CHAPTER 8

Beyond Duty

Tim Dearborn

Tim Dearborn (PhD, University of Aberdeen) is the former director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching at Fuller Theological Seminary. He also served for 10 years as director for faith and development at World Vision International and professor of theology at Seattle Pacific University. He has also served Eskimos and First Nations People in Alaska and authored several books on spirituality, globalization, and mission-related issues.

From Beyond Duty, 1997. Used by permission of World Vision Inc., Federal Way, WA.

We often focus on the question: “What must we do to obey the Great Commission, make disciples of all nations, and hasten the return of our Lord?” This is the wrong beginning point, for it locks us into a human-centered perspective. If we begin with the human-centered orientation, we continually feel constrained by insufficient resources—and the tasks are far greater than we can possibly fulfill.

Biblical priorities reflected again and again in Scripture ask us to begin instead with these questions:

• Who is the triune God?
• What is God doing in the world?
• How are we to participate with God in His redemptive purposes?

Mission is ultimately not a human response to human need. The church’s involvement in mission is its privileged participation in the actions of the triune God.

A Singular Passion

Lack of interest in mission is not fundamentally caused by an absence of compassion or commitment, nor by a lack of information or exhortation. And lack of interest in mission is not remedied by more shocking statistics, more gruesome stories, or more emotionally manipulative commands to obedience. It is best remedied by intensifying peoples’ passion for Christ, so that the passions of His heart become the passions that propel our hearts.

Mission must never have first place in the church’s life. The church is to have but one Lord—one passion—the One in whom all the fullness of God dwells, who has reconciled all things to Himself (Col 1:19–20). If the church today is in need of a conversion, it is always and only to Jesus Christ. We must say an emphatic, “No!” to lesser gods who clamor for our allegiance, and a living and joyous, “Yes!” to the One in whom all creation is summed up.

It is insufficient to proclaim that the church of God has a mission in the world. Rather, the God of mission has a church in the world. Grasp this inversion of subject and object, and participation in God’s mission will become a joyous, life-giving privilege. Miss it, and mission involvement will eventually degenerate into a wearisome, over-whelming duty.

If the church is faithful to the gospel, then its focus, passion, and delight are always and only Jesus Christ. Once our hearts beat in time with that of our Lord, we can experience a joyously passionate engagement in mission.

Mission’s Integrating Theme

So many conflicting and competing agendas cry for our attention. We are so easily pulled by divergent needs and calls. Without a central understanding of the biblical emphasis on the kingdom of God, our terminology becomes one of “I bring you bad news of sad problems.”

Efforts to provoke interest in mission are often based on bad news—natural catastrophes, complex humanitarian disasters, unreached people groups, oppressed and exploited minorities, urban or suburban problems, and civil wars.

These things are important, but the gospel begins with “I bring you good news of great joy!”

Woven into the fabric of our Christian faith is good news! And yet we’ve made mission the discussion of bad news and unmet needs. Do any of these sound familiar?

• Thousands of people every day are slipping into Christless eternities.
• Tens of thousands of children die every day from malnutrition and preventable illnesses.
• There are thousands of unreached people groups without a church.
• More Christians have been killed for their faith in twentieth century than in all others combined.
• Genocide, ethnic cleansing, illiteracy, homelessness, poverty, oppression . . . the list goes on and on.

Sad News of Unsolvable Problems

I must confess I once challenged and provoked people into mission using statistics similar to those mentioned above. I’m not at all suggesting that these are not real needs. The point is this: How shall we respond to these needs?

Good-hearted people always want to respond with compassion and kindness. We worked ourselves into exhaustion with exhortations to give more, do more, be more, care more, serve more, love more, sacrifice more. As fruitful as this could be, something always seemed to be missing.

My church members—including myself—often seemed exhausted. Missionaries we sent seemed overwhelmed by the arduous duty and responsibility on their shoulders.

Materials written to motivate the church in mission are filled with descriptions of tasks we must perform, responsibilities to be carried out, our Lord’s commandment and commission to the church, and the desperate needs of the unreached, undernourished and oppressed. And so the church moves out in mission from a sense of duty, obligation, and responsibility to attempt these tasks.

Not surprisingly, this commitment to the missionary enterprise of the church produces exhausted servants. The tasks are so great, and our resources appear to be so small. Yes, we must confront huge problems and fundamental issues—but in the context of a coming kingdom, not in the context of ever-deepening chaos. Missions is not ultimately our response to great need.

No wonder the church and many organizations’ supporters are increasingly disinterested in mission! People cannot handle relentless exposure to catastrophes and crises. This is not the gospel. The gospel is good news of great joy!

The Kingdom of God Is Good News of Great Hope

We are witnesses to great hope, not merely grievous hurt. This should be deeply woven into our psyche as Christians. Scripture tells us, “Since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us give thanks” (Heb 12:28 NRSV).

Frankly, we have not set our hearts toward hope. We look at the world and it seems to us that everything is being shaken. Everything seems to be teetering on the brink of disaster—and yet the undergirding news in Scripture is that we have a kingdom that cannot be shaken. The author of Hebrews affirms this, saying,

We who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul. (Heb 6:18–19 NRSV)

Christ’s Great Victory

If we have this utterly reliable anchor, this certain and stead-fast hope, then it is actually blasphemous to focus our missionary communication on descriptions of the great void of unmet needs in the world. P. T. Forsyth makes the statement that

The weakness of much current mission work is that [we] betray the sense that what is yet to be done is greater than what [Christ] has already done. The world’s gravest need is less than Christ’s great victory.¹

If we understand biblical faith, we will understand that what Christ has already accomplished is far more determinative, significant, complete, and important than anything yet to be done. In my work with World Vision and discussions with its leaders, we have begun to recognize that sometimes we’ve inadequately represented mission in our well-intentioned promotional and fundraising activities. We’ve perfected the art of portraying truly heartrending stories and providing people with pictures and descriptions of real crises, needs, and disasters. God has used our best efforts, though flawed, and His people have responded from compassionate hearts. However, if Forsyth is right—and the Bible is emphatic in its documentation of the truth of his statement—then we must change how we communicate mission opportunities. Instead of relying entirely on presentations of need, we must begin inviting people to participate in God’s work by making known to all people the “mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9 NRSV).

Privileged Participation—Not Exhausted Action

Without this news of great hope and full confidence in a completely sovereign God, we will have the sense of mission as an exhausting human enterprise. We’ll feel as though we’ve been handed a mandate, a commission, and a duty, and that the job is completely up to us. This inevitably leads to burnout. Mission was never intended to be an exhausting human enterprise. Mission is our privileged participation in the life-giving action of the triune God.

Seeking First the Kingdom

Jesus invites us to participate in what God is doing in bringing His kingdom. But what does that look like? We all know Matthew 6:33 NRSV: “Strive first for the kingdom of God.” If the kingdom was so central to Jesus’s life and ministry, then we cannot afford to be fuzzy about its meaning and significance.

Look at what Jesus said about the kingdom of God:

• The kingdom of God was the subject of Jesus’s first message when He told the people that the kingdom of God is at hand (Mark 1:15; Luke 4:18).
• The kingdom was also the subject of His last message (Acts 1:1–8).
• Jesus Himself said the kingdom was the goal, the intention, and the purpose of all His teaching (Luke 8:10).
• Even Jesus’s miracles were called “signs of the kingdom.”
• We all know the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”
• Jesus even goes so far as to say that the end of this age will not come until the gospel of the kingdom has been proclaimed to all ethnic groups (Matt 24:14).

Signs of the Kingdom

Without this integrating vision of the kingdom of God, mission involvement can degenerate into competition among our own programs, ambitions, and desires. When the kingdom of God is the goal of all we do, then competing calls and opposing ambitions fade under the sound of the King’s marching orders. To engage in mission is to participate in the King’s business.

God Himself brings His kingdom to fruition. He establishes it—not us. God chooses to let us share in His work. We are not told in Scripture that we bring, cause, or create the kingdom. We are called by the Spirit of God to participate with Him in building God’s kingdom, but the responsibility is His. This is not merely a semantic issue. These terms mean the difference between something that is life-giving and something that can be death-dealing. We have a pivotal role in the coming kingdom of God. The Spirit of God is sent to manifest signs of the kingdom through us. But the work remains God’s.

Signs of Kingdom Life

Jesus’s miracles were signs of kingdom life. Because He chose to limit Himself to time and space, He could cast out only a few demons, and feed only a few people miraculously. In comparison to the population of the world at the time, relatively few were privileged to see Jesus in action. Only those living in Palestine and specifically around Galilee had the opportunity to experience a part of what the kingdom was about. But Jesus’s reputation began to spread so that when He came to a new town, people brought the afflicted to Him for healing. Every act of healing illustrated the message, “The kingdom of God has come near . . . to you” (Luke 10:9). All of God’s fullness is on the way. Whole towns and regions were transformed by the hope of the kingdom.

In a similar way, the late Mother Teresa, for example, only cared for about two hundred thousand people in Calcutta, but all 18 million people in that city knew that life could be different because of her example. In fact, her good works have come to be known in the global village and have impacted the world.

God desires that we be living signs of the kingdom, to provide visual aids of what life will look like one day when the kingdom is fully here. We will not bring the kingdom or build the kingdom, but our privilege is to live out previews of “coming attractions,” revealing what this kingdom will look like.

Both Hands of the Gospel

The King seeks to restore the well-being and wholeness of His creation. The church is not to be an underground railway to heaven, hiding people on earth until they can escape to glory. Nor is the church to be another philanthropic organization, kindly doing good works and dispensing aid to those in need. Rather, the church is the body of Christ, consciously and explicitly participating in the establishment of His reign on earth. The church is to be consciously and explicitly Christ’s, regardless of the activity.

Therefore, we extend both hands of the gospel: the hand inviting people to repentance, faith, and eternal reconciliation with God through Christ Jesus, and the hand manifesting deeds of mercy and compassion, extending the goodness of God’s kingdom on earth. One is not a means to the other. Both are equally significant to life in the eternal kingdom as described by Scripture.

No Longer a Somber Duty

To engage in mission is to participate in the coming of the kingdom of God. When the King and His kingdom are the unifying, controlling source and goal of all we do, then competing calls and opposing ambitions fade under the sound of the King’s marching orders. Participation in God’s mission is no longer a somber duty. It becomes a joyous privilege and an adventure of passion and hope.

RETURN TO LESSON 2: The Story of His Glory

Notes

1. Jason Mandryk, Operation World: The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010).