Jesus constantly spoke about the kingdom of God in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His ministry, which means the kingdom of God was the plot of the story. The kingdom of God is not a seeable place or even a belief system, but rather it is the rule and reign of God in the hearts, thoughts, and actions of His people through Jesus.
What would our mission strategies consist of if we allowed the Book of Acts to thoroughly permeate and shape our approaches? How would our postmodern day acts of the apostles be different if our American worldview didn’t drive our mission methodology so broadly and intensely?
Macro-compassion projects from the West tend to swallow up micro-compassion lifestyles for the Rest. Compassion in the hands of the few on behalf of the many is extremely limiting. How can we help to reverse this syndrome and make compassion every Christ follower’s natural rhythm of life in their micro-spaces, thus becoming a global movement?
While serving with a Christian humanitarian organization in South Sudan, I worked with a Dinka man named Abijek who lived in a nearby village. He was employed by the organization to keep an eye on the goings-on in and around the compound where our team was based, which was comprised of little more than a flimsy straw fence surrounding the camping tents where we slept, four or five mud huts known as tukuls, and two white canvas storage tents used to store program supplies.
The Lausanne Movement describes integral mission as a style of mission that recognizes “no biblical dichotomy between evangelistic and social responsibility.” Putting this concept into the form of an action statement, we might say that integral mission is “integrating the proclamation of the gospel and social action.”
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