Why World Missions?

Rich Nathan
Congregational Email - 3/1/2009 

By this time next year, Vineyard Columbus will have 30 adults working full time in the activities of church planting and development on three continents (Africa, Europe, and South America). Our church and its members will invest nearly $1.1 million dollars a year in supporting the team members and their families as well as supporting the projects they are working on. And none of this includes the many short-term missions activities we've engaged in over the years (China, Morocco, Mexico, Costa Rica, etc.). 

Why does Vineyard Columbus invest so heavily in world missions? The simple answer is that our God is a missionary God. As theologian Christopher Wright put it: Mission means "our committed participation as God's people, at God's invitation and command, in God's own mission within the history of God's world for the redemption of God's creation". The reason we invest so heavily, in short, is because we are partnering with God at his invitation to redeem his creation. 

The whole story of the Bible is a story of world missions. The Old Testament begins not with the God of a particular people (the Jews), but with the creation of the heavens and the earth. Our God is not some petty tribal God like Baal, the God of the Canaanites, or Chemosh, the god of the Moabites. Our God is the God of all people and is concerned about all of creation including the animals. In fact, God made a covenant not only with humans, but with all of the animals during the time of Noah (Genesis 9.8-11). 

The call of Abraham did not contradict God's heart for the entire world. The Lord told Abraham to leave his country and people for another land he would be shown. And God said to him in Genesis 12:1-3

"Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

In this promise God communicated his saving purpose to bless the whole world through Abraham. The sad story of the Old Testament is that Israel kept forgetting God's desire to bless "all peoples on the earth." They began to believe that their being chosen was a sign of divine favoritism. Israel didn't understand that they were chosen for a purpose, "to be a light for the Gentile nations" (Isaiah 49.6). 

Jesus is a missionary Messiah. The gospel of Matthew begins with Jesus' genealogy and has several Gentiles in it including Tamar, Rahab and Ruth. The story continues with the Magi (perhaps from Persia), who brought their treasures to the King of the Jews. Matthew sees these Magi as forerunners of the Gentiles, who would later bring their worship to Jesus. And the gospel of Matthew ends with the Great Commission in which we followers of Jesus are commanded to "go and make disciples of all nations" welcoming them by baptism into the Christian community and teaching them to obey all of the instructions of Jesus the Messiah.

The Holy Spirit in the book of Acts is a missionary Spirit. Pentecost was a missionary event in which God fulfilled his promise through the prophet Joel to pour out his Spirit "on all people" (Joel 2.28; Acts 2.17). The story of the book of Acts is the story of the expansion of the church through missionary witness in the power of the Spirit.

The activity of the apostle Paul was, of course, the activity of "preaching the gospel where Christ was not known" (Romans 15.20). And the apostle Peter calls every church to be a missionary church whose members "declare the praises (or proclaim the triumphs) of the Savior who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Peter 2.9). 

The climax of the Bible is a missionary climax. In the book of Revelation, what John saw as he looked through the door that led to heaven was a great crowd of people standing before God's throne coming "from every nation, tribe, people, and language" (Revelation 7.9-10). John's vision was of a multiethnic, multinational throng of countless people engaged in the eternal worship of God and the Lamb of God, Jesus the Messiah. 

In sum, it is unthinkable to be a church which claims to live in submission to God's Word found in Holy Scripture and to not be a missionary church. This next year we are sending out our fourth full team to plan churches among Muslim peoples in one of North Africa's major cities. At Vineyard Columbus we passionately and gratefully embrace our partnership with God in the accomplishment of His mission.