Mission as the Church’s Identity

During the twentieth century, as the church was realizing that mission is rooted in the Triune nature of God, it also came to realize in new ways that the Church to be a people sent on a mission rather than as a place where Christians meet, the word is proclaimed, and the sacraments administered. The Church is a community, a gathered people who have been brought together by a common calling and vocation to be a sent people.[1] The Church is not an organization or an institution; it is the people who make up the Body of Christ incarnate in today’s world.

In such an ecclesiology, the Church finds its identity in being missional. Rather than being something the Church does, missional churches recognize that mission is what the Church is.[2] Its mission (its “being sent”) is not secondary to its being; the Church exists in being sent and in building itself up for the sake of its mission. “Mission is not ‘a fringe activity of a strongly established Church, a pious cause that [may] be attended to when the home fires [are] first brightly burning... Missionary activity is not so much the work of the church as simply the Church at work.’”[3] This means the Church must move from being a church with a mission to being a missional church.[4]

Becoming missional recognizes one’s immediate context as a mission field. This is not only a shift in location (from “there” to “here”), but it is also a constant reminder that the Church is about mission, and mission is active. It also marks a shift from Church being about maintaining the institution toward reaching the surrounding culture.[5]

Since God is a missionary God, the Church becomes a missionary people. When the Church ceases to be missional, it is no longer the Church. “The Church in the third millennium must be a missional church. We have a passion for mission because our God is a missionary God. He is seeking, sending, and reaching out to others. When we are like Him, we will do the same.”[6] Just as mission has been termed the “mother of theology,” mission might also be called the “’mother of the church,’ the great task believers have been given that binds them together, provides them with nourishment, focuses their energies, heals their sinfulness and provides them with challenge and vision.”[7]

Missional churches are ordered by their mission. When mission becomes part of every ministry of the Church, it ceases to be just one of many programs; it becomes the guiding principle by which all ministries are based. “[Mission is] not a special activity that a few members [are] supposed to engage in on behalf of the whole church, but ...something that [has] to invade the whole of the church’s life.”[8]

This invasion into the Church’s life causes mission to become the key characteristic of the Church’s life. “Mission is so much at the heart of the Church’s life that, rather than thinking of it as one aspect of its existence, it is better to think of it as defining its essence.”[9] Emil Brunner put it this way: “The church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning.”[10]

When a church takes its mission to its local and global contexts seriously, it must reorder or revise its programs and activities to fit its mission. This is an operational shift from how many have learned to think of church B as a set of scheduled programs and activities. As local churches examine their mission contexts, they must decide how to revise their activities to better fulfill their mission. Some churches may need to reduce the number of activities while others will simply need to reorder theirs.[11] In some cases, mission and evangelism need to move from being separate ministries to becoming part of every ministry of the church.[12] “[M]ission is the sign of the life of a church which is sure of its source in the Spirit of God, and is, for this very reason, ready to open itself up to and turn towards strangers.”[13]

Bruce Camp has observed that churches fall into three categories with respect to their commitment to world missions. The most passive churches provide candidates, funds, and prayer – a pass-through relationship. The second category includes those churches which initiate and own the process of motivating and sending missionaries rather than simply sending funds and candidates. The most proactive are those churches which mobilize their resources and take initiative to accomplish a specific task in missions, often in partnership with agencies and other entities. These missional congregations are active not only in their local context, but are impacting churches around the world.[14] Missional churches can become truly apostolic – being sent into the world on behalf of the reign of God. “The church exists as community, servant, and messenger of the reign of God in the midst of other kingdoms, communities, and powers that attempts to shape our understanding of reality.”[15]


1. Darrell L. Guder, ed. Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 81.
2. Ibid., 82.
3. Power, John. Mission Theology Today. (Dublin: Gil & Macmillan) quoted in Bosch, 372.
4. Guder, 6.
5. Jim Kitchens, The Postmodern Parish: New Ministry For a New Era (The Alban Institute, 2003), 75.
6. Chuck Gailey, Mission in the Third Millennium (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 2001), 86.
7. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2004), 11.
8. Charles Van Engen, God’s Missionary People: Rethinking the Purpose of the Local Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1991), 36.
9. J. Andrew Kirk, What Is Mission?: Theological Explorations (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 30.
10. Emil Brunner, The Word and the World (New York: Schribner’s, 1931), 108.
11. Kirk, 218.
12. Van Gelder, 36.
13. Wilhelm Richebächer,”Missio Dei: The Basis of Mission Theology or a Wrong Path?” International Review of Mission. Vol. XCII, No. 367: 588.
14. James F. Engel and William A. Dyrness. Changing the Mind of Missions: Where Have We Gone Wrong? (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 121-122.
15. Guder, 110.