'Special Mission'

Ross Paterson, AM-CCSM's International Director. Posted on 29 March 2010.

The word ‘mission' in a Christian context is facing a challenge as to its definition.

Understandably, many believers feel that any outreach service for the Lord is to be defined as their individual or church ‘mission'. It might be church planting in their city, or seeing the Gospel penetrate into the world of their work, or any local outreach in which they might be involved. That view of ‘mission' is in many ways valid.

However, there is a danger also in that kind of definition. It leaves many with no specific word for cross-cultural ‘mission' to other people groups and to other lands. There is no term now that specifically challenges us to witness "to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8) and to reach every people group (Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20), so that no people group, however small, is lacking when the redeemed gather before the throne of the Lamb (Revelation 5:9-10). Where the Great Commission is not defined in its original context of mission to the ends of the earth, it will in my experience often be marginalised.

This reaching of the totally unreached and the partially unreached in other lands and cultures needs a specific term to cover it. If you know one, do please let me know! Until you do, I shall call it ‘special mission'!

I met recently with an Asian pastor who has built a church of 8,000 people. He is a friend and colleague of almost 40 years, who says that my teaching on Antioch changed the direction of his church. Yet he said he did not agree with me on this point that reaching other peoples, lands and cultures needed any special emphasis! A few days later, inside China, I met with the head of his "cross-cultural" missions department. Almost the first thing this brother said to me was that he was concerned that the word ‘mission' had been stolen. There in a nutshell is the issue - successful local pastors downplaying the need for specific challenge, training and resourcing of ‘special mission'; and those involved in it seeing the danger of that marginalisation.

On this website you can read the testimonies of some of those who have seen the need for the church's engagement in ‘special mission'. They are a great bunch of people. It is my general prayer that many reading what they say would be challenged to walk in their steps - to step out of their own culture and leave their own shores.

Specifically in that area my wife and I are increasingly burdened to see more teachers of English in China. Chinese students face huge challenges - imagine that you are the only child in the family, that the family pays a high price to send you through university, expecting you to bring in significant income for the family, and then you find you cannot get a job (the statistics suggested that one million graduates were unemployed from last year). Some of our AM-CCSM team have been able to reach out to students with the love and comfort of the Lord Jesus. You do not have to be a PhD to teach English in China, so long as you are a native English speaker with a reasonable education. It is more to do with a servant heart and a caring concern for young people.

Almost 40 years ago I taught English to Chinese students. In the last few years I have heard of at least four of them who gave their lives to the Lord (I knew of three others at the time). Three of those who came to the Lord have served Him in full time ministry.

"Lord, raise up those who are willing to embrace the challenge of ‘special mission', in China or elsewhere, by teaching English or by any other legitimate means!"