Top Missions Challenges in the Changing U.S. Church

A Webinar for The Mission Exchange, Jan 10, 2008

David Mays, Director of Learning Initiatives and Church Relations, The Mission Exchange

 

 

Marcy and I are Taylor University graduates of the class of 1964.  After graduate work at Purdue, I worked 15 years for Bristol Myers in research and development.  At age 40, I returned to Wheaton Graduate School to study theology and get involved full-time in missions.  I worked for ACMC, Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment, helping churches in missions, until February of 2007.  In March I joined The Mission Exchanged as Director of Learning Initiatives. 

 

Marcy and I have been heavily involved in four different churches during our married life.  These include two very historic and traditional churches and two which were both very new when we became part of them in the late 70s and early 90s respectively. 

 

You will notice that I maintain a personal web site with dozens of missions resources and ideas.  My email address is listed in case you did not receive handouts or would like to correspond after the webinar.

 

Introducing the Webinar                                              

 

            In 2003, I read Brian McLaren's book, Church on the Other Side which was written in 1998 (10 years ago now).  One of the positives of the book was a whole chapter on missions, fairly unusual for a book about the church.  At that time Brian had served on the board of a mission organization for several years and on an airplane trip from a board meeting he had jotted down a series of obstacles to missions which had become this chapter.  I was interested in his assessment of the obstacles, which I felt were pretty much on target.  That initiatied my thinking on this topic.  What are the major obstacles? 

            At that point I decided to do a survey of church leaders.  I emailed quite a number of missions pastors and asked them what their biggest obstacles were.  I received quite an earful of responses and categorized them in a one-page chart.  Then I volunteered to speak on this topic to a network of missions pastors in Chicago.  As I was putting the talk together it occurred to me that putting together a list of obstacles was no great accomplishment, and no great help.  They would all acknowledge that these were their problems too and then they would ask what they should do about those things.  At this point I was already committed to the talk, so I did what any desperate teacher would do.  I put them in groups to work out some practical steps.  And then I suggested a few "principles." 

            While it would no doubt be worthwhile to discuss these obstacles listed by missions pastor, I intend to summarize my own observations.  Many experts are in a better position than I am to see what is happening in missions around the world.  Missionaries, missiologists, church and mission leaders at home and abroad, and many others can see the results, good and bad, of North American missionaries, tentmakers, short-termers, finishers, businessmen and others representing Christ throughout the world.  The church is large and diverse and, like they say about China, anything you say is probably true somewhere!  My perspective comes from twenty years of working with local churches in the U.S., primarily in the Midwest.  And from reading everything I can on missions and the church.  From this position, I see a number of challenges in regard to the ongoing commitment of North American churches to world missions.  Just as the observations are about churches, the recommendations are for churches.

            I could mention the challenges of adapting to new strategies such as international partnerships, business as missions, working in league with majority world mission organizations, and so on.  These would all be very worthwhile conversations.  However, I have chosen to look at issues within the culture of the church in the U.S. and ask how our current attitudes, interests, commitments, and methods of operation provide challenges to global missions.

 

            Fortunately there are answers and solutions to these challenges.  Unfortunately, for the most part, they are not under our control.  They are things that others have to do.  But isn't that how God works?  He gives us challenges that only He can do.  Then when there is progress, He gets the credit.  After all, as one author noted, he is not here to make us successful but to reveal Himself. 

 

Challenge 1. Keeping “lostness” in view.

As churches and congregations become more concerned about being a less threatening place for non-believers and about our image in the culture, we are careful how we use legalistic and harsh-sounding words like "evil," “lost,” “sin,” and “repentance.”  These words are awkward for non-Christians and somewhat uncomfortable for many Christians who would avoid coming to terms with the stark possibility that people could be forever lost.  At least a dozen years ago, Roger Greenway, perhaps the premier missiologist for the Christian Reformed Church, said in a workshop that the exclusivity of Christ is the pivotal issue for evangelicals.  A mobilizer from an evangelical denomination told me several years ago that he had conducted an informal survey in Sunday School classes he taught in his churches.  More than half the people had admitted they couldn't really say that people without Christ were lost.  A lady came up to me after a workshop at the November ACMC Conference in Baltimore and said her denomination had "taken evangelism out of missions."  I’m afraid many Christians just wouldn’t be able to agree that those who haven’t heard or don’t know Christ are lost. 

I have observed that Christians and non-Christians, the saved and the lost, look much alike.  When I look out my window in the morning and see my neighbor going to work, he looks a lot like me.  I may spontaneously think about the value or condition of his house, his family relationships, his job, the new things he has, or the make of car he drives.  I’m not very likely to be reminded that he is lost, in need of the Savior.  And when he sees me, I wonder if my life looks any different to him.  It is not always easy to remind ourselves that people are in two very different camps, those that know Christ and are going to spend eternity with Him and those that don’t and aren’t.  We just don’t tend to see people as “lost.”

I was talking with a young man recently whose grandparents were pioneer missionaries.  His mother has just completed a book about their first five years in Africa.  The young man himself is working for a mission organization.  When I told him that I was concerned that we don’t see people as lost, he openly said, “I don’t think of people as lost.”

As Stan Guthrie said in a very recent editorial in Christianity Today, there is a hole in our holism.  Personal evangelism is a much tougher sell than giving a cup of cold water in Jesus' name.

When we see pictures on television of people in troubled places in the world, we are likely to be reminded of hunger, of the repressive effects of totalitarian governments, of environmental destruction, of the needs for education, political stability, freedom, moral restraint, clean water, good food and medical care.  We are much more likely to observe the physical needs of people than their invisible spiritual needs.   Young adults seem to be increasingly responsive to such needs.  I asked a missions class at a Christian University about their career plans.  Most were anticipating ministry in urban areas and meeting social needs.  No one mentioned evangelism or church planting ministries. 

The missions movement has been criticized, and rightly so, for 'saving souls' and neglecting the conditions an systems that keep the bodies enslaved.  What we are seeing in churches now is a corrective to that omission.  The danger is that the pendulum never stops at the bottom.  I don’t seem to hear as much talk about the priority of reaching lost people, even in missionary reports.  The reality of the spiritual world seems hazy.  What we see in churches today, we will see in missions tomorrow.  A lack of passion about sin, repentence, lostness, redemption, the necessity of salvation, and the transformation of both the private and public life, may be reflected in missions tomorrow.  The theme that is taken for granted in this generation may be lost in the next generation.

We must not lose sight of the fact that people are lost.  People are eternal.  They are going to spend eternity with God or outside His presence.  They must be introduced to Jesus.  This must be a major component of our missions plans and ministries.  Our many humanitarian ministries must not neglect the evangelization and discipling of the lost among all nations.  As Jesus said, "These things ye ought to have done and not to have left the other undone."

 

Principles for Maximum Global Impact:

 

 

Challenge #2. Reaching both the community and the world.  

For a long time many evangelical churches focused on serving believers within the church and reaching the nations abroad.  Occasional revival meetings were meant to revive the faith of nominal Christians in the neighborhood.  Reaching the community was not a major focus.  In the last two decades, however, there has been a long overdue movement to reach our communities.  Most of the recent books I have read about the Church focus on how to reach your community and grow your church.

Many of these books begin with the Great Commission as stated in Matthew 28:19.  Working from the New International Version, they suggest that the “heart” of the Great Commission is to “make disciples” and they apply that to reaching your community.  What is often missing in these books is discipling “all the nations.”  Cross-cultural missions is taken for granted, off the radar screen of the book, frequently limited to a passing mention in a page or a paragraph.  Not too long ago I proposed “The Great Commission-Driven Church” as a workshop title.  One pastor said to me, “I’ve studied the Great Commission Church and taught on it and I was hoping for something more global.”  It seems that the Great Commission is now commonly thought of as local outreach by many church leaders.

Pastors and church leaders seem to be looking primarily to mega-church models for how to do church.  These model churches usually have a missions program, sometimes an outstanding missions ministry, but it has not been a major feature of their books and conferences.  One person involved in missions told me about returning with a van of church leaders from a mega-church conference.  One of the leaders said to the other, "Why are we putting so much money into missions?  Did you hear them talk about missions?"  Thankfully this may be changing as churches such as Saddleback are pouring themselves into the world.

New church plants are nearly all focused on reaching their unchurched community as you might expect.  They are often slow getting started in missions.  Several years ago I asked the receptionist of a young church plant, “What are you doing in missions?”  “We are a mission,” she replied.  In a recent book about effective church ministry the authors reported putting their teenagers to work “on the mission field” on Sunday morning.  He was referring to having them work in the church programs.  Recently one young church planter was asked what his church was doing in missions.  “We have a miscellaneous budget line item for that kind of stuff, “he responded.  Another young seeker church of more than 1200 people reported a missions budget of 1% in 2004. 

Doing church in a culturally relevant manner is increasingly expensive. It is difficult for churches to maintain the percentage they used to give for missions.  Large churches with large budgets have huge internal expenses.  Churches of more than one thousand in attendance rarely give more than 20% of their regular income to missions.  Younger large churches not infrequently have missions budgets of 5% or less.  A large church in the Chicago suburbs has designated 80% of their missions budget for expanding their multi-campus sites.  Traditional churches with large missions budgets are spending more on staff and facilities.  Becoming more seeker-oriented means spending increasing dollars on facilities and accoutrements for a more hospitable and pleasing place for secular people.  Almost all churches are facing these pressures in order to be acceptable, if not competitive.

The non-negotiables are changing.  At one time the missions budget was sacrosanct in many churches.  Now, as one worship pastor told me, “We have two PowerPoint projectors in the worship service.  Each projector has two bulbs.  Each bulb costs seventeen hundred dollars.  And if one blows, you gotta’ replace it.”  A volunteer technical assistant in a church of six hundred told me, “In five minutes I could write down two million dollars worth of sound equipment we need.”  Many younger churches desire to do more missions, but missions must wait on higher priorities.

Fifteen years ago, church purpose statements frequently specified "reaching the world.”  Current purpose statements are shorter and less specific.  The world is not clearly stated.  And as someone said, "a mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pew."  Missions is treated as a program rather than part of the church’s purpose.  There is a huge difference.  One missions pastor told me, “In our church, missions is one of 125 ministries and it must compete with all the others for pulpit time, resources, and volunteers.  In highly professional, time-delineated worship services, time is not available for missionaries to tell their stories.  Brief interviews or video clips must suffice to let church people know they are involved in missions.  Many churches are reducing the number of missionaries they support so they won’t be overloaded in trying to keep themselves and their people informed. 

The effort to reach our communities deserves to be supported and applauded.  How to retain and build a focus on reaching the rest of the nations at the same time is the challenge.

 

Principles for maximum global impact

 

Challenge #3.  Maintaining Focus.

When I teach in the Perspectives Course I like to begin by asking if God has an end goal for the church and the nations.  By lesson 7, the students give me good answers from the Scripture: God desires that all nations hear the gospel, that reproducing churches be established in every people group, that God be glorified by all peoples, that all nations worship, etc.  When I ask similar questions to church groups, the answers are less clear, much more nebulous.  When I ask for a definition of missions, the answers are all over the map.  It is obvious that church leaders do not spend a lot of time establishing the context for pursuing the Great Commission or its goal.  It is my assumption that missionary efforts represent our obedience to disciple all nations.  This is a very broad mandate, but it does have a goal.  Perhaps this has been taken for granted but it is no longer common knowledge. 

At one time missions was “foreign missions.”  Our nation was assumed to be Christian - at least nominal Christians - and there were many in other nations that were not Christian.  Missions was considered "taking the church where it isn't" and evangelism meant "growing the church where it is."  As our culture has become less and less Christian, the need to evangelize our own culture has become increasingly apparent.    

In addition, people from every language and nation have come to live among us so we have “cross-cultural missions” at home.  But culture isn’t limited to nationality.  We are increasingly a country with multiple cultures, many of them less affected by the Gospel or with greater social needs than others.  Even the unchurched people who grew up on your street have a different cultural worldview.  There is no longer a clear distinction between missions and other church ministry.  For most people missions has come to be defined by whether the ministry occurs on church property.               

“Local missions” is part of most missions budgets.  It is not uncommon to find up to half or more of a church’s missions budget designated for ministry within the U.S. or within the church’s own community.  Two days ago someone wrote me that their church board has mandated that they spend no more than 50% of their church budget on foreign missions. 

Since the missions budget is about the only budget available for supporting ministry outside the church, para-church organizations present their ministries as missions.  I have thought of the church as a building with one window.  The missions department has the office with the window.  Outside, above the window is printed: "Funds available.  Apply here."  Many people who work for Christian ministries consider themselves missionaries, even if their ministry supports almost exclusively middle-class American Christians.  A good friend who was principal of a local Christian school was indignant that the host church wouldn’t support the needs of the school from its missions budget.  The fact that the school primarily serves the children of Christians from his church did not change his perspective, nor does it affect the perspective of people in churches.  Recently a young man wrote to one of my colleagues, “I am presently leaving a 15-year career in corporate finance to become a missionary with ____ Financial Ministries.” An organization that provides legal support for Christian organizations refers to its agents as missionaries. Church leaders often have pet projects and organizations they would like to have funded from the missions budget.  One missions pastor smiled when he described his church’s missions budget as the wastebasket because it receives all the requests no one else wants to fund.

Increasingly missions money is used for ourselves.  In a church in Michigan the missions leader appealed for people to get involved in two missions projects.  One was building a house for an elderly member of the church.  A dozen years ago I observed missions budgets listing a maximum of 5 or 10% to be used internally for missions promotion and education.  Missions committees sometimes declined ACMC membership because, “that money could go to the missionaries.”  It was very common to see rudimentary, even shoddy, missions promotion, in very nice churches.  For years I advised missions committees to do higher quality promotion because people judge things as important if they look important.

But missions leadership in many churches has been handed off to a generation that is comfortable spending more money.  Missions promotion and education have escalated in quality and cost.  The missions budget is also called upon to provide funding for outreach activities undertaken by other departments and ministries. In one church, a Sunday School Class hosted an outreach barbecue on school property across the street.  When no one showed up, the Class asked the missions team to cover their $500 loss. 

Without clear and understood boundaries for missions, a healthy missions budget is a temptation for any church leader with ideas.  If a project or program can somehow be tied to outreach, the missions budget becomes a potential source of funding.  Youth excursions have been converted to mission trips and are supported by missions budgets.  In one church the missions committee budgeted funds for a youth missions trip.  When the youth raised all the money they needed for the trip, they asked for (and received) the same funds for a retreat.  When church leaders planned a community service project for cell groups, the missions team was asked to cover the cost of the lunches.  In one church children were asked to give money to missions “for children who don’t know Jesus.”  The funds were used to purchase playground equipment for the church, presumably to attract those children. 

The missions budget is increasingly becoming a “miscellaneous budget.”  One must ask what priority “miscellaneous” will continue to enjoy in the church.  Purpose-driven institutions try to focus their resources on their primary purposes and it’s easy to see that “miscellaneous” spending should be small.  A missions chair wrote me, “The leadership at our church has been arguing that all the church does is ‘missional.’  Therefore, it is inappropriate to expect that a given percentage defines a "healthy, vibrant" church.”  Missional is good.  And it should maintain an appropriate balance between 'our world' and the rest of the world.      

Even while the prosperity of the North American church grows, the challenge also grows to increase, or at least maintain, outreach ministry focused on the peoples and nations with the greatest needs and least access to the Gospel. 

 

Principles for Maximum Global Impact.

·        Look at the world from the top down, rather than the inside out.  We look from where we are and see needs all around.  We have difficulty looking through nearby needs to see the greater global needs.  God looks from the top down.  He sees the whole world and our location and resources in the scope of the bigger picture.  We can practice that.

·        Develop and widely communicate the priority of cross-cultural missions from both a biblical and a “state of the world” position.  Demonstrate the clear disparity of Gospel “access” and Christian resources between our own culture and other cultures.

·        Develop a definition and boundaries for the missions budget, describing what is considered missions and what isn’t.  Negotiate to remove non-missions items from the missions budget. 

·        Develop and communicate a missions strategy that clearly shows the church’s highest priorities for missions involvement.

·        Set up a separate budget for local or same-culture ministries.

 

Challenge #4. Balancing new strategies with commitment to long-term missionaries. 

Church leaders always have to decide how to best use limited resources for Kingdom benefit.  Which takes priority, investing in promising and productive missions strategies or supporting and caring for current long-term missionaries?

Historically congregations have been connected to missions through their missionaries and their primary concern has been the missionaries.  Some churches idolize missionaries, the people who gave up everything to live for Jesus in far away places in the world.  The support and welfare of their missionaries is their number one priority.  One pastor told me, “We have never missed a check for our missionaries, and as long as I’m the pastor we never will.”  They may have little idea what the missionaries are trying to accomplish, but their prayers are on behalf of the missionary and rarely the people they serve.  They would not think of asking whether a missionary is effective or their ministry is strategic but whether he is safe and healthy. 

Many churches do not have specific missions goals and priorities.  Until recently the most common church goal was to raise as much money as possible for missions.  Less attention was given to what was accomplished or attempted with the funds raised.  Local church lay leaders are often unaware of various parts of the world and know little about cultures and mission strategies.  They support and trust missionaries and mission organizations that have their own goals.  The church missions strategy is a collection of the strategies of supported missionaries and organizations. 

Many churches have lost touch with a number of the missionaries they support.  Few people know them and they have little idea of what or how they are doing.  New missions leaders may want to evaluate their missionaries but they may have unreasonable expectations.  Is a church entitled to evaluate the ministry of someone with whom they haven't communicated and of whom they have only perhaps 5% of their support?  Further, what standards apply?  Could you use the same standards to evaluate your church?  Others are highly critical of missionaries whose results aren't dramatic.  They seem to assume church growth in a difficult environment should be rapid and dramatic like it happens to be in their church.  One young missions pastor in a suburban multi-campus church told me their elders were considering disengaging with their missionaries in the 10/40 Window.  They wanted to take a “high impact” approach like their ministry in the U.S.  It seemed to be a new idea to him that “high impact” might look different in the 10/40 Window.

Occasionally a new missions committee takes seriously their responsibility to become better stewards of missions resources and they develop a strategy.  Wise leaders will consider the input of, and the consequences to, their far away and dependent missionaries.  Alternatively, missionaries who may have pioneered the missions ministry in the church or been long time workers from the church may be unceremoniously dumped because they don’t fit into the new strategy. 

Increasingly church leaders recognize that the congregation has become disconnected from missions and they work to get more people connected and involved.  With fewer and time-limited services, there is little opportunity to help the congregation to learn to know all the missionaries on their roster.  Even the missions team can't keep up.  This leads to a desire to reduce the number of supported missionaries so that the church can focus more heavily on the ministry of a few.  The same reasoning makes it difficult for new missionaries to obtain support unless they are highly regarded members of the congregation. 

In reaction to the criticism that "churches only want your money," raising money has become an almost taboo topic in churches.  In days past churches enthusiastically raised funds for missions.  When people in the congregation were approached by individual missionaries for support, it was understood.  As one fundraising missionary told me last week, "Young people don't have supported missionary models visiting and having dinner and being touted at church anymore.  Support-raising, except for mission trips is foreign and odd."

The most natural forms of congregational involvement are mission trips and projects in the community.  These require a great deal of planning and management.  Many missions leaders are so busy with organizing these complex involvements along with their other church responsibilities, that they have little time to think about how or whether these high-involvement projects contribute to the larger goal of world evangelization.

Becoming more strategic while taking care of our missionaries is a major challenge.

 

Principles for Maximum Global Impact

 

Challenge #5. Maximizing Mission Trips

Probably everything that can be said about mission trips has been said.  And probably everything that has been said is true somewhere.  However, it is too big a phenomenon to ignore.   

The last twenty years have seen an explosion of mission trips.  Some estimate that one million Americans go on mission trips annually at a cost of $1 billion.  Early on mission trips were mostly undertaken to stimulate missions commitment in the sending church: more giving, and praying, and producing more long-term missionaries.  For years many of us have encouraged congregations to send their pastors and leaders to the mission field to give them first-hand experience and build their missions commitment. 

Now people are traveling everywhere in the world for all kinds of reasons and no reason at all, and missions trips are part of this trend.  Daniel Rickett in the latest EMQ said that mission trips are at the tipping point of becoming tourism.  On the contrary, many Christians have seen needs elsewhere in the world and discovered ways they can contribute.  Almost all new long-term missionaries have been on one or more mission trips.  Others have maintained contact with people in remote parts of the world.  Nearly anyone you ask will say the mission trip was a “life-changing experience.”  The results of more research is coming to light, with mixed results.  It seems a life-changing experience isn't what it used to be.  Some people are attempting to build a life made up of a series of life-changing experiences.   Some people who go on a mission trip come home two weeks behind in their work and find the washing machine broken, a harried wife, and a houseful of dirty laundry.  This turns out to be another life changing experience, partially negating the earlier one. 

People who have little or no interest in missions will sometimes take a missions trip.  My favorite story is the one Larry Ragan tells in the CultureLink workshop.  A church had a cancellation for a trip and asked the congregation if someone wanted to go.  One man volunteered, got on the plane with the group, arrived in Europe, got off the plane and disappeared into the crowd and that was the last they saw of him! 

Mission trips are so common that in Wal-Mart a clerk saw my “Go-Team” shirt and asked if I had been on a mission trip.  I asked if she had been on a trip and she said, no, but her husband had been on several trips, and she named at least six countries in Latin America.

Mission trips are changing the way we view missions and do missions.  Mission trips are a means to accomplish mission work on the field, to enlighten and disciple the ones who go, and to influence the congregation back home.  At the same time, trips consume a great deal of missions energy both at home and on the field.  Those who go return exhilarated, worn out, and two weeks behind.  Unless the fires are deliberately stoked, they tend to die out.     

While much good work is accomplished on trips, there are not infrequent reports that trips were more costly than beneficial, if not down right detrimental, on the mission field.  The permanent life change we hope to see in the one who goes gradually fades back into normal American life.  The congregation may not get the full impact because there is little opportunity to communicate and because of a failure to think clearly about what needs to be communicated.  Not too long ago I heard a missions trip report that included no mention of giving, one appeal for prayer, and several enthusiastic appeals for people to go on trips.  The primary result of most trips is more trips.

In May of 2005, representatives of twelve churches in Indianapolis estimated that more than 1300 individuals from their churches would go on mission trips in 2005.  One new missions committee member told my colleague, “I thought serving on the missions committee was just deciding where to go on trips.” 

I’ve never heard anyone say that their church’s regular missions budget (outside of giving for mission trips) has grown because of their mission trips.  I'm sure it has happened but it doesn't appear to be a general expectation. It is clear, however, that an increasing proportion of many missions budgets is going to help support the trips.  One of my friends told me that their church had notified a long supported missionary couple that they wouldn’t be able to support them any longer because they needed the funds for more missions trips. 

While most new missionaries have taken mission trips, there is little evidence of a surge of new long-term missionaries.  Every three years the Mission Handbook reports the number of missionaries serving overseas for four years or more.  The latest figures from 2001 show that the number has changed little over the past dozen years.

An increasing number of churches are making trips a major part, sometimes the primary part, of their missions ministry.  Others are using trips not for doing ministry but primarily as a discipleship tool.  One young leader in a mega church told me that discipling their people is THE reason they do trips.  There is no doubt that mission trips can be an effective discipling tool but subtly mission trips are becoming something we do for ourselves rather than a means of sitmulating greater missions involvement and effectiveness in the world.  When we find ourselves “using” missions as a tool for our own benefit, or doing missions in a way certain way because it provides a means for personal involvement, rather than to accomplish something for Jesus out in the world, we have gone off course. 

The challenge is to do mission trips in such a way that they are productive on the field, they disciple the people who go, and they stimulate the congregation to greater missions commitment.  This is no small challenge.

 

Principles for Maximum Global Impact 

 

Challenge #6. Producing and sustaining (and financing) high quality, long-term missionaries.

In many cases - obviously not all - our missionaries represent the best our churches have to offer and today’s missionary recruits have many advantages over previous generations.  Younger candidates have much awareness of the world and experience crossing cultures.  Second career candidates have rich life experiences, skills and expertise.  But many also have much to overcome.  Many have not grown up in the church.  Some have grown up in churches where Scripture teaching has not been solid.  Thus they may think and act more from a cultural than a biblical worldview.

Potential missionaries struggle with issues related to their family backgrounds, life experiences, relational issues, spiritual development, and expectations.  Our culture heavily affects our churches and congregations, and our culture does not tend to produce the Godly qualities described in the New Testament.

From the beginning the Church in the United States has been closely connected to the culture and we still cling to it as the culture deteriorates.  We live pretty much at the level of our culture.  For the majority this includes a relative level of wealth, ease, and physical comforts but it also includes accommodation to habits, attitudes, practices, sins and weaknesses that compete with spiritual development.  In many churches people come to Christ with high expectations of personal benefits and little expectation of life transformation and change.  People in the church look and act much like people outside.  The moral looseness of our “Christian” society is an embarrassment to Christians around the world.  Church leaders sometimes set the pace by identifying with the culture through edgy language, film clips, and dramatic sketches.  Christians in general spend much time with the media and little time in the Bible, and consequently few are able to think and act consistently from a Christian worldview.  Our American arrogance and independence are not good models.  Our freedoms to eat and drink and wear and say and do whatever we want are a hindrance and shame to many of the churches we want to help elsewhere in the world. 

We are accustomed to a luxurious lifestyle, a stark contrast to most people in the world.  Habits and desires do not disappear when one decides to become a missionary.  Those who have never lacked anything may struggle mightily in living situations that are still upscale compared to the people to whom they minister.  Such western missionaries are in an awkward position to teach others Scriptural attitudes toward money and sacrifice.  As one missions pastor told me, “Our church has a good missionary candidate training program but we can’t teach them how to live a simple lifestyle.” Christians and potential missionaries from our culture may sometimes appear to have little to offer unbelievers. 

Dysfunctional backgrounds must be overcome.  Those who have struggled with abuse, addiction, broken families and relationship issues carry additional baggage that tends to surface under the pressures of cross-cultural conditions and spiritual challenges.  Our large spaces and independent lifestyles allow us to avoid people with whom we have problems.  Such issues are often not so easily resolved overseas.

Living in a world where Christianity is taken for granted does little to develop conditioning and toughness to withstand cultural and religious animosity and persecution.  As one woman in the third world said incredulously, “If you haven’t suffered persecution how do you know what it means to be a Christian?”

In spite of these issues, many godly people, young and old, are moving into significant mission roles, for which we can be enthusiastic and grateful.

 

Principles for Maximum Global Impact

·        Note that younger generations have many natural cross-cultural relationships that facilitate working with people of other nationalities and languages.  Provide opportunities and training for building relationships and witnessing across cultures locally.

·        Go against the current.  Teach and practice the New Testament model of being set apart for Christ. 

·        Challenge people to a self-denying, counter-cultural lifestyle.  Be clear about sin, purity and holiness.  Develop a culture of expectation of life transformation.

·        Develop accountability groups to help people live true to Christian convictions in both their personal and corporate lives.

·        Be sure that missionary candidates have thorough exposure to the church and life in another culture.

 

 

 

More than 10 years ago, Paul Pierson, the former dean of the School of World Missions at Fuller said, "This is the most rapidly changing and creative and productive time in the history of the world missionary movement."  I think Paul would agree that this is true today even more than it was then.

 

We have the confidence that this is God's work and God is relentless.  We are on the winning team.  Let us take heart and move forward for the King!