A Theology of Mission | Ed Stetzer

What is the mission of the church in the world today? In this episode of Logos Live, Kirk E. Miller sits down with author and missiologist Dr. Ed Stetzer to trace the mission of God from Genesis to the Great Commission.

Whether you are navigating between evangelism and social justice or seeking to avoid “mission drift” in your local congregation, this conversation provides a biblical-theological framework for understanding our purpose in God’s grand purposes.

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Episode guest: Ed Stetzer

Ed Stetzer, PhD, is the Dean at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He also serves as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University. Stetzer has planted, revitalized, and pastored churches; trained pastors and church planters on six continents; earned two master’s degrees and two doctorates; and he has written hundreds of articles and a dozen books. He is Editor-in-Chief of Outreach Magazine, and regularly writes for news outlets such as USA Today and CNN. His national radio show airs on Moody Radio and affiliates. Stetzer also serves as Teaching Pastor at Mariners Church.

Episode synopsis

Where does mission originate?

Many begin considering mission with the Great Commission (Matt 28:18–20). But mission is not a task God assigns partway through the Bible’s story. Mission has roots in the Old Testament and even finds its origin in God himself, who is a “missionary God.”

This changes how we read the Bible. Rather than treating mission as a novel New Testament addition, Scripture’s entire storyline showcases God’s consistent purpose to restore creation and redeem a people for himself. As early as the protoevangelium (Gen 3:15), God promises a human offspring who would undo the effects of the fall. In Genesis 12, God calls Abram. Through his offspring, God will bless the nations. Then in the Exodus, God rescues Abraham’s offspring, the nation of Israel, and appoints them a priestly people for his mission to represent God to the nations and draw them to God (Exod 19:5–6).¹

Ed Stetzer summarizes, “There’s never been a time when God hasn’t been a missionary God.”²

Creation and covenants as the seedbed of mission

In Genesis 1:26–28, God commissions humanity to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Gen 1:28). Scholars identify the garden of Eden as a proto-temple whose borders humanity was meant to extend, bringing order to the chaos beyond.³ As God’s image-bearers, humanity represented God as king and was tasked with extending his rule and presence across creation.⁴

This Creation Mandate then resurfaces in God’s covenant with Abraham, which drives the rest of Scripture’s storyline. Genesis 12’s promise of blessing, offspring, and land echo the language and themes of Genesis 1–3, aiming to recover them post-fall.

The Great Commission, then, is the redemptive recovery of that original Creation Mandate. The call to fill the earth with God’s image-bearers (Gen 1:26–28) is fulfilled in the multiplication of disciples conformed to Christ, the perfect image of God (e.g., Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10).

Exodus and the shape of God’s mission

As “the gospel before the gospel,” the exodus event is incredibly important for shaping how we think about God’s mission. Even as the prophets treat the exodus as a template for God’s future work of redemption, the exodus shows us the intent and scope of God’s mission.

First, according to the book of Exodus, mission is what God does, never primarily what Israel does. God hears the cry of the oppressed, reveals his name, and acts in history; Israel’s role is responsive, not initiating.

Further, Israel’s redemption occurs, not merely to rescue Israel, but to make God known. In Exodus 9:16, God tells Pharaoh, “For this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” Israel’s priestly vocation (Exod 19:5–6) confirms the same point: God sets his people apart as a priestly nation, to mediate knowledge of God to the nations. As Ed explains, “God’s mission creates a people, and God’s people exist for God’s mission.”

God’s mission creates a people, and God’s people exist for God’s mission.

Finally, Exodus highlights the ethical dimension of God’s mission (e.g., “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt”; Exod 22:21).

In sum, the exodus teaches us that God reveals himself through redemptive action, that redemptive action forms a people who are to reflect God’s character, and that that people is called to ethics and compassion.

From “come and see” to “go and tell”

As Ed explains, in the Old Testament, the mission of God’s people has a centripetal movement. Israel’s task was to draw the nations toward Jerusalem to worship the one true God. However, Jesus reverses this direction. He tells his apostles that they “will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Instead of the nations coming to Jerusalem—a centripetal or “come and see” mission—the apostles are to go out from Jerusalem to those nations—a centrifugal or “go and tell” mission.

Pentecost (Acts 2) pictures what should have happened had Israel actually brought the nations to God: a multilingual praise of God and his salvation (cf. Rev 7). Instead, that anticipated in-gathering of the nations transforms into the church’s outward sending. As Jesus acquires authority over all nations (cf. Dan 7), so Jesus deputizes his people to make disciples from among all of those nations (Matt 28:18–20).

What is the ultimate goal of God’s mission?

People at times debate whether the ultimate goal of God’s mission is the salvation of sinners (soteriology) or God’s glorification among the nations (doxology).

According to Ed, God has always been on a mission to glorify himself by making himself known (Exod 9:16; Isa 11:9; Hab 2:14). That mission will complete when God is rightly glorified among his people (see Ps 96; Rev 19:1–6; cf. 5:9–14; 7:9–12). This is the goal of God’s mission—a goal that defines everything God is doing in the world, and a mission he invites his people to join.

Missions—cross-cultural, missionary work—is a subcategory of that mission. Historically, Christians have emphasized different motivations for missions, which, according to Ed, should not be pitted against one another. We can pursue missions

• to rescue the perishing from hell and a Christless eternity
• to gather the elect from among the nations for God’s glory⁵
• to see God’s shalom realized across creation

What is the mission of the church?

Moving from the mission of God to the mission of the church, Ed appeals to John 20:21. According to Ed, the mission of the church is to join Jesus on his mission. And when we look at Jesus’s ministry, we see that his mission involved two things: serving the marginalized and hurting (Luke 4:18–19) and saving the lost (Luke 19:10). Thus, for Ed, the church’s mission is also twofold: gospel demonstration and gospel proclamation. We declare the gospel with our mouths and then we display it with our deeds.⁶ So we observe the early church in Acts doing both of these things.⁷

Evangelicals have often debated the mission of the church, particularly whether that mission centers on evangelism and discipleship or if, and to what extent, it also involves things like caring for the vulnerable and pursuing justice in society.⁸ Ed raises the concern that gospel proclamation often gets lost when the church “rediscovers” gospel demonstration. Yet, based on Scripture’s teaching, he does not want to jettison gospel demonstration as a major part of the church’s mission. After all, as Kirk observes, even if one locates their definition of mission in the Great Commission, that commission calls us not merely to make disciples but to teach these disciples to observe all that Jesus commanded, which is quite expansive (Matt 28:18–20).

Nonetheless, Kirk introduces a distinction between the church’s mission as an institution (or the church as organization) from the broader responsibilities and activities of individual Christians who make up the church (the church organic). Even if Christians are called to do a breadth of things, observing “all that [Jesus] has commanded [us]” (Matt 28:20), does that mean the church—as a collective organization or institution—should subsume all of those things into its mission? As many point out, if everything is mission, then nothing is mission.

How gospel and kingdom define mission

Often one’s conception of the gospel—its nature, concerns, and scope—as well as the kingdom have a direct correlation to one’s theology of mission. Debates about the church’s mission usually trace back to debates about how the gospel itself is defined.⁹

For instance, some define the gospel more narrowly as focused on Christ’s atonement and the salvation of sinners. Others include within the gospel broader concerns of societal renewal and cosmic restoration. For his part, Ed believes the gospel concerns both aspects: personal salvation and broader transformation. He defines the gospel as

the good news that God, who is more holy than we can imagine, looked upon people with compassion, who are more sinful than we’d possibly admit, and sent Jesus into history to establish his kingdom and reconcile people and the world to himself.

Regarding our theology of the kingdom, Ed avoids saying Christians “build” the kingdom, preferring instead to say that Jesus grows his kingdom, and that the kingdom, having come, produced the church, which then joins Jesus’s kingdom-mission in the world. The church is not identical with the kingdom, but the two are inseparably connected.

The mission in practice

Practically, what does it look like for churches—and Christians—to be mission-oriented?

As Ed explains, it’s not that your church needs to find a mission, but that God’s already-existing mission ought to define your church’s. We get to be caught up in a mission bigger than ourselves.

Every believer, then, is called to say yes to participating in that mission, even as that will take different forms for different people. Whether it means becoming a cross-cultural missionary, serving our neighbors, or teaching the Bible to children, we respond like Isaiah, “Here I am, send me” (Isa 6:8).

Share your thoughts

What is the mission of the church? Join us in the Word by Word group to share your thoughts.

Ed Stetzer’s resource recommendations on mission

• Craig Ott, ed. The Mission of the Church: Five Views in Conversation. Contributions by Stephen Bevans, Darrell Guder, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, Edward Romman, and Ed Stetzer.
• Stetzer, Ed. Review of What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission, by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert. Themelios 36, no. 3 (2011). https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/review/what-is-the-mission-of-the-church-making-sense-of-social-justice-shalom-and/.
• “Responding to the Lausanne Seoul Statement: We Need a Greater Focus on Evangelism’s Place in the Holistic Mission.” ChurchLeaders, September 25, 2024. https://churchleaders.com/voices/exchange/lausanne/497595-ed-stetzer-my-appeal-to-lausanne-dts.html.
• “Declaring, Displaying, and the Future of Lausanne.” ChurchLeaders, September 27, 2024. https://churchleaders.com/voices/exchange/lausanne/497753-lausannes-integral-mission-the-role-of-evangelism-in-the-lausanne-movement-explained.html.

Related content

• What Is the Great Commission—& Is It Even for Me?
• How the Great Commission Echoes the Old Testament
• What Is the Creation Mandate—and Does It Still Matter?
• What’s the Purpose of Work? How Vocations Participate in God’s Mission
• Ecclesiology: What Do We Believe about the Church?

1. Ed Stetzer recommends Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, 2nd ed. (InterVarsity Academic, 2025), as a helpful book for tracing God’s mission across the whole Bible, especially the Old Testament.
2. On this theme of God as a missionary God, Ed recommends Francis M. Dubose, God Who Sends: A Fresh Quest for Biblical Mission (Baptist Sunday School, 1983).
3. See G. K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God, New Studies in Biblical Theology 17 (Apollos, 2004) for a helpful treatment of these themes. See also Andreas J. Köstenberger, Salvation to the Ends of the Earth: A Biblical Theology of Mission, 2nd ed., New Studies in Biblical Theology 11 (Apollos, 2020).
4. Ed recommends Carmen Joy Imes, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters (InterVarsity, 2023).
5. Ed references John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 30th anniversary ed. (Baker Academic, 2022) as an example of this theology.
6. The Lausanne Movement, for instance, reflects this dual emphasis in its approach to missions.
7. On this latter point, Ed recommends Michael Green, Evangelism Through the Local Church: A Comprehensive Guide to All Aspects of Evangelism (Eerdmans, 2023).
8. For example, see works like Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert, What Is the Mission of the Church?: Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission (Crossway, 2011); David J. Hesselgrave et al., We Evangelicals and Our Mission: How We Got to Where We Are and How to Get to Where We Should Be Going (Cascade, 2020); Craig Ott, ed., The Mission of the Church: Five Views in Conversation (Baker Academic, 2016); Jason S. Sexton, ed., Four Views on the Church’s Mission, Counterpoints (Zondervan, 2017). John Stott and Billy Graham also famously disagreed over this issue.
9. For example, compare and contrast Greg Gilbert, What Is the Gospel? (Crossway, 2010) and Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, rev. ed. (Zondervan, 2016).