The Church on Mission

A Biblical Vision for Transformation among All People

Craig Ott

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781540960887
• eBook ISBN: 9781493418169
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

In this scripturally rich exploration, senior missiologist Craig Ott unpacks the mission statement of the church: to glorify God by multiplying transformational churches among all people. This concise yet robust biblical-theological treatment focuses on God's glory, a strong ecclesiology, the importance of Scripture, and practical implications for congregational and mission practice. Ideal for launching discussion and reflection, the book helps readers refocus their vision and reignite their commitment to fulfilling God's purposes for their church or mission.

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Transformation to God’s Glory

The Source and Goal of Our Mission

What is the mission of the church? How one answers this question will determine how one believes churches should cast their vision, set priorities, direct their energy and resources, and measure their effectiveness. More importantly, clarity about the mission of the church is critical in aligning the church with God’s mission and purposes for his people in this world. There is of course no shortage of wide-ranging answers to this question. On the one hand, if our answer is too broad and general, then it will offer little specific, practical guidance for the church. On the other hand, if our answer is too narrow, it risks neglecting important dimensions of God’s purposes for the church and may be unable to adapt to the rapidly changing cultural shifts and challenges of ministry in the modern word.

Above all, the way I will seek to answer this question will be based upon the teachings of the Bible. Unlike human undertakings or even specialized ministries, the church is not at liberty to simply define its mission for itself. There may be different ways to formulate a mission statement with various nuances and emphases. But God has created the church and commissioned the church for his purposes. That calling is spelled out for us in the Scriptures, and our role as his people is to clearly discern that calling. Time and again we must recalibrate our understanding of the church, examine the investment of our energies, and purify our motives so as to maintain alignment with that mission, God’s own mission. To fail to do so risks the removal of our lampstand (Rev. 2:5). But the reward is great for those who have an ear to hear what the Spirit says to the churches. It is at once a humbling privilege, a weighty responsibility, and a joyful journey to be taken up in God’s great story of redemption.

Of course this little volume cannot possibly do justice to this topic with the kind of depth and biblical study that it deserves. I’ve recommended other sources to that end.1 The goal of this book is more modest—namely, to cast a biblical vision. I will explicate biblically what I believe is not the only way, but one of the best ways to concisely capture God’s mission for the church: to glorify God by multiplying transformational churches among all people.2 I will unpack and expand upon this statement from six perspectives: God’s glory as the source and goal of transformation (chap. 1), the church as a new-creation transformational community (chap. 2), the transformative power of the Word of God (chap. 3), the transformational influence of the church in the world (chap. 4), transformation that reaches to all people (chap. 5), and transformation through multiplication, filling the earth with God’s glory (chap. 6).

To be clear, when I speak of the mission of the church here, I am not speaking only about world missions or evangelism (although the mission of the church certainly includes that). Rather, I’m using the term “mission” in the sense of the overall purpose for which God sends the church into the world. I am not speaking of the tasks that missionaries sent out by the church are to fulfill, which I understand as being related but more limited than what the mission of a local church includes.3 The word “mission” stems from the Latin term for “sending.” God himself is a sending God, a missionary God, who sent prophets and angels as his messengers and who ultimately sent his Son as agent of his redemptive purposes in the world. Today he sends the church in the power of the Spirit as his people to further his mission of redemption and restoration. The church is indeed God’s missionary people, a sent people, as expressed in Jesus’s words to his disciples, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). Or as the apostle Peter expressed it, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).

In 1962 Johannes Blauw wrote a classic little volume, The Missionary Nature of the Church. It was a groundbreaking biblical study making the case for its title and arguing that “a ‘theology of mission’ cannot be other than a ‘theology of the church’ as the people of God called out of the world, placed in the world, and sent to the world.”4 In this sense God’s sending purpose for the church—that is, the mission of the church—defines the very identity of the church. We must understand the church’s place in the larger picture of God’s salvation-historical purposes, as God’s primary instrument to bear witness to his kingdom in this age. The first and second comings are, as it were, bookends of the church’s mission. As Richard Bauckham frames it, “Mission takes place on the way from the particularity of God’s action in the story of Jesus to the universal coming of God’s kingdom.”5 Jesus inaugurated the kingdom of God—that is, the establishment of God’s rule—with his first coming. Where the powers of evil and consequences of sin are being overturned, the kingdom is already in our midst.6 But only with the second coming of Jesus will the kingdom come in fullness and all evil ultimately be defeated. In the words of David Bosch,

In her mission work the church lives in the tension between the “already” and “not yet” [of God’s kingdom]. Mission is essentially witness to the rule of God that has already come in Christ with a view to the rule of God yet to come. The missionary proclamation of the church gives the time between Christ’s resurrection and his return its salvation-historical meaning. . . . The existence of the church in the world infers her mission in the world. . . . Eschatology thus casts a bright light upon the profound missionary responsibility of the church.7

The church occupies this space of the already-but-not-yet kingdom in God’s grand story and has a role to play.

We should never lose sight of the reality that the coming kingdom is an eternal kingdom (2 Pet. 1:11). The church bears witness to the gospel of the kingdom in word and deed. This is the message that proclaims Jesus Christ, the only one who is able to “deliver us from the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4), by whom we no longer come into judgment, but pass from death to life (John 5:24), and in whom alone there is salvation (Acts 4:12). What we do in this age anticipates the coming age and has eternal consequences. But eternal life begins in this life. Although this world order is passing away (1 Cor. 7:31; 2 Pet. 3:11–13; 1 John 2:16–17), how we live and the difference we make in this world will extend into the next.8 While the New Testament gives a certain centrality to the spiritual dimension of life, the physical and social dimensions are not irrelevant.9 Our work this side of heaven is not comparable to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic of this perishing world (as sometimes suggested). Nevertheless, the eternal perspective should never be far from our thought and action. It is therefore of ultimate importance that the church understand well its mission in this world. The stakes are eternal.

This book is an attempt to biblically explicate the church’s mission as summarized in the statement to glorify God by multiplying transformational churches among all people. Some readers from the outset will protest that this statement is flawed: it is too church centered and not enough kingdom centered; it does not give prominent enough place to gospel proclamation; it is too focused on numerical growth; or it does not give adequate attention to the Holy Spirit. I acknowledge that a superficial reading of the statement could give rise to such concerns. But I will attempt to demonstrate with the unpacking of the statement that each of these important issues is in fact addressed.

The Meaning of Transformation

Central to this mission statement is the concept of transformation; thus we must begin by clarifying its meaning. The words “transform,” “transformation,” and the like have been used in a wide variety of ways in the context of theology and mission. For example, people have spoken of “transformational local congregations,”10 “holistic mission” and “social transformation,”11 or prayer movements that claim to “transform” whole cities;12 they have sometimes spoken of a paradigm shift that “transforms” mission theology in the postmodern world.13

So how is the concept of transformation to be understood in this book and in this mission statement? There are at least two ways in which a church might be considered transformational. One is the transformation of individuals and congregations as the gospel changes their lives. This occurs largely within the church. The other is the transformational influence that believers and congregations have upon the people and communities around them, largely outside the church. The two are intimately related, and throughout this book the discussion will move back and forth between these two dimensions regarding what it means to be a transformational church.

Transformation always has to do with change from something to something else, whereby the change is substantive and affecting the very essence or nature of the object. So when we speak of a transformational church, two questions emerge: What is being transformed? and How is it being transformed? The approach taken here will begin by looking at the way the New Testament speaks of transformation. Scripture describes many aspects of dramatic change in lives and communities without using a specific word that could be translated as “transform” or “transformation.” Nevertheless, examining the biblical usages of the Greek term metamorphoō (to transform) and its cognates does provide a telling starting point.

To grasp the New Testament understanding of transformation we must first look at how metamorphoō was generally understood in the first century. What did the first readers of the New Testament think of when they heard the word? They were probably not thinking of caterpillars becoming butterflies, which might come to our mind when we hear the English word “metamorphosis.” The term metamorphoō would have been ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Transformation to God’s Glory
• 2. Transformational Communities
• 3. Transformation and the Word of God
• 4. Transformational Influence
• 5. Transformation for All Peoples
• 6. Transformation through Multiplication
• Scripture Index
• Subject Index
• Back Cover