Missions and Missionaries

Missions and missionaries are related terms referring to the organizations (missions) and people (missionaries) who communicate their religion in words and actions across cultural and linguistic boundaries with the aim of encouraging the adoption of the religion by people unfamiliar with it. Missions are the agencies in particular times and places that send out the communicators of religious messages. Missionaries are the ones sent to articulate those messages in words and actions, in the form of witness and embodiment, what is believed to be the universal truth of their religious tradition. Undergirding missionary action is the belief that the religion they represent does indeed have answers to the ontological, physical, and spiritual problems of human beings and, more [Page 801]broadly, that it encompasses and addresses ...