Simon Cox Blog: The Myth of Missionary Neutrality

Monday, 17 September 2018

The Myth of Missionary Neutrality

Everything we do either propels God’s mission forward or hinders the embodiment of his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Cars rarely operate in neutral, but churches do all the time.

Maybe this is because neutral is the normative posture of those who make up the church.

It’s common to hear people speak as if there are three possible positions for life in relation to God. Some are in drive—moving forward in active obedience to the Great Commission. Others are in reverse, demonstrating rebellion against God’s authority and living to undermine God’s mission in the world. The rest are sitting in neutral, somewhere between drive and reverse.

Those in the first position are the missionary superstars of the church. They preach, lead, or better yet, they go across the world to take the gospel to those who’ve never heard. Those in reverse are clear enemies to the gospel. They flaunt their depravity through heinous acts that are universally decried as wicked.

Then there’s everyone else—the mass of humanity who saunters through life in a seemingly neutral posture.

Some of these neutral people profess faith in Jesus yet perceive of their existence as morally and missionally neutral, devoid of meaning most of the time. Others do not believe, however their posture toward life differs little from their neutral, supposedly believing friends. They simply live making decisions and investing time in ways that have little significance beyond the meagre reach of their influence, or so they think.

I (Jeff) write about these themes in my book, Kingdom Matrix, where I suggest that, contrary to this tripartite way of thinking, there are ultimately two, not three, kingdoms in which we can live.

The first is the kingdom of God wherein our lives are caught up in the grand mission of God and infused with worth, value, and significance ...