Issues
Facing Missions Today: 39.1 ‘Missions is not from the West to the Rest?’
Introduction:
In post number 36 of 'Issues Facing Missions Today,' I raised 20 topics for
discussion in a hypothetical ‘Missions 101' course (or module). Dr. Mark
Royster tossed me an irresistible bone in a comment on that post: he suggested that I set up an opportunity for discussion around these points, giving me a limit of 500 words
for each one. (I will try to keep things in
the neighbourhood of 1,000 words.) Knowing
that much discussion has already taken place around these topics, I’m somewhat
reticent to gnaw on these 20 points, but it is also unfair of me to
leave things as I posted them earlier.
So, with the caveat that what is said here is incomplete and
introductory, I will attempt to offer some
commentary to which others might respond with corrections and expansions as
they see fit (allowing for some moderation on my part if the need arises). The goal here is to
identify truth in these statements while also separating the truth from error,
and my suggestion in blog post #36 was that there is often more error than not
in these points as I stated them.
Point 1 stated: ‘Missions is not from the
West to the rest. It is
from everywhere to everywhere. There
are no longer ‘mission fields.’’
One hears this constantly these
days. If the point is descriptive, then
the first two sentences are accurate and well worth dwelling upon. I might, then, begin on a positive note. Already towards the end of the 20th
century, people were observing that former ‘mission fields’ were now sending
missionaries. This is part of the story
to be told. The mission agency, SIM,
e.g., already had 9 sending countries in the days I served with it, and one of
their great success stories in missions, Nigeria, had an established church (ECWA)
sending out large numbers of missionaries.
Yet missionary engagement is part of the
nature of the Church itself, and the history of the Church is the history of
missions. Part of ‘Missions 101’ should entail
reading a work such as Andrew F. Walls’ The
Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith.[1] In
conjunction, students might also read Timothy Tennent’s World Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-First Century.[2]
However, an appreciative study of the issues
in such works requires certain previous study in the theological curriculum. I would suggest three prerequisites to
Missions 101. Our course would be
Biblical Theology 101, but it must be taught in such a way that students could
begin their study of theology not only as Biblical theology but also with an
understanding that Biblical theology is missional. This mission is firstly God’s own revelation
of Himself to the world, starting with the calling of Abraham/Israel from the nations for the nations.[3] In this and other important ways, as some
have recently argued, Biblical theology is significantly missional.[4] Our
Missions 101 might also require Church History 101 and 102 as prerequisites, with
Church History taught through the lens of the Church’s missionary history and its
cross-cultural engagement (a mixed story of good and bad with many lessons to
be learned).[5]
This sort of curriculum would help to
disentangle muddled thinking that takes the ambiguous second step of ‘Missions
is from everywhere to everywhere.’ Yes, missions
has been and is part of the history and DNA of the Church and therefore from
everywhere to everywhere. Yet it has
been and remains in good measure a
purposeful, geographical spread. That
is, we should not confuse the truth in this statement with the notion that
there is no benefit to thinking geographically anymore when studying and
planning missionary work. The truth lies
between that thinking that disavows the concept of mission fields and those
mission-minded churches that focus too much on foreign cultures and places
without appreciating missionary mobility in fulfillment of missional goals.
Some of good, geographical thinking in
our day entails the reverse story from sending:
immigrants from unreached regions of the world are coming to so-called ‘Christian’ countries[6] rather
than missionaries going to those regions themselves. Still, there is room for, by way of example,
Presbyterian Frontier Fellowship’s mission of ‘For every people, an indigenous
church’ and not only its further mission of ‘For every church, a mission
vision.’[7] Ralph Winter may have overstated the meaning
of ethnoi (nations) as ‘people groups’
and the Joshua Project may be too
focussed on thinking of missions as a particular, geographically definable
task, but there remains a geographical, ethnic dimension to mission
planning. The Great Commission (Mt.
28.18-20; cf. Mt. 24.14) remains relevant.
In this regard, there are still ‘mission
fields’—places where the Gospel has yet to be preached, where churches have yet
to be established, and where self-sustaining, self-propagating, Biblically sound,
theologically orthodox churches have yet to grow to maturity. This is so not only where the Gospel has yet
to be preached, Scripture has yet to be translated, clear, Biblical teaching is still desperately needed, and healthy churches are yet to be established. It is also true in places where established churches
have faltered and the shining lampstand of the testimony of Christ has been
removed (cf. Rev. 2.5). This is true as
much for the devastated Church in the Middle East, the cradle of Christianity,
as it is for the formerly orthodox denomination in those countries where the rabid
hound of heresy has run wild in the streets.
Indeed, Christianity has gone through three plantings in Africa over its
two thousand year history.[8] It is ripe for replanting in certain European
countries. New mission fields appear all
the time.
[1]
Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement
in Christian History (Orbis, 1996).
See also Andrew F. Walls and Cathy Ross, eds., Mission in the Twenty-First Century: Exploring the Five Marks of Global
Mission (London: Maryknoll, 2008).
[2] Timothy Tennent’s World
Missions: A Trinitarian Missiology for the Twenty-First Century (Grand
Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2010). This would expand
the reflection on the history of the Church and the theology of mission in Wall’s
work.
[3]
Christopher Wright, The Mission of God:
Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
2006).
[4] An
Old Testament and a New Testament theology text needs to be used to make this
point. Taking steps in the right direction,
although not thoroughgoing enough from a missions perspective, are: Robin
Routledge, Old Testament Theology: A
Thematic Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012) and I.
Howard Marshall, New Testament Theology:
Many Witnesses, One Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: 2014). I have been working on this blog in parts of
the Why Foreign Missions? section to
explore Biblical (yes, the Old Testament too) theology through a studies on the
Gospel. (I am reworking the blogs for
publication some day.) Also helpful are
several works by Michael Goheen, such as A
Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011); Introducing
Christian Mission Theology: Scripture, History, and Issues (Grand Rapids,
MI: Downers Grove, IL: 2014).
[5] Two
possible textbooks for Church History 101 might be: Eckhard Schnabel, Early Christian Mission, Vols. 1 and 2
(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004) and Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity: Volume I:
Beginnings to 1500, Rev. ed. (HarperSanFrancisco, 1975). Latourette tells the Church’s story largely through
the lens of mission. Church History 102
could continue with Latourette’s 2nd volume, ‘Reformation to the
Present’ (1975). Both courses should
include reading from Stephen Neill and Owen Chadwick, A History of Christian Missions, Rev. (Penguin Books, 1990).
[6] Of
course, there is no such thing as a ‘Christian country.’
[8]
Paul Bowers, ‘Nubian Christianity: The Neglected Heritage,’ Africa Journal of Evangelical Theology iv.1
(1985): pp. 3-23. Bowers’ primary point
is that African Christianity, represented in the Nubian Church, is almost as
old as Christianity itself and is not some new import in the past several
centuries from the West. Accessed 8
October, 2015: http://www.theoledafrica.org/othermaterials/files/nubianeglectedheritage.pdf.
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