[10 Minute Read]

“…mission is the very being of the Church.”

In his inaugural address, Bishop Dr Thomas Schirrmacher, the new Secretary General of the World Evangelical Alliance, affirmed that God’s mission is central to the DNA of every major expression of the Christian Faith. During his speech he said,

Let us consider the document Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World (crafted by the Vatican, the World Council of Churches and the World Evangelical Alliance). Evangelicals have always been about each believer preaching that Jesus died on the cross for us and that only in Him we find communion with God and eternal life. But now, this ecumenical document released in 2011 starts with, “…mission is the very being of the Church.” It speaks about every believer being obliged to witness to other people about the gospel.

Is this evangelical or is it Christian? It is Christian insofar as all churches agree now that mission is the very being of the church. This is the task that Jesus Christ handed to us. Not everybody is happy about it or puts it into action like evangelicals, but it is core to our faith. We have to be very careful if we say that as evangelicals we automatically do what Jesus said, because mission is not always the ‘being’ of our local churches. We often have to be reminded as evangelical churches that we have to put the witness of the gospel into the centre.

In this address, Bishop Dr Schirrmacher emphasized the DNA, the commonalities, we share between the major expressions of Christian faith around the world, particularly as represented by the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, the World Pentecostal Fellowship and the World Evangelical Alliance. In addition to common theological agreement, he noted there were many social issues we share in common, for which collaboration can make a significant impact. He specified advocacy for persecuted churches and religious liberty in general. We could add Creation Care, Nuclear Disarmament, Anti-Human Trafficking and myriad other justice-oriented causes to the list. Implied in Bishop Dr Schirrmacher’s emphasis was a caution to Evangelicals against the thought that we might have some unique perspective on theological and sociological matters. As he said, when it comes to our witness for Christ, we might be more activistic, but the call to mission is not unique to Evangelicals. Furthermore, we can too easily forget this call ourselves and must continue to “put the witness of the gospel into the centre” of all our churches. 

He was exposed to evangelical missions activity from his childhood…

Bishop Dr Schirrmacher does not speak from a position of Christian politics, divorced from complex realities on the ground. He is first and foremost a missiologist, the discipline of his first doctoral degree. His second doctorate is in World Cultures.

He was exposed to evangelical missions activity from his childhood, as his parents were supporters of international missions and regularly hosted missionaries in their home as well as other international evangelical leaders. While Bishop Dr Schirrmacher’s missions commitment took a more academic route, his older sister and brother were missionaries in Indonesia and South Africa respectively.

During his student years, he joined the late Dr Ralph Winter in a global collaboration to map the unreached peoples of the world. Working with WEC’s Patrick Johnstone, Schirmmacher translated several editions of Operation World into German, and participated in the global missions prayer movement promoted by Operation Mobilisation and Youth With A Mission in particular.

Helping with people group mapping helped him become familiar with all the major people groups of the world and the progress of the gospel among them. This interest continues as a motivating factor in his travels and diplomatic relationships with leaders of other major religious bodies as well as Christian leaders in other nations, particularly in areas where persecution against Christians is frequent. When he travels, he enjoys meeting as many ethnic and language groups as possible. Bishop Dr Schirrmacher’s wife, Christine, is a specialist on Muslim people groups around the world, so the people groups focus is a family affair.

Fascinated by God’s love of ethnic diversity

Bishop Dr Schirmaccher is fascinated by God’s love of ethnic diversity and quotes Revelation 7:9 as his favourite Bible verse, “After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.”

Just prior to the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, Bishop Dr Schirmaccher made an emergency trip to Gambia to assist with a crisis emerging over the rewriting of the national Constitution which was likely to negatively affect the country’s Christian population. He was able to help the Christian leaders understand, and appeal for, a broader interpretation of the concept of ‘sharia’ as it was to appear in the new version of the Constitution. The Christian leaders eventually saw ‘sharia’ in its broader terms as a more acceptable concept than ‘secular’ for the deeply religious nation. Their recommendations for a broadening of the meaning of the term in the new Constitution was accepted and strengthened relationships between the majority Muslims and the minority Christians. For the role he played in advising the Gambia Christian Council, as well as helping to improve relationships between Christian and Muslim leaders, he was gifted a first edition of the Mandinka Bible translation. Upon receiving it, he says, “I felt like coming home”.

From his time as a student, Bishop Dr Schirrmacher has been involved in advocacy for the persecuted church, beginning with visits to secretly train pastors in Communist East Germany prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He notes that the spirituality of persecuted Christians has shaped his to a large extent. It was his interest in religious liberty and human rights that first brought him into contact with the World Evangelical Alliance, where he helped to build up the International Institute for Religious Freedom, later adding leadership of Inter- and Intra-Faith Relations, and the Theological Commission.

Dr Schirrmacher’s title of Bishop comes from his participation in a movement called “Communio Messianica”, which reports more than 1 million adherents, spanning 75 nations, from another faith background. The Bishop title is a direct outcome of Schirrmacher’s engagement with the movement and the various advocacy roles he has played on the world stage for religious liberty in general and persecuted Christians specifically.

We welcome Bishop Dr Schirrmacher to the role of Secretary General and celebrate his interest, experience and passion for global missions. Bishop Dr Schirrmacher continues a strong history of commitment to missions from WEA senior leaders.

Introducing Rev Dr Brian Winslade

Rev Dr Brian Winslade is a New Zealander who has served in pastoral ministry since 1979, including senior pastor of five multiple staff churches (NZ and San Francisco). From 1989-1991 Rev Dr Winslade served in Bangladesh as a missionary, seconded to the National Christian Fellowship Bangladesh (NCFB) helping develop their relief and development arm, Koinonia.

From 2001 to 2006 he was National Leader (CEO) of the Baptist Union of New Zealand. From 2008 to 2011 he served as the National Director of the Baptist Union of Australia and also Director of Crossover – the evangelism and missional resourcing ministry of Australian Baptist churches. From 2005 to 2010 Rev Dr Winslade was Chair of the Church Leadership Commission for the Baptist World Alliance. He now serves the WEA as Deputy Secretary General for Ministries.

Rev Dr Winslade describes himself as an ecclesial missiologist with a passion for leadership, the local church, facilitating organisational reformation/effectiveness in reaching 21st century people with the gospel.

Pray

• Praise God for the excellent transition between Bishop Ef Tendero and Bishop Dr Thomas Schirrmacher, for the cooperation and joint decisions made during the transition period.
• For God’s wisdom, discernment and favour to be upon Bishop Dr Thomas Schirrmacher as he takes on the responsibility for leading the WEA, a role he says “is just too big for one human being”.
• For WEA department leaders and staff as they adjust to the organisational changes that accompany a leadership transition. Pray for a deepening collaboration and commitment to one another in the common cause of God’s mission, locally and globally.
• That the new Deputy Secretary Generals will quickly adapt to their new responsibilites and discover rhythms of working that will help them thrive in their new roles, as challenging as they could be.
• For God to strengthen the global Body of Christ around what we can all agree on, and give us all grace regarding issues about which we have different perspectives and passions… that God will be glorified through us witnessing to the world that our God reigns by our integrated unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace in-Christ.