“Despite what people think, within the Christian family and outside it,
the point of Christianity isn’t ‘to go to heaven when you die.’”
(N.T. Wright)

Author Leonard Sweet notes that the first step in treatment in certain European hospitals is the establishment of mission or purpose. For example, the doctor might say to a person with a life-threatening disease such as cancer, “You are sick. Do you want healing, or do you want to complete the circle of your life?” If the patient wants healing, the doctor then says, “You must tell me your mission. Why is it that you must live? What must you accomplish? What is your specific purpose?”

As a pastor and director of a program that works with people suffering from addiction, there is one question that has loomed large in my nearly four decades of ministry:  Recovery, wellness, wholeness, holiness, Christian formation, . . . to what end? What is the ultimate purpose of getting sober and clean, getting saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, becoming more Christ-like?

To avoid hell? Minimize negative consequences? Decrease rate of failure and relapse? Stay out of legal trouble? Experience less guilt? Enhance social relations? Become more productive? Improve self-image? Feel more confident and hopeful? Sleep better?

Of course, these are things we all desire, and there is nothing inherently wrong with any of them. But is there a deeper, more fundamental and overarching reason for our existence? The answer, I believe, is rooted in two axiomatic truths revealed in the Scriptures. One pertains to who God is and the other, what God’s salvation is.

God, by his very nature, is missionary. God is not a missionary (as if missionary were one of God’s several attributes or activities), nor is God the missionary (as if God were the prime model or example of being a missionary). God IS missionary. The triune God is love and, therefore, self-communicating and self-giving. As such, God seeks to include all creation into his fellowship of shalom. 

Jonathon Edwards (1703-1758), one of America’s greatest theologians, wrote that the Apostle John’s twice declaration, “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), means that God has “a disposition to abundant self-communication.” In other words, because God is love, he is outward-reaching, generative, redemptive, ever engaging his creation for its highest good.

God’s salvation, by virtue of who he is, is therefore missionary. To receive God and his salvation is to enter Love. Those in God carry his very DNA and are, accordingly, loving, . . . missionary. Just as mission is the defining mark of God, it follows that mission is the defining characteristic of all those who are in this missionary God. Theologian Michael Gorman writes: “Christian identity . . . is missional at its core because Christian existence is a participation in the missional (loving) character of God.” Or as author Michael Goheen puts it, “The salvation that comes to God’s people is missional: not simply enjoying salvation as a beneficiary but also participating in the mission of Christ.” Christian salvation is being laid hold of by God for his larger purposes of liberating and reconciling his creation to himself. Love, in a word.

In light of this, the recovery we at Life Challenge seek to bring to those suffering from addiction is missional. We ask, “Sobriety, serenity, mental and emotional well-being, social functionality, . . . discipleship, conformity to Christ, incorporation into Christ’s church, . . . to what end?” We answer: Love. Mission. Partnership with God in his healing campaign. Holiness is a second order discipline. Spiritual formation is for the purpose of the world’s reconciliation. There can be no truly healthy or sustainable recovery that is not rooted in and directed towards God’s mission.

Recovery for the sake of others.

The purpose of Life Challenge Ministries is to not merely help those struggling with addictions experience sanity, physical health, mental and emotional well-being, social adjustment, or even, most vitally, spiritual life. These are all critically important, but to what end? God’s salvation in Christ brings precious gospel realities to those who believe—forgiveness of sins, reconciliation, adoption into God’s family, imputation of righteousness, freedom from the power of evil, inhabitation by the Holy Spirit, an unshakable hope, peace that passes all understanding, and joy unspeakable. But again, to what end?

Mission. We are both recipients and participants of God’s loving, reconciling salvation.

Christian recovery is for no other reason than ultimately raising up and nurturing apostles (sent ones)—Christ-followers who will join with God in his work of redeeming creation. . . loving. Christian transformation is for the purpose of developing people who will live in the world without being of the world for the sake of the world.

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“There is no participation in Christ without participation in his mission to the world.”
(Leslie Newbigin, theologian and missiologist, 1909-1998)

“Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
(Jesus, Mark 1:17)

Life Challenge Ministries exists to promote a recovery that leads to missional formation and faithful participation with God in his mission of recovery. To that end, we seek to nurture a missio-centric addiction-recovery that will foster missional identity, stir missional passion and imagination, and equip and empower Christ-followers to live joyfully as witness bearers in the unique ways the Spirit is calling them to work with God towards human flourishing and the renewal of all things in Christ.