Introduction
Bible is the primary book or account through which humanity can understand their maker’s purpose for them. The book of Genesis provides information about the creation and humans’ existence but significantly little about why God created humans. According to Genesis, the only clear role for people is that humans should take care of the land, creation, and reproduction to dominate the world. Other books in the Bible further provide accounts of additional roles of humanity, with making God known to be a principal assignment stipulated in the New Testament teachings. The matter leads to the mission facet, which causes significant division globally, especially among Christians, leading to crisis.
The church traverses rippling routes since its incorporation on earth until now. Research shows Europe and North America as the two primary cities from where Christianity dispersed to the world. Individuals distributing the word bore the name missionaries, while the local destinations from where they operated became missions. Furthermore, outreach undertaking by the missionaries bore the same name, mission, with the title existing to date. Thus, churches and individual Christian groups’ confusion about the role of humans on earth and the true meaning of mission leads to confusion in the Christianity fraternity. The challenge substantially disrupts humans from living according to God’s purpose, thus necessitating a paradigm shift to the holistic mission initiative.
My Interest in Mission
Humans around the world lack the true meaning of Christianity and its mission. The issue leads to significant confusion, thus upsetting God’s original plan. According to the Bible, God created the earth to extend His dominance and bring order to the formerly orderless void. Accordingly, the creator delegated the responsibility to manage the earth to humans through the great commission communicated in various books and chapters of the Bible. However, the sinning of man made it impossible for God to physically live with humans long enough to make His true intentions toward humanity known. Thus, beings depend on the Bible to know God’s intentions.
The inability to go through the Bible first to get the whole message causes major challenges in understanding God’s intentions amongst hominids. The aspect affects even theology, which is the study of God’s nature and spiritual convictions. Division in meaning makes it hard for Christians to pursue a common goal. The existence of numerous denominations worldwide, each exhibiting a different meaning of God and mission, partly reveals the danger involved in contradictory meanings of fundamental elements about God and spiritual life. Thus, the primary aim of the present work is to define a holistic meaning of the mission to help individuals globally acquire a rounded understanding of God and our role on earth as originally intended by the creator. The goal focuses on the mission aspect, one of the highly mistaken facets of Christianity, and whose true understanding this work finds mandatory for humans to fulfill God’s will.
The Problem
Christianity is highly divided, leading to divisions in the meaning of fundamental aspects regarding spirituality and God’s true meaning when creating humans. There are evangelical, ecumenical, Pentecostal, charismatic, and several other categories of Christianity (Bosch). All of these have the distinct meaning of life, creation, and mission. According to Bosch, the last aspect, the mission, became the center of Christianity’s crisis from very far. The scholar provides God’s sending of Jesus and the Holy Spirit on earth to redeem and guide humans as the first long-standing definition of mission. Bosch says that Until the sixteenth century, the term (mission) was used exclusively concerning the doctrine of the Trinity, that is, of the sending of the Son by the Father and of the Holy Spirit by the Father and the Son (Bosch).
The definition, still mistaken, lasted on earth until the sixteenth century when different groups started coining varied explanations for the facet.
Emergent meanings for the team included the distribution of preachers to selected regions, the undertakings by such ministers, and the physical expanse where the missionaries operated. Agencies dispatching the priests, the targeted non-Christian world, and the hubs from where the evangelists operated on the targeted fields, too, formed missions to other groups (“Holistic Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Missiology”). These definitions existed around the 1950s and were equally wrong. Nonetheless, developments in various Christianity setups introduced other contexts bearing different meanings for the term. For example, the Catholics termed confined worshipers without a denizen priest, which depended on an older established church for support, as a mission. Additionally, evangelicals employed the term ‘mission’ to refer to distinctive worship services held in series anticipated to extend the Christian faith, typically in an ostensibly Christian milieu. The two groups still apply similar meaning to the word to date, though transformations in theological understanding leads to significant changes in understanding.
Looking at the theological interpretation of mission further reveals the confusion in understanding God and spirituality, even among scholars, leading to mistaken paradigms. The discipline, which uses factual scholarly tenets to define aspects of the creator and divinity, paraphrases ‘mission’ as the dissemination of faith or expansion of God’s reign among people. Equally, some theological concepts define mission as the transformation of the non-Christians, while others use the term to refer to the establishment of new churches. Accordingly, all these definitions lead to divisions among Christian groups and the upsetting of the true purpose of humanity on earth. The issue is solvable through theological transformation, particularly via the promotion or adoption of the holistic mission.
Context of the Problem
Misunderstanding concerning mission connotes a theological problem related to mistaken paradigm. “Holistic Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Missiology” defines paradigm as a specific way of regarding something based on a distinct set of concepts, patterns, research, and theories. Accordingly, theology studies the Deity’s nature and spiritual beliefs, thus providing valid accounts of the two subjects. Like any other science, theology gathers evidence through investigations, meaning that the developed theory or accounts’ truth is dependent on the collected data and the investigators’ thoroughness. That way, investigating the past and present theological sentiments about mission shows a challenged paradigm. The discipline presently holds divided questionable information about the matter, thus fashioning the need for new developments.
The past and present definitions for mission match the fragmentations in the Christianity fraternity and should be eliminated. Catholics, evangelicals, Protestants, Pentecostals, and all the other groups under the Christianity umbrella do not agree on the true meaning of mission. The facet denotes a dangerous situation, especially based on the fact that Christians must work together with unity in faith and knowledge to build a holistic body of Christ, according to Ephesians 4:11. Consequently, the problem of defining and undertaking mission activities is only solvable through the development of a real meaning of the matter. The solution lies in introducing a paradigm shift in theology for all Christians to acquire identical realistic knowledge and faith.
Problem’s History
Confusion about the mission’s real meaning is significantly old, based on the available theological accounts. Limited knowledge and information in the past made scriptural concepts highly divided. Virtually every denomination developed distinct meaning about varied aspects of spirituality and God. For instance, early Christians living during the nineteenth century believed that the sending of Jesus and the Holy Spirit on earth constituted the only meaning for the term mission (“Holistic Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Missiology”). Developments in the concept’s understanding introduced new aspects, including the setting of new churches in non-Christian communities and outreach activities involving worship services in distant neighborhoods.
Different religions’ contradictory meanings of the mission are backed by each group’s theological accounts, significantly implying the divided nature of Christianity. However, present-day and future developments in knowledge acquisition denote potential changes to the issue. Accordingly, investigations about a holistic mission form a reliable solution to the problem since knowledge is power. The new theological paradigm (holistic mission) relies on the whole Bible’s teachings on the role of humankind on earth and the true purpose of people’s creation. The model is all-inclusive and helps Christians live a pleasing life that emulates Christ’s completeness.
Why the Problem Happened
Rifts within Christianity, religionism and mistaken biblical understanding are some of the fundamental causes of the present theological challenge concerning missiology. As noted earlier, Christianity is never united, with different groups under the title, including Catholics, ecumenical Christians, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and Charismatic believers. The various groups exhibit contradictory faith in some elements of spirituality, leading to diverted theological elucidations. The issue further leads to religionism, which is the adoration of religions, with open ignorance of basic biblical teachings about God’s purpose regarding humans and creation. Accordingly, the following discussion provides some of the critical causes of the present theological challenge about missiology.
Choosing Intently from the Bible
The Bible is the primary book given to Christians to teach them about God and His divine purpose for creation. The general belief is that the Bible contains God’s message passed down to humans through inspired authors. Biblical books fall under different classes, including prophetic, law, epistles, and the gospel. “Holistic Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Missiology” insists on the need for people to read the holy book to get the true meaning of certain spiritual concepts (n.p). However, the source notes that people generally interpret the Bible based on one verse that suits a particular purpose, the so-called proof-texting.
The ‘proof texting’ aspect leads to substantial problems since the Bible contains numerous pamphlets developed and compiled over thousands of years, as well as written by several persons. Thus, there is a need to apprehend the poetry and law parts, the sections depicting Jesus’ words, and those containing histories regarding the church. The aspect is highly critical since humans are involved in writing the Bible, even though inspired. Accordingly, interpreting the Bible from the broad teachings of Christ helps to construe things via the discernments of the unbiased Jesus, leading to true comprehension of concepts, which form the basis of a holistic mission.
Reducing God’s Concern for Humans Alone
The creation account proceeds in a manner that tempts people to think that God only cares about humans alone. Other verses in the Bible reiterating the love of God towards people, including the postulation that God punishes everything when humans blunder, leads individuals to ignore the other creation. The aspect thus mistakenly makes people think about their souls’ salvation and delivery. Consequently, the attitude corrupts theological concepts regarding mission, with evangelism being the primary meaning of the idea (mission) among individuals due to this mistake.
Contracting Salvation to the Church
The church’s adoption of the Christendom nature during the first one thousand years led to the mistaken acquisition and use of power. For example, the institution claimed to have the ability to determine who gets saved by Jesus and who could not. The issue placed the church at the center of Christianity and mission, with doing the pope’s will being the sole definition of getting involved in mission undertakings (“Holistic Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Missiology” n.p). Accordingly, persons found to wrong the church or pope were ‘righteously’ chased away, excommunicated, and believed to go to hell. However, the Second Vatican Council altered this misguided mentality in the 1960s. Thus, theological records during this time contained elements praising the church and showing compliance to its aspects as the only mission for Christians.
Constricting Humanity to Our Soul
The combination of spirit, body, and mind is what makes up the human being. Among the three elements, only the former, spirit, is theologically believed to belong to God, with body and mind being destroyable products after one’s death. The credence leads many Christians to reduce individuals to spiritual beings or mere souls. Accordingly, the aspect even influences some early scholars’ view of the body as a physical entrapment of the spirit. The viewpoint leads Christians to only care about the souls while neglecting all the other creations, with the ‘mission’ becoming saving souls.
Narrowing Christ’s Work to Personal Atonement
Putting humans at the center of creation leads to the connected problem of seeing Christ’s work as returning individuals to God alone. The error comes mainly from overlooking verses such as 2 Cor. 5:19 and Eph. 1:10, which reiterate God’s disposition as reconciling the whole world by gathering up all things on earth and in heaven for Himself. Accordingly, the verses put the universe at the center of God’s deliverance plan, meaning that a true (holistic) mission implies getting transformed and reconciling the world.
Evangelicals’ Gradual Narrowing of Their Vision
The evangelicals’ primary concern is to spread good news across the world. However, changes in this Christianity wing over the years contribute significantly to the contradictory meaning of the mission. For example, eighteenth-century evangelicals combined gospel spreading with promoting access to justice among minorities. However, the mentality changed during the nineteenth century, when they started focusing more on liberal Christianity, which questions the Bible and rejects some Christian beliefs. Consequently, spreading the gospel and promoting justice and compassion became two disconnected facets, amounting to a diverted view from the original more sound definition of the mission.
Conclusion
Reflection
The six issues discussed above show the various forces leading theology and theologians astray on matters of the mission. Failing to read the Bible entirely to get God’s meaning is a major problem troubling the realization of holistic mission to date. However, information technology innovations and the continued search for unity of purpose among Christians gradually led to a possible solution to the issue, which lies in a holistic mission.
Comments
The new theological concept denotes a paradigm shift in theology, which centers on reconciling humans to God, the journey to fullness, restored interpersonal associations, and all creation, including nature. The holistic mission provides worshiping, evangelism, dialogue among religions, compassion, seeking justice, peacemaking, ecological protection, and social responsibility as expressions of one assignment. Consequently, embracing the fresh doctrinal idea concerning God and spirituality will not only help humans work together, but also make the world safe through creation conservation initiatives, as reiterated by the bible.
Works Cited
Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission – Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Orbis Books (USA), 2011.
“Holistic Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Missiology.” Lecture Notes.