Edwards on (and in) Mission

Scripture focus

That thy way may be known upon earth, thy saving health among all nations.

Psalm 67:2 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the chapter

Edwards called missions “the propagation of the gospel”: the preaching of the gospel by ministers and lay missionaries in new lands, made effective only when the Holy Spirit empowers otherwise feeble human instruments. He set this activity inside his largest theological scheme, the history of redemption, traced from eternity past to eternity future. Missions were not an optional extension of the church's work but the principal means by which God pursues his purposes in history: repairing the ruin of the Fall and uniting all things to Christ.

Edwards taught that this history advances through periodic revivals, Spirit-given seasons when preaching and concerted prayer break through long periods of spiritual decline. He therefore urged churches across denominations to unite in explicit, extraordinary prayer for revival in his 1747 Humble Attempt. Where most Reformed theologians before him, including Calvin, Ames, and Wollebius, had said little about mission, Edwards applied the Great Commission to every believer and treated the spread of the gospel as the deepest logic running beneath all of history.

Edwards's missiology was not merely theoretical. He watched its fruit firsthand in the revival among David Brainerd's Indian converts at Crossweeksung, which he judged more remarkable than much of the Great Awakening, and he later gave years of his own life to ministry among the Mahican and Mohawk people at Stockbridge. Through Brainerd's widely read Life, and his own example, Edwards helped shape the missionary movements of the following two centuries.

Key points

• Edwards's own term for missions was “the propagation of the gospel” — preaching empowered by the Spirit to convert souls.
• He placed missions at the center of the history of redemption, the single grand narrative he traced across all of human history.
• Edwards taught that history advances by periodic, Spirit-given revivals, which is why he called Christians of every denomination to unite in explicit prayer for revival in his Humble Attempt.
• He broke with most earlier Reformed theology, which said little about mission, by applying the Great Commission to every believer rather than limiting it to the apostolic age.
• Edwards's own missionary years among the Mahican and Mohawk people at Stockbridge, and his editing of David Brainerd's diary, gave his theology of mission lasting influence on later Protestant missions.

A line worth remembering

Edwards's term for missions was "the propagation of the gospel."

McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 34

Related Scripture

• Matthew 28:19-20
• Romans 10:14-15
• Isaiah 52:7
• Acts 1:8

For reflection and discussion

1. Edwards saw the spread of the gospel as the hidden engine driving all of history — how would that conviction change the way you think about a single conversation or invitation to faith?
2. What would it look like for your own church to unite in the kind of explicit, sustained prayer for revival that Edwards proposed in his Humble Attempt?
3. Edwards spent years living among the people to whom he ministered at Stockbridge — what does that costly proximity add to mission that preaching from a distance cannot?