Towards a Trinitarian view of the Christian's Commission

Recently I've finished reading through Rick Warren's multi-million selling The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan: 2002, see http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/).

And I like it. That's the second time I've read it through over the prescribed 40-day period, with a different group this time, and I found it refreshing, challenging and helpful. This time I took Warren's advice and spent time working out my own "Life Purpose Statement".

But there are still parts of the book - and parts of me - that don't sit well with one another. And this is not just a critique of Warren, because Warren represents (well, I think) the thinking behind the kind of evangelical theology and spirituality I have come to know.

Let's take an example. On p.295 Warren says this:

The eternal salvation of a single soul is more important than anything else you will ever achieve in life. Only people are going to last forever.

Back a few pages he writes on p.284:

Your mission has eternal significance. [Warren defines "mission" as your service to unbelievers (p.281)] It will impact the eternal destiny of other people, so it's more important than any job, achievement, or goal you will reach during your life on earth. The consequences of your mission will last forever; the consequences of your job will not.

Finally on p. 304 Warren concludes:

The Great Commission is your commission, and doing your part is the secret to living a life of significance.

I think I know why Rick Warren argues like this, but I believe some of his assumptions to be wrong, and I think they can lead to some rather confusing problems. I'll explain what I mean, and then see if I can present something more satisfying (theologically, practically) as an alternative.

First, Warren is entirely right in his insistence on the importance of evangelism as proclamation. His concern for people's eternal destiny comes - I would argue - from a faithful reading of the Bible's teaching on sin, judgment, and the salvation available only through faith in Jesus Christ. We - Christian and non-Christian alike - need to hear this.

But is it faithful/biblical/practical to suggest that proclamation evangelism is mission, and that mission so defined is more important than anything else we do? Indeed, is Warren correct to say that it is the only thing we do that is of eternal value?

It is interesting that although Rick Warren does say this (see my quotations above), he gets himself in a bit of a stitch when he starts to work out its implications. It's almost as if something inside him can't really believe it either. Because if Warren is right, then (a) most of what everyone does all day long is irrelevant/meaningless from an eternal perspective, and (b) full-time "missionaries" and "evangelists" get to do more of what's really important, and the rest of us just chip in with our evenings and weekends, our cash and our "quiet-times". Everything else is just part of the preparatory "test" that Warren wants us to see ourselves as being examined by in life.

It's just possible that Warren would say yes to (b), and that he would respond to (a) by saying something about us using our abilities and gifts, at work and at play, as evangelistic "opportunities". Certainly he spends several chapters encouraging us to develop our God-given shape for service, and this includes all kinds of aspects of our human life and culture. In fairness to Warren, he is motivated by the social action imperative, and he and his wife are noted philanthropists - not just in the direction of "missionaries" doing proclamation evangelism.

But there's something going on here that sets up contradictions, and works out in real life as frustration for an awful lot of Christians. If Warren wanted to say we should all do more proclamation evangelism and we should all consider doing it cross-culturally (he does say this, and I for one think he's right to say so) then I believe he could have done so in a much better-supported and carefully-nuanced way.

Let me try to outline such a way. I can't claim original credit for it: most of the ideas come from an article in the journal Vocatio by Siew Li Wong (Fall 2005: 41-42) and some supporting thinking from Darrell Cosden, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, (Paternoster, 2006). But I am drawing the threads together in a slightly idiosyncratic way: the blame for any obscurity is mine alone.

Wong's article (which is a summary of something she co-authored and available here: http://community.gospelcom.net/lcwe/assets/LOP40_IG11.pdf) identifies a "gap" in the Church's theology when it comes to the Christian's Commission (or in layman's terms, what the heck we're all supposed to be doing down here...).

A Trinitarian understanding of God, she writes, gives equal importance to the work of each person in the Godhead as well as equal weight to the three commissions to which we are called [emphasis mine]: the Creation Commission of the Father (Genesis 1:26-28), the Evangelistic Commission of the Son (Matthew 28:18-20) and the Relational Commission of the Spirit (Matthew 22:37-40). Often, she goes on, the Creation Commission is also the Great Omission. The church needs to recognise and act on all three commissions.

This is dynamite. And I love it.

What it does, first and foremost, is bring God's being as Trinity right to the centre of the questions of commission and mission. And then its great strength is that all of life becomes the stage for playing our part as ministers of the New Covenant. There's no hierarchy of things to do anymore - I'm not being more holy, or even more eternally important - when I preach the gospel than when I type this blog. Everything we do - in ruling the world and subduing it, in winning it for Christ, and in loving God and neighbour in fulfilment of the law - everything is fulfilling our purpose of imaging God and being his representative on earth, when it is done to the glory of God and in his name!

Wow!

The age old divide between the sacred and the secular - which Cosden persuasively argues is simply not biblical - comes down, and Christians are liberated to live significant, coherent and integrated lives. And what we do, Cosden demonstrates, is always of eternal importance, because God, in making everything new, is not tearing up the prototype and starting again (as a reading of Warren might lead us to believe) but, biblically, re-newing what is already here. The good fruits of our labours, of whatever sort, are eternal.

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:17

Summer fun...

Well - essays are all submitted for my final year at International Christian College. In a matter of weeks, I'll be BA again. That's a bit weird - I was BA before, and then MA, and now I'll be BA again. I guess that makes me BAMABA. That's how I feel, anyway.

Until work starts on 14th September, I'm free! What on earth I am going to do with all this time... Well, go to Corsica with Yuko and the rest of the family, do a camp with Scripture Union at Glenshee (50 11-14 year-olds... sweet joy...) and move to London in a big van (bigger than the apartment we're going to move to, I think) with about a month to get settled, locate a church and a supermarket.

I'm also working at a few extra projects, including the Shizuoka International Translation Competition, and hopefully the Sir Peter Parker Speech Contest when applications get up and running. I've tried to enter both of these before, without success, but I'm convinced that practice makes perfect. The translation one particularly took me weeks last time around, but hey, that's what I've got.

Don't think we'll be able to do much else this summer, really. We have probably just about enough resources to keep us going until first pay packet arrives, so it'll be plenty of sitting in parks and bike-riding, plus 日本のテレビ･ドラマ. Let's hope the sun keeps shining...

"Simple" lifestyle...?

The Lausanne Covenant of 1974 is a foundational document for contemporary evangelical understanding of what the Church is and what it ought to be doing. (Check it out at www.lausanne.org)

But it's interesting that Billy Graham's wife wouldn't sign it.

She objected to one particular clause that calls rich, western Christians to a "simple lifestyle", principally because she argued that it was beyond definition. Mrs Graham preferred the wording, "simpler lifestyle" - she didn't get her way, refused to sign up to the Covenant, and the rest is history.

But what's really at stake here? Issues of poverty and equality have taken backstage somewhat for evangelicals over much of the last century. But recent emphases - particularly the Make Poverty History campaign - have marked something of a sea-change in thinking as evangelicals have 'rediscovered' their social conscience, at least in Britain. Responsibility for the environment is back into our theologies of creation, and may be filtering slowly down into our churches as well.

But what is the situation in the US? Or in China? My uncle - a naturalised American citizen - remarked to me last week that most American Christians have never even heard of the Kyoto treaty, and have little or no idea what was at stake at the G8 summit last year. Narrow, dispensational theology, and a focus on 'personal' moral issues such as abortion and homosexuality at the expense of global injustices and issues such as climate change, have perhaps taken some of the edge off the gospel's radical call. I was part of a church in Japan for 3 years and never once heard (or preached) a sermon that got beyond salvation as something essentially personal, private, and ultimately world-denying. The emphasis on sharing faith was essentially a call to get into the lifeboat in time to jump the sinking ship. It didn't really strike me that tithing (while it no doubt had value as an expression of obedience) was basically just giving to my own little group, to serve our own little interests. Never was a challenge issued to western (or Japanese) affluence per se. In fact, most would probably have thought it wrong to issue any such challenge.

Does Jesus call us to a 'simple' lifestyle? Would you sign the Lausanne covenant? If so, what does it mean, for God's world and not just for you, to lead a simple lifestyle?