8 Jul 2010
Strategic Mission
What does it mean to be strategic about Mission?
Too often we as Christians have operated in a reactive way, letting our situation determine the shape and nature of what we called “mission” or evangelism.
Christianity didn’t change the world by accident.
By the 3rd Chapter of Mark we see that word about Jesus had reached right across the middle east.
7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. 8 When they heard all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon.
Pull out a map of the holy land in Jesus’s time and you can see just what an impact he had.
How did he do it?
Jesus was strategic, he understood the community and culture he was working in, and intentionally used the communication methods available to him.
The early church Fathers, too, were strategic. They knew what they wanted to do and set about doing it.
The Oxford dictionary defines strategy as “a plan designed to achieve a particular long-term aim”. It is that aim that is usually missing from Christian mission. Because the aim is missing its hard to evaluate success or failure.
Jesus though, had a clear long-term aim, Paul had a clear long-term aim. In fact wherever the church has exploded, there has been a nucleus of people who believed change was possible and gave their live s to see that change happen.
Over the next days I hope to unpack more of what it means to be strategic in Christian mission.
I hope this series of posts will be useful for anyone who wants to take the challenge of the great commission seriously.