The Church and Mission - Christianity Today

THE CHURCH exists for mission, and … a church that is only inward looking is not truly the church.Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission

JESUS CHRIST is God’s missionary par excellence, and he involves his followers in his mission.C. Rene Padilla in Missiology

JESUS SENDS US into the world, as the Father sent him into the world. … In other words our mission is to be modeled on his. Indeed all authentic mission is incarnational mission. It demands identification without loss of identity. It means entering other people’s worlds as he entered ours, though without compromising our Christian convictions, values, or standards.John Stott, The Contemporary Christian

THE CHIEF ACTOR in the historic mission of the Christian church is the Holy Spirit. He is the director of the whole enterprise. The mission consists of things that he is doing in the world. In a special way it consists of the light that he is focusing upon Jesus Christ.John V. Taylor, The Go-Between God

GOD HAS BEEN calling out from the world a people for himself and sending his people back into the world to be his servants and his witnesses, for the extension of his kingdom, the building up of Christ’s body, and the glory of his name. We confess with shame that we often denied our calling and failed in our mission by becoming conformed to the world or by withdrawing from it. Yet we rejoice that even when borne by earthen vessels, the gospel is still a precious treasure.From The Lausanne Covenant

ANY LONG-RANGE vision for missions must include not only the planting of new churches but also the renewal of old ones. The former without the latter eventually leads only to lands full of dead and dying churches. The birth of new congregations is no guarantee that they will remain spiritually alive.Paul Hiebert in Exploring Church Growth

NO FACT of history is more amazing than the spread of the influence of Jesus.Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity

THE GOSPEL is global good news. Thinking globally, God acted locally. The gospel is good news about personal, social, ecological, and cosmic healing and reconciliation. It is good news to the whole creation—to the whole earth and in fact to the cosmos.Howard A. Snyder, Global Good News

THE CHURCH must be one because a fragmented church is not much help to a fragmented world.Justo L. Gonzalez, For the Healing of the Nations

All quotations found in Samuel Escobar’s The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone (Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective); InterVarsity Press, 2003.