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April/May 1991 Editorial Comment How Goes the Harvest? Surmounting the Geographical Impase? |
The Editorial of Ralph D. Winter Founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission
My comments are going to run beyond the space normally allotted to me. There are too many exciting things to talk about. The Bombshell of this Bulletin Never in our history have we proposed so novel a plan for this publication. We admit this is our own "unheard-of" plan. I won't mention it further here since it already occupies an additional four pages (beginning on page 28). This unusual plan will attempt to solve one very big and stubborn problem, but at the same time may pave the way to some incredible new goals. "Risks are to be weighed not in terms of their probability of success but in terms of the inherent worth of their goals." How to Define "Mission"? Mission leaders in the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic traditions do not compare notes that often, but both traditions in the past 30 to 50 years, painted themselves into a corner (along with a lot of evangelical Protestant mission structures, whether denominational or interdenominational). From the Roman empire the Roman Catholics inherited their diocese type of territory--like a county in the USA today. Each diocese has its Bishop, corresponding to the Roman magistrates which in some respects they replaced. This confounded their mission outreach at precisely the point (shortly after WWII), when practically the whole earth's surface was covered by one diocese or another--and automatically, therefore, no longer a "mission territory." Meanwhile Protestant mission agencies of almost all kinds entered into "comity" agreements which, in effect, parcelled out all available space in a similar way. Thus, in both cases, as the work expanded, the remaining unoccupied territory accordingly decreased, and today for both Roman Catholic and Protestant, virtually the entire earth's surface is now, nominally at least, under the jurisdiction of one church structure or another--and the conclusion was that new pioneer "mission" efforts were no longer needed! The "Presbyterian Church of Pakistan," for example, has not been keen on workers coming into Pakistan that are not assigned to work for that particular church tradition, which in its own eyes represents all of Pakistan. However, note with surprise and pleasure the key quotations from the two new documents on page 31. What an irony that these two traditions, not known for crystal clear evangelical theology, have nevertheless, now stated the nature of mission in remarkably clear terms. The use of "Unreached Peoples" (a non-geographical) terminology is now making major changes in mission strategic thinking. It is not less than the recovery of mission strategically speaking. This has nothing to do with the content of the Gospel. It could be the Mormons who will next espouse these strategic concepts. At the very minimum, soon, we hope, U.S. congregations will stop thinking that pioneer, cross-cultural mission cannot be within the territorial limits of the U.S.A. Or, that it is inevitably what is going on in any foreign country. This is all the more crucial to understand, the truer our understanding of the Gospel. Mission does not mean going to places but to peoples, unreached peoples, to be precise--wherever representatives of such peoples are. "International students," for example, do not represent mission peoples necessarily unless the group from which they come is in fact itself an Unreached People. It is probable that the vast majority of international students come from "reached groups" not "unreached groups." This does not mean that they are not needing fellowship, if they are Christians, or needing to find the Lord, if they are not Christians. But this is once again the difference between evangelism and missions. Missions is a specialized kind of evangelism, the kind which is a "first penetration" into a group which might otherwise never have a chance at all. Both of these new documents clearly recognize the special character of unreached groups. See page 32 for a whole page of further commentary. Now, at this point, I have a long list of things I would like to comment on, but there is one serious matter that I must not let go by another month. Let's confront something delicate and awful. When you read things here you are reading the words of a person who not only started out as an engineer trained to create solutions for unsolved problems--and who then gained a doctorate in the field of anthropology--but a person who lived ten years in Guatemala living and working with a mountain Indian tribe. I cannot forget those mountain, tribal Indians, their smiles, their powerlessness before landowners, police, army, even American advertisements encouraging them not nurse their own babies, encouraging them to believe that smart people smoke... Those ten years created an unshakeable burden to carry. I find that I often see things differentlyƒthe flavor of this little bulletin is determined by the fact that it comes from the world's largest center of mission collaboration. People with backgrounds in 70 different mission agencies work here. The forty or so languages spoken here reflect experiences similar to my own--in forty OTHER and similar situations. Thus, basically, you are reading the words of an outsider to our culture--but an outsider who is also an insider. So here goes. (My point is that if we are willing to blind ourselves to one terrible, ghastly evil, we may need to ask if we are blinding ourselves to other evils.) Perhaps it took an evangelical Surgeon General to own up to the simple fact that nicotine is as addictive as cocaine or heroin. He is the one who made that statement. But evangelicals in general have been leaning over backwards for so long to avoid "legalism" that they have been unaware of the degree of their own cultural captivity in matters as widely accepted as "nicotine fixing through inhalation." In this area, the "world" has gotten ahead of the evangelical church. But now, finally, Christianity Today has published (April 8, 1991) the most phenomenal article yet on the grisly toll of nicotine in America--and by Americans on unwarned, unsuspecting poor people around the world. It is significant that they had to go to a Seventh- Day Adventist to get the article! Here is a sample: "Tobacco causes more deaths each year in the United States than heroin, cocaine, alcohol, AIDS, fires, homicides, suicides, and auto accidents combined." Note the last word, combined. An even more impressive way to say this is: "Tobacco causes more deaths annually than heroin PLUS cocaine PLUS alcohol PLUS AIDS PLUS fires PLUS homicides PLUS suicides PLUS auto accidents!" Not only does our culture blind us to the reality of this fact, but we need to wait for someone like Jimmy Carter (who lives in tobacco country) to say that "More Colombians died last year from smoking American cigarettes than did Americans from using Colombian cocaine." Our "mission-minded" country is belching out not only more pornography across the world than any other country, we are also exporting more killer drugs than any other. We not only export killer drugs, our State Dept. pressures resisting foreign governments to open their borders to those drugs--and to American advertising which is so effective that it dramatically increases the use of this death- dealing drug. If Boeing were so careless that THREE fully loaded 747's crashed every day, Boeing would not be protected and subsidized by our government as the tobacco industry is. Yet that is the daily toll of smoking in the USA alone, plus another 53,000 who die per year from passive smoking. Can we allow this electrifying set of facts to gives us clues to other things to which we Americans are blind? Like what? Well, like the fact that the very theme of the Bible--used in our churches to expound every other subject--is God's concern for all of the peoples of the earth. Or note this. I just now called the local supermarket to find out the average cost of a pack of cigarettes--$2.25. At only one pack a day that's more than three times what it would take to pay the cost of sending Mission Frontiers to 69 people--which is 71¢ per day, or $21. 39 per month. Do you think we can find a little over 1,000 such people--people who will pay that much to bless others? And, to follow through to meet those people face to face? (See pp. 28-32).
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