A Glimpse of Outreach

I was just talking to a sister about missions and start to wonder about the general conception of mission in Hope Church. Remembering what a brother told me last time, that in the past, when one talks about mission in Hope, it always refers to church planting. Today, it is a different story. As Hope folks expose themselves to more opportunities around the world, suddenly mission opportunities begin to open up and one can almost choose to go mission with whichever missionary organisation in the market.

Yet, in conjunction with the perception of mission being solely almost about church planting (which of course is a misconception since Paul's mission trip included the strengthening of the existing churches as well), there is also a common perception of missions almost always involving outreach.

In some sense, this is true. Mission, probably understood, should never be about doing the mission things, but should be grounded and understood in the light of the Great Commission. Almost no mission, long term or short term, can be truly called a mission if it is not done in the spirit of making disciple of all nations. However, I think, from this point on comes the differences in the different kind of missions, and fundamentally, how people understand outreach to be.

Perhaps in people's mind, there is already a hierarchy for missions. 'I would prefer to go for this mission because I am able to do more outreach' or 'I want to go for that mission because of this or that'. At a deeper level, if you ask me, there is no difference. No difference in a lot of sense, but I would like to point out one of those 'no difference'. Imagine you go out and do outreach in a mission trip and people get converted, then what difference would it make if the person is not being discipled properly, or if there is no continuity? The nett difference for the Kingdom is merely one more convert but not necessarily one more disciple. Of course, the same would have applied for other types of mission, if it is not understood in the light of the Great Commission.

Jesus said to the disciples that the Holy Spirit will empower them to be His witness in 'Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth'. He told the disciples before He ascended to 'go and make disciples of all nations'. In the light of what Jesus commanded and commissioned, one would have to keep in mind how these should direct our understand on what missions and outreach are all about. Outreach involves us being His witness, not only through words but also through action, to let the people see what happen when our rubber hits the road. If outreach can be understood in such terms, then we can clearly see that a mission that is intentional in its outreach need not be deliberately explicit in its intention to outreach.

I give you an example. The relief trip that I went for a few months back in Japan, it was positioned as a relief trip, simply that. We went there as Christians helping the locals to clean up their houses in preparation for the reconstruction work. What we did was just that, but what people will not be able to see on the surface is the kind of work that God was doing in that community. Basically, OM partnered with a local pastor and through the relief work, the pastor was able to set up a church in the town which will act as a conduit to disciple the believers there. Some of the residents came to know Christ just by observing the Christian volunteers and their lives. Many hearts were softened enough for them to start to open up to the gospel, although only God knows when they will come to faith.

All these started to challenge my perception of outreach in the way that we know it in Hope church. Perhaps, it is beyond sharing the gospel (but dun mistake me, it is still important) but more than that, it's about bringing the love of Christ into tangible forms which are visible for people. The fact is that the love of Christ cannot be all talk and no action. In participating in these missions, I came to realise that. These are great lessons for any aspiring church planters for the very simple reason that a church needs to go out where the rubber meets the road to show that it cares about the community. In Philip Yancey's book on What's so amazing about grace, the point he made is that grace is the last bastion in which the church can offer to the world. May I add on further to say that without the actualisation of these grace and the visible action of 'love thy neighbour', the church can no longer function fully as the bride of Christ?

Such experience offers me a true glimpse of what outreach is really about.

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