When society talks about the missionary vocation of the church, it is often scornfully called 'winning souls'. When political parties or commercial companies do their best to spread their message, there is apparently nothing wrong with that, but when the church speaks in public about its Lord Jesus Christ, it is suddenly suspect. That talk about 'winning souls' immediately indicates that 'the world' is thinking mainly about the spiritual aspect of man: the soul. And let that also be the thought I encounter in the church... The last episode of this series on missionary values is about the missionary focus on the whole person: soul and body.
In the Bible different from Greek philosophy
Churchgoers who stand in the tradition of the Reformation and the Later Reformation are familiar with talking about the soul. After all, that is what the Bible often talks about too. To win the world, but suffer damage to one's soul, in the context of Mark. 8:36 to be lost.
Still, it is good to hold that 'soul' in the Bible is not the same as the spiritual and eternal 'component' of being human. That is how it did enter our thinking from Greek philosophy. For the Greeks, the soul is the eternal principle of life in man that is 'imprisoned' in the body. At death, the soul is freed from its 'packaging' and can ascend to its origin: the divine primal principle. But that, then, is pagan thinking.
In the Bible, 'soul' means much more the whole 'me', with skin and hair, and not just the 'spiritual side' of our humanity. When Gen 46:18 talks about giving birth to 'souls', it is clear that this was about complete babies being born, not some kind of spirits! And when the writer of Psalm 69:11 talks about his 'soul' fasting during his mourning, it is clear that he does not mean 'spiritual fasting', but simply that he does not eat.
Some consolation
In this context, it is good to also listen for a moment to the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism. When asked there about your and your only comfort in life and death, the answer is that with "with body and soul, both in life and death" I am not my own, but the property of my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ.
So here too it is confessed that the Gospel of Christ is not limited to the 'soul' as the spiritual chance of our humanity, but that salvation is inclusive of the 'body'. The great proof that God is concerned with the redemption of the whole human being is that on the Feast of Easter, Christ did not rise 'spiritually' but bodily. Even, to prove this to His disciples, He ate bodily to dispel the idea that He was some kind of spirit appearance (Luke 24: 36-43).
Missionary partners
So what does this mean for our missionary vocation? Among other things, I think this: if the Gospel has meaning for body and soul, shouldn't evangelising elders and deacons also work together much more as 'missionary partners'? In many churches there is the thought, and in any case it is the practice, that evangelisation and diaconate do not have that much to do with each other. Diaconate is often focused internally (one's own congregation) or on distant neighbours in disaster areas, for example. But couldn't churches and church members act both diaconally and evangelically in their own environment?
In a lot of churches, I then hear people say: but our fellow locals are well off, they don't need the diaconate. But if we take a broader view of diaconate? Sure, diaconate is about daily bread, income, clothing and practical help. But don't deacons (literally, "people who serve") also have a role in equipping the congregation for service (Eph. 4:12)? And is there not a great need in our society, including outside the church, for all kinds of service? Who cares about 'loitering youths' and (this too occurs) 'loitering elders'? Who cares about children who have a house but no home because their parents are not there for them? Who cares about highly educated hard-working people who end up in burnout at a young age? Who cares about isolated migrants in their flats?
Body and soul thus
What I have in mind I the example of the Lord Jesus: He did not separate the care of body (bread) and soul (proclamation). With Him it was a perfect unity, right down to the prayer He taught us: 'give us this day our daily bread' (the body), 'and forgive us our sins' (the spiritual life).
Rev Peter L.D. Visser
missionary consultant
