Mission

On the one hand, understanding the mission of the church is quite simple. On the other hand it becomes a perplexing thing that requires a lot of thought across several different categories. Several questions come to mind. What is the church? Who gets to define it? How do we think about the unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the church? How do the Old Testament and New Testament inform the first question? How much should a church be contextualized and how much should it adhere to the great tradition? At the end of all such considerations, will we get back to the simple answer concerning the mission of the church?

First, let’s simply say the church is not like any other organization on earth. It is not a simple matter of a voluntary association. It is not a club for those who are similar in their tastes or dispositions. It is constituted by God and is disturbingly diverse, ranging not only across race, ethnicity and nationality, but also across the political and cultural spectrum. It does not craft or even manipulate its identity; rather its identity is formed from without, by the Word of God.

To cut to the chase, so to say, the church’s mission, CTK’s mission, centers on the commission of Jesus: Making disciples, baptizing and teaching; proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins in his name to all nations. The doing of these things has always taken on an indigenous quality wherever the church has been established. So we seek to be a church that makes sense in Cambridge, loving and serving the city while challenging its counterfeit gods.