Mission & The Fourth Gospel

July 21, 2008 | Filed Under missional |

The contemporary church desperately needs a self-understanding that will embolden and empower us for ministry in this changing world. In spite of the enormous gap between what the church is and what it is called to be, we have no alternative but to continue to cling to a belief in the church’s identity like that found in the Gospel of John.

Part of our struggle is not with the world or culture “out there”; it is with the world or culture “in here.” Like an athletic team that has a petty dispute within its own ranks, the church’s witness is paled and depreciated.

For clergy and congregational leaders that means, among other things, that we can never divide the ministry within our community and the ministry outside our community. Each nurtures the other. We know that we strengthen our ministry beyond the wall of the church by nurturing hope and enthusiasm among our members; but it is also true that, the more we stretch ourselves out into the world the stronger we become for doing so.

Obviously the Gospel of John supplies us no quick fix for the life of the church in the next decades. Nor is its witness entirely unambiguous. However, this gospel may provide some clarity in terms of who God wants us to be and what God wants us to do. Certainly in a church that is sometimes dominated by Pauline conceptions of the church and its ministry, the Fourth Gospel, too, deserves a hearing.

– Robert Kysar, “As you Sent Me: Identity and Mission in the Fourth Gospel” Word & World, Fall 2001

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