Christian mission
The Christian mission can be understood as the conviction that all believers are called to spread the Christian gospel to the whole world, in accordance, for example, with the Great Commission set out by Jesus Christ and recorded in Matthew 28:16-20. More specifically, a Christian Mission is an organized effort to carry on evangelism, in the name of the Christian faith, or a location established for this purpose. Missions involve sending individuals and groups across boundaries, most commonly geographical boundaries. Sometimes individuals are sent and are called missionaries, and historically may have been based in mission stations. When groups are sent, they are often called mission teams and they undertake mission trips. There are a few different kinds of mission trips: short-term, long-term, relational and those that simply help people in need. Some people choose to dedicate their whole lives to mission.
Missionaries preach the Christian faith and sometimes administer the sacraments, and provide humanitarian aid or services. Christian doctrines permit the provision of aid without requiring religious conversion. Nonetheless, the provision of help has always been closely tied to evangelization efforts.
History of Christian missions
The earliest Christian mission, the result of the Great Commission and of the Dispersion of the Apostles, was active within Second Temple Judaism. Whether a Jewish proselytism existed or not that would have served as a model for the early Christians is unclear.Soon, the expansion of the Christian mission beyond Judaism to those who were not Jewish became a contested issue, notably at the Council of Jerusalem. The Apostle Paul, an early proponent of expansion among the "Gentiles", contextualized the Christian message for the Greek and Roman cultures, allowing it to reach beyond its Hebrew and Jewish roots.
Other key figures in the New Testament also played significant roles in the early spread of Christianity. Barnabas, known as the "son of encouragement," supported Paul in his early missionary journeys, fostering the growth of Christian communities. Peter preached to the Jewish community in Jerusalem, emphasizing repentance and baptism. Philip, one of the seven deacons, spread Christianity beyond Jerusalem, notably in Samaria, where his preaching and miracles led many to believe. Thomas is traditionally believed to have traveled to India, establishing Christian communities that remain influential in South India. Apollos, a skilled speaker from Alexandria, proclaimed Christ and strengthened believers in Ephesus and Corinth.
A major early center of Christianity, the Coptic Church in Alexandria has the reputation of spreading the faith as far afield as Switzerland, Abyssinia and India, influencing Mesopotamia, Persia, Rome, and Ireland.
From Late Antiquity onward, much missionary activity was carried out by members of religious orders. Monasteries followed disciplines and supported missions, libraries, and practical research, all of which the Church perceived as works to reduce human misery and suffering and to glorify the Christian God. For example, Nestorian communities evangelized in parts of Central Asia, as well as in Tibet, China, and India. Cistercians evangelized much of Northern Europe, as well as developing most of European agriculture's classic techniques. St Patrick evangelized many in Ireland. St David was active in Wales.
During the Middle Ages, Ramon Llull advanced the concept of preaching to Muslims and converting them to Christianity by means of non-violent argument. A vision for large-scale mission to Muslims would die with him, not to be revived until the 19th century.
Additional events can be found at the timeline of Christian missions.
Medieval
During the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries and missionaries such as Saint Patrick, and Adalbert of Prague propagated learning and religion beyond the boundaries of the old Roman Empire. In the seventh century Gregory the Great sent missionaries, including Augustine of Canterbury, into England, and in the eighth century English Christians, notably Saint Boniface, spread Christianity into Germany. The Hiberno-Scottish mission began in 563, ultimately sparking the Anglo-Saxon mission which evangelised in Francia in the 8th century. Military-religious orders operated in the Baltic regions of the Northern Crusades, spreading Catholicism at the expense of heathenism and Eastern Orthodoxy.In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, Franciscans such as William of Rubruck, John of Montecorvino, and Giovanni ed' Magnolia were sent as missionaries to the Near and Far East. Their travels took them as far as China in an attempt to convert the advancing Mongols, especially the Great Khans of the Mongol Empire. In the later part of the fifteenth century, Portuguese missionaries had success in spreading Christianity to the Kingdom of Kongo in West Africa. In 1491, King João I of Kongo converted to Christianity and his nobility and peasants followed suit. The Kongo kingdom remained Christian for the next two centuries.
Catholic missions after 1492
One of the main stated goals of the Christopher Columbus expedition financed by Queen Isabella of Spain was to spread Christianity. During the Age of Discovery, Spain and Portugal established many missions in their American and Asian colonies. The most active orders were the Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans and Dominicans. The Portuguese sent missions into Africa. These are some of the most well-known missions in history. While some of these missions were associated with imperialism and oppression, others were relatively peaceful and focused on inculturation rather than on cultural imperialism.In Renaissance Portugal and Spain, religion formed an integral part of the state, and evangelization was seen as having both secular and spiritual benefits. Wherever these powers attempted to expand their territories or influence, missionaries would soon follow. By the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the two powers divided the world between them into exclusive spheres of influence, trade and colonization. The proselytization of mainland Asia became linked to Portuguese colonial policy.
From 1499 onward, Portuguese trade with Asia rapidly proved profitable. Jesuits arrived in India around 1541, and the Portuguese colonial government in Goa supported the mission with incentives for baptized Christians. Beginning in 1552, the Church sent Jesuits to China and to other countries in Asia.
During the time of the Holland Mission, when the Roman Catholic church in the northern Netherlands was suppressed, there were neither parishes nor dioceses, and the country effectively became a mission area in which congregations were called "stations". Statie, usually called a clandestine church in English, refers to both the congregation's church and its seat or location.
Protestant missions
The Reformation unfolded in Europe in the early 16th century. For over a hundred years, occupied by their struggle with the Catholic Church, the early Protestant churches as a body were not strongly focused on missions to "heathen" lands. Instead, the focus was initially more on Christian lands in the hope to spread the Protestant faith there, identifying the papacy with the Antichrist.File:Suomenlahetysseurantalo1903.jpg|thumb|Lähetystalo, the office and church building of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission in Ullanlinna, Helsinki, Finland in 1903
In the centuries that followed, Protestant churches began sending out missionaries in increasing numbers, spreading the proclamation of the Christian message to previously unreached people. In North America, missionaries to the Native Americans included Jonathan Edwards, who in his later years retired from the very public life of his early career. He became a missionary to the Housatonic Native Americans and a staunch advocate for them against cultural imperialism.
As European culture became established in the midst of indigenous peoples outside Europe, the cultural distance between Christians of differing cultures has been difficult to overcome. One early solution was the creation of segregated "praying towns" of Christian natives. This pattern of grudging acceptance of converts played out again later in Hawaii when Congregational missionaries from New England went there and converted the native population, including the royalty. In the course of the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Catholic missionaries learned the languages of the Amerindians and devised writing systems for them. Then they preached to indigenous people in those languages instead of in Spanish, to keep Indians away from "sinful" whites. An extreme case of segregation occurred in the Guarani Reductions, a theocratic semi-independent region established by the Jesuits in the region of the future Paraguay between the early 17th century and 1767.
From 1732 onwards the Moravian Church began sending out missionaries.
In the United States, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was chartered in 1812.
Protestant missionaries from the Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian traditions starting arriving in what was then the Ottoman Empire in the first half of the 19th Century. This eventually let to the creation of what are today the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and the see of the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. Furthermore, it was during this time that the Christian and Missionary Alliance started their missionary activity in Jerusalem.