Reflections on TEN’s Vision and Mission
By Alec Brooks, Board member
Everything we do has a purpose, a reason why we do it, and whatever we do is in fulfillment of that purpose. Often when people ask about TEN/RTF they want to know what it is we do, which is a good question, but it isn’t the most important one. The most important question is, why do we do what we do, what is our vision? What we do, our mission, is train pastors who have little or no formal training, and that is a very good thing. But why we do it is what matters most. We train pastors because, according to Paul, pastoral ministry is essential for the building up of the followers of Jesus both individually and together so that they can become all that Jesus wants them to be.
Vision is about seeing. To see the vision become reality is the reason for all that is done which is the mission. That is why it is so important that we understand what is the vision of TEN. This is why, in the prologue to our vision and mission statements we show that TEN’s ministry is scriptural, essential, ecclesial, and perpetual.
The Bible is the story of the vision of God for humanity and all that he has done, at great cost to himself, to bring it to reality. In Genesis, we see that creation is the coming into existence of the vision of God. We read that God said, he spoke his mind, and then God saw what he had envisioned and he said it was good. When things went wrong, God envisioned a new creation which we read about throughout Scripture, For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind (Is 65:17), and it is what John sees in the Revelation when God’s vision for humanity becomes reality, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more (Rev 21:1). At the heart of this new creation would be a new humanity in Christ who is the perfect human.
It was to this end that Jesus came, lived, died, and was resurrected–the Word became flesh and we saw his glory. Jesus became one of us and was the perfect realization of God’s vision for humanity. When, on the sixth day, the day of Christ’s humiliation and crucifixion, Pilate says, “Behold the man”, he says more than he realizes, because in Jesus God’s vision for humanity is fully revealed and restored. When, on the cross Jesus said, “It is finished,” God’s vision for humanity was finally and fully realized That is why we read, later, that Jesus came the disciples on the first day and breathed into them the breath of life–a new Genesis, a new creation, a new humanity.
The church is meant to be the people through whom God’s vision for humanity becomes visible. “if anyone be in Christ, there is the new creation,” Paul tells us. In his commentary on Galatians, David deSilva reminds us that God’s purpose for us is not to make us happy as the world understands happiness. God’s purpose is to make us, in our life together, like Jesus as we follow him in the way of the cross, the way of self-denial and self-giving for the good of others, as Paul makes clear in 2 Cor. 5:14,15: For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. The early church father Cyprian wrote to his fellow followers of Jesus: “Beloved brethren, we are philosophers not in words but in deeds; we exhibit our wisdom not by our dress, but by truth; we know virtues by their practice rather than boasting of them; we do not speak great things but we live them.”
This is what John Wesley meant when he said that there was no holiness but social holiness, because holiness can only be experienced and expressed in the context of our relationship with others. Wesleyan theologian, Diane Leclerc, in her book, Discovering Christian Holiness, points out that John Wesley formed his bands and classes because he knew that the community of faith is indispensable for believers to grow in holiness and love. She also makes the point that holiness abstracted from human relationships is nonsensical, because holiness has everything to do with our relationship to God and others, and the foundation of those relationships is love, which is why John tells us, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us (1 Jn. 4:11-12). Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the church, said that outsiders observing the lives of Christians did not say, “Aude, listen to the Christians’ message”; nor did they say, “Lege, read what they write.” They said, Vide, look! How they love one another.”
Before ascending to the Father, Jesus’ final words to his disciples were: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt 28:19-20). What was it that Jesus commanded and that they were to teach? We find that in what is called the Sermon on the Mount.
Mountains and hills in Scripture have great significance, as they are places where God meets with man, and where heaven and earth are joined. The first place that God met with man was in the Garden of Eden, and it appears that the Garden of Eden was on a mountain. (Ezekiel 28:13). From that time on, each time God meets with man on a mountain it is a reminder of God’s meeting with man in the Garden of Eden and a return to it, as it were.
We read, Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them . . . You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:14-16).
The gospel of Matthew is bookended by promises. The first speaks of God's coming into the world in the person of Jesus, and the last speaks of God's going out into the world with and through the disciples, thus identifying Jesus with God. Matthew begins with the promise of the presence of God among his people, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us) (Matt 1:23), and ends with Jesus's final words to his disciples on another mountain, Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt 28:16-20).
Three things stand out, here: the disciples are sent out under the all encompassing authority of Jesus to make disciples who are to be baptized into the life of the triune God; they are to teach them to live in accordance with all that Jesus taught; and Jesus would be with them as God was with Israel.
At Mt Sinai God gave Israel his way for them to live, the commandments. Here the disciples are sent into all the world to proclaim a new and greater exodus from the powers that bind all mankind, an exodus achieved through the death and resurrection of Jesus that will lead to the new creation to which their life together would bear testimony, as an expression of their obedience to all that Jesus had commanded. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world”, a city set on a hill. The followers of Jesus are to be the light, the community whose life together enables others see God’s vision demonstrated, which is why Paul contrasts the children of darkness and the children of light who walk as Jesus walked, for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord (Eph 5:8-10).
This new people, however, would not be formed by their identity as Israel but by their identification with Jesus in whom all the promises and purposes of God for Israel had been realized. Those who followed him would be the true people of God, a city set on a hill, God's city, and who serve as a light to all in the house.The people whom Jesus describes as blessed are the people in whom through whom the kingdom of heaven will be shown here on earth, the people who pray, “The kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and who live accordingly. St. Gregory said, "Different men have different names, which they owe to their parents or to themselves, that is to their own pursuits and achievements. But our great pursuit, the great name we wanted, was to be Christians, to be called Christians.”
The early Christians were unusual, because they did not have or go to temples. But there was no need for the early Christians to go to a temple, for they were the temple and God’s presence in their lives was the explanation for all they did. Paul reminds the Corinthians, All of you surely know you are God's temple and his Spirit lives in you. Together you are God's holy temple. And because they are, he writes to the Romans, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (1 Cor 3:16,17; Rom 12:1). In Reading Romans Backwards, Scot McKnight writes, “[T]he sacrifice Paul has in mind is radically new. Instead of offering animals and grains to the gods in local shrines and temples or in the temple in Jerusalem, Christian sacrifice is an embodied way of life offered up to the invisible but ever-present God. What they [Christians] do is their sacrifice: when they speak, listen, embrace, eat, drink, love, have sexual relations, guide children, offer wisdom, work, garden, pay taxes, offer visible expressions of care, respect, approve and disapprove, pray, participate in fellowship worship and instruction . . . one could go on. Their sacrifices is their embodied life. Unlike moderns who use the term ‘worship’ only for the singing portions of Sunday services, their embodied daily life is their worship.”
If we are to become like God then we must know what God is like, and what we learn is, God is like Jesus. As the great German theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, “When the crucified Jesus is called the ‘image of the invisible God,’ the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender.”
Discipleship is lived theology, for it is life lived in the light of who God has shown himself to be in Jesus. Referring to Phil. 2:2-11, which is understood to be a version of an early Christian hymn, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright says, the “real theological emphasis of the hymn . . . is not simply a new view of Jesus. It is a new understanding of God.” This is why, if we were to take the words of Jesus as descriptive of God, when he says, Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls (Matt 11:29), we would have a deeper understanding of who God is and who we are meant to be.
The seeming contradiction of the cross–honor in humiliation, visible splendor in disfigurement and death–calls us, as it did the disciples, to reckon with a love that alone is able to resolve what was from them and is for us, but not for God, a contradiction. “The Cross should not be relegated to an event that accomplishes our salvation as an isolated or unique transaction. The Crucified Christ reveals the very nature and character of God and the nature and character of the life of salvation. The Christian life is the process of increasing transformation into the image and likeness of Christ. That image and likeness is specifically that of the Crucified.” (Fr. Freeman).
This is why, when Jesus ascended to the Father he gave to his people the gift of leaders, among whom are pastor-teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:12-13), which is the realization of God’s vision for humanity.
As two Christian educators put it, (Miroslav Volf and Matthew Croasmun), “Theological education is a dimension of Christian education, and it therefore shares in its goal: forming human beings according to the pattern of Christ.” The goal of TEN/RTF, is therefore, not simply the transmission of right information, but the transformation of men and women into the likeness of Christ. This is why Paul wrote to the Galatians, that the whole focus of his life and ministry was, until Christ is formed in you! (Gal 4:19), reminding us of God’s forming man in his image in the beginning, because God’s purpose in our salvations is that we be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom 8:29). To that end Paul instructs the Colossians to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:10).
As African and American Christians, we bring together and serve with denominations and churches throughout Francophone Africa to train pastors and other leaders who have little or no formal training. TEN/RTF’s ministry, therefore, is not ancillary to the life and ministry of the Church, it is an essential part of it because it is rooted in God’s vision for all humanity for as Paul writes, what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor 4:5-6). And we do this in order that all put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:10). We say with Paul, Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me (Col 1:28-29). This is the vision of TEN and the end to which our mission is directed.
Vision and Mission statements
Vision is about seeing–TEN’s vision: To see believers in churches in Francophone Africa mature in Christ under the leadership of pastors and other godly leaders who have been given instruction for right living, so that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed (2 Tim 3:16-17).
TEN’s mission: Bringing together and serving in harmony with denominations and churches in Francophone Africa to train pastors and other church leaders with little or no formal training who will teach others, that we may present everyone mature in Christ (2 Tim 2:2; Col 1:28)