Matthew 28:19-20, John 20:21, Acts 1:8
A Sent People
The word "mission" comes from the Latin missio — to send. The church is a sent people. As Jesus said to His disciples: "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you." (John 20:21). The church does not exist for itself — it exists for the world it has been sent into.
The Great Commission
The clearest statement of the church's mission is the Great Commission:
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. — Matthew 28:19-20
The mission is to make disciples — not merely converts, not merely church attenders, but disciples: people who are baptised into the community of faith, taught to obey everything Christ commanded, and shaped into the likeness of Christ.
This is both evangelistic and formational. The Great Commission is not just about getting people to pray a prayer — it is about the comprehensive discipleship of whole persons and whole communities.
Word and Deed
The church's mission includes both proclamation (the verbal announcement of the gospel) and demonstration (the visible expression of the kingdom through acts of love, justice, and mercy).
Jesus's own ministry combined both: He preached the kingdom and He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and welcomed the outcast. The church is not faithful to its mission if it only preaches without caring for the poor, or only serves the poor without proclaiming the gospel.
Micah 6:8 calls God's people to "do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God." Isaiah 58 describes true religion in terms of loosening the chains of injustice and sharing food with the hungry. These are not alternatives to the gospel mission — they are expressions of it.
Local and Global
The church's mission is both local — loving the neighbourhood it inhabits, serving the community around it — and global. Acts 1:8 describes a concentric expansion: Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth. The church is simultaneously responsible for its immediate context and for the unreached peoples of the world.
Every local church is a sending base — praying for, giving to, and sending missionaries to the remaining unreached peoples, while simultaneously engaging its own community with the gospel.