What is Christian missions, anyway?

Rebekah Naylor entered a mud hut in an Indian village to find a woman lying on a mat, severely handicapped by burn scars on her arms and legs.

Naylor, a longtime missionary doctor with the SBC’s International Mission Board, examined the woman and later performed surgery at an area hospital to render her arms and legs fully functional  again. Most importantly though, she told the woman about the salvation available in Jesus, and she was saved.

For Naylor, now IMB missionary emeritus and healthcare consultant with Baptist Global Response, the episode illustrated what missions should be.

Meeting physical needs and preaching the gospel “are essential” to missions, said Naylor, daughter of former Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Robert Naylor. “Jesus commanded us to preach the gospel and heal the sick, like when he sent out the 12 and he sent out the 72,” she told the TEXAN.

Several Southern Baptist theologians agree that acts of service and gospel presentation each play a role in biblical missions. They also agree that service divorced from gospel presentation is not missions. Malcolm Yarnell, associate professor of systematic theology at Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, said the apostles would not have imagined a day when Christians claimed to act in Jesus’ name without giving a verbal witness about him.

“An act of service alone may qualify as a mission ‘of men,’ and it may have a positive benefit to ameliorate the vast suffering of humanity,” Yarnell told the TEXAN. “But an act of service alone does not qualify as ‘Christian’ mission if the gospel of Jesus Christ is not clearly stated to the recipient and any bystanders as the reason for the mission.”

In fact, acts of kindness without an accompanying verbal witness cannot qualify as service “in Jesus’ name,” Yarnell argued.

“In the New Testament, Jesus praises acts of service done in his name,” he said. “The focus is not on a nameless act but on introducing people to the Name. … How can you serve ‘in Jesus’ name’ without identifying who Jesus Christ is and what he has done? An act of service without witnessing to the gospel—that Christ Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross for our sin and arose from the dead for our life and will return to judge—is not an act of service ‘in Jesus’ name.’”

David Sills, the A.P. and Faye Stone Professor of Christian Missions and Cultural Anthropology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said the relationship between service and sharing the gospel has been a topic of debate throughout the history of Christian missions.

He identified three basic positions on the issue, described in David Hasselgrave’s book “Paradigms in Conflict.” Some adopt liberation theology, which is concerned exclusively with social justice apart from preaching the gospel. A second group holds “holism theology,” which emphasizes both serving and preaching the message of Jesus on the mission field. Within that group, some give priority to evangelism while others try not to dichotomize service and witnessing at all. Finally, “prioritism theology” regards evangelism as primary and all other ministries as secondary.

Though sharing the gospel is essential to Christian missions, Sills said merely preaching the gospel without meeting people’s physical needs does not qualify as biblical missions.

“Twenty-six thousand children die every day of starvation and hunger-related diseases,” Sills told the TEXAN. “If you’re one of the parents of one of those 26,000 and you see your children dying of starvation, and a missionary … comes in to preach John 3:16 and doesn’t hand you one of those bags of food he has in the back of his truck to feed the team and your child dies that day, you’re not going to listen to any message he has to say.”

On the other hand, he said too many Southern Baptists perform service around the world without sharing the gospel. Many have wrongly adopted a position known as “inclusivism,” according to Sills, which holds that Jesus will save sincere adherents of other religions without their repentance and explicit faith in him.

“There is increasing confusion, but only because we listen to the world more than we listen to God through his Word,” Sills said. “If we did that, there would be no question that we must share the gospel message.”

According to Naylor, the biblical mandate to integrate acts of service with sharing the gospel is one reason for the IMB’s use of medical missions among unengaged unreached people groups (UUPGs). Plus, providing medical care is the only way some governments will allow missionaries access to their citizens, she said.

Among many UUPGs, “possibly the only access that we would have to them is through healthcare missions,” Naylor said. “So the IMB is very much committed to medical missions.”

Mark Coppenger, vice president for extension education and professor of Christian apologetics at Southern Seminary, used the military phrase “tooth and tail” to describe various roles Christians can play within the missions task.

In military parlance, “tooth” refers to combat troops on the frontlines while “tail” refers to logistical support that comes behind, he said, noting that both components are essential to any combat operation. Analogously, the “tooth” of Christian missions is sharing the gospel, but that task requires significant logistical support that should also be considered missions—the “tail,” Coppenger said.

“If you’re over on the mission field and you’re doing the finances for the mission and cutting a check so they can purchase Bibles on this remote island, you’re doing missions,” he told the TEXAN. “But you’ve got to be connected to the tooth. And the tooth is the presentation of the gospel and the teaching of the Word of God.”

Other examples of “tail” activities that still qualify as missions are constructing a church building that will help a missionary proclaim the gospel and organizing sports camps to help a missionary establish contact with people with whom he hopes to share Jesus, Coppenger said. Still, he cautioned against becoming engrossed in activities that support gospel proclamation without actually telling people about Jesus.

Demonstrating kindness and having a warm demeanor will endear people to Christians, according to Coppenger, but the world can only guess at the reason for the kindness unless believers specifically tell them how Jesus changes lives.

“The power of missions is the gospel,” he said. “The Bible speaks of the gospel not just as true, but as powerful. And if we suppose that we can get [missions] all done with just being sort of gracious and the like, then we’ve absolutely denied the power of the gospel.”