 |
 |
||
|
March - April 1998 The Editorial MF Behind the Scenes
|
Sphere One: Standard Missions Defined This is the classical type of mission agency. It is expected to “go out there, anywhere, and do whatever is necessary, building on a foundation of evangelism and church planting.” Such mission agencies are generally the older church-planting agencies, including denominational and interdenominational, Presbyterian, Baptist, SIM International, etc. We have asked a Standard Mission of the interdenominational variety to address the strengths and weaknesses of Standard Mission activity overseas. SIM today works all over the world with nearly 2,000 missionaries delving into almost every good thing you can think of—schools, hospitals, radio, agriculture as well as thousands of churches and, yes, even foreign mission activity on the part of its national churches. Once, a hundred years ago, SIM was a rambunctious young-people’s mission. It is now a very keen, seasoned organization of enormous impact. Plueddemann has mission-field experience as well as additional background as a Professor of Missions and Christian Education at the Wheaton Graduate School. —RDW Standard Missions Represented Jim Plueddemann President of SIM—the Society for International Ministries (Formerly: Sudan Interior Mission) Strengths of Standard Missions Standard Missions often have a wide scope of ministries, but their focus is on the church. SIM’s purpose statement illustrates this: “The purpose of SIM is to glorify God by planting, strengthening and partnering with churches around the world as we: * Evangelize the unreached * Minister to human need * Disciple believers into churches * Equip churches to fulfill Christ’s Commission.” We are like the general practitioner in the medical profession. A general practitioner has the joy of bringing babies to birth and then also helping them to stay healthy and grow strong. Standard Missions are well-positioned to integrate the wide variety of ministries that must be tied together in order to plant and nurture churches in other cultures. Evangelism, development, discipleship and outreach can be closely linked under one umbrella in the case of the Standard Mission. Evangelism. Pioneer evangelism in unreached areas has been the hallmark of Standard Missions. The amazing spread of Christianity in the last 100 years is in large part a testimony to their effectiveness. Standard Missions may very well continue to be at the cutting edge of moving into unreached people groups. Human need. Though Standard Missions are not relief and development organizations per se, they have always had strong ministries of compassion. From the very beginning they have led the way in providing health care, community development, and education. They have the unique ability to work through the churches they have planted to integrate physical and spiritual ministries. Discipleship. SIM and many other Standard Missions have a burden for the saved as well as the unsaved. Carnal Christians are not a fulfillment of Christ’s Commission no matter what they look like in a computer data base. Lukewarm Christians hinder the progress of world evangelism, while believers who are well-taught make the best evangelists and cross-cultural missionaries. It is possible to emphasize unreached people groups to the exclusion of ongoing discipleship. Yet discipleship is the goal of the Great Commission and the key to evangelizing the unreached. Equipping believers. Standard Missions are not only planting churches; they are also planting mission boards. For example, cross-cultural missionaries sent out by the SIM-related churches of Nigeria and Ethiopia now outnumber all SIM missionaries! Globally, mission agencies springing up from SIM-related national churches are right now in the process of forming the Evangel Fellowship International Missions Association, for purposes of dialogue and partnership in cross-cultural missions. Weaknesses of Standard Missions One of the greatest dangers is that those of us in Standard Missions will lose our vision and focus. We engage in hundreds of strategic activities which could all lead in different directions. We have to keep asking, “How does this program help to strengthen the church?” Another potential weakness is that Standard Missions tend to focus either on expansion or consolidation. Healthy missions must keep both philosophies in fruitful tension. Unfocused expansion drains resources, but a consolidation mentality is deadly. A third area to watch is the relationship between Standard Missions and the churches they plant. As the planted church matures, missionaries must progressively step out of positions of control. The tension is that missions tend either to control the church and hinder her development, or they become controlled by the church and lose their worldwide outreach focus. We must learn to work as interdependent equals. Finally, Standard Missions are known for their stability and strong infrastructure, but at times they might be slow to respond to the spontaneous unfolding of God-given opportunities. Sometimes it takes us too long to recognize and participate in new ventures. We all need to step back and ask the question Southern Baptist mission leaders have recently been asking: “What would we do if we were starting all over?” As I look back on our 104-year history, there is surprisingly little that I’d do differently—but I would hope that we would do it all with more love. Love is the strategy that will draw lost people to Jesus. Close Links With Other Spheres I find a delightful openness on the part of many organizations to work together in close cooperation. Younger missions and older missions are exploring ways to learn from one another. Standard Missions have always appreciated Service Missions like MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) and Wycliffe Bible Translators. The huge missionary radio station in Ecuador, HCJB (Heralding Christ Jesus’ Blessings) and SIM recently formed a strategic alliance to link radio and church planting more closely. While many “Congregational-Direct Missions” may prefer not to depend on other organizations, in actual fact they seldom go entirely on their own. They often depend on Standard Missions for MK education, medical care, guest-house facilities, transportation, and crisis management. Standard Missions such as SIM often provide infrastructures that help other types of mission agencies. Most fulfilling for Standard Missions are the partnerships they form with the churches they have helped to plant. Right now, SIMers Howard and Jo-Ann Brant are helping to equip and lead a team of ten Ethiopian missionaries to minister alongside national workers in India for four months. Living expenses are being paid by the church in Ethiopia and SIM is helping with travel costs. This is cutting-edge missiology. Never has the world of missions been so exciting! Editorial Comment on Standard Missions These agencies represent comprehensive concern. They are listed first because they are the “all-purpose” missions. Their mandate very simply includes whatever is hurting people, whatever the problems are, and this explains why, over the years, they have worked into such an incredible spectrum of activities. They are much more likely to note a missing element of ministry and to find out how to meet it than is a mission specializing in a particular missing element. Plueddemann rightly emphasizes the fact that the pioneering history of the older Standard Missions has inevitably resulted in the reaching of many unreached people groups—and that the Standard Missions can readily continue to seek out remaining unreached groups. On this point our comment is about ethnic subtleties. Often we encounter the idealistic assumption that by working in a major tribe the smaller tribes in the same country will readily come along and join in with the same national church. In earlier days this common misunderstanding unintentionally excluded smaller groups or produced minorities within the church movements themselves. Then—and I take a deep breath lest this give offense—in all my years teaching the history of missions I have heard many criticisms of missions, but there is only one valid criticism, I believe. And it is understandable. While most missions have from the first planned to plant churches, very few of the older missions planned from the first to equip those churches with the vision and practical knowledge to undertake new cross-cultural mission on their own initiative. Exception: The Christian and Missionary Alliance, in its work in Asia (but not in Latin America), is the only really outstanding example of a mission from America that from the beginning taught its field believers to become involved themselves in the Great Commission. Yet, once mission efforts on the part of the national churches (often called “Third World Missions”) have finally burst into view (often without the initiative of the expatriate missionaries) truly amazing and wonderful mission structures have often emerged. Certainly that is true for SIM, which Plueddemann rightly points out. Note that the final appearance of these new missions completes a potent “reproductive cycle.” 1) Expatriate mission agencies plant churches and 2) those churches sprout their own mission agencies, and 3) those new field mission structures then become a new generation of “Standard Missions.” In the 1920’s people spoke of “the great new fact of our time” as the marvel of national churches planted within hundreds of different languages and cultures all over the world. Today “the great new fact of our time” is the marvel of national mission structures as those same overseas church movements add their own missionaries to an ever increasing world total. Thus, the mission fields of the world are becoming aries to an ever-increasing world total. Thus, the mission fields of the world are becoming mission bases, and the remaining by-passed “unreached peoples” are the only pioneer fields or frontiers. Note, however, a technical point. Jim Plueddemann has a strong background in Christian Education. And that is where he and I have gone around and around for years. For what it may be worth I feel that Christian Education activities and materials in general are lacking in Great Commission content. It is easy to suppose—but questionable—that by “discipling” you get mission vision. The Great Commission in Matthew is not talking about what we today mean by discipleship of individuals nor teaching in the usual sense. Furthermore, most Standard Missions (which now have seen mission efforts launched from their own overseas churches) have to confess that their earlier discipleship efforts did not properly include missions and literally decades went by before missions became the thing to do. Indeed, Christian Education in the overseas church, if it is not coupled directly to active global outreach will continue to be “a next best.” This is what underlies his comment: “It is possible to emphasize unreached people groups to the exclusion of ongoing discipleship.” In my opinion this statement is mostly hypothetical since 95% of the time it is the other way around. The healthiest church movements in recent mission history are those that from the start had a nurture-witness-mission emphasis. (I think of the intrepid Dani missionaries in Irian Jaya.) Indeed, it is not too much to say that true discipleship cannot precede mission outreach but can only exist where that outreach is clearly in the picture from the start. When mission vision is not constantly present “discipleship” just may become little more than a kind of Hindu or Buddhist self-improvement activity. On the other hand, even missionless discipleship, as we know it, is worth something. If all Christianity did was to produce honest people we would have to be delighted. The fact that there are millions of Christians all over the world today is not the result of the derivative missions (Spheres Two through Six) so much as they are clearly the essential means without which those agencies could not operate. More on this in the editorial. —RDW
[ FRONT PAGE ] [ MEET OUR STAFF ] [ USCWM ] |
|
|
