This statement, developed by EPGM's diverse organizations, has been circulated widely and endorsed by the 2000 General Convention.
God has lovingly and joyfully created heaven and earth. Human beings, however, have become alienated from the Triune God, turning away from God and one another. God, in love, seeks to heal the divisions that drive us apart. In the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God provides the way by which all creation can be reunited with our loving and merciful Creator. In dying for us, Jesus Christ redeems us to new life. In him the Reign of God is made real and accessible for all. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, the Body of Christ present in the world today proclaims and lives out Jesus' work of reconciliation and redemption. The mission of the church is thus to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ (Catechism, Book of Common Prayer, page 855). As God sent Jesus into the world, we too are sent into the world.
The history of salvation from creation to the present day demonstrates that God is a sender. The Holy Scriptures are the definitive chronicles of the work of the sending Triune God. They tell of prophets and apostles, women and men of faith, impelled to speak and act in God's mission. The truth of Scripture is that from the Triune God, Creator of all, God the Word is sent and made human to accomplish reconciliation and redemption, and God the Holy Spirit is sent to empower God's people to participate in and bear witness to God's reign.
God's mission of reconciliation and redemption is the work of the church. In mission God the Holy Trinity takes God's believing people as a partner. Commissioned in baptism, and enabled by the Holy Spirit, Christians are invited to be recipients and channels of God's transforming grace. We do this through: prayer and worship, repentance and forgiveness, the proclamation of the Good News of God in Christ, loving service, and struggles for justice and peace (Baptismal Covenant, Book of Common Prayer, pages 304-305).
God's mission carries us across frontiers to encounter the new and the unfamiliar in our own communities and beyond. Every Episcopalian is called to cross frontiers, local or global. Mission is both "domestic" and "foreign." We thus participate in God's mission in the Episcopal Church, in the United States, within the Anglican Communion, and beyond. As we are called to go, so are others called to come and bear witness to Christ among us. We are both givers and receivers in God's mission.
As missionaries, Christians are nourished by God's Word and sacraments, and sent into the world in God's name to bring hope, healing and justice to a sinful, divided and broken world. The God who is known in the Old and New Covenant works both through the established and through the surprising and unpredictable. The variable strategies and structures of the church have always been a response to new circumstances. As the world and its cultures change, so too should the vehicles by which God's people present the Gospel at home and to the ends of the earth.