We need a gracious revolution in our thinking about world missions. We are not likely to be effective in the next century by merely becoming more efficient within the old paradigms. Mission boards, churches, training schools, and mobilizing organizations need a new paradigm to guide their agenda. As I describe three common mission paradigms—Factory, Wildflower, and Pilgrim, each of which have influenced me at different times—I admit that, for the sake of clarity, I may be presenting extremes. In any case, I believe we must leave the first two paradigms behind and move on to become pilgrims in mission.
The Factory
The dominant assumptions underlying some contemporary missions are rooted in what I call the factory paradigm. The industrial revolution gave us this paradigm. The factory metaphor places a high value on precision, quantitative goals, predictability, efficiency, and control. It moves planners to set goals that can be easily measured. They want to know exactly what the final result will look like, when it will be accomplished, and how much it will cost.
Such a mind-set within the Christian community affects the way we look at the task,
strategies, leadership, and evaluation of mission. When we aim only at what can be measured,
we ignore the more important goals of character, discipleship, and holiness, which we cannot predict or quantify without falling into legalism. Factory thinking forces us to aim for goals that can be accomplished in a specific time frame. It inhibits vision for the qualitative development of people, of the church, and of society.
Fortunately, most factory-minded missiologists also have a genuine love for the Lord and a deep passion for the church, which produces qualities of character in people despite the inadequate aspects of the paradigm. But while the factory model has been helpful in defining the task, far too often lukewarm churches are the result of the assembly-line mind-set.
The Wildflower
In reaction to the factory model, the wildflower metaphor, a more intuitive paradigm, has gained strength. This model emphasizes personal experience, emotions, spiritual warfare, and inner healing. While the paradigm may provide a corrective to the factory model, I question the extent of its integration with biblical teaching, and I fear it may blindly build on contributions from existentialism and Freudianism. Wildflower missionaries often prefer a “go-with-the-flow” approach to missions; they are so embedded in the existential present that they have little time for future planning, or they may assume such thinking is unspiritual. If factory-oriented missionaries have their day planned in fifteen-minute intervals, wildflower missionaries seem to be blissfully unmindful of the calendar. One manages by objectives, the other by interruption. Wildflower missionaries have many strengths and bring spiritual vigor to missions because their flexibility and people orientation enhance their ministry. The danger is that they may lose the foundation of biblical Christianity, become inward looking and lack strategic planning for world outreach.
The Pilgrim
A better mental image is that of pilgrimage. Pilgrims have a visionary goal and a sense of direction, but they realize that the path often leads through rugged mountains and foggy swamps, bringing unexpected joys and sorrows. Pilgrims travel together, helping each other follow the map of the Word of God. Because pilgrims have a sense of direction, they are better able to decide if an event is an unfolding opportunity or a sidetrack interruption. Missionary pilgrims are not surprised by difficulty and ambiguity. They are motivated in their service by a vision of the kingdom.
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An Agenda for Revolution
We in missions need a gracious revolution as much as any mission, a revolution based on the pilgrim paradigm. Our direction can be outlined in the following twelve-point agenda.
1. Vision
The pilgrim missionary is driven by a vision of what God can do for people, for the church, and for society. Pilgrims invite lost people to join them on the road to Christ, involve them in a community of believers, and help them to become all God intends them to be. They challenge them to follow the map of the Word and to become lifelong obedient students of Jesus.
For the last ten years we have been conducting vision seminars in its candidate classes, leadership development courses, and field conferences. We also conduct regional vision consultations for missionaries and church leaders in South America, West Africa, East Africa, and Asia. When field directors report to the International Council (which meets every three years), they talk about their vision and the indications they see that the Lord is fulfilling that vision.
In all our efforts, while we encourage after-the-fact numbers to describe results, we focus on inner qualities that describe pilgrims marching toward a vision of the future. We ask, What difference does our ministry make in the lives of people, in society, and in the church? As we become ever more efficient and technologically competent at doing secondary things, I fear we might lose our vision for the work of Christ’s kingdom. Instead of church growth in mere numbers, we need a vision for a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish, holy and without fault. Instead of completing a precise task by a specific date, pilgrim missionaries have a dream of what people might look like if they enrolled as students in the lifelong school of discipleship and more consistently evidenced the fruit of the Spirit.
2. Strategy
It is not enough to have a vision. Strategic plans—action steps—are necessary. In a world of constant change and uncertainty, vision provides a foundation for pilgrim missionaries who dream of creative, innovative, and even audacious strategies. When missionaries unwittingly work from a factory paradigm, they are tempted to aim at programs or methods rather than eternal results. For example, the vision for a theological school should be more than to double the size of the library or build a new chapel. Vision foresees Christ-like qualities in students and the influence they will have on the church and society.
In each vision seminar during the last five years, we have discussed and planned action steps. A pastor’s library project, which provided about 20,000 small theological libraries and training sessions for pastors in Nigeria and South America, grew out of a vision for powerful preaching by better-equipped pastors. Out of a vision for the majestic Andes mountains ringing with the praises of redeemed Quechua grew a radio ministry for that people group. Out of a vision to reach upper-middle-class people of Lima, Peru, grew a Christian TV station. Out of a vision to reach Muslim beggar boys grew a friendship and feeding program.
3. Leadership
All pilgrims are called to be both leaders and followers in the body of Christ. The doctrines of the priesthood of all believers and of spiritual gifts mean that each pilgrim is responsible to lead by taking initiative to help others in the body of Christ. Since no person has all the gifts needed for the pilgrim band, there are times when all pilgrims need to follow other spiritually gifted pilgrims. There is often a need for a person to coordinate the gifts of other pilgrims. A coordinator does not take the place of Christ, the true Head, but has special abilities to maximize the effectiveness of other pilgrims. The most appropriate style for the pilgrim coordinator is team leadership. The pilgrim coordinator needs to be proactive, pushing the process of visionary thinking and action, while trusting the insights of others.
The primary focus of factory leaders is simply to use the person to accomplish the task. Task-oriented leaders tend to use a controlling style that stifles the development of people. Wildflower leaders seek to develop the person but often ignore the task. In contrast, the primary focus of pilgrim leaders is to use the task of world missions to develop other pilgrims.
4. Evaluation
Pilgrims use evaluation not to place blame for past failures or for boasting but rather to help colleagues do a better job next time. Many times the results of ministry are serendipitous—wonderful and unexpected. Thousands of people in a resistant people group decide to follow Christ. Revival breaks out in a Bible college. A women’s fellowship group in Africa catches the vision for supporting their own missionaries to a neighboring country. Evaluation in these cases is not to transfer to humans the credit that belongs to God alone but rather to rejoice in what God has done. Similarly, when results are discouraging, the purpose of evaluation is to figure out what might be done to improve the situation the next time, not to assign blame for failure.
SIM is in the process of changing ministry evaluation forms to focus on three questions: What was your situation? What was your vision? and What did you do to get there? We ask about indicators of results in the hearts of people and look for ways to improve the strategy in the coming months. Under the wildflower paradigm, evaluation tends to focus on how people feel about themselves; attention is concentrated on interpersonal relationships. Evaluation under the factory paradigm, in contrast, is often threatening because it measures specific outcomes in comparison to predetermined goals.
5. Evangelism
John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress illustrates that evangelism is a necessary—indeed urgent— step in helping pilgrims flee the City of Destruction, enter the gate of salvation, and leave their burden of sin at the cross of Christ. Although the global Christian community has grown rapidly over the last century, due to population growth, there are today more people outside the gate than ever before. As a result, evangelism is needed as never before. Evangelicals working from all three paradigms place a strong emphasis on evangelism. While factory-oriented missiologists have been somewhat mechanical in their approach, they have provided a most valuable service in pinpointing areas of need and drawing attention to unreached peoples. Missiologists working under the wildflower paradigm have helped to emphasize the joy of the Lord for new believers and have encouraged greater creativity in expressions of worship. SIM acknowledges its debt to these streams of mission influence and seeks to be faithful as pilgrims in evangelism.
Along with our related national churches, SIM regularly asks if there are unreached people groups in our areas of responsibility. A high percentage of our missionaries are working with unreached people groups, and we have recently entered some of the most needy areas of the world.
6. Discipleship and Church Growth
When Bunyan’s hero, Christian, flees the City of Destruction, enters the gate of salvation, and leaves his burden of sin at the cross, he is just beginning the next stage of the journey. Evangelism is a most necessary and crucial step, but it is not sufficient. The most urgent need in world missions is the task of helping pilgrims become disciples, learning to obey everything Jesus commanded. There may be as many as 1 billion lukewarm, nominal Christians in the world today. Transformed by Christ, these pilgrims could evangelize their world and flood the earth with justice. Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Colombia, China, and the United States would become models of justice and peace. Racism, ethnocentrism, and poverty would end as people began to evidence the fruit of the Spirit in their communities.
Growth in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus is an inner, qualitative process that is difficult to predict, control, and measure. It does not fit the factory paradigm. But world evangelization by itself is not the fulfillment of Christ’s Commission. Christ commands us to make disciples who will obey everything he commanded. This is a lifelong process, not a precise task that can be finished by the year 2000 or any time before Christ returns. Church growth as defined by logarithmic graphs and ten-year projections has never been a New Testament ideal for a church.
7. Theological Education
Visionary theological educators see teaching as an opportunity for fellow pilgrims to spend time in what Bunyan called Interpreter’s House. Solid biblical content is taught to help pilgrims find the right path, discover resources to win spiritual battles, and catch the vision of the ultimate goal. Teaching Bible content is a means, not an end. The implicit curriculum for the pilgrim educator is the development of a caring community of disciples learning to obey all Jesus commanded. Wildflower educators often downplay the need for formal education or emphasize personal experience over theological reflection and biblical interpretation. Factory-oriented educators preoccupy themselves with behavioral objectives, test scores, and outward compliance with course requirements.
There are about 18,000 students in our related theological schools or extension programs. A high percentage of our missionaries are involved in pastoral education. We also have worked in a low-profile manner to help promote renewal in theological education. We have encouraged international accrediting in Africa and South America, promoted Theological Education by Extension, and helped to publish the writings of theologians from the Two-Thirds World. We have led seminars for theological educators from dozens of countries, urging a quiet revolution in theological education. But I am afraid that the factory paradigm is still common in our related theological education.
8. Meeting Human Need
Pilgrims are concerned about poverty, sickness, injustice, and hopelessness; the Holy Spirit helps them respond with love and practical action. Both factory- and wildflower-oriented missionaries also have a heart for helping people in need. The factory paradigm, however, tends to see the task in terms of doing things for people, like giving them pills, fertilizer, roads, and wells. It tends to measure results in terms of economic indicators, the number of schools, and so on. Wildflower-oriented ministries tend to give aid based on the emotions of the moment rather than on the long-range development of people in need. But all real development is human development—development that leads people to become all God intended for them.
Even though we can cite many failed efforts from our past, we hope we have been
learning from our mistakes. We support programs that involve people in their own development, such as People Oriented Development in Nigeria and the Niger Integrated Development team, and helping churches minister to the poorest of the poor, for example, in Guayaquil, Ecuador. It is most fulfilling to see the churches we helped to plant catch the vision for meeting human need through their own development projects.
9. Mission and National Church Relationships
Pilgrim missionaries have the task of planting and nurturing churches in other cultures, while
avoiding the temptation of trying to run them. Missionaries need to get out of leadership positions in national churches as soon as possible. Growing churches need to be self-supporting, self-governing, self-propagating, and self-nurturing. At the same time, however, we must confess that an “independent” church is an oxymoron. How can members of the universal body of Christ in one country be independent of the rest of the body? The ideal relationship is one in which the national church and the foreign mission work together in a loving, trusting, and interdependent relationship, each fulfilling complementary functions, neither dominating the other.
Missions working from a factory paradigm seldom see a loving, interdependent relationship as the goal. They are primarily interested in evangelism and precise time-specific targets. For example, they may say that when 20 percent of a people group have become Christians, then 95 percent of the missionaries need to be moved to a new field. Such a strategy may avoid some tensions of church-mission relationships, but it also misses the joy of cross-cultural discipleship and the excitement of partnering together to reach the rest of the world.
We at times has had problems with national church relationships. Sometimes we have held control too long and hindered the development of the national church. But there also have been times when we lost our identity as a cross-cultural mission and fused with the local church. This has meant losing our distinct function as a cross-cultural mission. Through channels such as Evangel Fellowship, which every two years brings together leaders from our related fields, we are endeavoring to develop healthy interdependent relationships.
10.Mission Church Relationships
The home-based sending churches and mission boards have an interdependent relationship. Each needs the other. It is not healthy for a sending church merely to send the missionary and the monthly support and not be involved in the care, encouragement, and prayer for that missionary. Likewise, it is difficult, inefficient, and usually ineffective for local churches to send isolated missionaries around the world. Mission boards provide not only logistic and spiritual support but also structures for field-based visionary planning and for accountability. For individual churches to send missionaries around the world would be like local towns sending their own soldiers into war and having the soldiers report back to the mayor of their home town rather than to the officer in the field. Such a plan not only would be more expensive, it would create chaos in the battle. Sending churches and mission boards are mutually dependent on each other.
Churches and mission boards with a factory paradigm have a more difficult time with an interdependent relationship. Factory-oriented mission boards have a passion for control and may feel threatened by local churches wanting to take more initiative. Factory-oriented church mission committees may feel threatened by the mission board and resent the fact that they use so much money for administration and don’t consult them for every strategic move on the field. The pilgrim paradigm is driven by vision and has a higher tolerance for the more ambiguous relationship of interdependence.
We are learning how to listen to sending churches. While the missionary is the primary
contact with supporting churches, we can learn much from listening to highly motivated mission pastors and committees. In the past two years, leaders have hosted significant meetings with missions pastors and laypeople from major missionary-supporting churches in five key cities. The purpose is not to indoctrinate them about our mission but to listen to their vision and problems and ask if there are things we can do to help them. Several major initiatives have resulted from these meetings.
11. Partnering with National Church Missions
A primary reason why a mission needs to continue a noncontrolling, interdependent discipling relationship with national churches is so we can partner together to reach places neither could reach on their own. The Gospel will be preached in all the world with much more power and credibility if it can be preached by Bolivians together with Australians and Nigerians. It is difficult for a Muslim to say that Christianity is a Western religion when he is hearing the Gospel from a team made up of missionaries from Japan, Canada, and Ethiopia. An ideal is for Christians from any country to be able to share the Gospel together in any other country.
The factory paradigm places a high value on efficiency and getting the most results for the least amount of money. Advertisements in major magazines like Christianity Today challenge churches to simply send their money to support national evangelists because it is cheaper or more efficient. While there may be situations where churches in more-developed countries should send money to support national evangelists, the process is loaded with danger. Seldom does the national church feel the responsibility to pick up the support of the evangelist when foreign funding is eventually cut off. Often the local evangelist does not feel accountable to the local church. Moreover, sending churches in the West do not get the blessing of sending their own daughters and sons to their “Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Our related churches in Nigeria and Ethiopia each have more than 1,000 cross-cultural missionaries, supported primarily by local churches.
12. Revival
Pilgrims need regular renewal. It seems that the normal tendency is for missionaries, supporting churches, and field churches to lose their way and fall into the Slough of Despond, to be tempted at Vanity Fair, chained in Doubting Castle, or captured by the Giant of Despair. We become discouraged and begin to fight with each other. Revival helps us to get back on the pilgrim path. Revival is not the ultimate goal for the church any more than getting back on the track is the ultimate destination of a derailed train. Without revival, however, we get stuck with all kinds of problems for a long time.
Factory-oriented churches either try to control revival or are afraid it will become too emotional. Wildflower churches may at times think that the emotional high of revival is the ultimate goal rather than a means for pilgrims to get back on the path of worship and service. Pilgrims seek daily revival as the Spirit uses the Word to challenge and correct those who stray from the path.
Since 1998 we set aside the ten days between Ascension and Pentecost for fasting, confession, and obedience to the Word. Guided by the model of revival in Nehemiah 9, we included confession, worship, prayer, and obedience. We used e-mail as the primary means of encouraging the mission family each day to continue to seek the Lord.
We now have four couples who travel around the mission world as international pastors. Many times the Lord brings renewal during the annual spiritual life conferences held on each field. Many have told me that they are praying daily for revival in our mission, in our supporting churches, and in the thousands of our related churches in Africa, Asia, and South America. May the Lord graciously give us profound times of refreshing and renewal.
What might happen if churches, missions, and schools would catch a vision for a gracious revolution in world missions? Could it be that the twentieth century, an amazing century of progress in missions, will be seen by historians as a mere prologue to the astounding growth of biblical Christianity in the twenty-first century? May it be so.
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