Missions Misunderstood

A key part of our ministry is building relationships with the people God brings to us. God has often used us in ways similar to His use of Joseph in the Old Testament. Not so much in the "Pharaoh-naming-us-Vice-Pharaoh" sort of way; more in the sense of "I had a dream, what do you suppose it means?"

Our friends often confide in us concerning their struggles, fears, and dreams. This confidence gives us the opportunity to speak into their lives from (what we hope is) God's perspective. Like Joseph, we try to give God the credit for any insight we might have to share.

One thing that strikes me about Joseph's story, and about ours here in Western Europe, is that God doesn't always communicate by speaking truth to His people and sending them to tell other people that truth. Sure, that is a common occurrence throughout history (God told Moses to tell another Pharaoh..., God told Jonah to tell the people of Nineveh, all the prophets, etc.) But here, God reveals truth to Pharaoh, who in turn seeks out God's man for some help in interpreting that truth.

Joseph had built a reputation (at least in the cupbearer and baker communities) as someone who could interpret dreams. God used that to put him in a position to speak to Pharaoh. Many of the conversations we're having now are not resulting in individual salvations or churches being planted. Instead, they are being used to build our reputation as God's people in this culture.

"You want to know who has some insight into that sort of thing?" I imagine them saying behind our backs, "you need to talk to those believers."

God is revealing truth to them. Within the culture there is a great conversation about these truths- life, death, guilt, love, peace, justice. These are deeply spiritual issues that aren't being forced on them by outsiders. Unfortunately, like Pharaoh, the people of Western Europe do not recognize that the truths they struggle with have been revealed to them by the Most High God, the Author of all truth. That's where we see God using us; people are asking us for our opinions about life-changing truths.

Research and immersion put us in a position to recognize and call attention to truths in the culture. Relationships put us in a position to participate in the conversation. I like to think of it as "Prophecy by Proxy."

Statistics. Demographics.
Lostness. Evangelization.
Need. Opportunity.
Resources. Support.
Trends. Movements. Reaction.
Creativity. Good ideas.
Common sense.
Duty. Tradition.
Ease. Difficulty.
Guilt, pity, fear.
Passion, compassion, desire.
Love.

We are constantly tempted to allow these things to dictate our missions activities. In many cases, these are the motives that were used to recruit us into sacrificial giving and to service. We all participate in different ways and for different reasons, but the things listed above can easily get us "ahead of God" and out of tune with what He is doing. As far as I can tell, the best- the only- sure foundation for how to know what missions is and how it ought to be done in my context is this:

Step-by-step obedience to the Spirit of the Most High God.

God called me to missions in Western Europe by giving me a vision for what He could (would?) do among the people here. I was excited about being part of God's interaction with the postmodern, postchristian people of Europe. I really believed that God was going to start a church planting movement here, and I trusted that He was going to use me to somehow be part of that. That certainty of calling and purpose is what has kept me on the field.

But something is bothering me.

We still haven't seen it. Despite our efforts, prayers, and desires, we have yet to see God move in the ways we envisioned years ago. No city-wide house church networks. No major unity movements among the believers here. Years of studying the language and culture, sowing the gospel, building relationships, and speaking truth into people's lives hasn't produced the kind of fruit I thought we were called to.

Don't get me wrong; I know that the work isn't something that we do, and that God will do His will in His sovereign timing. Please don't remind me of William Carey or Adoniram Judson. I'm not discouraged about the number of people who are being saved.

I've spent months in introspective prayer and meditation, asking God if there might be sin in my life, or if my actions might be disqualifying me from His service. I'm begging Him to use me. I'm open to whatever He has for us.

I guess I'm just a little disappointed, that's all.

It occurs to me that much of our missionary efforts today are carried out as though God wasn't on the field.

God doesn't "send" us. He calls us to join Him. There's a difference. If we think that we're doing something great for God, or that He (or the "nations") needs us in any way, we think too highly of ourselves.

Consider the terminology we use: "Reaching the nations for Christ." "Finishing the Task." "Building the Kingdom." "Engaging people." Because we haven't been careful to explain what they originally meant, these trite phrases have helped shape a human-centered missiology among many believers.

Few missions strategies include something like, "Get involved in the community and wait for God to bring us the people in whom He is already working."

Instead, we have people canvassing neighborhoods in search of anyone who will listen, and broad (and generic) "Sowing of the gospel." It's as though we were afraid that the God who called us to the field has left us to search blindly for what He might do.

Why do we view the role of the missionary as perpetually active ("reaching," "evangelizing," "sharing," etc.) and rarely passive ("being given the opportunity," "being used," "being led")?

Missions- (mish-uh ns) -noun: 1. a group of persons sent by a church to carry on religious work, esp. evangelization in foreign lands, and often to establish schools, hospitals, etc. 2. missionary duty or work 3. organized missionary work or activities in any country or region 4. a church or a region dependent on a larger church or denomination 5. a series of special religious services for increasing religious devotion and converting unbelievers: to preach a mission 5. an assigned or self-imposed duty or task; calling; vocation 6. a sending or being sent for some duty or purpose 7. those sent

I'm starting to realize that the greatest problem facing Christian missions today is not money, not manpower, not strategy, and not even the physical and spiritual opposition to our work. The problem with missions is that we don't know what it is. The concept, the very definition of the word, is interpreted and applied by so many people in so many ways, I think we've lost the plot.

To the world, missions is church people feeding the poor and building church buildings. To the casual churchgoer, missions are those trips the youth group takes every summer. To the volunteer missionary missions is sacrificing time and hard-earned money to travel to a distant place to conduct sports camps and backyard Bible clubs. To the long-term and career missionary- well... they obviously have no idea what it is.

For the sake of my calling and work, I'm going to work on defining the ministry and role of the missionary.

A key element of our missiology is our understanding of what heavenly worship will look like. This will affect the degree to which we value the individual cultures of the nations. It seems that most of us tend toward one of two extremes. Of course, I simplify here for the sake of discussion.

• Multi-cultural Church: A people group's culture is of eternal significance in that the unique attributes were built into it by God and that He is glorified by an expression of faith and worship through that cultural lens. In other words, people can and should be discipled within their own culture because God wants to be worshiped by different people in their different ways. In missions, these are the folks who go to great lengths to learn their people group's language and customs, and make efforts to blend into the culture in order to minimize the differences between them and the people. Most of the questions about what the church should look like are left to be answered by new believers.
  

• A-cultural Church: There is a biblically-mandated "culture of the church" that runs contrary to the culture of the world. A people group's culture is therefore not something that should be respected, as most of it needs to be "taken off" upon salvation. In missions, these "a-cultural church" church planters tend to worry less about losing their American accent or living like the nationals, and rely more on the power of objective truth of the gospel as they share it with people who are different from them.

I'm sure that you find your own opinion somewhere in-between the "multi-cultural church" and "a-cultural church" positions. Nearly all of us would say that a church should be indigenous- that it should be contextually appropriate to the culture. People should not have to learn English or wear western clothing in order to hear and understand the gospel. When it comes to "the nations," most would lean toward the "multi-cultural" understanding of the universal church.

On the other hand, we understand that the church is necessarily marked by a distinct "Kingdom culture" that often conflicts with societal norms. Equality, unity, compassion, discipline- the culture and values of the church make it stand out from the world. We cannot be judgmental, controlling, greedy, bitter, or materialistic, no matter how ingrained these vices may be in our culture. Jesus sums up the "culture of the kingdom" with a lot of His, "You've heard it said... but I say..." comments. The church's culture is not natural to sinful humanity. It is counter-cultural.

So we see that we need some good balance of indigenous and Kingdom cultures in the churches we plant. Consider, however, the West. Whenever the conversation turns to church planting in a postmodern, post-Christian context, people seem to run to the "a-cultural" extreme of the argument. "You can't be postmodern and a Christian" some would say. "They cannot use words that we consider to be profane," they say. "They must dress appropriately" they think, and "if they're ashamed to call it a church, than it isn't a church." (These, by the way, are near quotes of what I've heard missionary colleagues and supporters back home say whenever I try to discuss what the indigenous church might look like in Western Europe.)

In Revelation 7, John recounts the vision God gave him of multitudes worshiping Jesus. The countless hoards of people, John writes, were "from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. " For many of us, that same vision is what drives us today, together with the desire to be part of what God has said is certain to happen. We want to see the diversity of God's children unified in worship. But not everyone sees the value and beauty of culture, especially when it comes to missions in a culture that seems near to our own.

I believe that the indigenous church in Western Europe, made up of mature, faithful believers, will look very different from the traditional churches that can be found here today. I believe that a follower of Christ in this culture will think very differently about gender roles in the church, alcohol use, experience of real supernatural activity, and celebration of worship, fellowship, and community than most of the churches that send me. I think that's okay, because to me, culture counts. It's the "language" we use to understand and relate to the world around us, and it allows us to worship God in a way that is real and meaningful to us.

In keeping with my complete inability to leave well enough alone, I'd like to illustrate the point of my last post. Some of you will be surprised to learn that there was, in fact, a point to my last post.

"Church planting movement" is the term we've adopted to describe a phenomena in which many, many churches are sort of spontaneously planted and those churches quickly turn and plant other church-planting churches. In many ways, a CPM is like a storm (or an earthquake, or a drought, or any other "act of God"), in that it is something only God can do. We cannot cause a CPM to happen any more than we can cause a tidal wave or instigate a hurricane.

It makes no sense, then, to set as our goal something that we cannot do. Yes, I've heard about the importance of having a "God-sized" vision, but a vision and a goal are not the same thing. To continue with the illustration:

We can prepare for a storm. When the weatherman warns us and the sky turns dark, people run to the store and buy water, plastic, duct tape, and granola bars. This is how many of us "prepare" for a movement of God, CPM or otherwise. We get a hint that God is working somewhere, and we rush to get ready. We write requests for volunteers and we notify the prayer networks that we're going to need extra coverage. We put unresponsive people on the back burner and concentrate our energy where the action is. The problem, in my opinion, is that rushing to facilitate a CPM is not the kind of strategy that called people should depend on.

Why not? Because only God knows when and where He's going to make it rain, and whether it will be a slight drizzle or a torrential downpour. I think that's why he called me to Western Europe well in advance of whatever it is He's going to do. This wasn't a "priority" area for the IMB. There were places with more "strategic significance" and higher "concentrations of lostness." But He know what He was doing, and I trusted Him, even though I haven't seen the results I'd hoped for.

Which brings me to another type of readiness that we should consider. It's the long-term, not a cloud in the sky, "wait for it... wait for it..." sort of approach. It is modeled for us by Noah in Genesis 6-8. When people saw this old man building a giant boat in the middle of the desert I'm sure they called it insanity. I think we should apply it to missions, and call it "nonstrategic obedience."

God gave Noah a vision of the deadly waters that would flood the earth. That was something only God could do. Noah's goal, then, was not to create a storm, but to build the boat. His goal was a big boat full of the people and animals God told him to take inside. His strategy was to build the boat exactly according to God's detailed instructions.

Church Planting Movements are a vision, not a goal. Proclaiming the gospel, teaching people to obey, living as incarnational witnesses- these are goals. Our strategies need to get us to these goals. Focusing on Church planting movements distracts us from doing the things God has instructed us to do because we assume that we know how God wants to take us to the vision He's given us. We start to see our goals as means. We should make disciples because God told us to, not so that we can facilitate a greater movement.

Getting ahead of ourselves (and God, if it were possible) is pretty common for us. We love people in order to share the gospel with them, and we share the gospel with them in order to plant a church. We plant a church in order to start a CPM, and we do that in order to "finish the task" and glorify God (and bring Jesus back). I say, let's let go of all the "next things" that we think may happen. Let's focus our attention on who God has brought us today. Let's obey regardless of whether a CPM starts or not. It would be like building an ark whether the floodwaters came or not.

Now I'm left with the question of the vision. Are we sure that God told us that He was going to start church planting movements all around the world? How long do you suppose Noah would have worked on the ark without seeing evidence that God was getting ready to bring the storm? How long will our people (trusting the vision as it's been cast by our organization) continue to pursue a church planting movement before they should start to question that vision? If it's from God, we should never give up. If it's just a good idea, we should change course immediately.

What do we mean when we talk about "reaching people?" Is it the same as telling them about Jesus? What makes a people group "reached?" Having heard the gospel? Having access to it? Having a viable church planted among them?

The IMB's current strategy is to "engage" (send missionaries to) people groups that we classify as "unreached" (less than 2% evangelical) and that also have populations of 100,000. Using the 2% rule, there are thousands of unreached people groups that number lower than the 100k minimum. Nevertheless, the IMB does not actively seek to send missionaries to work among these smaller groups. Why not?

It seems to me that these numbers were picked by IMB marketers to provide a goal for our organization that was ambitious, yet attainable.

"No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once." - Oswald J. Smith

I ran across this quote on a colleague's website. I'm not sure who Oswald J. Smith is/was, and I'm not particularly interested. His sort of guilt-inspired, task-oriented, logic-based, marketing-ploy, pop missiology is exactly the sort of thing I was referring to in my last post. It has infected our understanding of what missions is, who God is, and how He works.

Let me be clear: My concern is not necessarily with current missions strategy, it's with our missiology. What, you might ask, is the difference? It has to do with motivation; both ours- in what guides us in service, and God's- in what He's doing globally and why. Just as the practice of our faith is determined by our theology, our mission strategies are derived from our missiology. So I'm not talking here about whether we use tracts or Jesus Films or relational approaches to church planting. I'm not even talking about whether we should even be trying to plant churches. My contention is this: We have bad missiology.

For starters, we make an unnecessary distinction between "missions," and, well, everything else. Why do we apply Luke 10:2 ("the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few") to missions, but not Luke 10:27 ("love your neighbor as yourself")? Where does our understanding of missions come from?

Take the quote above, for example: "No one has the right..."? What does that mean? Is hearing the gospel a right? Is it a privilege? I guess Mr. Smith would say that the first time is a right, and the second a privilege. What biblical support do we have for either?

Is the goal of missions that people hear? What about incarnation? Discipleship? Is missions nothing more than proclaiming the gospel, giving people "a chance to hear" it? Many missionaries approach their work as though missions was about spreading information. Surely we need proclaimers, and it is a vital part of missions, but I believe it is only a part.

(Another part, one that we rarely focus on, is worship as missions. John 12:32 -"I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." I get that He's alluding to the cross, but I think that worship is underrated as a missional activity. Maybe that's another post...)

Back to the quote: is it really ours to decide who should hear and who should not? Even after years of proclamation, are we ever in a position to say whether a person (or people group) has heard the good news in a way that they can understand and respond to? I believe that the Spirit should guide all of our evangelistic efforts, and that He should be the one to lead us in when to share, and with whom (and when to keep quiet!)

I cannot accept a missiology that essentially puts us on "auto-pilot" in terms of to whom we should go. The second we assume where and in whom God is going to work, we get ahead of Him and disqualify ourselves from full participation in what He's doing. This missiology is essentially either/or; missions is either relating to those people that God leads us to, or it is targeting the next "lostest" people group according to our statistics and research. It cannot be both, because the second assumes a monopoly on the first. How else can we explain so many of our workers feeling called to work among "reached" peoples?

God is at work redeeming humankind to Himself. I believe that missions is crossing cultural barriers to be part of that. Until we seriously rethink our missiology, we will continue to build our strategies on a broken foundation.

1. Kate Winslet was in Titanic with Leonardo DiCaprio
2. Leonardo DiCaprio was in Catch Me If You Can with Tom Hanks
3. Tom Hanks was in Apollo 13 with Kevin Bacon

You're probably familiar with the game "Six Degrees of Separation (Kevin Bacon)," where one player picks an actor, and the other players list a string of co-stars and supporting actors that connect that actor to Kevin Bacon. Apparently, Kevin Bacon is the center of the film universe. If you've never tried it, you should. If you're lazy, or if you don't want to admit to watching rated-R movies, there's a Bacon Calculator to do it for you at the "Oracle of Bacon."

Lately I've been reminded of the Kevin Bacon game a lot. I spent the last week talking with missionaries from around Western Europe, and I was encouraged to hear their stories. I really had no idea what some of them were doing in their places of service (and in more than one case, I had never even heard of their place of service). Anyway, one thing that struck me about nearly every story I heard was how they related the great spiritual need they they found every day. It seemed like everyone I spoke with felt the need to tell me how lost their people group or city really was.

For example:
"We're working with university students in Salamanca. There are one hundred and fifty thousand students there, and the city is less than point-five percent evangelized."

"Our team is working with Cambodians in Dusseldorf, and they are the largest UPG in the world."

It's not just the numbers. As if work in a city of five million was somehow more important than work in a village of thirty thousand. Ok, so maybe it is the numbers that bother me. But I've written enough about how I don't think we should let numbers determine our strategy. My question now is about degrees of "lostness." Are some people more lost than others? What is it that makes missionaries measure their importance by the perceived challenge of "reaching" a bigger, "loster" people group?

Is a historically "Christian" people group closer to Jesus than a Muslim one? Maybe we should measure lostness by distance from the land where Jesus Himself walked (as the crow flies). Should we consider the ones that sin more to be further from salvation? Maybe the less civilized? I guess that biblically, we could argue that the richer nations have a harder time entering the Kingdom...

So now we're back to the Kevin Bacon game: Are there degrees of separation from God? Are some people more lost than others? I get that some people are more spiritually minded than others, and that some are nearer than others to that point of belief that comes with a relationship with the Creator. And of course, God uses encounters with believers to draw people to Himself. But if a person or people group is separated from God, aren't they still only one step away from Him? I believe that people are only separated by one degree from God. After all, it isn't us that bridge the gap between them and Him. Forget Kevin Bacon, Jesus is the relational center of the universe.