Western Christianity is having the wrong debate about 'mission'
Western Christianity is having the wrong debate about “mission.”
We keep debating methods: more digital outreach or more small groups, more political engagement or more community service, more “revival” meetings or more social justice. The result is exhaustion and fragmentation. But the deeper problem is simpler. Many churches have stopped answering one basic question with clarity: Who is sending us, and for what purpose?
Mission is not a church program. It is the Church’s identity.
When mission becomes a program, it becomes optional. Churches can cut it when budgets tighten or when conflict rises. When mission is identity, it is non-negotiable. The church exists because God sends, and because God has acted decisively in Jesus Christ.
Start where the apostles started
The New Testament’s starting point is not strategy; it is an event. God raised Jesus from the dead and made him Lord (Acts 2:32–36). That confession is not a spiritual slogan. It is a public claim about reality: Jesus Christ is alive, reigning, and calling a people to witness.
This is why Paul says the resurrection is not optional. If Christ is not raised, Christian faith collapses (1 Corinthians 15:14–17). In other words, mission begins where the apostles began: not with our anxiety, not with our marketing, not with our politics, but with God’s action.
The early Church did not grow because it had perfect techniques. It grew because it had a clear center: a crucified and risen Lord, and a Spirit-empowered community sent into the world.
Two thin substitutes for mission
Once we lose that anchor, mission gets reduced to one of two thin substitutes.
Some treat mission as activism: the Church becomes an NGO with Bible verses, and the gospel becomes a banner for our causes. Others treat mission as private spirituality: the church becomes a wellness space, and the Gospel becomes a tool for personal coping. Both can do some good. But neither is what Jesus commissioned.
Activism without the risen Lord turns the Church into a competitor in the marketplace of ideologies. Spirituality without public witness turns the Church into a private club for managing anxiety. In both cases, the church becomes small — either captive to the news cycle or captive to personal preference.
Witness, not branding
Jesus did not say, “Build a brand.” He said, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). He did not promise a life of comfort. He promised the Spirit, and he promised power for witness.
Witness is not the same thing as promotion. Witness is testimony — speaking and living in a way that says, “this is what God has done, and this is who Jesus is.” Witness includes proclamation, but it also includes a community life that makes proclamation credible.
A church can have excellent slogans and still have no witness. If people cannot see reconciliation, humility, and truthfulness in the church’s life, they will assume the Gospel is another technique for influence.
Worship is formation, not entertainment
This is what many churches in the Global South understand instinctively, often better than we do. In places where Christians are poor, marginalized, or threatened, “mission” is not an add-on. It is survival, hope, and truth-telling. Worship is not entertainment. It is formation.
Worship trains allegiance. It shapes what we love and what we refuse. When worship becomes consumer experience, the church starts to mirror the market. When worship is Scripture-shaped and Christ-centered, it forms a people who can endure, repent, forgive, and serve.
The Lord’s Table is not sentimental. It is public proclamation: “We proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:26). That single sentence is mission in miniature — cross, hope, and public truth. When the church gathers, it is rehearsing a story and training a people to live inside it.
Cruciform churches are credible
A missional church looks different. It is not obsessed with winning. It is committed to witness. It rejects coercion because it follows a crucified Lord. It refuses cynicism because it believes in resurrection.
This means mission cannot be built on manipulation, celebrity culture, or fear. Those tactics may gather crowds, but they hollow out the Gospel. The church cannot proclaim a crucified Christ while practicing domination. It cannot proclaim reconciliation while feeding tribal contempt. It cannot proclaim truth while tolerating lies for the sake of “success.”
The credibility crisis facing many churches is not mainly intellectual. It is moral and community. People are not only asking, “Is Christianity true?” They are asking, “Does Christianity produce a community that looks like Jesus?”
Acts 2 is still a blueprint
The church’s missional life is not complicated to describe. Acts 2 gives the basics: teaching rooted in Scripture, prayer, shared life, hospitality, generosity, and public witness. Not perfection — faithfulness. Not performance — presence.
A church like that can speak about justice without becoming captive to ideology, because it is anchored in the lordship of Jesus. It can speak about salvation without becoming escapist, because it is committed to embodied mercy. It can speak about holiness without becoming cruel, because its holiness is cruciform.
The map is the Gospel
The Western church does not need a new mission. It needs a recovered map.
The map is not hidden. It is the Gospel itself: Christ crucified, Christ risen, Christ reigning, Christ sending. When that is the center, worship stops being a product and becomes formation. Mission stops being a department and becomes identity. And the Church stops being a nervous institution trying to survive and becomes what it was meant to be: a people who can say, with credibility, “Jesus is Lord,” and live as if it is true.
That is not a technique. It is repentance. It is renewal. And it is our only way forward.
Rev. Dr. Richard Howell is the founder President of Caleb Institute. And Chairman of Evangelical Church of God established in 1977. He is the former General Secretary of Evangelical Fellowship of India. (1997-2015) and of Asian Evangelical Alliance for ten years. He was Vice President of World Evangelical Alliance of Four Years. And a founding member of Global Christian Forum.
