November 01, 1990 by Greg Parsons

The Dangers & Challenges of Change!

USCWM Executive Director Greg Parsons recently returned from the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association/Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies and International Society for Frontier Missiology meetings in Denver, Colorado with the following thoughts. See page 18 for more reactions to these sessions.Is your church changing?

Is it for the better or...?

How about your mission program?

How are you dealing with the growing apathy towards missions seen in some of the younger generation?

How are you dealing with the AIDS epidemic in Africa?

How are you dealing with the cries for more budget for church programs here at home?

I've seen many churches go through change. Some churches work with traumatic changes to improve their ministries. Others go through as if nothing happened, even defending "the way we've always done things. "

I visited one church recently that is looking for opportunities to forward the Gospel in their city and throughout the world. They plan with a clear understanding of the changing culture around them. It is an exciting place to visit because you get a sense that these people are in touch with what God wants to do through them.

Another church I've visited is still living in the past. It is all for spreading the gospel, yet it is trying to do that in ways that don't relate to the culture in its area or to the world of today. That church is not wrong. But it's also not as effective as it could be.

Change can loom before us like a roaring lion and scare us back into the past. A recent study showed that many people who are involved in high-tech jobs often like to have a "country kitchen" type of decoration at home. They like the fact that something can root them to the past, even if it is a past they didn't know firsthand.

The 11th IFMA/EFMA Study Conference (see sidebar for detail) in Denver was an opportunity to see both these aspects at work. There are things that won't ever change, things like the points David Howard shared in his opening message for the conference: The work and Word of Christ, the resurrection, the Holy Spirit in our lives, the promise of His return, etc.

But there are changes in the world that must be taken into account when you are involved in a worldwide effort. One example, discussed during a meeting of mission agencies that work in Africa, was the issue of AIDS. It is not a pleasant topic. It is not something that many of us want to talk about. It may be one of those topics that we avoid or mentally "turn-off" when we hear it on the news.

But agencies and missionaries who work with Christians and non- Christians in the central part of Africa--agencies who have medical and church planting personnel in these areas--must strategize about how to deal with this issue.

The Issue of Change
The issue of change in our own land was highlighted in a presentation by Leith Anderson, pastor of the Woodale Baptist Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. As a pastor of a growing church that has sought to relate effectively to the people coming to church today (and to draw in people who might not come), he noted a number of changes happening in our day that must be dealt with in order to maintain and grow.

Two of these were a growing consumer mentality and an increasing theology of tolerance. In a way, these two trends play against each other.

A consumer mentality comes from today's demand for quality products. Consumers want everything, they want a lot of it, and they want it just right. In the 1960s, Ralph Nader organized this consumer demand for quality. In many ways, the trend has been positive and beneficial; we're all glad that certain testing and other pre-product analysis is done for safety's sake.

But we've come to the point where consumer choices are staggering. It used to be that the choice in a writing implement was simple: you could choose a pen or a pencil. Now there are aisles of choices and varying qualities and prices.

This has not only increased consumption and competition, but more importantly, it has increased the propensity of people to "switch rather than fight." That may be reasonable for pens and pencils, but not for people who change churches or missionary support on a month- to-month or even Sunday-to-Sunday basis depending on how their consumer drive for satisfaction is met.

Combine that with another growing tendency Anderson pointed out: People are becoming more tolerant of other people's lifestyles choices. "What's right for me is what's right for me. What's right for you is right for you." Some people watch channel 2; others, channel 4. It's OK. Some people like this church; some like that church. It's OK. Some people are Christians; some are Buddhists. It's OK.

Or is it?

I saw this growing culural tolerance while visiting a major computer firm in the San Jose, California area last February. I met with a group of Christians who get together for a weekly lunch. All of them noted that it was very hard for them to share their faith with fellow workers because it is fine for anyone to be a Buddhist, New Ager or whatever, but not to be an "intolerant" Christian.

Of course, most Christians we know wouldn't hold this extreme view of tolerance of belief systems. Instead, they may apply this cultural "change" with a different twist. As it applies to missions, people are tolerating many things. Perhaps if the real task of mission-- making disciples of every ethne or people group--is not clarified better for them, they may not continue to support mission endeavor at all!

Dangerous Trends
The question we the church must ask and answer is, "What local church changes are undermining missions?" I will list three I have heard recently. Let me know if you've seen others:

First, missions is anything "overseas." We still have the view that location or geography is the key rather than cultural difference. This is a very interesting difference between our church missions policy and the global world business market that is growing faster than you can imagine. Many businesses today are looking at the world as a whole.

One illustration from the Los Angeles area brings this home. We have all seen that L.A. has greater minority populations than the vast majority of cities "overseas" from which those people have come. But do we also realize that there are probably hundreds of smaller people groups from all over the world represented in this area? The same is true with almost every medium to large city in the U.S.

Second, mission budgets are being tightened.
This probably doesn't surprise any of us. We say, "Well, that's what happens in tough times." I say we are not in tough times. We may have some select areas that are suffering. But in many cases that is just an excuse. It comes from the tendency we all have, as seen throughout church history, to make sure that we are blessed. We want our needs to be met first. Then, if there are any resources left over, other things like missions can be considered.

We've probably all heard people say, "Let's reach our own area first; then we can go out to 'Samaria' or the uttermost parts." Of course, there is no basis for this view. Jesus didn't say to finish in Jerusalem first. When the apostles stayed there, God through persecution kicked them out to spread the Church. This preoccupation with our own needs is also a pattern throughout church history. If we in this country lose any more ground in our real outreach, we may see it repeated with us.

Third, if a missionary is "overseas," then whatever the person does is called "missions."
To many, mission is everything from teaching people in other cultures counseling methods from the U.S. to pastoring an overseas church for Americans.

It is not missions for a national evangelist to do door-to-door evangelism in his own culture; that's evangelism! Similarly, it would not be missions for me, a Caucasian, to go across the ocean and witness to English-speaking Caucasians; it would still be evangelism. If I were training nationals to do it, the process would be called discpleship. If I were working with the 5,000 unreached Uzbeks in New York city it would be frontier missions, but would churches support it?

I realize that these types of ministries are part of the mission we have, and many churches have these things as a big part of their mission budget. I think that should change. We should see a difference in our mission budget between taking the church where it hasn't gone yet and evangelizing/ discipling efforts.

A Frontier Mission Fad?
These trends may be why people are not clearly understanding the call to frontier mission that we are trying to sound.

My biggest concern is that it seems that the issue of frontier missions is becoming an old-fashioned, out-of-date topic with some. This concept of taking the Gospel where it has not gone yet (Romans 15:8-21), or making disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19), preaching the gospel to all nations (Luke 24:47), being sent, like Christ, into the world (John 20:21), being witnesses to the uttermost (Act 1:8) and seeing to it that all nations are blessed (Gen. 12:3, Gal. 3:8) is being put on the back burner too often. Some people publishing missions magazines have even told us, "We can't print that article on unreached peoples; that isn't what we're talking about now," as if there is a new focus on what the Bible commanded us to do!

At the Denver conference I saw in a new way the needs and pressures that missions leaders have for their field missionaries and the national churches that have grown up--without even thinking about opening new fields or ministries. The Great Commission commands us to "teach them all that I commanded you." We do and we should seek to meet the needs of the new Christians we see God raise up in various cultures around the world. I sense the burden many of the mission leaders at these meetings have for their worldwide efforts and the problems they face. I talked with key people during the week about these issues and how they relate to the entire Great Commission.

But there is a need to see the emphasis on the frontiers or unreached people grow stronger. We can't give up a clear purpose God has given to us. We must pursue with all the energy, finances and prayer we can muster to establish a church in each of the remaining unreached or frontier people groups of the world.

Some have given up on finishing this by the year 2000. We must not give up on the fact that God, not us, can finish the task by AD2000. There is too much that God is doing and wants to do to say that it is too complex or impossible for Him. Where is our faith?

Perhaps you--whether you attended some of the Denver meetings on strategies of change or not--have noted other changes affecting the mission of the local church. Feel free to write your comments to Readers Write, Mission Frontiers, 1605 Elizabeth St., Pasadena CA 91104 USA.

EFMA-IFMA Study Conference "It's a Brand New World ! "
The swirling changes in the economic and political worlds in the past year are having their effect on missionary work. This was reflected in the choice of theme: "Confronting Change," for the triennial Study Conference hosted jointly by the Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies (EFMA) and the Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association (IFMA) in late September near Denver.

Leadoff speaker Eugene Williams, general director of the American Missionary Fellowship, noted that since the two groups met one year ago, "It's a brand new world!" Against a backdrop of mega-changes affecting everyone, he sketched those uniquely challenging the mission community: U.S. immigration blurring distinctions between "home" and "foreign," effects of "baby-boomers" on recruitment, worldwide urbanization, growing aggressiveness of other religions, etc. His counsel: Be prepared to make competent choices by initiating change as well as managing it.

In his annual report, IFMA Executive Director Jack Frizen warned of a "crisis of belief" facing America. Frizen offered his antidote: an awakening among evangelical pastors and congregations. "A church that no longer teaches that man is eternally lost apart from Jesus Christ is not a sending or a missions-supporting church!" Executive Director- Designate John Orme will assume office in September 1991, and Frizen will serve as consultant an additional year.

Minnesota pastor Leith Anderson addressed "Change in the Church." He suggested that dollars will be in shorter supply than personnel because of trade deficits, rising inflation and fears of unemployment. Mission agencies must be more open to the needs of the church and vice versa.

In spite of these concerns, Anderson professed hope; God uses times of change to accomplish growth, as with the Chinese church in the cultural revolution.

New EFMA Executive Director Paul McKaughan addressed "Change in Missions." Using the image of plates moving beneath the earth's surface, he noted several "tectonic shifts": growth among charismatics; spread of nominalism among Third World Christians (Korea already needs revival, he suggested); the potential of the high-tech era; New-Age impact around the world; new prisms of social need and science through which the Bible is seen; aging of many missions' donor bases; the costliness of American agencies and missionaries; the problem of who actually owns mission agencies--God, donors or the founders.

To cope with the fault lines set up by these shifts, McKaughan advised: Adjust to change by accepting facts as friendly. Renew vision by meditating on God and His Word. Build partnerships across age and culture gaps. Develop different types of leaders--the inventor (intuitive visionary); the entrepreneur (activist); the integrator (leader accepted by others); the expert (possessor of technical knowledge); the sponsor (facilitator to get resources from higher levels).

Daily Bible studies by World Evangelical Fellowship Director David Howard led back to how the apostles handled change in the book of Acts through flexibility and trust in the Lord.

In the final address, "Two Thirds World Missionary Training," William Taylor of the WEF Missions Commission hit hard: "We must rethink partnership. The Third World wants American missionaries, but only on certain terms. Older missionaries are the biggest hindrance to new ideas. Many failed to challenge the Third World to become a sending base!"

ISFM 1990: Links to the Field
Loud music reverberated throughout the patio of the hotel with partygoers engrossed in their evening activities at "Christie's: A Gathering Place." Dancing, drinking and a fashion show were the reasons to gather that night.

Just a few feet away in a quiet room, about 60 people gathered for a very different reason. It was the fifth annual meeting of the International Society of Frontier Missiology. Co-hosted by Caleb Resources, an agency mobilizing young adults to complete the Great Commission, the conference considered the theme: "Crucial Links in the Frontier Mission Chain." The "chain" concept came from an analysis by George Patterson of Cultural Awareness Training of the 14 stages needed to reach the goal of forming missionary-sending churches in presently unreached fields.

Annette Elder of Caleb Resources presented characteristics of the Baby- boomer (ages 30-44) and Baby-buster (ages 18-29) generations and how this would affect the mission agency leadership styles. The good news: the younger generation is more willing to volunteer and give themselves. At the same time they will be far less willing to obey decisions they have had no part in making, be loyal to an organization, live within rigid structure, respect rank and age, and make completion of the task their goal. Instead most will desire to network with others, seek innovation, expect personal growth as well as accomplishment and want leaders who are facilitators. Traditional agencies must adjust, warned Elder, or boomers will: a) form new organizations, b) be unhappy on the field or c) not go at all.

In Outlining the Present Situation Todd Johnson brought the group up to date with his current work with David Barrett and the Lausanne Statistical Task Force. He noted that people are using the term unreached peoples to mean anything they want. Todd challenged the society to further clarify and quantify definitions and results related to unreached peoples.

Howard Brandt of SIM International handled the topic of deploying personnel in a balance of evangelizing and discipling. He pointed out that in the list of gifted leaders Jesus gave the church as well as in the steps of the Great Commission there is an equal emphasis on planting and nurturing. His advice: "Go for both!"

The Adopt-A-People endeavor is one link where a new organization, the AAP Clearinghouse, has been raised up to fill a definite gap: identifying unreached peoples or clusters, making profiles of these available to agencies and churches and keeping track of which have been adopted. Darrell Dorr, director, stressed the integrative role the Clearinghouse can fill, creating bridges between research and mobilization, providing measurable signs of progress towards closure and helping define which reached peoples can best be assigned to unreached peoples.

Prayer was the suitable closing "link" as John Robb of World Vision pointed out that prayer is at its heart a linking activity. First it links us to God to receive His power and direction, second to unreached groups and the workers among them. But in searching literature on missions, he found that much is said about strategy, organization and planning with almost no mention of the place of prayer. Jesus told us the first step when we begin to recognize ripe fields around us: pray the Lord to thrust forth workers!