The problem of closure

People don’t seem to have a problem with the idea of missions in the Bible.

There have been times when people have tried to. Just two centuries ago, when young William Carey challenged his church to missions, he was famously told, “If God wants to save the heathen, he’ll do it without your help or mine.” Carey ignored this and went on to help spark the modern Protestant missions movement.

Throughout history, any serious student of Scripture has known the kind of protestations and wiggling Carey encountered are just vain excuses. The Great Commission to make disciples of all nations is repeated in various forms several times in Scripture. Paul made it clear he handed on to others what was given to him, and he expected those who followed him to do the same. It applies to us as much as to any early disciple. John saw a vision of the end of time, with tribes and tongues gathered around the throne. There have been thousands upon thousands of missionaries who have gone into the world because they believed Scripture commanded them to do so.

More, any serious student of missions—from Perspectives on up—knows the missionary task isn’t just in the “New Testament.” It has been on God’s mind from the very beginning. In the first command in Genesis 1, God desired man to “fill the earth”–the whole of creation was in God’s view, not just the little Garden in which he initially placed mankind. That same command was repeated to Noah after the flood, showing it was still on God’s mind. The people refused to scatter over the earth, so in Genesis 10, God scattered them by changing languages and creating nations. Then, in his earth-changing promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, God said unequivocally, “all of these nations” were to be blessed by what he would do through Abraham.

A blessing beyond God’s people happened in Joseph’s day when God used Joseph to save the House of Jacob and the land of Egypt and all the surrounding nations from famine. He worked signs and wonders in Egypt to rescue his people and spread his glory on earth (Psalm 106). Time and again in Scripture, we read about challenges between God and the petty gods of the nations: for example, see the smackdown between God and the Philistine deity Dagon (1 Samuel 5) and between God and Baal (1 Kings 18).

David often wrote “missionary Psalms” that spoke of all the nations giving glory to God. Solomon built the Temple and prayed a missionary prayer, believing foreign nations would come to the Temple and pray and ask God to hear their prayers. Even after Israel and Judah both fell into the decay of sin and exile, God was still setting about his missionary purpose: using Gentile world rulers like Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus to send his glory to the ends of the earth (for example, see Daniel 3:28, 4, 6:26).

Nowhere, to me, is the Old Testament missionary heart of God clearer than in the writings of the Prophets. Isaiah 2:2-3 promises that in the last days, “People from many nations will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of Jacob’s God. There he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths.’” Habakkuk 2:14 promises, “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.”

From the first command in Genesis to “fill the earth” to the prophetic pronouncement that His glory would cover the earth as the waters cover the seas to the final revelation of tribes before the throne, we know God has been about the business of reaching out to and embracing the whole of our world. We’ve even come back to a Biblical understanding of the goal: not just geopolitical countries but nations, tribes, and tongues. God is less concerned about our governments and more that every language can hear and understand His Name and Word.

Where people seem to have a problem is the idea of “closure”—that the task can be finished.

“Closure” is a word used in a missiological sense by some missionary researchers, missiologists, professors, and missionary “professionals” to mean something very simple: that the task can be completed.

Some mission thinkers believe “mission” is not so much a task to be completed as a habit to be cultivated, much like loving our neighbor or giving our tithes. The result of this perspective can be unfortunate.

If I tell my child, “You should work on keeping your room clean,” we both know I am referring to a general daily habit. Certain things are to be done each day: beds made, clothes put away, toys picked up. At any given moment, a room may be more or less clean, and there could be a variety of reasons for that state. For example, I might say, “We don’t have time for you to pick everything up right now—we’re running late for church. Clean up when we’re back.” But then, the pastor’s sermon might go long, and there might be a long altar call, and then we’d spend time talking with friends afterward. We might not get back until very late, and I would further excuse them from the habit of cleaning up: “It’s late. Everyone’s tired. Go to bed, and do it in the morning.”

On the other hand, I might call my children together one day and say, “Tonight, we have company coming for dinner. They will be here sometime after six o’clock. Make sure your room is completely clean.” They might not know precisely when our visitors will arrive—“sometime after” can cover a fairly large time span—but they know what my expectations are. The best thing is to have the room clean before six o’clock.

Habits are things we do off and on throughout our daily lives—like cleaning, budgeting, paying tithes, or going to church. Some of us may be very diligent about a particular habit, and others less so. We might even go through up and down “phases.” We can be tempted to lessen the frequency with which we practice our “missionary habit.” We might be waiting for the right moment—perhaps when it’s not too painful, when we’re sure of success, and when we’re likely to receive some glory.

Moreover, when a habit does not represent a task that can be finished, it tends to become something done routinely in daily life. You can habitually clean your house, knowing you will always be cleaning the house. You will use and reuse dishes, and they will have to be washed and re-washed. There is no end to cleaning, so it doesn’t drive major life decisions (other than perhaps making you buy books about time management or invest in cleaning tools). There are many habits like this: making charitable contributions, making smart shopping decisions, budgeting, balancing bank accounts, and the like.

When mission is lived out as a habit in daily life, but doesn’t drive life decisions, it typically becomes about the guy next door, the colleague at work, or the rebel cousin who needs Jesus. Our neighborhood is our mission field. It’s true my family, neighborhood friends, and work colleagues all need the love of Christ. The fellow next door is surely just as important as a Saudi halfway around the world–but we can say the reverse is true, too: that Saudis are as important as your neighbors. When mission is a habit and not a life-defining task, big life decisions are naturally driven by other factors–perhaps not God’s desire for the nations, but our desire for a steady salary.

If the mission isn’t something that can be finished—just a habit to be done where we are—then we are rarely willing to go somewhere else, somewhere difficult. We leave that to those people whom God has struck with a blinding vision (and perhaps thrown in a burning bush to boot). We say, “I’m not called.”

This functionally reduces the vast majority of believers to a mission that is nothing more than home evangelism. Most Christians are found within the walls of Christian languages and cultures. We stick to our neighbors who are like us, live near us, and speak our language. We remain inside the walls of our language and culture, where things are known, where things can be expected and understood, and where things are safe. Eventually, we come to a point where “I’m not sure he’s a Christian” simply means “He doesn’t go to my church.”

When most Christians remain inside Christian languages and cultures, few Christians are found in non-Christian languages and cultures, being salt and light. This is why the Saudis and Sudanese are not Christians: not because they have rejected the Gospel, but because when we make missions a habit where we live now, we don’t go to the hard places and do the hard work. It’s not just the persecution–we can ennoble that. No, it’s the difficult task of learning a new language, a new culture, eating new foods, using strange toilets, enduring diseases, living without our favorite television shows, and sometimes living in hard, smelly, people-packed, poor places.

Yet if we don’t do the hard work of putting ourselves in the way of difficult-to-reach opportunities–because we think the task cannot be finished–it never will be.

On the other hand, if we really, honestly, truly think of the Great Commission as a God-given task that can be finished, then the way in which we make decisions must change. The drive to finish the task will shape the course of our daily lives: both our big decisions and our small ones. Missions will be about the whole world–including both the guy next door and the Saudi halfway around the planet. Our ministry actions must “scale”—they can’t be limited to our own local context. Difficult tasks will be contemplated from the default position of “we should try and go unless God tells us specifically to stay where we are.” Most of all, we as Christians will intentionally place ourselves “in the way” of cultures—at places where we will most likely intersect those who have no knowledge of Christ, Christianity, or the Gospel (and not just people who simply don’t attend our church).