The Great Commission
As taught in the Anglican / Episcopal tradition
The mandate to make disciples of all nations through witness, service, and presence.
In the Anglican tradition, the question of mission is not merely an activity the Church performs but is fundamental to what the Church is. To ask, "What is the Great Commission?" is to ask, "Why does the Church exist in the world?" For the Anglican, mission is understood as Missio Dei—the Mission of God. It is the overflow of the life of the Holy Trinity reaching out to embrace a broken world. This subtopic addresses the vital tension between our identity as a "called out" people (the ekklesia) and our identity as a "sent" people (the apostoloi). Within the Anglican "Via Media" (Middle Way), mission is neither purely a social programme nor a narrow verbal proclamation; rather, it is a holistic participation in God’s work of reconciling all things to Himself in the "World to Come."
By the end of this lesson
- **Identify** the Trinitarian foundation of the Great Commission as *Missio Dei* (the Mission of God).
- **Distinguish** between the Anglican "Five Marks of Mission" and narrower definitions of evangelism.
- **Explain** the relationship between the Great Commission and the "World to Come" in Anglican eschatology.
- **Articulate** the significance of the "all authority" of Jesus in Matthew 28:18 as the legal basis for the Church's global mission.
- **Trace** the movement of mission from the "Centripetal" (coming to the Temple) in the Old Testament to the "Centrifugal" (going out to the nations) in the New Testament.
- **Defend** the necessity of both verbal proclamation and social action in a holistic reading of the Great Commission.
- **Apply** the Great Commission to the local parish context using the concept of "incarnational mission."
- **Compare** the Anglican "Via Media" approach to mission with the purely "Social Gospel" or "Exclusively Proclamatory" models.
Scripture
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