“the people of God” chosen to be a missionary community “to all peoples” is the Bible’s central theme. A fourth factor in the theology of Mission includes the missionary nature of the church. Many evangelicals, committed to the local church polity and to the planting of churches on their mission fields, are in danger of falling into provincialism and ethnocentrism. They need a dose of the New Testament doctrine of the universal church, the spiritual community of Christ in the world. The local congregations