Page 27 - The Church of Ireland Apologetic for Mission?

chapter two
mission: more than apologetic?
The APCK Sharing the Faith pamphlet provides a helpful vignette of the evolution of mission:
It has been said that the church exists by mission as fire does by burning. Mission was commanded by Jesus himself and he assured his followers that the Holy Spirit would equip them for this task. According to the Fourth Gospel account of his first resurrection appearance to the disciples, Jesus said, “As the Father sent me, so I send you”. When he had said this, he breathed
on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”. (John 20:21b–22.) Thus inspired, the Church expanded hugely during the first Christian millennium, as far as Norway and Ethiopia, Ireland and China. From our own country, Irish monastic missions to continental Europe were particularly effective in the 6th and 7th centuries. However
it was not until the 16th century that intercontinental missionary activity took off, with Roman Catholic missions to Central and South America, Africa and Asia. Then, in the 18th century the newly confident Protestant churches began seriously to engage in mission, in the South Pacific, India and Africa, with a further intensification
of activity in the early 20th century, when the vision was to Christianise the world in one generation. The missionaries frequently went out in the wake of the European traders and colonising powers, and that awkward relationship has only recently begun to be transcended, making the former
mission territories truly independent. Indeed the majority of Christians now live in Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Pacific region.39
Peter Drucker says there are two crucial questions any organisation should ask itself. What’s your business ... and ... how’s business? As demonstrated, the Church of Ireland has clearly articulated what its ‘business’ is - it has an unambiguous apologetic for global and local mission. How deeply this is in the consciousness or psyche of every level of the Church is hard to quantify. Yet the apologetic is there.
Commercial enterprise can tell you how business is. It simply points to the bottom line. This will tell the enquirer whether a profit is being made. For a business success is easy to define. The Church of Ireland will find answering the question How’s business more problematic.
To answer the question requires some agreement on how success may be defined,
how it might be measured and how it can be evaluated. Not only that but there will also be some resistance to even thinking in such terms. Nevertheless, having answered the question ‘Does the Church of Ireland have an apologetic for mission?’ it seems reasonable to ask another: How well is it doing in making good on that commitment?
So, can the Church of Ireland point to significant evidence to support its stated commitment to mission, both locally and globally? Whilst difficult to accurately quantify there is evidence of work going on at all levels to make good on that commitment.
39
https://www.ireland.anglican.org/our-faith/apck/sharing-the-faith
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