World Communion of Reformed Churches
Mission
United in Christ and rooted in the historic Reformed traditions, the WCRC with its member churches believe that Christian faith is responding to God’s call to meet spiritual needs and foster justice for all in the transformation of the world through the love of Jesus Christ.
God’s mission (missio Dei) is God’s purpose in Christ to renew the whole of creation. It is communal in nature because God is a communal God. This mission is a dynamic process whereby God’s people are called to participate in God’s mission. Therefore, engaging in God’s mission is God’s call to the whole church as a worldwide community. We engage most faithfully in mission when we do so together.
The church not only participates but is also transformed by its engagement in the mission of God.
Whereas our ancestors understood mission as engaging with those who were geographically “far away,” we understand mission to be the crossing of all borders and barriers that separate people from God, one another and creation, trusting that by crossing borders, the Spirit makes possible reconciliation through Christ.
This is the Gospel message of salvation in Jesus Christ to be shared both within the church and with neighbours with a deep sense of respect, sensitivity, understanding and humility in relation to peoples of other faiths, belief systems and contexts.
Creative engagement in God’s mission is the joy and responsibility of every believer. The primary place for missional engagement is the local community in which Christians live, even when mission is undertaken within a global network which brings the people of Christ together as agents of justice, reconciliation, transformation and redemption.
We need to repent of any form of mission praxis that disempowers or dehumanizes. Mission, bearing witness to the justice of God and overcoming the wrongdoings of the past, requires intentional and continuous efforts of de-linking the historical and enduring connections between slavery, colonialism and Christian mission.
Mission is practised in partnership with the triune God and among churches reflecting the fact that mission today is done in the midst of a religiously plural society.