When you look up mission in the dictionary, there are a LOT of definitions listed. A task a group is charged with. A calling or vocation. A group of people organized to carry out a certain task. A ministry. Then, in entry 5, you get the obsolete one: “the act of sending.”
Of course, if we’re looking at the history of a word, we should always start with the obsolete meaning, right? LOL.
Mission comes directly from the Latin missionem, which means “the act of sending, a dispatching; a release, a setting at liberty; discharge from service, dismissal.”
It’s literally a sending-forth. That’s also, obviously, where dismissal comes from. I hadn’t ever really examined the connection between those two until it was explained that the dismissal from a church service is not meant to be the pastor saying, “Okay, we’re done. Have a good day.” It’s literally saying, “You’ve now been filled with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God–go, take it into the world!”
A crucial distinction, isn’t it?
The word mission has been in English since the 1500s as “a sending forth.” By the 1640s, it referred to the organized effort of spreading the Gospel. The word mass is even older and from the same root, being the original word used for the religious service in which you receive communion and then are sent out into the world. Dismiss is from the early 1400s, but dismissal wasn’t created as a form until the 1790s! (Who knew?)
So remember, next time you leave a service, that we’re all sent out on a mission–to spread His light in the world.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.