Tim Dakin(Photo: © CMS)“As you go make disciples of all peoples.”
Throughout history, God, by his Holy Spirit, has ensured that the Church has been continually transformed to be a community that obeys this command from Matthew 28:19. But we may be surprised by the way that the Holy Spirit does this.
A major way is through migration. Since Jesus’ time the Holy Spirit has kept us on the go through migrations. This has ensured that the Christian community has faced the challenge of making disciples of all peoples.
To make disciples of all peoples is to be evangelistic in sharing and imparting the gospel, to engage holistically with peoples’ cultures and contexts, and to do all this worldwide as we go.
CMS is a lay community which has discovered that the calling to be a disciple of Jesus is at the heart of all our callingsA “semi-detached appendix of the Great European Migration,” is how Andrew Walls describes the modern mission movement! And though it was sometimes despised, Walls says it played a significant role in the contemporary transformation of Christianity from being a religion of the northern hemisphere to being a global religion for all (see his essay in the book advertised on page 22).
CMS was part of that modern mission movement; and we are now part of the Great Reverse Migration in which people from all over the world are connecting, moving and establishing themselves in the northern hemisphere, particularly the West.
The Holy Spirit, to whom the Church is given for mission, is still working to ensure that God’s people are evangelistic, holistic and worldwide. Today, as never before, we see a worldwide network of God’s people in mission.
So what sort of community is CMS, as shaped by these migrations? We may say five things:
- it is a missionary or missional community, in which God’s mission to all peoples comes first – a movement in which mission is evangelistic, holistic and worldwide
- it is an ecumenical community which engages with the greater Church as God seeks to express his life through his people throughout the world
- it is a spread-out community which has many centres and is held together in a network of relationships in multiple cultures across the world, with some concentrations here and there it is a lay community which has discovered that the calling to be a disciple of Jesus is at the heart of all our callings and vocations in God’s world and in his Church
- it is a diaconal community, a community of mission service that is obeying Jesus’ call and therefore aims to inspire, enable and resource others in God’s mission
CMS is exploring what it might mean for the Church of England to recognise us as this kind of mission community. A community that has emerged and been shaped over the last 200 years by mission on the go.
We’re exploring how being an ‘acknowledged community’ would help us to be more of what we are, to be encouraged in our vocation and in the way of life that sustains it.