Missiology of Influence:

The Church’s Experience

AN IMOKE ’85 ZOOM LECTURE
by
Very Rev. Dr. Ifechukwu U. Ibeme
http://www.scribd.com/ifeogo
Click Here For PriscAquila Christian Resource Centre

TABLE OF CONTENCTS
• Appeal
• Introduction
• Definitions
• Missio Dei
• The Challenge of Missiology
• Ancient Missiology sought the sanctity of the Gospel
• Middle Ages and Modern Missiologies disregard the sanctity of the Gospel
• Process Missiology
• Target Sphere Missiology
• Counter-missionary Reactions
• Conclusion

Appeal
As I appeal to all to bear with my choice of topic as one who belongs to the Church’s ordained Clergy, it
is important to understand that the views expressed here are based on the saving wisdom found in the
God-inspired Scriptures and shared together with the age-old and time-tested theological studies and
experiences of the Church all through the generations.

Introduction
Another word for “influence” in this context is “redemptive leadership’ toward the divine purpose of
sanctifying transformation or transformative sanctification, because missiological influence is toward a
divine goal. So, Missiology of Influence in the society could also be understood as Missiology of Spiritual
Leadership in the society. Missiology discusses or studies the meaning of “missioning” or “being sent”,
its methods and purposes toward fulfilling the assignment for which one who is lesser (the Church) is
sent on mission to the world by One Who is greater (Christ). For Christians and indeed all humanity who
are God’s image and vicegerents on earth, this Greater One is the Heavenly God Himself, Who made and
owns us all, and all creation is subject to His Heavenly Dominion and Rule or “Kingdom”.

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Missiology of Influence in this perspective is about what and how those saved through Christ need to
bring that saving influence for which God has made and saved, sanctified and sent them to do in a
corrupt and condemned world, so that God’s world would be restored to God’s originally intended goal
(Eph 2:10; 1Pet 2:8-9), as God has exclusively revealed in the Scriptures through Christ, His Apostles and
the Prophets. In her mission, the Church must never lose sight of the fact that she has been made holy
in order to rescue a world which is utterly lost! The world may never understand they are lost but the
Church must never forget they are holy.
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Definitions
To be sure, Ecclesiology is meant to study the work of the Church among Christians, while Missiology is
meant to study the work of the Church in the world. In Christian theology, Ecclesiology is the study of
the Church, the origin, nature and structure of the Church of Christ – its relationship to Jesus, its calling
and role in salvation, its polity, its discipline, its leadership, and its eschatology. On the other hand,
Missiology has an important role to play in turning congregationally minded churches from being inward
looking for members, to also become missionally minded churches, churches that exist for non-
members; indeed, Missiology helps practical theology to learn anew what it means to be the Church of
Jesus Christ in the context of God’s world. Missiology as a theological study stands true on this premise:
if it is true that God has sent His Church on Divine Mission (missio Dei) to bring God’s redemptive
Kingdom influence on His world, then the Church must study to ensure that the influence she brings
must be that for which she has been sent according to God’s Word.

Both Spiritual Regeneration (or Salvation of the soul from depravity and damnation) through
evangelistic preaching, as well as Social Reformation (or Christianization of the society from paganism
and inhumanity) through strategic presence have always been the commission of the Church in the
world. However, after the Early Church Fathers, the Church lost her ecumenical unity in their
interpretation of God’s Word to become less scriptural and more cultural; and later after the Protestant
Magisterial Reformers, denominations lost their national unity in their administration of God’s mission
to become more and more fragmented by eccentric separatist and privatized ministries. That is why
missiological attention gradually drifted away from outward-looking Missiology toward the society to
become more focused on inward-looking Ecclesiology toward the congregation.

Thank God, in the 20th Century, the Church is coming to realize again that missiology should broadly be
committed to the whole mission of God (missio Dei) for His whole creation – souls and societies of every
nation, but not narrowly be concerned with only evangelistic mission for the salvation of souls or
expansion of a Church denomination to the unreached or with merely be misconstrued for cross-
cultural expansion of Western civilization to the unwesternized world. The only mission which carries
the same power with God’s Mission to which the Apostles were committed, is that mission which
propagates and perpetuates what is purely scriptural not what is cultural.
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Missio Dei
God’s mission (missio Dei) is comprehensively understood by the Church as the full divine commission to
the world:
 for which God first sent all humanity on earth (at our CREATION in the innocent Adam) on God’s
creation mandate or culture mandate mission to be fruitful and fill the earth, to subdue, have
dominion and tend the earth as God’s vicegerents (Gen 1:26-31; 2:15); but
 for which He secondly sent all believers in the Church (at our REDEMPTION in the Divine Christ)
on God’s Gospel mandate or Kingdom mandate mission to make disciple of all nations for doing
God’s will on earth as it is done in heaven as God’s ambassadors (Mat 28:18-20; Luk 4:18-19).

The personal dreams and mission of most people on earth is usually to attain their personal monopoly of
popularity, power and prosperity – self-actualization. However, God’s authoritative, loving and
redemptive purpose and mission to His creation (mission Dei) is to restore all lost humanity to spiritual
order (sanctity), moral order (purity), mental order (sanity), social order (unity), state order (equity),
economic order (prosperity) for the good of all people, and eternal bliss (eternity) for whosever believes
in Christ as Lord and Saviour.
Matthew 28:18-20
(18) And Jesus came and spoke unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in
earth.
(19) Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit:
(20) Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with
you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Luke 4:18-19
(18) "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to tell the good news to the
poor. He has sent me to announce release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to
set oppressed people free,
(19) and to announce the year of the Lord's favor."

It is good to know and seek what acts God is committed to work on earth, but it is more important to
yield our hearts to walk in God’s ways rather than harden our hearts to devise our own revised ways for
doing those divine acts. Yielding to God’s Word by diligently insisting on knowing God and following His
pure way (God’s why and God’s how) for doing those His powerful acts would avoid error and disaster.
The deep mystery is that we could only do God’s work properly if we do them only according to God’s
Word.
Exodus 33:13
Now therefore, I pray you, if I have found grace in your sight, show me now your way, that I may
know you, that I may find grace in your sight: and consider that this nation is your people.

Psalms 103:7
He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel.

Psalms 95:8-11
(8) Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of trials in the wilderness:

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 (9) When your fathers tested me, tried me, and saw my work.
(10) Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in
their heart, and they have not known my ways:
(11) Unto whom I swore in my anger that they should not enter into my rest.

Speaking on behalf of The Gospel and Our Culture Network in 1998, Darrell Guder (in Darrell L. Guder
(editor), Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans Publishing, 1998, 4-5) writes,
"We have come to see that mission is not merely an activity of the church. Rather, mission is the
result of God’s initiative, rooted in God’s purpose to restore and heal creation. 'Mission’ means
‘sending,’ and it is the central biblical theme describing the purpose of God’s action in human
history.... We have begun to learn that the biblical message is more radical, more inclusive,
more transforming than we have allowed it to be. In particular, we have begun to see that the
church of Jesus Christ is not the purpose or goal of the gospel, but rather its instrument and
witness.... God’s mission is calling and sending us, the church of Jesus Christ, to be a missionary
church in our own societies, in the cultures in which we find ourselves.”

The Church must be committed to God’s Gospel Mission (missio Dei) for which she has been sent into
the world – to influence the world for the Kingdom of Heaven and fulfill the will of God on earth. This
divine missionary assignment for the godly restoration of the nations is strategically accomplished
through Social Action (presence, participation, engagement in the human community) for Stewardship
(subduing and tending the natural creation Gen 1:26-31; 2:15), and Discipleship (Gospel proclamation
and Christian discipleship Mat 28:18-20; Luk 4:18-19), could only be said to be divinely missiological
when it is not misconceived and syncretized in conformity with the depraved ways of this heathen world
(Eph 4:17-20).

Preaching and teaching the Gospel demands Contextualization of the Gospel which has been
understood variously (as Transliteration, Translation, Acculturation, Inculturation, Adaptation), but
which must never be syncretistic. Unfortunately, people are often able to discover syncretism of the
Gospel with other people’s preferred cultures, only to end up re-syncretizing the same Gospel with
their own preferred cultures. God-hallowing missiology that seeks to do on earth as it is done in heaven
(Mat 6:9-10) must be ready to let go of all our preferences and interests that spring from our mundane
cultures, in order let be only what is Christ’s as made plain in the Scriptures (Mark 7:7-9; Col 2:8-10).
True Divine Mission must be purely based on Divine Truth and be properly done as God’s redemptive
means for the conversion of the world to Christ – not only for regeneration of souls (Tit 3:4-6) but also
for restoration of societies (Act 3:19-21).

The Apostles unequivocally insisted:

 that we must not walk like the Gentiles in their vain minded disobedience and darkness (Eph
2:2-3; 4:17-20),
 that we be not conformed to this world but be transformed and translated into the Kingdom of
Christ (Rom 12:2; Col 1:13), and
 that we be not friendly with the lustful and prideful ways of this sinful world (Jas 4:4; 1Joh 2:15-
16).

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Compromising or contaminating the Gospel mission is syncretism which hallows the world and not
missiology which should hallow the Lord, because it fails to “do the will of God on earth as it is done in
heaven” as Christ taught and sent us to do (Mat 6:8-10).
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The Challenge of Missiology

The Scriptures reveal that because of human depravity, everyone in every cultural human community or
society is inescapably influenced, formed and subjected to cultural depravity (in word and work, in
mentality and morality, in mores and manners, in values and virtues, in politics and policies, in ideology
and cosmology, as well as in aesthetics and spirituality) by the dark prince of the power of the air (Eph
2:1-2). Through such entrenched cultural agencies, mundane mindset and idolatrous worldviews, pagan
societies disobediently follow their ungodly lusts and depraved course of this world (Eph 2:2-3). This is
the challenge Christian Missiological influence is up against but many in the Church are unaware of
these while others are sympathetic to such traditional, trending and tendentious depravity of the world
or even proudly cherish them with strong nostalgia!

Escaping syncretism is the difficult challenge facing Gospel Missiological influence in dealing with the
powerful grip of ungodly “strongholds” (i.e. unbiblical worldviews, cultures and agencies of pagan

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societies) on the way people see, think and do things among themselves (1Cor 10:3-5). Christian Gospel
missiological influence shall be in vain except the Church insists on wrestling against these demonic
spirits (Eph 6:12) and resisting the depraved cultures they engender (Eph 4:17-20). Christians should also
seek to mortify impiety and sinfulness of the flesh and walk in piety and holiness of the Spirit (Gal 5:16-
18; Col 3:5-8; 1Thes 4:3-5).

Yet, the Scriptures clearly identify both the Church (Eph 1:22-23) and the State (Rom 13:1-7) as divinely
instituted but distinguishes them for different purposes that are both being corrupted and thwarted by
human depravity. According to Nate Humphries, who was writing on Separation of Church and State in
Pursuing Biblical Doctrine website:
(http://www.pursuingbiblicaldoctrine.com/2012/12/separation-of-church-and-state.html)
“Relations between Church and State have been notoriously controversial throughout the
Christian centuries. To oversimplify, four main models have been tried –
1. Erastianism (the State controls the Church), contemporary example is Zaire where the
State controls the Church, which Nigeria is tending to with CAMA 2020.
2. Theocracy (the Church controls the State), contemporary example is The Vatican or Iran
where the Pope or Ayatollah controls the State.
3. Constantinianism (the compromise in which the State favours or defends the Church
and the Church accommodates to the State in order to retain the State’s favour or
protection) [also called Caesaropapism], as obtains in England and Wales, and
4. Partnership (Church and State recognize and encourage each other's distinct God-given
responsibilities in a spirit of constructive collaboration), as constituted in founding the
Unted Sates of America.”
Italics and bullets are added.
The fourth [instituted by American Founding Fathers though it is now being revised against
the Church] seems to accord best with Paul's teaching in Romans 13 and Christ’s teaching in
Matt 22:17-21. Galio’s dictum in Act 18:14-15 also conforms with this truth.
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Ancient Missiology sought the sanctity of the Gospel

What we study as Missiology today was instituted by Christ and the Apostles as the “sending” to which
the Church is commissioned for bringing godly influence of God’s Kingdom Gospel of Salvation into all
the nations. “All nations” here referred to the “whole inhabited world” which was how the Greco-
Roman Empire understood herself to mean. The Greeks and Romans as well as the Church saw the
nations of the world as one ecumenical (universal or catholic) unity, such that people were simply
reckoned by their present localities of residence without much regard for their genealogical nationalities
or race.

With this ecumenical mindset, the Early Church went about their mission by preaching the pure and
true Gospel to win the whole inhabited world for Christ in every locality as One Body. All whosoever
believed in Christ as the surest and ultimate Saviour (John 6:44; Act 4:12; 1Tim 2:5) belonged to the One
Church without regard for their nationalities. The Church as one nationless peculiar people, sought to

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live their whole life by only the reason of their Hope in Christ (1Pet 3:15) and were present in their
locality as Christ’s ecumenical/tribeless disciples. This historic ecumenical or catholic perspective has
been lost in modern times because of modern degeneration of humanity into racism. The Antichrist may
fake restoration of ecumenism for tyrannical and godless purpose (Rev 17:18) but true divine
ecumenism shall only be restored when Christ Himself comes again for the resurrection of the saints to
reign with them in righteousness (Dan 2:44; 7:14, 27).

The Disciples who made up the Early Church were followers of Christ from all nations who have been
baptized into Christ and catechized as Christ’s one ecumenical or nationless Church to practice all that
Christ had commanded for every aspect of their lives and work in every locality (Mat 28:18-20), thereby
being light and salt (Mat 5:13-16) to every community. To be a member of the Early Church was
understood as being a whole-of-life disciple of Christ/believer in Christ (John 2:11; 8:31; Act 16:1) or
witness of Christ (Act 1:8) or follower of the Way (Act 9:2; 19:9 & 23; 24:14), which was later termed as
being a Christian (Act 11:26; 26:28; 1Pet 4:6).

The missiological goal of the Early Church was to maintain the purity of their foundation in Christ and
the Scriptures in order to retain their salt and light as the sure basis for bringing true Christian influence
on every community. To do this they set to ensure the sacredness of the Church as holy, the unity of the
Church universally (i.e. ecumenically/catholically) and to validate the purity of the Gospel solely on
apostolic authentication. They believed that the four true Marks of the Church on earth were ONENESS,
HOLINESS, UNIVERSALITY (catholicity/ecumenicity) and APOSTOLICITY.

Despite the forces of persecutions, misconceptions, and syncretism, the Early Church worked together in
sharing the same faith and life, worship and work, morals and manners, as they were taught by Christ
and the Apostles, and preserved the pure faith from syncretism in every nation. By preserving the
sanctity of her faith, the ancient Church was able to influence the Greco-Roman world in every
ramification to its highest level (government, justice, policy, economy, music, calendar, academia,
diplomacy, philosophy, worldview, culture, etc). This missiological influence was not only so effectual

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that the whole Greco-Roman world became known as Christendom, but the influence went beyond the
empire to all the world and endured long after the Greco-Roman Empire collapsed.

The Church’s Christendom had prevailed because the Early Church persevered to remain on course with
keeping Christ’s mandate sacrosanct until modern upheavals of the Church’s backsliding and modern
resurgence of antichrist paganism. The old Church’s success did not come by formulating a critical
theology of Mission or Missiology, but through concerted ecumenical effort to resist the world’s
syncretistic encroachment into the Church. That was why the worldwide Church united together and
diligently sought:
 to maintain local unity by remapping the world into organized Diocesan Episcopacy that shared
one local leadership and local liturgy in succession to the Apostles;
 to ensure worldwide unity based purely on faithfulness to the full Apostolic Doctrine through
Ecumenical (or Catholic) Councils of all known Diocesan Bishops in all metropolitan cities,
dioceses and provinces in the Greco-Roman world (particularly Nicaea 325 AD, Constantinople
381 AD, Ephesus 431 AD, and Chalcedon 451 AD); and
 to preserve generational purity of the Gospel Truth by circulating all Scriptures ascertained as
Apostolic and by sharing ecumenically only those Creeds and Canons and Constitutions which
accurately agree with pure deposit or ordinances (paradosis) as they were received and handed
down from the Apostles.

The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea laid out the touchstone of apostolic orthodoxy and was the watershed
that united the worldwide Church to reject and denounce all paganizing syncretism and revisionist
heresies from desecrating the pure Christian Gospel, it has therefore received so much fallacious
bashing and distorted narratives from frustrated heretics and pagans so much so that gullible and
uninformed Christians get carried away by such campaign of calumny against this great landmark.

Despite tensions and tendencies to do otherwise, they persevered on these stringent strategic measures
of resisting the world from eroding the true Faith and syncretizing into the Gospel, because they stood
on the principles that for the Church to be True, she must be doctrinally Apostolic, distinctly Holy, and
Universally (or ecumenically/catholically) United.

Under the sway of the Christianity, pagan beliefs and practices used to subsist in the fringes outside the
Church but often in shame or secrecy as vices of human failing and vileness of human wickedness, but
gradually such paganism has waxed confrontational to even parody and condemn Christianity. This
resurgent paganism has grown bold and gained ground through belligerent activism which now
advocates their ways as virtues that require the right of legalization, while they demand that if
Christianity would not allow itself to be syncretized contrary to Scriptures, then it must be blacklisted for
cultural cancelation.
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Middle Ages and Modern Missiologies disregard the sanctity

of the Gospel
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Gospel missio Dei to all humanity is about fully bringing the heavenly influence of Christ’s sacrosanct
Gospel (Gal 1:6-9) of salvation to all the earth – “Thy will be done earth as it is in heaven” (Mat 6:10).
Sadly, after the Early Church of the Apostolic and Nicene Fathers had succeeded in their mission toward
the Greco-Roman or Western world, she suddenly began to backslide into weakness and worldliness by
heretical revisionism, innovative controversies, inventive compromises, subjective liberalism, and
infighting that led to divisions and confusions. After a little recovery during the Reformation, the
protestant Church has lapsed back again into revisionist liberalism for which the Reformers fought and
died. This backsliding drift of the Church into unscriptural “progressivism” weakened the Church to give
room for the resurgence of European paganism and atheism in the Middle Ages. This has been recently
joined in the modern times, by Eastern and African paganism which now malign the Church and
undercut her mission. Nevertheless, the postmodern society still enjoys the impact from some humane
influence of Christian values – such as empathy and charity, equity and equality, liberty and solidarity.

Modern missiology has refocused on going into the world to influence the world, but unlike the Church
Fathers and the Reformers persevered to do, we have totally lost sight of preventing the world from
coming into the Church to corrupt the purity of the Church! In fact, it has turned out that today’s Church
is seeking after the cultures of the world rather than spreading Scriptures of God! In the name of so
called modern “contextualization” and “repackaging" today, the Church has ended up failing to save the
world from filth and fire, but rather getting herself stained by filth and scorched by fire! It is like treating
COVID-19 patients without being vaccinated and without using personal protective equipment! Or
rescuing fire victims without fire extinguishers and fireproof equipment!

The Apostles would admonish, that our compassion must distinguish the faith and when love moves us
to pull others from fire of sin, we must hate being stained with the evil of the flesh (Jude 21-23). Some
misunderstand Paul’s “becoming all things to all men to win some” (1Cor 9:22) to mean compromising
the Faith to contaminate it with the world! Yet, the context of that Scriptures shows clearly that it is
actually about empathizing with people’s conditions by forfeiting his rights, but not about compromising
the standards of the Gospel to forgo what is right (1Cor 9:19-23; Gal 1:10; 1Thes 2:4). The Truth of the
Gospel as found in the Scripture is sacrosanct above all traditional, trending and tendentious cultures
(Eph 4:17-20), above all men and above all angels (Gal 1:6-9) as well as above all other revelations and
other records (2Thes 2:1-3; 1John 4:1-3), such that it saves from all things to the uttermost (Rom 8:37-
39; Heb 7:25).

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Process Missiology
Process missiology describes missions through Church Planting processes. The thought of Europeans
daring to go on missions for Church Planting to distant lands arose from recent 500 years of
international socio-political changes that made such missions possible. Much of the appalling historical
facts from the fall of Rome till the Renaissance and Reformation is subdued by historians in the West as
the “Dark Ages”. In 476 AD, Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Caesar, was deposed in a Germanic
barbarian overthrow to mark the Fall of Rome. From then, the provinces Western Roman Empire were
carved up and disintegrated into feudal kingdoms by ethnic chiefs and kings, war lords, peasant leaders
and bandits. This resulted in the era called the Dark Ages or Middle Ages (c. 500-1500 AD) which are
mostly kept in the dark in school history because it was an era when the Western world was mostly
decimated, subjugated and humiliated by non-Romans and non-Europeans, while the Church underwent
coldness, backsliding and great losses. Some worthwhile spots of the Dark Ages were the time of

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Charlemagne (774-814 AD) and the abysmally failed but grossly exaggerated Crusades escapades which
were fought for a narrow access to the Holy Land (1100-1300 AD).

The Middle Ages was a thousand years (500-1500 AD) of decline and disorder or “Dark Ages” for the
Greco-Roman Europe and Christendom, but a period of rise or “Golden Age” (c. 740-1517) for Islamic
Caliphates that held economic and military sway over the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle-east,
but also made scholarly advances in algebra, calculus, geometry, chemistry and astronomy. The Islamic
Caliphates took over the Mediterranean Sea from Greco-Roman domination, especially after the
conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 which sacked the Byzantine Empire (i.e.
Eastern Roman Empire). During the Christendom Dark Ages, Europeans were terrorized and enslaved
and blockaded from world trade by Islamic Mediterranean Sultanates and States under the Bagdadi-
based Abbasid Caliphate which ruled the world from 740 till 1517 AD – referred to as Islamic Golden
Age. After the sack of Bagdad by the Mongols led by Genghis Khan in 1258, the Abbasid Caliphate shifted
its capital to Cairo as from 1261-1517 protected by the Mamluk Sultanate. Egyptian Mamluks had ruled
over Egypt and Syria since 1250.

The Ottoman Emperors (who ruled in Turkey from 1299 to 1922) overthrew the Egyptian Mamluks and
usurped the Caliphate from 1517 till 1922. The Sultanates of the Islamic Caliphates dominated the
Mediterranean trade till the emergence of USA as a world power. It was when America had gained
independence from Britain and grown in wealth and power as USA that their formidable navy came back
to help Europe subdue the Mediterranean Muslims especially through their victory in the Barbary Wars
of 1800-1816. By dislodging Islamic seafaring bandits, kidnappers and marauders who have caused
havoc for centuries, American navy restored the safety of the Mediterranean trade route.

The humiliated and backslidden Europe of the Dark Ages only began to recover its classical glories of
knowledge, wealth spirituality and power during the intellectual Renaissance socially (1400-1600) and
the magisterial Reformation spiritually (1500-1600) accompanied by their Age of Discovery socially and
Age of Awakening spiritually leading respectively to expeditions as well as missions to new distant lands.
Before the Middle (or Dark) Ages, Europe of the Greco-Roman era was ecumenical, neither nationalistic
racist nor xenophobic since the focus then was for anyone from any continent to be regarded as Greek
or Roman irrespective of one’s native nationality. However, after suffering the many centuries of racial
terrorism and supremacism from Islamic Caliphates, Europe seems to have reemerged retaliatorily
from Islamic subjugation of the Dark Ages with racist, supremacist, and xenophobic paranoia! They
began to go everywhere as conquistadores to subdue and pillage, or as colonialists for annexation and
exploitation.

After they recovered from 1000 years of the trans-Mediterranean slavery by armies and pirates of the
Islamic Caliphates, Europeans began in 1444 (first by Portuguese and Benin Kingdom in Lagos) to
perpetrate trans-Atlantic slave trade in turn! Thank God that the Church after acquiescing to civil and
political trend of slavery for a while gradually built up to rise against such trendy culture on the basis on
proper meaning of the Scripture. This Abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement (from 1780s) led by
spiritually minded Christians, like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce was crowned with the
Abolition of the slave trade in Britain (1807), in America (1808), in Spain (1811) and internationally
enforced (1833). The Church of this generation need to rise from their acquiescence to many culturally
justified and legalized paganism so that they bring similar transforming missiological influence over

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many ravaging unbiblical vices today like racism, human-trafficking, chemical-abuse, abortion,
perversion, promiscuity, terrorism and totalitarianism.

It is often overlooked but cannot be denied that missionary work by the Church to native Africans
followed the Abolition as a means to stopping native Africans from slave-raids and slave-trade among
themselves. Following the Abolition of Slave Trafficking, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Sierra
Leon sought to enhance their missions with their “Bible and plough” approach propounded by Sir T. F.
Buxton, and propagated by Rev J. F. Schon and Rev S. A. Crowther. The intension was to strategically
counter the evils of slave trade through “Christianity, Commerce and Civilization”. Such
comprehensively emancipative, evangelistic, empowerment and educative approach to missions aimed
to ensure that the new indigenous Churches in Africa would be civilized (i.e. educated and economically
viable) enough to be self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating.

In West Africa for instance, the missionaries who were mainly returned freed slaves who worked with
Crowther (Adolphus Howells, Simon Jonas, John C. Taylor, James Johnson, who are today mistaken to be
Whites because of their names) sought to replace the longstanding slavery and war culture in their
native communities by preaching peace for safe movement and introducing varieties of profitable food
and cash crops for free enterprise. However, much of these missiological realities are revised by
modern historians in the course of the White-Black racial polemics of today.

Later, the League of Nations adopted abolition of slavery in 1926, while the United Nations adopted it as
part of its human rights charter in 1948. From 1950s to 1960s, African nations regained levels of self-
governance followed by independent sovereignty. But supremacism by Europeans against others, and
even ethnic xenophobia by one nation against another have remained.

As from the 15th Century, Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores began to explore the Americas and
Africa and Asia to claim territories for westernization and international trade including transhuman slave
trade! In the current race polemics, these mostly atheist expeditioners are often recently confused as
being the same with evangelistic missionaries who often struggled against opposition from those
unchristian expeditioners and colonialists to spread the Gospel. By the 17 th Century, Settlers (both as
Explorers who were mostly not Christians and as Pilgrims who were mostly persecuted Christians)

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began to emigrate from Europe to settle as colonist in America. Soon after these European immigrants
settled as colonist hosted by the natives, their European nations began to lay state colonial claim on the
foreign land as belonging to their governments, so the settlers became hosts who ruled the natives as
their subjects! Also in Africa, the Europeans that came as explorers and merchants soon turned into
colonial governments to annex and subjugate their clientele African regions as their colonies leading to
the 19th Century (1870s till 1914) “scramble for Africa.” These historical upheavals reawakened the
Church on the need for missions to these newly discovered and colonized distant lands.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Missionary Awakening for both Protestants and Roman Catholics was
built on theology of Christian missions (missiology) to the world for two purposes which are:
1. preserving the purity of biblical Gospel proclamation for sure spiritual conversion and Church
Planting (evangelism and discipleship usually based on Mat 28:18-20), and
2. pursing the principles of missiological strategic influence for effective social transformation and
Social Action (local presence and involvement, health and educational service, agricultural
empowerment, human rights advocacy, statesmanship and civil service engagements, often
based on Luk 4:16-19).

In the 1980s, drawing from the Ecumenical Missionary trends reinvigorated through the World
Evangelical Alliance (founded 1846), the Lausanne Conference (held 1974), and World Council of
Churches (founded 1948), the worldwide Anglican Communion pulled all the thoughts into the strategic
missiological process which is studied today as the Five Marks of Mission (Tell, Teach, Transform, Tend
and Treasure). The purpose of the Five Marks of Missions is to lay out the principles of strategic
missiological processes by which the Church today could influence both souls and societies for godly
transformation and reformation of policies and practices for all nations in a way that ensures moral
rectitude, social justice and humane policies at all levels of society.

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Target Sphere Missiology
Target Sphere missiology discusses missionary transformation of societal structures. By 1975, the focus
by Apostolic Reformation and Pentecostal Churches in America shifted to an alternative paradigm of
targeting what was designated as the “seven spheres” or agencies/structures of the society (faith,
family, education, government, business, media, and entertainment). These are called the Seven
Spheres/Pillars/“Mountains” of Society often associated with Isa 2:2-3/Mic 4:1-2).
Micah 4:1
But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be
established on the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall
flow unto it.

This alternative target sphere approach arose when it was realized that in the modern world setting,
these Seven Spheres exert powerful influence on every person in every society and culture. Loren
Cunningham of “Youth With A Mission” (YWAM – a worldwide missionary movement founded in 1960 to
train and send missionaries worldwide), was the first to begin the Seven Spheres approach to missiology
in 1975 as pillars on which the Church should target her mission in order to take over the cities through
social transformation.

The strategy here is that Christians in every sphere would not merely see themselves as people only
blending in to make a living, but engage with targeted mission to make a difference toward godly
transformative impact against all odds – through proficiency, integrity, humaneness and
resourcefulness. Reality is that crookery and freakery, avarice and vice, vileness and violence are the
order of the day in every facet of life today, so the Church member who is also a Christian citizen owes
the society a divine duty to bring on the light and salt influence of best practices and recommend best
practice alternatives (sublimely inspired by heavenly wisdom) to societal problem solving.

Nevertheless, this modern alternative approach which complements the older missiology often seems to
rather seek for activist invasion with innovative strategic methods to take-over the society by targeted
sphere domination – which has not yet had enough time to have much success with the Church. The
older Church had rather sought for ethical infiltration with the divine Truth of the Gospel as light and

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salt (Mat 5:13-16) to make-over the society by Church Planting and reformation – which has had some
success in the past until the Church began her backsliding. One caveat in missiology is to watch against
unbiblical conversion and syncretic methods of contextualization which would turn out to be
counterproductive.

Whereas the Church has not had much success with the recent target sphere missiological approach, it
has been borrowed by New Agers and Postmodernists who have applied this idea with much legalization
activism and cancel-culture propaganda to counter the Church’s influence which has bandwagoned the
world into today’s postmodern paganism. It is important to notice the subtle difference between the
earlier process missiological approach of evangelistic proclamation for societal make-over, and the
recent target sphere missiological approach of activist invasion for societal take-over. In a pluralistic
society a make-over approach would be more conversational and harmonizing, while a take-over
approach would appear more confrontational and polarizing which requires more sensitive strategic
responsiveness to ameliorate.
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Counter-missionary Reactions
Salvation as Christ offered it is only possible by faith in accord with the Scriptural Truth. Other
alternative ideas cannot be vouched by the Scriptures lack any guarantee of Biblical Salvation. Over the
centuries many counter-Christian reactions and resistance backlashes have come up against Scriptural
Truth and the Church’s Mission in many forms and on many fronts, attacking from both outside and
within the Church such as:
1. Streets (physical Social Chatter and virtual Social Media) – Warped/distorted narratives and
worldly/depraved tendencies used for all forms of hyped bashing and bullying of the Church, or
rampant scoffing and scorning of Christianity.
2. Schools (Academia) – Philosophical and Scientific scholarship geared toward innovative
Revisionism and aggressive disinformation as well as agnostic and atheistic skepticism.
3. Statism (Governments) – Secular and civil systems and actors ranging from Monarchy to
Aristocracy, Autocracy to Democracy pushing and pulling the Church with trendy pressures and
tyrannical policies.
4. Spiritism (Religions) – Syncretistic contamination with unbiblical Heresies, idolatrous Deviations
demonic Occultism and esoteric Mysticism (from European Paganism, African Paganism, and
Eastern Paganism) seeking to syncretize with and antagonize the Gospel.
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Conclusion
Ultimately, we need to ensure that all of God’s Mission or work is fully done, provided it is done only
according to God’s mind or Word, that God’s mission be accomplished according to God’s wisdom to
attain God’s own intended influence on His own world.

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For the Gospel Faith, Religion and Society are only true and fruitful if they are done according to divine
institution revealed in the inspired Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures. Otherwise, they are vain and
futile. The Church should awaken to insisting seriously on bringing to the world that pure biblically based
missiological influence and to strategize on discipling her members for transforming the society, else the
Church would cease to be scripturally true but becomes a culturally trendy Church made false through
syncretism. Such a drift would mean that by the time Christ comes again, he would hardly find any true
and pure faith on the earth.
Luke 18:8
I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man comes, shall he
find faith on the earth?
This same verse of the Scripture had inspired Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, in about 250 AD to write:
“But if there be among us, most beloved brother, the fear of God, if the maintenance of the
faith prevail, if we keep the precepts of Christ, if we guard the incorrupt and inviolate sanctity of
His spouse, if the words of the Lord abide in our thoughts and hearts, when he says, "Thinkest
thou, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth" then, because we are God's
faithful soldiers, who war for the faith and sincere religion of God, let us keep the camp
entrusted to us by God with faithful valour. Nor ought custom, which had crept in among some,
to prevent the truth from prevailing and conquering; for custom without truth is the antiquity of
error. On which account, let us forsake the error and follow the truth, …” (Cyprian; EPISTLE
LXXIII https://www.andrews.edu/~toews/classes/sources/early/Cyprian%20Epistles.htm)

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The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

Amen.

Last revised: February 14, 2022

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