David Wesley
Nazarene Theological Seminary
In a last minute effort to put together a workshop for the M7 conference, I am wrestling with the theme which has been given to me. The theme comes from a common question in the U.S. “If the need is so great at ‘home’, why do we send missionaries?” For my own purposes, I have reduced the title to just “Why Send North American Missionaries?”
In my grandparents, or parent’s generation, this question would not have even been asked. The question, more, likely would have more to do with sending people who are not North Americans.
The map of global Christianity that my grandparents knew, however, has been turned upside down. At the start of the 20th century, only ten percent of the world’s Christians lived in the continents of the south and east. Ninety percent lived in North America and Europe, along with Australia and New Zealand. But at the start of the 21st century, at least 70 percent of the world’s Christians live in the non-Western world—more appropriately called the majority world. Just to give an idea:
- There are more members of the Anglican churches in Nigeria than all of the Episcipal and Anglican churches in Britain, Europe and North America combined.
- There are more Baptists in Congo than in Britain.
- Ten times more Assemblies of God members in Latin America than in the U.S.
- From the Nazarene World Mission Website: “Statistics indicate that World Mission can anticipate church membership in excess of 1 million members in World Region areas by September 2007” (there are currently 640,000 Nazarenes in North America).
- The growth rate of the Church of the Nazarene in the U.S. last year was 0.59%, in world areas it was 5.58%.
What used to be the peripheries of the Church is now the center. The old center of the church is quickly becoming the periphery.
Philip Jenkins book, The Next Christendom which describes the realities of a southward movement of Christianity, has brought this reality to popular attention in the past few years.
While many would argue that “Christendom” in reality does not exist, and the “Majority world church” is not clamoring for some kind of political or church power (on the contrary, many desire to help the U.S. in the struggle to shift from survival mode to mission mode) the reality of an enormous shift in Christianity is, in fact a reality. This is partly because of the incredible success of the mission movement of the past 100 years.
With enormous sacrifice on the missionaries’ part as well as the sending churches part, the church has been established throughout the world. While it is popular to evaluate and critique the mistakes of colonialistic missionaries (and there were many mistakes that we can learn from), the missionary movement of the 20th century was an enormous success. It was such a success that today there are more Nazarenes outside the U.S. than within the U.S.
This brings us around to the question, “so what?” What does all of this mean for mission?
In such a changing and unstable global environment, there are a few ‘indicators’ which serve to guide us.
1) Our mission and our mission strategies (including where we send missionaries from) must be addressed from a theological and scriptural reference point.
Jurgen Moltman said: “It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church” (1977:64)
There are various implications of this statement. One of these is that the church does not organize itself and it’s strategies in order for God to move in our world (that is magic). Instead, we ask; “what is God doing in our world?” and “how can we open our church structure to participate with God in His activity in the world” (that is true worship)?
We often ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is, “Where does my little life fit into the great story of God’s mission?”
In all of our discussions of the “emergent church” we wrestle to “make the gospel relevant to the world.” But God is about the mission of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel.
Lesslie Newbigin has prophetic words for the church in this regard:
We are being called to reclaim the church for its missionary purposes…there is a fatal dichotomy that marks Christendom ecclesiology: church and mission. Mission is often treated as a stepchild or, even worse, in some cases an orphan. That is to say, traditional ecclesiology has no place for mission. Yet the church was instituted by Jesus Christ to be a sign of God’s reign and the means of witnessing to that reign throughout the world. The church that refuses to accept its missionary purpose is a deformed church.
Paul Orjala definitely had it right when he said, “God’s Mission is my mission”. Mission is the nature of God, and the church reflects the nature of God as it participates in His mission.
2) We will increasingly need to realize that Christianity does not have a territorial or national center. Our center is God, and His passion for a lost world.
Mission begins anywhere there are believers who follow the passion of Christ, who reach out to areas where people do not know Christ.
The church has always been multidirectional in its mission. We often use Acts 1:8 as an argument for concentric circle type of mission, but if we look at Acts closer, we notice that Jerusalem was just one of the sending points for the church.
- Peter goes from Jerusalem to Samaria, to Gaza, to Azotos, and to Ceasaria (Acts 8).
- Believers from Cyprus go to Antioch and initiate a multiethnic church there (Acts 11:19-21).
- Barnabus goes from Antioch to Tarsus to get Saul (Acts 11:22-26).
- Priscilla and Aquilla come from Italy and end up in Corinth (Acts 18)
- Apollos comes from Alexandria to Ephesus, then ends up in Corinth (Acts 18-19)
What held this early, multidirectional church together is found in 3 John where you will notice the use of letters of recommendation and the exhortations to treat traveling church planters and teachers “in a manner worthy of God”. In this we see a sense of cohesiveness in which the church is not separated independent sending nations, neither is it a church dependent on the church in Jerusalem. It is, however, an interdependent network which is centered in Jesus Christ.
The real mission boundary is not between “Christian countries” and “the mission field,” but between faith and unbelief, and that is a boundary, according to Christopher Wright, “that runs through every land and, indeed, through every local street.”
What does this mean?
Since M7 is primarily comprised of people from the U.S., I will frame the questions in relation to that perspective:
- Is there no longer a need for the U.S. to send missionaries? (Is the task done?)
- Should we focus on sending missionaries from other countries to the U.S.?
If we looked at the church as a business that was ours to control and run like machinery, one could possibly say it would be more practical to declare a moratorium on U.S. missionaries. There are many denominations that have been doing just that over the past 15-20 years. The interesting phenomenan is that these denominations have consistently decreased in the U.S. as they brought missionaries home. One of these mainline denominations had a goal of have a decrease of only 5% in the U.S. last year.
Why??
I believe that is because of the fact that mission is God’s nature. God is a mission God, and if the church is focused on itself and not outwardly toward the lost that God is seeking to redeem, it no longer functions as the healthy body of Christ.
Are ‘missional’ churches the answer?
I have found, as I have come back to the U.S. after 14 years that the word “missional” is in vogue. At first, I thought this meant that the church was actively focused on God’s mission. I have found, however, that:
- We often use the term “missional”, but that usually means that we are about relevant communication.
- “Missional” language is used to infer that we are all about living incarnationally, which means having real conversations with people that are similar in a postmodern, secular society. That is relevance, and is a need in our world today.
- This is not, however, taking the kingdom of God across cultural boundaries, or going to people who are nearby, but who are culturally or socially different and who are separated from God.
Although cultural relevance is necessary, the key which will awaken the Church in the U.S. or in any other part of the globe is to seek God’s holiness. I am not, in anyway, trying to use that phrase as a cliché or “Nazareney” term. What I am saying is that the life of the church can only be found in being in the likeness of God. This means that we reflect “His glory” and “His passion”.
So to finally answer the question: NO!! In no way can we afford to stop sending missionaries from the U.S. or from any point where the body of Christ find’s itself. There are many motives for which people become missionaries, but it has become increasingly evident that we do not go because of nationality; we do not go because we are more intelligent or resourceful. We go because we are called of God to participate in His mission, His salvage operation to restore broken and lost people.
