When we think about missionary support, many of us think about a denominational effort which sponsors and supports missionaries who are working in various parts of the world.  For example, many denominations participate in a centralized support structure whereby the denomination collects money which, in turn, is used to support the denominational missionaries on the field.  For example, the Southern Baptists support their missionaries through the Lottie Moon offering taken up every December.  Likewise, the Christian and Missionary Alliance support their missionaries through the Great Commission fund.  Many such examples could be given.  Indeed, this continues to be an important and vital structure which effectively sends out and supports missionaries around the world.  However, for the last hundred years there has been a dramatic rise of what is sometimes called “faith” missionaries.  This refers to missionaries who raise their own support through direct appeals to churches and friends who, in turn, partner with an organization which often does not belong to a particular denomination.[1] Mission organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators, Frontiers, SIM (Society of International Missionaries) or OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship) are providing an increasingly growing proportion of the missionary force.

In addition to the traditional denomination support and the growth of the many “faith” mission boards, there is also an increasing number of missionaries going out as professionals who support themselves through their own occupational employment.  This is known as ‘tentmaking’, so named after the Apostle Paul’s determination at a certain point in his ministry to not take support from the Corinthian church, but to support himself through his trade, which was tentmaking.  By extension, any secular occupation whereby one supports themselves in a strategic location for missionary purposes is known as ‘tentmaking.’  Many countries which have restricted missionary presence are being served through Christians who have re-located to those countries and work in a wide array of fields for strategic purposes.  In the 19^th century the dominant ‘tentmaking’ professions were either physicians or nurses providing medical care whereas today one is more likely to meet someone who is an English teacher or who is utilizing their technological expertise in some strategic part of the world.  Nevertheless, this is an important avenue through which many missionaries are being effectively placed around the world.

Church’s today need to be aware of these shifts and realize that the global missionary effort is being extended from a wide range of initiatives including the local church, denominations, para-church organizations, professionals and by a whole range of efforts by indigenous churches throughout the world.

For centuries the church has thought of itself as existing in three major branches:  Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox.  Within each of these branches there are, of course, countless smaller orders, denominations and bodies of believers.   One of the most dramatic changes during the 20^th century has been the emergence of a broad spectrum of Pentecostal Christians which have grown so numerous that many are considering it a separate, fourth branch of Christianity.[1] The number of Pentecostals world-wide has now grown into a force which is numbered, not in the thousands, but in the hundreds of millions of believers (Chart Below).[2] This has not only influenced Western, Protestant Christianity, but has been a major force on the mission field, particularly in Latin America and Africa, but true to a large extent throughout the world.   In Latin America, for example, Pentecostal Christianity makes up the largest segment of Protestantism which is expected to constitute one third of Latin American population by the year 2010.[3]

As we think about the world, we can no longer assume that Pentecostal branches of Christianity are small or that Pentecostal theology is being embraced by only marginal groups of believers.  Today, many of the most vigorously growing Christian movements in the world are identifying with some aspects of Pentecostal theology.  It is not unusual, for example, to see believers around the world gathering to lay hands on the sick to pray for someone’s healing or hearing of someone prophesying in the church or speaking in tongues.  Regardless of your position on the ongoing experience of spiritual gifts in the life of the church, we cannot afford to ignore this global movement and the fact that an increasing number of our brothers and sisters in the global church are Pentecostal, Charismatic or Independent believers.

[2] Documentation of this can be found in the following works:  Karla Poewe, ed., Charistmatic Christianity as Global Culture (Columbia:  University of South Carolina Press, 1994);  Walter Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Its Origins and Development Worldwide (Peabody, Mass.:  Hendrickson, 1997);  Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Peterson, eds., The Globalization of Pentecostalism:  A Religion Made to Travel (Oxford and Irvine, California:  Regnum International, 1999); and David Martin, Pentecostalism:  The World Their Parish (Malden, Mass:  Blackwell, 2001).

[3] Dana L. Robert, “Shifting Southward:  Global Christianity Since 1945,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 24, #2 (April, 2000) 56.   Even in the 1990’s Brazil, known traditionally as the world’s largest Catholic country, had nearly 80,000,000 Christians who fit into the broad category of Pentecostal, Charismatic or Independent.    Of the 80 million, 32% were Pentecostals, 42% Charismatics and 27% independents.  See, David B. Barrett, George Kurian, and Todd Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 2001) 134, col. 1.

7.  THE GOAL OF MISSIONS AND THE GREAT COMMISSION IS CHURCH PLANTING

The gospels record that the last act of Jesus prior to His ascension was to deliver a final commission to his disciples.  Today, this is known as the Great Commission.  A close examination of the gospels reveals that Jesus issued the Great Commission on several occasions to his disciples between His Resurrection and His ascension.  He delivered the Great Commission at least twice in Jerusalem, once in Bethany and once in Galilee.[1] One of the most striking facts about these final commissions from our Lord is that the emphasis is not merely on making converts around the world, but the incorporation of new believers into the redeemed community of the church!  For example, the most well-known of the Great Commissions is found in Matthew 28 where Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20).  The only imperative in the entire passage is the command to ‘make disciples’.  That is the central core command around which the entire passage is structured.   In several of the Great Commission passages Jesus mentions the central role of baptism which is not merely referring to being baptized into an individualized faith, but being baptized into the community of those who declare that “Jesus is Lord.”

One of the challenges we face in the current globalization of the Christian movement is that the evangelistic-conversion thrust is moving at a much faster rate than the church-planting – discipleship thrust.  The result is that people are being brought to faith at a rate much faster than they are being effectively incorporated into a local church and at least initiated into the discipleship process.  This is of great concern for several reasons.  First, if someone is not quickly incorporated into the church they are more likely to succumb to doctrinal errors.  Many new Christians who have not been incorporated into a Christian church have been lured into heretical movements such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormonism (LDS) or other groups which have not been faithful in preserving and defending historic Christian faith.  Second, if incorporation into a church does not happen quickly, new believers are more likely to fall away altogether and leave their newfound faith.  While it is difficult to document how widespread the problem of retention in the faith is, we know that the problem is large because the number of reported conversions in some countries far exceeds the number of actual worshiping Christians.  Once someone who has made a profession of faith in Christ falls away, they are – statistically speaking – far more difficult to reach than someone who has never responded to the gospel.

Western Christians, in particular, too often assume the presence of an existing infrastructure of church bodies which are within easy driving distance of any city or town in America.  However, this is seldom the case on the mission field.  What are the implications of this for a local church?  I have found that it is far easier to raise money to fund a purely evangelistic enterprise as opposed to the more difficult task of raising money to train and disciple existing believers.  Nevertheless, the church must keep the entire goal and scope of the Great Commission in mind as we pursue missions in our local churches.  We need to do a better job explaining to our members that to lead someone to Christ without also thinking about their incorporation into a body of believers is irresponsible and, frankly, a direct disobedience to the Great Commission which calls us to baptize new believers into a community of faith and to teach them everything he has commanded us.  We have, I fear, been guilty of under-interpreting the Great Commission through viewing it as a call for us to evangelize all over the world.  It does mean that, but it also means much more.  It is also a call to plant viable, self-replicating churches among all people-groups.   Our vision must be nothing less than a commitment to “disciple the nations.”

There is a widespread confusion in local churches today in discerning the difference between the evangelistic mandate of the church and the missionary mandate of the church.  This confusion has led many churches to claim a wide array of mission activities which are actually, in fact, evangelistic activities.  In short, evangelism refers to Christian witness among those who belong to the same culture as we do.  Missions, in contrast,  refers to Christian witness across cultural boundaries to men and women who do not belong to our culture and where there are either no Christians or the national church is not yet viable.  Why is this distinction important?  There are three reasons why remembering this distinction is vital to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.  First, we must always remember the vital difference between those who currently do have access to the gospel and those who do not.  If we belong to a culture where the church has been sufficiently planted then it is likely that non-Christians already have friends or neighbors or even family members who are Christians.   It is likely that there are local churches, radio broadcasting and a host of literature available which gives this non-Christian access to the gospel message.  Furthermore, it is likely that the Bible is also available in the language of these non-Christians.  In short, they have access to the gospel message even if they are non-Christians.  In contrast, there are thousands of people groups in the world today who simply do not have access to the gospel.  The missionary mandate focuses on this latter group and constitutes approximately 33% of the world as demonstrated by the graph below (See, Chart C).  Second, it is vital that local churches wisely allocate their scare missions resources.  Why should we spend missions money to send a young family to a part of the globe where the church is already viable?   If, for example, there is a vigorous church present among the Yoruba in Nigeria, why should we allocate resources to send someone who is culturally and linguistically removed from the Yoruba (e.g. an American, English speaking person) to do evangelism for the Yoruba Christians?  It is not only an unwise allocation of resources, but it is actually a missiological impediment to the full emergence of the indigenous church among the Yoruba.  Third, we must recognize that evangelism, even on a massive global scale, will never fulfill the Great Commission.  Even if every Christian in the world became an anointed evangelist and, furthermore, every person they witnessed to (friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members and so forth) became Christians, at the end of this wave of evangelism there would still be over one billion people who have never heard the gospel message.  Why?  Because these are the people groups who currently do not have any Christians in their midst.  There are thousands of people groups where people simply do not have any Christians in their family, or among their co-workers or in their neighborhood and so forth.

This distinction is not intended to diminish the vital importance of the evangelistic mandate.  It is merely intended to clearly understand the differences between the two mandates and the vital importance for the local church to be certain that everything they call missions is actually missions.

Chart C

Going out as a missionary was very different in previous generations compared with today.  It wasn’t that many years ago when a young person would present themselves at the altar of a church and declare their desire to become a foreign missionary and in due course of time be sent out knowing very little, indeed, about the peoples to whom they were sacrificing everything to minister to.  I think that many of us who have studied the lives of these missionaries are amazed and awed at the depth of their commitment, despite facing so many unknowns.  While commitment to the task is an unchanging necessity for the mission field throughout the ages, we are now in a position to better prepare men and women for the challenges which they will face and to learn from the wisdom and mistakes of those who have gone before us.

In an article of this brevity it is impossible to go beyond broad generalizations, but it may be helpful, just as an example, to give a simple beginning lesson to make the point.  When we all learned to read we began by learning the ABC’s.  Likewise, one of the basic building blocks of information which an inspiring missionary learns is the global “windows.”  A global window is like the ‘alphabet’ of missions.  It helps people to start with some broad generalizations about the world and then to dig deeper as they prepare for work among a particular group in a particular place.   In order to begin to break the global mandate down into bite sized pieces, we must begin by seeing the world as a conglomerate of five basic blocks known as mega-spheres or, more popularly, as “windows”.  The first and most well-known “window” on the world is the 10-40 window.  This refers to those people-groups who live 10 degrees north latitude to 40 degrees north latitude of the equator spanning from N. Africa, across the Middle East and central Asia all the way across most of India, China and Japan.  This sphere refers to the place where the most unreached peoples live and is the heartland of the major non-Christian religions of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.[1] The fact that most unreached peoples live in this relatively small corridor of the world reminds us of the importance of developing viable strategies for reaching Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist peoples for Jesus Christ.[2] The second “window” on the world is known as the younger church window.  This refers to the entire African continent below the Sahara desert.  In this region we are experiencing a very rapid increase in the number of new Christians and new churches.   The African church below the Sahara desert is increasing at a rate of approximately 16,000 new members per day.  This underscores the growing need for effective church planting, discipleship and leadership development in this sphere.   The third “window” on the world is the “post-Christian” window and refers to the Western world, most notably N. America, Western Europe and some portions of E. Europe.  In this region there is a significant decline in Christian affiliation among people groups who were the traditional heart-land of Christian faith through most of the last five hundred years.  Reaching people who are nominally Christian or who have already had prolonged superficial, but not effective, exposure to the Christian gospel calls for unique strategies and gifting.   The fourth “window” on the world is the Catholic-Pentecostal Window.  This refers to the remarkable situation in Latin America which for the last four hundred years has been predominately Roman Catholic, but in the twentieth century has also witnessed the dramatic rise of the Pentecostal movement in Latin America.  One cannot work effectively in Latin America without a deep understanding of the historic role of Catholicism or the more recent growth of  Pentecostalism in the region.  The fifth “window” on the world is the Orthodox window.  This refers to the regions north of the 10-40 window and East of Western Europe located in Euro-Asia which represents the traditional heartland of the Eastern Orthodox church.  Many people who know only of the atheistic legacy of the Soviet Union are unaware that Russia was Christianized by Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the 8^th and 9^th centuries.  Major Eastern communions such as the Russian or Ukranian or the Serbian orthodox church have long histories in these countries which are today the object of much missionary outreach.  It is, of course, vital to bring the gospel to this area, but it must be done with an awareness of and a sensitivity to the prior presence of the Orthodox church.   Walter Swatsky, a leading expert in Russian Christianity has correctly stated that “the one thing that we do not need now is evangelists from the West who neither speak the languages nor understand the cultures of the former Soviet Union.”[3] As with all of these mega-spheres, missionaries today need to do their homework and to commit themselves to the kind of preparation and study which is needed to be effective in any ministry.

[2] See, Timothy C. Tennent, Christianity at the Religious Roundtable:  Evangelicalism in Conversation with Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam, (Grand Rapids:  Baker Press, 2002).

[3] Walter Swatsky, “After the Glasnost Revolution:  Soviet Evangelicals and Western Missions,”  International Bulletin of Missionary Research  Vol. 16, #2, (April, 1992), 54.

One of the most frequently asked questions is whether I think short-term missions is a healthy or destructive trend in the church today.  Nearly all pastors are aware of the dramatic rise in short-term missions among local churches.[1] Most have either been on a short-term missions trip themselves or they have seen many youth and other groups in the church take off for two weeks or so to participate in some project or activity.  It might be a construction team helping a church in Honduras construct a church building, or a group of young people performing a mime skit on a town square in Europe or parishioners passing out tracts on the streets of a Muslim city.  The question which I am often asked is whether I think these kind of trips are a sign of a church increasingly engaged and awakened to the missionary mandate of the church or are these trips merely another sign of the kind of Western cultural “quick fix” approach to everything which naïvely believes that the Great Commission can be fulfilled through short term missions.

Let me say at the outset that there is no easy answer to this question.  However, I think if we learn to ask the right questions, we can begin to more effectively assess our short-term missions program and, thereby, begin to have more clarity on the central question.  I have developed a six point series of questions for pastors and church missions committees which may help to serve as a diagnostic tool to develop a better, smarter short term missions program.   I call these six questions ‘dangerous’ questions because if reflected on honestly they could dramatically change the way we talk about and do short term missions in our local churches.

Question #1: What is the goal /motivation of short-term missions?

We need to honestly assess what is the primary purpose of our short-term missions program.  To put it very bluntly, is this trip for ‘us’ or is it for ‘them’?  Are we using this trip to help our church to become more globally aware and, perhaps, to raise up missionaries from our church or is it to accomplish a particular goal or task on the field?  We must become more realistic about the nature of short-term missions and what we can realistically expect to be achieved.  Although there are notable exceptions, most short-term missions trips are far more effective in transforming the hearts and lives of those who go than they are in accomplishing long term missional objectives in a cross-cultural context.

I think we should openly acknowledge that these trips are primarily for the spiritual formation among our own group and that their major benefit to the field will be if people are motivated to pray more regularly and specifically for missions and if it results in long-term workers.  This is not intended to be pessimistic about short-term missions, but to more accurately see how they fit into long term strategy.  There is no replacement for long term workers who are prepared to commit years of their lives to the arduous and joyous task of language learning, cultural adaptation and effective cross-cultural witness.

Question #2:  What is the cost of short-term missions?

It doesn’t take too long looking at church missionary budgets to realize that short term missions is an expensive endeavor.  It is not unusual for the cost of a short term missionary going overseas for two weeks to spend more than $2,000 for airline tickets, food, lodging, shots, on-field transportation and other costs associated with the trip.  That same $2,000 might, in contrast, be sufficient to fund a full time national church planter for an entire year or fund other important projects.  As with any allocation of funds, we should be very sober minded about the nature of the investment.  On balance, I think the investment is often worth it, but it does need to be appropriately weighed.  Indeed, I do not support the position that the best way N. Americans can serve the global church is by staying home and writing checks and letting others get their hands dirty with the hard task of cross-cultural witness.  There are well known organizations that raise money in the West based on this premise.  This is not my position.  One of the real advantages of short term missions is that we are re-locating people to another part of the world who can experience first hand the challenges and hardships of missionary service.  I see no Biblical precedent for a church called only to send their “e-mails and dollars” and not their “sons and daughters”.  The Great Commision is about thrusting forth laborers, not just funding.  Nevertheless, we must be cognizant of the costs involved and make certain that our investments are, on balance, wise ones.  A more hopeful point is that most of the money raised by short term missionaries would, in the absence of the person going on a short-term trip, not be available for some of these other needs on the field.  However, a church must set strict guidelines on how much money flows into short term projects as compared with other cross-cultural commitments.

Question #3:  Where are short-termers going?

One of the challenges of short term missions is to send groups to places where they can be the most strategic.  One of the inherent problems in local church missions programs is that due to time and budgetary constraints the destinations of choice are often places where the relationship between the Western church and the mission field is most problematic.  While there are notable exceptions, many of the churches located in nearby places such as Mexico, Honduras and Haiti have, over the years, developed dependency relationships with the larger, more affluent N. American church.  The result is that, while never denying that these trips transform the lives of those who go and, on the surface, are accomplishing some worthy task such as a new roof on a church or a wonderful vacation Bible school, some of these trips also contribute to larger missiological problems which would not be evident by looking at the videos which accompany the group when they return home.  This problem has been called, “doing harm by doing good.”  In other words, we send our short term teams out and undoubtedly accomplish many good things, but in the process may – in concert with dozens of other teams – be contributing harm by impeding the indigeneous growth and initiative of the national church whom we are serving.

It is a fact that short-term mission trips often do not go to those places nor work  among those peoples who most need long-term workers.  This is often due to the cost difference between sending a group to Honduras, for example, as opposed to Istanbul.  The growing disparity between where short-term mission trips are going and where our long-term mission commitments are directed is, in my view, an issue which every church should address.

Question #4: What is the witness of short-term missionaries?

Many non-Western peoples only regular exposure to Christianity is in the lives and witness of those who travel on short-term missions.  This underscores the tremendous opportunity which is afforded by short-term missions teams.  We actually have the privilege of being a living example of what Christianity actually is on the field.  However, this also underscores the need to make sure that we send reasonably mature Christians onto the field.  There are several embarrassing examples whereby youth groups or other church or college groups who have be sent out on short-term missions have sometimes unwittingly discredited the very gospel they are seeking to bear witness to through they way they interacted with one another or they way they dressed.

All teams should undergo careful pre-field training and be exposed to any areas which requires cultural sensitivity.  This means teams should be particularly aware of how a country might wrongly interpret the way N. American males and females interact, address their elders, dress and so forth.  There are excellent guides written for local churches preparing short-term mission teams which can be extremely helpful in avoiding giving a negative witness abroad.[2]

To assure a more mature representation of Christian witnesses, I have encouraged churches to require not only a few pre-field training sessions, but also that they should have already served their only local community in some way in order to be eligible to go on a short-term missions trip.  Why do we think someone who has not served in their own community will be transformed into an effective cross-cultural witness just because they board a plane and then find themselves on the soil of another country.   Youth groups, in particular, should be asked to complete some basic home service prior to going on a short-term missions trip. It might be something as simple as helping in a food kitchen or mowing the grass of an elderly person, but it can very effectively underscore that the purpose of these trips is to serve others and, in the process, to allow God to change and transform our own lives – and that begins right where we are.

Question #5:  What is the impact on field resources/ personnel?

Having hosted many short-term teams who have visited India, I am aware of the impact of any short-term team on the resources and field personnel who are working long term in the field.  I can say that, almost without exception, those who host short-term teams do it with joy and fully realize the vital role they are playing in raising up long-term workers, helping people to gain more global awareness and to facilitate the best possible experience for the short-termers who come onto the field.  I am also aware that short-term visits can also cause the long-term workers, both missionaries as well as nationals, to suspend many of their own ministries during the visit.  I also know the many hours which are spent in arranging vehicles, providing translators, accompanying teams to various tourist areas within the country, and so forth.   Most field workers will tell you that it is a privilege to provide such services, but we should never underestimate the cost (financial and personnel) of this.  Many visiting teams need to learn to be more modest in their demands on their host and to make sure that all expenses allocated by the host are fully reimbursed.

Question #6: What is the impact of short-term missions on long-term missions?

Any church involved in missions should recognize that, in the long run, the real strength of our missionary efforts should be measured by our long-term commitments on the field.   One of the most strategic and useful benefits of short-term missions is in the recruiting and raising up on long-term workers.  It is very unusual today for someone to commit themselves to becoming a missionary without having been on a short-term missions trip.  Therefore, having a short-term missions program is a vital part of any long-term strategy.  However, some churches have failed to see the vital connection between short-term and long-term missions.  I have even seen some churches who boast of their growing missionary budget but, upon close examination, their missions budget reflects an increasing emphasis on sending short-term teams at the expense of their support of long-term workers.  This, in my view, is a myopic and tragic development which needs to be addressed.  Churches should be more intentional about how their short-term missions trips connect with long-term missions commitments.  The former should always serve and support the latter.   When this gets out of balance, we may actually be undermining the long term goal of the church which is to plant and nurture viable, self-supporting, self-governing and self-replicating churches around the world.

None of these “dangerous” questions are intended to discourage or to downplay the vital role of short-term missions in the church.  I am a strong supporter of short-term missions and believe that they should be an important part of a church’s global outreach.  Nevertheless, reflecting on these questions can help local churches build a smarter short-term missions program and stimulate a more mature outreach which, in the long term, will assist the growth and development of churches around the world.[3]

[2] See, for example Robert L Kohls’  Survival Kits for Overseas Living and Sherwood Lingenfelter’s Ministering Cross-Culturally.   Patrick Johnstone’s The Church is Bigger Than You Think is also a helpful introduction to many basic facts about Christianity outside of the United States.

[3] For more help in building an effective short-term missions program visit  on of Gordon-Conwell’s web-sites:  www.missionscenter.org.  This web-site is one of the ways  the J. Christy Wilson Center for World Missions at Gordon-Conwell is helping local churches be more effective in their missionary efforts.

With the growing interest in the globalization of Christianity and the unprecedented travel of Christians around the world, it is not unusual for churches to be overwhelmed with financial requests to support various missions projects around the world.  Since resources are limited, churches must be careful to make sure that they are wise stewards of the funds which have been committed to their care to promote missions.  Unfortunately, valuable resources are often wasted because they are being sent to projects or ministries which are not truly furthering the global advance of the church or, in _some cases, actually helping to perpetuate dependency on the more affluent church in the West and thereby hindering the growth and development of the indigenous church.

In order to improve the church’s investment in mission giving, I propose two simple criteria which, if followed, will greatly enhance the effectiveness of our missionary budget process.  These two criteria, if applied when a new proposal is brought before the missions committee, will assist in the decision making process.  The first is what I call the Access Criteria.   We should ask the question, “does the people-group which will receive this potential funding currently have reasonable access to the Christian gospel?”  If a people-group already does not have reasonable access to the Christian gospel then it is likely that resources may, indeed, need to be invested in order to promote the gospel among that particular group.  If, the people-group does have access to the gospel, then it may not be a wise investment of our scarce missionary funds.  However, a second criteria will help to further clarify the strategic potential of the request.  If there are already Christians among this people-group, what is the current state of the church among that people-group.  This is the second criteria, known as the Viability Criteria. Is the church among this people-group viable?  In other words, can the church be reasonably expected to disciple its own members, train leadership for the church and to further their own evangelistic mandate?  While judging viability is not easy, a helpful rule of thumb is to ask what percentage of a given people-group is Christian.  If the overall percentage is less than 5%, then it is likely that the church has not yet reached viability.  There are some people-groups in the world who have neither reasonable access to the gospel and the church is either non-existent or lacking in viability.  There are others where there is vibrant conversion growth occurring, but the church is not yet able to keep up with the growth by providing basic pastoral training and leadership development.  These are the people-groups who must be given a priority.

All too often churches invest money, resources and personnel in places where people have access to the gospel and the church is already viable.  This simply does not make sense when there are other groups who have no access to the gospel.  In fact, we may even be doing harm to the indigenous church even while doing something which appears quite good.  If, for example, there is a people-group in Nigeria where there is vibrant Christian growth and the church is viable, then why should a church in the West invest resources to send someone to Africa to do the evangelism which is the responsibility of the Nigerian believers?   There are some churches in close proximity to the United States that do not believe it is possible to dig a well or have a Vacation Bible School unless a group from the USA comes down to do it.  This kind of dependency is not healthy.  If, on the other hand, there is a request for funding to assist in bringing the gospel to a people group with little gospel witness, few Christians and no viable church, then it is likely a very strategic investment of our resources.  Thankfully, with the help of resources like Operation World and the World Christian Encyclopedia, this kind of information is now available to any church who takes the time to do a little research.

Many people still conceive of the typical mission field as a remote jungle area with half-dressed natives who have never heard of a telephone, much less the gospel of Jesus Christ.[1] This mental paradigm has been reinforced through the biographies of Western missionaries from the 19^th century who often did live in remote areas with peoples whose lives seemed to be unchanged by the modern world.  However, global demographics have dramatically changed since the turn of the 19^th century when only 4% of the entire world lived in urban areas.  Today nearly half of the world live in urban areas (See, Chart B).[2] In fact, the largest cities in the world are no longer found in Europe, but in the non-Western world.  Great cities such as Tokyo, Jakarta, Lagos, Delhi and Cairo represent the new face of the mission field.[3] These are people who more often than not already belong to a major world religion like Islam or Hinduism.  The lost peoples of the world today are more likely to carry cell phones than spears.  What are the implications for this?  Much of our missionary preparation is still based on sending people to remote areas.  We still show missionary videos at our conferences which reinforce this notion.  Our church planting strategies are often based on reaching rural peoples and starting churches in non-urban areas.  We need to focus more on the great sprawling cities of the world where most un-reached people groups now live.  We need to pray that God would give this next generation of missionaries a real heart for the cities.  It is no understatement to say that the Great Commission cannot be fulfilled until we learn to embrace the city!

Chart B

[2] Barrett, Johnson, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia, vol. 1, col. 27-29, page 883.  In the World Christian Encyclopedia, this data is analyzed into three constituent parts:  rural, urban and metropolitan.

[3] According to United Nations projections, the top ten most populated cities in the world in 2015 will be:  Tokyo (28.7), Bombay (Mumbai) (27.4), Lagos (24.4), Shanghai (23.4), Jakarta (21.2), Sāo Paulo (20.8), Karachi (20.6), Beijing (19.4), Dhaka (19.0) and Mexico City (18.8).  All figures are given in millions.  See, Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom, 93.

1.  THE RISE OF THE NON-WESTERN CHURCH

Our generation has experienced the largest demographic shift in Christian affiliation in history.  In the last fifty years the church in the non-Western world has been dramatically increasing.  Traditionally, missions has been primarily conceived of as someone from the Western world saying good-bye to kith and kin and re-locating to another part of the non-Western world to share the gospel.  However, today we can no longer regard the non-Western world as a monolithic block which is equally in need of the gospel.  To be sure, there are hundreds of people-groups in the non-Western world who have no viable witness of the gospel in their midst.  However, we are also seeing the growth, sometimes, dramatic growth, of the church in many parts of what was formerly known as the missions field.

To put it plainly, the church is shifting southward and is growing in the southern continents of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.  When William Carey went to India at the threshold of the 19^th century, only 1% of the entire world’s Protestants were found in the non-Western world.  That means that 99% of all Protestants lived in the Western world!  It is no wonder that some people called Christianity a “white man’s religion”. Even one hundred years after Carey at the turn of the 20^th century, only 10% of the world’s Protestants lived in the non-Western world.  However, the 20^th century witnessed a dramatic shift Southward and Eastward such that today approximately 67% of the world’s Protestants live outside of the western world.[1] That means that today the majority of Protestant Christians are non-white and non-Western in their ethnic and geographic orientation.

As the below chart indicates, one can see the percentage of where Christians live in each of the major spheres of the world.  (See,  Chart A).

What are the implications of this?  This is not a call for a moratorium on missions from the Western world.  This is no time for us to sit back and declare that the job is done.  It is a time to be thankful that the seeds which our missionary forbearers planted have taken root in ways undreamed of by those early pioneers.  However, there are still people groups in the Middle East, Central Asia, China and N. India who have very few or no known Christians.  This should call us to re-double our efforts among those peoples.  Nevertheless, it does mean that the remaining job is not to be done only by initiatives from the West, but in genuine partnerships with Christians from around the globe.  It is quite common, for example, to meet Korean or Brazilian missionaries on the field working alongside or independent of Western missionaries.[2] Churches in the West should be more aware of the existing work being done by our non-Western brothers and sisters and, wherever possible, engage in creative partnerships so that together we can more effectively obey the Great Commission.  This has been summarized best by the statement issued at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in 1974 which stated, “It takes the whole church to bring the whole Christ into the whole world.”  May this reminder always be before us.

Chart A

[2] For a discussion of the growth of the Korean missionary movement see, Steve S. C. Moon, “The Recent Korean Missionary Movement,”  International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 27, #1 (Jan., 2003) 11-17.

Central to the theological reflection has always been the realization that the gospel is rooted in real history and the gospel has been received within particular historical cultural contexts through the ages.  The gospel cannot be properly understood in a vacuum or in isolation from the history of those who have “welcomed the message with joy.”