What is mission?

Mission. This word has been resounding in my head for a while now. Partly because that is the buzz word in TSCF at the moment. Mission seems to be the hip word that has replaced evangelism. Actually, I’m not exactly sure how mission actually differs from evangelism, except that in some cases proclamation takes a back seat to establishing a relationship with the person (a.k.a. friendship evangelism).

Technical definitions aside, what do I define as mission? Firstly, I seek to define mission because it is a part of my job: I am involved in training students for mission and I am involved in student mission (the likes of the Discovering Jesus group). Secondly, because it is part of my work, I want it to be authentic. I don’t want to go and do ‘mission’ because that is what I have to do under a generic understanding of the term. Having my own definition of mission will help me make it authentic in practice.

To me, mission is to bring wholeness. From the gospels I understand that Jesus sought to bring wholeness in all areas of life. For example in relationship (between God and us, and us with each other), to broken areas in our lives by offering forgiveness, in the way we live by teaching us a new value system and convictions to live by, etc. And because I seek to follow Jesus, I will also emulate (in my limited capacity) his mission – to bring wholeness. So it is not just proclaiming the gospel story, but to be an instrument to bring wholeness to their lives.




For starters I will try not to offer people any pat answers, formulas or human traditions, rules and ‘packages’, but somehow seek to share with them the holistic gospel where Jesus has made a way to live life more abundantly (I’m still working out what this means). In some ways, it is much easier to just tell people the gospel story and to concentrate only on their ‘walk with Christ’, but I think mission calls me to more than that. And bringing wholeness is a concept that sits with me more comfortably then simply converting people to Jesus. How does this pan out practically? I guess I will find out over the coming months.