October 01, 1989 by Ron Shaw

IFMA Impact!

The 1990s are upon us. A whole new decade. Just years away now from the unsettling prospect of a new century, a new millenium. Just a few years from the perfectly plausible goal of planting a church in every people group by the year 2000.

But finishing the task of the Great Commission during the 1990s will be a race against time.

Probably the most unlikely sprinters to plant their cleats into starting blocks, carefully position fingers along the starting line and direct steely eyes across the next 11 years to the goal are a bespectacled, mixed-age team who, according to one observer, look like “a bunch of bankers.”

But tensing for the race, teaming up as never before are a determined team of mission executives whose endurance and saavy in running the race eminently qualify them to lead this Great Commission race against time.

Two significant mission executive meetings last month have announced the pace of the race—the annual conferences of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA) and the International Society for Frontier Missions.

Insights & Strategies

The IFMA held a busy 72nd Annual meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, from September 18-21. The Back to the Bible radio broadcast was host to nearly 200 people from 66 member Boards and other organizations from the U.S. and Canada—a key group that represents nearly 12 million mission-active constituents!

These mission execs worked through issues rarely considered by homefront churches in their mission interest. For example, participants were urged to fine-tune their crisis-handling contingencies as terrorist activity against Western missionaries is expected to increase in the coming decade.

Bob Klamser shocked the group by reporting that nearly 4,000 misisonaries were kidnapped last year, up 2,000 from previous yearly averages. Klamser, a lieutenant in a large Southern California police department, has experience commanding hostage negotiation teams. Mission agencies, he warned, need to coach their constituents on how to respond to such crises. He told of one kidnapping incident during which the victimized missionary’s home church was actually raising a mercenary commando squad to attempt a military-style rescue!

IFMA executives explored several new ways of approaching the mission challenge. For example, the North America Committee reported progress in establishing a network to match returning missionaries with opportunities to minister among ethnic groups in North America. This capitalizes on the trends of Two-Thirds-World people moving to this continent and the “hidden resource” of retired or returned missionaries. These workers are already culturally and, in some cases, linguistically qualified to step into meaningful, immediate ministry.

Global Issues

The Africa Committee of IFMA called for increased prayer in light of the increasing militancy of Islam, a continent-wide problem with world-wide implications. A strategy needs to be developed, suggested several conference participants, to help African churches be more effective in witnessing to Muslims.

Peter Deyneka, George Murray and Andrew Semenchu of the European Committee have been in the Soviet Union in the last year and report amazing changes in religious liberty, though restrictions still exist. Prayer was requested on behalf of the Soviet believers to know how to handle this new liberty with the same religious fervor they have shown under persecution.

Goals for the 90s

IFMA Executive Director Edwin Frizen highlighted important issues facing the IFMA in the decade of the 90s. Some of these global issues include:

• AD2000 goals and plans;
• the rapid spread of Islam;
• world population growth;
• continuing migration into cities and from other continents to North America;
• inclusion of Roman Catholics in evangelical-sponsored conferences;
• growing problems with the occult, including witchcraft and demon possession;
• Liberation Theology and other forms of “adding-to” the Gospel;
• problems with secularism, including divorce, drugs, inflation, the rising costs of mission and lack of personnel.

How can these challenges be met in the race against time to establish “A Church for Every People By the Year 2000”? The smaller, newer Society for Frontier Missiology conferred to discuss that question. Now, late in 1989, how can we get a running start on the global challenges of the 1990s?

ISFM Action!

“Global Christianity stands poised like a giant space vehicle on its Cape Kennedy launching pad, ready to complete world evangelization in this generation!” So say Barrett and Reapsome in Seven Hundred Plans to Evangelize the World.

The metaphor for completing the Great Commission seemed to shift from the IFMA’s refreshing emphases on teamwork and stamina to the ISFM’s nuts-and-bolts image of a rocket launch. Missiology, perhaps, can be thought of as the study of getting the rocket of global Christianity off the pad.

So each year the International Society for Frontier Missiology gathers for three days of intensive study, prayer and planning. This year the group met in the crisp, late-September air of Colorado Springs in conjunction with the Lausanne Statistics Task Force.

Countdown Challenges

But a rocket launch is hi-tech, complicated business. For the 50 who attended ISFM from a broad spectrum of American evangelical agencies, it became apparent that the theme, “Implementing Global Plans into the Decade of Evangelization,” poses some intriguing problems if the task is to be completed by the year 2000.

For example, of the 780 plans for world evangelization proposed in various eras, 401 are known to have failed. Currently another 133 are in danger of collapsing.

ISFM participants discussed the problem that too many evangelization plans are based on “Come over and help us—do our plan” instead of “Let’s plan together to see what we will do—together!” We need to understand these failures if we’re to avoid more.

Massive cooperation between huge numbers of Christians will be necessary to complete such a momentous task. Thomas Wang of the AD2000 Movement pointed out that “the task belongs to all churches and all Christians. Therefore we must have a big heart to work together.”

Do We Know Enough?

Conference participants grappled with some of the logistical problems inherent in the Final Task. In spite of bulging memory banks of data, there is still need for much more information about the target: the unreached and largely unknown peoples.

Will we standardize specifications and formats for clear profiles of each people group? Will we be able to train missionaries to more efficiently gather research data and to use such information strategically? Will we learn how to manage all this information on such a global scale—in time?

ISFM presenter Chris Ackerman of Global Mapping International pointed out that in addition to columns of figures and statistical people profiles, information needs to be put in forms like pie-charts and maps to help lay people see relations and comparisons. “Research information isn’t just for missiologists,” he said. “These findings are needed in the church pew just as much as they are in the mission agency file. This same data in a lay-level style can mobilize more people of all ages.”

More technological moxy is needed by missionaries on the field, many ISFM participants noted. Often missionaries and smaller mission agencies do not yet know how to tap the usefulness of computers in the work of planting spiritual seed in human hearts. Paul Filidis of YWAM announced a Research and Data Conference next March in Manila to help equip missionaries for the task of gathering on-the-field information in what is called “work-among research.”

Possible Solutions

But, the conference sessions emphasized, we do not need to wait until all the data is in before getting into action. Unlike space vehicles which operate best if all possibilities are known, in the Spirit-led endeavor to obey Jesus, we can learn as we go. Ralph Winter used the example of a foreman needing to move a large pile of bricks. He could expect each worker to carry a certain load, even though the total number of bricks is not yet known.

David Barrett presented the “Kaleidoscopic Global Action Plan” (KGAP) previously published in the International Journal of Frontier Missions (Jan.-Oct. 1989). He used the picture of a kaleidoscope because it makes patterns out of diverse pieces. The 109 plans contained in KGAP complement each other and do not propose to take the place of those already in existence. They attack “sticking points” which have caused failures in the past and propose the use of new ideas and recently developed tools.

Barrett warned: “These aim to ensure that the current ‘four-year window of opportunity’—1989, 1990, 1991, 1992—, which is probably all we have today, will see all plans placed firmly on their feet enroute to AD2000.” Others at the conference specified 1995 as the crucial year by which preliminary steps have to be in place to ensure that our mission is completed by the end of the century.

After discussion as to how these 109 plans would actually be implemented, Luis Bush of Partners International asked for a time of prayer. One of the highlights of the meeting was the sight of the Society on its knees, crying out to God for forgiveness for slowness to obey His “Global Action Plan.” Participants wept in prayer for more faith, for more grace to cooperate with others.

Who Is “We”?

Many of the plans offered spoke of “We must do this or that,” leaving unanswered the question, “Who is ‘we’?” It soon became apparent that “we” had to be “whosoever will.”

In the session on matching targeted people groups, missionaries and churches, Dale Kietzman of William Carey International University offered to be part of the “we” by giving details on the Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse which will build on groundwork laid by the IFMA Frontier Peoples Committee. The Clearinghouse will use research data from Global Mapping to form Unreached Peoples profile sheets, and will refer requests from churches or individuals to mission agencies. Soon it is hoped an 800 number can be in use to make requests easier.

Wes Tullis of the USCWM proposed a plan to apportion by region the adoption of 6,000 Unreached People groups by U.S. churches, based on the number of evangelical churches in each region. For example, the Southwest Region (Southern California and Arizona) would be given opportunity to adopt 1,406 such groups, while the New England stateswith fewer evangelicals would take 376.

Tullis also detailed the promotional and educational materials being developed to help agencies implement the Adopt-A-People concept. Strategies & Facts David Garrison of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board detailed a recent strategy, new to many, of “non-resident missionaries” (NRM). These fulltime professionals target an unevangelized segment in a country (such as China) where resident missionaries cannot get in, identify every Christian resource that might help in their evangelization (literature, broadcasting, etc.) and devise entry plans to get workers such as students, businesspeople or teachers into place. The NRM himself may or may not get “in country” but continues to be an advocate for that people to the outside world. Bill Waldrop of the Association of Church Mission Committees revealed a sad fact that affects efforts to mobilize Christians: only 10% of all American evangelical churches are visibly involved in missions! His group is attacking the problem by setting up the concept of a “mobilized church.” (See related article on page 19 .) The ACMC goal: 2% of the 300,000 U.S. evangelical churches to be “M&M churches—Mobilized and Mobilizing others.” To accomplish this, says Waldrop, North America needs pastors on fire for frontier missions and a genuine spiritual revival among members. Larry Pate of Overseas Crusades charted the astonishing phenomenon of the emerging missionary force in the Two-Thirds World. He encouraged the Society with news of new “cross-cultural ministries, led by national leaders and largely (95%) funded indigenously.” Pate projected these growth figures in the worldwide mission force in the coming decade:

The Global Mission Force 1988 1995 2000 2/3 World 36,000 86,000 162,000 West 85,000 111,000 136,000

Action: Getting Off the Pad At the closing session a fitting climax was reached as Dave Garrison read a list of goals determined the previous evening. He asked that people agree to take responsibility for one or more action steps, in possible concert with other agencies. The response seemed like “an unprecedcnted breakthrough in mission cooperation,” according to one participant. The 1989 IFMA and ISFM meetings proved that mission strategy is as exciting as a track and field event, as complex as a Cape Kennedy rocket launch. As Vinson Synan of the International Charismatic Commission on World Evangelization commented, “Every mission agency in the world should have access to the information presented at these sessions!”

Reach the World By 2000?

IFMA participant Richard Winchell, general director of TEAM, challenges mission executives, church leaders and lay mission enthusiasts alike to measure the task of the Great Commission.

Reach the world by the year 2000? Can it be done? To answer that question we must define what we mean by reach. A simple definition would be to see that every soul on earth has had an adequate opportunity to hear the gospel with understanding.

This was what motivated Fredrik Franson in 1891 to write: "Let us assume-.that each Christian should be able to evangelize, disciple, and then shepherd the new converts in an area of 1,500 people. To do that, we would need at this time an army of one million missionaries. The question turns then on how many more than a million Spirit-filled believers there are in the world today...."

Others are measuring the task in terms of unreached people groups. The chief missiological researchers now agree that the number is probably in the vicinity of 12,000. To reach them there are estimated to be 500 million "Great Commission" Christians, defined as those who take seriously the Great Commission. Another way to measure our potential for reaching each people group is to note that whereas there were 12 unreached people groups for every congregation of believers in the first century, today there are 410 churches in the world for each people group where there is no viable, witnessing church.

If the next few years see the increase in missionary activity for which we are I praying, and the results for which we long, the army of witnessing servants of the Lord will continue to increase. Let us pray that this goal will be reached÷the s planting of viable, witnessing churches in every people group in the world by the fill year 2000. No other method of evangelism will bring us closer to the goal of ], presenting the claims of Christ to every living soul on earth.

With trends like the technological revolution, ease of travel, population mobility and urbanization, I am reminded of the bumper sticker that reads: LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. We have that choice regarding these trends. We can continue to harness technology for our purposes, expand our efforts to meet the population explosion, move out to meet the mobile population, and claim the great cities for Christ-or we can just follow or get out of the way.