Missions

Missions is the practice of sending messengers beyond an existing community to announce God's good news to peoples who have not heard it, and the word itself comes from the Latin missio, "a sending." The New Testament grounds the practice in commands attributed to the risen Jesus: the text says in Matthew 28:19, "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," and in Mark 16:15, "Go into all the world and preach the Good News to the whole creation." Luke records the same charge with a geographical starting point and a legal image, saying that "repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem" (Luke 24:47), and adds, "You are witnesses of these things" (Luke 24:48).

The concept is not confined to those closing scenes. The text presents the gathering of scattered peoples as God's own intention in Isaiah 43:6–7, where the north and south are told, "Bring my sons from far away, and my daughters from the ends of the earth," namely "everyone who is called by my name, and whom I have created for my glory." Acts shows the sending carried out concretely: the Holy Spirit directs the church at Antioch, "Separate Barnabas and Saul for me, for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2), and Paul describes his commission as being sent "to open their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God" (Acts 26:17–18). Acts 13:47 applies Isaiah's servant words to that work — "I have set you as a light for the Gentiles, that you should bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth" — and Revelation 14:6–7 envisions an angel with "an eternal Good News to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people," calling them to "Fear the Lord, and give him glory."

Linguistically and historically, the Greek verb apostellō ("to send") and the noun apostolos ("sent one") stand behind the New Testament's sending language, while "missions" as a named program is a much later development: historians trace the organized mission society, and the word "missions" in its modern sense, to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, well after the biblical period. A textual point worth noting honestly: Mark 16:15 falls within the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20), which is absent from the earliest extant manuscripts and is treated by most critical scholars as a later addition, though it is canonical Scripture in Catholic, Orthodox, and most Protestant Bibles. The English word "mission" also carries a broader everyday sense of purpose or vocation, from which the narrower cross-cultural sense must be distinguished.

Traditions differ in how they frame all this. Catholic and Orthodox teaching characteristically describes mission as participation in the divine sending, emphasizing the liturgy, evangelization, and the gradual inculturation of the gospel within a people's culture; Orthodox writers often speak of the liturgy itself as the church's primary witness. Evangelical Protestant traditions tend to stress the Great Commission's command to proclaim and to plant churches, and Pentecostal and charismatic churches typically emphasize Spirit-empowered witness with signs following. Mainline and ecumenical bodies more often define mission holistically, joining proclamation with service, justice, and care for creation, while some traditions reserve the word "mission" for cross-cultural work and call local outreach "evangelism." Related disagreements persist over the boundary between mission and proselytism, and over whether dialogue with other faiths belongs inside or alongside the missionary task.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.