Mission - the heart of the church

In German-speaking countries, the term "mission" has very ecclesiastical connotations and is often associated with the history of the church in a critical way. In the English-speaking world, "vision and mission" is usually used as a guiding element for an organisational goal: It is different in the church context: mission here is the mission of God - the "Missio Dei". Jesus commanded the mission as follows: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19,20).

 

The mission: speaking of your faith

These last words of Jesus according to the Gospel of Matthew are still regarded today as the "Great Commission", which gives us the task of talking to others about our faith, sharing it with them and telling them about Jesus. The Old and New Testaments are such stories. They describe the experiences of people as they travelled with God or - in the New Testament - with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul is regarded as one of the people who shared such personal experiences of faith in detail, in particular how he himself encountered God, lived out his faith, established Bible study groups, founded and cared for churches from the Middle East to Rome. This is considered mission and this is exactly what we practise in the church as congregational work. From a historical perspective, this type of missionary work then grew all the way to Europe - especially during the time of the Roman Empire.

Let us remember that the gospel was preached in Jerusalem and Samaria by Jesus in the Jewish tradition. Paul preached the same in the Greek and Roman traditions. We gratefully recognise that other missionaries also brought the message of the Gospel to Europe. Europe was also a land of "pagans", with pagan cults such as the burning of witches, etc. From the early Bronze Age to the end of the early Middle Ages, the Gospel encountered the polytheistic religious cults and rites of the Germanic tribes and peoples, who had to come to terms with the new faith in the same way as the pre-Christian religion of the Viking Age, the "Nordic paganism".

 

Theology - intercultural at its core

This is why our supposedly "normal" or "classical" theology (in contrast to "intercultural theology", which is often naively labelled as "exotic theology") has already survived many intercultural confrontations. Suffice it to say here that there is no division into classical and intercultural theology. Theology is intercultural at its core. In Roman times, everything was not only intercultural, but also very political. In other words, the church and the congregations here in Europe, as we experience them now, have many cultural and political conflicts behind them. There is always something Jewish, something Greek and something Roman to discover in our church life, perhaps even European pagan rites and cults. Despite all these challenges, the churches have always adhered to the Great Commission, namely "to talk about our faith and share our experiences with God". This is different from the kind of missionary work that claims that other religions are wrong and therefore should and/or must no longer be believed. 

In its missionary mandate, the church has always found it difficult to keep out of cultural and political discourses and conflicts in its search for its own profile. It was much more involved in these battles as an actor in its own right. At some point, the church itself exercised power over politics and culture, or the church and politics complemented and enriched each other. This called into question their mandate for prophetic ministry.

 

No reason to cancel mission

Many churches and Christians in Europe did not want to remain silent about their faith. They wanted to tell the world about the message of Jesus and bear witness to it in a very holistic way. They then set off from Europe to Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America. But some churches found it difficult to separate their mission from the political and economic interests of the time. On the contrary, they saw the interest of the European colonial powers at the time as an opportunity to carry out missionary work. Sometimes naively, but often against their better judgement, the church became an agent of the political and economic interests of the time.

The church wanted to go outwards to preach the gospel and win disciples of Jesus, while the imperialists also wanted to go into the whole world to make people there their subjects. Then they went out into the world together. Knowingly or not, the church more or less allowed itself to be exploited by the imperialists. The latter all too often propagated their ideologies, their racism, sexism and anti-Semitism with the blessing of the church. Despite the church's well-meaning intentions in the matter of "mission", it actually became a stooge of colonialism. Behind this, its core task disappeared. However, this fact is not enough to cancel mission. Because mission is actually God's mission - "Missio Dei".

 

Theologians are called upon to tell a differentiated history of mission and to interpret Jesus' definition of mission. So that mission is not automatically labelled as racism or colonialism, it is our task to bring more clarity to the concept of mission. From now on, I want to experience mission in "three Ds", namely the associated heavenly dimension, the cultural dimension and the political dimension. The message of Jesus does not change, but how we carry and proclaim this message is constantly changing.

 

A different definition of mission

It must also be clearly stated: Other missionaries or missionary societies were already present in the Global South and West before the rise of European imperialism. This is why some generalised criticism that mission is racist or colonialist does not necessarily apply to them. The Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Organisation in Lower Saxony (ELM Hermannsburg) also has a positive history: missionaries from Germany deliberately sailed first to Ethiopia and South Africa, where Germany had no colony. Nor did they travel on ships of the colonial powers. In fact, Ludwig Harms, the founder of the Hermannsburg Mission, had his own ship built so that the missionaries he sent would not sail under a colonial flag.

 

Today, mission is defined differently. The ELM, today's missionary organisation, no longer has a ship - the "Candace" is no longer sailing towards the Global South. Now missionaries - we now call them "ecumenical co-workers" - from the Global South come to us in Lower Saxony and share the Gospel with us. It is said that the meaning of mission has changed a lot over the decades. All of a sudden, mission was no longer a matter of "planting churches" in other countries (autonomous churches already exist) or, as Ludwig Harms wrote: "... taking the gospel to the heathen." Nor is it the way it is often casually told: We fly there to explain to them what God looks like or how the world works. No! A time had suddenly dawned in which people wanted to "discover the mystery of the gospel together with others." Today, mission is perceived holistically as a mandate to empower people in their context so that they can "experience a life worthy of humanity".  It is a mission of God - Missio-Dei - that everyone must work for peace, justice and human dignity for all. And that is why we are convinced that mission is the "heart" of the church.