That's my job!
Are we done with missionaries doing the work of
members of the local churches?
We are perhaps down to ‘learning by repetition’ but we really must ask, “Are we sending missionaries to do what the national believers are called to do?” Certainly, there remain pioneer mission fields and certainly, raising up the first national leaders may take some time. For how long shall we do their work until they take over and do it themselves?
I still shake my head in amazement when I think of how we had 11 families at one time on a mission field in a state of 3 million people. My disappointment will never go away that in the two terms we were there, only one Bible college graduate was given opportunity in a church where the missionary church planter had already left. The initial strategy of four and out (four years to plant a church and then move on) was abandoned some time before and the idea of ‘more time required’ led to several terms.
I was never the church planter and when I was the teacher of Church Planting and Growth, I knew enough to bring in the church planters to help teach the class. Answering the question of how to advance church planting is up to those who plant churches. My only suggestion is to send experienced church planter, not to plant a church but train multiple nationals to plant churches.
In the ministry I am in right now, I am helping a group of churches to send a national church planter across a border into a country we cannot enter. They had a portion of his support from their churches and asked my ministry to supply the rest from American churches. They planned to send him to plant a church. “You’re singing my song”, I said. Then, I made the argument that he should not plant a church but train church planters. In the church planter’s report six months later, he reported that he was training 12 church planters. He has now 4 preaching points and sends 3 men to each site. One will eventually take over and the others will move on. Does that sound like multiplication?
Make the same application to other areas of ministry, whether missions or local church. Instead of sending Americans to do the work, why not send experienced trainers to train nationals (in multiplied locations) to do the work?
