Christianity in the West is currently navigating a period of significant social and cultural marginalization. This shift represents a new experience for many believers, altering our sense of identity within a society where Christian perspectives were once central to public discourse. As secular discussions increasingly move toward pushing the Christian voice out of the public square and characterizing traditional beliefs in negative terms, many in the church feel forced into a defensive posture.
When we experience that kind of alienation, the natural human desire for belonging makes the rejection of mainstream culture difficult to endure. To escape this discomfort, we are often tempted by two extremes: total assimilation into the mainstream or a defensive entrenchment. In the latter, we withdraw into isolated communities to preserve what we consider essential, often resulting in a reactive or aggressive relationship with the surrounding culture. While there is a vital place for prophetic engagement, a response rooted in fear or feeling threatened rarely comes across as redemptive or as a genuine expression of the gospel.
I think exile describes this feeling we have, providing both an emotionally resonant and theologically accurate framework for our identity. The biblical narrative helps us transform this sense of alienation into the mindset of an ambassador. While an ambassador is not at home and may find their environment difficult, they remain focused on a specific purpose with the resources of heaven at their disposal. This hopeful theology, reflected throughout the Old and New Testaments, allows us to reframe our missionary identity in a secular world and consider embracing an exile mindset in mission.
We have to think like cross-cultural missionaries into an unreached people group. We have to have that mindset when we engage the city and society and community around us in the West. If we make that kind of shift in our imagination, we have all the tools already at our disposal. We’ll just have to learn to use them. Most of us don’t think we need them in the West. We have to recognize that this missionary calling is not for a few specialists. It’s not a calling just for the church leader or missions director. It’s actually a calling, a commissioning, on every believer. This is what happens to disciples. They follow Jesus, they watch him doing all kinds of amazing stuff, He gets them involved in it, and before they know it, He’s saying, All right, now you do it. And this is the process God will lead us all on. It’s not a narrow concept of mission, because it’s going to look very different if the place I’ve been sent is in a corporate law office versus a neighborhood soup kitchen. We’ve got to have the breadth of mindset that the gospel is related to all of life, and God is interested in reaching into all those fields. There’s no hierarchy here. His heart is to redeem all things. He wants all things on heaven and earth reconciled and coming under the lordship of Jesus Christ. That’s God’s mission statement in Ephesians 1:10. And so we need to be careful that we don’t have a narrower mission than that.
If we are growing in maturity and equipping one another and learning from one another, God will start to show connections between the gathered and scattered church. We actually start to gain the insight of the people God has put into these different spheres by talking and listening to one another, and discerning and praying about how is God challenging, provoking, and equipping us. How he is giving us faith and a heart to actually reach these areas and undertake our work in ways that are caught up in his mission and purpose in the world. That can bring enormous energy. There’s no knowing what can happen when we start to ask God to give us the kind of corporate vision for a place that we might expect to have if we really understood ourselves as the body of Christ placed and sent into a particular community with the authority of God to witness to and represent his kingdom in that place. If we really inhabit that identity, then it shouldn’t surprise us if, when we begin to ask these questions, God begins to reveal things to us. We begin to see things coming together.
Paul S. Williams is CEO of the British and Foreign Bible Society, one of the world’s oldest and largest Bible societies. He is also research professor of marketplace theology and leadership at Regent College in Vancouver and an honorary professor at Alphacrucis College in Australia. His ReFrame video curriculum has been used worldwide at conferences and colleges and by faith-at-work organizations. His new book is Exiles on Mission: How Christians Can Thrive in a Post-Christian World (Baker).