IndexSummary IntroductionConclusionSummary This essay discusses the meaning of a Christian mission and highlights the activities of Christian missionaries, such as Amy Carmichael, William Carey, and David Livingston, who proclaimed the Gospel to all those nations where the people had never heard of them before, and they converted people to Christianity. The essay also explores the tension of overbroadening the definition of Christian mission and narrowing it to a very limited understanding of mission. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay IntroductionWhen we start our sessions with my postgraduate students, we ask them what is the mission? They immediately respond by saying that the mission includes evangelization, social work, liberation and dialogue. They assume that we are asking the question about Christian mission as such. They are often confused with the meaning of the word mission because very often this word is abused and misunderstood. Mission according to Chambers dictionary is an act of sending to perform some functions. May refer to a flight with a specific purpose such as bombing a target (p. 951). Therefore the word mission is a little more than an act of evangelization or an act of charity. Then we ask ourselves the question: what makes a mission Christian? We mean what is Christian mission which is distinct from that of mission. So we show them photos of Amy Carmichael, William Carey, and David Livingston and ask them: Do you consider them Christian missionaries? Surprisingly the first and immediate answer was “yes”. Some of them were aware of the colonial issues and the connections these missionaries had and were critical of their missionary activities. However, the majority in the class agreed that we could consider them as Christian missionaries. So my question was: why? Furthermore, what activities have they done to call them Christian missionaries and identify their work as Christian mission? To this question they tried to answer that they came and announced the Gospel in all those nations where people had never heard it before. They obeyed Jesus' great commission to go, proclaim and make disciples of Jesus Christ. This is a Christian mission. More than William Carey and Amy Carmichael they promoted education among oppressed people and uplifted them. You can hear more comments about the missionaries in particular, as if they did not openly support the colonial power, but did not publicly pledge against them either. Some students commented that they are clearly Christian missionaries. For them what they did was proclaim the Gospel to all those nations and convert the people to Christianity. They also used a variety of methods to proclaim the gospel and enabled Christians and non-Christians to become better human beings through educational and social development programs. Some students commented that their education was too Western, too modern and, at times, not very relevant to their context. One of them referred to an interesting statement especially in relation to African contexts, while missionaries and local indigenous people prayed together before the prayer the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible and after the prayer the Africans had the Bible and the missionaries had the earth. This metaphorically highlights the colonial agenda with which some missionaries operated in some parts of the world. In some parts of the world, missionaries encouraged local people to be passive and therefore not go against colonial rulers. In the Indian context, imissionaries and the British Raj Company collided very often. The company of the British Raj and the colonialists did not want missionaries to convert the locals and in fact banned conversion in many places. In some cases, the colonialists also banned the missionaries. The colonialists did not want any revolt in the name of religion in India. In some contexts, British missionaries not only encouraged people to join the nationalist movement but also educated the public towards such activities. The discussion continued a bit towards the next set of images and we asked them if they would consider the people in these images to be missionaries. These images included Mandela, Gandhi and Mother Teresa. My question was the same: can you consider them as Christian missionaries? They had an argument with each other. Some of them were not sure about my question and some were confused. One of them came back saying that yes, they can be considered Christian missionaries from a different perspective. Some of them agree that Mother Teresa can certainly be considered a Christian missionary from the point of view of charity. None of them asked questions about their denomination as no one was of the Roman Catholic denomination during my session. We begin to see how our definition of Christian mission begins to broaden a bit, although there has been some discussion about this. Then, when it came to Mandela, almost everyone agreed that he was Christian and part of a mission towards an independent South Africa. We then challenged them by asking this question: What would make Mandela a Christian missionary? Because of the general, popular, and public perception of Mandela, no one in class questions that he is a Christian missionary. Then we provoked them by asking if he didn't use violence as part of his strategy. Then they defended him by saying he was in prison and then used dialogue as a path to independence. Then they began to argue whether we should classify Mandela as a Christian mission as they did with Mother Teresa or William Carey. Interestingly, in this period postgraduate researchers began to see two sides of an argument. Furthermore, they expressed difficulty on the one hand in narrowing the definition of Christian mission and on the other in broadening it to include everything as mission. Bishop Stephen Neil (1959) stated that "if everything is mission, nothing is mission". . Many of our students recognize the tension in broadly broadening definition two and at the same time narrowing even the very limited understanding of mission. Ultimately, we must arrive at some sort of broad description of Christian mission, while acknowledging the fact that there may be more than one definition for it. We have highlighted some relevant points related to Christian Mission as follows:We discussed together about Christian Mission as highlighted by David Bosch in his famous book Transforming Mission.Sending Missionaries to a particular placeActivities of MissionariesThe geographical area where missionaries workPropagation of the GospelExpansion of the kingdom of GodThe conversion of the pagansThe foundation of the New ChurchAt a certain historical point, some interpreted the Christian mission as expansionism. (Kirk 1999, Cardoze 2002)Expansion of churchesExpansion of ChristianityExpansion of business operations of Christian countriesExpansion of colonial powerExpansion of land and fieldsThen we discussed and identified some possible areas that can help us recognize the broader definition of Christian mission even if we have accepted the our limitations in making universal and immutable use of these two words. Let's put together what the possibilities may be for.