The Mission of the Gospel
by Carl E. Branten
The winds of theological conflict are blowing through the church. People sense thcre is something wrong1 but they don't seem to know exactly what it is or what to do about it.
A paradigm shift in mission theology took place in the 60s and '70$. The ecumenical assembly in Bangkok in 1973 discussed the theme, "Salvation Today". A Roman Catholic observer said, "I am appalled that you people can discuss 'Salvation Today'...but not listen to what the Apostle Paul said about it. I haven't heard anyone speak on justification by faith or everlasting life."
The Lutheran World Federation assembly in Brazil dealt with the cry of God's people ‘for salvation'." Its document gets down to the "real business" of the assembly in solving the problems of the poor the global economy, the exploitation of nature, and dialogue with other religions. But there is not a single paragraph that deals with world evangelization, with its basis, content, motive, goals, and method.
The church spends prime Lime on concerns for which it has no unique competence, but neglects the one thing needful which only the church, and no other agency in the world, has been commissioned to accomplish. There is no doubt that whatever the church can do to accelerate the betterment of human life on this planet is pleasing to God. But the question is, "1% there not something more – uniquely more – that the church must do besides taking a stand against racism, sexism, poverty, oppression, exploitation and the like?"
The apostolic mission of the gospel created the church; we call it evangelism. God has given the church this commission to go with the gospel to all who do not yet, or who no longer. believe. It is an assignment God has given to no other people in the world. If the church does not proclaim the message of salvation in the name of Jesus to those who do not believe, it wi[l not get done.
There are lots of people who know nothing about the gospel of Jesus Christ, yet who care a lot about the earth and the integrity of creation. They march at the front lines for peace and justice, are working for a new international economic order, and give their lives to establish democratic freedom. These are all good things which the Gentiles seek, and God knows that we need them all (Matth. 6:32). But all these important activities are no substitute at all for the good news of God's justification of poor sinners and the spiritual deliverance of all persons oppressed by sin and the tenors of death and the devil.
Christians alone have been called and ordained through their baptism to address all the Gentiles with the news of God's salvation so that they may hear and believe. Faith comes by hearing!
We used to speak of missions as 'foreign" missions. There was no doubt in the mind of the missionaries what they were supposed to do. They were to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to start new churches. And they did it with an eschatological perspective. There was something gloriously right about that. The gospel was the essential core of the Christian mission. Anyone familiar with the scene knows that missionaries were not worrying over much about the souls of the natives to the neglect of their bodies. They became sacrificially involved in health care, in founding hospitals and schools of all kinds, in agricultural and industrial ants, in literary and publication projects. All these activities were seen as auxiliaries of the gospel. They practiced "holistic" mission.
It is sometimes said that the contemporary concept of mission is "holistic". There is a big hole in holistic mission, however when it cuts out the core of the gospel.
Yes, the mission of the gospel is uniquely the church's. That does not primarily mean entering into solidarity with all people of good will who want to deal with the emergency situations in which the world finds itself The mission of the gospel is to continue Christ's redemptive mission through preaching the gospel everywhere, making disciples, and baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The idea itself sounds downright silly and useless to Jews and Greeks; indeed, to all of us. We hear over and over again from the new missiology that what the world needs now is not verbal proclamation but good deeds.
The church lives in the historical tension between the "already" and the "not yet", called to be faithful to God's mission in the interim. The reign of Christ, meanwhile, is the way of the cross, giving us a new calculus to figure the difference between victory' and defeat. The core of the gospel mission is always Christ. "Christ alone" is the content and criterion of the message of the gospel.
This grounding of mission should make clear that God and not the church is the primary subject and source of mission, Advocacy is what the church is about, being God's advocate in the world.
But ours is an age of apostasy in which humanity has become god to itself. "Humanity is the measure of all things". All that matters now is that the church get involved in social and political analysis, go where the action is, mobilize the good intentions of its members, and pass world-shaking resolutions at its general assemblies. What the world calls justice seems much more tangible and necessary than the righteousness that God has bestowed freely from above through faith in Jesus Christ.
What a turn-about in mission thinking! Consider what the Willingen Assembly of the International Missionary Council in 1952 said.
"The Cross does not answer the world's questions, because they arc not the real questions. It confronts the world with the real questions, which are God's question – casting down all that exalts itself in defiance of him, bringing to nothing the idolatries by which people are deceived, and raising up those who are sunk in disillusionment and despair."
Compare also: Speaking about the ecumenical assembly in Uppsala in 1968. one British theologian said,
"The Assembly was preoccupied with the hunger, poverty and injustices of the contemporary world. I myself was deeply moved and challenged by it. What worried me, is that I found no comparable compassion or concern for the spiritual hunger of the unevangelized millions . . . The Lord set his Church to preach the good news and make disciples. but I did not see the Assembly cager to obey this command of his. This same Lord wept over the unrepentant city which had rejected him, bull did not see the Assembly weeping any similar tears!"
Lutherans have been poised between two opposing theologies of mission. Evangelicals stress the absolute priority of evangelism aimed at eternal salvation through personal faith in Jesus Christ, searching out opportunities in world history for whole peoples to respond to the proclamation of the gospel. "We beg you for Christ's sake, be reconciled to God" ('I Cor. 5: 20). The Ecumenicals seem to have replaced zeal for evangelism by social ethical concerns. Making Christians and planting churches have given way to combating unjust systems and changing social structures.
The vertical dimension of reconciliation with God is not an alternative to the horizontal dimension of social transformation, however.
Lutherans should he the first to acknowledge that. The verbal proclamation of the gospel must always be authenticated by diaconal works of love.
Meanwhile, simple believers are shown dramatic pictures of the good things the church is doing around the world, and they assume that the primary goal of preaching-so that people might believe in Christ and be baptized-is still the engine that drives the 6obalmission programsofthe church. But there is a growing suspicion among pastors and laity today that mission without gospel is being promoted.
Nothing is more fashionable in contemporary missiology than to talk about "dialogue" with people of other faiths and ideologies. That word has become a substitute for evangelism. Dialogue is the new in-thing, but often the theology supporting it borders on treason and betrayal of the gospel. Many ecumenical missiologists believe and teach that Christ is already savingly present in all the religions.
Here there is a great confusion of law and gospel. Lutherans have confessed that God is providentially at work in the world of the Gentiles, that he has not left himself without a witness, that in God we all "live and move and have our being". There is a universal revelation of God through creation and law, no matter how much truth has been suppressed, so that nobody is "without excuse." But nowhere in Scripture is it ever said that the general knowledge of God brings salvation. A church or theology that cannot distinguish between the concerns of inter-religious dialogue and the assertions of the gospel is bankrupt.
What must we do to get our mission theology back on track? The first thing is to think more radically out of the biblical frame of reference as the authoritative source and rule of our faith, doctrine, and practice. In the past two decades we have witnessed the collapse of biblical foundations in contemporary theology, and this has let the church meander in the most bewildering directions.
Secondly, define the "Kingdom of God" on the basis of biblical theology. The idea of the kingdom has come to stand for a mixed bag of things in mission statements. The New Testament proclaims that the present stage of esehatological fulfillment has taken place already in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ, and a final stage representing the transformation of the historical and cosmic conditions will take place at the end of history and the world.
Thirdly. the broken relationship between God and the fallen world has been restored and the gift of new fellowship with God has been granted by the Spirit to those who believe in Christ and are baptized. This gift is mediated through preaching the Word and the administration of the sacraments. This then is the abiding core of evangelism – communicating the gift of new life with God on the basis of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Fourthly, the church is called to the front lines of snuggle against the enemies of God's kingdom: sin, death and the devil. It is a constant spiritual struggle that must go on everywhere in the world until the end of time. The present structures of this fallen world will be transformed as God's own doing on the day of the final advent of Christ and the consummation of all things in the power and glory of God.
Fifthly, the prime missionary task of the church is to be the church in action, proclaiming Jesus Christ to all the nations. closing ranks with all fellow-believers for mutual encouragement in the one true faith. So it may become imperative to call for an ecumenical realignment in which Lutherans cultivate closer association and cooperation with Evangelical and Catholic communities that have not capitulated to the new missiology.
Finally, our Lutheran evangelical commitment does not detract but rather stimulates our responsibility to care for people who suffer injustice. The tendency of some Lutherans to accommodate to the liberationist's equating of God's justification and human justice, by exchanging his justification of sinners for his alleged preferential option for the poor, deals a deadly blow to the high priority of evangelism. Striving for peace and justice and denouncing poverty and oppression need not be purchased at the expense of the uniqueness of Christ and the proclamation of the gospel. It is precisely the gospel that frees us to work for a more humane and just world. Because our hope is grounded in God we can afford to take the risk of losing ourselves so that others may live more fully.
*Excerpted from Prof Braaten's dynamic address to the 1990 St. Olaf Conference, (CA Call to Faithfulness". Braaten is Prof. of Systematic Theology at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Director of the Center for Catholic & Evangelical Theology. Call to Faithfulness Ii will be held at St Olaf College. this coming June 9-11th. open to all who are concerned for our Lutheran confessional integrity.
Indoctrination: It’s Not A Dirty Word
These days one detects within the church’s clergy and laity an attitude of reluctance or disdain toward what is called :right-doctrine" or "ortho-doxy" – as thought the church is overly insistent on adherence to the truth it proclaims.
Recently an as appeared in The Lutheran, sponsored by the ELCA Division for Education. It stated that our ELCA colleges and universities emphasize "values education without indoctrination." I hope not! I confess to more than a bit of uneasiness about that phrase. It seems to promote values and eliminate indoctrination. But values are never arrived at in a vacuum.
Any school, religious or secular, which does not indoctrinate ought to be avoided. It hardly qualifies as a place of learning. If Webster has it right that to indoctrinate is "to instruct in the rudiments of a branch of learning," then I’m thankful that from the elementary grades onward, I was "indoctrinated" in Science, Math, English and Social Studies. Religion? Even more so.
It's Not A Dirty Word (Cont'd)
by Gordon Selbo
Whence comes this peculiar view that in religion we must never be dogmatic? Or, worse yet, that anything goes? Some say, "In the realm of religion we must never be precise." They insist, "Yes or no, right or wrong, true or false-it is presumptuous for Christians to deal in such categories with conviction or certainty."
But consider a few fundamental tenets: Is there a God? Is Christ true God and true man? Did He rise from the dead? Is there a Heaven? Can we earn it? Tile answer to each of these must be Yes or No, but not both. There is an absolute necessary "correctness" about the Christian message or it loses its very right to exist.
Let it be stated clearly: INDOCTRINATION IS NOT A DIRTY WORD. In fact, it is the church's never-ending business. So let's not apologize for it or remove it from top priority.
Astute theologians are pointing to a certain drift occurring in our Lutheran Church, characterized by a strange "tolerance", and accommodating to a wide spectrum of beliefs. This is both utterly foreign to the New Testament and unlike our own church's history. It tends to eschew doctrine for the sake of dialogue and inevitably then minimizes witness and the urgency for mission which were so prominent with Jesus and the apostles.
The reason for such a wimpy approach to theology lies in a distorted view of the nature of the Christian faith. "The faith once delivered to the saints" is not some ethereal tenuous collection of human opinions or speculation. It is not at its heart an idea or a concept or a philosophy, not one in a vast array of man's views about God or how folks on earth ought to relate to one another. It is more "real" than that.
The Christian faith is based on history, event, fact- the acts of God. Its essence is the truth that a Man did live, die, and rise again for the sins of the world, and that eternity depends on it. Evidently then, to teach this good news and all that it entails is our highest responsibility and privilege.
Overwhelmingly, Scripture insists on sound teaching. Paul writes that a pastor"must hold fast to the sum word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it" (Titus 1:9). He writes to Timothy about "those who will not endure sound teaching.' (II Tim. 4:3). The express content of our faith is doctrine- to be preached with power, persuasiveness and spirit.
Is this a clue to our problem of churchly lethargy? Is it possible that we am in a theological recession? Can it be that a lack of doctrinal seriousness is the major reason for the numerical decline of the Lutheran Church over the past three decades? Indoctrination is a matter of life and death for both the individual and the church. Without it we are anemic. Forget the lame excuse that at times some people have used it to "jam the gospel down peoples' throats." Anything good can be abused.
Studies testing the knowledge of basic Christian teachings among both adults and youth are not encouraging. No doubt Paul's words address a timeless need: "Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; hold to that, for by so doing you will save yourself and your hearers," (I Tim. 4:16).
Among the many concerns occupying Christian thought and action in the modem world, the teaching of the faith must remain fundamental. It is the one task on our agenda for which the church alone is equipped. Other institutions can generate social action programs. To the church alone belongs the gospel and the proclamation of the true faith.
Some religious groups and denominations treat doctrine rather loosely. This has not been a Lutheran trait. We are a "confessional" church, which means that our beliefs are quite clearly defined, subscribed to, taught and broadcast to the world.
Selbo, a retired Lutheran pastor, has had a distinguished career as missionary, parish pastor, Luther College campus pastor, and President of Augustana Academy.
FOCL POINT is the quarterly newsletter of the Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans. Its purpose and vision come from the commitment of its supporters to the Confessional integrity of the ELCA, and from their desire to be a pro-active voice within the Church. If you have any comments you would like to share with us, please feel free to write to the editors with your thoughts. Also, if you and your congregation would like to become supporters of our fellowship and receive additional copies of our newsletter please fill out die form below and send it to our office. Our fellowship is supported solely by contributions. Please prayerfully consider your involvement in and support of the work of this fellowship. Your church needs your and our influence. We hope to hear from you soon.
READER RESPONSES
Editor's Note: We invite reader responses to FOCL concerns. Letters may be abridged and will be edited for space requirements.
Dear Editor:
I have recently received a communique From "a group of church leaders", meeting at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, whose steering committee includes a PLTS faculty member. Calling itself The Network, the group says it wishes "to publicly challenge the ELCA on all levels [regarding] this church's policies on homosexuality." It wants"to move to public advocacy...to affirm committed and faithful same-sex relationships, to sanction these relationships with appropriate ecclesiastical liturgies...and to accept qualified women and men regardless of sexual orientation, single or partnered as pastors and professionals of this church....
Times have certainly changed from my years at PLTS in the '70s. Then the climate was a hotbed of activity for economic justice (the Grape Boycott), for the civil rights movement (Martin Luther King's assassination), and for the anti-war movement (remember Kent State?). Now, apparently. it is simply a hotbed of activity. Or as one discouraged activist once put it, "Does the road to Selma have to end at Sodom?"
The two directions do not appear to be related at first, yet some make the connection more easily than others. Still, one wonders that, in this world with all its spiritual darkness, suffering and death, there could not be found some Christian cause of greater moral result than this.
(Rev.) William R Bragstad, Ph.D.
[Editor's Note: Our readers may wish to pursue more seriously the implications attending the encouragement of homosexuality. Recommended for study is the fully documented 1991 article, "Some Things You May Not Know about Homosexuality," published by the Berean League, 2875 Snelling Ave, N., St. Paul, MN, 55113. The article discusses homosexuals' goals, identity. origins, numbers. life-style, health, strategy, costs and needs. Copies of the article may be secured from the publishers for 25¢ each.
Mission Statement
The fellowship of confessional Lutherans (F.O.C.L.) Is an organization of clergy and lay persons who are concerned that the present prevailing mood within our church is one of cultural accommodation and theological relativization and who seek therefore to promote Confessional integrity and biblical theological fidelity by:
1) Establishing a voice for confessional/Evangelical concerns;
2) Creating mutual support of systems for its participants;
3) Providing a source of information sharing and educational opportunities;
4) Encouraging theological dialogue; and
5) Being understanding and sensitive to issues of theology, mission and ministry.
As an organization, F.O.C.L. seeks"
1) The guidance of the Holy Spirit and to glorify Christ in all we do and say;
2) To be a positive, pro-active and affirming presence within our Church; and
3) To influence Synodical and National Church practice and policy.
As part of our commitment to the Scriptures and the Confessions of the Lutheran Church, we have identified six major areas of concern that we believe to be central in maintaining a sound Lutheran theological identity within the Church catholic. These areas appear to be suffering significant departures from the faith "once delivered to the saints." They are: The Mystery of God; the Human Condition; the Uniqueness of Christ; the Place and Authority of Scripture; the Christian life; the Church.
Editorial Office Address
3020 Whitney Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95821
F.O.C.L. BOARD
Dr. William Bragstad
Mrs. Christine Brodnax
Mr. Ulrich Christiansen
Rev. Timothy Feaser
Rev. James Hoefer
Mrs. Lee Horn
Rev. Phil Lee
Dr. George Muedeking
Rev. Michael Murphy
Rev. Daniel Selbo
Rev. Gordon Selbo
Mrs. Arlet Vollers
Mr. Alan Waite
F.O.C.L. Point Editors
Rev. Dr. George Muedeking
Mr. Alan Waite
Typesetting and Design
Shirlee Smith - Professional Images