We know that anyone who repents and comes to God through Christ is a new creation. They are different. But how that transformation plays out in different cultures is not what we might expect. What they need to do or avoid within their cultural or religious setting is something we must consider carefully.

Donald McGavran used to say that when the gospel is first penetrating a culture, how others within that culture view the new believers is key to future growth. If they feel like “those people” (meaning new believers) are now different or “other,” the gospel will not spread. If, however, they are seen as a valid expression within the culture, the gospel will spread.

Think for a moment about your own identity. What is your cultural background? (I’m speaking mainly to Westerners, but others from around the world where the gospel has been implanted for years can also relate, since many Koreans or Africans south of the Sahara or Latin Americans come from a “Christian” background with Western roots.) Most of us would likely say that we didn’t have to change that much when we came to Christ. Sure, there are those who used to think and act immorally—living out the flesh in all of its fullness. And, yes, it is a major shift for them. But even then, while they need to leave certain friends to stay away from sinful behavior and temptation, they can normally find believers who are from similar cultural understanding. At least they can find believers like them who speak their language.

Yet for us who didn’t indulge in that level of pre-faith sin, the shift is far subtler, especially if we trusted Christ when we were young. Researchers tell us most people come to Christ before they are 18, yet most of the time, the shift to being a new creation is difficult to see.

So is the change real? Of course! That six-year-old boy who truly believes is a new creature. Naturally, he will grow and exhibit more fruit of the Spirit as he matures in life and spiritual things.

But now, imagine growing up in a culture where there are no people of faith. Any believers living near you are from a different background and speak a totally different language (or at least use different religious terminology).

Looking at it from our perspective as believers, when someone from a situation like this comes to Christ, what would we expect (or require) them to do differently? Are we sure that any and all of these requirements are derived from clear biblical teaching and not merely our cultural traditions?

Unfortunately, we often add to the Bible from our religious traditions. Those traditions may not be bad or wrong, but that doesn’t mean they are best in another culture. For example, we might expect that once there are enough new believers, they will have a church building and a full-time paid pastor. If there are already Christians nearby using the same language, we expect they will adopt the Christians’ way of saying things (as is the case with languages such as Arabic or Urdu, where religious terminology is very different between Muslims and Christians). We might expect them to go to prayer meetings at 5 am, or if they were Hindus, to start eating meat.

Most of us would say that these things are not “required.” Historically, all this and more has been expected of new believers. So I wonder, are we merely putting new forms of legalism on new believers? Are we putting a yoke on them that neither they (nor we) should have to bear, as James said in Acts 15:10?

Why not make a list of the things you do as a part of your faith or church pattern, which are not clear biblical teaching. Remember that doesn’t make it wrong, but it should make us think more carefully as to how our “Christian activities” might be seen when lived out in another situation.f

(I encourage you to briefly post your story or comments in the response section after my article on the MF website, and see what others have said.)

The Church is called to be a place of worship, fellowship, service and discipleship. It is not called to run income-generating businesses which are often created to compensate for low tithes and offerings. Sometimes church-run businesses, including development projects, become an alternative source of income to tithes and offerings. While churches are to run on tithes and offerings, businesses run on profit and loss.

In various parts of Africa, weddings have become big business opportunities where family and friends pay a considerable amount of money to a wedding organizer. Services include rental of the wedding clothes, arranging the location, transportation and reception. The details for the entire wedding are subcontracted to the wedding coordinator. One church I know about in East Africa looked upon this as an opportunity to earn money for their congregation. I learned about them when they asked for overseas funding to help launch their church-run business.

Church-run businesses are by no means limited to wedding services. They include agricultural projects, bakeries, clinics, taxi services or other so-called income-generating projects. Sometimes these projects are as large as a block of apartments (flats) designed to generate income to support a diocese, district or central office of a denomination.

The rationale behind church-owned businesses is that they would be a good investment because it generates local income for the church. If all goes as planned, it would eventually reduce dependence on overseas funding. However, there seems to be something incompatible with church-owned investments and healthy sustainability. In other words, the churches most committed to owning income-generating businesses are the ones least likely to stand on their own two feet. One might ask what could possibly be wrong with a church-run business. After all, it is generating local income for doing God’s work. It looks like an investment, not like charity. In reality, several things happen when churches depend on business income to sustain themselves. Let me mention a few:

First, a church-owned business can dominate the schedule of the church leader who must manage it. Church leaders are to give themselves to prayer and preaching (Acts 6).

Second, it does not follow that church leaders are natural born business managers. They are supposed to be spiritually gifted to impart the Word, seek converts, disciple believers and strategize outreach. When they become preoccupied with the bottom line of a church-run business, especially a questionably-run business, their workload increases significantly.

Third, inadequate income from church-run businesses sometimes leads to the need for subsidy from somewhere else – perhaps even from the church it is meant to support. During the missionary period when there was insufficient income to sustain business-like projects, funds given for evangelization in the sending country sometimes ended up being used to cover the losses of church-run businesses. Lest, you think this is something that only occurred many decades ago, one has only to look at some of the current development projects today to see how church-run businesses are consuming funds originally intended for church growth and evangelism.

Fourth, income from church-run businesses can have a negative effect on tithes and offerings in local congregations. So long as church members believe that there is potential income from a church-run business, their conclusion can be, “The church does not need my money because they have a business.” When that happens, church offerings suffer.

Fifth, sometimes church-run businesses are in competition with church members who are struggling to make a living without the benefit of support from the church or from overseas. For example, when that happens, a church member who runs a bookstore in his or her community may find that his or her biggest competition is another bookstore run by the church which may enjoy free rent and other advantages not available to the church member.

So, what about the church?

There is a place for pastors and church leaders to generate their own personal income just as the Apostle Paul did. But these are not church-owned businesses. They are private individuals with a foot in two vocations – serving the church and earning their own income if the church is too small to pay them a full salary. But the bottom line is that churches should consider getting their income from tithes and offerings of their members, rather than from church-run businesses.f

Glenn Schwartz is author of When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement. It is available on the website of World Mission Associates – www.wmausa.org.

The Difference between Biological and Social Familial Terms

The problem for this woman was that the word used for father in the Bible translation that she was reading is biological in meaning. It is not normally used for non-biological fathers, such as stepfathers and adoptive fathers. Thus it implied that Joseph had sired Jesus by having sex with Mary. The word was equivalent in meaning to the English words biological father, genitor, and procreator, rather than to social father, pater, or paterfamilias. The biological father is the one who begets the children. The social father is the one who raises the children as their father, looks after them, and has authority over them.

In a typical family, the same man is both the social and biological father, i.e., he is a parenting father, meaning he is the provider of both paternal DNA and paternal nurturing to the same child. In some cases, however, the social father of a child is not the biological father. An adopted child, for example, has an adoptive father and a birth father. These categories are shown in table 1.

It is crucial to note that social father and biological father are overlapping categories, and a parenting father is in both categories. So a man can be described as a child’s social father without implying that he is the child’s biological father as well, even if most social fathers are also the biological fathers of the children they raise. In Luke 2:48–49, both Joseph and God are called in Greek Jesus’ patêr, “social father.” Since neither one passed DNA to Jesus, the paternal relationship was not only social but also non-biological.

As shown in table 1, the English word father is broad in meaning and not necessarily biological, since one can be a father to someone without having sired him or her. In some languages, however, the word commonly used for a paternal family member is limited in meaning to biological father, so it is not used of a stepfather or adoptive father. In the translation read by the woman above, the word used to translate patêr, “social father,” actually meant biological father; this implied that Joseph had sired Jesus and hence that Mary was not a virgin when she conceived him. It was not an accurate translation.

A similar distinction exists between social son, which signifies a filial social relationship to a father, and biological son, which signifies a filial biological relationship to the source of one’s paternal genes. Again, in a typical situation the same person has both relationships; a parented son receives his DNA and paternal nurturing from the same man. In some situations, however, this is not the case; Jesus received paternal nurture from Joseph but did not receive DNA from him. These categories are shown in table 2.

The English word son covers all three categories, but in some languages the word commonly used for a male child of the family is limited in meaning to biological offspring. Such a word does not accurately describe Jesus’ relationship to Joseph.

Biblical Greek and Hebrew have one set of terms signifying social familial relationships, similar to English father and son, but with broader application, and a second set for biological familial relations, like English procreator and offspring.² In a nurturing biological family both sets of terms apply to the same people. A stepson, however, is not called a biological son, and a disowned biological son is no longer a social son.

It is important to realize that to express divine familial relationships, the Bible uses the Greek and Hebrew social familial terms, not the biological ones. It presents the essence of God’s fatherhood of us in his paternal care for us as his loved ones rather than in siring us as his biological offspring.

While in Hebrew and Greek the social familial terms are the ones commonly used to refer to members of one’s family, in some languages the biological terms are most commonly used. Other languages, like Arabic and various Turkic languages, lack a set of social familial terms, and neither adoption nor step relations are recognized, so to convey a non-procreated familial relationship one must use a phrase, such as like a father to me, or use a term for paterfamilias (head of family). When translating the Bible into such languages, it would be inaccurate to translate the Hebrew or Greek word for a social father or son using a word for a biological father or son in the target language unless the relationship is truly biological. This is especially the case with regard to the Father-Son relation, which was generated non-biologically, without procreation. Translating Father and Son with biological terms has caused readers to think the text claims that Jesus is the offspring of God procreating with Mary, and this has caused Muslim readers to reject such translations as corrupt and even blasphemous.

Problems with Mixing Up Biological and Social Familial Terms

It is the task of Bible translators to communicate “the meaning of the original text…as exactly as possible…including the informational content, feelings, and attitudes of the original text” by re-expressing it “in forms that are consistent with normal usage in the receptor language.”³ It might seem astounding, therefore, that Bible translations would ever use expressions that misrepresent the divine relations by implying they arose from sexual procreation. However, this has happened in the history of Bible translation for two reasons. One is that translators have historically preferred word-for-word translations of key biblical terms. Some translators are under pressure to do so even if it misrepresents the meaning, as it can when the target language requires the use of a phrase to express a non-biological familial relation. Another reason is that some translators simply used the most common words in the target language for all familial relationships, even if those words were biological in meaning and a different, specialized term was required to express the social or non-biological relationships in the family of God.

The reality is that there are usually semantic mismatches between the words in any two languages, especially if they are from different language families and different cultures, and translators often have to use phrases in the target language to express the intended meaning of a single term in the Greek or Hebrew text. Not understanding this, some well-intentioned Christians have insisted that the Bible translators in other countries produce word-for-word translations of familial terms because they mistakenly assume that every language describes familial relations in the broad sense expressed by the common English, Hebrew and Greek familial terms. But that is not the case, and the common, single-word terms used for family members in some languages are strictly biological and are inappropriate for describing the family of God. The problem is that these translations end up attributing a biological meaning to the fatherhood of God, implying he reproduced the Son, the angels or even the spirits of people through sexual activity. This meaning was not communicated by the original-language expressions, and it conflicts with the intended meaning of the text.

This mistake results in readers understanding the Lord’s Prayer to say “Our Begetter, who is in heaven,” and understanding Jesus to be “God’s (procreated) offspring.” The “longing of creation” (Rom 8:19) is understood to be “for the revealing of God’s biological children.” Such wordings are inaccurate because they add a procreative meaning that was absent from the original, and they sideline the important interpersonal relationships that were expressed in the original text. Readers from polytheistic religions readily accept that gods procreate with goddesses and with women, and they assume the phrase Offspring of God signifies a procreated origin. Readers in many Muslim language groups understand Offspring of God in a similar way, namely that it means God had sexual relations with a woman; unlike polytheists, however, they reject this possibility and consider the phrase to be a blasphemous corruption of the Bible that insults God by attributing carnality to him. They fear that even saying such a phrase will incur the wrath of God. These misunderstandings disappear, however, when translators express the divine familial relationships in ways that do not imply sexual activity on the part of God. Muslim readers and listeners can then focus on the message without being preoccupied with the fear of attributing carnality to God, and when they do, they recognize that the deity and mission of Christ is evident throughout the Gospels. This highlights the fact that translators are not trying to remove original meanings from the translation that might offend the audience. On the contrary, their concern is to avoid incorrect meanings that fail to communicate the informational content, feelings and attitudes of the original inspired text.

Some Possible Translations for Father and Son of God

If translators wish to avoid those mistakes and express the divine familial relations in non-biological terms, then what expressions can they use?

1.   Obviously, in languages that have single words for social fathers and sons, if phrases like our Father and sons of God are understood as signifying God in his caring, paternal relationship to us as his loved ones, without implying a claim that God produced our bodies or spirits by having sex with females (as even Mormons claim), then these expressions are to be preferred.

2.   In some languages where the commonly used kinship terms are biological, there are also social familial terms similar in meaning to paterfamilias and loved ones (meaning one’s beloved family), and Christians use these to describe God’s paternal relationship to us and our filial relationship to him.

3.   Where such terms are not available, it is sometimes possible to say something like our God in heaven, who is like a procreator to us, and we are like offspring to God. On the other hand, a phrase like God’s loved ones may be better at conveying the loving nature of the relationship.

4.   To describe the Father-Son relationship, some languages add a word that helps block the biological meaning of the words, using phrases equivalent to Offspring sent from God or Spiritual Offspring of God.

5.   Some languages have terms for a favorite son, only son, firstborn son, or ruling-heir (who is usually the firstborn), and people use these for the Father-Son relationship, as in God’s Loved One and God’s Only One. The Greek New Testament uses terms for Jesus equivalent to all four of these, but it also has a term for social son, huios, that is used more often. Unfortunately many languages lack a term equivalent in meaning to huios.

Translators ask people from the intended audience, both believers and others, to read or listen to passages of Scripture in which these alternative wordings have been used; then they ask them questions to find out what they understood these phrases to mean in context. Based on this feedback from the community and feedback from other stakeholders, the translation team and the local editorial committee, with the help of an outside translation consultant, decide which translation is best. There may be several cycles to this testing phase until the best solution is found.

Using the Paratext

The authoritative text of Scripture is the one God communicated to us in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. The task of translators is to enable readers to understand the message that God communicated via this original text. Because of differences in language and context, to communicate God’s message in another language requires both text and paratext. The paratext can effectively define the biblical meaning of an expression used in the translated text as long as that expression does not already mean something contrary to biblical meaning.

The paratext consists of any introductory articles, footnotes, glossary entries and parenthetical notes in the text that the translators wrote as an integral part of the translation to explain terms, unfamiliar concepts and essential background information. So even if translators find a way to express divine fatherhood and sonship in the text, it is also important to fill out the meaning of the expression in the paratext. In a non-print Scripture product, the paratext consists primarily of introductions to sections of text. So what should be included in the paratextual explanation of Son of God?

Components of the Meaning of Son of God

Church history and contemporary scholarship emphasize two components of meaning of the term Son of God:

•    Ontological (as the eternal Son he is consubstantial with the Father and eternally generated from him in a non-procreative way; Heb 1:3); and

•    Mediatorial (as Son of God he is sent by the Father to mediate God’s rule, grace and salvation to his people, to impart sonship to them, and to be their Savior and Advocate).

Bible scholars suggest that the mediatorial meaning is the most prominent in many contexts of Scripture, but they also recognize that the Bible uses the phrase with six additional components of meaning: familial/relational, incarnational, revelational, instrumental, ethical and representational. All these can be explained to readers in the paratext, usually in a mini-article, in the glossary, and in footnotes. While the mini-article goes into depth of meaning, the explanatory notes remind the audience that the phrase “Son of God” does not mean God’s procreated offspring but means that he is the eternal Word of God (ontological and revelational), who entered the womb of Mary (incarnational) and was born as the Messiah (mediatorial), and relates to God as Son to his Father (familial).

Preference for the Familial Component of Meaning

Although the concept signified by Son of God is rich in meaning, there are advantages to expressing the familial component in the text and explaining the other components in the paratext. This provides for consistency among translations and consistency with church tradition. More importantly, it is primarily the familial component of divine sonship that Christ imparts to believers, and he is the “firstborn among many brothers,” all under the paternal care of God as loved ones in his eternal family. This is not easily communicated if the familial component of Son of God is not expressed directly in the translated text.

Although Bible scholars agree on the prominence of the mediatorial meaning of the term Son of God in most New Testament contexts, yet because of the advantages of expressing the familial component in the text, it is clearly best to do that and to explain the mediatorial and other components in the paratext. In particular, we believe mediatorial terms like Christ or Messiah should be used only to translate Greek Christos and should not be used to translate words like Son.

Clarifying Some Misperceptions

There have been a number of misperceptions about the translation of divine familial expressions, especially in languages spoken by Muslims, and these have been aggravated by the current level of tensions in the world. The explanation above clearly states that this is a linguistic issue, in which translators seek to communicate the social familial meanings of the Greek and Hebrew expressions while avoiding the wrong meaning that God reproduces children through procreation. This is the meaning of accuracy in translation. But it might be helpful to address the misperceptions as well:

Contrary to what some people imagine, the use in translation of non-biological expressions for Father and Son

•    is not imposed by outsiders, but is decided by believers in the language community;

•    is not limited to languages spoken by Muslims but is a challenge for any language in which the normal kinship terms are biological in meaning and imply procreation;

•    is not intended to lead audiences into any particular form of church, whether Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or “insider”;

•    does not itself constitute an “insider” translation or even a “Muslim-idiom” translation;

•    is not contrary to normal translation principles but seeks to follow them, by using phrases to translate the meaning of Greek and Hebrew terms that lack a semantic counterpart in the target language, and by explaining the meaning of the terms in the paratext;

•    is not limited to “dynamic” translations but is used in more “literal” ones as well;

•    is not contrary to how conservative Biblical scholars interpret the Greek and Hebrew expressions but rather seeks to follow their scholarship;

•    is not intended to change or obscure the theological content of Scripture or make it more palatable to the audience, but seeks rather to convey it as accurately as possible;

•    does not hinder the audience’s perception of Jesus’ deity but rather facilitates it;

•    does not stem from liberal or unorthodox theology on the part of translators or from a liberal view of Scripture, but from interaction with the interpretive and theological tradition of historic Christianity and the results of contemporary conservative scholarship, with the goal of communicating the verbally inspired message of the Bible as fully and accurately as possible.

Various Bible agencies are seeking to explain translation principles and dispel these misperceptions. Wycliffe Bible Translators (USA), for example, includes the following point in its statement of basic translation standards:

In particular regard to the translation of the familial titles of God we affirm fidelity in Scripture translation using terms that accurately express the familial relationship by which God has chosen to describe Himself as Father in relationship to the Son in the original languages.⁴

It is not accurate to use expressions which mean Jesus’ sonship consists of being the offspring of God’s procreation with a woman.

Conclusion

In order to accurately convey divine fatherhood and sonship, translators need to use expressions that are as equivalent in meaning as possible to the Greek and Hebrew terms for social son (huios and ben) and social father (patêr and âb) and to avoid biological expressions of the form God’s Offspring or the Procreator of our Lord Jesus Christ, because these are understood to signify biological relations generated through a sexual act of procreation. In this way translators can enable new audiences to understand the biblical sense in which God is our father and Christ is his son, as well as understand the relationship of Joseph to the boy Jesus.

Ultimately it is comprehension testing that plays the crucial role in the process of translation, because there is no other way to ascertain what a particular wording in the text and paratext actually communicates to the audience or to discover which wordings communicate most clearly and accurately. That is why translators and churches “test the translation as extensively as possible in the receptor community to ensure that it communicates accurately, clearly and naturally.”⁵ Across the world, this approach to first-time translations has been found repeatedly to offer the best success at enabling new audiences to comprehend the biblical message and to respond in faith, as God enables.f

We gratefully acknowledge the helpful input, feedback, and support we received from many translators and other interested parties, and from Bible scholars such as Prof. Vern Poythress of Westminster Theological Seminary and Roy Ciampa of Gordon-Conwell Seminary.

See “A New Look at Translating Familial Biblical Terms,” by Rick  Brown, Leith Gray, Andrea Gray. International Journal of Frontier Missiology 28:3 (2011).

Forum of Bible Agencies International, Basic Principles and Procedures for Bible Translation, www.forum-intl.org/uploadedFiles/about_ifoba/Translation%20Standards.pdf.

See www.wycliffe.org/TranslationStandards.aspx. See also www.wycliffe.net/Missiology/BibleTranslationandMission/tabid/94/Default.aspx?id=2213 and www.missionfrontiers.org/blog/post/bible-translations-for-muslim-readers

FOBAI, Basic Principles.

Our evangelical community across the world is debating, as we should, the limits and connections between cultural identity and faith in Christ. This is especially intense in those cultures where religion plays a dominant role in framing one’s identity. In almost every mission focused on unreached people I have found a healthy and intense dialogue going on concerning what it means to be a follower of Jesus within these cultures, where the Holy Spirit is drawing people to Himself in historically unprecedented numbers. New communities of those who follow Christ and honor God’s Word are adopting many new forms. And many of us seem to feel compelled to define what obedience looks like for others who accept the Lordship of Jesus.

As evangelical missionaries, we once insisted that following Christ required a complete break with one’s culture because it was steeped in an un-redeemable “heathen” religious system. In some places followers of Jesus were even required to take new westernized Biblical names, while we seemed unaware of the degree to which our own Biblical understanding was compromised by extra-Biblical and cultural accretions.

As a result, many of the Christian churches we helped birth around the world are seen by locals as the embodiment of foreign and western culture. In their view, Christianity is an expression of a corrupt western “modernity” that seeks to subvert what they see as morally superior in their own national/religious identity. This perception obscures the truths of God’s grace.

Thus many of Christ’s followers (missionaries and locals) are questioning the necessity of leaving the dominant culture, and even its religious expression, to follow Christ.

In these ongoing discussions the debate is often heated and the tensions quite fierce.

The Challenge

Missionaries and nationals on both sides of this question are appealing to those of us outside their reality for theological legitimization, and in the West we seem quite ready, even anxious, to try to arbitrate a dispute that is not really ours. Rather than bringing peace, we are stoking the flames of strife and division in their world.

My Personal Reflections

People frequently ask me what my theological position is on the “insider movements,” or the use of “dynamic equivalents” in Bible translation. Several reflections have led me to hold lightly my positions on these issues. You may consider this a good old fashioned cop-out, and you may be right, but here are my reflections.

System Thinking and Sin

Years ago I was introduced to “systems thinking.” My “personal system” is the circle I draw around things I influence or control. The inference for a dispersive person like me is that I shouldn’t waste time and energy worrying about the things outside that circle, but carefully manage the things in my personal and corporate system.

As I have gotten older, I have recognized that I don’t draw the circle; rather, I recognize and accept it. It is the Holy Spirit who—through God’s Word, brothers and sisters in Christ and even circumstances—creates the boundaries around the system He entrusts to my stewardship.

When I ignore those boundaries—and get involved with things outside my system that I feel necessitate my urgent intervention, or that I am sure absolutely require my astounding and unique gifts—disaster is not far behind. I have come to recognize that my presumptive boundary-jumping really comes from my dual sins of pride and unbelief.

My prideful nature tells me that God speaks more clearly to me—or, at the very least, I understand Him more clearly—than my brother or sister. My sin of unbelief leads me to doubt that the Almighty can get His point across to those who may lack my dedication, intellect or training, even though He has also called them to be a part of His family and His Spirit also resides within them.

Pride and unbelief exercise a strong magnetic attraction to draw my attention away from my own system and calling. My presumptive intervention in the systems of others takes away from what God wants to do through me in my own system, and also interferes with what He desires to do within the “system” I illicitly invaded.

Good Theology and Obedience are Contextual

The best theology comes through interaction with the Scripture in a specific context. Because God seeks worshipers among all peoples, additional peoples are always searching the Scriptures to understand how God’s Word speaks to their culture, identity and worldview.

Throughout church history and across diverse cultures, the Holy Spirit seems to have applied varying facets of His comprehensive revelation about God, man and redemption. Obedience to God’s Word rather than mere knowledge is what counts with the Creator, obedience which is always specific and concrete.

Recognizing My Limitations

My father, now with the Lord, was a wonderfully wise and godly minister of the gospel. When I left home to prepare for the ministry, he gave me some awesome advice: “Son, when you see great and godly men arrayed on opposite sides of any major biblical truth, don’t think you are going to resolve that issue.”

In terms of the “systems thinking” mentioned above, he was saying “Paul, you should study and come to your biblical theological positions, but leave those outside your system to the Holy Spirit.”

I have found that my father’s admonition was good advice. Still, pride and unbelief tend to lead me to dogmatic conclusions that I feel compelled to apply to those outside my system. I am often unwilling to grant to others the grace that our Father seems to extend to me.

Conclusion

I have never worked nor lived in a Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu culture. There are sincere, knowledgeable and biblically obedient brothers and sisters on each side of this issue, and at various points on the continuum. They are sincerely attempting to follow the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit’s leading in these matters. They all seek to extend Christ’s reign in their cultures and countries. I must trust the Holy Spirit to guide them. God has not placed these issues within my system. I must be a peacemaker rather than a partisan in this conflict.

It took hundreds of years for the early followers of Christ to develop the theological formulations we now accept as normative. It has taken generations for us in the West to discover the weaknesses of our former mission patterns. So years–even generations–may pass before we see the full fruit of these various efforts to follow Christ more contextually and completely. I must exercise patience and not make precipitous value judgments as to the right or wrong conclusions of my brothers and sisters.

Such patience is definitely not natural for me; I come from a rather ego-centric culture and generation that tends to believe that history really starts with us.

The world of the Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist follower of Christ is outside my system, experience and calling. I have never lived or worked in those regions of the world, nor have I faced the tensions and pressures my new brothers and sisters in Christ face every day. Thus I feel called to practice several disciplines amid the tensions to which I have alluded.

My Proposed Steps of Obedience

1.   I will hold my own positions on these important issues tentatively and share them carefully and in a spirit of love.

2.   I will leave the judgment as to who the true followers of Christ are to Him. It is He alone who calls and imparts life according to His will and purpose.

3.   I will grant my brothers and sisters time for their views to mature and their practices to be further shaped by the Holy Spirit’s leading as they pursue a growing understanding of biblical truth and obedience in their context.

4.   I will actively seek to promote peace among followers of Christ as they seek to be faithful followers of Jesus as Lord under the authority of His Word, accepting that my brothers and sisters may practice obedience in very different ways.

5.   I will oppose those here or in the field who promote strife and division within Christ’s Body.

A Final Thought

In my pilgrimage the Holy Spirit has made me much more aware of my theological compromises with my own culture. I often fail to see the degree to which I allow my own culture to shape my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus. I thus aim to be more discerning and obedient as I follow Christ and obey God’s Word within my own culture, and as I interact with those who have experienced His grace in very different cultural/religious settings.

Within weeks of arriving, Ying began to see results we could scarcely have imagined. God was orchestrating an incredibly explosive movement in the Kais’ part of the country.

For years our organization has trained missionaries and church leaders how to cooperate with God to experience church‐planting movements (CPMs)—the Spirit-empowered rapid multiplication of disciples and churches generation by generation. At the end of the training each participant develops a CPM Plan. Their plans begin with God’s vision for a movement, but majors on the practical ministry steps they will need to take to move toward that lofty vision.

Over the years, we have seen missionaries and church leaders make great progress and breakthroughs in the ministry to which God has called them. Yet in all our years of training, we had yet to see a missionary or church leader fully reach the vision and goals set out in his CPM plan. The purpose of the vision is that it is so God‐sized that it guides the missionary and his partners for many years to come. That end-vision drives them to attempt things in faith they never would otherwise have attempted.

Three months into his CPM plan, Ying called the regional leader for our mission organization.

He said, “Bill, I have finished my CPM plan. What do I do next?” Once Bill picked his jaw up off the floor, he responded, “Ying, just keep going!” Ying’s CPM plan called for a goal of 200 churches in his end-vision. Ying reached his goal in just three months!

That made all of us turn our heads and pay attention. As the months flew by, the hundreds became thousands of new churches, most of them meeting in homes, restaurants, parks and factories. Tens of thousands of people were coming to faith and passing this faith on to others in an Acts‐like explosion of discipleship. The movement grew every day. Ying and Grace kept meticulous records as the many emerging leaders in the various networks of the CPM reported to them each month. These numbers were logged in faithfully and then recorded in the most conservative manner (discounting for possible discrepancies).

Today the movement might best be described as a sort of super church‐planting movement. It has become so large that it is impossible to track all that is going on. But it is clear that an entire Asian region has been saturated with the kingdom of God, and the ripples of its effect are now touching people groups in other countries and continents.

As believers were faithfully following Jesus as obedient disciples and passing on the gospel and discipleship to others they led to faith, a discipleship revolution emerged. Ying called it Training for Trainers (T4T) because he expected every disciple to train others.

The CPM that has emerged in Ying’s ministry has challenged common discipleship and church‐planting expectations of today. It harks back to the original discipleship revolution. As a return to the original revolution, it is a RE‐revolution! Simultaneously with the Kais’ super CPM, another work of God was unfolding, this one in our own ministry.

3.5 Years!

Our work among the remote people group we call the “Ina”¹ was finally taking off. In this oppressive Asian country, we had labored for five years to get to this point. The Ina were the poorest people group in the country, most of them uneducated and illiterate, and days away from most population centers. Five thousand of their villages dotted the haze‐covered emerald mountains as far as the eye could see.

We were desperate for a movement of God’s kingdom to break loose among this animistic people entrenched in their fear of demonic powers, but even accessing them was difficult.

I had tried sneaking into Ina villages to share the gospel. With my coat collar pulled up, hat pulled down and sunglasses on, I would slip in at dusk and out at dawn. My team and I would share in homes privately about the gospel as we sipped murky tea and ate bee larvae. Then shortly after we departed, the police would raid the village and crush the work. We felt so helpless. “Father,” I prayed, “even if they believe, how will they ever have a chance to grow in faith before they are crushed?” Through repeated readings of Matthew 10, Luke 10 and the book of Acts God led us to a different strategy. If people who looked like the Ina—other Asians—could discreetly enter the Ina villages to share the gospel and disciple them, perhaps the authorities would not notice for a while. And if these new Ina believers could then pass on this witness, discipleship and church-planting to new villages themselves, then perhaps they could go places we and our other Asian partners couldn’t. And if the kingdom expectation of each new obedient disciple becoming a witness and each church becoming a church‐planting church could catch on, there was a hope that the movement could sprout up as a mustard tree in each place until nothing could stop it.

So we mobilized and trained Asian partners who trekked into the remote mountain homeland of the Ina people. Many of these partners were arrested, thrown into jail and beaten, but they also were able to share the gospel, disciple new believers and plant churches among the Ina.

In two short years, they planted the first churches among the Ina that launched into a kingdom movement! The outside Asian partners had started a few churches, but what was most thrilling was that the discipleship revolution was catching on among the Ina themselves. The majority of the new churches were being started by new Ina believers anxious to spread their love for the King to other villages. I was thrilled. Yet, there was something troubling my soul. “Lord, this is not enough! We have only reached 80 villages. There are still more than 4,900 villages yet to be touched by the gospel! Don’t let us become satisfied with the good and miss what it will take to see all 5,000 villages reached!”

I sat in a small room in a secret location with 12 new Ina leaders and three foreign partners. These Ina leaders rode buses on perilous mountain roads to represent the 80 new churches at our first leadership training. As the week went by, we gave them some basic leadership training to take back to the churches they represented. We discussed many topics in that secret room that week – marriage, discipleship, leading well, loving well, enduring persecution, understanding the Bible, etc. But most of all we discussed the kingdom revolution that has spread from country to country, from people group to people group since the time of Acts. It was God’s time for the Ina to be reached and for them to take their place in God’s relentless plan of spreading His kingdom to every people group.

Although these brothers and sisters had been so faithful in starting new churches, 80 churches weren’t enough! These 12 leaders needed a bigger vision, a vision that would drive them to all 5,000 villages and beyond to other people groups and nations.

I had that vision.

My Asian partners had that vision.

But did the Ina churches have that revolutionary vision?

I spent many hours teaching the group about church‐planting movements. About how God could use them to reach the whole people group and beyond. About how every obedient believer could become a witness and discipler of others. About how every church could start churches. About how new generations of disciples and churches could begin every few weeks or months. But still it wasn’t sinking in.

One morning, I cast the vision once more for how a church‐planting movement could expand to all 5,000 villages. As the morning progressed, and confusion continued, I almost gave up. In exasperation, I told the group:

It’s lunchtime, and I have to leave for an appointment. Over the lunch break, I want you to come up with a plan for how 80 churches can reach 5,000 villages in five years or less! When I come back, I am going to ask you what you are thinking.

I could see the nervousness in their eyes, but I didn’t know what else to do. I walked out the door and left them with each other—and the Holy Spirit.

Two hours later, I returned to the training room and was amazed at the visibly different atmosphere in the room. They were jubilant! The 12 Ina leaders were beaming with excitement.

As I looked around the room, my eyes rested on the white board where they had written these numbers:

80, 160, 320, 640, 1,280, 2,560, 5,120

One of the Ina leaders approached me jumping up and down with excitement. He was the spokesman for the lunch work group. “Brother Steve, you’ll never believe what we discovered! [Continued jumping.] As you know, we represent 80 Ina churches. [Jumping.] We can easily go back and train each of our 80 churches to start a new church in six months or less. In six months, before the harvest season, we’ll have 160 churches!” [him jumping. me feigning ignorance.]

“That’s not all! We can train all 80 new churches to start a new church in six months or less. And before the planting season six months later, we’ll have 320 churches! [Jumping higher; me feigning shock – though real shock is beginning to set in] That’s not all, every six months we can help the new churches to repeat the pattern so that every six months we double in number from 320 to 640 [pointing to the numbers] to 1,280 to 2,560 and finally to 5,120!”

Now all the Ina in the room were jumping up and down, smiles on their faces. It was beginning to occur to me that the Spirit had finally opened their minds to understand church‐planting movements and their part in them. Hope welled up in my heart that the Ina could indeed be reached in my lifetime. They really were grasping the idea that every new believer could be trained and expected to live out a lifestyle of witnessing and training other new believers.

I thought the presenter had finished, but he had one more thing to share. In large writing he drew on the board a number and exclaimed in a loud voice: “Brother Steve, we are going to be finished in 3.5 years!”

Now I knew that the vision of God’s kingdom coming had caught on. Their spiritual DNA was becoming the kingdom DNA. They understood it. They owned it. “Spirit of God!” I prayed, “Empower them to fulfill this vision!” These Ina leaders became trainers who trained other believers who trained other new believers who kept repeating this generation by generation.

The movement came to life. Though the Ina fell short of their goal to reach all 5,000 villages in 3.5 years, they began diligently moving toward that vision. Over the next three years the number of Ina churches more than doubled to 176. In the years since, the movement has hit many bumps and overcome many roadblocks, but today the Ina continue to plant new churches and recently sent out their first long‐term international missionaries. What had begun as the vision of a foreign missionary was now being pursued by hundreds of Ina believers, prompting my missionary supervisor to say: “Steve, this sounds like the book of Acts!”

Indeed, it did. It was truly “God’s kingdom come.” It was a return to the original discipleship revolution—a re‐revolution.

Enter and Discover

The spiritual principles that God is teaching us from the Kais’ T4T movement and our own CPM experience among the Ina are now informing and enhancing the work of many other CPM missionaries and church leaders around the world. The King has many deep principles and practices to teach us from these church‐planting movements—these discipleship re‐revolutions—that can be applied in your own community. Ying and I invite you to enter these pages and discover what those principles and practices are.f

The name Ina is a pseudonym I use in this book for the previously unreached people group with which we worked in a limited-access nation. For security reasons, many real names will be changed in this book.

In early 2010 we first were entrusted with the Atlas of Global Christianity, edited by a team led by Todd Johnson and Kenneth Ross, extensively documenting the shifts in global Christianity over the past century. Then in October 2010 we received the latest (seventh) edition of Operation World, in which Jason Mandryk and his team have given us country-by-country narratives to help us to pray and act. Now, as we turn the corner into 2012, we have before us The Future of the Global Church, Patrick Johnstone’s delightful new book that beautifully complements the Atlas and Operation World and that pushes us to renewed zeal and creativity.

(Full disclosure: I was part of the editorial team for the Atlas of Global Christianity, I was also part of Patrick’s team for the fifth edition of Operation World in the early 1990s, and I have long been a vocal advocate of Patrick’s work. So if you’re looking for a dispassionate and detached critique of these books, you’ll need to look elsewhere.)

So, where to begin with The Future of the Global Church? The subtitle “History, Trends and Possibilities” gives us our first clue that Patrick utilizes long arcs backward and forward to suggest a variety of possible futures as well as to advocate his own positions and fuel the progress of world evangelization. Patrick is an evangelical optimist who writes “in the face of a prevailing pessimism and creeping universalism.” He combines the synthesizing mind of an analyst with the passionate heart of an evangelist. He liberally sprinkles his text with “Food for Thought” and “Burning Questions” sidebars. His preface declares, “My concern in designing this book is that passion and vision be paramount,” and his introduction specifies the users for whom the book is designed: “Christians passionate about the extension of God’s kingdom,” Christian congregations, disciplers and teachers, mobilizers and missionaries, researchers and academics.

The order in which Patrick lists the intended users points us to some of the comparisons and contrasts between this book, the Atlas and Operation World. The primary authors of these books enjoy warm and collegial relationships with one another, sharing data and sharpening one another’s perspectives. All three books have been prepared by evangelicals, but the Atlas carries a more detached posture directed to researchers and academics of various stripes, whereas Operation World and The Future of the Global Church carry advocacy postures directed primarily to evangelical activists. Operation World is organized primarily around countries and the Atlas around world regions, whereas The Future of the Global Church gives less emphasis to geography and more to ethnic and cultural blocs of peoples. (More on the latter in a moment.)

Operation World is the least expensive and is dominated by black-and-white text in paperback form, while the Atlas carries a much higher price suitable for a full-color, large-format reference book with elaborate maps and diagrams. Formatted in the attractive and useful A4 page size, The Future of the Global Church is priced close to Operation World, but, like the Atlas, offers a hardback form and extensive use of color for multiple graphics.  (Take a look at the four sample pages included in this issue of Mission Frontiers.) Whereas the Atlas and Operation World are the products of editorial teams, The Future of the Global Church is, in Patrick’s words, “all essentially the work of one person” and is therefore “likely to contain biases and quirks” that will nonetheless refresh and stimulate many readers. All three books are accompanied by electronic media that extend the print products.

The nine chapters of The Future of the Global Church follow a clear progression. Three foundational chapters on demography, history and religious streams undergird the next three chapters that focus on Christianity and especially renewalists and evangelicals, and then the final three chapters elaborate evangelical emphases on the unevangelized, missions and “finishing the task.” For me (and I suspect for many others) chapter 7 is Patrick’s most distinctive and helpful, for it is here that he more fully unpacks the paradigm (he introduced years ago) in which he presents the world’s array of people groups within 15 Affinity Blocs and approximately 250 People Clusters; these are not mere categories of convenience, but a genuine attempt both to reflect field realities and to highlight ethnic connections conducive to mission partnerships and missiological creativity. Patrick’s commendable emphasis on least-evangelized countries and least-reached peoples (reflected, in part, by his conclusion on “finishing the task”) is counterbalanced by his deep and consistent concern for the re-evangelization of Europe and the strengthening of evangelical foundations in the West.

I have long anticipated The Future of the Global Church, and I am buying copies not only for myself but also for friends. I am delighted that Patrick’s legacy to the Church now includes not only the first six editions of Operation World but also a carefully conceived and beautifully presented “game plan” for world evangelization that seeks to shift proportionately more energies to the world’s least-reached peoples. We have truly inherited an embarrassment of riches, with the accountability to match.f

The Future of the Global Church, 240 pages, A4 page size (8.3 X 11.7 inches), hardback, $39.99 retail ($29.99 discount or $23.99 for three or more copies). Published in the USA by Biblica and InterVarsity Press, ISBN-13: 978-1-60657-132-3. Electronic media published by Global Mapping International. See www.thefutureoftheglobalchurch.org and www.missionbooks.org for more information, and see http://www.thefutureoftheglobalchurch.org/usatour to learn about Patrick Johnstone’s January 14-25 tour of five U.S. cities.

First, short-term missions are invaluable in mobilizing every-day believers. A tagline for the broader STM movement could easily be “just one look, that’s all it took.” There is undoubtedly no other single tool that has done more to introduce average believers to other cultures and contexts. Each year, more than 1.5 million U.S. believers travel abroad on short-term trips. We can rejoice that so many believers are being exposed to a world their parents and grandparents never saw. Surely many of these people feel God calling them to long-term mission involvement while on a short-term jaunt. Not only do STMs open their eyes to the needs of the world in general, they also give them a first-hand experience of some aspect of mission work, not to mention the personal discipleship that may occur. This parallels the growth in mission involvement that occurred in the early twentieth century when those returning from the World Wars founded structures to meet the needs they had seen while away from home.

Second, STMs are invaluable in mobilizing every-day churches, putting the missions piece front and center of church consciousness.  This is really just a corporate application of the first point. For missionaries and agencies who often feel like they are knocking on the back doors of churches trying to get in, this is a great turn of events, an unforeseen coup. Many churches have gone from “zero to sixty” in a matter of months with regard to mission interest and involvement, solely because of one short-term trip.  STMs, at least those done in partnership with a mission agency, help connect churches and agencies, which is crucial for the survival of those agencies. Another part of this is the impact STMs have on those studying for the ministry. One study showed that 51 percent of all MDiv students reported STM involvement¹, an encouraging fact when you consider the dearth of mission studies mandatory for future ministers. Having pastors with STM experience is a significant factor, since pastors are a major piece of a church’s mission commitment.

Third, STMs can bring innovation to mission strategy. With new eyes come new ideas. Even when the new eyes aren’t those of an “expert”, there remains much to be said for what happens when those from different backgrounds apply their skill-set to the mission context. Medical mission is a good example. Begun as an effort to care for missionaries, medical specialists soon saw the many needs around them in the local population and created ministries for them not originally envisioned.  “Business as Mission” (BAM) is a more recent example. In some ways, the same thing has happened among business people that happened with medical people many years ago—lay people (not pastors or Bible teachers) went overseas and simply applied their training and skill-sets to a new situation. It would be interesting to know the percentage of mission innovations that have started just this way. STMs foster this important interaction between a lay person’s occupation and the mission context. Such cross-disciplinary pollenization is the seedbed for innovation.

Finally, STMs are a good rebuke to us mission “professionals” that we are not in charge and that God often smiles on ideas that we might find laughable. Who could have anticipated what God would do with five stones and a sling or what Jesus might do with five loaves and two fish? When Jesus told Peter to throw the net on the right side of the boat after they had been fishing all night, I imagine that even the most novice fisherman wouldn’t have been impressed with Jesus’ suggestion. One would expect far more expert advice than that. And yet that simple act, which had undoubtedly been tried many times during the whole night-long excursion, broke the nets. Because the catch was so unusual for such a simple act, John recognized something was going on here that went beyond skill-set and expertise.  It dawned on him and he said, “It is the Lord.” (John 21:7).  We may think we know what methodology is needed to be expert fishermen. But we must always keep our eyes open for the unusual, the too simple or the amateurish. It just might be the Lord.

Priest, Robert J. and Priest, Joseph Paul, “They See Everything, and Understand Nothing’ – Short-Term Mission and Service Learning” in Missiology: An International Review, Vol. XXXVI, no. 1, January 2008.

I reasoned that if church-planting in one’s native country, using native tools and the mother tongue, was only for the truly gifted, then doing it among strange or even hostile peoples was surely for even greater giants, the saints and the martyrs. This was my conviction until I met a nine-year-old shoeless boy in Ethiopia.

A Shoeless Boy Trained to Be a Church Planter 

Our small team walked down a small path that wound from the street to the front of an indigenous home. The tattered door hung from the clay walls. A thatched roof packed tightly over the sun baked walls guarded us from the night. We sat down on wooden planks and a hay mattress fashioned into a bed. The earthen walls and the black skin of our hosts blended into one indistinguishable backdrop on this dark African night. One small candle burnt low as the smell of late-night coffee and roasted home-grown grains swept in from the backroom.

Our voices and the voices of our two coworkers and interpreters were the only ones with a language we could understand. The rest blurred into a happy chatter occasioned by the laughter and cries of small children.

A boy approached one of our interpreters. “He wants to tell you a story,” the interpreter relayed to us. We agreed. The boy proceeded to perfectly recite a story from the Gospel of Mark. The room was filled by four missionaries, three pastors, a village elder and a half dozen other adults. But the boy never blinked in his telling of the story in front of this “impressive” audience. The story spoke of a man terrorized by demons who was healed through his encounter with Jesus. After telling the story, the boy walked all of us through a set of questions his father had taught him to ask whenever he had a group willing to listen.

“What do you like about the story?” the boy asked. “What do you not like or find confusing?” 

He continued to ask us questions. He asked what we learned about mankind and what we learned about God through the story. He challenged us to apply it in our lives and to think about to whom we could pass the story. The boy probed us for answers and pushed us to share our thoughts.

We talked and learned together as brothers and sisters. That small thatched hut transformed into a holy sanctuary where together we learned from a story told to us by a nine-year-old boy. He was doing what he was trained to do. He didn’t know he was teaching. He didn’t know he was spiritually edifying or instructing. He was just sharing what he thought was the greatest story he had ever heard, the story of God.

The local village elder took the boy’s questions as a chance to share what he had learned from the story. He was a recent convert from Islam and was eager to learn more of the stories himself. A hush fell over the indigenous home because when a village elder speaks everybody listens. The man began to repeat a portion of the story he heard from the boy. But the boy grew uncomfortable. We didn’t know the language but we could tell there was something wrong. The boy’s youthful impatience bubbled over until he finally interrupted the elder. Shock and laughter blew through the crowd.

I asked what had happened. It turns out the elder had misremembered a point in the boy’s story and while his comments were by no means unorthodox, they betrayed he did not know the boy’s story as well as he thought he did. The boy’s father had taught him that God’s stories were the most important stories on earth and that when you tell one of God’s stories you must not let anyone change it. The boy was not willing to let even an elder change the story he told.

The elder joined in on the laughter and thanked the boy for his correction. In that one moment, the boy was more than a boy. He was a brother helping another brother to better follow Jesus. It just so happened that at that moment his brother was the village elder and he was a skinny shoeless boy who knew one of God’s stories.

The boy learned this story, as he did dozens of others, from his father. His father learned it from a neighboring village elder. That elder had learned it from an Ethiopian Christian trained to plant churches using Chronological Bible Storying among his native people. The boy was using the same methods and stories that his father was using to plant churches. While the boy’s current audience happened to be all believers in Jesus, he continued to do what he did in any context: share the stories of God’s Word. To our amazement standing in front of us, was a nine-year-old boy who was trained to be a church planter.

Partners Working Together to Train Oral Church Planters

In early 2006, the Oral Communication Strategy team at e3 Partners began looking for a place to test and implement an oral church-planting strategy. Ethiopia was soon chosen and a partner church found. The church had conditions tied to the funding. They wanted the project to focus on the most resistant Muslim people group we could find. The Ulai people boasted of a mere handful of Christian converts. They were known for their militant hostility towards Christianity, specifically in the recent killing of several missionaries and converts. Thus the Ulai seemed to qualify and were later chosen as the intended people group for this oral church-planting project.

The initiative was to last two years. Every six months a small team of Americans would travel to Ethiopia for three weeks to teach a small group of national believers a series of stories from the Bible. Along the way, they would also instruct these national partners in how to use these stories to start story groups. Evangelism, discipleship and church-planting would all happen simultaneously in these groups. Muslims would be introduced to the gospel through stories that range from the Old and New Testaments. They would begin living out and passing on these stories even before they became believers. And when many of them did become believers, they continued meeting and passing on those stories as a new church. After implementing this strategy in their native people group, these national believers would also be responsible for passing on what they learn to teams of other believers from around the country commissioned to do the same.

Steve Sims, with e3 Partners Ministry, was tasked with leading the project, particularly as it pertained to the biannual trainings. Various national partners and denominations helped identify the trainees. StoryRunners, an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ, partnered to provide the experience and expertise in chronological storytelling. I joined under e3 Partners Ministry just prior to the first training trip and focused on following up with the trainees in between their twice-a-year training sessions. 

After the initial training, the national team found their way back to their native peoples and began implementing what they were trained to do. Scant reports filtered back to us, but the true status of things was largely unknown when the American team ventured back to Ethiopia to do the second training six months later.

As we gathered back together, we attempted to assess the progress of the initiative and soon discovered that over the previous months at least three churches or story groups had been started and several more were underway. We were shocked. Based on their experience with similarly difficult people groups, the national denomination we had partnered with warned that it would take several years before we saw the first new church, but we were now getting reports of three within the first six months. 

Impressed and eager to validate the initial reports, I was sent out three months later to confirm what our national coworkers had told us. As it turned out, their initial reports were wrong. They reported that they had started three story groups. As I traveled with our national partners along the countryside, visiting home after home, village after village, I discovered ten different story groups, a mark that our national partners thought would take ten years to accomplish.

School Teacher Transforms Village with the Stories of God’s Word

One village seemed particularly striking. Up until recently, only one family in this village was Christian. The school teacher for the local elementary school had become a believer years ago and resided in this village to provide his native people with education. At various times, he had attempted to share the gospel with his neighbors but was fiercely repelled. Missionaries also came to this village but were all chased out with rocks. Still looking for a way to share the gospel with his people, the man heard about a storytelling training that Markos, one of our trainees, had conducted in a nearby village. With his interest sparked, he attended the last meeting and witnessed the trainees orally reciting numerous Bible stories. None of them could read, but now all of them were trained to be Christian leaders teaching the stories of God’s Word.

The man was impressed. He loved what he saw and wanted to bring the stories back to his village. Markos agreed to train him, and the man began spreading the stories throughout his village. Remarkably, he met no resistance. He even started classes where children of Muslim families could come and learn the stories and begin telling them to their families.

On one of my trips there, I visited this man’s village. On arriving there, everyone came out to meet us, Muslims and Christians alike. We sat in a large circle as I asked questions. The village began explaining what was occurring with the arrival of these stories. A man stood up and said, “I am Muslim. But these people [the Christians] are good people. We love their stories. We send our children to them to learn the stories. If they need anything, materials or food, we will provide what they need.”

Stunned by this Muslim man’s offer, I asked Markos why the man would offer material support to a group this village once persecuted. Markos responded, “When we carried God’s Word in our hands with Bibles, this village threw rocks at us. Now we carry it in our hearts through these stories, and they welcome us and send us their children. They love the stories of God’s Word.”

It turns out, that these Muslim people were not opposed to God’s Word, just the way in which it had been presented. Now it was finally in a language and in a form that they understood. And they loved it. And they soon began loving the God and Savior who wrote the stories.

The Stories Spread Throughout the Region

In just six months, that one Christian family led seven other families to Christ and started the village’s first church bringing healing to a divided community.  This story repeated itself dozens of times over the next several years. Young teenagers started a singing group that put the stories of the Bible to native music and traveled the countryside spreading their message. Women, previously ill-equipped to preach or even read from the Bible, now boldly shared God’s stories everyday at the wells, the marketplaces and in their homes. Old men, too old to have experienced the coming of education to their people, now found an avenue to boldly teach and spread their new found faith even though they could not sign their own names. Poor illiterate farmers, considered by most ineligible for Christian leadership because of their inability to read the Bible, now began using Bible stories to start churches in unreached Muslim villages. Village elders, once unable to communicate the truth of God found in Jesus, now boldly taught God’s stories in the local mosques. The movement quickly grew beyond our ability to track. We are hoping these simple methods could result in a true Church-planting Movement and are currently in the process of assessing whether this is actually the case.

And what about back home? American churches who thought reaching the unreached was a job only for the professional missionaries found an avenue to meaningfully engage and reach one of the most unreached and hostile people groups of Ethiopia. e3 Partners continued to help mobilize short-term teams to strategically use their time and presence to start churches in unreached areas that resulted in the genuine expansion of the Kingdom.  And yes, even I learned that church-planting is not just for the Rick Warrens. It’s for nine-year-old boys, for churches and people like you willing to venture on a strategic short-term mission trip.

e3 Partners Ministry: an organization dedicated to equipping God’s people to evangelize the lost and establish new churches using short-term mission trips and church partnerships in collaboration with national partners.

StoryRunners: an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ aimed at providing access to God’s Word through story to the least-reached peoples of the world.

Sergeant was pained, but having spent years in less developed countries, had seen such accidents before. But what happened in the next few minutes shook him and caused him to grieve in his heart.

It wasn’t even that the bus driver spit on the body and cursed the grandmother for denting his bus. Sergeant, too far back to be able to exit to offer assistance, said to his companion, “You have to tell the bus driver to stop.” “Why?” the friend puzzled. “Because those children there are all alone, and someone needs to do something to help them.” Then his companion spoke the truth about the people in this mission field that caused even this veteran missionary to question God’s wisdom in sending him there. “Everyone on this bus has enough troubles of their own.” So the bus rumbled down the road.

Anger welled up inside him. “Lord, why did you send me to this place of heartless, evil people?” And the answer, spoken to his heart, came back: “That’s why I sent you. The people have no hope, no purpose, nothing to give. I sent you so that they would.” Sergeant sighs as he tells the story today, “People’s hearts were hopeless.”

This incident took place in 1991. For the next five years, Sergeant worked strategically in this province, and saw his efforts wonderfully blessed by God as a great church planting movement began in this area. A Church-Planting Movement is sometimes defined as “a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches planting churches that sweeps through a people group or population segment.”¹ Even though this was a restricted-access country, much was brought together by God in the province to cause exponential growth of churches over the next several years. An important factor was the structure of the local churches themselves that facilitated multiplication. Sergeant and others who would join him in this movement also intentionally and tactically used short–term mission teams to kindle the fire.

How fast and momentous was the growth of this church-planting movement? To grasp the enormity of the task, picture a population the size of New York City, or if you’d rather, Kentucky plus Oregon. What happened over a few years was that a significant, Holy Spirit-powered, church-planting movement caught fire. It was kindled to an important degree by short–term missionaries. Sergeant looked around five years after God used him to begin the work, saw that he was no longer needed there, and went on to his next calling. That was far from the end of the story, however.

According to David Garrison in his book, Church Planting Movements, Sergeant began with only three house churches numbering 85 members. To his knowledge, although there were a few government-sanctioned churches that they avoided, there were no other followers of Jesus in the province. The first year, six churches were planted. The next year, they started 17, then 50. Sergeant remained until 1996. By the time he left, the province had about 8,000 followers of Jesus. God’s blessing on the national church’s growth had taken them to every county in the province, all five ethnic groups, and were beginning to saturate the entire province. The rest of the team from the Southern Baptist IMB was gone by 1998. By that time, there were 550 house churches, numbering more than 55,000 believers in the province. Map A shows the growth between 1993 and 1998. Each dot represents a church. By 2001, it is estimated that there were 900 churches with nearly 100,000 believers worshipping in them. By 2005, as seen in Map B, one might wonder if there was any area left without a church within walking distance. This all took place in a country that if not closed to the gospel, certainly had a government that was hostile to non–sanctioned churches.

What factors and actions led to that growth, and to the further exponential growth continuing to this day? Sergeant lists several:

Short–Term Volunteers: Because the province and its people groups included so few Christians, an important church-planting tactic was to use short–term missionaries recruited from other countries. Although they did not speak the predominant language of the province, they were able to speak a shared language with many people in the county seats. These short–term missionaries came from several different countries. They appeared as if they were from the same general ethnic group as the population, and so did not draw attention to themselves because of their low profile.

A Person of Peace: First, they would seek out a person of peace in each new community. That person may or may not have been a believer initially, but could help facilitate a house church. The first church then began with an emphasis on discipleship. Then Sergeant would connect with leaders and tie them into a network of other house churches.

The Significant Advantage of Short–Term Missionaries: There was no temptation to develop dependence on outsiders, because they knew the visitors wouldn’t be there that long. “After all, Paul was essentially a short–term missionary,” Sergeant reminds us. “Except for longer stays in Corinth and Ephesus, he was not ministering anywhere very long.”

Training the Trainers: Sergeant led the short–termers to spend much of their time training nationals who would in turn train others. The nationals would be trained in a central location. When they left to return to their own town or a new village, they would then train others. The locals absorbed the training, sponge–like, because they knew from the beginning that it was their own individual and community responsibility to obey Christ’s commands and impart those to others. Picture the urgency on the faces of the national believers as they responded to the training. Sergeant shares how training, leadership and spiritual growth are all tied in together. “The heavenly economy is different from the earthly economy. As I am faithful in leading others, He will reveal more of himself to me. It’s all based on giving, not on protecting what I have. Keeping people from leading is the last thing you want to do. Everyone is a contributor, not just a consumer. Prayer, Bible study, life in the Body, persecution and suffering.” We’ll talk more about exactly how new believers were prepared for sharing their faith in a moment.

Start with Accountability: Sergeant is often asked how the church’s theology could remain solid with such fast growth. He asserts that it has to do with the way the churches function. They have dual accountability. Every time the members get together they are asked two questions: (1). Did you apply what you learned? (2). To whom have you passed this teaching, and how have they applied it? According to Sergeant, this keeps them tied to the Lord and accountable. Scripture is the authority, and there is a twin focus on right belief and right behavior in daily life. Both orthodoxy and orthopraxy (from the Greek “orthopraxia”, meaning correct action/activity) are important, whereas in more traditional churches we have become a bit skittish at questioning other believers about their conduct. “In movements that are this active, you don’t have to worry about orthodoxy, because it’s being constantly tested.” The network itself has very high accountability. The individuals are accountable to their local church. The church is then accountable to the district, which is accountable to the county leadership, which is further accountable at the province level.

Duckling Discipleship: Another question that Sergeant often hears is, “What about leadership, with so few people formally trained, or even having been Christians very long?” His answer might cause a smile. “When you see a family of ducks crossing the road, only the first duckling is following the mother. The rest are following the duckling in front of them.” Sergeant explains. “None of us has achieved the full measure of the stature of Christ. Every one is mature enough to be a leader of another duckling. Follow me as I follow Christ.” That’s a lot of responsibility on new believers, but they seem up for it. “Each of us, including a brand new follower, is ready and responsible to lead others to Christ. Everything we receive, we have an obligation to pass on to others.”

The churches tended to be small. Seldom did a house church grow much larger than 30 members before it spun off a sister church. This splitting accomplished two beneficial results: it avoided attracting government attention, and it caused faster growth. A good summary of the structure of these house churches is to look at the acronym Sergeant developed, POUCH churches.

The POUCH Church

Is this a one–place, one–time kind of miracle by God for which we ought to sit back in wonder and praise Him? Or is it a wonderful miracle, plus a basket of lessons for us to apply? Dan Hitzhusen, International Vice President of the mission organization e3 Partners, offers a view into how short term mission groups have learned from this and continued the POUCH church idea. He says that short–term missionaries can be very effective in coming alongside nationals in church planting. While recognizing that sometimes poorly planned team efforts can do more harm than good, he lists several ways they can help when done right:

Short–term teams can open doors for nationals. Their very novelty can create interest. Some short–term missionaries explain, “We’re just the bait! Once the door is open, the nationals walk right in.”

Short–term teams can be used by nationals to plow up difficult ground with prayer. More than one short–term mission team has spent their time prayer–walking through unreached or difficult areas. Nationals are encouraged by the fact that someone would come from so far away to show love for their country. And God answers their prayers.

They can use their God–given gifts and talents. They can be used in evangelism, storytelling (even through translators), and sports ministries.

They can train. Perhaps most significantly for the province that experienced such wonderful growth, they can be a source of training for nationals. Although it was a country essentially closed to missions, Christian visitors were able to move in and out to help train the trainers. In the first year, four teams of 4–10 members came ten times. They trained nationals to plant 11 churches, strategically placed in different counties, in the first year. Was it really the trained nationals who were doing the work year after year? Hitzhusen offers a striking piece of evidence. Commenting on how inconspicuously Curtis Sergeant worked during his years there, he says, “When he left, probably only about 20 people in the province even knew his name!”

They can model POUCH Groups.

Believers (sometimes joined by seekers) can take part in these groups at home, and then become comfortable with the concept and the accountability involved as they help in church-planting. Ideally, each believer is involved in two groups: the one in which he or she is a participant, and a new one that he or she is starting. In a church-planting movement, much the same thing happens.

Sounds good, but in the fast-growing church-planting movement in Sergeant’s province, what really happened at ground level? How quickly were new believers expected to share their faith and even plant churches? Immediately! As soon as someone came to Christ, Sergeant or one of his team members would say the following: “It is a great blessing to lead someone else to Christ. It is an even greater blessing to start a church. It is the greatest blessing to train others to start churches. I want you to have the greatest blessing, but let’s start with great blessing.” Then together, they would make a list of 100 friends and begin to role-play sharing the Gospel with five friends. Then they would pray and go and share with their five friends right away. After that new believer came to Christ, he or she would repeat the same phrases. Many wouldn’t really know how to plant a church yet, but they would learn over time as one duckling follows the other. One disciples another who may be only one step behind.

So then, could this be replicated? The evidence of growth like this in other areas that apply these strategies gives a resounding, Yes! Sergeant, now the Vice–President for Global Strategies with e3 Partners, has worked with the same system in other countries with results that evidence God’s blessing. E3 Partners has taken much of this, and worked with short–term teams to come alongside church planters in many other countries. In India, a mission called Light India has begun, whose purpose is to see thousands of new churches started in every state of India using this strategy. Curtis Sergeant has stated that heaven’s economy is different from the world’s economy. How about this: The average cost to train and provide materials to start each new church in Light India is only $13.

E3 Partners has also combined the experience of Pouch churches with modern technology and media experience through their I Am Second ministry. Originally begun as an evangelistic effort in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Texas area in 2008, it has gone world-wide as both an outreach and a training resource. I Am Second Groups are a version of POUCH churches, and include an Internet overlay. This resource has been a useful source of training for the church-planting movement. The visible face of the ministry is a website www.iamsecond.com, which has striking and unusual filmed testimonies by people, some well–known, others more like your next-door neighbor. Bethany Hamilton, subject of the film Soul Surfer, shares her faith. St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford is on it, as is Texas Ranger Josh Hamilton talking about his recovery from addiction. Others discuss how God has rescued them from a myriad of conditions, from abuse to war. The site offers opportunities for seekers or strugglers to call, chat or email for help. People are attracted by the testimonies, and invited to consider giving their lives to the Lord. It is a great tool to use to lead seekers to Christ in urban areas that have Internet connections.

At other locations on the site are invitations to begin or join an I Am Second group, patterned on the POUCH church idea. Deeper in the website are also Bible studies, with questions that are used in the groups and new churches. Training materials are also available on this one site, which are now being used worldwide. All of this comes together for the purpose of being a resource to believers, trainers and new church plants. Call it an online site to spark an offline movement.

You’ve probably heard the story of the little boy whose father wanted to teach him the power of multiplication. The man asked his son whether he would have more money if he received $1.00 a day for 30 days, or a penny the first day, two pennies the next, and so forth, each day receiving double the day before. It seemed to the little boy that the addition of $1.00 every day would yield him more than starting with just a penny and doubling that daily. The real answer, to his astonishment, is that doubling the penny daily would yield a haul on the last day of over $10 million. People are much more than pennies, but God’s economy is also one of multiplication rather than simple addition. And Jesus talked of seeds each multiplying “a hundred–fold.”

In 2010, Curtis Sergeant was visiting his friend Thom in India. It had been 19 years since the bus incident, and 14 years since Sergeant left the province of that East Asian country. A Christian woman came to their door, very excited. “I’ve got to tell you about this place I visited. It was amazing! Every village has churches. The worship is phenomenal. They’re sending out missionaries! The government formerly persecuted the Christians, and now they are encouraging churches because the crime rate is down.” Thom asked, “Where is this place?” Sergeant smiled when she named the same province in which God had used him so many years back—the province that less than one generation before had been, a place of “heartless, evil people” with no hope in their hearts.

But many thoughtful leaders have sought to overcome these problems and have developed the Standards of Excellence in Short-Term Missions. Every church or mission group should study these guidelines and learn from them before sending out their next short-term mission team. Go to www.soe.org for more information. Another helpful part of the preparation for short-term team members is to have them go through the Perspectives course before they leave? Go to www.perspectives.org for more information. Online study is also available.

Instead of going over the failures of short-term missions one more time, we decided to provide some inspirational and strategically significant stories of short-term mission teams that are making a long-term impact on the expansion of the Church in previously unreached people groups. What we present here are not evangelicals on a vacation but examples of well-trained short-term volunteers fitting into highly-focused and well-executed long-term strategies in pursuit of ongoing Church Planting Movements (CPM). This is the complete opposite of amateurism in missions. In fact, there is plenty that all of us can learn from the experience of Curtis Sergeant and the church planting strategies that he has employed in literally transforming the people group with which he worked. We highlight his story in our lead article starting on page 6.

Learning From the Field

How is it that by most accounts the Church is not growing in the West, but in numerous places, like where Curtis Sergeant served, there are rapidly growing Church Planting Movements that are transforming entire peoples or regions? What have they learned that we need to apply? Will the church in the West continue to stagnate and decline in its influence on the surrounding culture, or will we learn the lessons from the mission field of how churches can grow and multiply?  The future of the West may depend on it.

Knowledge vs. Obedience

Does God care more about how much we know or about how much we obey what we know? In the West we are prone to think that the acquisition of knowledge of Scripture is equivalent to maturity in Christ. We spend our time listening to sermons, going to Bible studies and even attending Bible school and seminary—all in the pursuit of knowledge. After gaining all of this knowledge, how much of it is actually applied in obedience? It is not what we know but what we obey what we know that will change our lives and transform the lives of others.

Only a small percentage of church members obey Jesus by regularly sharing their faith or discipling others, even fewer plant new churches. Yet in Church Planting Movements the focus is on immediate obedience that leads to growing maturity. As soon as someone comes to faith in Jesus, he is taught how to share his testimony and the gospel and he obeys what he has learned by doing it. He develops a lifestyle of sharing his faith regularly at every opportunity. When these new disciples do lead someone to Christ, they are immediately taught how to disciple them and start new churches. Whatever they learn they obediently apply by teaching it to others. At the very start of their relationship with Christ the DNA of obedience-based maturity is established and then passed on to others in succeeding generations of disciples. The expectation is that every believer has the potential to be a soul winner, disciple-maker and church planter. That expectation leads to multi-generational discipleship and church planting. We cannot leave the job of building God’s kingdom to just the professionals.

When I was a child, my father told me that the best way to learn is to teach others. All too often, in the West, only the pastor and a few others actually learn by teaching. The rest of us are passive listeners who seldom remember, much less apply, what we hear in church. As a result, new believers are trained to sit and listen, and are often discouraged from getting involved in ministry because “they do not know enough yet.” Right away they are taught to be passive in their faith and leave the work of ministry to the paid professionals. Is it any wonder that the Church in the West has stagnated? All of us must become doers of the Word and not just hearers.

Accountability

At the heart of every Church Planting Movement is loving accountability to obey what they are taught. At every stage of a believer’s development, accountability keeps them moving forward toward active involvement in ministry and maturity in Christ. Some have expressed concern that with the rapid growth of churches characteristic of CPMs that sound doctrine will be lost. However, just the opposite is true because of the accountability that is built into the process of CPM multiplication. Because of the close accountable relationship between the discipler and the ones that he trains, deviations from sound doctrine can be caught early before unbiblical beliefs become engrained and are spread to others.

What kind of accountability is there in our current church structure? Virtually none. Because of the lack of accountable discipleship taking place in today’s churches, believers can easily get off track in what they believe without anyone stepping in to correct them.

George Barna stated in 2009 that only 19% of self-proclaimed born-again Christians had a biblical worldview based on the acceptance of foundational beliefs such as absolute truth, the accuracy of the Bible, the literal existence of Satan, salvation by grace alone, the sinless nature of Jesus and God as the all-powerful Creator.¹ Unless we want both stagnant growth and a lack of sound doctrine, something is wrong with our model! We must change the way we do church in the West. Does it make sense to spread our current patterns of doing church to every tribe and tongue? For more information on the best practices in Church Planting Movements, see the book T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution, which we have excerpted starting on page 21.

The Great Translation Debate

On page 26 we feature a landmark article regarding the standards for translating divine familial terms such as Father, Son etc., written by Rick Brown and other Bible translation colleagues. There has been a great deal of controversy regarding this topic with translators being accused of changing the meaning of the original text to bypass theological objections of Muslims and others. In fact, translators are avoiding a wrong meaning, namely, biological procreation. Such a meaning is inconsistent with the Hebrew and Greek words used and it is contrary to the nature of God’s fatherhood and Jesus’ sonship. Bible translation agencies have taken the only responsible position that they can by their commitment to translate the original meaning of the Hebrew and Greek as accurately as possible. I urge the critics of the translators to choose to believe the best about their brothers and sisters in the Lord who have taken on this difficult translation assignment. They deserve our appreciation for the tremendous sacrifices they have made to do this work. They also deserve our maximum efforts to understand the process of translation and the difficult choices involved in overcoming language barriers. Please study this article carefully.

Starting 2012 on a Strong Note

Although we did not meet our goal of 1500 gifts of $180 in 2011, we did receive gifts that were equal to 455 of these gifts. Please help us start 2012 strong with your gift of any amount. If you would like to receive an email notice when MF is available on our website and when other opportunities for involvement arise, please go to www.missionfrontiers.org/email to give us your email address.

I am not saying we should give up our values or ideas. While our theology (-ies) may not be wrong, those from a very different culture may view specific areas in radically different ways than we do—adding a new dimension of our understanding of God. Perhaps this is one reason we have not seen more progress among the least reached. We see things differently. We prioritize differently. An important issue to us, may not be something that others think about at all.

For example, one mission I am close to has a particular view on eschatology. They have a sending base in a country in Asia, and those who join the mission from that country don’t have the same priority for eschatology. For various reasons historically, it was simply not an important issue to them.

At the same time, some of the ideas and emphases from the West are actually good ones. Because we have had the Gospel for centuries and have been involved in missions for decades, we have learned a few lessons along the way. Westerners have different, sometimes creative perspectives on how to do outreach more effectively. And we’ve sought to learn from history and our mistakes of the past. That doesn’t mean we don’t make new—or the same old—mistakes, but sometimes we can see things that the insiders to the culture cannot. Some of our ideas may be bad, but I believe our creativity is one of the major gifts we can contribute to other believers worldwide.

My point is this: just because an idea doesn’t come from the new believers doesn’t mean it is bad. One argument I’ve heard in the last year is “well, this approach is a Western idea from the missionaries…”, as if that automatically makes it bad or less helpful.

I suggest that when it comes to approaches to contextualization, the outsider may indeed have some helpful insights. At times, the insider, who has been saved out of their majority non-Christian context, cannot easily see how the gospel might spread in their midst. Depending on how they were reached, they may have only been exposed to a narrow approach to outreach. For example, someone who was initially reached by radio or tracts may think that radio or tracts is the way to reach everyone. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with either of these methods, they’re simply not the only ways to reach people or penetrate new people groups.

In the early 1970s, Ralph Winter introduced an idea which some saw as “Western” called the E-Scale. It described a simple yet profound way of categorizing non-Christians and highlighting overlooked cultures. Other factors aside, those who are E-1—or culturally near you—would be easier to reach, while those who were E-2 or E-3 would be much more difficult because of major cultural differences in understanding or acceptance. A major contribution of his 1974 Lausanne presentation was to point out that 87% of the non-Christians of the world were at an E-2 or E-3 distance from Christians, and that reaching them would take a special kind of cross-cultural effort. Thinking through these issues has greatly helped mission strategy, even though the ideas originated from the West.

As we watch what is happening around the world and seek to further His Kingdom, we need the wisdom and insight of God to direct our way and inform our strategies, as he guides us in communicating the Gospel to all peoples.f

The USA medical team visited families in the community; they gave free check- ups, medicine, and vitamins. Cambodian members from the local church served as their interpreters. After these home visits, the medical team informed the local pastor which families had responded to an invitation to accept Jesus and committed to come to church. The following week, a local team from the church went to visit those specific families. Surprisingly, they experienced a chilly reception. People accused them of forsaking their own culture and religion. In addition, the families were disappointed that the Cambodians from the church did not bring medicines, and kept asking when the Americans were going to return.

Originally, the local church, my colleague, and I had thought that this medical outreach would increase the credibility of the Cambodian believers in their community, but it had the opposite effect. The most the Cambodian believers could offer the families was fruit, along with a smile and some companionship, which paled in comparison to the expertise and handouts of the visiting medical team.

The majority of North American missionaries practice what one might call “patron-client missions.” Patron-client relationships are based on social associations of unequal status. The patron is the protector, provider and defender within the relationship. In return, the client serves and becomes obligated to the patron. The client often adopts the beliefs and values of the patron as part of his or her loyalty in the relationship. Patron-client relationships are part of many social and political systems around the world. In the above example, the visiting team from America had set themselves up in a role of being needed. More often than not, missionaries offer medical, linguistic, educational, or construction services that cause the local people (the clients) to need and depend on the missionary (the patron). The more social services and assistance provided, the more the missionary is perceived as the patron.

Some people see the patron role as worth capitalizing on, as it gives the missionary an edge to influence people for Christ. In actuality, the patron-client style of missions hinders multiplying disciples and movements for Christ for several reasons. First, local believers usually cannot duplicate patron-client methods with their own people and local resources. Sadly, this robs them of credibility. Second, many of the conversion experiences are superficial and readily forsaken when the patron-client role comes to an end. Third, this model looks very much like a cousin of colonialism. Fourth, the end result often produces churches in which the members view the mission as their patron. Finally, Western missionaries too often minister from a status of superiority rather than humility.

Dr. William Kornfield shares how patron-client roles distort evangelism:

In many cases the Western cultural transplant is reflected in large evangelistic campaigns, usually financed by North America or Europe. In some cases the only cultural adjustment is the direct translation from English into the receptor language, thus negating major cross-cultural factors affecting decision-making. For example, Latin American evangelists trained in North America are usually people of a higher status—the upper middle class. The sociological lower class people of Latin America will often respond during an invitation—not necessarily because of the convincing power of the Holy Spirit calling them to repentance, but rather because their culture of courtesy obliges them to respond positively to a higher class person.

Someone writing anonymously about Bangladesh reveals how the patron-client mentality affects missionary outreach there:

For better or worse the ‘patron-client mentality’ has become firmly embedded in local Bangladeshi culture. Foreigners are often viewed as moneybags who must be praised and eulogized but manipulated shrewdly whenever possible. It has been said that a foreigner is like a faucet; he may not be flowing now, but if you stick around long enough, the money will eventually begin to flow… .    

But in the long run, is patron-client evangelism reproducible for those whom we are seeking to disciple? Can they take the gospel to their nearby cities and villages without providing goods and services? Furthermore, is this approach even biblical?

Perhaps, we need to reconsider the paradigm of patron-client missions.f

Jean Johnson served as a missionary with Assembly of God World Missions in Cambodia for 16 years. She is currently a senior consultant on issues of sustainability with World Mission Associates. She lives and works out of Minneapolis, MN. This month she presents this article as a guest columnist on behalf of Glenn Schwartz. Jean welcomes feedback, and she can be reached by e-mail at jeanjohnson@wmausa.org.

To put this another way, this is about the value of an investment of ideas rather than normal philanthropy1. Successfully communicate an idea, and you are making an investment. As I mentioned above, if ideas are introduced appropriately, they can live on in a community long after a financial contribution is used up. One problem with philanthropy is that when it is dissipated, more is often needed to replace it.

Business people speak of “return on investment” or ROI. It means that for everything invested, one should be able to expect a positive return. One of the most powerful investments we can make is an investment of ideas. Think of the amount of resources within arm’s reach of people all around the world that are waiting to be mobilized. Consider the impact when local people discover and mobilize those resources.

I am sometimes asked, “What results have you seen from the emphasis on avoiding or overcoming unhealthy dependency in the Christian movement?” Indeed, there are many positive results that show that our efforts are bearing fruit.

In 1996 World Mission Associates (the charity of which I am a part) produced an eight-hour video series on avoiding and overcoming unhealthy dependency in the Christian movement. It is filled with suggestions (ideas) about how to do God’s work without the continual flow of outside resources which so often end up creating unsustainable projects. Since that video series was first produced, miles of video tape, and a lot of ink and toner have been spread around the world on self-reliance issues. Missionaries and church leaders in various parts of the world have been introduced to the idea of avoiding or overcoming unhealthy dependency. Later on, the content of the video series was transcribed and included in a book I wrote called When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement.2 More than ten thousand copies of the book have been circulated around the world. Hardly a day goes by that I do not hear from someone who has read the book and is making changes in their church or missionary service. I consider this video series and the resulting book to be an investment of ideas for the benefit of church and mission leaders far and wide.

But what is the impact of the ideas to which I am referring? The following are a few examples.

First, in 1997, top leaders of a large mission agency in North America (an agency with about five-thousand missionaries) acquired many copies of the video series on dependency and self-reliance to which I referred above. They took the message seriously. As part of what they learned, they instructed their missionaries all over the world to put all institutions of their denomination into local authority. This meant that if missionaries were in charge of a Bible institute or hospital somewhere in the world, they were to find a local church leader or medical officer and turn the work over to them. Imagine the implications of that kind of an idea.

To show the seriousness with which that directive was taken, ten years later I met someone in West Africa who is president of one of the seminaries of that denomination. I asked if he knew about the decision that was made a decade earlier. His response was, “Yes, and that is why I, as a West African, am president of this seminary today.”

Second, last year I met a North American medical doctor who had been serving in a hospital in Ghana. He told me his story. The hospital in which he and his wife worked was sustained by outside funding and staffed by people from North America. Someone suggested that he and his wife learn about overcoming unhealthy dependency, which they did. When they finished going through the video series, they asked themselves what they should do differently based on the ideas they learned. He said, “That was ten years ago, and today that hospital is fully staffed by Ghanaians and totally supported with local resources.”

A third illustration comes from a small team of missionaries who went from North America to West Africa to plant churches. Their mode of operation included four-wheel drive vehicles and projectors which they used in rural areas to show pictures and preach the Gospel. Somehow they learned about the video series on overcoming unhealthy dependency. Their mission board in North America began to inquire about what it would mean to change the paradigm on which they were functioning in Ghana. After watching the video series and discussing the issues involved, they decided to make changes in their mode of operation. The missionaries got rid of the four-wheel drive vehicles and projectors. Instead, they began to use bicycles to get from village to village. They soon discovered that local Ghanaian pastors decided they could do the same; so the pastors also acquired bicycles and joined in the evangelism and church planting efforts. After some time, word of their efforts filtered back to their American board and to me and my colleagues. This is what they said: “We just want you to know that the indigenous principles we learned work!”

In 1999 in Mozambique a group of sixty-five pastors and a handful of missionaries got together for several days to discuss how to overcome unhealthy dependency. During one of the presentations, they began to discuss when the Gospel was first preached in that region of their country. After some discussion the church leaders decided that the Gospel first came there about 1915. The next question was natural: “How many of your own missionaries have you sent out since that time?” The answer was, “None”. I responded by saying, “So apparently this gospel is for receiving, but not for sharing. Is that right?”

The question I asked startled my translator to such an extent that he asked if he could speak with his fellow pastors. I agreed and stepped aside. The translator then suggested that they all needed to confess the sin of being receivers, rather than givers in relation to the Gospel. Before the conference ended, the sixty-five pastors appointed a committee to send out their first missionaries. They sent several workers to a ripe mission field in Northern Mozambique. Later, they sent one couple to Brazil and another to Portugal where they could use the Portuguese language they already knew.

My investment in each of the above examples was the communication of ideas, not money or other resources. Of course, there was an investment of my time and resources in getting to Mozambique and in producing the video series in the first place. However, the end result was not dependent on providing resources from outside those communities. In the Mozambique situation, it was local initiative that took hold because of an idea that was planted in the hearts of the pastors.

I am not saying that financial assistance should never be given. But I am trying to show that an investment in creative ideas can be more effective in the long term than simply “doing philanthropy”. In each of the previous illustrations, relying on outside people and outside resources had often been the primary mode of operation. It was simply assumed that outside resources were the key to doing God’s work—which many people still believe today. But notice that in each story, it was later discovered that local people, empowered with local creativity and mobilizing local resources, could make the difference.

One could well ask how much outside giving would have been needed to affect that kind of change. The honest answer would be that outside resources are often likely to create and perpetuate unhealthy dependency, not avoid it or resolve it. An investment of time and ideas can be far more effective than philanthropy alone ever could be. But remember, there are times when philanthropy is well justified, but care should be given that it does not replace the mobilization of local resources.

The return on an investment of ideas can have a long-lasting and far-reaching impact. Imagine five-thousand missionaries changing their mode of operation! One should not underestimate that kind of change. It is a massive thing to consider, because missionary philosophy and practice are often very deeply rooted. I invite missionaries and church leaders to consider an investment in mobilizing local resources, and then watch to see how much can be done.

Conclusion

One final word is in order. The reason I challenge churches and church-related institutions to strive for sustainability is so that they can focus on spiritual renewal and bringing people to faith in Christ. I am not just promoting an economic or missiological philosophy. And, I do not minimize the role of the Holy Spirit in the process. Our Lord, through His Spirit, inspires people to identify and mobilize their resources in Kingdom ministry. Therefore, the power of the Holy Spirit is the most important “idea” that should permeate all that we do.

There will also be the need to help the truly poor, but being a continual receiver is not good for the dignity of either the giver or the receiver. I trust that church and mission leaders far and wide will discover the benefit and reward of mobilizing local resources which leads those in need not only to stand on their own two feet with joy, but also to be able to help others in need. And that is an idea with a return on investment worth promoting.f

I acknowledge that philanthropy can represent more than money, but for my purposes here I am referring primarily to financial philanthropy.

This book is available on the website of World Mission Associates at www.wmausa.org.

It was an early dream of the founders of the U.S. Center for World Mission to empower the global body of Christ to understand the state of the unfinished task. Almost 25 years ago, a global mapping project was envisioned that would enable the mission community to zoom into any community in the world through a mapping database and know the status of the gospel there. That day is almost here. Dozens of countries around the world are initiating their own national surveys to identify church planting priorities. As this data is being collected and mapped, a graphic visualization of the progress of the gospel is emerging, revealing both growth and gaps.

Thanks to the work of national governments around the world, we are getting increasingly better data on virtually every inhabited place on earth. Global databases of habitats (cities, towns and villages) now exist for over three million communities. Surveys to determine the status of evangelism and church planting have been completed for almost fifty countries and 350,000 communities. Wherever these surveys have been done, the information has had a powerful mobilization effect on the national church. (A great example of this has recently happened in Thailand, where a national survey has brought the entire evangelical church together in response to the need. Indeed, the research process itself has served to ignite the church to action.)

Missions in the Information Age

As national surveys are being conducted, a critical issue is emerging: How do you keep church-planting data current and the maps updated? National surveys can be costly, involving considerable manpower and time. Fortunately, the technology to solve this problem is now readily available. Combined with the proliferation of smart phones with GPS capabilities, and widespread access to the Internet, it is now possible to set up what are called “cloud-based mapping servers” which can be programmed as a global network with potentially millions of users. This will enable believers from around the world to dynamically map their own ministry data while contributing to the bigger picture as their data is combined with other user’s data.

For example, let’s say we wanted to track the evangelization of every home in Los Angeles. Since LA is ethnically diverse, Armenian churches might be interested in a particular subset of that overall task—visiting the 80,000 Armenian homes in LA and presenting the gospel. As they track their progress, and Filipino churches do the same, along with Chinese, Korean, etc., the composite picture will enable us to see the progress of the goal as well as identify gaps that may represent overlooked or “hidden” peoples which no church is touching.

Of course, that is just the beginning of what can be done with dynamic mapping technology (dynamic in the sense that as the data changes the maps are updated in real time). From tracking the global migration of unreached peoples, to the movement of nomadic bands, to the engagement of strategic population segments by frontier mission teams, web-based map networking will enable cooperation and coordination at a level which generations before could only dream about. This represents a significant advance in the use of mapping as a mission tool. A decade before, mapping was primarily used by the mission community for mobilization purposes. In the next decade it will become an indispensable tool for strategic planning and networking as well.

As the world becomes more complex through urbanization and globalization, we will need more sophisticated tools to engage this ever-shifting mosaic. Could it be that God has given us computer networks, smart phones and mapping technology for such a time as this? With every increase of technology has come an advance in the Great Commission. Changes in transportation technology enabled the gospel to travel further and faster than ever before. Next we saw a communications revolution, which enabled the gospel to be broadcast at the speed of light, and into some of the most restricted places on earth. Today’s revolution is in the area of information technology. We have the ability to instantaneously collect and process information in a way that is almost overwhelming for our generation. But as the Church begins to catch up to this revolution, it may very well accelerate us in filling the Great Commission.

For example, if you go to www.greatcommission2020.com, you will see a world map that pinpoints in real time the responses of people around the world who are visiting one of the evangelistic websites set up by Global Media Outreach. You may watch as a visitor in Libya comes to one of the sites and begins to read a gospel message. If this visitor prays to receive Christ, the color of the pinpoint changes from blue to yellow. If the person asks for follow up, the color immediately changes to red. (What a tool for intercessors to use for prayer!) Of the average of 150,000 visitors that come to a GMO related website every day, 25,000 pray to receive Christ, and 5,000 ask for follow up. Now imagine that over the course of a year, the millions of bytes of data gathered by GMO can be mapped to show where there are greatest responses to the gospel in every city in the world. This data can then be made available to mission strategists and disciplers on the ground who can follow up on the leads this information provides.

Staying Secure

Obviously, the most important consideration in the information age is data security. For about forty countries in the world, which are classified as “restricted access countries,” this is a major concern and a different approach is required. For the other 180 nation-states, data can be more freely shared. Fortunately, the more restricted the country, the fewer people there are that need access to information (because there are less indigenous believers and missionaries on site in such places). For these countries, a different approach can be taken which keeps data offline and encrypted, something which many mission agencies working in the 10/40 Window have had to figure out.

Taking the lead to assist mission agencies and churches in this effort is a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ called Map Factory (www.mapfactory.org). Led by mission strategist Christopher Deckert, the vision of Map Factory is to equip every ministry in the world with the ability to dynamically map the vision God has given them and the progress in seeing it fulfilled. High-end, commercial map servers can cost as much as $50,000 to deploy, plus the ongoing costs of programming and maintenance, and so they have been a forbidding challenge even for many large ministries such as Wycliffe, the International Mission Board and Youth With a Mission, who need them. Map Factory is raising the funds to provide this service to the missions community at a relatively low cost and recruiting computer volunteers to meet this need. (We would encourage our Mission Frontiers readers, who are interested in helping, to contact Campus Crusade’s Map Factory division and inquire how you may be able to contribute to this important new initiative. Chris can be contacted at cdeckert@ccci.org)

Secular startup companies are currently attempting to provide location-based services to local and city governments to track crime, graphitti, road hazards, and weather related issues. Non-Government Organizations are utilizing simple, real-time mapping software to track disaster response, such as in the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Japan. At a moment’s notice, on the ground responders are sharing, through their cell phones, the locations of needs and the type of assistance required. Software then presents a composite of those needs on a map to enable better coordination. Now picture the Church rallying together after the recent tornadoes in Joplin, Missouri using collaborative tools such as this. Or imagine a city that works together to plant churches and initiate outreaches in areas where crime databases tell us there is the greatest need.

Today we have the opportunity to capture the big picture, as well as zoom in on the details of the unfinished task before us. The Church can do better, needs to do better, and must do better at seeing the state of their “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and uttermost parts of the earth.” With the tools and technology we have today, we are left without an excuse.f

In the capital city of Freetown stands a massive cottonwood tree that serves as a roundabout in the old city center, towering above its surroundings. It is at least two hundred years old and has an African experience that goes far beyond my own. Myth and legend surround the tree. I was told that the iron posts still visible in the tree were used to chain people there during the days of slavery. It is said that the first group of returned slaves (thus “Freetown”) gathered around the tree upon arrival in 1792 and sang,

Awake and sing of Moses and the Lamb

Wake! every heart and every tongue

To praise the Saviour’s name

The day of Jubilee is come;

Return ye ransomed sinners home.

Whatever the specifics actually were, it would be a true marvel if the cottonwood tree could talk. It has been a silent witness to early indigenous culture, the ravages of slavery, the colonial power-grab and resultant rebellions, the laughable division of Africa into the present geo-political nations at the Berlin Conference in 1884, the struggle for national independence, a brutal civil war and the present fragile peace and attempt at rebuilding. The tree has witnessed, in microcosm, the troubling history of the entire continent in the modern period.

Africa continues to struggle for its identity. Like a child born from the rape of a stranger, it has been indelibly marked by the imperialism of the last centuries. A “pure” African identity is impossible to recover. The damage has been done. The child has been born and she doesn’t look like her mother. The question haunting Africa now is, “What is the way forward?” Countless books have been written on the African dilemma, and yet the stark realities remain. While educated elites debate the issues, the African on the ground is left to deal with daily realities.

Where does the Christian mission movement fit into the discussion on Africa? After all, we came on the scene as part of an unholy and often contentious alliance with colonial powers and their more commercial concerns. It has been said that eighty percent of the schools and hospitals in Africa were built by missionaries. And for every sordid tale of arrogant missionary practice, there are other stories of incredible compassion and sacrifice that fill our missionary biographies. The sharing of the gospel in Africa left a mixed bag of results that are still seen today. But that is the past. What is the role of the mission enterprise in today’s Africa? Well, the mission enterprise at work in Africa today is no longer predominately Western. Africans have their own ideas and always have.

One senses that while the Western world wrings its hands over Africa’s predicament and struggles to bear the “white man’s burden,” Africans themselves have gone ahead of us. Africa, while still experiencing less obvious forms of Western imperialism, is now largely in the hands of Africans. This is a new reality. Most African states are only around fifty years old, a very short time in the lifespan of a nation. And much of the last fifty years has been a wilderness experience, as these newly “independent” nations have found it difficult to wear Saul’s armor. But there have always been and continue to be in increasing measure African Davids who are showing up and doing their own thing. We do not think they have nearly enough to get the job done, but giants are beginning to fall. The MANI conference covered in this issue is but one example of the many encouraging initiatives coming from Africa.

In the end, Africans will write the story of Africa. It is a story forged between the two extremes of unrivaled potential on one hand and unprecedented problems on the other. If the cottonwood tree remains standing for another two hundred years, what will it witness? While it may be hard for some to conceive, Africa could be a world-power by then. But however the larger story unfolds, as biblical faith continues to express itself authentically in African form through African initiative, there will be many good chapters worth reading, both for the glory of God and the good of the people.f

As the mission director of my church in Ethiopia it was my job to coordinate efforts to reach the Borana people group of Southern Ethiopia. As I began to do research on the Borana (an Ethiopian tribe of 700,000), I discovered many other nearby unreached peoples and I began to urge our church to begin work among them. Around this time I was also doing my graduate studies with William Carey International University and so I decided to integrate these two, which resulted in a national ethnographic research project.

Sounds providential! How did your graduate work contribute to this effort?

WCIU really came right on time, both for my assignment with the Borana people as well as my new role as regional facilitator for the country assessment process of the Horn of Africa with MANI (Movement for African National Initiatives). The WCIU program gives you a passion for reaching unreached peoples, and greatly helped me to coach our church planters in researching the cultural background of the Borana and then contextualizing the message. The readings and assignments were exactly what we needed and very practical for what we were trying to do.

Tell us a little about your partnership to reach the Borana.

This is a joint endeavor between local churches in Ethiopia and partner churches in the United States affiliated with the Baptist General Conference, which have also adopted the Borana. We began in a practical way by starting hostels for school children, who needed a place to stay while studying away from home. Our partner churches assisted us with funds and short-term personnel. As a direct result, today there is a church planting movement among the Borana, and about 50 house-fellowships have been established.

After you researched all the people groups of Ethiopia, what did you do from there?

I began my assessment by starting with the Joshua Project data of the U.S. Center for World Mission. I was surprised to learn how many unreached peoples are listed by Joshua Project in Ethiopia and my research confirmed this data. I approached one of our Ethiopian church leaders about this and urged him to make this front and center as a national priority. We agreed that what was needed was to make detailed profiles of each of these groups, then present this information to every leader as opportunity allows, and then urge them to take the action step of adopting one of these groups.

How is the Ethiopian church responding to the needs of the least-reached peoples?

Of the 18 major church-networks in Ethiopia which we are tracking, only three have no current evangelistic outreach or ongoing church planting activities among the UPGs. The fact that more than 80% from among those evangelical institutions included in the study are involved in some degree in reaching the Ethiopian UPGs is a very encouraging finding. It tells us the evangelical institutions are, to a large extent, aware of the existence of these UPGs and are exerting some efforts to reach them.

What are the priorities revealed by the survey?

In our first survey of 2008 we found that there were at least six people groups that were not yet engaged. They were the Birala, the Kwegu, the Saho (Irob), the Seze, the Shabo, and the Shebelle. Through a more recent assessment we learned that work has started among the Saho and the Shabo. Among the people groups that can be listed as under-engaged, there are about 15 groups. (These include the Anfillo, Koma, Mao of Bambasi, Benshangul, Hamer-Banna, Karo, Tsemai, Arbore, Suri—including Tirma, Chaj, Baale—Nao, Chara, Shabo, Hararge Oromo, Karrayu Oromo and Yajju Oromo.) Among those that are said to be engaged, there are 9 groups where the gospel seems to exert little influence. (These include the Afar, Harari, Somalis, Jimma Oromo, Agua, Qebena, Allaaba, and Siliti.) Among these people groups, it would be good to carefully consider and perhaps reevaluate the methods of approach when presenting the gospel in order to bring a breakthrough among them.

What you have done in Ethiopia has now become a model for other countries in Africa. Tell us a little about how this is developing.

As a regional coordinator for MANI, one of my duties is to oversee the country assessment process in the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti. The vision is to equip nationals to do their own research, and then to use the information to mobilize the churches for action. We start by gathering leaders and experts in each country and forming an assessment group. This group examines the Joshua Project data and updates it with known information. Then we begin to pursue the gaps in our knowledge through field survey. In some cases the data is about ten years old, and much has happened since then.

How can the global Church help with what you are doing?

Partnership is very much welcome and helpful. Outside funding and personnel can have a catalytic impact, though there should be a clear plan involved with this, and a time limit placed on outside assistance. I am personally involved in advocacy and coordination for the Somali, Afar, Beja and Tigre people groups. The church in Africa is becoming more aware, and we need mission-minded leaders to come alongside and help Africans reach their people. This is the focus of MANI: to help Africans reach Africans. That is my call also.f

The traditional approach to this situation is to build tens of thousands of orphanages. Some are certainly trying to do this, among them many notable Hollywood celebrities. But the enormity of the challenge has forced others to rethink the traditional approach. The result may be something which is far superior to the institutional model, and which may actually help bring about change around the world in orphan ministry.

Seeking Cultural Appropriateness

In most African societies, institutional arrangements are the exception rather than the norm. Institutional care is a Western invention which we have created to replace traditional family care. This has resulted in a clash of values and understanding between good-willed Westerners and those we are seeking to assist in the developing world

One of the ironies of much of the world’s orphanages is that most of the children in them are not orphans. For example, recently a missionary came to visit us at the U.S. Center for World Mission and he was telling our staff of his new orphanage which was now caring for fifty children. We asked how many of these children were really orphans—children without parents. A little embarrassed, he replied, “Well, none.” So why call it an orphanage we asked? His reply was as pragmatic as it was revealing, “Because if I don’t, no one will give!”

What typically takes place in institutional models of orphan-care is that the quality of life is far superior to anything on the outside. When that happens, parents are sometimes tempted to give their children up to the orphanage so they may have a better economic chance in life. (Americans will not soon forget the missionaries who were arrested for trying to take “orphans” out of Haiti following the earthquake of 2010. Turns out the orphans had parents, and the missionaries were violating the law!) The problem with the institutional approach is that it gradually begins to isolate young people from their communities, creating a sub-culture with an inevitable identity crisis. Ironically, Americans have done away with orphanages in their own country because of the many problems they create. Yet we unquestionably continue to use this problematic model around the world!

Why might that be? One reason is because we intrinsically think our way of life is best and in order to export it we have to create institutions to do it. In this sense, orphanages are just as much cultural institutions as they are structural. For example, last year a group of Christians came on a short term mission trip to Northern Uganda and visited an orphan community. They were shocked that the only bathroom available to the orphans was a hole in the ground. So they promptly went to work to raise money for toilets. However, they were even more shocked to learn that the orphans wouldn’t sit on the toilet seats after they were installed. Instead, they stood on them. The orphans explained that squatting is much more sanitary than sitting on a seat where everyone else has sat!

Now while this may seem like a small and comical incident, you have to multiply this by a thousand when you import a cultural institution like an orphanage to Africa. Fortunately, the magnitude of the AIDS orphan crisis has outpaced the ability of Westerners to build such institutions, and as a result a healthy partnership is emerging between orphan ministries and affected communities. The traditional way that Africans have cared for orphans is through the extended family network. So why not work with communities and empower them to take care of their own orphans? Such an approach has come to be known as “community-based care,” and this model has successfully cared for many more orphans than the institutional model will ever be able to touch. Even so, a great deal more money continues to be sunk into the institutional approach, which requires land, buildings and full time staff.

Another model which is gaining prominence in Africa is the “child head of household.” In this model an older sibling, usually a teenager, takes care of his or her brothers and sisters, and keeps the family unit intact. Many NGOs are coming alongside this model and adding mentoring and support to bolster it. Why would orphan ministries want to work with this? Studies have shown that keeping siblings together dramatically reduces emotional distress, as opposed to dividing up the children among relatives or institutionalizing them. Such a model can also serve to carry on the family name, as well as maintain family rights and land inheritance.

Africa vs. America

Last year I visited a self-organized association of widows in Uganda, which included around 450 members. At this particular gathering there were around 50 in attendance. During our Q&A time together I asked them the following question, “If you could have one wish come true, what would it be?” The first widow to respond said she wished for a house (a traditional African thatched roof and circular mud hut). Upon further inquiry I learned that no men were left in her family who possessed the capability to build her one. She said her greatest desire was to provide proper shelter for her orphaned grandchildren. Now this got me curious. What was she doing caring for orphans when she herself qualified for convalescent care had she been in America? She explained that because of HIV/AIDS and the war, many widows have been left as the last remaining family member to care for the orphans. My curiosity peaked and I asked the group how many of them were caring for orphans. Most raised their hands. Then it dawned on me—by providing shelter security for the widow—you also shelter the orphan.

Another widow raised her hand so she could be recognized to share her one wish. She wished for vocational training assistance and/or micro-enterprise assistance in order to generate additional income. Imagine that! Here I was in the presence of these dear saints—the poorest of the poor in this community—and the primary thing on their minds was not a free hand-out, but rather a hand up. Their desire for vocational training was for the purpose of sending their orphan children to school, and for creating a self-sustaining family unit.

In this same community was the news that a very famous American evangelist was soon to erect an orphanage nearby. I visited the proposed site. It was huge, and knowing what I know about similar types of projects, this one was going to be lavish, sparing no expense. It would have all the amenities and comforts of a Western vacation resort, but exclusively for children. And this is the dilemma. What will this widow grandmother do—struggle to keep what remains of her family intact or release her grandchildren to an institution? Most likely, she will end up doing the latter, along with the others in the community. Unfortunately, at that moment, her grandchildren will be truly orphaned in every sense of the word—from their family, culture and community.

Some Friendly Advice

As more and more churches and individuals begin to get directly involved in orphan-care around the world, it will become increasingly important to learn from those who have gone before us. Seek out good counsel and do your homework. Don’t be tempted by fame or adulation for saving the poor or the world—that is deception. Be willing to put your pride aside and consider the time-tested, proven methods of others. If you don’t know where to begin, two ministries with a proven track-record are World Vision and the Firelight Foundation. No one organization has been caring for children at risk longer, or has invested more resources in Africa towards this cause, than World Vision. Additionally, no one organization is better recognized for their support of entrepreneurial community-based organizations (CBO) than Firelight Foundation. Of course, there are many other good organizations, but this is a good place to start. Initiate the conversation, read their material, consider partnering with them—and build on what you learn. f

The Nigerian Church welcomed and hosted participants in this second MANI consultation, following on from the African Millennial Consultation in Jerusalem (2001) and the first MANI Continental Consultation in Nairobi (2006). Through worship, devotions, drama, testimonies, presentations, group meetings and informal conversations, they explored the blessings, challenges and opportunities in mission facing the African church.

About 525 participants from 45 African countries were joined by 89 global delegates. Most of the presentations were in English or French, but there were delegations from Portuguese, Spanish, Amharic and Arabic speaking countries as well.

The Movement for African National Initiatives (MANI)

As far back as 1974, the Ghana Evangelization Commission started a thorough survey of their country with the goal of establishing a nationwide vision for comprehensive “saturation church planting.” Other countries like Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and Kenya followed with similar efforts. In the 1990s, the AD 2000 Movement fanned the flames of emerging national mission movements. By the year 2000, African national initiatives were becoming the norm throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Niyi Gbade, representing FinTask Nigeria, told how their ’87 survey revealed 520 people groups in Nigeria. By the year 2000, 400 of those peoples were adopted by 94 denominations. Today 140 of those people groups are engaged with ongoing evangelism and church planting efforts. The many case studies and reports showed that national initiatives follow a common and logical sequence: vision > research > mobilization > training > sending > church planting.

It became obvious by the end of the second day that while the African Church faces many issues and challenges, they have been leaders in strategic research for nearly three decades. The Country Assessment Process, which is verifying and updating the Joshua Project list of peoples on a country-by-country basis, puts Africa at the forefront in terms of a comprehensive, continent-wide assessment of the task in term of peoples (see www. joshuaproject.net). Dan Scribner of Joshua Project told Willie Botha of South Africa, who is coordinating the Country Assessment Process, “I know of no other attempt to coordinate this type of survey for a whole continent.”

According to Botha, the current total for Africa is 3,768 people groups, 996 of which remain unreached. The country and regional breakout sessions discussed either how to finish the assessment process or how to work in partnership to act on the information already before them.

Global Partnerships

The spirit of the MANI movement is one of healthy partnership and mutual respect. The most notable was the time spent every evening honoring those who had made a significant impact on the growth of the Church in Africa. This included representatives of agencies with a long history in Africa like AIM, SIM, etc. It also included honoring those who had grown up as missionary children in Africa and had chosen to stay and serve throughout their adult lives. Also recognized were representatives of newer agencies like OC Int’l, Wycliffe, and the USCWM’s Joshua Project that have partnered with the national mission movements in ways that have been appreciated.

One of the topics that is unavoidable in any discussion of international partnerships is that of dependency. Foreign funding has both the power to achieve shared goals or diminish dignity and weaken local initiative. Instead of focusing on the problems caused by dependency, delegates were reminded how much God had blessed the African continent. In order to play a greater role in world evangelization, they were challenged to commit to the biblical ideals of generosity and stewardship. 

Casting Mission Vision Within and Beyond

The challenge of increasingly aggressive forms of Islam in Africa was mentioned frequently. This is particularly a concern to the countries that straddle the contested belt between the Muslim-dominated North and the Christian-dominated South. It is this contested middle belt that contains the majority of the remaining least reached peoples, be they animistic or Muslim. (See map)

Because of the dominance of Christianity in the southern half of Africa, the catchphrase for casting vision is not surprisingly, “Go North!” The challenge Sub-Saharan Africans see when they look to the North is not only the Arab countries of North Africa, they see beyond the Mediterranean to a post-Christian Europe. Both of these contexts are quite different culturally from the “heart of Africa.” If Africans are going to be effective in evangelism and church planting as they send to the North, they will certainly have to learn how to do things differently from the methods they have used closer to home. But if the most important ingredient in opening the eyes of the lost is seeing the faith lived out in good soil of lives filled with His Spirit, Africa has a lot to offer.

Africa’s Place in Mission History

Only three of the seven continents can reflect on their place in biblical history and the history of the church before the colonial era. The devotional messages were filled with insights about Africa’s place in the great story of the spread of biblical faith. Those educated only in a Western view of Church history have much to learn about the faith present on the African continent for more than two thousand years, particularly in the Horn of Africa.

The whole idea of unreached peoples may be falling out of vogue in many countries in the West, but it is alive and well in Africa, and for good reason. Ask someone in the U.S.A. what “people” they belong to and you will almost certainly get a blank stare. Ask most Africans, and they will name their mother tongue or tribe without hesitation. The vision of reaching every tribe, tongue, people and nation is a natural concept for Africans, and their commitment to the biblical mandate to “make disciples of all nations” is exemplary. The African “nations” are playing a greater role in God’s plan for “all nations” than ever before.f

To read the official summary of MANI 2011, download the MANI 2011 Declaration at www.maniafrica.com.

So, why does Africa remain the world’s poorest and most broken continent in the world? Based on per capita gross domestic product, the world’s 10 poorest countries are in Africa.⁴ The United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) reveals that 21 of the 25 lowest developed countries are in Africa.⁵ As a rough estimate of the continent’s educational standing, the latest measurements reveal that 14 of the 15 countries with the lowest literacy rates are also in Africa.⁶ While it is difficult to measure a country’s moral standing, the corruption perception index (CPI) attempts to statistically rank countries by their perceived levels of corruption as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys. According to their 2010 results, 13 of the world’s 25 most perceived corrupt nations are found in Africa.⁷

There has been extensive research and agreement that pouring financial aid into Africa as an approach to improve the impoverished nature of the continent is in fact having the opposite effect and is actually engendering a harmful, growth-stunting, state of dependence on international aid.^{8, 9} So, what is the answer?

From the political perspective, the solution to Africa’s development plight, corruption and poverty is believed to be through education, specifically higher education.¹⁰ The need here is great. According to The World Bank, “During the past decade, Africa has experienced the fastest increase in tertiary enrollment in the world, far outstripping economic growth and the capacity of government financing to keep pace.”¹¹ Ex-president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, recently gave a speech calling for advances in higher education to address Africa’s desperate need. He exclaimed, “The regenerated African university must be the principal driver of that intellectual awakening, which awakening will empower the peoples of Africa to remake our societies and our continent.”¹²

Recovering a Biblical Worldview

Formulating a holistic, transformative, Christian higher education that fully acknowledges the preeminent need for the Holy Spirit’s work of redemption in Christ can be aided by an intimate understanding of the contextual worldviews in which such an educational environment will exist. As with any generalized worldview, the African worldview is exceedingly complex. It may encompass African traditional religious and colonial influences combined with Western, modern and postmodern influences. The African worldview also incorporates a variety of syncretistic “christian” influences that also require consideration.

Arthur Holmes uses the concept of gnostic dualism¹⁵ to describe what some African theologians have pointed out as a misconception in the way many Western missionaries have presented the Gospel in the African context. For example, in the words of Professor Stuart Fowler of Potchefstroom (now North-West) University in South Africa, “The most disastrous weakness of all the proclamation of the Gospel in Africa was the secularisation of public life and the parallel privatisation of religious faith… . That so many Christians have been persuaded to accept this dualism as natural, right and proper must be one of the greatest success stories in the never ending campaign of the father of lies to blunt the edge of the witness of the Gospel in this world.”¹⁶ This destructive influence is echoed by Professor Bennie J. van der Walt, who states that,

While many African Christians still look for the enemy outside themselves in, for instance, witchcraft, demons and other religions, a secular worldview has infiltrated deep into their hearts and lives. Added to this is a second irony, namely that this secular worldview did not originate from outside Christianity. It slowly developed from inside Christianity itself, being the direct result of a dualistic Christian worldview in which the “natural” realm was separated from the influence of the “sacred” realm. Secularism’s influence has become so pervasive on our continent that we don’t even recognize it.¹⁷

This dualism is set in contrast to the traditional African religious perspective where, “Nature, man and the spirit world constitute one fluid coherent unit.”¹⁸

African theologian Dr. Van der Poll summarizes well the result of this dualism:

Because the Gospel was not brought to the people as a new totally encompassing life view, which would take the place of an equally comprehensive traditional life view, the deepest core of the African culture remains untouched… . The convert in Africa did not see the Gospel as sufficient for his whole life and especially for the deepest issues of life. For that reason, we find the phenomenon across Africa today that Christians in time of existential needs and crises (such as danger, illness and death) fall back on their traditional beliefs and life views. It is precisely an area where the Gospel should have most relevance, yet the Gospel does not mean much in practical terms for the African.¹⁹

Considering aspects of all of these influences, the collage of such an African worldview must be set in light of a Biblical worldview to inform and guide an approach to education which might confront false, depraved thinking with truth and divine thinking. If such worldview influences and Western secularized aid and involvement in conforming Africa’s future direction are to be discerned, there must be a standard by which such influences can be interpreted. The attainment of such a standard is one valuable outcome of a higher education shaped by a Biblical worldview. African Christian University seeks to formulate such a presuppositional Christian education that fully embraces dependence on God’s grace through Christ in the transformation of the African mind to the glory of the Creator with an indigenous sensitivity, maintaining African distinctives for the betterment of God’s kingdom. 

A Proposed Vehicle through Christian Higher Education

The holistic nature of African culture, especially at this time of declared African Renaissance,²² much like the European Renaissance of the 15th-16th centuries, offers fertile ground for the inauguration of an African Christian Reformation as described by Professor B. J. van der Walt, “We cannot ignore the fact that perhaps the dominant type of Christianity on our continent is of an escapist and pietist nature. … without any relevance to the burning issues of Africa. However, if we want a new Africa, we need a new type of Christianity…. Our eyes have to be opened, our vision broadened, we have to know how to serve God in every part of our existence.” [emphasis by B. J. van der Walt]²³

Based on these objectives, the presuppositional, African Christian University will include the following:

(1) In a preparatory year, students, churched and unchurched, interact with the full narrative of God’s plan for man’s redemption in Christ from the whole Scripture. The Gospel message is reinforced through preparatory work in communications and critical thinking to assure student preparation for the rigors of undergraduate-level coursework. Discipleship begins through a student labor program where existing worldviews are routinely confronted through practical application of God’s Word to daily living in relationships, hardships and successes, thoroughly exposing students to a Biblical worldview.

(2) Undergraduate courses are composed to aid maturation in the understanding and handling of the word of righteousness nurtured through biblical studies and theological preparation. Biblical discernment is constantly practiced through the study and critique of classical through contemporary literature across all disciplines of the humanities and sciences to sharpen the student’s discernment between good and evil, while developing their skills in the classical trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric.

(3) A student labor program incorporating all aspects of industrial arts, trades, crafts, businesses, technology and agriculture not only develops a self-sufficient, financially viable institute while training students in multiple life-skills, but more importantly, is the vehicle through which discipleship and mentoring can most effectively occur. It is here that renewal of the mind and moral transformation to Biblical standards is practiced. The discipler demonstrates living out faith for the student in practical application to one’s whole life through God-glorifying labor.

(4) All aspects of education will focus on benevolent application to address existing challenges in Africa. From service programs to student-team thesis projects, every student applies their talents and learning to group projects that facilitate the demonstration of Christ’s love in concern for the needs of others—eternal, firstly, and temporal, correspondingly. Such projects afford opportunity for an honor’s degree awarded to student-team benevolence projects considered worthy to seed through incorporation of necessary outside support structures, allowing students to initiate new approaches to meeting existing challenges in the African context.

The entire purpose of ACU is securing the Gospel as the foundation of every aspect of student learning and development. The re-uniting of intellectual labor along with the moral impact of experiencing the dignity and beauty of “intelligent labor,”²⁴ into a higher education environment is anticipated to uniquely address African challenges through the outreaching, benevolent love of our heavenly Father working through Christ in His ambassadors.

Conclusions

This represents the purpose and vision of African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia. The securing authority and reliance upon the guiding Word of God by the Reformed Baptist Church Association of Zambia is tasked to assure that the university maintains the intended course in serving Christ through the church in expanding the kingdom with servants dedicated to glorifying God with their whole lives offered to Him as living sacrifices. We trust that God may utilize such an institute to prepare ambassadors of Christ that can serve in their local churches and occupy positions at all levels throughout Africa for the proclamation of the gospel through their lives in both word and deed. African Christian University seeks to impart the life-transforming wisdom proclaimed by John Calvin in the opening page of his Institutes of the Christian Religion, “True and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” May such knowledge reveal our desperate need for redemption, and exalt God’s gracious response in His provision through His Son, Jesus Christ. May such understanding provide the basis for a true transformation of Africa to the glory of God alone. f

References and the entirety of this article can be found online at www.missionfrontiers.org. For more information on this project go to
www.acu-zambia.com

However, there is a story within the story, a story of trial and error as a new kind of partnership is in the process of being forged, a partnership in which the partners are striving to honor diversity and wrestling with the reality of globalization and what appropriate models of leadership can look like that will enable the church to fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. It is the unfolding story of the integration of national aspiration using cultural appropriateness calibrated by the biblical mandate of being the Body of Christ where every member needs the other.

How It Started

In 2004 President Kagame invited Pastor Rick Warren to implement his newly-announced P.E.A.C.E. Plan (Planting Churches that Promote Reconciliation, Equip Servant Leaders, Assist the Poor, Care For the Sick, and Educate the Next Generation) in Rwanda. The vision undergirding the PEACE Plan is the mobilization of churches everywhere (“ordinary people, empowered by God’s Spirit, doing what Jesus did, together, wherever they are”) to address the Global Giants of spiritual emptiness, self-serving leadership, poverty, disease and illiteracy/ignorance (see Figure 2).

Each component of PEACE is distinct and works with the others as a “wholistic” unit. As the expression of Christ and the world’s largest distribution network, the ideal is that local churches globally will provide the leadership and ownership of all PEACEworks (a designation we use to identify the uniqueness of the integrated projects that are emerging) carried out to create sustainable and reproducible physical and spiritual community transformation. The church, and pastors in particular, must become convicted of the biblical imperative to reach out in word and deed to everyone in the community without discrimination. They do it not because someone is paying them, but because of their own conviction that this is what God wants and for the fulfillment it provides to them as owners of the solutions rather than as only implementers of someone else’s ideas. It is the local church, not outside entities that reflect God’s glory. It is the local church that is seen as bringing the tangible expression of God’s love, forgiveness and hope.

Therefore from the beginning, Warren’s vision for PEACE called for local churches in Rwanda to lead in unity. The first years of Saddleback’s involvement in Rwanda were spent investing time in facilitating the creation of a Steering Committee (SC) representing the more than eighty Christian denominations in Rwanda.

Through trial and error a three-level approach (Figure 1) emerged as a possible framework for how PEACE could be implemented. Figure 1 was designed by my colleague Mike Contantz primarily to educate enthusiastic short-termers, Saddleback Valley Community Church (SVCC) members, with rich professional backgrounds and newly awakened to the needs of the Global South who were preparing to go on short term mission trips. It was an effort to educate them as to the place of outside resources and their application in a developmental approach that would be sustainable and would help the poor rather than hurt them (Corbett and Fikkert 2009). The various blocks were filled in with suggested tasks and activities which the Steering Committee found helpful as they continued to position themselves to lead with implementation of the PEACE Plan in Rwanda, rather than to simply be passive recipients of the goodwill of donors in the Global North.

Directly and indirectly we constantly wrestled with the issues of power and influence in the delicate context of ethnicity. Engel and Dyrness accurately and provocatively note the heart of this challenge:

While the modern development of missions was associated with centers of power and influence, today those places are not important centers of Christianity, and the most vital Christian communities are found in areas of limited political and economic power. What this means, in no uncertain terms, is that past practices cannot continue to be the model for the future of the missions. Our dilemma then can be put in these terms: while our mission structures and attitudes have been formed by a particular historical and cultural situation, missions must now be carried out in a wholly different situation. Here is where our reflection . . . on Jesus’ instructions and practice of the early church takes on renewed importance. (2000, 47-48)

What they do not address sufficiently in this otherwise excellent book is the role of ethnicity as the church in North America seeks to play a more active role in global missions in this age of post-post modernity. I believe churches will not only severely limit their effectiveness in the 21st century but also run the risk of engaging in partnerships that are not based on biblical principles unless they are willing to adjust to the challenges of the realities of post-post modernity. That is why we have been seeking unity built on diversity, and globalism built on localism (Hiebert 2003, 2).

Glocalism demands that we seek truth together and come as equals to the table of negotiation. More and more we have to learn how to share the gospel and resources with others so they can be empowered to make their own decisions in their situations. The periphery and center of missions are becoming interchangeable (2003, 2) and we have been committed to seek new ways of partnering in mission outreach.

Two years ago, Archbishop Kolini of the Anglican Church in Rwanda, elected as the chairman of the SC by his peers, commented that working with SVCC is indeed a new experience for them. Not only do they feel empowered but he also said that if SVCC would leave Rwanda it would still have accomplished its purpose. He noted that this was because for the first time in the history of Rwanda, all the denominations were working together, not only in various evangelical sub-groups but truly as the Body of Christ. They had never convened in this fashion and were growing in their appreciation for one another as fellow servants of Christ in spite of some doctrinal differences.

How PEACE Unfolded:
“Church-Based” and “Church-Owned” Defined

It is important to define church-based and church-owned and the distinction I make between working with the church and through it. They are fundamentally different approaches and strategies with proverbial “continental divide” outcomes.

Through implementing community development and particularly Community Health Evangelism programs globally, it occurred to me that most programs that are faith-based are also only church-based. Most of the times an individual or organization in the Global North will develop a ministry plan and then shop for a partner in the Global South with whom to execute the plan. The Global North partner will convene some church leaders, or simply approach a local church and explain to them the program, asking if they could do it “in their church.” Inevitably the answer would be “Yes”; the recipients anticipating that this program will come with an influx of funds. Their belief is rewarded when the “donor partner” funds positions to make the program functional, but ultimately resulting in very little if any local ownership. Sadly, after an average of two years, grants usually run out or donor fatigue sets in and the program closes down, sometimes leaving the intended beneficiaries in the church and community in a more precarious situation than before the program was based in their church. The main reason this happens is the lack of local ownership. It is simply an outside program “based” in a church with very little or no chance for sustainability and possible scalability.

Church-owned, however, refers to a process in which local pastors and leaders catch and own the vision of what God wants to do through them and their churches. They grow in their own convictions of the biblical imperatives of holistic ministry. For example, they may come to understand God’s heart for orphans in a new way, and determine that they will address it—with or without any outside help. They initiate interventions in which their churches play the primary role. Outsiders may or may not join them in their efforts. The sustainability that is built into such an approach is obvious as well as the possible scalability depending on the availability of resources.

Likewise, working through the church implies making it a priority to mobilize the local church leadership and membership for the tasks they have identified as well as working through existing distribution channels and with the local church personnel. Not following this route could be perceived as disrespect. For the Church to move forward in partnerships to the extent that God intended it, prejudice has to be faced for what it is. As we embrace a post-post-modernist approach we have to embrace ethnic equality as God-given and be open to hear God speak through voices other than those of the Global North. Saayman gives us a very harsh warning:

Personally I think that the experience of slavery and colonialism, with everything this implied in terms of brutal dehumanization and degradation is still at work today in Africans’ perception of not being taken seriously as mature Christians. Yet it also cannot be denied that African theologians and church leaders are indeed not taken seriously as they deserve by first world theologians and church leaders (2003, 64).

Working through the church is an expression of respect and validation of our Global South partners’ ability to lead.

In light of this, our primary concern as we started this initiative was to make every effort to work through and not only with the church. It had to be a process and ministry that was owned by the church, since without local ownership sustainability, scalability and reproducibility would be impossible. To accomplish this I started with a two day “Vision Seminar” for pastors in one sector (in Rwanda, there are five provinces, every province is divided into districts and every district is divided into sectors) in the Western province, Bwishyura, with a population of around 30,000 people.

During the two-day Vision Seminar I dealt with worldview, the biblical imperative of integrating the Great Commission and the Great Commandment, the difference between relief and development and what church-owned means.

Through the use of participatory learning activities and Participatory Rural appraisal techniques (Bradshaw 2002, 240), the pastors were exposed to the entire Initiative and what it would mean to be implementers and owners of PEACE. By the end of day two and after some frank discussions regarding the fact that it will have to be a volunteer church-led movement, the pastors were given a two week window to decide whether or not they wanted their churches to participate. We wanted them to “consider the cost of the tower.” If they chose to participate, each pastor could send two leaders from their respective churches to be trained through a six-month process. All thirteen churches opted to participate and were represented by two leaders from their churches.

The training process has profoundly impacted the community. Training of Trainers (TOT) sessions I, II and III were conducted, with appropriate field work in between. Healthy home standards were adopted, seed projects completed, churches worked together and the government asked if their community health workers could also be included in future trainings. Upon completion of the TOT III, the pastors and the trainers from their churches worked together to select 225 church members to be trained by the newly graduated trainers to serve their church and community. The training of the Community PEACE Volunteers went very well (now Rwandese training Rwandese) and soon each one was assigned 7 homes to visit twice a month with a physical health lesson (as agreed upon by the local health officials) and a Bible lesson.

The program grew rapidly. By the end of 2010, 124 Community PEACE Trainers (CPTs) in 5 sectors had trained around 2,400 church members as Community PEACE Volunteers (CPVs). The CPTs became the chief implementers and facilitators for the visiting short-term teams from SVCC and partner churches that joined the effort—church-to-church ministry in action. Based on the information gathering exercises and various participatory activities, the church leaders identified assets and needs and incorporated outside resources appropriately, keenly aware of the challenges unique to the African context (Calderisi 2006, 35-56).

These pedagogical principles must be adhered to in order to move a ministry from being church-based to being church-owned. Freire argues that dialogue is more important than curricula (2000, 122), or (as I see it) agendas. He argues against the common “banking” educational model, which is that education is simply depositing information in the minds of people without application (2000, 71-74). In this model, “Education becomes the act of depositing in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor” (Freire 2000, 72). This model presupposes that the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing; the teacher chooses the program content and the students adapt to it; and the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the students are the objects (Freire 2000, 73). He argues for a problem-posing educational model which “breaks the vertical patterns characteristic of banking education” (2000, 80).

Kraft (2003, 402) and others (Taylor and Taylor 2002, 63) point out that the refusal of groups to accept “guided change” is often the fault of the sponsoring organization rather than the recipients. It is critical and non-negotiable that the local community must be fully engaged if we hope to effect lasting change. Only when the local community grows in confidence of their own abilities and they decide what their real problems are will real change take place. This is the critical turning point for a ministry to move from being a church-based ministry to a church-owned ministry. In this the educator is a “midwife” rather than “father” (since that is “bastardization”). We too had to adopt the role of midwife, a position strongly promoted and endorsed by Rick Warren and now incrementally adopted and implemented under the skillful guidance of the executive direct for Global PEACE, Mark Affleck.

Concluding Remarks

The next chapter of this story is still being written. We are identifying the barriers to change that have to be overcome in order for us to function in partnership as the Body of Christ where eye, hand, head and feet all realize they need each other (1 Cor. 12:21). Barriers once removed and overcome will make it possible for a governance structure to emerge that is biblically motivated rather than determined by financial wealth, political correctness or cultural appropriateness. Our prayer is that this will be a partnership where “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female because all are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28); one in which Jesus’ prayer “that all of them may be one, Father …so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21) becomes a reality; a partnership that truly empowers all partners and transforms individuals and communities.

Our partnership is slowly moving from the kitchen table to the boardroom table because it is a partnership based on spiritual giftedness and a shared call from God to fulfill the great commission and the great commandment. Strength emanates from the diversity of perspectives we bring. This diversity is embraced as God’s gifting to his Body for the purpose of seeing his Kingdom purposes fulfilled on earth. We are moving from the kitchen table to the boardroom table because we are also sitting around the communion table.

The journey is a slow one, sometimes painful but always rewarding. It is a journey towards honoring diversity while wrestling with the reality of globalization and what appropriate models of partnerships can look like that will enable the church to fulfill the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. It is a journey towards a partnership that integrates national aspiration with cultural appropriateness while calibrated against the biblical mandate of being the Body of Christ where each member needs the other.

It is a journey worth traveling because one day the boardroom table will be replaced by a wedding banquet table and diversity celebrated as voices representing every culture and language will shout, “Hallelujah! For the Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready” (Rev. 19:6-7).f

References for this article can be found online at
www.missionfrontiers.org.

By the end of the century, Africa will climb from its current population of 1 billion people to over 3.6 billion, an increase from 15% of the world’s population to 30%.1 While the rest of the world’s population is slowing down, Africa’s is accelerating. This rapid growth combined with Africa’s current development state has produced a human tragedy on a scale almost impossible to comprehend.

In the last thirty years, over 100 million Africans have died from wars, famine, malnutrition and preventable diseases.2 This ongoing tragedy is compounded by the reality that most of those dying are people who bear the name of Christ. Even more unthinkable is the fact that such tragedy has occurred at the height of Christian power, wealth and influence in the world. But here also is another part of the irony that is Africa. Though billions in aid has been sent from the West, the aid itself is now seen as part of the systemic problem that keeps Africa from moving forward.

Islamic Advance

While all this has been happening to Africa, a quiet but steady invasion has come to the continent—an invasion not of guns or foot soldiers, but of ideas and missionaries. Capitalizing on Africa’s crisis, oil-rich Muslim countries have themselves been pouring massive amounts of money into sub-Saharan Africa—building mosques, establishing schools, and setting up an economic infrastructure for the specific purpose of converting the entire continent to Islam. (The now deposed Libyan leader Gaddafi pledged last year to invest 97 billion dollars in sub-Saharan Africa in order to “free the continent from the West.” 3) There is compelling reason for this interest. The vast majority of Muslim converts in the last thirty years have been black Africans.

In the last century, the percentage of Muslims in sub-Saharan Africa has more than doubled (from 14 to 29 percent). 4 Though this growth has been largely incremental, in a few places it has been dramatic. The nation of Rwanda, which saw 800,000 Christians massacred in 1994, now has over half-a-million Muslim converts from a Christian background. 5 Many of these converts have the same story to tell. They testify how Muslim Hutus and Tutsis protected one another during the crisis. In contrast, many of their fellow Christians were engaged in brutal ethnic-cleansing.

Rwanda is not the only country where Muslims have a powerful story. In South Africa, the stain of apartheid has made for fertile evangelistic soil in a place where the perceived brotherhood of Islam stands in stark contrast to a historically segregated Church. Black South African converts to Islam are estimated to have grown six-fold since the 1990s.6 The Islamic stance against alcohol, immorality, segregation and usury has attracted many who see the religion as holding answers for the holistic problems facing the nation.

In Northern Africa, the battle lines between Islam and Christianity are literally battle lines. The North is almost entirely Muslim and the South is majority Christian. In the middle region known as the Sahel, Muslims and Christians have been clashing for over a century. In Sudan, two million Christians have been killed by the Muslim dominated North, resulting in this year’s referendum to divide the country in two. This unprecedented event has left many wondering if a similar separation may take place in Nigeria, a land where continual clashes between Northern Muslims and Southern Christians have left thousands dead on both sides. 7

In the Ivory Coast, the current civil war is based as much on religious factors, if not more, than political or economic ones. Muslims now have the numbers to install their own president. Though the incumbent Christian president technically lost the election, he refuses to step down in spite of great international pressure. The prospect of Muslims ruling in the Ivory Coast for the first time in its history has many local Christians very concerned. When the Muslim general Idi Amin took over Uganda he intentionally persecuted and weakened the Church, and tens of thousands of Christians were martyred. Generally speaking, controlling the powers of government in Africa has meant those who supported your ascension will prosper, and those who didn’t will suffer.

Today’s Scramble for Africa

The failure of the world to intervene in Rwanda unfortunately didn’t end with Rwanda. The same militias that murdered so many with impunity in their own country took their guns into the heart of Africa. Once again, the world looked on from the sidelines. The result was a civil war that left six million people dead in the Congo—six million Christians, murdered, raped, and starved in almost systematic fashion. Even after the war officially ended, an estimated 45,000 Congolese Christians continued to perish every month, several years later. 8 Today, the country’s rich mineral resources have made it a potent incubator for rebel groups which have exploited the chaos to take control of the nation’s mining industry. While the world has rallied to stop the flow of blood diamonds from Africa, the truth is much of every mineral coming out of the Congo is now suspect.

What this means is very plain, and yet many outside of Africa are slow to get it. Africa’s problems are as much a result of Western tribalism (corporate and national) as they are African. Before we get too carried away in pointing the finger, we should first do so in front of a mirror. Where does Africa get the guns, bullets, land mines and mortars used in these wars? They don’t come from Africa! They come from the very same nations that are benefiting from Africa’s instability. And where do corrupt African politicians put the billions they steal? Right back into the Western coffers from which they came.

Congo has one of the world’s greatest depositories of a mineral called Colton, an essential raw-material used in manufacturing cell phones. Like many industries caught up in Africa’s mineral wars, complicit Western partners often stand to gain when rebels take over a mining region. Without a central government to negotiate and control prices, the “divide and conquer” strategy which colonized the continent is still as profitable today as it was then. Unfortunately, without anyone to stop them, rebels are free to use slave labor to increase their profits. They then use those profits to buy still more weapons and expand their powerbase.

Finding Solutions

With a continual stream of bad news pouring forth from the continent, it is difficult to stay positive amidst growing crisis fatigue. From civil war in Libya to famine in Somalia to one million AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe, the year 2011 was not short on overwhelming humanitarian disasters. If any of the problems Africa routinely faces were to happen in a particular area of the United States, every government agency would be mobilized and a state of emergency declared. Yet at any given time, Africa has multiple “states of emergency” and there is no foreseeable end in the decades ahead.

Even so, what is often missing in our response to Africa is a long-term strategy, the lack of which usually renders our short term aid more problematic than helpful. In 2005, Niger’s president went out on a limb to accuse Western agencies of corruption. Though shocked at the accusation, his point was eventually received as a timely rebuke. From the African perspective, Western NGOs appear quick to jump on a crisis, raise tons of money, take their cut and then dump the rest on the problem, moving on as quickly as they came to the next event. Unfortunately, in their wake, when food aid from outside of Africa pours into a drought-stricken region, it completely alters the economic system. If emergency aid is mishandled, it can put local farmers out of business for good, resulting in a mass-exodus to the cities and increasing Africa’s systemic malnutrition crisis.

Today, there are over 165 million urban slum dwellers in Africa, almost all of which were once farmers. 9 Such a trend means less overall food is being produced, while the number of people without the ability to feed themselves increases. This is the most serious ticking time bomb Africa faces in its near future. Though it gets the least amount of attention in our event-driven press and media, Africa’s greatest long-term need for development is in its agricultural sector. Much of the topsoil in Africa’s farmlands is being lost from overuse, which decreases yields as well as the nutritional value of what is produced. 10 This scenario does not bode well for one of the world’s fastest growing populations. The result is predicted to be increased famines, and crushing inflation throughout the coming decades. In Mauritania, food prices have more than doubled in the last few years. As a result, Mauritania has one of the highest child-mortality rates in the world—the inevitable effect of chronic malnutrition.

So what can outsiders do to help? Though the situation is incredibly complex, the following are a few general recommendations that are beginning to gain consensus:

Recognize that we in the West are part of the problem in Africa. Though we can’t exempt ourselves from being part of the solution, we need to come as servants, not saviors to the African people. Let’s begin by asking what’s needed, and let’s be willing to get out of the way.

Recognize that aid must not come at the expense of long-term development, and we should focus more of our energies and resources on the latter rather than the former.

Recognize that what’s already there is more valuable than what is not. The usefulness of foreign imports should be very carefully studied and monitored for long-term sustainability.

Some of Africa’s most persistent problems are actually very solvable. For example, according to the World Bank, malaria itself costs Africa over 30 billion dollars annually and slows down economic growth by 1.3% a year.11 That means Africa’s GDP would be 30% higher today if malaria had been eradicated in the 1980s. So what keeps this from happening? Malaria used to be widespread in the United States a century ago and so was Tuberculosis. Concerted efforts by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) virtually eradicated these diseases. According to CDC records, malaria affected 30% of the population in the Tennessee River Valley just 60 years ago, resulting in 15,000 cases each year.12 Why are there almost none today? Two simple reasons: more screens and drainage. The mosquitoes are still there, and there are even more people, but malaria is gone.

In many localized places throughout Africa, foreign-initiated screen programs have significantly reduced the number of malaria infestations. While this is a good step forward, such programs have only begun to scratch the surface. So why not consider building screen-making factories in Africa rather than importing the screens? And why not use indigenous raw materials to make them? These are the kind of long-term questions well-intentioned outsiders need to begin asking about every problem they are seeking to tackle. Certainly it takes more work and greater up-front investment, but in the end, placing the means of production in the hands of locals has always been the long-term pathway out of poverty.

Finding God in Africa

According to the Hollywood film Blood Diamond, God apparently left Africa a long time ago. Another recent film on Africa, Tears of the Sun, had its lead make a similar remark. But unlike Hollywood’s depiction of the hopelessness of Africa, the truth is quite the opposite: God is alive and well, and moving everywhere on the continent. Africans are beginning to come together in a spirit of unity that may soon become a model for the whole world, and the Church is leading the way.

If 20th century missionaries did one thing right in Africa, they planted churches—a lot of them. Africa has over 175 million evangelicals and 1.5 million churches.13 Whatever may be its deficiencies, Africa’s churches are thriving and poised for action. Most importantly, they are actually beginning to work together, side by side. Today, Africa is the one region on earth where you can find Evangelicals, Protestants, Catholics, Pentecostals and everyone in between working harmoniously together in multiple networks and projects. Perhaps it takes a real crisis to bring about real unity.

One of the most successful church-led initiatives in Africa today is the Rwandan Peace Plan—the very place where Christianity seemed to fall flat on its face just over a decade ago. Though initiated from the outside, it has become owned by the Rwandan Church. When an American consultant came to investigate the progress of the Peace Plan, he asked the committee of African leaders running it, “What makes this work?” They replied, “Because it’s ours.” Nothing happens in the Peace Plan without the leadership of the indigenous church. When a UN-affiliated delegation learned of the success of the Peace Plan volunteer program, they approached the leaders and asked if they would be willing to reproduce it throughout southern Africa. They had just one condition: leave out the Christian orientation. The Peace Plan declined. “It is the volunteer’s commitment to Jesus that makes this possible!” explained the Rwandan leaders.

Another significant move of God on the continent is MANI (the Movement for African National Initiatives). MANI is an outgrowth of the AD2000 movement in Africa, the only region which continued to build from the momentum stirred up during the 1990s. The goal of MANI is to mobilize and equip the African church for completing the Great Commission in this generation. And they aren’t just thinking about Africa. Some are actually thinking about how to bring the gospel back to Europe. Indeed, the largest Pentecostal church in Europe is now led by a Nigerian, and the congregants are not Africans! They are Ukrainians, many of whom were former drug addicts and criminals. Not only is Europe in the sights of African Christians, but in the sovereignty of God, doors are opening to reach into Asia as well. For various reasons, India has taken an interest in improving the educational system of Africa. The result has been that African Christian students can now be found studying in many universities in India. As you might expect, they aren’t keeping their faith to themselves! They are actually leading Hindu students to Christ through demonstrating the power of Jesus to heal the sick. Fellow students have remarked, “The African God is very powerful!”

Last September, leaders gathered from all over Africa to talk about how to finish the task of reaching the remaining unreached peoples on their continent. The country of Kenya has led the way by becoming the first country to engage all its unreached peoples with national missionary teams. It is very likely that based on the momentum we are seeing in Africa, all of the unreached peoples on the continent will be fully engaged and reached in the next decade. In spite of all they have been through—in spite of wars, plagues, famines, and natural disasters—the gospel of the Kingdom is being preached to every ethne and the finish line is well within view. For the first time in history, this generation of Africans will actually be able to say, “every nation, tribe, people and language” on our continent has been reached. Does this sound familiar? Like something straight out of the Bible! Jesus said it was going to be like this, and if Africa has given the world one thing to remember, it is this—whatever you are going through, as dire as it may seem, God’s purposes will stand. He will accomplish His work, because it’s His work. He will build His Church, and His Church will prevail.f

References and the entirety of this article can be found online at
http://www.missionfrontiers.org For m.ore information, see
http://www.gmdata.info/africa and www.joshuaproject.net/africa.

References

Gillis, Justin. “U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End”, New York Times, May 3, 2011.

This includes an estimated 15 million deaths from war/genocide, 15 million AIDS related deaths, 15 million tuberculosis deaths, 25 million malaria deaths, 15 million deaths from diarrhea/intestinal parasites, and 20 million deaths from famine/malnutrition. Sources: UNICEF, WHO, and AU.

“Libyan Aid and Investment Projects in Africa,” Reuters-Africa, Nov. 24, 2010.

“Islam and Christianity in Sub-Sahara Africa,”
 www.pewresearch.org, April 15, 2010

Emily Wax, “Islam Attracting Many Survivors of Rwanda Genocide,” Washington Post, Sept. 23, 2002.

Nicole Itano, “In South Africa, Many Blacks Convert to Islam,” The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 10, 2002.

“Sectarian Violence in Nigeria Leaves 200 Dead,” Associated Press, March 7, 2010.

Heidi Vogt, “45,000 people dying a month in Congo,” Associated Press, Jan 22, 2008.

United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, www.uneca.org, Water and Urban Environments report, 2006.

“Barren Future for Africa’s Soil,” BBC News, March 30, 2006.

“The World Bank and Malaria in Africa,” http://www.worldbank.org

“Elimination of Malaria in the United States,” www.cdc.gov

Global Mission Database, USCWM Research Dept., http://www.uscwm.info/gmd

Africa is an object lesson and a case study of all the things you should not do by both the global world powers and the Church. The global powers, seeking access to Africa’s vast natural riches and human capital, have sought to control the continent for their own benefit. Colonialism and slavery have resulted. Even after the colonial powers left, there is still fierce competition for Africa’s resources, leading to further bloodshed and corruption. In their attempt to fix what they have broken, the global community has flooded the continent with foreign funds and resources, thereby destroying local markets and creating ongoing dependency, and enriching the corrupt leadership of the various countries. It is a lot for any people to overcome.

The Church Is Part of the Problem

The global Church, on the other hand, has worked very hard to help African peoples with the best of motives but also with many of the worst possible mission strategies. Yes, the mission strategy that one employs does make a huge difference. Missionaries came to Africa with their foreign culture, funds, strategies, and structures that in many cases created dependency and prevented the gospel from becoming truly indigenous to the people of Africa. In general Africans failed to take true ownership of the gospel and the mission to take it to every tribe and tongue of Africa and the world. As David Taylor reports on page 6, one ray of hope is that this is beginning to change.

Our friend, Glenn Schwartz, who writes regularly for us (see p. 28), saw first hand the devastating impact of these poor mission strategies on the people of Africa. He has spent decades teaching the global Church about self-reliance and the dangers of dependency so that the mistakes made in Africa will not be repeated elsewhere. We feature him in each issue because the global Church must learn from its mistakes and employ the most effective strategies for the establishment of self-supporting and self-propagating church-planting movements in every people on earth. Unfortunately, there are still mission organizations that continue to promote the same mission strategies that created dependency in the African church. As a result we see an ongoing need to focus on this subject in each issue of MF.

Proclaiming an Incomplete Gospel

For the gospel to have its full impact in transforming a people and their culture there must be a transformation of each person’s worldview. The Christian faith cannot simply be laid on top of a more foundational worldview. If all we do is get people to “pray the prayer” so they are bound for heaven and get them to go through the motions of following Jesus, then we should not be surprised when there is a lack of transformation in their lives and the surrounding culture.

In general, when the first missionaries came to Africa they did not come with the goal of making the gospel indigenous to the people and applicable to every aspect of life. All they knew was to present the gospel in the way that they had received it along with all the cultural baggage and limitations. Ken Turnbull talks about this problem in his article starting on page 16. He says,

African theologian Dr. Van der Poll summarizes well the result of this dualism:

Because the Gospel was not brought to the people as a new totally encompassing life view, which would take the place of an equally comprehensive traditional life view, the deepest core of the African culture remains untouched … . The convert in Africa did not see the Gospel as sufficient for his whole life and especially for the deepest issues of life. For that reason, we find the phenomenon across Africa today that Christians in time of existential needs and crises (such as danger, illness and death) fall back on their traditional beliefs and life views. It is precisely an area where the Gospel should have most relevance, yet the Gospel does not mean much in practical terms for the African.

Professor B. J. van der Walt states,

We cannot ignore the fact that perhaps the dominant type of Christianity on our continent is of an escapist and pietist nature.  Their Christian faith is something of another world, without any relevance to the burning issues of Africa. However, if we want a new Africa, we need a new type of Christianity.... Our eyes have to be opened, our vision broadened, we have to know how to serve God in every part of our existence.

This points out powerfully that it is not enough just to send missionaries to every tribe and tongue. If we bring an incomplete or culture-bound gospel along with an ineffective model of doing discipleship, then we have failed. Our job is to make disciples who can make disciples, not just to get people saved but to bring every person into a life transforming relationship with Jesus that is able to bring transformation to all of Africa. We must proclaim a gospel where every aspect of life is submitted to the lordship of Jesus.

Hope in the Midst of Darkness

Mistakes have been made, the damage has been done. How should the global Church move forward in helping the African church? We must focus on working with African leaders as servants to develop strategies of ministry with the end result in mind. Our goal should be to see rapidly multiplying Church Planting Movements within every people group in Africa. We know enough now about what God uses to create these Church Planting Movements. We should apply these principles and expect God to bring them about in every people with the resulting personal and societal transformation.

The most encouraging reason for hope in Africa is that a growing number of leaders seem to understand what many around the world do not—that world evangelization is impossible without reaching all of the unreached people groups. David Taylor points to this on page 6,

The country of Kenya has led the way by becoming the first country to engage all of its unreached peoples with national missionary teams. It is very likely that based on the momentum we are seeing in Africa, all of the unreached peoples on the continent will be fully engaged and reached in the next decade. In spite of all they have been through—in spite of wars, plagues, famines, and natural disasters—the gospel of the Kingdom is being preached to every ethne and the finish line is well within view. For the first time in history, this generation of Africans will actually be able to say, “every nation, tribe, people and language” on our continent has been reached.

In the midst of all of the suffering Africa has gone through God is bringing about a victory in mission strategy that bodes well for the future of Africa.

Spreading the Vision

Thank you to all of you who have sent in gifts to help support the work of Mission Frontiers in spreading the vision of reaching the unreached peoples to Christian leaders all over the world. We have been asking our readers to send in gifts of $180 to help us send MF to 30 Christian leaders around the world. Our goal is to raise 1,500 of these gifts by the end of the year. We have now received gifts of various amounts equaling 283 of these gifts. This is an increase of 45 since our last issue. We also appreciate larger and smaller donations which will also count towards our goal.

Please consider sending a gift to help us keep MF going out to Christian leaders around the world. Just go to www.missionfrontiers.org/donate. You can also give through Paypal.

Also please remember to send back your reply card located on the back cover. We do not want you to miss the next issue of MF.f

I can’t think of another evangelical theologian who would come close to Stott, both in the depth of his diligent scholarship and in the breadth of his unifying work in the global Body of Christ, especially through the Lausanne Movement.

I first heard him at Urbana in 1976 while I was still in college. That is where he delivered his message “The Living God is a Missionary God,” which is the lead article for Lesson 1 of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course. Later, I spoke with him briefly during a meal at Billy Graham’s Amsterdam 2000 gathering. Almost an octogenarian by then, Stott moved slowly but preached powerfully; the contrast was startling.

It is probable that his involvement in guiding and crafting the masterful Lausanne Covenant (1974) will be the most enduring single thing for which he will be remembered. As a part of the Statement Working Group at Lausanne’s Cape Town 2010 meeting, I can say that we knew well that we were not trying to replace that document—which is amazingly timeless in many respects.

I wonder what evangelical leaders would write today? Could a wide-ranging group of committed believers agree on something important? Certainly, the Cape Town Commitment suggests that such agreement is possible (http://www.lausanne.org/ctcommitment).

But I am more and more convinced that, at another level, we must disagree—in love—for God to use our differences to further display His glory. In theory, we know God works through different approaches and giftings. In practice, however, we often we think we know what His preferred approach is for us—and for everyone else!

Since we aren’t going to agree on every issue, we need to reemphasize the core: Repentance and salvation by grace through faith in Christ. Yet when I look at such a phrase, I am tempted to add more words in order to clarify its meaning still further, additional ideas that, according to my understanding of the gospel, are an integral part of the gospel. I include things like, “based on His death on the cross,” “by the power of the Holy Spirit,” and “resulting in fruit that remains.”

What else do we think the unreached need to do or believe?

It’s instructive to see how historian Mark Noll describes 18th-century evangelicalism, looking back on what he calls the period of “rising,” when godly men like Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys led the charge. He summarizes the core of evangelicalism as follows:

• justification by faith, not human works;

• the sole sufficiency of Christ for salvation, without the need for human mediation;

• Christ’s death on the cross as a once-for-all act, not something that needs to be repeated (as in the Catholic mass);

• belief in the final authority of the Bible, which every believer should read, rather than in the Bible as a means, which the priest interprets;

• the priesthood of all believers, rather than inappropriate reliance on a class of priests ordained by the church.¹

Noll’s summary reflects the cultural, religious, and historical setting in which Edwards and the others ministered. I wonder what future historians, writing about today’s evangelicals, would place on our list as we reach out in mission? Will they make a list of things we require people to stop doing before they can follow Christ? Or a list of things we have added to the basic requirement of faith. If so, that would reflect a dangerous loading on of works from our western Christian sub-culture.

Let’s be very careful not to add to the basic “requirement” of faith or we could be in danger of loading on the works of our current western Christian sub-culture to the gospel.

It was Martin Luther’s stand on Sola fide—faith alone—that began the Protestant Reformation. As we strategize to reach the unreached, we must clarify what “faith alone” means at some level. Certainly we include the works for which God has created us (Eph. 2:10).

So, echoing Stott’s words in section #3 of the Lausanne Covenant, we: “…proclaim God’s love for a world of sinners and … invite everyone to respond to Him as Saviour and Lord in the wholehearted personal commitment of repentance and faith.”

Luke, the writer of Acts, describes the day that 3,000 people joined the 120 believers (Acts 2:41). Money was not mentioned as the “deal maker.” Actually, money did not enter the equation at all. What or who did play a role in this people movement for Christ? The Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit empowered Peter to speak the gospel with boldness and clarity. The Holy Spirit moved upon people’s hearts with conviction. The Holy Spirit, using Peter, did this all without money.

As affluent North American churches and missionaries, we have communicated through words and actions that we cannot fellowship as a community of disciples (called the church) without an infusion of money. In the book of Acts, we see that the community of believers “had church” and God added to their number 3,000. Did money enter the equation this time? It sure did, but not through foreign donations unleashed on a local community of believers.  Rather, the local believers shared selflessly with one another. If outsiders had donated money to help advance the local church in the Book of Acts, they could have crushed the Holy Spirit-generated giving of the local believers.

As we read on in Acts, the community of believers grew from 3,000 to 5,000. Was money the “bottom line this time?” As a matter of fact, Peter exclaimed to the beggar at the Gate of Beautiful: “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (Acts 3:6). Money did not add 2,000 more disciples. A miracle of kindness from God to a beggar and the disciples’ proclamation, along with suffering and obedience led to the incredible growth of this movement for Christ. God, through the disciples, did this all without money.

The community of believers’ first written prayer was not at all about money. They did not say, “We cannot continue to spread the gospel without money.  God, extend your hand and provide us with ample resources.” Rather, they prayed for boldness and that God would perform signs and wonders through the name of Jesus.

As I read story after story in the book of Acts, money does not play a role in the conversion of masses of people. The apostle Paul indeed received occasional support from churches that he planted, yet he worked to support himself. Paul and his companions had to pay for lodging, passage and food along their missionary journeys.  The book that Luke authored through the Holy Spirit is not about the “acts of money,” but the Acts of the Holy Spirit through the apostles.

Have we allowed material and economic abundance to be the hallmark of our mode of operation rather than (or more than) the acts of the Holy Spirit and our humility, boldness, suffering and obedience? Have I found it easier to minister out of affluence in order to gain an audience rather than go through the grueling work of building relationships? Have I sidestepped suffering, making my resources too valued to those with whom I share the gospel? While serving as a missionary in the Buddhist nation of Cambodia I observed that we missionaries were often tolerated for the money we brought, more than the message we had to share. Does the easy access to the money missionaries may bring cheapen the meaning of the gospel, resulting in shallow conversions and half-hearted disciples?

Glenn Schwartz, the author of When Charity Destroys Dignity, once received an email from a missionary in Zambia. The missionary voiced concern that his mission may have been viewed by the local culture as Mission Jireh (the mission, our provider), rather than Jehovah Jireh (God, our Provider).  If so, have we not cheated those we seek to serve?

Throughout my missionary experience I have seen the harm money can do to the Church of Jesus. Like the camel herder, many people have been led to believe that Christianity requires lots of “stuff” and lots of money.  Such an expensive form of Christianity is dependent on the affluence of outside cultural groups.   Let’s redouble our efforts to make the Good News all about the power of the Holy Spirit to transform lives.  Remember, Christ himself said – about desiring the good life – “But seek first his [the Father’s] Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”  Transformation of the heart comes first.f 

Jean Johnson served as a missionary with Assembly of God World Missions in Cambodia for 16 years.  She is currently a senior consultant on issues of sustainability with World Mission Associates.  She lives and works out of Minneapolis, MN.  This month she presents this article as a guest columnist on behalf of Glenn Schwartz.  She can be reached by e-mail at jeanjohnson@wmausa.org.

I recall that some Sawi tribesmen who worked for me or brought me food, firewood, etc. wanted to be paid with colorful beads or tobacco. Unlike Roman Catholic priests in the region, I declined to be a bead or tobacco merchant on the grounds that steel tools, salt, fishing line, fishhooks, soap, nails, etc., would benefit the people much more than baubles and smoke (though these latter items of course would have cost me much less, especially in terms of air freight).

I dispensed medicine free of charge to the ill but strengthened the remarkable work ethic the people already had by requiring them to work for everything else they wanted from me. Learning that a Roman Catholic priest in another area was reputedly doling out goods free of charge to anyone who asked, three Sawi men asked me, “Can he do that because he is richer than you, or is it just that he loves the people of that other tribe more than you love us?”

I replied, “If indeed he gives them things other than medicine free of charge it is because he sees them as children and himself as their father. If I saw you as children I could do the same. But I know you are men just as much as I am a man; that is why I require you to work for the things you need.” They were quite pleased to know I regarded them as men, so that was the end of that.

Some missionaries teach the Ten Commandments by rote but fail to exemplify lessons such as these, lessons so basic to helping redeemed people contribute to the edification of the overall society. I taught key Sawi men how to teach the gospel, yes, but I also taught them to own and operate their own retail stores and tithe their weekly profits.

Exploitive outside merchants are loathe to come in and compete with reasonable markups set by honest local merchants, so I deflected considerable predatory encroachment by teaching Sawi Christians how to be merchants.

If Christianity in some regions is “a mile wide and one inch deep,” I suspect missionary failure in matters of common sense teaching of ethics is partly responsible. I also believe that failure to link the gospel effectively with redemptive analogies may leave converts with a weaker appreciation for the marvel of God’s grace.

In our work, medicine, hygiene, economics, introducing new crops and education progressed hand-in-hand with the work of church planting. This was largely true of all the ministries carried out by evangelicals in what was then Irian Jaya, now Papua. Eventually, though, if the missionary stays too long, he generates a dependency syndrome which hinders both the growth of the church and the social and economic development of the society. People have to be given space and time to apply what they have been taught, thereby claiming ownership of it by fitting it to their own culture and environment.

When people visit the Waodani, they look around and think, “Wow, these people have nothing!” People from the outside think the Waodani are poor because they don’t have three-bedroom ramblers with wall-to-wall carpeting, double garages so full of stuff the cars never fit and, I guess, because they never take vacations to exotic places like Disney World.

So, on speaking tours I began describing these jungle dwellers as “People who all have water front property, multiple houses and spend most of their time hunting and fishing.” The most common response I have gotten when describing the Waodani this way is, “Wow, would I ever like to live like that!” I agree completely.

Mincaye, on the other hand, sees the way we “Outsiders” live here in “The foreigner’s place” and makes comments like; “Why, never sitting, do the foreigners run around and around in their car things speaking to each other on their talking things but never hunting or fishing or telling stories to each other?” After traveling and speaking with me in the U.S., Canada and Europe, Mincaye is always greatly relieved to get back to his thatched roof hut, with the open fire wafting smoke in his face, eating whatever happens to be in the cooking pot. He sits around in jungle-stained clothes and the look on his face tells it all. He would not live in North America for all the green paper and little pieces of plastic he could carry. He doesn’t understand how money and credit cards work but he knows foreigners can’t leave home without them.

Mincaye is a rich man. Or, he was until someone taught him to drive a golf cart and he started thinking how much fun it would be to take his 57 grandchildren for rides up and down the Nemompade airstrip where we used to live together. Now he wants his own golf cart (which means he would need a charging station, and a solar panel farm to power it, and a shop to maintain it, and spare parts to keep it running….)

From my life experiences with the Waodani—and other people groups in Africa, Asia and South America who live simply and materially contentedly—I have learned that it is unreasonable to evaluate their “lack” based on our distorted and exaggerated perception of need. When we try to meet phantom needs of people who live at a lower material standard than we have learned to consider “minimal,” we not only fall into a trap that keeps us from seeing their real needs but we also tempt them into a snare that can raise their perception of need beyond what their economy can support.

When we project poverty on people where it doesn’t exist, we also overlook the actual poverty with which they struggle. Solomon said it well, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase so do those who consume them” (Ecc 5:10–11).

Dangerous Charity

Often charity to help the poor attracts more people into poverty. One example I have noticed takes place when North Americans try to care for the needs of orphans in cultures different from our own. If you build really nice orphanages and provide good food and a great education, lots more children in those places become orphans. I see this happen all over. When we attempt to eradicate poverty through charity, we often attract more people into “needing” charity. It is possible to create need where it did not exist by projecting our standards, values and perception of need onto others.

So what is poverty? We in the “Wealthy West” have little understanding of “poverty.” As our standard of living has risen in developed countries, our perception of poverty has changed.

Consider how our definition of an orphan is different from most other cultures. In the U.S., you are an orphan if your mother and father have died. In South America (where I grew up), as in other contexts where extended family structures are intact, you are not really considered an orphan as long as you have a living grandparent, uncle, aunt or older brother or sister who is capable of helping take care of you. So when North Americans build an orphanage in South America, we “create” orphans by tempting family members to take advantage of our well-intentioned largess. This is seldom in the best interest of those children who are “orphaned” by our desire to meet what we perceive as their need.

Provoking Poverty

In the same way, proximity and exposure to wealth can provoke a sense of poverty. A group of North Americans going on a short-term mission—with our international cell phones, iPads, fancy clothes and fat wallets to buy curios and spend on hotels and restaurants—can create more comparative poverty than most of us can imagine.

But, all of that is not the issue. Do we have a responsibility to care for the poor? Yes. 1 Cor 8:11–15 hits the nail on the head. Let me summarize—“No Christ follower should have too much while anyone else has too little.” So, should we all become poor so that we are no longer responsible? No. Paul also points out that this teaching is not intended to put the poor at ease and to burden the wealthy (2 Th 3:6-12).

Among people living simply amidst abundant resources, poverty is not measured in annual income or net worth, but in “what I have in comparison to what those around me have.” In such contexts poverty is more of an attitude and a mood than an actual state of having or not having something. In such contexts, contentment is the secret. Some people think 1 Timothy 6:6 says “Godliness is a means of gain,” but really it says “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” Where there is godliness with contentment there is no perceived “poverty” until discontentment has been stirred.

Building Up Christ’s Body

Our goal in planting Christ’s church where it doesn’t exist must be to produce churches that are self-propagating, self-governing and self-supporting; especially where the members come from a background of hopelessness, powerlessness and inadequate resources. The most important aspect of church planting is whatever that fledgling congregation needs most. In a growing number of cases, the greatest need new churches have is to become self-supporting.

Giving handouts creates more problems than it solves. It is like casting out demons with long leases. Break the lease or they will come back and bring more roommates (Lk 11:24–26). Where the Church is being established among people that perceive themselves as powerless, there is a great need for deep discipleship, wrestling with the roots of poverty at the community level rather than concentrating on the individual.

Financial help that does not develop sustainable, local, financial self-sufficiency is much more likely to create poverty than it is to meet real needs. Until we realize that we can’t overcome poverty with handouts, we will never be much help in completing Christ’s Great Commission.

As followers of Christ we must fight poverty through discipleship rather than covering it with spiritual frosting. Either we do God’s will God’s way or we aren’t doing His will at all. Discipleship means teaching others what we have learned so they can teach others to care for their community’s physical, economic, emotional and spiritual needs on a sustainable basis! (2 Tim 2:2, Mt 28:19–20)

The problem? Decisions are taking precedence over discipleship. In the process, there is an increasing gap between the numbers who are deciding for Christ and the numbers who are being trained as disciples. The wolves are eating the difference.

Is it time to slow the pace of evangelism and to increase the pace of training and discipleship?

“But, you’re knowingly leaving the masses in darkness and the prospect of eternal damnation.”

Is it any worse to offer Christ to people, who, after having decided for Him, lose their faith for lack of training in Christian living, Bible study, sound theology, and apologetics? Could this be the point of Jesus’ story in Luke 11:23-26, where an evil spirit, having been cast out of a person, rounds up seven more spirits to re-inhabit the poor man? “And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” Matthew’s account adds this application: “That is how it will be with this wicked generation” (Mt. 12:45b).

The Parable of the Sower (Mt. 13:1-9) should also give us pause. Is it any joy that so many sprang up “quickly” and then “withered” (v.5) or were eventually “choked?” The former “quickly falls away” because of “trouble and persecution” (v. 21). The latter is choked by the worries and cares of this life (v. 22). In both cases, there is no fruit and the metaphorical wolves have been fattened.

A little reflection on the metaphor should alarm us. Does a wolf need fully-grown animals, the kind that can and have been reproducing, bearing children, for its food? Hardly. It prefers the weaker and younger offspring. Newborns are just fine, if you can get to them. Just as young sheep are easy prey for wolves, so are young, undiscipled believers. Masses and masses of young, undiscipled believers, left without training and solid food for growth, leave the wolves salivating overtime. And, reproducing overtime, as well.

Dare we ask ourselves if the proliferation of cults and perverse systems with some tenuous link to the Bible are not due to the masses of tender converts upon which to feed and to prey? Is it surprising that the “burned-over” district of upstate New York (a region where every square inch of land was somehow touched by the Second Great Awakening) gave rise to all sorts of false cults (including Mormonism) in the following several decades?

Evangelism no doubt maintains the size of the sheep herd. And, so the church is growing, at least nominally. But, it may also be unwittingly fattening, strengthening and vitalizing the enemies of truth, at the same time.

If it is true that a high evangelism-to-discipleship ratio is actually strengthening the position of fiendish unbelief, how might this situation have occurred? It is because Western-funded and managed Christian movements have measured success in terms of numbers of converts instead of measuring evidences of transformation in people and society. Another way of framing this is to say that modern believers, under the spell of reductionist, modern Western thinking, have so emphasized the evangelistic mandate of Matt. 28:19-20 as to virtually ignore the equally compelling cultural mandate of Genesis 1 and 2. Lest this be seen as re-visiting the old “quantity vs. quality” dilemma, we agree that the book of Acts is replete with numbers of converts (such as Acts 2), but the real questions is: “How did the early believers measure the success of their mission?”

Success was measured by evidences of the Kingdom. Personal and social transformation were the sine qua non of the early Christian movement. The Apostolic Church beheld the joy of community, of God’s reality in their midst. Convert-making programs don’t seem to have headed their agenda.

But, let us go back further to Jesus Himself. How did He measure the success of His mission? When the Apostles came back to Jesus after their first journey, He said, “I’ve seen Satan fall!” We don’t see Him quizzing them about the numbers of converts they made. In His earlier instruction before He sent them out, He didn’t lay emphasis on methods. He rather said “Proclaim the Kingdom!”

On top of that, He threw up big barriers to discipleship. The narrow road was hardly inviting. The promise of martyrdom attracted the hearty few. If Jesus’ view of success was tied into numbers of converts, He was a failure.

A final clue comes in Jesus’ High Priestly prayer of John 17. He seems to measure His success by indicating that He had completed the work assigned to Him by His Father, by which He brought glory to the Father. His prayer (at the end of the chapter) is not that more will be added to the small group of followers, but, rather, that they will display an incredible, unheard-of unity.

Let us move to Paul, the best-known of the Apostles, besides Peter. Are there commands to witness, to make converts? Precious few, if any, dot his letters; rather, his letters are written with the clear intent of training and discipleship.

While his epistles offer very little by way of exhortation to evangelism, what we do see are intense commands to effect transformation by the power of the Holy Spirit. And lurking in the background are warnings about our menacing Enemy. He lurks about to devour, to cast fireballs, to deceive, and so forth. His “front-men” (literally) are those who “take capitives by means of hollow and deceptive philosophy.” They are “mutilators of the flesh, men who do evil” “hypocritical liars” who teach people to “abandon the faith and to follow deceiving spirits.” To summarize, Paul recognized, as did Jesus, that transformation (not numbers of converts) is our goal, a goal that is constantly threatened by, among other things, the presence of false teachers and their teachings.

What is the modest proposal of this paper? Simply, that we throttle-back on evangelism and throttle-forward on discipleship. This is not a call for cessation of evangelism, but rather a plea for us to examine the reality of the situation—many converts, little transformation.

Understanding this may help to understand why places like sub-Saharan Africa teem with converts, and yet, the societies, at least, are going “to hell in a handbasket.” If Christians are the “salt of the earth” whose transformative impact should greatly outweigh our numbers, why are so many developing countries awash with converts and with crushing debt at the same time? Many of these converts will not be able to live long lives by which to glorify God as they fulfill their callings—and why?

Untaught to apply the truth to all dimensions of reality, unskilled in contextualizing Biblical truth in a way so that it transforms their worldview and their way of living, these believers are food for the wolf of hunger as well as the wolf of false teaching. One kills the body, the other the soul, and, in either case, God’s Kingdom is hindered.

Is it fair to suggest that our massive crusades and evangelistic campaigns are one vast feeding and breeding ground for the Enemy? Perhaps not, but are we honestly willing to face the problem of the masses of untaught, undiscipled believers?

Jesus bypassed the cumbersome religious structures and irrelevant worship practices of his day, and started something living and organic. The word “organic” is a good one to describe a spontaneously reproducing simple church movement because it describes something that grows naturally, without artificial additives. It consists of elements that exist together in natural relationships that make growth and multiplication possible. That is how a simple church movement grows: it is not a top down hierarchical organization, but a movement held together by people who share the same vision and values. I have observed that successful churches in the conventional church model can actually be a hindrance to a simple church planting movement.

Notice the way Jesus got the disciples exercising gifts of leadership from the outset, before they were “ready.” Jesus didn’t wait for disciples to be born again, baptized, trained theologically and supervised under a safe religious system with guaranteed controls before He was involving them in leadership. He got them out telling others about Him within a few weeks of being with Him (Matt 10:1–14). He led the movement He began from underneath, very quickly involving the disciples in leadership assignments without mentioning positions or titles. He had a radically different paradigm from that of the religious leaders of His day, and of our day as well. He was training them to lead before they were actually born again, in our evangelical understanding of what that means. After all, the journey of discipleship doesn’t start when a person comes to faith in Christ, but long before.

Movements not just meetings

In his book Organic Church², Neil Cole describes his journey from a static kind of church planting model to a dynamic and rapidly expanding organic movement of over 800 simple churches. Cole describes his journey of disenchantment with “church growth” seminars that attributed the secret of growing churches to clean toilets and plenty of parking spaces. Cole comments: “Apparently, the kingdom of God is held up by dirty toilets and poor parking. Jesus will have to wait for us to clean up our act. In India and China, however, where the church is growing fastest, among the most noticeable missing ingredients are clean toilets and parking spaces.” ³

Cole describes coming to the realization that God wanted him to help birth a movement that radically lowered the bar for what it meant to be church, but raised the bar for what it meant to be a disciple in the church. By assertively sharing Christ and making disciples, their movement, Church Multiplication Associates (CMA), grew in just a few years to over 800 churches in more than 30 States in the U.S.A. and 25 countries around the world.

How does such a movement happen? There has to be the blessing of God, for sure. But besides that, simple church movements are spurred in their growth by personal discipleship. It is people discipling people. Programs don’t disciple people, buildings don’t disciple people…people disciple people. And discipled people transform nations.

In our church planting endeavours in Cape Town, we stress the loving invitations of Jesus to everyone, and then teach the loving commands of Jesus to those who are serious. We lower the bar for doing church so that everyone can be part of it, and we raise the bar for being a disciple so that everyone knows what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, a person who lives a transformed life.

Of the four kinds of soil that received the seed in the parable of the sower, only one kind was deep and lasting. That is what we look for to make our disciples, transform communities, and find future leaders. We consciously and unconditionally love all those we minister to, but we also recognize that some people are hungry to learn more about Jesus and some people aren’t.

Formation, not just information

When I think about those who have influenced me most in life, it’s a few people who made a significant investment in me. These are men and women who believed in me and took time to impart to me what God had deposited in their lives. The goal of discipleship is not disseminating information, but life-on-life formation. I have heard a lot of great sermons in my days. I have read many excellent books. And I have interacted with world-class leaders. But what really changed my life were those who took the time to get to know me and mentor me. Those are the ones who really impacted me. I can count them on the fingers of two hands. God put something in each of them that was unique, and they passed it on to me. I am what I am today because of those men and women.

People like Gordon Fee. Dr. Fee was one of my professors while I was studying at Vanguard University. He was much more than a professor, actually – he became a mentor. He became a friend. He took time to hear my story. He would come by my room in the residence hall to visit with me and the other students. He would stop by the gym and shoot hoops with us as we practiced for our next game. He invited me to his office to chat. He poked around in my heart when he sensed I was not doing well. There has never been a time I have preached God’s word that I was not passing on to others what was imparted to me by this man of God.

Disciple making is the way Jesus did church

Jesus chose a few people and poured Himself into them. He preached to the multitudes, but He spent most of His time with His disciples. Jesus calls us to follow His example by reproducing what He has given to us in others, who in turn are to invest in others also (2 Tim 2:2). Building a disciple-making culture and birthing a disciple-making movement does not happen by accident. Passionate people catch the fire that burns in them from someone else and in turn pass it on to others. Every person who is influencing other people’s lives can tell you about the people who impacted upon them.

There are churches and movements today that produce these kinds of results, while others don’t even come close. The reason? Some have caught the vision of relational disciple-making, and others have not. How can we expect to reproduce our lives in others, and see whole cities and nations transformed if we don’t deliberately pass on to them what God has given us?

Anything good in our life is the result of our being impacted upon by someone else. It began with Jesus and His disciples 2,000 years ago, and it carries on with us today. If you have hope, passion, a sense of purpose and destiny, it is because you received it from someone else. You are one of many in a long line of people who have touched each other’s lives. And if others are changed because of you, it will be because you gave to them what has been given to you. Passion for Jesus and His purposes in the earth is received, nurtured, then passed on to others. That’s how it lives on in the Church.

Passion and purpose come at no less a price than Jesus and His disciples paid to possess them. If Jesus walked the way of suffering to receive the blessing of the Father, do we think we can do anything less? If we are willing to align ourselves with a tribe of people with proven passion, it will mean getting out of our comfort zone, taking up our cross, and putting ourselves in harm’s way for the sake of the gospel and for nations to be transformed. If we are willing and obedient, we will experience the same fruit as the first disciples.

Jesus chose personal investment in people’s lives as the primary way He did church. The Sunday-centric model of church will not change the world. Some think the church started on the day of Pentecost, but I disagree. Jesus led the first New Testament church. He modelled for us how to do church by the way He gathered and invested in the lives of a few men and women. He modelled a new way of doing church. He gathered, equipped and mobilized faithful men and women into a movement of devoted followers (Matt 28:19–20, 2 Tim 2:2). This kind of one-on-one intentional relationship is the key to helping people get freed from their brokenness and turned on to serving Jesus. Discipleship isn’t a school or program, but a lifestyle of passion and purpose passed on through personal investment and involvement in one another’s lives (1 Thess 2:18–19; 3:10).

I met a young man named Charles a few years ago. I asked him if he had a dream, and he eagerly shared it with me. “I want to have eight generations of disciples. I am an eighth generation disciple. I have traced it back through the guys in our church, starting about 20 years ago.” He named the men in the long chain of relationships that Charles knew by heart, and could articulate the principles that made it so powerful.

“I want to start a church planting movement someday, and I know I won’t be able to do it unless I invest my life in others,” said Charles. He was right. There are no short cuts to doing church the way Jesus did it. He built a team that became a community that multiplied and grew into a movement. You can build a disciple-making church with two or three generations of disciples, but Charles was already dreaming of more than one church, and more than four generations of disciples. He wanted to build a church-planting movement, and he knew it had to begin with him leading people to Christ and investing in them one at a time.

When I quizzed Charles on what steps he was taking to turn his dream into a reality, he told me about room-mates he was reaching out to and new followers of Jesus with whom he was meeting weekly to have a quiet time and share their faith. He was taking simple, practical steps to turn his dream into a reality. He was faithfully working away at it, and you know what? I believe his dream will become a reality.

Making disciples is not an option, it’s a command

Jesus said: “Teach them to observe all things I have commanded you.” (Matt 28:19–20) Obedient disciples make disciples. It’s the heart of what we do. There is nothing more important than investing our lives in other people. There is no more crucial role for leaders in the church. When leaders invest their lives in other leaders, it’s discipleship at its best. Why? Because only those who live with apostolic intent can create a leadership culture conducive to attracting and releasing more leaders. When a leader develops other leaders, the impact of one life is multiplied many times over. It produces more fruit for the kingdom of God.

Making disciples is personal in nature but transformational in scope

Jesus said we are to make disciples of “all nations.” It’s God’s way of spreading His glory to the whole earth. Personal discipleship connects us to God’s global purposes.

Making disciples is God’s way of transforming cities and nations

To quote Landa Cope: “A reached community is not a discipled community.” God uses the process of personal discipleship to bring about spiritual transformation in individuals’ lives, and in turn, those transformed individuals influence their business, family, school and, in time, whole cities and nations. As Landa says, it is possible to evangelize people by the thousands and millions, but that does not mean they have been discipled.

Africa, the continent where I live, has actually been evangelized over and over again. But it has not been discipled. Africa desperately needs a new kind of Christian and a new way of doing church. When we disciple people in small groups, we are doing church the way Jesus did it. He modeled a new concept of church by gathering a few men and women and teaching them to love and obey Him. In this sense Bill Hybels is right: the church is the hope of the world. Hybels declares: “The church is the only God-anointed agency in society that stewards the transforming message of the love of Christ … the local church is the hope of the world.”

If the church is to steward the message in the same manner as Jesus, we must make disciples who know, love and obey Jesus. This means that every aspect of their life must be different: how they work, love their family, tell the truth, handle money with integrity, and reach out to the poor. Personal salvation is not enough. It is the beginning of a relationship with Jesus Christ, but if we follow the example of Jesus, calling people to obey Jesus is the goal. Discipleship is intended by God to lead to transformation, both on a personal level and in the surrounding community. Sadly, many leaders are getting people to make decisions about Jesus but they are not making disciples for Jesus.

Weaving a discipleship net

When Jesus called Simon Peter and Andrew to become His disciples, He called them to be fishers of men. Later, He described the kingdom of God as being like a net that is cast into the sea to catch fish (Matt 13:47). Though Jesus cared for individuals, He longed for many individuals to experience forgiveness of their sins. If we are to weave a net to catch the harvest God wants to bring through our lives, it means weaving a discipleship net. Weaving a net is another way of saying that God wants us to be intentional about winning and gathering and multiplying transformed people for Him. In the same way that Jesus very deliberately selected and equipped men and women to bring in a great harvest, we’re commissioned to do the same thing in our sphere of influence. Jesus did not come to establish an institution called church, but to empower people to do church intentionally. God has a passion to gather a great harvest for His glory—and He is inviting us to work with Him as His co-labourers to draw in the net.

To weave an effective discipleship net means gathering and equipping people to be disciple-makers themselves. That means modeling disciple-making in our lives. It comes down to small groups and one-on-one times with people at work and school and who live close to us. If we select and faithfully disciple a few people in our sphere of influence, and they in turn are discipling others, we take the first steps to build a harvest gathering net for the kingdom.

It begins with casting the vision, then inviting people to respond. Jesus began the process of training His disciples by letting them in on the big plans He had for their lives. He told them He was going to make them fishers of men. He told them, “You will see heaven open.” Over and over again He encouraged them to dream big dreams for their lives, helping them catch a glimpse of the courageous men and women He was calling them to become. For those who were willing to obey Him, He invested in their lives, then He asked them to disciple others.

Discipling someone means intentionally identifying with God’s interests in that person’s life. When someone says yes to your invitation to spend time together, get to know them – ask questions, draw them out, develop genuine interest in their lives. By prayerfully affirming them, you will impart life to them. Tell them God loves them. Pray for them. Bless them. Tell them the things God gives you for them when you pray for them, but don’t use churchy language. Your encouragement and belief in them will give them courage to say yes to God’s love. Help them realize the great value they have to God. Paul was doing this very thing when he wrote these words to his disciple, Timothy: “I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you.” (2 Tim 1:6)

If we don’t disciple the hearts and minds of our people, someone else will do it for us. We live in a pluralistic culture. There is a constant battle for people’s passion. Every disciple of Jesus is on the front line, frequently alone. Living in such an environment calls for clear biblical thinking, and that means teaching and training. Memorized answers will not be enough. We must not let people think that by going to a meeting once a week they will be ready to face the challenges the enemy throws at them.

We have the awesome responsibility and opportunity to help shape the world-view of people and impart to them kingdom values. We are preparing frontline workers for the kingdom of God. God has called them, placed them where He wants them, and we get to equip them to be “full-time” for Jesus.

The cost of discipleship

Jesus said that for those who believe in Him, they will do greater works than He did. This promise is not a blanket guarantee for anyone who wants to be a disciple, but it is an insight into how much God wants to work through us. The cost is great, but if we are willing to pay the price, we will inherit the rewards of obeying Jesus. Paying the price means making a conscious decision to live full-time for Him at work, in our residence hall at the university, with our neighbors, and with our family members. It means dying to self, exchanging our life for His, confronting strongholds in our lives (2 Cor 10:4–6), living a life of truth and accountability with two or three others on a weekly basis, and walking with others in honest, accountable relationships. God is calling us to father and mother movements of men and women who will do mighty exploits for God, and that will not happen if we are not diligent in seeking God and obeying Him.

There are churches and movements today that produce these kinds of disciples, while others don’t come close. The reason some churches and movements produce these kinds of disciples is because their leaders have been captured by a vision of laying down their lives for the purposes of God. If the people who lead have this kind of passion and vision, it will be passed on to others. Unless we make disciple-making our main agenda, all our visions are fantasy. It’s the difference between dreaming and doing. And to do the job really well, we have to make our main business making disciples who make disciples.

Making disciples creates a discipleship culture

When personal discipleship is a way of life for a church or movement, it ensures that what they stand for is passed on. Discipleship helps create a culture. One person cannot do that by himself or herself. A solitary individual cannot possibly be in enough places to influence enough people. By calling us to birth and nurture a disciple-making movement, God has designed a process that has the deepest impact on the greatest number of people. This is how a movement grows to impact upon thousands and even hundreds of thousands of people, all with the same passions and dreams.

Discipleship is the difference

All kinds of programs and strategies have been developed by Christian organizations and local churches to evangelize the world. All these programs and strategies are great. But programs and strategies don’t disciple people. Great ideas don’t make disciples. Disciples make disciples. There is no shortcut and there is no other way for a church or movement to reproduce itself and to have a transforming influence on a nation.

You won’t reproduce the vision and values God has put in you if you don’t make disciples. There is no other way to pass on the spiritual DNA God has put in you. There are many methods that seem more glamorous, and there are many approaches to ministry that get more attention. But if you want to build a leadership culture, if you want to impart apostolic passion to your church or movement, and if you want to see the gospel have its desired transforming effect on people and nations, it will happen because you make disciples.

Who was William Carey? He was exactly the kind of man that the Lord seems to delight in using to accomplish great things; in other words, the kind of person that most of us would least expect. He was raised in a small, rural English town where he received almost no formal education. His chief source of income came through his work as a cobbler (a shoemaker). He had an awkward, homely appearance, having lost almost all his hair in childhood. Upon his arrival in India and throughout his years there, he was harassed by British colonists, deserted by his mission-sending agency, and opposed by younger missionary recruits who were sent to help him. Despite these setbacks, he became perhaps the most influential person in the largest outpost of the British Empire.³

Carey didn’t go to India merely to start new churches or set up medical clinics for the poor. He was driven by a more comprehensive vision—a vision for discipling the nation. “Carey saw India not as a foreign country to be exploited, but as his heavenly Father’s land to be loved and served, a society where truth, not ignorance, needed to rule.”⁴ He looked outward across the land and asked himself, “If Jesus were the Lord of India, what would it look like? What would be different?” This question set his agenda and led to his involvement in a remarkable variety of activities aimed at glorifying God and advancing His kingdom. Following are highlights of Carey’s work described in Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi’s outstanding book The Legacy of William Carey: A Model for the Transformation of a Culture.⁵

Carey was horrified that India, one of the most fertile countries in the world, had been allowed to become an uncultivated jungle abandoned to wild beasts and serpents. Therefore he carried out a systematic survey of agriculture and campaigned for agriculture reform. He introduced the Linnean system of plant organizations and published the first science texts in India. He did this because he believed that nature is declared “good” by its Creator; it is not maya (illusion) to be shunned, as Hindus believe, but a subject worthy of human study.

Carey introduced the idea of savings banks to India to fight the all-pervasive social evil of usury (the lending of money at excessive interest). He believed that God, being righteous, hated this practice which made investment, industry, commerce, and economic development impossible.

He was the first to campaign for humane treatment of India’s leprosy victims because he believed that Jesus’ love extends to leprosy patients, so they should be cared for. Before then, lepers were often buried or burned alive because of the belief that a violent death purified the body on its way to reincarnation into a new healthy existence.

He established the first newspaper ever printed in any Oriental language, because he believed that “above all forms of truth and faith, Christianity seeks free discussion.” His English-language journal, Friend of India, was the force that gave birth to the social-reform movement in India in the first half of the nineteenth century.

He translated the Bible into over 40 different Indian languages. He transformed the Bengali language, previously considered “fit for only demons and women,” into the foremost literary language of India. He wrote gospel ballads in Bengali to bring the Hindu love of music to the service of his Lord.

He began dozens of schools for Indian children of all castes and launched the first college in Asia. He desired to develop the Indian mind and liberate it from darkness and superstition.

He was the first man to stand against the ruthless murders and widespread oppression of women. Women in India were being crushed through polygamy, female infanticide, child marriage, widow burning, euthanasia, and forced illiteracy—all sanctioned by religion. Carey opened schools for girls. When widows converted to Christianity, he arranged marriages for them. It was his persistent, 25-year battle against widow burning (known as sati) that finally led to the formal banning of this horrible religious practice.

William Carey was a pioneer of the modern Christian missionary movement, a movement that has since reached every corner of the world. Although a man of simple origins, he used his God-given genius and every available means to serve his Creator and illumine the dark corners of India with the light of the truth.

William Carey’s ministry in India can be described as wholistic. For something to be wholistic, it must have multiple parts that contribute to a greater whole. What is the “whole” to which all Christian ministry activities contribute? Through an examination of Christ’s earthly ministry, we see that the “whole” is glorifying God and advancing His kingdom through the discipling of the nations (Matt. 24:14; 28:18–20). This is God’s “big agenda”—the principal task that he works through His church to accomplish.

If this is the whole, then what are the parts? Matthew 4:23, highlights three parts: preaching, teaching, and healing. Because each part is essential to the whole, let’s look at each one more carefully.

Preaching includes proclaiming the gospel—God’s gracious invitation for people everywhere to live in His Kingdom, have their sins forgiven, be spiritually reborn, and become children of God through faith in Christ. Proclaiming the gospel is essential to wholistic ministry, for unless lost and broken people are spiritually reborn into a living relationship with God—unless they become “a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17)—all efforts to bring hope, healing, and transformation are doomed to fail. People everywhere need their relationship with God restored, yet preaching is only one part of wholistic ministry.

Teaching entails instructing people in the foundational truths of Scripture. It is associated with discipleship—helping people to live in obedience to God and His Word in every area of life. In Matthew 28:20 Jesus tells His disciples to “teach [the nations] to obey everything I have commanded you.” Unless believers are taught to obey Christ’s commands, their growth may be hindered. Colossians 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.”

Healing involves the tangible demonstrations of the present reality of the Kingdom in the midst of our hurting and broken world. When Jesus came, He demonstrated the present reality of God’s Kingdom by healing people. “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor,” was Jesus’ report to His cousin John the Baptist in Matthew 11:4–5. Jesus didn’t just preach the good news; He demonstrated it by healing all forms of brokenness. Unless ministry to people’s physical needs accompanies evangelism and discipleship, our message will be empty, weak, and irrelevant. This is particularly true where physical poverty is rampant. The apostle John admonishes, “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17–18).

Here’s a picture of the basic elements of a biblically balanced, wholistic ministry:

First, there are multiple parts—preaching, teaching and healing. These parts have distinct functions, yet they are inseparable. All are essential in contributing to the whole, which is glorifying God and advancing His Kingdom. Lastly, each part rests on the solid foundation of the biblical worldview. In other words, each is understood and implemented through the basic presuppositions of Scripture. In summary, preaching, teaching and healing are three indispensable parts of wholistic ministry, whose purpose is to advance God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Without these parts working together seamlessly, our ministry is less than what Christ intends, and will lack power to transform lives and nations.

To comprehend the nature and purpose of wholistic ministry, two concepts must be understood. First is the comprehensive impact of humanity’s spiritual rebellion. Second is that our loving, compassionate God is presently unfolding His plan to redeem and restore all things broken through the Fall.

When Adam and Eve turned their backs on God in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:1–6), the consequences of their sin were devastating and far-reaching; they affected the very order of the universe. At least four relationships were broken through the Fall. First, Adam and Eve’s intimate relationship with God was broken (Gen. 3:8–9). This was the primary relationship for which they had been created, the most important aspect of their lives. When their relationship with God was broken, their other relationships were damaged too: their relationship with themselves as individuals (Gen. 3:7, 10), with each other as fellow human beings (Gen. 3:7, 12, 16), and with the rest of creation (Gen. 3:17–19). The universe is intricately designed and interwoven. It is wholistic, composed of multiple parts, each of which depends on the proper functioning of the others. All parts are governed by laws established by God. When the primary relationship between God and humanity was severed, every part of the original harmony of God’s creation was affected. The results of this comprehensive brokenness have plagued humanity ever since. War, hatred, violence, environmental degradation, injustice, corruption, idolatry, poverty and famine all spring from sin.

Thus, when God set out to restore His creation from the all-encompassing effects of man’s rebellion, His redemptive plan could not be small or narrow, focusing on a single area of brokenness. His plan is not limited to saving human souls or teaching or even healing. Rather, it combines all three with the goal of restoring everything, including each of the four broken relationships described above. Colossians 1:19–20 provides a picture of God’s wholistic redemptive plan:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Christ], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. (Emphasis added)
 

God is redeeming all things. Through Christ’s blood our sins are forgiven and our fellowship with God is renewed. And not only that—we also can experience substantial healing within ourselves, with others, and with the environment. The gospel is not only good news for after we die; it is good news here and now!

The task of the church is to join God in His big agenda of restoring all things. We are “Christ’s ambassadors,” called to the “ministry of reconciliation” (see 2 Cor. 5:18–20). In the words of Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer, we should be working “on the basis of the finished work of Christ . . . [for] substantial healing now in every area where there are divisions because of the Fall.”⁶ To do this, we must first believe that such healing can be a reality here and now, in every area, on the basis of the finished work of Christ. This healing will not be perfect or complete on this side of Christ’s return, yet it can be real, evident, and substantial.

Preaching, teaching, and substantial healing in every area where brokenness exists as a result of the Fall—in essence, wholistic ministry—is the vision that Christ had and modeled for us on earth. It was the vision that set the agenda for William Carey in India. It is the vision that should set the agenda for our ministry as well.

When Jesus sent out His disciples on their first missionary journey, “He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2). Yet today it’s common for Christian ministries to separate the twin ministry components. Some focus exclusively on preaching, evangelism, or church planting, while others focus on meeting the physical needs of the broken or impoverished. Typically these two groups have little interaction. This division is not what Christ intended. By focusing on one to the exclusion of the other, ministries are limited and ineffective in bringing about true, lasting transformation.

The Bible provides a model of ministry where preaching, teaching, and healing are, in the words of Dr. Tetsunao Yamamori, “functionally separate, yet relationally inseparable.”⁷ Each part is distinct and deserves special attention and focus. Yet the parts must function together. Together they form a wholistic ministry that is both powerful and effective—a ministry able to transform lives and entire nations. The work of William Carey in India gives historical testimony to this fact. According to theologian David Wells, preaching, teaching, and healing must be “inextricably related to each other, the former being the foundation and the latter being the evidence of the working of the former.”⁸

Yet one thing that hasn’t been shrink-wrapped is the amount of information now available to us, which is expanding exponentially. The smaller our devices get, the more powerful they are and the more unable we are to keep up. We are no match for these machines. They give us more bytes about everything than we ever dreamed possible. Because we have so much more information and can access it so much faster, we are easily overwhelmed by it. Recently, I devoted one year to reading biographies. Two of them were John Mott and Oswald Chambers, men who lived about 100 years ago. In both cases, they traveled by ship. And in both cases these trips were often the only respite they seemed to have in otherwise hectic and busy ministries. It was on board those ships that they had time to reflect and think and…gulp…relax a little. But those days are long gone. Now we are just glad that there is wi-fi on board so that we can keep up with our inbox. Such is life today.

Viewed positively, this shrink-wrap world has dramatically increased our understanding of the scope of the mission task. As the theme of this issue illustrates, we are not only out to preach the gospel, we are out to transform the world in every area of society. We would do well to note the magnitude of this shift. Did the missionaries of yesteryear even think about transforming the very societal framework of the places in which they worked? Did they contemplate and write strategic plans about how they would change societal structures, the so-called “seven mountains” of society: business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion? In some cases, they were simply trying to stay alive and show the love of Jesus in a hostile environment. By contrast, we are today witnessing many innovative strategies never conceived before.

Viewed negatively, the more we know, the more complex issues become. The bliss of viewing the world in hard and simple categories is no longer possible for us. What the microscope and telescope did for the expansion of learning about the natural world, the new technologies and new media have done for the expansion of just about everything else. While in one sense mission theory and strategy has been advanced and become more sophisticated, in another sense it has struggled to keep up with the complexities of a world better understood through these new technologies. In some ways, the more we know the more we realize what we don’t know.

It used to be that we would talk about “world religions” that neatly divided the world faiths into clean and neat categories. But as my colleague HL Richard has pointed out, the concept of “religion” itself is dubious. In fact, there are many Christianities, many Islams, many Hinduisms and Buddhisms. Neat categories have been replaced by very messy constructs much closer to the reality on the ground. So what are we to do? We need to carefully walk the tightrope and balance the tension between generality and specificity. We speak in general terms because it makes communication possible. As mobilizers, we can’t get away from the general way of looking at things. However, we must recognize that such communication is only a beginning. Technically, it is virtually impossible to communicate meaningfully at the complex level if we only speak in generalities. We cannot overlook complexity in the hope that it will just go away. “Keep it simple, stupid” has a short reach. As strategists, we must embrace specificity and complexity.  

The generalists and specialists in the mission enterprise need to work together, even while we speak a somewhat different language. This distinction reminds me of a similar reality that often exists between the marketing and research/development divisions of a company. While they are usually a lesson in stark contrast, they are nevertheless necessary to each other. Similarly, while mobilizers and strategists usually live in different worlds, the consequences of ignoring each other are grave.