom God’s global mission has become the integrating priority for their life. A World Christian doesn’t mean you just go on many missions trips or help out in social justice initiatives as much as you can; it means you are actively thinking about what the Great Commission (Matthew 28, “Go and make disciples of all nations…”) means. It means your life decisions aren’t based on what you prefer, but rather have been transformed by God’s world vision of mission.

Practically, catching the world vision of God’s mission involves:

• Praying that The Holy Spirit would open the eyes of your heart to his world vision, so you start seeing the lostness of the culture around you and the power of the gospel to transform lives.

• Reading Scripture through the lens of a missionary instead of only for spiritual knowledge.
• Genesis 37: God sent Joseph away from his family and into Egypt
• Nehemiah 1-2: God sent Nehemiah away from his daily job in Persia and into another type of work in Jerusalem
• Jonah: God sent Jonah away from Judah and into the city of Nineveh
• John: 20+ times, Jesus refers to Himself as “sent of God”)
• Acts 9: Paul is sent away from Jerusalem and into the Gentiles, which resulted in 7 separate short-term mission trips to Asia Minor

• Think eternally. What would happen if you though eternally like Jesus did? What would happen to your resources, income, time, relationships, possessions, career, academics? How would they be used for God’s global glory?

• Spend time with people that have caught the world vision of God’s mission

2. Obey the World Vision: We don’t want to just think and pray, we have to ultimately obey. Every Christ-follower, by definition, must obey the world vision. It’s not optional. In our culture, we’ve separated the words, “Christian” and “missionary.” So you can be a Christian, but not a missionary. That’s simply not biblical. In the Bible, every Christian is a disciple of Jesus; a missionary on his behalf and a member of the family of God. In other words, there’s no such thing as a part-time Christian. And no such thing as a part-time missionary. Regardless of age, gender, culture, race, experience, education, economic status – we are on mission for God all the time. Of course, God doesn’t call all of us to be full-time paid overseas missionaries, but he does call us to be on mission wherever we are and in whatever we’re doing. Practically, there are three avenues for obeying the world vision: Local Missions, Short-Term Global Missions and Long-Term Global Missions. Every Christian must be involved in each of these three avenues – whether by sending (3 John 6), going (v. 7) or mobilizing/raising financial support (v. 8).

3. Keep the World Vision: Prayer is important. I think reading Scripture will help, but ultimately it’s repenting. The first recorded command of Jesus was not “Go,” but “repent.” We can’t catch the vision, obey it and we can’t keep it unless we take a serious look at our hearts. I’m not saying we have to be perfect before we go, but we have to continually at a look into our own hearts and work to be more like Jesus everyday, by the grace of God. There are (at least) three areas of repentance I can think of as it applies to our cultural context:

• Repent of Our Love for Comfort and Money: There is a small % of the global body of Christ living in  a level of affluence that is simply unimaginable to the vast majority of believers around the world that live with the threat of persecution and rampant poverty. We have to repent of loving our comfort and money instead of loving others.

• Repent of Our Obsession with Status and Power: We don’t go to “help” others because we are smarter, richer and we want to feel good about ourselves. We must repent of these attitudes. We go because out of a gratitude for what Jesus has done for us.

• Repent of Our Belief Anything But the Gospel Can Save Us: In order to be a World Christian (and on mission for God), we have to keep repenting because we are constantly tempted to go back to our idols, and when worship our idols instead of the living God, you can’t be effective on mission. The first step in obedience, after all, is not to go, but to surrender. If we want to catch the world vision, obey it and keep it, we must first repent of our idol worship (comfort, money, status, power, etc.) and surrender our lives before God.

In Jesus, for Jesus,

Pastor Ho-Ming

The missional church always lives in tension. We want to make the gospel as culturally accessible (knowing/engaging culture) as possible without compromising the truth of the gospel. This is known as contextualization. This is not a new concept. The missional church enters the world with both wisdom and courage. Listen to what Paul says in 1 Cor. 9:19-23

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.  I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

To be a missional church means we know the culture in which lost people around them live, so we can be effective in bringing the love and truth of Jesus in word & deed: “all things to all people” using “all means” to “save some.” Too many churches end up being very hostile to those their trying to reach just because they haven’t understood the culture. On the other hand, too many churches are trying to be too “relevant/cool” that they compromise the gospel’s message. We want to walk in the tension with wisdom and courage. Listen to what Jesus says in John 17:9-16:

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

The first thing we observe is that Jesus is praying. Who is he praying for? Jesus doesn’t pray for the world, but for those IN the world. What does Jesus pray for? (v. 15) Jesus prays that we are not taken out of the world but rather that we remain in the world, but away from the evil one. Do you see the tension in which Christians must live? That’s what being a missional church is all about. What we want to avoid as Christians is either of these two extremes:

The missional church is in a completely different category. We were once of the world. Jesus rescues us, adopts us into his family as his children, and sends us back out into the world with a new identity, new heart, new desires, new family, and new power.

3 Marks of Being a Missional Theologian

1. Love Jesus and His Word: We’re not missional because we just want to be relevant, or accepted. We are missional because we truly love Jesus. We want to share Jesus with others because of the love, joy and peace we find in Him. Have you embraced the gospel? Do you love Jesus? Are you growing in his love and grace? Are you deepening in your discipleship? Do you love His Word? We believe that the Bible is the Word of God and the final authority in all matters of life and faith, including how we interact with culture.

We are a church that believes that the Bible has universal application, meaning its principles hold true regardless of your circumstances, preferences, age, ethnicity or culture. This means that lying is wrong, murder is wrong, and rape, homosexuality, slander, gossip, materialism, lust and pornography are wrong. Are there cultural activities in your life God would deem sinful? The Bible is either the Word of God or it’s not. Before you go into culture and know culture and try to reach your friends for Jesus, there is a key principle: If the Bible says NO, we abstain. In some circles, they like to use this language: Reject Culture, Receive Culture or Redeem Culture. How do you know when to reject, receive or redeem something? You can’t answer this question until you can genuinely say you love Jesus and know His Word. We cannot be missional without being “of Jesus” first. We are in the world, but of Jesus.

2. Go into and Know Culture:  We embrace the gospel, we love Jesus and we know the Bible. What’s the next step? It’s to go into and know culture.The missional church must understand the people God has sent them to. A big mistake churches often do is to copy other churches, especially those in different cultural contexts.That’s like trying to raise a Polar Bear in the desert. God calls us to go into know our culture. That’s why we use the term “missional theologian” (missional = being sent into a particular culture; theologian = knowing God). We want to study our culture so that we can bring the gospel to people in our culture in an effective way.

Practically, how do we know culture? The key is to listen, watch, read and interact with people. You are listening, watching, reading and interacting so you can uncover the idols that are in people’s hearts. You’re trying to see how sin has replaced the gospel of Jesus as the source of hope, love and joy in a person’s life. What is their “heart’s cry”? Let me give you a recent example from our culture. Steve Jobs. His heart’s cry was beauty and perfection. It wasn’t money or status. It was finding that beautiful balance between technology and art, and in that, making people’s lives better. I’m reading this and I’m thinking: Jesus came to redeem a sinful, broken world and restore it to perfection and beauty. That’s going to happen one day. So the world Steve Jobs wanted to create has already been addressed with the gospel. So when you talk to someone who loves Steve Jobs and what he represented, you can tell them show them the relevance of the gospel.

Consider the Apostle Paul and his gospel strategy in Acts 17. His cultural context was Athens, and his listeners were pagan polytheists who enjoyed discussing philosophies (Acts 17:19). So he quoted pagan poets whose ideas were consistent with biblical theology because the Hebrew Scriptures were unfamiliar to the audience and were not considered the final authority. Paul went into the culture, got to know it, and adapted his message to address the heart’s cry of the people there.

3. Speak and Live Out The Gospel: Once we know the culture, our job is to speak and live out the gospel in that cultural soil (c.f. gospel is the seed).This involves two things: (1) We don’t compromise the truth of the gospel. We have to talk about sin, judgment, justice and even hell. It’s not uncomfortable and it’s not easy…(2) But we have to speak about the truth of the gospel lovingly, graciously and understandably. We have address people’s objections and listen to their concerns patiently as well. Speaking and living out the gospel means we use every means possible (as long as it doesn’t contradict Scripture) so that people can hear the message of Jesus and see the relevance of the gospel in their lives.

It’s living in that tension of being sent into the world, but not finding our identity from it. It’s living with wisdom and courage simultaneously. It’s being innocent (Matthew 10:16), but not naïve. It’s listening to the world, but listening first to God’s Word. It’s being prepared to be hated or ridiculed by the world, but know your hope and joy is in Jesus, so you can love it anyway. Are you living in that tension? If you don’t feel a tension in your life about this, something’s wrong. Do you love Jesus and His Word? How are you getting to know your culture? Are you entering the world with wisdom and courage? Do you love others as Christ loved you? Are you speaking and living out the gospel to people around you? That’s what being a missional theologian is all about.

[Listen to the sermon that this article was based upon HERE]