The Church is missionary by nature

What is the mission of the Church?  Our Mission?

Introduction

To understand the mission of the Church is to know that it exists for one reason only. That reason is to proclaim through deed and word the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The highlights of that Good News are, specifically,

That Jesus was born a human being like us.

He taught the way to a fully human life and true freedom in God.

He was rejected by his own people because the truth he revealed highlighted their own sins and failings, and the abundant shortcomings of the Judaism of his time.

 As a result of the message he lived and the life he lived, he was put to death in one of the cruellest ways imaginable.

But this was not the end.  Because his life was lived in a state of unconditional trust in God, and because his love for God his father was absolute, he was raised from the darkness of the grave.  

As the firstborn from the dead, Jesus Christ illuminated the ways of God, the nature of life under the rule of God, and showed that men and women are not doomed to be dominated by our destinies in the grave. 

 Jesus is the ‘saviour’ and in him, we discover the path to healing, forgiveness and life.

Everything the Church is and does is at the service of this proclamation. The fundamental reality is this:  If the Church at any level - the individual believer, the local community or the universal Church - is not prioritising these divine realities, then it has no reason for existing.  It is no longer the Church, it is a self-serving organisation and as such has nothing to offer the world.

But this is not a mission for clergy and religious alone.  It is a universal mission for all the baptised.  It is a calling that comes with our baptism, the sacrament in which we are called and empowered to take the Good news from God out to others.     As one writer put it, we are all called to go to all people with all the Gospel message all the time. This is a challenging thought, as the temptation is to subtly edit these words out of convenience, reluctance or uncertainty.

It was the sins of our first parents, Adam and Eve, who in their rejection of the sovereignty of God over creation, condemned all men and women to the dire consequences of sin.  We were condemned to live outside the Garden, to till a dry and infertile earth without a guarantee of being able to “feed” ourselves or find meaning and purpose in our short lives between birth and death.  God sought the salvation of his children, and with the calling of Abraham and the choosing of Israel as his own people, he moved all history towards the moment he would send his only Son to become man.

It is for this reason that, at the heart of the Church’s missionary imperative over the centuries, is the deeply held conviction that all people deserve to hear this good news, this liberating word of our salvation in Christ.   

Acknowledging that we live in a world more characterised by suffering, pain, futility, misunderstanding, war and death, than by hope, light, kindness and peace, there is no one alive, at any period of human history that does not look for the kinds of gifts on offer from Almighty God, our Creator and our Redeemer.   This is why it is called Good News for everyone, no exceptions, an unearned, life-transforming gift to the world.

However, this comes as both a blessing and a curse for the Church. We know that we are but the messengers and that the Gospel message is for everyone, that does not mean we are all we are called to be. 

We are, it must be admitted, a weak and fragile community, torn between sin and righteousness.  But our failings are not without consequences.   When we, the baptised, fail in our vocations, when we compromise on our mission and fall into sin, the mission of the Church loses credibility. Unjust as it may appear, for better or worse, we are increasingly identified through the lens of our weakest members, rather than by the strengths of the many faithful Christian men and women who live out their faith, uncelebrated and at the service of others, because of their love for Jesus.   It is because we tend to fall short of what God demands of us that there is always an ongoing need for renewal and reform.

At the very heart of the way the Church goes about her mission in the world is the incarnation, the Son of God becoming man, a human person like we are and making his home among us.  He is both truly God and truly human, without compromise or alteration to either of his natures. In Jesus, we come to understand that the spiritual and physical aspects of our humanity can no longer be thought of as distinct. Contrary to the expectations of some, the mission of the Church is not, and cannot be, purely spiritual. It is impossible to think of the spiritual as being apart from the physical.

So much of the Church’s missionary activity is involved with engaging with people as we reach out to them in their physical situation, as they go about their day-to-day activities.  Whether it be the education of the young, the care of the sick and elderly, supporting the disadvantaged, advocating for the displaced and the refugee, or promoting an awareness of the need to care for the environment, the Church has a long history of assisting those who need practical assistance. All of this is fundamental to our mission as Christ’s Disciples.  History is replete with examples of this mission priority.

 At a time when society believed that only the wealthy should receive an education, the Church taught the poor. At a time when the sick and elderly were looked after solely by those family members who were able to help, the Church opened hospitals and homes for those who were neglected and abandoned.

While no one is in any doubt that there have been failures in these spheres, it must also be acknowledged that the origins of the education, social welfare, hospital, and advocacy services to be found in any society influenced by the West are in the selfless activity of many Catholic individuals and groups. It is all a continuation of the ongoing mission of Jesus in the world. 

Why do Christians persist in doing this?  We do this because we are aware that the mission to proclaim Jesus Christ is deeply connected with recognising him in those in need of every kind. The mission of the Church is to proclaim his presence and to serve him where he is to be found. It is why the Church teaches that we are saved by faith in Christ, but that faith, to be real, must be a part of all we do. 

This is the true meaning of the ‘faith and works’ teaching that sets authentic Christian Churches apart from those who believe faith alone will save them. As the New Testament makes clear, faith and “works” need to be different sides of the same religious coin… James 2:14…What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?  This union between the spiritual and the earthly is clearly explained throughout the letter of James. In 2:14-26, the Word of God teaches us that our faith in Christ and our actions to serve others must always be inseparably united. It cannot be said that one area can function without the other since they should be indivisible areas in which no contradiction is found. Faith and works cannot be separated as some suggest, since a faith that is not manifested in good works is not true faith.   Faith remains purely a nice idea, a great idea alone, unless it is made real in the way we live our lives.  If it is not manifest in the way we live and in the way we engage with the world, if others cannot experience Christ in us, ours is not a genuine faith. 

The Church's Mission?  To be as Christ Jesus

We should never forget that without its mission, the Church is nothing. It is its missionary activity that makes it Church as distinct from just one more collection of people, a group organised in its own unique way, with a distinctive array of special buildings (oddly called churches) and distinctive activities.  Unfortunately, the Church is more associated with these unique characteristics, rather than with its primary mission which is engaging with the world. 

That is not to dismiss the external features and structure, for the Church must function in the real world and to do that it needs leadership, structure, rules, property and all the things that go with any sensibly organised institution. While all of that is true, we must remain ever alert to the dangers focussing on and prioritising the peripheral aspects of Church to the detriment of those that are core elements.  Mission is the only thing that matters. 

The peripheral, the institutional are only of significance to the degree that they serve and enable the Church’s primary mission: to reveal Jesus Christ and to proclaim his message. The degree to which the Church does that authentically is the degree to which it fulfils its primary vocation. The degree to which the Church fails in this is the degree to which it is not worthy to be called the Body of Christ. This links us back to Paul’s instruction on the need for us to ‘be as Christ Jesus’ …1 Corinthians 11:1... Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. In reality, what does this mean?

To be as Christ Jesus, we must expect that the way he lived his life will be the way we live ours. We live in the world in the same way Jesus lives in the world. Like him, we are to be intimately connected to the Father, and our relationship with God is to be at the centre of all we say and do. This call to an intimate relationship with God is an invitation planted in us at baptism, and it remains our vocation.  In Christ Jesus we are God’s sons or daughters. 

As it was with Jesus, we are to speak the truth of the Father’s love in our every word and deed.  However, as Jesus himself experienced, truth and love shine a light into the dark corners of society and into the sometimes-darker hearts of people.   But that is rarely welcomed.  That means that like Christ, we can expect to be misunderstood, falsely accused, rejected and (in one way or another) put to death. This is what being “like Christ” demands of us. 

The Life of Faith

Walking in faith requires that we strive to discern the God who is often hidden from our eyes. We hear his voice, we feel his gentle touch, and we sense deep within ourselves the call to respond.  That does not always mean we know exactly where God is working, or how God is working.  We just believe with absolute certainty that he is at work.   Even though we can rarely see the end of the road we are called to walk, we set out anyway. Like the children of Israel heading off into the wilderness on the way to Canaan, we step out confidently that God is present, guiding us, leading us, bringing us to the destination he has set for us.  We continue with unwavering trust in the God who holds us in being and who calls us forward.

We understand and accept unconditionally that we are not the ones in control. The moment we believe that we are in control is the moment we have lost sight of what it means to be in Christ Jesus.  Even Jesus accepted a loss of control over the way his life played out. This is the way we understand the passion and death of Jesus.  He lived a life that was utterly dependent on the God that even he could not always see: my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? His words from the cross just prior to his declaration, into your hands, I commend my spirit. 

The Church’s mission in the contemporary world

The faithful Christian, even knowing the trials and unavoidable trials that will inevitably come our way, is called upon to persevere in faithfulness to our God-given mission: revealing Jesus Christ to the world. We are called to this even know this is never going to be easy in a world that is unable and unwilling to recognise God in us.

Compassion and mercy

All Christians – no exceptions here – all who have been baptised in Christ are called to be people of compassion and mercy. It is God who shows us that this is the way to respond. God has consistently revealed himself as a compassionate and merciful God, a divine compassion that reached its high point in the sending of his only Son.  In the incarnation…God’s love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son that we could have life through him (1 John 4:9). In the incarnation, we witness the depth of God’s eternal and endless love and mercy.  All the subsequent words and actions of Jesus reveal who he is, God pitching his tent among us.

 Not only does Jesus speak of God’s mercy and explain it with the aid of comparisons, miracles and parables, but, above all, he embodies it and personifies it. He is, in a very real way, the mercy of God revealed in the world. This is what the world should experience in us.  This is how the world experiences God.  Alive in us. 

Christ Jesus has given us the task of continuing his mission: to reveal the mercy of God to the world. We have to make visible, time and time again, in each new human culture, the love and the mercy of God.

We need to be ever mindful that being a missionary is, in fact, central to the Christian life. A person without a sense of mission cannot be described as fully Christian. Our call to mission means we are to be more focused on the needs of those to whom we are sent than we are on preserving our comfortable ways of doing things, or the institutional elements of our Church.

The mission on which we find ourselves because of our baptisms will never cease to call us out of our comfort zones.  A complacent attitude, a willingness to leave things as they are, and at the same time an unwillingness to be open to new movements of the Holy Spirit, do not go hand in hand with the demands of faithful Christian living.  We are obliged to think differently about our priorities, individually and collectively, and to be all we can be for God. 

Bishop Michael Hough                                                               June 2025