November 01, 1993 by Ralph D. Winter

“Will We Fail Again?”

I don't think I agree completely with my Managing Editor's cover question. But, I am sure you aren't interested in overhearing an argument between the Editor and the Managing Editor--unless the point itself is VERY IMPORTANT. It is!

Who failed? America? Evangelicals? Pastors? Mission leaders? Missionaries? To ask, "Will we fail again?" is not a helpful warning-- as I'm sure it is intended to be--unless it is crystal clear WHO it is who is in danger of "failing."

Are readers of Mission Frontiers in danger of failing? Failing to do what? Well, actually, I guess, all of us need to be sure we are doing everything within our power to complete the Great Commission, now that we are so near.

Maybe Rick is right after all. Maybe all of us need to assume that there may be some things we could be doing wrong. His write-up on the Cover Question is on page 12. It draws on several other sources and points up three ways in which grave failure did in fact occur the last time the end of the century loomed up as an exciting goal to shoot for.

Watch this:
Today (I am writing this on Thursday the 16th of September) is the day thousands upon thousands of high school young people will be gathering "at the flag pole." I really know very little about this whole thing. But I feel in my bones that this movement and this very day could be the beginning of a country-wide, even world-wide revival.

I don't exactly mean that high school kids are going to change the world, but the Bible says, "a child shall lead them." No, I mean simply that this remarkable renewal breeze that has swept through the high schools of this country, hopping over many denominational barriers, is quite possibly one of the surest signs of a coming major movement.

I even wonder if the spectacular possibilities of peace in the Middle East isn't another evidence of impending global revival.

This aging planet has known massive evil and brutality--such as the resurgence of genocide in Bosnia. Boys will be boys, and shooting people is thrilling for gangs and terrorists. But if grown leaders can agree that perpetual war is not reasonable, then remarkable things can happen--and maybe even the boys will get interested in helpful things. Most wars are the initiatives of leaders dragging common people into disputes that are not really theirs.

But there is something else in the air. A book the President has just talked about…

The Culture of Disbelief

That is the name of a book by a black Yale professor who, according to Newsweek (Sept 20, p. 46), charges that the nation's liberal elites have "come to belittle religious devotion, to humiliate believers and, even if indirectly, to discourage religion as a serious activity." Newsweek goes on to summarize, "He believes that law, politics, the media and the universities pressure devout believers to treat religion as merely a private matter and 'God as a hobby.'" He claims that the concept of separation of church and state "originated in an effort to protect religion from the state, not the state from religion." Religious convictions, he believes, instead of being excluded from public issues because they are religious, ought to be included deliberately just as we now honor ethnic differences intentionally. All the bookstores around here are already out of stock--as might be expected--but I look forward to reading more than a Newsweek review!

And, I happen to know, Yale has another black professor, Lamin Sanneh, who is an outstanding evangelical, occupying the chair Kenneth Scott Latourette once held, in missions. And, Yale also has a powerful heart in a black student named Manny Hooper who is from Nigeria and is absolutely absorbed in the subject of a revival in America.

Is it possible that high school young people and black Yale professors will both make crucial contributions to a true greening of America?

Before we look at some of the bright spots of opportunity right before our eyes, let's pause to recognize just how tough a battle we face. It is awesomely more complicated than merely passing out tracts or winning individuals to a new hope in Christ. It would appear that demonic perversion has invaded every living thing.

What the future holds

If there is a coming revival in America, we may not know it in advance. But we ought not to assume it will not happen. We ought to work for it and live with that New Thing as a clear possibility, despite demonic opposition.

The situation is similar in regard to the whole world and its destiny. It is "inconvenient" not to know whether the Middle East peace will last, whether Somalia or Bosnia or North Ireland can also be fixed, if Yeltsin will foster an official abhorrence of religion in Russia to the extent that we have it in America, or if Cambodia is now just in a pause before another killing storm.

Actually the whole of creation is in conflict. If man has gained the ability to tamper with the DNA molecule in order to head off genetic defects, it is not unreasonable to believe that "the god of this world" (2 Cor 4:4) has had the ability to tamper with the DNA and produce all kinds of contrary, life-destroying forms of life. Where else would the purely destructive sea lamprey eel come from (said to antedate the dinosaurs) whose only function is to suck the life out of fish--and at one time threatened to kill most of the fish in the Great Lakes?

Where would the virulent viruses come from, whose only function is to invade healthy cells and kill them? What kind of a God would have designed the horrifying, life-destroying dinosaurs whose five-foot jaws were not designed for eating but only for destruction? And, how is it that the human lineage displays greater danger to itself than that of any other form of life? The purposes of a loving God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ were twisted and distorted--and temporarily thwarted.

When the Bible says the whole creation labors in a slavery to corruption (Rom 8:19-23) it may precisely be referring to the astoundingly deep and pervasive damage "the ruler of the darkness of this earth" has inflicted upon the creative purposes of God, setting life against life, injecting evil, hatred, cruelty, distortion and corruption into the very DNA molecules of all living things. This is a "slavery" of a sort which is yet to be ended. Yes, we "wrestle against… the rulers of the darkness of this world," no doubt about it!

The Thunderbolts of God

We can only name a few here. But there are many indeed.

Thunderbolt One

The AD2000 Movement is surely one of God's most welcome thunderbolts. A few days ago at their Aug 30 meeting, the U.S. Lausanne Committee agreed to serve as the coordinating agency for the AD2000 Movement in the United States. This is a remarkably wise move and bodes well for things ahead in the United States.

I don't really need to describe the AD2000 movement right here. This issue of Mission Frontiers is full of it, focusing, as our cover question does, on the year 2000 and on whether or not we can reasonably set up significant Great Commission goals for that date.

Ever since the 1980 World Conference on Frontier Missions in Edinburgh, our slogan at the Center for World Mission in Pasadena has been "A Church for Every People by the Year 2000."

We thought, back then--at this largest meeting of mission executives ever held on the world level--that the global family of believers might not be able to evangelize every individual by the year 2000. But we believed that it would be feasible to try to establish a beachhead in every unreached nation or people by that date. Toward that end incredible progress has been made in the past 13 years.

Now, however, the sprightly, magnificent AD2000 Movement has created an additional phrase, "A Church for Every People and the Gospel for Every Person by the year 2000."

This adds some additional words but just might amount to the same thing, depending on how you define "the Gospel for every person." That's what a church movement enables.

In 1982 the concept of reaching a people was technically defined by a large, representative body of executives and scholars in terms of establishing a church. (See page 9--1st paragraph and the footnote)

The momentous emphasis today on "church planting" efforts takes its cue from the shift beyond evangelism to church planting--the biggest shift in mission terminology in this century. In the last century they clearly understood the importance of church planting over mere evangelism. But the flood of Student Volunteers at the turn of this century generally blotted out that insight and the younger breed had to rediscover the concept of the indigenous church, which would then become the most effective means of evangelizing individuals.

Thus, many today feel you can't take the Gospel to every person without planting a church movement within every people, that kind of initial breakthrough then being the primary measure of mission accomplishment.

But let's not get bogged down in technicalities.

The new, 3rd edition of the "AD2000 Movement Handbook" is a work of art--75 pages, 8.5x11, four-color cover. Your congregation can get ten copies postpaid for $20 by writing to Luis Bush, 2860 South Circle Drive, Suite 2112, Colorado Springs, CO  80906. (Phone 719-576- 2000, Fax 719-576-2685.)

It is like reading science fiction to read the detailed plans of the 1994 meetings, including the June 25th "Day to Change the World." You have got to get this book! Here is the final paragraph:

On Saturday, June 25, 1994, what will probably be the most massive prayer meeting in the history of Christianity is scheduled to take place in thousands of locations around the globe. It will climax a three-year process building the heaviest concentration of prayer into world evangelization that has ever been known. We are believing that on that day at least 30 percent of the world's committed Christians will be praying in a specific and coordinated manner for world evangelization. This implies that 160 million brothers and sisters will be interceding together over a 24-hour period. The entire body of Christ on all six continents will be involved in beseeching God to hasten the day when "the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ and He shall reign forever and ever" (Rev 11:15)!

But this is only the runner-up to the AD2000 Movement's scheduled 1995 face-to-face global meeting in Korea which may be the most strategic Christian gathering in history. Again the details (pp. 59- 62 in the AD2000 Movement's "Handbook ") are breathtaking.

God bless this movement headed up by Two-Thirds world leaders in rich fellowship and harmony with Western leaders. Do keep in touch with this fast-moving phenomenon. Surely you and your friends at church can use ten copies of this handbook!

Thunderbolt Two

330,000 copies in the first printing! This thunderbolt is more like Halley's Comet, which returns every 75 years. It is the reappearance of the 5th edition of Operation World. You have been seeing in these pages (and in this issue on pages 10-11) the remarkable interest that has mounted for this humble evangelical listing of the countries of the world along with the vital (and astounding) statistics of the Christian movement. The "Unfinished Task" (smaller now than ever) is a prominent feature.

But can you imagine the first printing being 330,000 copies? We ourselves have received orders at this date for 70,600 and have another 29,400 coming. We passed on the price (to the penny) of what we paid per copy by buying 100,000. The 300 organizations listed across the page which made pre-publication orders of 100 or more copies and have paid us $3.37 per copy--exactly what we paid to Zondervan for the entire 100,000. We hope that this effort will expand "presence" of this superlative book into many new circles, as well as stimulate many more "normal sales" through the bookstores. It seems clear that the Zondervan corporation would not sell so large an order to us if they did not believe this would help them sell even more in traditional patterns.

OK, the 70,600 advance orders are being shipped directly to the people listed across the page. The remainder, 29,000, will arrive in our hands in a day or two. (Today is Sept 16.) We are allowed to sell copies only in the U.S.A. But any individual or organization who now wants copies will have to pay more since a late order requires the cost of an additional shipment, additional handling, storage, order processing, etc., almost doubling the $3.37 price. But, buying copies by the case (20 copies) will still enable us to offer a price less than half the $12.99 retail. See the quantity price list in the order pages, 44-47.

Why this book? What is so mysterious and amazing about it? It describes vividly, factually, unquestionably the vibrant, up-to-date facts about God's hand in our world today, 1993--more than any other book in existence!

What the newspapers hardly mention, what the school textbooks on contemporary political science usually ignore, is all here, meticulously and excitingly spread out for all to see. The amazing, instant, huge demand for this book proves that a lot of people like you, my dear reader, are clearly interested in the hand of God in our world today. That fact is more important than the book itself. Oh, what if all those high school young people "at the flag pole" could own a book like this! The only reason most of them may never hear about it is simply the fact that the 300 alert organizations on page 11 are less than 1% of the evangelical churches in the United States. Where were the rest of them? Sure, 330,000 is a big printing. But why not 30 million?

Thunderbolt Three

What is a thunderbolt? A flash of intense light plus a revelation of incredible electric power.

The powerful global movement which Patrick Johnstone's book describes is seriouly hampered. Two million functional pastors of local churches have never had any formal theo-logical studies, and probably never will--not in a classroom. The global family of believers needs a thunderbolt in this area. The average "mission field" church movement consists of, say, 100 congregations and about five or six "properly trained" pastors. Economics alone prevents U.S.- type pastoral training. Even to give two million barely literate pastors minimum classroom training would cost in the billions of dollars. What happened? The wildfire movement of Christian faith has grown much faster than our Western, professionalized training systems can handle. The irony is that professionally trained pastors don't generally enable the church to grow as fast as the more natural leaders. Someone has observed that the newest 30,000 congregations in the USA (started in the last 25 years) are almost entirely without professionally trained pastors.

But things are now really happening in the area of jump-start training of the actual grass-roots leadership of the global church movement. What is happening?

First, ACCESS exists. We now know we can offer high-quality training beyond school walls. We get letters every day from literate, English speaking Christian leaders, often in the most remote places on earth.

All of a sudden, even though the whole world is not likely to convert to English, English is the best link to the vast majority of all of the world's peoples. We are not trying to teach people English. I am simply noting that bi-lingual people who already speak English are able to relay through their own native language to their own people whatever they learn in English. And that is true in most of the societies of the world. If you were to traverse the earth and peek in on every nationality you would be amazed how often you find at least some one person who has a foot in both his own and an outside culture, more and more often English. This is due to radio, to television, to the printed page, to migration, to expanded travel, to increasing safety (forget safety in the U.S.), to the enormously expanding world culture of our planet today. Intercontinental television is pressing this reality out further each day. Others are selling their wares.

But secondly, CONTENT is on its way. What do WE want to "relay"? Our faith, our hope, His love--in fresh new terms.

In the last 19 years more than 20,000 people in the U.S. (and an equal number elsewhere) have worked through our 150-hour Perspectives Study Program. This has given a taste of a strikingly different perspective, but has not been extensive enough to provide the foundational skills and tools for serious ministry based on the Bible. Their study, for example, should include the ability to trace key words throughout a Hebrew concordance of the Old Testament, the Greek Old Testament or the Greek New Testament.

We have designed a 32-semester-unit curriculum that covers the essentials of a seminary education and does so from a fresh, global, international, mission perspective. Even more radically, it integrates the many stand-alone, fragmented courses typical of schools. They break reality up because they need to keep all of their professors busy at the same time, each working and teaching in his or her own specialty.

The first of four 8-unit modules, each guiding 400 hours of study, is now complete. Several major evangelical seminaries have shown an interest in employing these materials in their own off-campus programs. It is very necessary for us to enlist existing schools to accept students we may recruit since the number interested will run into the thousands.

If you are interested, write to Dwight Baker, 1605 E. Elizabeth St., Pasadena CA  91104, or fax 626-398-2185. Ask about our "Seminary in a Suitcase."