If we are to live as “resident aliens” in the West, as I suggested at the end of my article last week, then we will have to understand that there are several significant elements to the real success of our mission. One of these is to recognize the deleterious impact of hedonism on everything we think and do in this culture. This means we must seek to be countercultural without becoming escapists or Gnostics.

Gnosticism was a prominent heretical movement in the 2nd-century Christian Church, partly of pre-Christian origin. Gnostic doctrine taught that the world was created and ruled by a lesser divinity, the demiurge, and that Christ was an emissary of the remote supreme (divine) being. It taught that an esoteric knowledge (gnosis) of God and self enabled the redemption of the human spirit. A central tenet of ancient and modern Gnosticism is the corruption of the physical world, which leads to the idea that this world is worthless, unimportant. This emphasis finds it voice in modern Christian views about the Second Coming and of how we should become pure and pious internally. The created world, and our physical bodies, will all be discarded. Gnostic beliefs tell us that we can transcend this material world through the acquisition of inner (esoteric) spiritual knowledge. It is this part of the ancient teaching that remains deeply embedded in the modern evangelical church.

A credible theology of mission must avoid all forms of escape and any celebration of the non-material. Our redemption will be in our bodies and the present earth will not be discarded but become new! This is an entirely different view of things than what many of us were exposed to in evangelical Protestantism.

Mission Must Be Ecumenical

This new mission effort, rooted in the 21st century in Western culture, must be deeply ecumenical. I believe this means we must cultivate both a friendly and critical stance toward denominationalism. We must acknowledge that the Bible and the early church knew nothing of such structures. We invented them for ourselves and then defended them with proof texts and personal opinions. We then exported them to the world, dividing the church up all over the planet. This has massive implications for the modern age, both here and abroad.

Robert Bellah, author of the famous 1985 book, Habits of the Heart, wrote in 1991 that denominationalism, particularly in the United States, descended from the Lockean contract model and generated consumer Christians who shopped around various churches looking for the best package deal they could get (cited by Blosch, Believing in the Future, 57). Lesslie Newbigin said:

Denominationalism is the religious aspect of secularization. It is the form that religion takes in a culture controlled by the ideology of the Enlightenment. It is a social form in which the privatization of religion is expressed (Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, 145).

Bosch adds that if there is any truth in these observations, and I believe there can be no doubt that there is, “now that we are moving into a postmodern era, [we cannot] simply take along this albatross around our necks as it nothing has happened” (Believing in the Future, 58).

If you study missions around the world you will soon discover that what I call missional-ecumenism is happening in a number of places. We are rediscovering the spiritual reality of our essential unity in Christ and thus with each other. But there are some disturbing realities that should trouble us. Let me share just one.

I previously referred to the Pew Research Poll conducted among evangelical leaders at the Cape Town Lausanne gathering last October, 2010. One of the most disturbing things revealed by this poll had to do with the perception of evangelical leaders about the importance of unity in mission. Here is what the article noted:

The Lausanne leaders express lower – but still substantial – levels of concern about a variety of internal disagreements and shortcomings among evangelicals. More than a quarter of the leaders perceive major threats from theological divisions among evangelicals (30%), evangelical leaders displaying lavish lifestyles (30%) and evangelical leaders violating sexual morals (26%).

This gathering produced The Cape Town Commitment, a wonderful missional document that addresses the need for missional-ecumenism like no previous evangelical statement of faith and practice. One can only hope that over time the number who believe internal disagreements among Christians are important will rise significantly. Unless it does we will continue to promote our unique brands of denominationalism (even in forms that are independent of formal structures).

Mission Must Become Post-Denominational

Mission in the West can no longer afford the luxury of being understood as recruitment to a mega-church or a particular brand of religion. Whether denominationalism refers to a social and organized (older) form of the church or to a newer and less organized brand the reality is the same – sectarianism. This has to stop or the church will become increasingly irrelevant. Some denominations are critically aware of this problem and are facing it with courage and vision. Most are not.

Young adults have dropped out of the church in droves. Most are not coming back, as their parents did, when they get married and start a family (if they get married and start a family at all). There is real evidence that they are deeply distressed by how Christians treat one another and deal with their differences. Having grown up in broken and dysfunctional families, they will not embrace a broken and dysfunctional Christian community.

The very nature of Jesus, and his kingdom, works against the evangelical impulse to do kingdom building through the church and groups of churches. Ecclesiastical empire building needs to be challenged and ethical responses to it need to be embraced by a wider number of leaders. In some ways the future will likely not be first modeled by local congregations but elsewhere. Then local congregations will be forced to adjust or perish.

Mission is not building the biggest and fastest growing church, or group of churches, but sharing the good news about the universal and coming reign of the true and living God in Jesus Christ!

Here every Christian and church should begin to develop a theology that speaks to the missional-ecumenism of our time.