A Reflection on Mission

Sunday 24 May 2026
Revd Ross Miekle

As someone whose job title is Missioner, surely, I must have a sense of what mission is. But then I’m not sure that I do.

Mission in all its various definitions and ideas surrounds me and muddles me. From here and there, I hear different churches and theologians and preachers and Christians and thinkers and missiologists claiming what the mission of God in the world today is.

Mission is making Jesus known. Mission is baptising new believers. Mission is standing on the street corners telling people they are sinners. Mission is feeding the homeless. Mission is good administration. Mission is good pastoral care. Mission is getting more bums on church seats. Mission is encouraging people to give money to support the work of the church. Mission is the parish system. Mission is church planting. Mission is mission is mission is.

Yes, no, maybe so.

Frankly, it can make me feel like an embarrassment and a failure when I feel I’m not contributing enough to any of the wonderful causes that sometimes we’re told is the benchmark of good and engaging Christian mission.

Some weeks ago, I was doing a Clergy Hotseat with a primary school visiting the cathedral. One of the kids asked me: ‘how many people have you made a Christian?’

Such a simple question, but how does one measure? Should I have counted the number of baptisms that I’ve done? Is it the number of people I have convinced to join the faith?

How many people have I made a Christian? The sacrament of baptism aside, I don’t know.

I don’t think I would want to know.

The problem with the question is this: it assumes that mission is what I do. As opposed to mission being something that God does. Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God.

That is what God requires of us, according to the Prophet Micah.

It’s not a bad biblical model of mission, and right at the end comes the assertion of doing it humbly with God. Humbly. Because it’s not about me. It is always about God.

Extemporise: Jesus says to Nicodemus… wind and spirit.

And at the top of Pendle Hill in Lancashire, the wind would carry me and my brother across the plateau with little control over where we would end up. To try and walk against the wind would be folly. And perhaps I may have looked a fool letting the wind push me into the unknown. And yet… it was right.

So it has been for me with the Spirit. I suppose I could have resisted the call to priesthood, accepted the first curacy that came my way, decided not to have applied for this post.

But that would have been me, standing against the wind, trying to stand my ground, and do things my way and in my own failing strength and wisdom.

To travel through life after and with the Spirit of Christ has only ever led me deeper into the love and joy and peace of the very heart of God.

I think of those disciples in the upper room and then out in the streets of Jerusalem. Fishermen, zealots, tax collectors, rich women, and those healed from demons… all of whom entered into a community after the very heart of God. They saw it in Jesus – his life, his teaching and parables, his death, and his resurrection.

They learned that this was not about any one of them, but about God and what God was doing in the midst of them: filling them with new life, new purpose in which all who they are is honoured and treasured.

And discovering, what God could do with them if they committed their very breath to the breath of God – the very Holy Spirit of God. And by their humility and surrender to God’s Way, others joined the Way – breathing in the breath of God and transfiguring their hearts and lives according to the love of God.

To the transformation of the world itself.

And the Acts of the Apostles does a very good job of telling us how many people joined their community.

That leads back to the child’s question: How many people have I made a Christian? I don’t know. I almost don’t care.

I care about God, and what God does. I know that God’s mission is one that moves people from death to new life, from despair to love, from darkness to light.

I know that God’s mission is one that lifts up the lowly and brings down the mighty from their thrones. I know that God’s mission is one of a perfect love that drives out fear from and for all people – Jew and Greek, male and female, and every other category we imagine.

And I know that God calls me and you to participate in that mission.

And I know that to participate well requires me to attend to the daily transformation of my heart: by breathing in the breath of God and walking humbly with God all the days of my life.