Addition?
Are we done with simple addition in missions?
Is simple addition enough or do we need to insist that everything done in missions multiply? We live in a world of 8 billion people and growing daily. Half of the countries in our world today do not allow traditional missionaries to live and work freely in their country. Those countries contain 65% of the world’s population. Our traditional missionaries are serving among the 35% where they can serve. Many of these countries have welcomed or allowed missionaries for many, many years. Generations of missionaries have served in some countries and still there is work to be done. Should that be said with a question mark, “STILL there is work to be done?”
One missionary after many years of missionary service cried that only one lady-missionary was still on the field. Another country had 11 missionary families serving in a state of 3 million people.
So, we send/add one couple here and another couple there. Our investment in missions is huge while our outreach continues among a minority of the world population in need of the Gospel. Multitudes within these countries have shut out the message that has been available for so long as our missionaries continue to reach out to the children and grandchildren of those who were the focus years ago. People who ought to be reached by the national churches we established years ago are watching our missionaries continue to do the same work. Meanwhile, multitudes (millions, even billions) of people are outside our traditional methods of missions with hostile governments and false religions barring the preaching of the Gospel. Millions of people have never even heard the name of Jesus; the name by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
When have we left a country to be reached by the national local churches we started? What is the end game of our mission agencies? Is it good enough to add a few couples every year? Let the national churches of the places where we have spent so much time and treasure now reach their own; what can be done for those who have never heard?
Is it time to shift the focus from who we are sending to reach them to who are they sending to reach their world? What is the church’s strategy to see the Gospel touch every part of our world? Is it time for fellowships of churches to convene a World Missions conference to consider their present approach, methodology, and strategy in light of the unreached world.
To whom does the Great Commission belong as an obligation, demand, expectation, responsibility, and requirement? Obedience is commanded and blessing is dependent on fulfillment. Incomplete obedience is in fact disobedience.
Is it only the western churches that needs to gasp and flail around for some excuse for non-compliance? We should be long past ‘the west to the rest’ and instead arguing for ‘EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE’. Every believer is responsible for outreach; every local church should be looking for how to reach their world. The church is God’s plan for this age. Where is the local church and not just in the west? The obligation of world missions much be pressed on all churches, everywhere. Was (Is) that the intent of our church planters as they left (leave) our country for some other place? To hand off the responsibility for world missions to those we reached, taught and for whom we planted churches.
I speak this to my own shame as I went overseas to train national pastors to take the place of our church planters. Yet I never thought about training a man to take my place so I could move on to another destination.
Addition is another couple for Spain, one for Australia, one for Canada, maybe one for Cambodia. Multiplication is hundreds of national missionaries reaching their country and their world; some or a majority of them crossing borders into countries we as Americans may never enter.
Before moving on to the next area, please consider the necessity of getting the national local churches involved. I believe we fail the individual who makes his way here to the USA and raises support that is facilitated back to him by an organization created for that purpose. Where is the national church? Who sent these people to raise money from our churches? When he gets back, will he create his own kingdom or be sent out by a national local church to their mission field? The accountability issue can be resolved by expecting the national churches (sending and supporting national churches) to support their missionary, doing their ministry, in their mission field. It should also include their money. If American churches wish to help, it should not be by sponsoring the individual. Rather, if necessary, it should be by partnering for a time with the national churches until they can support their missions program on their own.
