Theologically speaking, when a church ceases to be a missionary church it gives up on being a church. It is an attitude that is satisfied with maintenance. This attitude is concerned neither with the world at the door step of the church nor with the world in the global sense. One attitude is to give up on world mission altogether, saying that the era of mission has ended, and concentrate only on the life of the local church. There are two prevalent attitudes to world mission today. It is used to refer to both local and global mission, i.e., every place where the church meets the world. The term 'world mission' is of rather recent origin. The author suggests three important principles. The task for today is to find a similar revolutionary meaning and practice for world mission. They were social reformers who challenged what they deemed to be wrong in society, theirs as well as those to which they went. But a more careful reading of mission history shows that, at the beginning, Western Protestant missions wanted to tread a path very different from Western mercantile and colonial interests. That is at the root of much of the political resistance to missionary work today. When we revisit earlier missionary history, our view is coloured by an opinion, often justified, that Western missions were heavily identified with Western colonial aspirations and are therefore tainted. This paper was presented at the Conference on World Mission and the Role of Korean Churches, held during November 1995 in Seoul, Korea. Niles was Director for Programme on Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation, World Council of Churches, Geneva, and was Senior Lecturer and Academic Dean at the Theological College of Lanka, Pilimaralawa, Sri Lanka. He is a member of the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom.
(Princeton) is General Secretary of the Council for World Mission, London.
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