Stages of Emerging Missionary Activity

Emerging churches don’t immediately or automatically begin to send missionaries to the ends of the earth. A study of Scripture and church history suggests that the typical response of local churches is to look inward and neglect God’s call to be a light to the nations.

Acts 1:8 can be seen as a possible model for stage development in missionary activity. Using this model, Jerusalem evangelism might entail sharing the Gospel with family and friends. Judea evangelism might include witnessing to people of the same culture and language in nearby towns. Samaria missions might expand outreach to people of near but different cultures and languages. Ends of the earth missions take place outside of the country’s boundaries where missionaries would learn another language and culture.

Stage 0: Receiving the Gospel
When the gospel is first introduced to a people group, there may be a struggle to understand the message and when it is accepted, believers are often like new-born babes dependent on outside nurture. New-born Christians are naturally dependent on those who brought them the Gospel. There is nothing abnormal when new-born believers see themselves primarily as recipients of the Gospel. A problem arises when they fail to grow in the faith and neglect the commission Christ gave. In spite of the growing emphasis on missions from everywhere to everywhere, it is quite possible that the dominant attitude of many emerging churches is an unhealthy dependency and lack of missionary vision. Joel Simbitti, a missiologist in Tanzania, writes that “The greatest missionary problem of the church in Africa . . . is lack of mission-mindedness in response to the Great Commission” (Simbitti 2003). Could it be that the “cutting-edge” of mission strategy should be to challenge and assist emerging churches around the world to catch Gods’ vision for the world?

Stage 1: Sharing the Gospel Locally: Jerusalem Evangelism
When a people group comes to Christ there should normally be a healthy response of wanting to share the good news with family and friends. Often whole families are so eager about their new-found faith that they can’t help but tell aunts, uncles, classmates and neighbors. For example, the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church has grown to over 5,000 churches, not primarily through missionary influence, but through new believers enthusiastically sharing the good news locally.

Stage 2: Evangelizing near people groups: Judea Evangelism
When the Gospel is enthusiastically accepted by people in one town or village, the natural response is to share the good news within the people group. In rural areas, families from neighboring towns walk a long distance to attend church. Eventually a group of people decide they do not need to walk so far to attend church, so they begin a church in their own town. Stories of exploding church growth in Nigeria and Ethiopia show that the Gospel spreads from witness to near neighbors, to the multi-village markets, and through contacts with relatives in nearby towns. Such growth is usually spontaneous and seldom results from planning with demographic maps and a five-year plan.

Stage 3: Sending missionaries to cross-cultural people groups: Samaria Missions
A church that is grounded in the Bible and is obedient to the commands of Christ will have a passion to take the Gospel to neighbors who might have traditionally been enemies. For example, the Gourma church in Burkina Faso caught the vision of Christ’s commission and began to take the Gospel to the Fulani people, traditional rivals of the Gourma. The church in Ethiopia began sending “barefoot evangelists” to neighboring people groups who had been hostile to their people group. At times these missionaries were persecuted and even killed for their witness. But the word of the Lord continued to spread through well-taught believers, obedient to Scripture.

Stage 4: Sending missionaries to distant people groups: Ends of the earth missions
Possibly the most dramatic development in missions since Acts 2 is the expansion of world-wide, cross-cultural missions. No longer do Africans, Latins and Asians reach out only to people who speak their own language. The enlarged vision for cross-cultural ministry is a healthy and hopeful sign for worldwide missions.

Every mature believer needs to be involved in some way in all four of these spheres of ministry. If we are called to serve within our own culture, we need to be prayerfully involved in supporting cross-cultural ministries. A healthy church in any people group will have some level of ministry in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth.”

Emerging Churches = Emerging Mission Agencies?

About 95% of the world’s people have a Bible or a New Testament 99% can understand the Jesus film and 99% can hear the Gospel through radio in a language they can understand (Johnstone and Mandryk 2001). As peoples from every corner of the world hear and respond to God’s plan of salvation, they are also hearing and responding to Christ’s admonition, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:2). Each of the 500 Bible translations contain Christ’s command to make disciples in all nations and to be witnesses in their own Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth. It is no surprise that as the Church emerges around the world, missionary activity also emerges. When emerging churches are taught to obey everything Jesus commanded, they also obey his command to make disciples in all nations. Mission activity should naturally emerge from obedient emerging churches.

I'm Tired of Paradigm Shifts

Twenty years ago few people heard of a "paradigm shift." For the longest time I though it was “the movement of two dimes.” But now every fad is called a paradigm shift. I suspect there have only been a half dozen true paradigm shifts since the beginning of the world in August 4004 BC. The coming of Christ was a massive paradigm shift. The Copernican Revolution was a paradigm shift. The return of Christ will be a paradigm shift. But I suspect that trends like generation X and postmodernism are merely temporary fads or variations on old and reoccurring themes. Why is it that so many so called paradigm shifts are only found among white, upper-class, college students in the Western world? I suspect that if people had invented the term they would have called mini-skirts, bell-bottom trousers and the Edsel, paradigm shifts.

I’m bothered by the use of the term paradigm shift in missions. People are saying that the sending of long-term missionaries is an old paradigm, while the newer paradigms are short-term missions, supporting nationals and church-to-church partnerships. All four models have been around since Acts chapter 2. My hunch is that while all these trends are potentially useful, the last three are techniques limited to white, wealthy Western churches. While these may be useful strategies for 5% of the Christians of the world, they certainly aren’t paradigm shifts. The paradigm that shouldn’t change, is local churches sending missionaries who, over the long term, build personal relationships, develop trust and become incarnated into the language and culture of the people to which they minister. I doubt if this paradigm will shift until the return of Christ.

Thoughts on Christian Missions

The Web Log will the thoughts of a missionary and professor of missions. I will comment on some of the trends in world missions in light of the Bible and experience. I am committed to the Bible, God's word and will try to evaluate some of the developments in world missions.

We live in the most exciting era of Christian missions. Not only has the church of Jesus Christ expanded into every country of the world, but the newly formed churches are reading the Bibles translated into their own language, and discovering the commands of Jesus to make disciples in all nations.