Archive: Do We Still Need Missionaries?
By Dick McClain
As long as I can remember, I’ve been around missions and missionaries. I still recall when, as a seventh grader in Hong Kong, the need for world missions first hit home to me in a personal way. I was watching my dad’s slide show, “Hong Kong Harvest,” in our living room in Kowloon. A visitor was being introduced to ministry in the world’s most densely populated city. I had seen the presentation so many times before that if the tape recorder had malfunctioned, I could have finished the narration all by myself.
But that night was different. I began to cry as I watched the unfolding story, and knew then that my life had to be invested in helping people know Jesus.
It was a surprise to me years later to learn that not everyone in the church was enthusiastic about foreign missions—a hot topic of debate in the United Methodist Church. I’ve discovered since then that many people are often unclear about what is meant by missions. One school of thought seems to regard virtually everything the church does as “mission” (note: no “s” at the end of the word). Richard Niebuhr narrowed that concept only slightly when he described mission as “everything the church does outside its walls.” However, we need to discuss foreign missions with a sharper vision than Niebuhr’s.
I propose that we understand missions as cross-cultural Christian ministry that has as its aim the reaching of those who have no allegiance to Jesus Christ, and making them Christian disciples. Three concepts are central: cross-cultural ministry, focusing on those who have not come to faith in Jesus Christ, and the goal of making Christian disciples.
With this understanding in mind, we can distill several questions that swirl around the great missions debate.
Question #1: Why Missions?
If missions has to do with Christians seeking to reach across cultural boundaries in an effort to point others toward Jesus, then the question naturally arises, why should we be doing that? After all, missions are costly business! Is the need for this activity sufficient to justify the cost? In other words, do all people everywhere really need Jesus?
The answer to this question depends on how you answer several others. Who was Jesus? Was he the Son of God? Is he the only Savior of the world? Can people come to a saving knowledge of God outside of faith in him?
Suffice it to say that missions is rooted in several foundational convictions: the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ, that Jesus’ death on the cross was the only atonement for sin which God has provided, and that humanity is lost apart from faith in Jesus.
In his recent article “The Devaluing of Evangelism,” retired Bishop Louis Schowengerdt illustrated what happens when church leaders reject the uniqueness of Christianity, challenging the evangelistic imperative that believers have historically affirmed (Good News, March/April, 1993). As a result of such changes coming to mainline churches, there was a 46 percent drop in the number of missionaries sent out by the UM Church between 1962 and 1979, a 68 percent decline among the United Church of Christ, and a whopping 79 percent reduction in the Episcopal Church.
Nevertheless, not all of United Methodism has lost its vision for missions. In the face of the relentless retreat of official denominational mission programs, many United Methodists have felt forced to minister outside the official structures.
In fact, far more United Methodists are serving around the world as missionaries today outside of our church’s official structures than are serving through the General Board of Global Ministries.
I am always meeting up with those who do not accept the uniqueness of Jesus, or those who just don’t believe that the question of people’s eternal destiny even matters. I am often tempted to try to convince them to rethink their views. But that is no longer my main concern. Dr. Ralph Winter, founder of the U.S. Center for World Mission, challenged me several years ago to focus my energies on trying to mobilize evangelicals to act in a way that is consistent with our stated beliefs. Our Latin friends are correct in stating that orthopraxy (right action) is as important as orthodoxy (right belief). It does little good to say we believe the world needs Jesus if we don’t make every effort to make him known.
Question #2: Why Missionaries?
Behind this question are several others: Isn’t the church already in every country? Why not let the nationals do the work? Isn’t it very costly to send missionaries? Missions, yes; but are missionaries really still needed?
First of all, the love of Jesus should motivate us to send missionaries. When Melville Cox, Methodism’s first foreign missionary, was about to leave for Liberia in the early 1830s, a friend challenged what he believed to be Cox’s foolhardy plan. “If you go to Africa, you’ll die there!” his friend warned. “If I die, then you write my epitaph,” was Melville’s quick retort. Caught off guard, his friend responded, “But what should I write?” Cox’s thoughtful answer is inscribed today on a monument in his honor in Monrovia, Liberia: “Though a thousand fall, let not Africa be lost.”
As the apostle Paul expressed it, “Christ’s love compels us” (II Corinthians 5:14). You cannot love him, love the world for which he died, and not want to make him known.
Secondly, Jesus commanded us to go. The Great Commission was his last commandment. It ought to be our first concern!
A sentence from Clay Cooper’s Nothing To Win But The World burns in my heart: “He needs no call who has a command.” We don’t have to wait for a special call from God to get involved in missions. He has already called the church to go.
During the Gulf War, one of our young missionary families returned to their central Asian field where they work among an unreached Muslim people group. The city to which they were returning was rife with anti-American feeling. Thousands had marched in the streets in support of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. One supporter said to this young couple, “You must be incredibly brave to return to your country at this time.” The missionaries responded, “No, we are no more courageous than anyone else. For us it has nothing to do with courage. It is a simple matter of obedience. God has called us to go, and we have decided to obey him.”
A third compelling reason for sending missionaries grows from a clear understanding of the nature of the world in which we live. While some make much of the fact that the church already exists in every country, the world isn’t really divided up by countries. As Donald McGavran, father of the Church Growth Movement, has pointed out, the world is an intricate mosaic of people groups. For example, Ghana—a country the size of Pennsylvania—is made up of tribal groups speaking some 50 languages.
Jesus’ command was to make disciples of every “nation,” not every “country.” The Greek word for nation is ethne, from which we derive the word ethnic. His order was literally to go to every “people group” with the gospel.
Of the world’s 5.1 billion persons, 33 percent are (at least nominally) Christian. Forty-one percent have been “evangelized” but are still non Christian. (They have some access to a clear gospel presentation, even though they have not accepted it.) But that leaves one quarter of the world still truly unevangelized or unreached. One and one-third billion people have no access to churches, Bibles, missionaries, or religious broadcasts. They have virtually no opportunity to hear and accept—or reject—the gospel.
Just as important as the total number of unevangelized persons, however, is the number of unreached people groups. Some eleven thousand such groups (as defined by language, culture, or sub-cultural grouping) still have no culturally relevant church or Christian witness, or the Christian presence they do have is too small to be able to reach the rest of the group for Christ.
As long as there are thousands of unreached people groups and hundreds of millions of unreached persons, there will be a need for “outsiders” to bring the gospel to them. By definition, that means missionaries are still needed.
Summarizing his life ministry, the apostle Paul concluded that it had always been his ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known. As a matter of strategy, Paul targeted those who had never heard. The unreached people movement in modem missions employs the same principle. United Methodists would do well to get on board. Our denomination alone has three congregations for every unreached people group in the world. Think what God could enable us to do by way of finishing the task if every United Methodist congregation was committed to personally targeting one of the world’s remaining unreached groups.
Question #3: Why Us?
Granted, missionaries should be sent. But why from the United States? Don’t our colonial background and our imperialistic tendencies render us suspect—perhaps even fatally flawed—as missionary candidates (i.e. predominantly white, middle class, north Americans)? And besides, isn’t it too costly to send westerners as missionaries?
In response, we need to be clear about what ought not be our reasons for sending our missionaries. They must not go just to make themselves feel better. (Despite the hardships involved in living in other countries, it’s certainly possible for missionaries to be motivated toward missions by a desire to meet personal needs.) Nor should missionaries go because of some misguided notion that to do so is to make the “ultimate sacrifice” for God. Even more to the point, no north American should go because “those poor (i.e. ‘uncivilized’) people desperately need our help (i.e. our ‘enlightened’ western way of life).” There is no room for cultural arrogance in missions today. Those who go must see themselves as simply “one beggar showing another beggar where to find bread.”
We should praise God for the internationalization of missions that we are witnessing today. A century ago the word “missionary” was almost synonymous with “westerner.” Thankfully, that’s no longer the case. The churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America have risen to the challenge of world evangelization in recent years, and are sending increasing numbers of cross-cultural workers to some of the neediest areas of the world. Still, there is ample justification for our sending forth missionaries.
Since the Great Commission was given to the whole church, we might better ask, “Why not us?” How can we exempt ourselves from the call to go and make disciples? Does the fact that it’s more costly to send westerners than missionaries from developing countries justify our “subcontracting” to the church in less affluent countries the task of sending their sons and daughters? Should we expect them to pay the price of separation from home and family and adjustment to new cultures, while we merely bankroll their effort from our place of ease in the west?
Time magazine (May 22, 1989), in an article entitled “Those Mainline Blues,” noted that “spreading the gospel abroad was once a quintessential mainline activity, but today evangelical agencies sponsor four-fifths of American Protestant missionaries.” I am convinced that our churches are in desperate need of a heightened world vision if they are to be spiritually revived. That vision cannot come, apart from a renewed commitment to sending forth laborers into the world’s harvest fields.
The bottom line is quite simple. God is still calling forth Christian men and women from the church in the U.S., and directing them toward missionary service. For them, going is a matter of simple obedience. For the rest of the church, obedience demands that we send them.
The countdown to A.D. 2,000 echoes louder with each passing day. Many “Great Commission Christians” have adopted the goal of completing world evangelization by the end of this second Christian millennium. The task can be finished. If all God’s people made Jesus’ last command their first concern, there could really be a viable Christian witness among every people, tongue, and nation by the turn of the century. Jesus didn’t give us an impossible task; just one that requires us to move forward on our knees, depending upon his Spirit.
Dick McClain is the director of missionary personnel for the Mission Society for United Methodists.
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