January 01, 1992 by Ralph D. Winter

The Mysterious Tension in Missions Today

A young single man "in the process," or "in the habit" of looking around for a girl to marry will face a great shifting of gears once marriage is behind him and children begin to appear. A new process, new habits, a whole new set of skills and goals will inevitably replace the awareness, sensitivities and lifestyle of the earlier period. Understandably.

Young mission agencies start out looking for pioneer fields. They are looking for virgin fields, where "Christ has not been named," lest they build on someone else's foundation. They would not think of going and building on an extensive church movement already in existence. Their supporters would be surprised and displeased!

But, as they begin to work in a new, frontier area--if they are successful in producing "children" (that is, a church movement)-- almost immediately a great shifting of gears begins to take place as they become transformed from pioneer agencies into church-nurture agencies.

Why? They plant churches, baby churches. New young leadership appears. A new situation arises which does not necessarily lead to more pioneer mission work.. It leads to the quite different task of taking care of the precious churches that are planted. This is quite understandable.

A tension remains beneath the surface, especially for supporters back home who tend to maintain "pioneer" vision for missionaries. Many pioneer, frontier fields still remain. Who will go there? Could the mission field churches themselves reach out beyond their own people?

Most missionaries today are tending church movements. Are these godly people aware of the importance of the so-called "Third-World Mission movement? In fact, it is growing up with very little notice from the bulk of all church-tending missionaries, who are deeply burdened in serving the church movements created by "yesterday's" pioneer mission work.

Enter, the AD2000 Movement

As this marvelous new networking movement (see cover story) expands around the world scooping up the keenest national leadership of now almost every nation in the world, the bulk of its preoccupation is to expand existing church movements.

A prime example is Taiwan, where 400,000 Taiwanese believers, in 2,000 churches, hope to have 10,000 churches by the year 2000. This is mainly a case of expanding further into what is no longer a pioneer field. No alphabet needs to be created. No languages need to be learned. No new Bible translations need to be made, etc. No difficult first churches need to be started. New churches are started now not by missionaries but by national church leaders, as it should be. No one can deny them the privilege of reaching their own people. But that's evangelism not missions!

The AD2000 committee in Taiwan represents the majority population in which all of this marvelous church work already exists.

Distinguishing Mission from Evangelism

Is Taiwan still a mission field? We will continue this crucial question in the Mission Executives section, on page 19, because right now we need space for a fascinating letter about the diagram across the page.

Diagram to Right

This dramatic diagram urged a long-time missionary in Japan to write,

"For the life of me I can't understand your Question and Answer paragraph (in the bottom right),

"Only if we had as many new believers per year as non-believers could we break evenƒit seems to me we are losing ground since the beginning.

"I wonder where you went haywire in your figuring?"

Dear Brother: If you wish, call it a mystery, stated the way you have. But look at the facts.

1. As you look down the column of all who call themselves Christians (Col 3) the additional number is always smaller than the additional non-Christian population (Col 2), yet the percentage of world population gets steadily larger. It starts out at 1% of world population in 100 AD (e.g. 1 compared to 100), and ends up at 33% (e. g. 1,833 compared to 5,480).
2. Or, look down the column of Bible believing Christians (Col 4). Again the addition each year is always smaller than the additional non-Christian population (Col 2), yet the percentage gets larger. It starts out at 1/2% of world population and ends up at 10% (e.g. 540 compared to 5,480).
3. Finally, look down Col 2--people who do not claim to be Christians. Here the addition each year is always a whole lot larger than the additional Christian population (Col 2), yet its percentage of world population gets smaller! It starts out at 99.44% and drops down to 67% (e.g. 3,647 compared to 5,480).

Isn't this a glorious mystery!

Distinguish "Mission" from "Evangelism"?

Is Taiwan Still a Mission Field? Very roughly, there are three kinds of people on island of Taiwan: the aboriginals, or "mountain people," who are mainly Christian.

Then, there are the early invaders, the Minnan Chinese who are two-thirds of the population. As we have just seen (page four), this group does not constitute a pioneer field.

About a fifth of the people are the later invaders of World War II, the ruling Mandarin, North Chinese (whose language is as different from Minnan Chinese as Gennan vs. Italian). Strong Christian work exists on the mainland in most of the various Mandarin dialects. We could say the same about these dialects as we said (on page four) about the Minnan Chinese.

About 10% of the people are Hakka, a group similar to the Minnan, among whom some churches exist but much more work is to be done.

HOWEVER, there are dozens of smaller groups, some of which are truly Unreached Peoples. And the splendid Taiwanese church is already providing missionaries for other parts of the world. Taiwan's incredible spiritual and financial resources ought to have great significance in the AD2000 Countdown!