Issues
Facing Missions Today: 39.2 ‘The World is Coming to Us’
The second point for discussion in our
imaginary ‘Mission 101’ course (module) is:[1]
Point
2: ‘We really no longer need to go anywhere for mission work: through
immigration, the world is coming to ‘us.’’
In the previous post, which challenged the suggestion
that there are no mission fields today, the issue of immigration was already
raised (and reading on this from Andrew Walls and Timothy Tennent placed on our
indicative bibliography for the course).
Two very important points in missions are acknowledged: there is in our
day an amazing movement of people to the West, and the West increasingly offers
new mission fields for missionaries coming from what used to be mission fields
in their own right. Immigration to the
West is an important part of present-day missions (as it was in, say,
Augustine’s day!). Yet there are also problems
with the statement as it appears in Point 2 and in many off-handed
conversations.
One positive aspect of immigration to the West
is that immigrants have often strengthened the Church. Some would say, e.g., that the most
spiritually alive or growing (or both) churches in England are often black
churches (whether immigrant churches or ethnic minority churches). Growth in the Assemblies of God in the
northern state of Wisconsin in the U.S. comes not so much from natural
multiplication but from Hispanic immigration.
Thus, not all immigration to the West is about non-Christian immigrants. Nor can we say that the West
is Christian, even if Christianity has played a significant role in reshaping the
culture of Caucasian tribes and Western nations.
A major error in Point 2 is the idea that,
because of immigration, we do not need to go anywhere else for missionary
work. The previous post emphasized the
continued importance of geographical strategies in missions. Another matter is that ‘missions’ is not only a matter of geography. As the Church
Universal’s mission, there are multiple reasons for believers to engage in
ministry around the world. This is not
to equate all ministry with mission, but it is to acknowledge that evangelism,
Bible translation, church planting, and theological education are not easily
discussed with geographical restrictions.
The same might be said for an understanding of mission that involves
helping ministries and development work: if this is our understanding of
missionary work, then the place for
mission is where the need arises.
Another mistake in Point 2 entails getting
caught up in the Western media’s presentation of the news. Immigration to the West has been one of the major news stories of the year
(2015). However, immigration is
occurring elsewhere. For example,
immigration to South Africa rarely gets a mention. Wholly reliable statistics seem impossible to
obtain regarding the population of South Africa. One report in 2000 stated that South Africa
is a country of 40 million (however, the census in 2011 had the registered population
at 51.7 million) and ‘has between 500,000 and four million unauthorized foreign
residents.’[2] This is not the place to try to sort out
conflicting and changing data. The point
is that even working with such statistics, South Africa may have close to 10%
of its population composed of illegal immigrants—and another 3% of legal
immigrants might be included.[3] For this and other significant reasons (e.g.,
the breakdown of law and order, corruption, unemployment, the emigration of
highly educated, white citizens, and AIDS), South Africa needs missionaries and other foreign involvement precisely because it has so many immigrants.
According to the Pew Research Center, illegal
immigrants in the US in 2014 numbered 11.3 million, or 3.5% of the population.[4] The report further
states that half of the illegal immigrants come from Mexico, a predominantly
Roman Catholic country (even if many of these are only nominal Christians), and
60% of unauthorized immigrants settled in just six states (California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and
Illinois). Immigrants in 2015 to Europe,
on the other hand, are predominantly non-Christian—as is Europe itself. The International Organization for Immigration
estimates that, from January through September, 2015, some 464,000 immigrants
have entered Europe.[5] With a population of just over 743,000,000,
this amounts to less than 1% of the population in Europe. Thus I offer some reflection on this data in
order to emphasize the fact that, the more one digs into the statistics, the
more one realizes that they point to specific issues facing specific regions
and are not, therefore, statistics to guide mission strategy in general:
*Immigration
from other African nations to South Africa may have no effect on the percentage
of Christians in the country but nevertheless increases the need for missionary
activity in the country;
*Immigration
from Hispanic countries to the United States may increase the number of persons
identifying themselves as ‘Christian’ (many, no doubt, being nominal Christians)
and, in some cases, are revitalizing denominations;
*Immigration
to the UK is both revitalizing the Church and increasing the numbers of
non-Christians;
*The
present immigration ‘crisis’ in Europe may be bringing non-Christians to a region
of the world that was once shaped by many Christian convictions and values but
that has moved very far from those Christian roots.
Several comments arise from this cursory discussion. First, the West is not the only part of the
world dealing with vast numbers of immigrants.
Second, illegal immigration is not from every country but from
particular countries—and in the case of the US and South Africa, many of these
immigrants are from more ‘Christianized’ countries. Third, that a part of a population immigrates
does not mean that everyone or even a majority of persons are immigrating:
there is still a need to reach the countries from which these immigrants came
with the Gospel. Fourth, the West is not
Christian. Of course, no country can be
called Christian, but many countries that were profoundly influenced by
Christianity in Europe and the Americas are not very Christian any more, in any
sense of the term. Fifth, a related matter to the story of immigration to Europe from
Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is the remarkable fact that no European
country has birth rates high enough (at 2.1 births per woman) to maintain its
population at the present numbers.[6] In the words of George Weigel (Distinguished
Senior Fellow of the Roman Catholic ‘Ethics and Public Policy Center’),
‘something has gone dry in the soul’ in Europe that is illustrated by
statistics such as this related to the family.[7] Sixth, if one goal of missions is ‘For
every people, an indigenous church’ (so the mission of Presbyterian Frontier
Fellowship), then merely ministering with immigrants to the West (or South
Africa or Australia) is hardly a sufficient strategy for missions. Nor is a broader understanding of missions
that includes social transformation served if the focus shifts in mission
activity in the West to engaging immigrants to the exclusion of sending
missionaries abroad.
More needs to be said on this issue in terms of the types of ministry
that constitute mission activity. There
are still ‘unreached’ areas of the world that need to hear the Gospel.[8] There are still many languages that lack Holy
Scripture—and many languages that could use a new translation.[9] There are certainly countries where ‘churches’
exist but where they are not ‘healthy’ Christian communities.[10] Moreover, the Great Commission mission of teaching
(teaching disciples and educating persons for ministry) is a task that needs to
be carried out in local and regional contexts, not by bringing students from
overseas to Western theological colleges.[11]
The movement of peoples in our day is an amazing, front line story. We regularly hear how the story of
immigration is unfolding in Europe and the USA, but the story is also unfolding
outside the West. Immigration trends do
call for serious strategizing in Christian missions. Immigration also allows some countries not
typically sending missionaries
overseas for economic (or other) reasons to engage in ministry to immigrants in
various ways—from handing out a bottle of water to sharing the Gospel verbally
(leaving aside what we mean by ‘mission’ for now). The small Evangelical body of believers in
Croatia, e.g., trained in relief aid through the Balkan war in the 1990s, has
in the past month been able to mobilize themselves to minister to immigrants
streaming through their country to European countries further north and
west. However, none of this provides an
argument to diminish the sending of missionaries to foreign countries. The task remains one of going into all the
world, whether we understand our mission to be the Great Commission of making
Christian disciples and teaching them the Christian faith or the Great
Commandment of loving our neighbours’ as ourselves.
[1]
See ‘Issues Facing Missions Today: 36. Missions 101.’
[2]
‘South Africa Amnesties,’ Migration News Vol.
7.1 (Jan. 2000). Accessed 8 October,
2015: https://migration.ucdavis.edu/mn/more.php?id=2015.
[3]
‘Rainbow Immigration,’ South Africa Info (8
October, 2015). Accessed 8 October,
2015: http://www.southafrica.info/travel/documents/immigration-trends.htm#.Vhb-HvlViko.
[4] ‘5
Facts about Illegal Immigration in the U.S.,’ Pew Research Center (July 24, 2015). Online: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/24/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/. About half the illegal immigrants are from
Mexico.
[5] Jeanne
Park, “Europe’s Migration Crisis,” Council on Foreign Relations (Sept. 23,
2015), accessed 25 October, 2015: http://www.cfr.org/migration/europes-migration-crisis/p32874.
[6] See
George Weigel, ‘Eurocentricity, Demographic Winter, and the Synod’ in ‘Letter
Number Ten, Letters From the Synod: Reports and Commentary. From Rome and
Elsewhere, on the XIV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops,’ First Things (Oct. 9, 2015). Online at: http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/letter-number-ten.
Not mentioned by Weigel is Russia, which also has a negative population
growth. The US’s population growth rate
is 0.7%. Kuwait’s is the highest at
4.3%. See the World Bank’s statistics
online (accessed October 9, 2015): http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW.
Compare UNICEF’s country statistics: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/.
[7] Ibid.
[8]
One attempt to identify people groups without sufficient resources to
evangelize their own people, the Joshua Project, places the number at over
6,600. Accessed 15 October, 2015: http://joshuaproject.net/. Note the
demographic work of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity: http://www.worldchristiandatabase.org/wcd/
and the Pew Research Center for religion and public life (with special
attention to its ‘Religion’ section): http://www.pewresearch.org/.
[9] See
the statistics of Wycliffe Global Alliance, e.g. at: http://resources.wycliffe.net/statistics/WycliffeGA_stats_2015_FAQs_EN.pdf. Also see United Bible Society, http://www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/translation/.
[10]
By way of example, I might reference one of my own works (with the help of
others) that attempted to ‘map’ the convictions, practices, concerns, and so
forth of baptist communities in Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia. The work did not focus on evaluating the
health of churches; the focus was on describing the churches through surveys
conducted in the early part of this century. I would hope, though, that this sort of research could help in discussions of 'church health' as much as strengths, needs, and so forth. See Rollin Grams and Parush R. Parushev, eds., Towards an Understanding of European Baptist Identity: Listening to the
Churches in Armenia, Bulgaria, Central
Asia, Moldova, North Caucasus, Omsk and Poland (Prague, CZ: International
Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006).
[11]
On the issue of foreign students training in theological colleges in the West,
and the many issues involved, see the excellent article by Jenny McGill, ‘Furthering
Christ’s Mission: International Theological Education,’ in Transformation 32.4 (October 2015): 225-239.
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