Table of ContentsSummary IntroductionConclusionSummary This essay discusses the meaning of a Christian mission and highlights the activities of Christian missionaries, such as Amy Carmichael, William Carey, and David Livingston, who proclaimed the Gospel to all. those nations where people never heard it before and converted people to Christianity. The essay also explores the tension of broadening the definition of Christian mission too broadly and reducing it to a very limited understanding of mission. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayIntroductionWhen we start our sessions with my postgraduate students, we ask them what is the mission? They respond immediately by saying that the mission includes evangelization, social work, liberation and dialogue. They assume that we are asking the question of the Christian mission as such. They are often confused with the meaning of the word mission because very often this word is misused and misunderstood. Mission according to Chambers dictionary is an act of sending to fulfill certain functions. It can designate a flight for a specific purpose such as the bombing of a target (page 951). The word mission is therefore a little more than an act of evangelization or an act of charity. Then we ask the question: what makes a Christian on mission? By this we mean what Christian Mission is which is distinct from that of a mission. So we show them the photos of Amy Carmichael, William Carey and David Livingston and ask them: do you consider them Christian missionaries? Surprisingly, the first and immediate answer was “yes”. Some of them were aware of the colonial problems and the links these missionaries had and criticized their missionary activities. However, the majority of the class agreed that we could consider them Christian missionaries. So my question was why? Furthermore, what activities did they carry out to call them Christian missionaries and identify their work as Christian mission? For this question, they tried to answer that they came and proclaimed the Gospel in all those nations where the people never heard it. Before. They obeyed Jesus' great commission to go and proclaim and make disciples of Jesus Christ. It is a Christian mission. More than William Carey and Amy Carmichael, they promoted the education of oppressed people and uplifted them. We can hear more comments about certain missionaries, such as that while they did not openly support the colonial power, they did not publicly engage against them either. Some students commented that they were clearly Christian missionaries. For them, what they did was proclaim the gospel to all these nations and convert people to Christianity. They also used various methods to proclaim the gospel and empowered Christians and non-Christians to become better human beings through education and social development programs. Some students commented that their education was too Western, too modern and sometimes poorly suited to their context. One of them referred to an interesting statement especially in relation to African contexts, while missionaries and natives prayed together before prayer, Africans had the land and missionaries had the Bible and after prayer , Africans had the Bible and missionaries had the land. . This metaphorically highlights the colonial agenda with which some missionaries operated in certain parts of the world. InIn some parts of the world, missionaries encouraged the local population to be passive and therefore not to oppose the colonial rulers. In the Indian context, missionaries and the British Raj Company clashed very often. The British Raj society and the colonialists did not want missionaries to convert locals and actually banned conversion in many places. In some cases, the colonialists banned missionaries too. The colonialists did not want revolts in the name of religion in India. In some contexts, British missionaries not only encouraged people to join the nationalist movement, but they also raised public awareness of such activities. This discussion continued a bit towards the next set of photos and we asked them if they would consider the people in these photos to be missionaries. These photos included Mandela, Gandhi and Mother Theresa. My question was the same: can you consider them Christian missionaries? They had a discussion among themselves. Some of them were unsure of my question and others were confused. One of them came back and said yes, we can consider them Christian missionaries from a different point of view. Some of them agree that Mother Theresa can certainly be considered a Christian missionary from the perspective of charity. None of them asked about their denomination, as none were in the Roman Catholic denomination during my session. We are beginning to see how our definition of Christian mission is beginning to broaden a bit, although there has been some controversy about it. Then, when it came to Mandela, almost everyone agreed that he was a Christian and part of a mission for an independent South Africa. We then challenged them by asking this question: What would make Mandela a Christian missionary? Because of the general, popular, and public perception of Mandela, no one in the class questions his status as a Christian missionary. Then we provoked them by asking them if he was not using violence as part of his strategy. They then defended him by saying he was in prison and then used dialogue as a way to move towards independence. Then they started debating whether we should categorize Mandela as a Christian mission, as they had Mother Theresa or William Carey. Interestingly, around this time, postgraduate researchers began to see two sides of an argument. Furthermore, they expressed difficulties on the one hand in narrowing the definition of Christian mission and on the other hand in broadening it to include everything that constitutes mission. Bishop Stephen Neil (1959) said that “if everything is mission, nothing is mission.” . Many of our students recognize the tension of vastly expanding the definition at the same time as reducing it to a very limited understanding of mission. Ultimately, we must arrive at some sort of general description of Christian mission while recognizing the fact that there may be more than one definition. We highlighted some relevant points relating to Christian mission as follows: We discussed together Christian mission as outlined by David Bosch in his famous book on transformative mission. Sending missionaries to a particular place. The activities of the missionaries. The geographical area where the missionaries work. The spread of the Gospel. Expansion. of the reign of GodThe conversion of the pagansThe founding of the new ChurchAt a historical moment, some interpreted the mission.