I finally started reading Leslie Newbigin's "The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society." I've heard it referenced so often by people I respect. I bought it last Fall as we began a Bible study in Matthew with a view that was going to be attentive to Matthew's presentation of the "ekklesia," the church. Matthew is the only gospel that uses that word. The following quote is from the chapter, "The Logic of Mission," about halfway through the book:
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I am concerned to explore the question of how the mission of the Church is rooted in the gospel itself. There has been a long tradition which sees the mission of the Church primarily as obedience to a command. It has been customary to speak of "the missionary mandate." This way of putting the matter is certainly not without justification, and yet it seems to me that it misses the point. It tends to make mission a burden rather than a joy, to make it part of the law rather than part of the gospel. If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possibly be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? The mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving. One searches in vain through the letters of St. Paul to find any suggestion that he anywhere lays it on the conscience of his readers that they out to be active in mission. For himself it is inconceivable that he should keep silent. "Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (1 Cor. 9:16). But nowhere do we find him telling his readers that they have a duty to do so." (p. 116)
Hopefully, I'll be able to digest the book enough to share more here in the days to come; but following our Sundays on Jesus' "Discourse on Mission" from Matthew 10, I thought this was a wonderful and appropriate paragraph from Newbigin.
