Part 3: Christendom and Mission

D. Maintenance and Mission

But the legacy of Christendom in the area of mission goes deeper still. Christendom, based on an assumption that Europe was Christian, was essentially oriented towards pastoral care rather than evangelism, or maintenance rather than mission.

One of the tensions evident in many periods of church history is that of maintenance versus mission. The church is both a community and a missionary organisation, an institution and a movement. It is required to give attention both to its internal health and development, and to its external responsibilities of proclamation and service. This balance is not easy to maintain. In general, first generation movements have tended to emphasise mission and to develop only rudimentary structures for maintenance. In the second or third generations, internal developments have predominated. This process of institutionalisation can be observed in all human societies and is necessary if progress is to be maintained and gains consolidated. However, unless this process leads on to renewed mission, the institution that has been created will dwindle, and new forms of mission will be needed, either to replace it or to revive it.

It is not that maintenance is unnecessary. Unless the church develops effective structures for teaching, training, pastoring and deploying those it reaches in mission, it will become progressively less able to continue to engage in mission. Furthermore, unless the church becomes a community of loving relationships and meaningful interaction, there is little to call others to join. Robert Warren has commented: "A church wholly given to 'mission work' is not a sustainable model". The result is exhausting activism and a "sales-addicted organisation". But when maintenance becomes central or all consuming, as it frequently has in European church history, mission has been marginalised and the church has forgotten its raison d'être.

A frequent response to the perceived need to engage both in mission and maintenance has been to develop specialist groups to engage in mission with the support of the church. The church in its congregational and institutional form is thereby freed to concentrate on maintenance, and church members who are able and willing to engage in mission activities can be seconded to these groups. From the Celtic mission bands and medieval monastic orders, to the plethora of contemporary missionary societies, there is a long and honourable history of such organisations. The globalisation of the church, and its evangelistic and social impact on human society, would not have been achieved without them. But some missiologists have questioned the legitimacy of this division of roles, especially if these structures do not interact effectively.

Anabaptist missiologist George Peters argues that the history of Protestant missions is predominantly the history of missionary societies and individual pioneers, rather than the church in mission. He attributes this development among Protestants to four features of the sixteenth century Reformation: the absence of a coherent missiology among the Reformers; their failure to establish churches free from state control; the teaching of some Reformers that mission was the responsibility of individuals rather than the churches; and their inability, due to the low spiritual state of their churches, to engage in mission. He describes this as "an unfortunate and abnormal historic development which has produced autonomous, missionless churches on the one hand and autonomous churchless missionary societies on the other hand".

Others have argued that this diversification of roles is not just a pragmatic solution to persistent institutional inertia, but a theologically sound and biblically justified strategy. Ralph Winter does not accept that mission agencies are unfortunate and abnormal, describing them instead as one of the "two structures of God's redemptive mission". He argues that from New Testament times both structures have been crucial for the church to fulfil its calling. Although Winter acknowledges that, at times, the partnership necessary for both structures to operate effectively has been lacking, he insists that this division of labour is appropriate and divinely ordained.

How does this analysis of maintenance and mission, congregations and mission agencies apply to the Christendom era?

• The church in Christendom essentially operated in maintenance mode and lost interest in mission, regarding it as inappropriate or unnecessary.
  
  
• When the church in the latter years of the Christendom era recovered a sense of mission, it tended to operate by separating church and mission agencies.
  
  
• But there were dissident groups who refused to accept the irrelevance of mission and who operated as missionary communities, refusing to separate church and mission.

These dissident groups functioned as renewal movements, calling the institution back to its missionary roots, and redressing the balance between maintenance and mission. The Lollards, Waldensians, Anabaptists and many other such movements operated as missionary churches, holding together mission and community, refusing to leave mission to specialist agencies. They have reminded the church that its primary task is to engage in mission to the world beyond the church, and that this is the responsibility of the whole church. This task may be fulfilled through diverse structures, but it may not be delegated to a minority of enthusiasts.

Whether this task is performed through two structures or one, mission is no longer a subsidiary point on the agenda, or something that can be delegated to a subsection of the church - it is the agenda, and the whole church shares responsibility for this task.

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