Contextualizing Peacebuilding Ambassadors of Peace and Reconciliation

Towards a Praxis of Integral Mission in the Local Church

Abstract

The mission of God requires both the demonstration and the proclamation of the Good
News of the Kingdom. Mission requires a vehicle or vessel through whom demonstration and
proclamation of God’s mission can be seen and heard. Mission needs a people called, formed,
and surrendered to the Lord of mission. In this paper we will explore Biblical mission as an
unbroken whole of proclamation and demonstration of the Good News of Jesus and the Kingdom
of God. Biblical mission is not only interested in saving souls but brings God’s intended
abundant life into the world as a foretaste of what is to come. This paper will argue God is
uniquely concerned for and seeking to redeem all localities and peoples with their distinctive
beauty and brokenness. God is at work to bring the shalom of his Good News Kingdom into
redemptive and transforming reality. And, furthermore, the primary agent of God’s integral
mission everywhere is the ekklesia that takes its locality, context, space and place seriously. The local ekklesia – whom God has called to Himself through faith in Jesus Christ and sent as Jesus
is sent – takes responsibility for their locality through the ambassadorial ministry of
reconciliation that has been gifted to it. The local church is set apart by God to be the local
ambassadorial agents of God’s plan to reconcile all things to Himself in Christ. And, finally, this
paper will present practical and challenging ways in which every local church, a community
consisting of those reconciled to God who are now ambassadors of peace and reconciliation,
must in their way of life as a community and in their planting of new churches embody the
ministry of reconciliation giving to the church by God.