December 01, 1990 by

It is wonderful when a magazine can become a channel for two-way communication. We highly value the feedback we receive from MF readers. So feel free to drop us a few lines. Write to: Editor, Mission Frontiers, 1605 Elizabeth, Pasadena CA 91104

Dear Friends,

Pastor Ken Parker got it right, Ralph got it wrong. [See October 1990 MF, page 5.1

Those of us who have been on the field know that "seasoned mission executives" can mess it up just as badly as a local church. The New Testament does not talk about mission agencies or world centers. It talks about local churches. Again, we may not be comfortable with what Scripture says, but we ignore it to our peril. As a local church mission coordinator I can assure you that agencies that do not take Pastor Ken Parkerâs advice seriously do so at well deserved peril.

Stan Husted, Minneapolis MN

Dear Stan: Regarding your reference to local churches being involved in the "supervision of the nissionary ministries": Many expositors believe that Antioch did not supervise Paul's mission work. Many centuries give evidence that Pauline teams making field-informed decisions is the better way to go. Of course the field leaders can go wrong. But they are less likely to go wrong.ö RDW

Dear Dr. Winter:

Just to prove that I did read at least one of the October MF articles: you say, "The tell-tale early symptom of the disease being the need to wear nametags!"

But in a growing church, nametags are almost essential for the new members to know who everyone else is. It shows the new member that the church is really interested in him becoming an organic part of the body.

Thanks for the comment on Cameroon. So seldom does an American know about it. I spent 18 or so years there and am still there except in body. We have four pastors in the States right now who intend to get a doctorate and return to Cameroon to man the Baptist Seminary at Ndu so that missionaries will be only for flavoring.

The Jesus film has had vast reception in Cameroon, but initial evangelisation is easy. It is the follow-up which is difficult because there are so few pastors. If some of these young seminary graduates could live on $100 a month and work as hard as some Cameroonian pastors, it would be a help. Elisa Mua-Neng ö a young man with wife and two boys ö pastors a church of more than 400, and is a chaplain to five secondary schools, a 200-bed hospital and the prison. He meets about 600 young people each week in the secondary schools and has his front room full each afternoon with people from schools, church and the hospital for counseling. The older members of the church donât want to help much, though he is having disciples from the younger people.

One of Nengâs classmates is working with the Aku people which is a Muslim Fulani group. He speaks Fulani, which has been well received by them, though I donât know if any have been much influenced by the Gospel yet. It probably will be that the entire group declare for Christ or none.

Gilbert Gordon
Salem OR

Dear Dr. Winter:

I am a retired missionary (SIM ö West Africa). In your most recent Mission Frontiers you apologize for its length. Perish the thought! That one page was the first I had ever heard about Adopt-A-People! May I quote from your last issue and summarize some of the material about its origin and development? In this issue of your Mission Frontiers people who are F-A-A-RR ahead of me might not have found the Adopt-A-People concept so exciting, but they would have utilized the "heavier" material. Maybe you should charge more.

Iâm glad that you provided information about the passing of Dr. McGavran. He provided the foreword in one of my missionary books written about a people movement in Colombia during the years of a previous violencia. The title is As a Roaring Lion, and its correlative is In a Crossfire of Hate.

Please excuse errors. My typewriter is getting old ö and so am I!

Martha Wall
Monterey CA

Dear Editor:

Iâve just spent part of my lunch hour reading an article on Perspectives in the current issue of Mission Frontiers. It is exciting to hear that so many people have taken the course. I took the course as an audit student in San Jose several years ago and it really made a tremendous impact on my life. Though more than 13,000 people have taken the course, many more have felt the impact of it. I wanl to thank you for offering the course; it has made a significant impact on my life, my church missions committee and our church mission strategy.

Steve Johnstone
San Jose CA

Dear Steve: We were wrong. It is more than 15,000, with 49 locations in the USA in 1991 PLUS 45 in New Zealand, etc. ö RDW

Dear Editor,

Many people have often asked just what is the US Center for World Mission? And we are all familiar with the answers that have been given of pentagon, shopping mall, think tank, etc. but may I say from one out here in the world that more than anything else, the appropriate thing which describes the Center and its ministry the best is a big drum.

The final era of missions began in 1974. I say the final era because for the first time, the task of world evangelism had been measured and we saw faintly a speck of light in the midst of a seemingly endless long dark tunnel. Then that speck grew into a spot and closure theology entered our vocabulary, but more so into some of our hearts and minds. And now the end is clearly in sight as we focus on finishing the job Jesus gave us to do.

The USCWM more than any other instrument has been used to heat the drum of Scripture by which this message has been brought to the attention of the Church that the end of world evangelization is near, and all that is needed is a final push to complete the Great Commission. And the Lord has used this little rag called Mission Frontiers to sound the drum of the beat that is closest to His heart.

RL
Flagstaff AZ

Dear Editor,

Thank you for your recent focus on the Asian Missions Congress (AMICON) and its results. I especially appreciate the inclusion of Dr. Edwin L. (Jack) Frizenâs article, "To Awaken The Churches," in which you listed the various points of the' Declaration of AMICON.

In reading the various negative comments in Mission Frontiers regarding the Congress (June-October 1990, pages 2 and 33) one cannot help but wonder if there is riot some Western reaction based more on cultural context than on substance.

Dr. Winter wonders why there was not an emphasis on unreached peoples at AMICOM. Bill Stearns wonders,

"Did AMC â90 copy the oversights of some Western mission experience which bypasses emphasis on the unreached and closure in favor of addressing the concerns of national churches?"

Having participated fully in the Congress, spoken in workshops and served on the Drafting Committee for the Declaration, I must state categorically that neither of these perspectives concerning supposed shortcomings of the Congress is accurate.

As I perceive it, the main difficulty is in the manner Asian leaders want to express their conclusions. Dr. Met Castillo, the coordinator of the Congress and a plenary speaker, is certainly one of the top missions leaders in Asia. He and the committee that worked with him are certainly as motivated as anyone else concerning the need to reach unreached peoples. These concerns were expressed throughout the Congress in both plenary and workshop sessions. What is important to note is that Asians are reticent to express missions, goals and purposes outside the context of local and national churches. Unlike North American mission leaders, Asian leaders tend to express their missionary goals as a task of the church as a whole rather than just as missionary structures. Anyone familiar with the Asian methods of expression will recognize that all ten of the commitments contained in the Declaration are a direct call to the churches and missions organizations of Asia to mobilize their resources to evangelize unreached peoples.

Perhaps it is time for the Western church to learn to express its own goals in terms of itself rather than missionary structures alone.

I also believe Asian missionary leaders are wise in their reluctance to accept the year 2000 as a target date for closure in the missionary task. They are well aware that the Western missiological community has yet to clearly define the task remaining and that the target keeps moving, depending on which researcherâs writings are most acceptable at a given moment.

Furthermore, in the minds of many Asian leaders, the goal of evangelizing every people by the year 2000 appears presumptuous to say the least. While most would applaud the goal of seeking closure, most know also that it will take longer than 9 1/2 years to evangelize adequately even those unreached peoples who are engaged this year, let alone those which wonât be engaged until later. Perhaps it would be wise that we Western leaders consider how triumphalistic our goals and pronouncements sound to leaders in other parts of the world before we condemn them for not adopting our slogans and jargon.

Larry D. Pate, Director
Two-Thirds World Missions Ministries (Overseas Crusades)

Dear Larry, Wow! You ha; e said a lot of hopeful things. I am sure that what I said about the Congress could easily have been misunderstood. 1 am glad you mentioned Dr. Met Castillo. He is certainly an outstanding example of an Asian leader in missions. Is it not wonderful that there are a lot more like him!

For one thing I was not trying to contrast Western and Asian mission perspectives but Asian church leaders' perspectives and Asian mission leadersâ perspectives. I was actually a bit amended that Western mission leaders were more prominent at that meeting than Asian mission leaders. Indeed, my main point was that the important resource of Asian mission leaders was nearly left out of the congress. But, this kind of church vs. mission tension is not unique to Asia. Down through history there has seemed to be almost an inherent antagonism between these two kinds of structures.

Suppose, in this country, the NAE were to attempt to put on a national level missions congress without asking the help of the EFMA and the IFMA? That is, suppose the church leaders took the lead in a nationwide mission conference and did not rely on the actual mission leaders of this country. Basically, the battle we still fight is that many local congregations are resistant to the very idea of a specialized mission organization, thinking that the local congregation is the only form in which the church of Jesus Christ (essentially a redeemed people) can properly appear.

As for attempting to reach every remaining "nation" by the year 2000, it is heart warming how many third world leaders are scrambling to do what they can to make that come true. 1 commend to all our readers the article, "In Praise of Foolish Lovers" in this issue. Let us all try to do too much rather than to make sure we do not try too much. It is better to try and fail rather than to fail to try. And, we will seek to do everything we can to "Hasten His Coming" if we "Love His Appearing." - RDW