Integral mission

Integral mission or holistic mission is a term coined in Spanish as misión integral in the 1970s by members of the evangelical group Latin American Theological Fellowship (or FTL, its Spanish acronym) to describe an understanding of Christian mission which embraces both the evangelism and social responsibility. Since Lausanne 1974, integral mission has influenced a significant number of evangelicals around the world.

The word "integral" is used in Spanish to describe wholeness (as in wholemeal bread or whole wheat). Theologians use it to describe an understanding of Christian mission that affirms the importance of expressing the love of God and neighborly love through every means possible. Proponents such as C. René Padilla of Ecuador,Samuel Escobar of Peru, and Orlando E. Costas of Puerto Rico have wanted to emphasize the breadth of the Good News and of the Christian mission, and used the word integral to signal their discomfort with conceptions of Christian mission based on a dichotomy between evangelism and social involvement.

The proponents of integral mission argue that the concept of integral mission is nothing new – rather, it is rooted in Scripture and wonderfully exemplified in Jesus’ own ministry. "Integral mission" is only a distinct vocabulary for a holistic understanding of mission that has become important in the past forty years in order to distinguish it from widely held but dualistic approaches that emphasize either evangelism or social responsibility.

The process of defining integral mission and the journey of its acceptance by significant numbers of Evangelicals has taken place over a period of just over 40 years. Its progress can be observed through a number of significant international Evangelical congresses.

In 1966, the Congress on the World Mission of the Church, held in Wheaton, Illinois, brought together Evangelicals from 71 countries. The Wheaton Declaration confessed that “we [Evangelicals] are guilty of an unscriptural isolation from the world that too often keeps us from honestly facing and coping with its concerns” and the “failure [of the church] to apply scriptural principles to such problems as racism, war, population explosion, poverty, family disintegration, social revolution, and communism.”

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