Defining missions

https://confessional.org/mercy-ministry-is-not-missions

The above link is to an article in a genre I find a bit odd, because I find myself agreeing with all of it and none of it at the same time.

The summary given is a fair summary of the article, so I'll just discuss that, to keep things brief.

Mission work, as defined by Scripture, is the church sending ordained ministers to preach the gospel, make disciples, and plant churches through the ordinary means of grace—Word, sacraments, and prayer. While mercy ministries support gospel outreach, they must not be confused with missions itself, which addresses humanity’s deepest need through the proclamation of Christ.

"Mission work, as defined by Scripture". The point of the article is to distinguish between "missions" and "mercy ministry". The difficulty is that the work of the article is generally done by the article's own definitions. There isn't a definition of "mission work" in Scripture, unless we mean that the Scriptures define the ministry of preaching the gospel, making disciples and planting churches, and then we define *that* to be what we are choosing to call "missions work". The author of the article has followed a confusing line, of arguing both that the ministries of mercy and evangelism/church planting are in certain ways distinct, and also arguing, implicitly and without explaining what he's doing, that the English terminology of "mission/missions/missionary work" should be reserved only for evangelism/church planting. Church-planting is (he argues) disciple-making; mercy ministry is not, and the lexical cognates of "mission" belong only to the former.

Looked at this way, it is a strange article. What is it actually about? The English word-group of "missions" comes to us not directly from the New Testament, but from the Latin "mittere" (to send); and whilst sending (and equivalent Greek words) are in the New Testament, missiologists (at least, the ones I've read) don't build out a whole theory of missions based on the etymology. Christians have no particular theological commitment to requiring that the English words "mission, missions, missionary, etc." are used in one, and only one, particular way, much less that this one particular way must exclude "mercy ministries", and must only be tied to the set of concepts to do with evangelising and church-planting. Non-biblical vocabulary can be used in the ways that people see as best; and in practice, if we decide to use a particular word in a different way to other people generally, it'll make life confusing. The article says "The clearest passage that defines mission work is Matthew 28:19-20". If this is the definition of how we must use the English words "mission work", then fine - but as I say, it is unreasonable to insist that everybody else do the same, because Matthew 28 does tell us what the mandate which the church received is, but does not then require us to use a particular lexicography fetched from outside the passage for that in English.

In the article, the lines of clarification are very hard and fast. An example of a "missionary" is a church-planter; whereas examples of people in "mercy ministries" are teaching English in an Asian country (why simply that would be an act of "mercy" is not clarified), and digging wells and building houses in an African country. The impression given is that the twain shall not meet. Is the English teacher presenting the gospel - perhaps it is an English learning group openly advertised as Christian and including a Bible study? Why is the house-builder building houses when there are plenty of African house-builders? Presumably the well-digger is demonstrating Christ's love in action, as part of explaining who Christ is and how he came. Does this make him a "missionary" or a "mercy minister", or does he switch suddenly back-and-forth between the two roles, perhaps multiple times a day, depending upon the precise activity he is performing at any one point?

I agree with the author that if the church simply sends people to do "mercy ministry", meaning doing good to people in a way divorced from a witness to Jesus Christ, then it has indeed lost sight of the marching orders, the commission, which it received from the Saviour, and that would be spiritually disastrous. If the church is just doing the same as large secular charities (perhaps doing it slightly or significantly better), then this is not what Jesus told us to do. But, the article hasn't begun to engage with the challenges and opportunities of mission in much of the world. A simple binary of "is it mercy or evangelism?" does not cover plenty of real-world, flesh-and-blood Christian activity. Christians, rightly, speak today about "holistic" mission. This word can be abused, and can, like "mission", be given unhelpful definitions. But the word itself is an attempt to recognise that man is body and soul. Jesus' miracles were not simply proofs of spiritual power and his Messianic claims in general, but also enactments of personal divine compassion towards their recipients. And many Christians today are carrying out works because they understand that since "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us", so they too, in order to preach the gospel, must incarnate practical love as part of their Christian/gospel witness, and not deliver the message in verbal form only. It was part of the apostolic witness, Acts 10:38, that Jesus "went about doing good", and this same Jesus told us "let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

From that point of view, a distinction between gospel-proclamation by word, and gospel-enactment by deed, can exist only as a technical, conceptual distinction, on paper. It helps us to understand what we are doing; but it is not a distinction between two different sets of activities, such that one set of Christians talks about Jesus Christ, and the other distinct set of Christians demonstrates the reality of Jesus Christ. Many missionaries should, and are, doing both, because the two can no more be separated in practice than Christ's manhood and deity can. Christ's manhood and deity are not the same thing, and the distinction is important theologically; but the actual Christ who saves us unifies them in a single person. In the same way, word-based missionary proclamation, and mercy ministry, may be separate conceptually, but are not actually separate in practice. And as such, though I agree with what the author seems to be aiming for, and the concerns he wants to guard against, as I understand them, I don't think the way he's gone about them, and the walls he's erected in doing so, ultimately help us.

In praise of United Beach Missions

https://www.ubm.org.uk

Whether you have, or have not, previously come across United Beach Missions ("UBM"), let me commend them to you!

Firstly, it's an organisation in which the purpose is to serve others, and particularly, to serve the lost by reaching them with the gospel. There are many fine Christian organisations in the world, and the work of the Great Commission involves many different tasks. Nevertheless, all armies and nations are especially grateful for those on the front-line. Without the front-line activities, nothing else would or could exist. UBM makes it easy for busy people to get to the front-line, and take part in the work of Jesus Christ, coming and being where lost people are, showing love to them and declaring him to them.

Taking part directly in such work, even if it's just one or two weeks a year, is very good for our souls. Life is full of many responsibilities once you reach the adult world, and faithful servants must be careful to remember the primary and direct purposes that their Master has given to them in their service. The Master has given us many helps in this: the local church, its worship, his word, prayer, the Lord's Day - and these are all things that UBM stands for. Team members are not only given service opportunities, but service opportunity in the context of the local church, worship, teaching, training, fellowship and prayer within the team, and the Lord's Day is honoured.

As such, I find it very much preferable to most Christian camps for teenagers and young people. I don't want to denigrate them: it's surely infinitely preferable to go on a camp where there's teaching in a Christian community setting led by godly people, rather than to spend the time at home gawping at the world's media. And no doubt on all camps there is some measure of service as you do the washing up and clean the camp toilets (though I think some misguided souls have eliminated even these minimal duties). But UBM reflects the fundamental principle of how Jesus taught his disciples (and indeed, what wise people do in pretty much every walk of life): learning by doing. Learning by working alongside the experienced folks who are not simply telling you what should be done, but doing it too, leading by example, encouraging and showing.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up, Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 8. It's too easy for one's Christian life to drift into focussing upon comfortably accumulating knowledge at a distance. Alongside the teaching of the church, there are books, conferences, podcasts - all available from our preferred celebrity pastors, and glowingly endorsed by all the big-wigs who inhabit their particular circles to assure us that we're in the right place. But in the end, we may end up resembling the overweight armchair sports pundit who knows everything about his preferred sport, and can explain in detail exactly how the game should have been won, but hasn't done any exercise for years and whose confident proclamations have no beneficial impact on anyone, anywhere. The Christian life turns into an intellectual game, in which the aim is to be more right than others, to stake out our position better than others do. Meanwhile, our actual spiritual muscles atrophy, and we're good for nothing except illustrating the folly of knowing our Master's will but not doing it. (The New Testament tells us directly, many times, that this policy will have disastrous results for us on the final day). Jesus spent his time with needy people, and gave up his life for theirs. The church today has built vast "comfort zones" where Christians can live their whole lives in ease and only rarely come into contact with the lost. In the "secular" West, of course, there are often many barriers to making meaningful contact, and it can take a long time to move from "building bridges" to actually driving something across them. Many give up along the way. UBM makes it easy: it's a straightforward Christian mission (it's there in the title), which is up-front about what it's doing, whilst forcing nobody to be involved in anything they're not comfortable with. Moreover, there are pathways through its associated organisations to keep on serving in various ways, at whatever stage of life.

Another way in which UBM keeps you humble is the other Christians that you'll meet. It is easy for us to become "wise in our own conceits". We have worked out all the details of the Christian life, and are wiser than the ancients, or so we think.... until such ideas are best exposed by reality. There are many Christians with fine knowledge and reputation, who serve little. But at the front-line of service, there are many Christians at all kinds of stages, holding many beliefs we find strange, dubious or flat-out wrong, who love the Lord and are full of zeal to serve him in all sorts of difficult circumstances. They resemble Christ and remind us of him. We are reminded of  what the Spirit of Christ is really like, and led away from the pride that had started to grow, that all the best Christians are found in our own circles and look quite like us and hold our opinions. In fact, we begin to see things differently: there are lots of us who have every advantage, but are going in the wrong direction... but others who, despite many disadvantages, are doing a lot better than us with what they have. God's wisdom, and God's choices of who he uses, humble and correct us. Moreover, by being actually exposed to people who see things differently (and not only exposed to people who already agree with us who describe the beliefs of others), we might find out that in fact we were wrong!

UBM is not perfect; unfortunately every person involved is a son or daughter of Adam. But, it does have a track record of serving on the front lines whilst simultaneously giving people (both young and old) opportunity for evangelistic service, fellowship and growth. May God keep and bless them for many more years to come.

(Footnote: my parents encountered UBM on a beach on a holiday when I was a child and found that in one of God's "coincidences", that the team leader lived in our home town. Later again "coincidentally" meeting the same church in an "in the park" service, we began attending there. Not long after that a visiting evangelist, strongly associated with UBM for many years, came to our church and talked to all the Sunday School classes. That day the Lord saved me through the gospel of Christ which he explained. Over a decade later whilst at university my first UBM team week was led by the same leader as on the original beach; and indeed the visiting evangelist spoke at my first UBM annual reunion).

Money, missions and maturity

A Christian brother and father-figure in the faith forwarded me an article from a journal of missions in the West, written by a visiting Senior Pastor of an American church. He had done some research, interviewing selected African "leaders" about the way forward for missionary co-operation in the African scene.

I don't have a link to the article online. But here was my slightly-amended reply...

Interesting, thank you....

There seemed to me to be a rather significant internal contradiction in the overall message. Those interviewed did not want colonial-style missionaries. But they did want to increase the flows of money which are at the heart of maintaining colonial-style missions.

Those two things only reconcile if you want to have money without accountability. At the risk of over-simplifying; "you pay the piper - but let us call the tune". If we adopt the image of the Western church as the father, trying to raise up his children in the African church to maturity, then this seems to be the part where the teenager says "Dad - get me my own credit card, I'm an adult now. But it's my life - don't poke your nose in to what I do with it!" The root problem, if we follow that metaphor, has been all along in dad - once you reach the teenage years, it's a bit late to sort this problem out, and it's time for damage control.... it is a good thing that God is gracious and ultimately we can hope for more than that. But it's a hideous mess now.

Frankly I disagree with the basis of the paper as a whole. It works within a paradigm. It looks how to find solutions within that paradigm. I think the problem is actually the paradigm itself, and the solution is to replace it. I wondered if he realised the irony of the whole concept of the Western man trying to understand the African's concerns better by visiting/interviewing the elite, Westernised folk at the elite, Westernised institution...

God bless,
David

"Reality 'snapshot' of mission teams"

Some good stuff here.

Speaking the truth about missionary mythology: read, learn, inwardly digest

Here are two posts to read, read and read again. (I found them via the narcissistic activity of self-Googling. Someone added a link to my blog, as someone sympathetic to the ideas expressed in this post. 15 months ago!).

Were I more of an emotionally expressive fellow, I could have wept in reading these. I don't know whether I feel more pain at witnessing so much of the perpetuation of what this blogger calls "the mythology of North American fundamentalism and Western Evangelicalism", or of the relief of finding a person who's willing to speak the truth so bluntly. Many of the writer's examples are American and I'm not American - he's also in the Orthodox Church which I have very significant theological differences with - but give or take those things, there's a lot to learn here. Opening paragraph:

"In the mythology of North American fundamentalism and Western Evangelicalism, we missionaries are the heroes. We've given up our comfortable lives and left family and friends and offered ourselves to bring the light of the gospel to benighted peoples across the globe. We of the missionary slide show/now powerpoint presentation, we of the missionary letters telling stories of our triumphs and sorrows, we of the frenetic furlough spent going from church to church giving our spiel and hoping that congregations and individuals will sign up and be on our financial support team. We have our special anecdotes that always produce the appropriate laugh or outburst of disgust. We always seem to be teetering on the brink of some ministry-threatening catastrophe, skillfully presented to elicit yet more prayer support. People regularly marvel at how we could have taken our children from here (land of milk and honey) and raised them there (the dangerous howling wilderness) and are astonished when they discover that our teenagers can carry on a meaningful conversation with adults." - read the full thing at: http://onesimusonline.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-it-time-for-moratorium-on-missions.html.

And here's a Kenyan Christian's view of an (unnamed!) missionary couple, having reviewed their blog posts written from within the above mythological ilk:

I am praying i never have to work with them because i would be hard pressed to be patient let alone gracious. I know the reason they say they are coming and I believe them but I have a question. Why are they coming? - full post at: http://quillsqueak.blogspot.com/2010/04/attention-field-to-missionary.html

A quick poke around gives some more beneficial stuff:

• http://onesimusonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-western-african-students.html
• http://onesimusonline.blogspot.com/2010/12/apparent-bankruptcy-of-theological.html
• http://onesimusonline.blogspot.com/2010/05/when-missions-becomes-toxic.html
  

In one place the first blogger writes: "I would love to have some thoughtful discussion on all this. But I fear that this is one of those untouchable topics in Evangelical circles because, truth be told, too many of us seem to have too much to lose." I've had experiences in that ball-park; sitting down with a Westerner who's an enthusiastic supporter of "mission" with a deep interest in "the mission field", moving towards a discussion of how it really is in this part of the world, and watching the defences go up: they didn't want to know how it is; they like the mythology better. And who wouldn't?

Uncontacted tribes

According to this article, the Brazilian government estimates that there are 68 isolated tribes living in the Amazon.

Note from the article that the Brazilian government views missionary activity as a threat to such tribes. This view is effectively countered by Steve Saint's book, "The End of the Spear"; in the Amazon tribe he worked amongst, 50% of tribespeople died as murder victims before the gospel came: after it came, murder was wiped out.

The Bible teaches that all the tribes of the earth must be blessed through the promises of Christ given to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3). Who is going to reach them? Who is going to pray for those people to be raised up? Christ gave the church a commission to "Go"...

Missions and dependency

Telling quote here from missiologist David Hesselgrave (“Planting Churches Cross-Culturally: North America and Beyond”, Baker Academic, 2000, p340-341):

“ME-3 illustration: Two churches are located within a few miles of each other in a certain Asian country. One was founded some twenty-five years ago by a dear missionary lady who appealed for support from the homeland but did no more than pass the collection plate in her congregation of nationals. The other was started somewhat later by a missionary and national pastor working as a team. In this church, as soon as people became believers, they were instructed concerning stewardship and challenged to give so God's work might prosper. Several years ago leaders of both churches were interviewed. Both congregations include some prominent and well-to-do people within their membership. But the first congregation had about thirty members and an average Sunday offering of about ten to twenty dollars. It was still without a pastor because the members “could not afford” to hire one. The second congregation numbered almost two hundred members and had an average Sunday offering of fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars. And in addition, it was starting two daughter churches!”

The damage wrought by unwitting "helpful" missionaries...

This, a short extract from Steve Saint's "The End Of The Spear" (p148), is a great illustration of how outside "help" often fails to help... but actually positively hinders, painfully, badly. Don't worry about the strange names for the tribe (Waodani) or vocabulary ("Waengongi" is the Waodani word for God, "People" means the believers) or places - but understand the point. So, so many lessons in here...

"On my weeklong trek, I had noticed that none of the Waodani villages had God's houses. Tiwaeno had once had one, and so had Tzapino. Now they didn't. I asked the People why. They simply said that they couldn't build them. Of course they could, I told them. They could build a Waengongi onco in the same way they built their own oncos! They explained that they could only build durani-bai - like the ancient ones had - not 'proper' churches.

As the conversation went on, I realized that when outsiders had built the crude little board church in Tonampade, with cement posts and a tin roof, everyone decided that this was what a 'proper' God's house should look like. The Waodani didn't know how to make boards, they didn't know what that mush was that got so hard and supported the building, and they didn't have the money to buy tin roofing.

The Waodani in Tonampade would not even attempt to fix the church floor, which had begun to rot. When I asked them why they didn't fix it, they said they couldn't because they did not have permission. 'Permission from whom?' I asked. They didn't know the answer to that, but what they did know was that they had not built it or paid for it. They did not know whose it was, but they knew it definitely was not theirs."

Church planting

A church that has no plan to church-plant is a disobedient church - disobedient to Christ and the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-21), that is.

This needs clarifying - what counts as a "plan"? I do not necessarily mean a formal, written plan, or even an unwritten one where that means we have already identified places and dates.

What I mean is that:

• The clearly revealed will of Christ is for his gospel to spread through all nations, amongst every people, language and cultural group (Revelation 7:9-10, Genesis 12:1-3, Matthew 28:18-21).
  

• It is also clearly revealed that wherever the gospel spreads, believers are intended (commanded) to gather together in churches for worship, encouragement, instruction and discipline (e.g. Acts 14:21-23, Matthew 16:18, Titus 1:4ff, Philippians 1:1).

Evangelism is not an end in itself. Those who are saved are then to be trained up, gathered together in churches and equipped to carry on that same work themselves. Each church is to aim to fulfil the "three selves" articulated and championed by Rufus Anderson (no relation that I know of!), Henry Venn, John Nevius and others in the 19th century:

1. Self-governing: Every church should work towards managing its own affairs without being dependent on outside leadership.
2. Self-supporting: Each church should be looking to finance its own activities without depending long-term on outside money.
3. Self-propagating: Every church should itself be seeking to do what it can to fulfil the Great Commission in particular in its own region, not looking to outside agencies to do or even lead the work for it.

It is against this big-picture criteria that historical mission efforts, ventures and missionary newsletters today should be evaluated. But this is not just for "missionaries"; it is for every church. God never sub-divided his church into "ordinary" churches which don't do mission and "missionary" ones that do. Every church is intended to be somewhere along the line, and no matter what trials and disturbances may knock it off course, yet to know where the goal is and how they intend to head towards it. Converts should be being trained and evaluated. Those with particular gifts in the area of evangelism, of teaching others and of leadership should be being looked out for and given particular mentoring attention and training. A watch should be kept on whether the church is outward looking and the members are mission minded. Opportunities should be sought. The pastors should be asking, "are we in a position yet to send some out, and if not, what steps are the next ones to take to move us closer?". The road might be very long - training, testing, correcting, etcetera, is not the work of a day or a year. But are we actually travelling on it?

What we need to be at war against is the conservative mindset that is forever saying, "we can't spare anyone, we're busy here, there's a lot to do, we have many problems to attend to, planting would be problematic, we're not experienced in that, etcetera etcetera." No doubt there may be a seed of truth in all of these things. So what? The aim is to please Jesus, and he's made his will clear. The actual step of sending out some members with a commission to begin a new work is just one (final) step in the chain, and the question is not if we know which date that will take place on (in Eldoret, we have no idea!). The question is if we actually are heading towards the goal at all in a meaningful way, or just paying lip-service to it. Are we traversing the other links that come earlier on, or just treading water and enjoying the comfort? Every worthwhile new church in the world was the result of someone taking these costly, time-consuming and difficult steps. Without them, the church will eventually die; churches are closing all the time - there need to be more opening so that the advance continues. Whose work is this meant to be? Not ultimately the work of missionary agencies, whatever their place may be.... but the work of individual local churches, working alone or in partnership as the opportunity arises. A church that has no plan to church-plant is a disobedient church.