SWEDISH MISSIOLOGICAL THEMES SVENSK MISSIONSTIDSKRIFT

482 Tormod Engelsviken
different ways share their faith with others. 3 This seems to happen especially
when the church grows through popular movements or revivals. The gospel
of Christ most likely reached the largest cities in the Roman Empire: Rome,
Alexandria and Antioch, through such “ordinary” Christians who shared
their faith through words and demonstrated it by their lives. We do not
know any apostles or other ecclesiastical envoys who brought the gospel
for the first time to these cities (cp. Acts 11:19-21). The same would apply
to the areas surrounding the major cities that Paul visited on his missionary
journeys and most of the rural areas.
Down through the history these “anonymous Christians” have played a
major role in the mission of the church. 4 It would not be, however,
appropriate to call them “missionaries”. This may be a parallel to the saying
that all Christians are priests (“Priester”) but not all are “pastors”
(“Pfarrer”). All Christian are called to mission, but not all to become
missionaries. This distinction might in a biblical perspective correspond
with the fact that all Christians have received the Spirit of God, all belong
to the same body, yet they are different members with various gifts and
ministries (1 Cor. 12-14; Rom 12:4-8).
Without disparaging the importance of the mission of the whole church, we
would in this article only call those “missionaries” whom Bill Taylor in the
Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions describes in the following way.
“These men and women are cross-cultural workers who serve within or
without their national boundaries, and they will cross some kind of linguistic,
cultural, or geographic barriers as authorised sent ones.” 5 Admittedly, there
is a flaw in defining missionaries as “cross-cultural workers” because it
excludes those who labour within their own culture to reach people with the
3 Sundkler/Steed expresses this with a view to the growth of Christianity in North-East-
Africa: “Christianity spread via the Red Sea as it had done in the Mediterranean: by Christian
traders bringing their goods and their witness”, Sundkler/Steed 2000:36. To the debate
whether Christianity during the first century A.D. spread primarily through organised
planned mission or by “microcommunication”, by “private und berufliche Kontakte, Faceto-Face
Kommunikation in Primär- und Quasiprimärgruppen”, see Reinbold 2000 and
Stenschke 2003:8-10.
4 See for example the emphasis placed on this by Sundkler/Steed in their whole approach
to African church history, Sundkler/Steed 2000:81-91, where three categories are especially
mentioned: kings and chiefs, the young men, the slaves and other socially marginalised
groups.
5 Moreau 2000:645