Neil Darragh discusses how Christian communities need to shift from a focus on themselves to seeing service in the realm of God as their primary focus.

Advent is the season in the Church’s year when we reconsider who we are and how our future could be better than our past. Two years ago, in an article in Tui Motu (Dec 2020) which faced essentially the same question about our future, I suggested (as many others had also done) that we shift our energies as Christian communities from a “self-focused” Church to a “mission-focused” Church.

The term “mission” as in, for example, a “mission statement”, has entered into the general, secular vocabulary of many businesses, corporations, schools, etc. There it is usually a brief statement of the major objectives or goals of that organisation.

In the Church and in Christian theology, however, the term “mission” has a much more specific meaning. It refers to the objectives which are outside the Church itself. It is an outreach. It refers to those activities which are undertaken for the well-being of the wider society and the planet rather than for the benefit of church members themselves.

In the recent past, it has become common for Christian communities, parishes in particular, to see their mission as mainly community care and community development. So, for example, the “mission” of a parish might be to become a diverse, vibrant, and welcoming community that provides a fertile spiritual ground for everyone to grow their Christian faith and to commit themselves with love and wisdom to proclaim the joy of the Gospel. Yet this is still a self-focused Church. It is focused on how we look after one another, how we build welcoming and creative communities, how we achieve better liturgies, how we increase the numbers of church members, etc.

Obstacles to Mission

Over the last two years, the idea of “mission” and such terms as “we are all missionary disciples” have become common. Yet our local churches do not seem to be much different from what they were two years ago. Even where there is an intention to become a “missionary Church”, there still seem to be “obstacles” in the way. And these obstacles, I suggest, can be found largely in our own attitudes. Perhaps noting and removing these obstacles might be a project we could undertake as we set our goals for this Advent season and a new year.

What then are the obstacles that make it difficult for our local Christian communities to shift from a self-focused to a mission-focused Church?

Let us imagine that someone poses to us the question: Does your Church have a mission focus?

Mission of Attraction

Some parishes answer like this: “Yes, we have a mission focus. We are very concerned with attracting more people into the Church. We have an active Order of Christian Initiation of Adults for receiving new members into the Church. We try to make our Sunday Eucharists attractive and ‘seeker friendly’. We actively reach out to people who are not Christian.”

What we need to note here is that this is a mission of attraction. It is undoubtedly part of mission, but it is only a part. It is an obstacle to a full mission focus to the extent that people believe this is all mission is about and ignore the wider sense of mission which is about the Church’s contribution to the realm/reign of God — a reality much larger than the Church. It minimises the idea of mission. It looks like mission, and it is part of mission but it is essentially self-focused. It is concerned with building up the Church rather than being a contributor to the wider, evolving realm of God.

Mission of Compassion

Other parishes I know might answer like this: “Yes, we have a mission focus. Our priests, ministers and volunteers reach out beyond our own community in looking after people who are in need. We have a food bank; we have volunteers who visit the sick. We have organised advocacy for people who need help in engaging with government departments or NGOs for assistance, we take up collections for aid agencies such as Caritas, Red Cross or Christian World Service. The parable of the ‘good Samaritan’ and the ‘corporal works of mercy’ are central in our Church’s understanding of Christianity”.

The thing to note here is that this is a mission of compassion (or mercy). Nearly every local church engages in this kind of care for those in need. These are all mission actions in the sense that they look after those in need regardless of whether they are church members or not. A Church could hardly even claim to be Christian at all without such care for vulnerable people outside as well as inside its own community. Yet if the Church’s mission is confined to this, its mission is minimal. This is a compassionate community, but it hardly qualifies as a missionary community. The restriction of Christian mission to acts of compassion is an obstacle to realising the full agenda (social justice, planetary care, etc.) of Christian mission which extends well beyond this immediate sense of compassion.

Mission as One of a Cluster

A third and common answer to the question is as follows: “Yes. We have a special team within the parish that is mandated to carry out our Church's outreach to the wider world. It sits alongside our other church activities such as our liturgy committee, our property and finance group, our pastoral care team, our youth group, our liturgical ministers, our choir, our education team, our sacramental programme, our Catholic school and

others. We consider our mission team to be a full member of our parish pastoral planning team.”

We probably stand in awe at this very busy parish and the committed energy of its members. Yet this too misses the mark of a mission focus. Here mission activity is just one among a whole cluster of church activities. This is a parish which engages in mission activities, but it is not a parish with a mission focus. Its mission outreach is submerged beneath a cluster of many different objectives.

Everything Is Mission

A fourth response to the question is: “Yes, we are a missionary parish because we are all missionary disciples and everything we do is mission.”

In this case all parish activities are regarded as “mission”: from washing the altar linen to teaching Christian living to taking part in a protest march to leading a liturgy. “Mission” has now come to mean everything. The term “mission” is effectively neutralised and means carrying on with whatever we are doing anyway. The term means everything and nothing.

The above examples describe a reduction of mission: mission of attraction, mission of compassion, mission as one of many activities. There are mission activities here but mission is not the focus.

A Mission Focus

A mission-focused Church, on the other hand, is one in which service to the realm of God is seen as the Church’s primary purpose. Most of its energy is directed to the well-being of this wider realm of God. This Church will still engage in church activities such as those noted above. Yet in a mission-focused Church, all of these are both relativised and invigorated by its primary purpose of service to the larger realm of God. Education, for example, would alert people not just to inner Church beliefs and common practices but also to action for well-being in the wider society. Similarly, liturgy would not just gather church members together in worship but also send them out purposefully into God’s wider world. Pastoral care would not just attend to people’s needs but strengthen and equip them for engagement in the evolving realm of God. Similarly for other common local church activities. A mission focus does not abandon the normal community activities of a Christian community but it alters our attention and focuses the direction of all these activities outwards.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 277 December 2022: 4-5