MISSION AS SPIRITUAL CONFLICT

'The deepest motive for mission is simply to be with Jesus where he is, on the frontier between the reign of God and the usurped dominion of the devil.'

Lesslie Newbigin in Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours, p.78.

HOW CHRISTIANITY ITSELF UNDERMINES CHRISTIAN ARROGANCE

'Repeatedly, whether crashing along the canals of Tenochtitlan, or settling the estuaries of Massachusetts, or trekking deep into the Transvaal, the confidence that had enabled Europeans to believe themselves superior to those they were displacing was derived from Christianity. Repeatedly, though, in the struggle to hold this arrogance to account, it was Christianity that had provided the colonised and the enslaved with their surest voice. The paradox was profound. No other conquerors, dismissing with contempt the gods of other peoples, had installed in their place an emblem of power so deeply ambivalent as to render problematic the very notion of power. No other conquerors, exporting an understanding of the divine peculiar to themselves, has so successfully persuaded people around the globe that it possessed a universal import.'

Tom Holland, Dominion, p.487.

EFFECTIVE EVANGELISM

'...Christians who narrow their understanding and practice of mission to evangelism alone end up being less effective in that evangelism precisely because what they are witnessing to, exemplifying, and acting out is a much-reduced gospel, an important but thin slice of the abundant Kingdom life. Proclamation of the Gospel is an essential of both Christian mission and Christian life, but it is not the totality of either. When it becomes the only mode of Christian service to God, the message being proclaimed becomes less attractive because it is less vital and less evident in those proclaiming it. How do we expect people to be attracted to a society of people who live only to convert other people to their society? We will be better evangelists if we do not concentrate all of our energies on evangelism.' 

John G Stackhouse Jr. Why You're Here p.97.