Holistic Missions

As a mission committed to fully expressing the all encompassing, emerging kingdom of reconciliation, we want to use this page to articulate our growing understanding of holistic mission & the various projects/processes we are involved in that are expressions of these convictions.

A STATEMENT

The “dawn from on high” has appeared on the horizon of human history bringing light to all of us who sit in darkness (Lk. 1:78). This light has been the good news of Jesus Christ that has ushered in the ministry of reconciliation. This good news announces the kingdom of God where we can be reconciled with God, each other, the creation, and ourselves. Consequently, accepting Christ is more than verbal assent of the lordship of Christ, but a journey of allowing the Kingdom of God to emerge in every aspect of our lives. Social responsibility is an interdependent part of the gospel. The gospel uncovers the image of God within every human being. Thus, proclaiming the good news involves the liberation of persons from oppressive structures, ideologies, and prisons of poverty that mar and damage their identities. Too often Christian witness has been described as simply the verbal proclamation of a reduced and deformed gospel of propositions. The good news, however, expresses the Kingdom of God in its fullest sense of word, sign, deed, and life. Furthermore, this gospel belongs to a God of the margins who suffers with the exploited, oppressed and weak. Our God is a suffering God—the Vulnerable One. As followers of Christ, social responsibility is not simply a handout without risk, but an engagement with the world where we find solidarity and interdependence with the marginalized. Christian mission is the risky business of suffering with the forgotten and oppressed.
(Gen. 1:27; Isa. 58; Luke 4:14-21; Rev. 21:1,2; II Cor. 4:10-12, 5:16-21; I Cor. 1:26-31; Micah 6:6-8; Amos 9:11-15; James 1:26-27)

OVERCOMING DUALISM

There has been a dualism in recent mission history (affected by the cultural dualism of modernity) that divides evangelism and what many have called social responsibility. In this respect, evangelism deals with accepting Jesus into your heart, which is fundamentally a spiritual exercise of the individual. This is due, in part, to the privatization of religion where we express our own personal “values.” This has also affected our view of end things where we resign ourselves to the otherworldly life to come. Consequently, this life is simply a waiting room, a burning house that one needs to escape. However, transformational mission offers a holistic look at the spiritual and physical as related terms. God is a God who has and is working in history not in some spiritual realm. God’s redemptive work will create a new heaven and earth, in which creation itself will be liberated from decay (Rom. 8:21). If one looks to the ministry of Jesus, we see his proclamation of the Kingdom of God. Within this Kingdom of God, Jesus talks about the good news as a way of life. In this respect, the ministry of Jesus is fully expressed through word, sign and deed. In this regard, the Kingdom of God is the realm or intersection point, where all aspects of reality converge and work with and for God.

UNDERSTANDING POVERTY

The issue of defining poverty is an enormously complex task. Poverty is a regenerative process, a web of entanglement, a constraint of movement, and disease that strips people of vocation and identity. Although the word, poverty, is most often associated with the economic world, poverty is inherently spiritual. Poverty is the extrinsic outworking of intrapersonal, interpersonal harmony in a creation groaning for redemption. The marginalized serve as the paradigm of a world without equity. Though the non-poor have issues of poverty, they attempt to force their own poverty issues on the marginalized. Consequently, the marginalized poor are the archetype and even embodiment of a world that is poor. In many respects the poor carry the poverty of the non-poor.

Poverty is rooted in the marred identity of those who cannot envision or imagine themselves not living a life of despair. Furthermore, this poverty gnaws at identity and argues that they somehow deserve such marginalization. This poverty can be seen among those who undergo constant verbal abuse and propaganda.

Poverty is a loss and retardation of vocation. Poverty creates a sense of futility and a deterministic journey leading to destruction. This poverty creates apathy and a general lack of energy that destroys personal and communal initiative. Many slums and inner cities are places where people feel trapped in a cycle of oppressive poverty. The continual cycle breeds despondency and a general malnutrition in hope.