IN THE late 1980s, a Yorkshire vicar, John Marsh, wrote a book on Christian mission, So I Send You. Not long after publication, the whole print run went up in flames in a warehouse fire. The author went on to work in other parishes and became a leading light in the UK’s Leading Your Church into Growth team. This is a revised and updated version of the same book, with a new title.
It is essentially an extended meditation on the biblical word “apostle”, and its New Testament meaning of being sent to proclaim good news. For Marsh, all Christians are apostles, and all churches are called to be apostolic.
He begins by looking at the relational character of the apostolic call to mission. Jesus tells his disciples that he is sending them out as his Father had sent him. For Jesus, mission grew out of relationship; and so it is, too, for the mission of the Church. Mission, Marsh says, is not about technique or strategy, but intimacy with God.
Subsequent chapters explore the apostolic calling as doing the Father’s will, and the importance of prayer; God’s motive in “choosing” a covenant people; the principle of incarnation as identification with a complex and damaged world; the meanings of salvation; the place of healings and signs and wonders as part of the apostolic call; and Jesus’s themes of the Kingdom of God and service.
Closing chapters are on the importance of teamwork, and the ways in which God equips the Church for its apostolic calling. The result is a solid unpacking of key biblical themes in mission, from a broadly Charismatic Evangelical perspective, which would make for a good study-group resource or sermon series.
There is little here on the ways in which the cultural context of mission in the West in 2024 has changed since the book was first published in 1988; and, despite the updated title, there is little on the meanings of discipleship. For these, the reader will need to look elsewhere. But, as an introduction to core biblical principles of mission, Marsh’s book is a good starting point.
The Revd Mike Starkey is a London-based writer, and former Head of Church Growth for the diocese of Manchester.
Go. . . Make Disciples
John Marsh
Sacristy Press £14.99
(978-1-78959-343-3)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49