The Scope of Missions

Having laid out a working definition of the church’s mission, we can now discuss what missions is. As previously mentioned, missions refers to various undertakings of the Church toward fulfilling its one mission. But what might be included in such undertakings? In other words, what is the scope of missions? Let's consider a few options.

View No. 1 - Missions as being primarily to the Unreached People Groups.

This is an extreme view that emphasizes the fact that the Christ’s Second Coming will occur only once “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world” (Mat 24:14). Paul’s personal ambition to preach the gospel to those who have never heard of Christ (Romans 15:20-21) is applied to all missionary activity. Therefore, the argument is that missions ought to focus primarily on the Unreached People Groups, namely, those whose population has only 2% or less evangelicals and 5% or less Christians (according to the Joshua Project’s progress scale. https://joshuaproject.net/global/progress).

View No. 2 - Missions is “to the nations”

This view emphasizes the fact that the church is to go to “all nations”. Support for this view can be drawn from Matthew 28:19 (cf. Gen. 12:3), which has an outward orientation. Therefore, missions is clearly distinguished from evangelism in that the latter is focused on the local community while the former is focused on disciple-making across geographical, cultural, and ethnic barriers. The scope of missions is smaller than the scope of the Great Commission.

This is the historical view of missions, especially since William Carey began the modern Protestant missionary movement. During his time, Protestant churches were eager to evangelize the unconverted within the “Christian” nations, but were uninterested in reaching “the heathen” nations. Missions, therefore, was seen as distinct from the evangelism that churches were already doing. In the words of DeYoung & Gilbert,

It used to be that mission referred... to Christians sent out cross-culturally to convert non-Christians and plant churches.

View No. 3 - Missions involves both local evangelism and foreign missions

In this view, missions covers everything from local evangelism to foreign missions. It is sharing the gospel to anyone, anywhere. Emphasized here is the church’s “sentness”, that it is God’s representative to all unconverted people, whether they be in the local community or overseas. Luke’s commission accounts (Luke 24:44-49 and Acts 1:8) seem to support this view, since they indicate that missions began with Jerusalem and spread outward. The scope of missions is said to be the same as the combined scope of all the Great Commissions.

Emphasis on the church’s “sentness” was popularized in the late 90s and early 2000s as part of the idea of the “missional” church. One missiologist explains that

the basic premise of the missional church is that “missions” is not simply one of the functions or programs of a church. It constitutes the very essence or nature of the church.”

(Jonathan Leeman, “What in the World is the Missional Church?” 9Marks Magazine Volume 3 Issue 8.) 

The View I Take

Missions unquestionably emerges from core biblical truth, but the word itself isn't found in Scripture, so Christians are free to define it differently. I personally take the third view because, it has the strongest Scriptural support. The New Testament uses the verb apostello (to send) even though it never uses the noun form apostelein (ie, missions). The connection is so close that we inevitably draw our ideas of missions from Scriptures's examples of sending. It just makes sense to apply the scope of sending to our concept of missions. And clearly, the Lord has sent the church to begin preaching the gospel locally and then proceed to the ends of the earth.