What Is the Church’s Mission, Again?
The mission of Cities Church comes from exactly what Jesus tells us to do in Matthew 28:18–20. He says to make disciples, and our mission is as straightforward as that: we exist to make disciples of Jesus.
This is to say:
We aim to multiply and mature worshipers, servants, and missionaries of Jesus who live faithfully in the home, the church, and the world.
But when I say “we” what do I mean? Am I talking about “we” as in our church altogether? Or do I mean “we” as in all of us as Christian individuals?
Well, I mean “we” as in our church corporately, and I want to clarify this because it’s an important distinction we can often forget.
The mission of the church corporately is not the same as the mission of Christian individuals. Now, of course, there is wonderful overlap, but there are some things churches corporately can’t do that individual Christians can, and vice versa, and both positive and negative.
As Jonathan Leeman puts it,
This is crucial for a conversation about the mission of the church because it means we now have two jobs to think about: the job of the whole family and the job of every individual member of the family — an “our” job and a “your” job. Jesus has assigned certain duties to the whole family for when we act together as a family, and he has assigned other duties for each of us as individual members acting separately. (What Is the Church's Mission?, 20)
In short, Leeman explains that the church corporate’s job is to make disciples, and the church member’s job (Christian individuals throughout the week) is to be disciples.
“MAKING disciples — this is the church corporate’s mission.
BEING disciples — this is the church member’s mission as a Christian individual in all spheres of life.”
I think confusion on this distinction is usually what’s happening when you hear complaints like “The church doesn’t do enough of …” or “The church has failed at …” If you put this through the grid of Church corporate or Christian individual you’ll find that most critiques on the church corporate are actually meant for Christian individuals. This is almost always the case in matters of justice.
There are things we might wish the church corporate would do more of, but actually, only Christian individuals can do those things. And the church’s mission is to make disciples who in being disciples does them.
For more on this topic, check out Jonathan’s latest booklet What Is the Church’s Mission?
This booklet, like all of the others in this series, is superb. And you could probably read the whole thing in a half hour.
