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I write this post extremely tentatively. Far greater writers, with more insightful intelligence and with vastly more experience than I, have attempted to answer the question: What is a Missionary? Of course, since our family have only been based in Madagascar for just two months, it feels almost impudent to try and pen a suitable description. I certainly don’t feel like a missionary yet, despite the fact that most people here on the ground perceive me as such. I cannot communicate with my host country on a base level, let alone form deeper relationships and engage in the task of preaching the gospel. Disciple-making, church-planting and mobilising all remain, as you would expect, at zero. But I am going to take a stab at a working definition. And who knows? Perhaps in some years I will revisit this post and revise it with all of my acquired missionary knowledge and a treasure trove of experience. Or perhaps I will be just as clueless then as I am now.
When I was younger, I heard Rev. J. John preach on evangelism and he made a remark that has stuck with me since that time:
A missionary is not someone who crosses the sea, a missionary is someone who sees the cross
I’m sure you can understand how I could remember such a pithy statement. But as I am here in Antananarivo, residing thousands of miles from my homeland having crossed the sea for Christ, I question its veracity. Those that are called missionaries certainly appear to be doing something “other” than the saints whom God calls to remain in their localities. Furthermore, if a missionary is simply someone who sees the cross, surely that includes all Christendom? This speaks to the wider debate in missiological discourse - are all gospel people missionaries? Is not the task of world evangelisation the task for all disciples of Christ? At this point I am being facetious, because I am sure that J. John was not wading into these questions, but rather highlighting the need for all missionaries to have Christ and him crucified at the centre of their message for the world. However, I do hope to pass comment on some of these questions, as well as posit a few more. For example:
Is the mere act of going enough to designate one’s self as a missionary or must there be specific further actions to earn this title?
Is there a biblical role that the term missionary inherits, or is a missionary a composite of several biblical roles?
Is a missionary defined as much by the type of audience they are trying to reach and serve?
Ok…here is my working definition, which I will outline in detail below:
A missionary is someone who is sent by God through His Church
to preach the Gospel to the nations.
A missionary is someone who is sent
This is the most distinguishable mark which I can think of that sets the term missionary apart from other Christian roles. It is important to note that the word missionary is not one seen in sacred Scripture, but rather than discard it, we must consider the biblical roles that the missionary inherits through imitation. Many scholars have tried to link the role of missionary to the pastor or the evangelist. But in the first instance, the pastor’s focus on his flock is too narrow for what missionaries have done historically. And the latter role of evangelist has the opposite problem, its scope is too broad for the peculiar nuances of the missionary. It is true that all missionaries should be evangelists (much in the same way that all Christians must be evangelists!) but it is certainly not true that all evangelists are missionaries.
The closest God-given role to the title missionary must be apostle. Apostles were specifically “sent-ones” who were tasked with disseminating the good news and teachings of Jesus, and this role often meant travelling to different communities, cultures and countries to do so. The Apostle Paul is the greatest example of a proto-missionary, sent by God for the specific task of proclaiming the gospel to the Gentiles. However, using the term apostle to describe someone being sent to carry out the mission of God would raise an eyebrow in today’s Christian parlance. Especially considering the debates on “capital-A” and “small-a” apostles, and the other roles of New Testament apostles as being witness to the risen Christ and writing Scripture itself, we can see why the missionary as a title for a Christian being sent is more en vogue. This is also probably why the term church-planter has also increased in popularity (the comparison between missionary and church-planter is an interesting one, but perhaps for another post).
By God
This speaks to the specific “calling” that God places on the missionary before he is sent out. One does not merely fall into the life and role of a missionary for God, even if that is how it seems at the time. Even for myself, I struggled with the idea of a missionary call for quite some time. But whether the irresistible missionary call from God occurs more explicitly before one is sent (as happened in my wife Miriam’s life) or the more winding journey to the mission field through resistance, struggling, acceptance and confirmation (as with myself, and Jonah), the providence of God is mightily at work in the life of a missionary. One way or another, the call of the missionary by God to be sent for Him resolutely hardens as we push into the role.
Through His Church
This is, sadly, often overlooked by many who assume the role of missionary, but the true missionary will be sent by God through the instrument of the Church that he has instituted. For the Global Church, and subsequently local churches, is ultimately how God has intended the message of his good news to be spread. If Christians are called to be ambassadors, the Church is the embassy in this foreign world that we are sent out from. There are countless examples in the New Testament church where cross-cultural “sent-ones” are sent out into the world through the praying, the laying of hands and resourcing of the local churches. Paul wrote his epistles to many churches, not just for encouraging or admonishing them, but also to ask for missionary support. Towards the end of Romans, for example, Paul aims to visit Spain but he asks the church in Rome “to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while” [Romans 15:24]. The local church and the catholic Church are vital to the sending out of missionaries into the world.
To preach the gospel
My discomfort in being designated a missionary (in my current circumstance) is due to the fact that the preaching of the gospel is a crucial aspect to the definition of a missionary. Being in Madagascar for only two months without the linguistic means to express the gospel to others means that I feel more like a glorified tourist (although I will accept missionary-in-training). Whilst preaching the gospel does not distinguish missionaries from other ministering Christians, it is still the defining purpose of a missionary, the raison d’etre. In recent years, this sort of claim would have drawn the ire of many missionaries and missiologists who would advocate other “marks of mission” such as social justice, creation care, sustainable development, advocacy, and many more. But before the excellent Micah Network and other similar organisations take me to task, by no means am I disparaging these additional foci for cross-cultural Christian workers, or indeed any Christian. Integral mission is a healthy, godly aspiration for Christians who should not just be mouthpieces for God but the very fragrance of Christ, living and obeying the teachings of our Master.
But for the missionary, primacy must be given to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I argue that if we exercise these other mission marks to the detriment of the chief task of proclamation, then we lose the definition of what is truly means to be a missionary. Our sending by God through His Church is to preach Christ and Him crucified. I liken the relationship between proclamation and demonstration to the Jamesian perspective between faith and works. For Paul and James, we are saved by faith alone through grace alone in Christ alone, but James particularly impressed upon the fact that our faith is not alone, but rather evidenced by the works that we do as Christians in this life. Similarly, demonstrating the mission of God through upholding the dignity of man, social justice and the other “marks of mission” verify and adorn the genuine transformation that the gospel brings in the hands of the Church. But this demonstration is not the grounds of God’s mission, but rather the heralding of the gospel message itself. This is at the root of the Great Commission in Matthew 28 - the gospel being proclaimed through us is what will make disciples.
To the nations
This brings us to the question of audience, who does the missionary preach the gospel to? The organisation I work with, Africa Inland Mission has specific focus of reaching the unreached on the African continent. Certainly unreached people groups are a prime target for the missionary for, of course, "how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?" [Romans 10:14-15]. The Apostle Paul was focused to preach where Christ had never been heard before. So is it the unreached that sets apart the definition of missionary from the work of other Christians?
If this is the case then it may be a difficult justification for our family to remain in Antananarivo. A strong Christian presence exists in the capital city of Madagascar (although there are still groups here that are considered unreached) with missionaries working alongside indigenous disciples of Jesus for the glory of God. Furthermore, even though Paul was sent to the unreached, he acknowledged that there are those who sow, those who plant and those who water, but "he who plants and he who waters are one" [1 Cor 3:8] because it is God who is the catalyst. I am indebted to the recent article written by A. J. Gibson regarding other groups that the missionary is sent to. Gibson identifies the misreached, once-reached and underreached groups, each of whom require the services of a missionary sent to them by God through His Church to preach the gospel.¹ The West, existing in Christian comfortability for centuries now, have many of these groups, and will soon require a fresh wave of missionaries sent by God to reset, revitalise and reform through the power of the gospel.
The image of the intrepid explorer-missionary, who must adapt to harsh environments and need intense cross-cultural training to proclaim truth to the unreached, is only one version of a missionary. Another may be called and sent by God to minister to the underreached in their own country. I think of my in-laws who are doing this very thing, sent by God to proclaim the gospel in a council estate of their country of origin, they are no less a missionary than I. The missionary is sent to the nations, in whatever form that takes through the mercy and providence of God Himself.
A Complete Definition?
By no means! Thankfully, there are many examples throughout church history that challenge and subvert this definition that I have given. Perhaps in future posts I will push back on my own definition using these examples. Yet it is crucial for all missionaries to reflect and consider the radix, the root of their calling. If we want to fulfil our calling to its zenith, we need to slice the extraneous fat off our job description and look to Scripture for the leaner, truer missionary we need to be.
¹ Gibson, A. J., "Who Needs Missionaries? (It’s Not Just the ‘Unreached’)," The Gospel Coalition (Accessed 13th April 2023) https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/needs-missionaries-unreached/
Other resources include:
DeYoung, Kevin and Greg Gilbert., What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission. (Crossway, 2011)
Rhodes, Matt., No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions (Crossway, 2022)
A recent talk from Kevin DeYoung at the Radius International Conference 2022 addressing this issue is also worth your time.