Missionaries use the Gospel as the measure of leaven to make the bread of humanity rise

TO MANY CHRISTIANS the idea of Mission Sunday appears as an irrelevant relic of the past, or as just one more occasion on which an external demand is made on the already badly-stretched financial resources of the parish.
Is it not time to drop the yearly recurrent event of Mission Sunday? Why has it stayed, while Benediction, the Friday
• fast, and Gregorian chant seem to have disappeared?
Contemporary Christianity has lost its nerve about mission. The popularity of the missionary ideal has been on the wane for some time. The reasons are not difficult to find: The missionary movement was
associated with the colonial experience. Colonialism is now a dirty word, and whatever was associated with
it appears tainted.
Missionary fervour is considered to accord ill with con temporary cultural relativism, which says that every nation has a right to its own culture. It seems also to go against the newly appreciated doctrine of religious freedom and tolerance,
l'he fight to bring the world to Christ is being lost. From the quantitative point of view there are more people on earth now who do not know Christ than there were at the time of Jesus' life on earth. The percentage of people in the world calling themselves Christians is falling.
Whatever the value of these objections to missions, it will be appreciated that giving up the missionary ideal would be an impoverishment for the Church and the Christian people, for it would reflect a growing sense of isolationism and encourage inward-looking tendencies. More in particular it will be seen that the modern theory and practice of mission makes short shrift of the above three objections against mission. What, then, are the essentials of modern missionary theory and practice?
Both the official teaching authority of the Catholic Church and individual theologians have been concerned with rethinking the nature and scope of missionary work.
The two most authoritative statements to date are "The Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity" of the Second Vatican Council (1965) and Pope Paul's Apostolic Exhortation Evangelic Nantiandi "A Meditation on the Effort to Proclaim the Gospel to the.People of Today."
The Council document makes it quite clear that the focus of missionary activity today is less on territorial expansion than on making the Church
an active presence within and native to the diverse and developing cultures of the world.
There is great emphasis on dialogue with non-Christians, adaptation to local conditions, and participation in community and national life.
The exhortation of the Pope analyses the complexity and diversity of Evangelisation and develops the theme of the missionary nature of the whole Church and all its members within the context of this diversity.
Mission has to take place in the office, on the shop floor, in the department store and the airline terminal, as well as in schools and churches — not only abroad but at home as well.
It is of the essence of the Christian Message to he an expanding and outward-looking force. There is an element of urgency about Christian love.
Fr Uhlmann is perhaps the best known individual thinker on the nature and scope of missions in the modern world. The main. thesis of his best selling book, "Coming of the Third Church", is that demographic changes operating within the Church and the world at large are causing a drastic transformation in ecclesiastical geography.
The population explosion of the Third World and the success of the missionary_move!tient during the past 100 years have brought about what is now known as the Third Church, which is both a new phase in the history of the Church and a geographic reality.
Soon the Church in the West will be a minority in relation to the Church Universal. Missionary activity of a new kind is necessary to cope with this drastic change and new reality.
From the point of view of missionary practice there are important new developments to report which are relevant to the pastoral situation in the West as well as in the traditional missionary countries.
The followiqg are some of the more important of these developments: 1. The emphasis on the local Church. Some people regret the fact that the external unity of a world-wide universal liturgy and discipline are now disappearing in the Church. This has come about, however, because of a greater positive appreciation of the need and desirability of diversity in union.
St Augustine's saying on the subject is once more taken seriously: "Let there be unity where necessary, diversity where possible, but love wherever you go". In fact, uniformity is less of a guarantee
than a danger to the genuine unity of the Church in the modern world. The modern missionary is searching to translate the language of God's Word into the idiom of new nations living in a new era of history.
2. The emphasis on freedom of conscience is an important characteristic of modern missionary work. There is a better appreciation than in the past that every man has a dignity and a creative freedom in virtue of his being made in the image of God.
Missionaries see it as their task to give man the opportunity to develop his freedom and enjoy it in the Spirit of Christ as laid down in the Gospels.
3. The emphasis on receiving and learning rather than exclusively on giving and teaching is another important characteristic of the modern missionary.
From Africa the Church may expect to receive a new sense of spontaneity, of joie de vivre, of untroubled faith and simplicity; from Latin America a deeper appreciation of the meaning of liberation, of translating the Gospel in terms of commitment to the poor; and from Asia the Church may receive greater awareness of the need for meditation.
4. The stress on the integral salvation of man and society. The missionary does not go out to save the souls of heathens, but to redeem man from slavery, to make the blind see, to set captives free and bring the good news to the poor.
Missionaries try to use the Gospel as the salt of the earth, the measure of leaven which will make the bread of humanity rise.
5. A greater enthusiasm for the idea of ecumenism. Ecumenism was from its beginning closely associated with the missionary movement. It is the task of the modern missionary to stimulate
fellowship between men of different cultures, nations, faiths and denominations.
A peaceful world community corresponds to God's revealed plan for mankind, since it is an image of the eschatological community. The missionary is a herald of this aspiration.
In the light of the renewed and updated theory and practice of mission it is clear that the missionary ideal can in no way be any longer associated with the colonial experience; rather, it has become the mission of freedom, liberation and unity.
Nor can missionary fervour be considered to accord' ill with the right of every people and nation to their own culture and life-style. In fact the missionary endeavours to season the richness of individual cultures with the salt of the Gospel.
Nor is the fight to bring the world to Christ being lost, for the missionary believes that God is in control of history. Believing this he reads the signs of the times which suggest new openings for the missionary effort. They are: The fact that amid suffering and violence a compassionate ' society is born, the like of which the world has not seen before.
The fact that to a degree never known before people protest against discrimination and exploitation.
The persistent search for meaning on the part of people in all places where the old fabric of society is being progressively destroyed.
The genuine desire of many people to develop an interior and spiritual life in protest against the pressures of a mass society. This is, as it were, a form of inward wrestling to conquer the eternal and enduring.
The search for belonging among the members of uprooted primitive cultures, among urbanised peasants as
well as among adherents of established Christian Churches.
The universal move to unity, which finds expression on the political, economic as well as religious level. Such an inspired reading of the signs of the times enables one to look upon the contemporary world as a providential challenge and opportunity for the Church to exercise her missionary task.
Contemporary mission may ride on the bandwagon of man's pressing search for justice, compassion, meaning, belonging and unity in the belief that for many, salvation must be, won through faithful adherence to their conscience.
Mission could concentrate on feeding the multitudes, 'on encouraging liberation, on engaging in dialogue, on unveiling the unknown Christ in other religions, and forging the bonds of unity of which the Church is a sign to the nations.
The updated theory and practice of mission make it all the more necessary that one Sunday in the year be set aside to reflect prayerfully upon the hopes and aspirations of the Church Universal, which are in a sense the hopes and aspirations of mankind.
Nor should it be thought that the new understanding and practice of mission is unrelated to the changing situation of the Church at home. Mission Sunday is about the mission of the Church at home, to the parish, town and nation,, as much as about the mission Of the Church abroad. •
Fr (Dr) Francis Groot, MHM Lecturer in Missiology at the Missionary Institute, London.
For a detailed discussion of the signs of the times, see Max Warren "I Believe in the Great Commission", (Hodder & Stoughton, 1976),