Issues Facing
Missions Today: 4. Mission Strategising
I recall the enthusiasm of a mission committee back in the
1980s as its members redirected their resources and attention to the 10/40
window [the largely non-Christian region of the world lying between 10 and 40
degrees latitude north of the equator] and ‘unreached peoples.’ Here, it was thought, lay the unfinished task
to take the Gospel to the nations. Such mission
strategising clearly pointed away from ministry in, say, Rwanda, where the
statistics reported an overwhelmingly evangelised and Christian country. Just a few years later, the Rwandan genocide
took place in ‘Christian’ Rwanda. Such
strategising also took the focus away from post-Christian, northern European
countries.
In this post, I wish to challenge the use of statistics alone
to determine mission strategies and offer five topics for mission strategising instead. I’ll be the first to say that I appreciate
all the statistics, maps, and historical trends that contribute to the
discussion of missions today. These are,
however, merely tools for mission strategising, and they are insufficient for
determining what the Church, a mission agency, or a missionary should do. This should be an obvious comment to make,
but too often this is not the case.
Along a similar line of thinking, I recently heard a talk
about trends in theological education in North America in which the meat of the
lecture was a statistical report. The
conclusion of the talk involved claims about what needed to be done next. If female enrollment is down, more women
students need to be recruited. If
African-American and Hispanic enrollment is up, more resources should be
directed to teaching them. If there is a
trend in closing theological colleges, then there is a crisis facing
theological colleges. And so went the
reasoning from statistics to strategies for moving ahead in seminary
education. After hearing these and a
variety of other such conclusions, I could not help but think of that
philosophical claim, ‘You cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”.’ We simply cannot derive a plan for mission
work today from demographics and statistics alone—even if those statistics are correct (be warned!).
Over against such approaches to determining mission
strategy, I would offer the following for consideration:
1. Understand the mission of God from Scripture and how the
mission of the Church relates to it. For
this, we need Biblical scholars, theologians, and Church historians.
2. Explore where there are needs in the world that the
Church’s mission can meet. Here there is
a place for the analyses of missiologists armed with statistics and other
arguments.
3. Determine where there are open doors for ministry at this
time. Mission practitioners are needed
to clarify where doors for ministry are open.
4. Identify the resources (whether resources in general or individuals
with specific gifts in particular) available for mission work and what can be
done to appropriate them. Here,
denominations, seminaries, mission societies, churches, and individuals need to
offer their insights and cooperate with one another.
5. In prayer, listen to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. All the best reasoning may be turned on its
head as people prayerfully submit all their human wisdom to God and ask for His
guidance. How wonderful when the Spirit
confirms the careful reasoning involved in the first four steps! Here, everyone needs to be concerned to wait upon
the Lord for His direction and empowerment.
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