Jesus alone stimulates and evokes our faith. Jesus is the source or origin of our faith. He is the originator of Christian faith within the believer. He initiated and sustained it. He is the completer or finisher who has gone before us and has completed the course. He is waiting for us in heaven (John 14:1-3; 1 John 3:1-3). "This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 6:19-20).
The optimistic belief in the possibility of actually finishing the task is diminished by the way in which we define the task in terms of reaching lost people everywhere. In contrast to this, when the task is conceived in terms of penetrating peoples it opens the door to a host of specific definitions that can measure in terms of those definitions the progress of the task. Thus changing missiological reality, which now becomes measurable through the “reaching” of people groups, fuels the hope of closure, completing this aspect of the task of the Great Commission and fulfilling the condition of Matthew 24:14 so that the end of this age can come.
This reminds of St. Joseph only because Tyndale University College & Seminary purchased the convent of the Sister of St. Joseph and I learned a few things.
"St. Joseph was an ordinary sort of man on whom God relied to do great things. He did exactly what the Lord wanted him to do, in each and every event that went to make up his life."
One has to feel sorry for individuals like George Whitfield who lost touch with the extraordinary.
"As for the extraordinary operations of the Holy Ghost, such as working of miracles, or speaking with divers kinds of tongues, they are long since ceased."
William Carey reminded his readers of the ultimate significance of missionary work:
“What a heaven will it be to see the many myriads of poor heathens, of Britons amongst the rest, who by their labours have been brought to the knowledge of God. Surely a crown of rejoicing like this is worth aspiring to. Surely it is worth while to lay ourselves out with all our might, in promoting the cause, and kingdom of Christ.”
To the average Christian there is no distinction between evangelism and evangelization. But to the World Christian Movement there is a distinction. Essentially, that distinction is that evangelism involves the saving of souls, while evangelization means the saving of whole nations or "people groups spiritually and temporally through political and social action.
A major obstacle to understanding the true motives and goals of the World Christian Movement is the inability to discern this distinction. That such a distinction exists is openly acknowledged by the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization, from which the World Christian Movement has sprung. In an interview prior to the first International Congress on World Evangelization, Bishop A. Jack Dam of the Anglican Church in Sydney, Australia, who served as Executive Chairman of ICOWE, stated:
"Lausanne is a Congress on evangelization, not a Congress on evangelism. [The World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin, held in 1966] was the first of many congresses on evangelism. But I think now the present thought in the minds of many leaders around the world is that we need not only to think of evangelism, that is, the proclamation of the Gospel, but the whole task given to us by the risen Christ. This, I think more aptly, is called evangelization."
Maybe this is a good time to end this post with the anchor of choice - women. Love this quote from a gathering in Edinborough in 2010 of the world leaders - which had this to particular say about women and missions --
"Since both women and men are made in the image of God, they should both be present, working side by side in mission. Failure to fully integrate women will hinder the capacity of Edinburgh 2010 to assess critically the status of the world, to renew our understanding of God’s purpose for creation in Christ, and to further a renewed vision of spirituality and mission for the 21st century’.
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