Every group, business and organization in the USA seems to have a mission statement these days.  It usually says something about what that organization is and what it does.    

Since its beginning, the church has also had a sense of mission.  Unfortunately, our understanding of mission has often not always been molded from the gospel, but from our greed for power.  From the crusades, inquisition, and our desire to ‘convert the heathen’, the history of Christian mission is a painful one that has caused the church and the people of the world more harm than good.  This is not the Good News!

Even today, mission is understood in different ways.  To ask a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness what mission is, they will say that it is knocking on doors and converting people.  Many Pentecostal Christians understand it as seeing how many people you can ‘save’. 

So what do we do with this word?  Should we, as Lutherans, abandon the use of the word?  Or should we stand up and reclaim it, in the way we feel called to do? Read the rest of this entry →