Mission Frontiers

September-October 2016:

Slaying the Dependency Dragon

Contents:

Dependency

The Crippler of People and Movements

by Rick Wood

The Best Way to Plant Indigenous Churches Is to Begin that Way

by Jean Johnson

When Two Bikes Split a Church

The Powerful Effect of an Act of Generosity

by Christopher Little

Popular Paths That Do Not Lead to Local Sustainability

by Glenn J. Schwartz

The Need For Bivocational Ministry

by Dr. Robert Reese

Doing Good That Is Good!

by Verna Schwartz

Reflections on Locally Sustainable Healthcare

in Ghana, West Africa

by DR. Cameron R. Gongwer, MD

Dependency & Self-Reliance

My Personal Journey

by Glenn J. Schwartz

A Recipe For Dependency

A Kenyan Story

by Fr. Evangelos Thiani

Good Intentions Are Not Always Good Enough

by Ralph D. Winter

Perspectives ‘Opens Up Purpose’ in Your Life!

by Darrell Dorr

Four Stages to “No Place Left”  in Our Generation

by Steve Smith

Are We Paying Attention to the World Around Us?

by greg.parsons@frontierventures.org

Editorial

Dependency

The Crippler of People and Movements

by Rick Wood

Jesus has called every one of us who claims Him as our Savior and Lord to go and make disciples, baptizing and teaching them to obey all that He has commanded us (Matt. 28:18-20). This is not optional for any of us. We have all been called to live on mission with God in obedience to His commands. Jesus says in John 14:21 (NIV), “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” Obeying Jesus’ commands, including the one to make disciples, is a key element in our love relationship with Him. Obeying Jesus and what He has told us to do is the way that we demonstrate our love and trust in Jesus. Obeying the Great Commission is also the way that we love others because the most loving thing we can ever do for someone is to bring them to Jesus.

As those sent out to make disciples, what is the goal that we want to accomplish in this world? Is it not to see movements of discipleship and church-planting develop in every people group and region on earth until every person has access to the saving knowledge of Christ? If this is our biblical goal, then we need to ask ourselves what fruitful practices help foster these movements and what practices get in the way.

In this issue, we focus on how so many of our mission practices are creating dependency on the mission field and thereby killing existing Church-Planting Movements and preventing new ones from ever getting started. This is a serious matter. We need to take a hard look at what we do in church and missions so that we are working biblically in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to foster as many of these movements as possible rather than stifling them through practices that keep people immature and helpless.

Dependency is a Universal Human Problem

In every aspect of life, we are either growing in maturity, taking responsibility for and ownership of the choices we make or we are remaining child-like and immature, depending on others to provide for us and make decisions about the direction of our lives. We naturally start out in life dependent upon our parents to provide for us and direct our lives. This is normal and good when you are six years old, but it is deeply troubling when someone remains dependent upon others well into adulthood.

A good parent should continually be working to guide their child towards ever growing responsibility and control over their own life. This is part of the natural order that God has set up. But this intended order can be violated by well meaning parents who in the name of love and compassion want to prevent their child from enduring the hard work and suffering that is required in growing up and becoming mature. Seriously, some parents keep their children helpless and dependent upon them well into adulthood because they want to spare their children the pain or “hard knocks” of life, yet this kind of “protection” is actually a form of child abuse because they are keeping their child from growing up.

There are direct parallels with our Christian life and mission. When a new babe in Christ comes to faith we can either put them on the path to maturity or perpetual dependency. When a person gives their life to Christ we can either mentor or apprentice them to obey Scripture and become confident and competent disciple makers or we can have them sit and listen to hundreds of sermons and attend countless Bible studies with little accountability for applying truth to life. Maturity as a Jesus follower does not come from just listening to truth but rather from applying that truth to our lives through obedience.

Dependency: The Killer of Movements

The same is true in Church-Planting Movements. The sad reality of missions history is that we have often created dependency by staying too long and doing too much for people rather than equipping them to make disciples one generation after another and trusting the Holy Spirit to lead them to maturity as they obey the Word.  We should never do for others what they can and should do for themselves. This is how you keep dependency from developing in every area of life and ministry.

The fact is that dependence on ourside funds and missionary leadership by local believers on the mission field has a devastating impact on the development of Church-Planting Movements. It can cripple the mission-established churches from growing and naturally reproducing disciple makers one generation after another because the abundance of outside funds has robbed the local people of the initiative to support their own outreach and to discover that they have the ability and privilege of developing the local resources they need to support their own work as they depend on the Holy Spirit. Foreign funds can never be a substitute for the devoted, passionate involvement of committed local people using locally developed resources to make disciples and plant churches. Support from outside funds is also not a mission strategy that can be infinitely reproduced generation after generation of disciple making. Whatever strategy or methods we use in missions must be infinitely reproducible.

The Three-Self Formula for Church Planting

These ideas are actually not new. Jesus and the Apostle Paul practiced them, and they were rediscovered over 150 years ago. But they are so regularly ignored in mission circles that it is required to continually emphasize their wisdom and importance for world evangelization.  Robert Reece explains the Three Self Formula and how it developed. “It [the formula] states that a newly planted church is mature or indigenous when it is self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting. It was first popularized and implemented by a pair of mission executives who headed the largest mission agencies of their day. The Englishman, Henry Venn, headed the Anglican Church Missionary Society from 1841-72, while the American, Rufus Anderson, led the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions from 1832-66. They represented some of the best mission thinking of the second generation of leaders of the modern missionary movement; both men arrived at the formula independently of one another at approximately the same time.

“The thinking behind the formula derived from field experiences of the personnel of both agencies as well as from Bible study. The goal of the formula was simple: to speed up the pace of world evangelization by moving missionaries on to new places while the leaders of the churches they started would complete the task of local evangelization. Venn and Anderson gave missionaries a goal to work towards: the production of churches that were mature enough to function on their own without missionary help in their own locale. Once that was achieved, missionaries could go to the “regions beyond,” sure in the knowledge that the churches they left behind could succeed without them. That, after all, was how the Apostle Paul proceeded in his mission work.” [1]

As it would be in our day, the wisdom of this approach was also largely ignored in Venn and Andersen’s day. This led to the planting of dependent churches that the missionaries felt they had to lead indefinitely. Human nature is the same today as it was back then.

Reece goes on to explain, “Roland Allen reacted strongly to this state of affairs in his famous 1912 book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?, where he compared the mission efforts of that time with those of the Apostle Paul. Understandably, he found that Paul’s methods were far superior. He called on missionaries to have more confidence in their converts and to release control over them as Paul did, trusting that the Holy Spirit would help them learn how to work effectively in their churches, even through their inevitable mistakes.”[2]

If we are to get to No Place Left in our day, where all have access to the gospel, as Paul did in his, we will have to consistently use his methods instead of the ones that have failed repeatedly over the last 200 years of the modern missionary movement.

[1] Robert Reece, “The Surprising Relevance of The Three Self Formula,” Mission Frontiers, July-August 2007, pgs. 25-27.

[2] ibid.

About The Author

Garrett

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Feature

The Best Way to Plant Indigenous Churches Is to Begin that Way

by Jean Johnson

I once had the opportunity to dialogue with a group of leaders in South Asia about their church planting strategies. A church planting team among them shared about some of the barriers to their effectiveness. One of those barriers related to hosting short-term teams from other countries. These teams had visited and conducted outreaches in the communities where they were planting churches. When the short-term teams departed from these communities, there were numerous negative consequences. The foreign presence, repeated injection of money into these outreaches, free benevolent services, handouts and salaries were a recipe for jealousy, confusion and misunderstandings.

The weightiest negative impact was that the community assumed that the church planters were involved in Christian work for the perks, rather than experiencing a sincere conversion and faith in Jesus. Thus, their testimony came across as less credible and believable among their fellow citizens. My next natural question was, “Why do you continue to host short-term mission teams if it is counterproductive?” They responded, “Because we depend on the support of these teams that we host.” Unfortunately, the church planting team deemed they needed to stay locked into a pattern that was counterproductive to their church planting effort.

Thankfully, this story doesn’t stop here. After several days of reading the Bible and discussing the benefits of self-supporting, self-giving and local interdependency, the church planting team and their fellow colleagues prayed about their role in making a sincere effort to share and support their own church planting efforts. One by one, their fellow teammates committed to either give money, skills or services to support the church planters. The leader of the overall team shared the following, “While we were praying, I saw a field of snakes. Little by little, the snakes fled. I believe we are being set free from unhealthy dependency.”

Understanding the root causes of unhealthy dependency can lead to employing empowerment strategies rather than dependency-producing strategies. In this article, we will focus on two main dependency-producing strategies and then two alternative empowerment-producing strategies.

Dependency-Producing Strategies

First, Christian cross-cultural workers often conceptualize and organize mission efforts based on their own culture, church experiences, formulas and standards of living. In this case, we end up paying for it and managing it because we introduce something quite foreign and expensive. In a way, we create a deficit and then need to make up the deficit through our funding, status and expertise. As a missionary, I often discovered that when I needed to subsidize an effort, it was because I introduced foreign forms and extra-biblical requirements or nonessentials. Nonessentials and extra-biblical requirements refer to customs, conditions and approaches that are not mandated or even modeled in the Bible, but rather are man-made traditions and preferences added on to the Christian experience from one’s own cultural milieu and preferences. I am sure you can think of many examples such as Sunday school classrooms, professional-style worship teams, pulpits and so forth.

Second, Christian cross-cultural workers often implement a model that includes paying for local workers and local efforts during the first stages, with the intention to wean away funds as local people grow to be responsible and give. Unfortunately, these actions — that are supposedly meant to empower and advance — end up conditioning the recipients or onlookers into a dependency mindset. For example, if someone came to your neighborhood, introduced you to a new experience outside of your everyday context and started paying for the process, wouldn’t you develop certain perceptions and expectations? The bottom line is while the outsiders are organizing and paying, the insiders develop certain perceptions and expectations that economic dependency on foreign funds is normal and should continue from generation to generation of new churches and ministries. Here are a few of those “conditioned” perceptions that seep into the church or movement launched and sustained by outside funding:

- They started it and they should pay for it.

- If this doesn’t work, it is really their problem.

- I deserve what I receive from the mission society.

- Our leaders are getting paid with foreign funding, and that should somehow trickle down to us.

- Why should we feel obligated to contribute?

Allow me to underscore once again — these harmful attitudes are not the result of the recipients’ wrongdoing, but rather the impact of outsiders trying to underwrite that which should be driven and sustained by insiders at their own pace. By the time the cross-cultural Christian worker wants to wean away subsidies, a dependency mindset has already taken root, affecting the church and their influence on communities around them. Jonathan Martin wrote in his book Giving Wisely, “If a church or ministry starts dependent on western money — western money will eventually end it.”[1]

Empowerment-Producing Strategies

How does a cross-cultural Christian worker avoid this dependency trap? First, an empowering way to plant indigenous churches, ministries or movements is to begin that way. If we keep in mind that people managed their own spiritual path and religion before we came along as missionaries, we will be more resolved to believe that this will be the case for those who choose to follow Christ as well. If we envision a model of doing church as exemplified in the book of Acts, we will discover that the resources for the harvest are already in the harvest. Donald McGavran summarized this concept in a saying, “In every apple there is an orchard.”[2] In this case, the cross-cultural worker should be a catalyst for mobilizing local resources by urging and encouraging insiders to conceptualize and organize the church based on their own culture, essentials of Scripture and creative usage of their own local resources.

Second, plant indigenous churches and movements by encouraging forms of healthy dependency on family, friends and community from the beginning. This type of healthy reliance was modeled in the early church and was written down for our benefit in Acts 2:42-47, Acts 6:1-7 and Timothy 5:1-5. The problem is that if outsiders replace local interdependency with global interdependency through subsidizing, we break down the economic engine of the church—the local people's motives and capacity to give, share and create. Instead, let’s do the absolute opposite: stay out of the way and rather urge and encourage healthy sharing, giving and serving in local families, faith communities and communities at large.

Most people would agree that self-reliance and local interdependence are core characteristics necessary for building healthy families and communities, so why wouldn’t this be true for the church as well? We would no more connect the world’s faith in Jesus to a few rich nations than we would connect the world’s electricity to the grid of one or two nations. Every local faith community deserves the opportunity to sustain, flourish and multiply while on their own spiritual journey. The cross-cultural worker can fan into flame this journey in the same way Paul did with Timothy — to urge and encourage. “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:6-7 NIV)

The best way to plant indigenous churches and movements is to begin that way. Then, we don’t have to discover mid-stream that it is too late — that an unhealthy mindset has settled in like cement. Keep in mind that in every apple, there is an orchard. In every people group, an Acts 2-type church is already there; we just need to believe it.

Believing in the One Who Indwells His Leaders

BY Dan Carl

Coach Affiliate with World Mission Associates

Co-Founder of International Living Stone Ministries, Haiti

I recently had a cup of coffee with James,[3] a friend of mine who is a member of an indigenous, Haitian evangelism ministry. James and his teammates are making great strides in learning to trust God to multiply their limited, local resources for ministry. James recounted how he struck a nerve when he shared his joy about mobilizing sustainability efforts with his spiritual father, a pastor of a large church and former president of one of Haiti’s largest mission organizations.

James: “Pastor Lucien,1 I’ve enjoyed sharing with you how our evangelism ministry has become indigenous. What vision do you have for your mission?”

Pastor Lucien: “It is the same as what you have shared. I want the mission to become an indigenous mission. However, most would hate me to death for saying such a thing.”

James explained to me that the reason most leaders disagree with Pastor Lucien is that they depend on foreigners for what they need. They do not think they have anything to give. Unfortunately, in my 13 years of ministry in Haiti, I have often seen the debilitating effects of dependency that have left great leaders without a sense of personal responsibility and have left them feeling like employees of a foreign mission.

While I was trying to reverse the paralyzing effects of dependency in my own ministry, I came across wise counsel from Roland Allen. He explains how to help local leaders develop a deeper sense of responsibility for their mission:  “It would be better, far better, that our converts should make many mistakes, and fall into many errors, and commit many offenses, than that their sense of responsibility should be undermined. The Holy Ghost is given to Christians that He may guide them, and that they may learn His power to guide them, not that they may be stupidly obedient to the voice of authority.”[4]

To those of us who struggle as missionaries with allowing local leaders the freedom to practice the above, Allen exhorts us through his observations of the apostle Paul:  “He believed in the Holy Ghost, not merely vaguely as a spiritual Power, but as a Person indwelling his converts. He believed therefore in his converts. He could trust them. He did not trust them because he believed in their natural virtue or intellectual sufficiency . . . But he believed in the Holy Ghost in them. He believed that Christ was able and willing to keep that which he had committed to Him.”[5]

After being impacted by Roland’s exhortation, I began putting Allen’s suggestions into practice. At the time, I was struggling to direct young, vibrant Haitian leaders in developing a strategy that would reach school-aged children in Haiti with a presentation of the gospel and Christian literature. Rather than determining a plan myself, I encouraged the Haitians to take charge and experiment, while praying for their success. Through this process, these leaders decided to use local solutions for logistical planning and to create networks of volunteer children’s workers throughout Haiti. These young, empowered leaders have reached more than one million kids with the gospel! Furthermore, out of their initial success, the indigenous evangelism team, of which James is a member, was founded.

When we believe in the God who indwells His leaders, He will get His work done through them!

[1] Jonathan Martin 2008 Giving Wisely? Killing with Kindness or Empowering Lasting Transformation.  Sisters: Last Chapter Publishing, 118.

[2] Quoted in Ferguson, David, and Alex Hirsh 2011 On the Verge: A Journey into the Apostolic Future of the Church. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 74.

[3] Not his real name

[4] Roland Allen,  1993 Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Printing Co., 145-149.

[5] Ibid.

About The Author

Jean Johnson is the author of We Are Not The Hero: A Missionary’s Guide for Sharing Christ, Not a Culture of Dependency. Jean served as a missionary with the Assemblies of God in Cambodia for 16 years in the areas of pioneer church planting, on-the-job leadership training, and oral strategies. She is currently the director of World Mission Associates and teaches and coaches on church sustainability and multiplication.

Email: jean@wmausa.org
Website: http://www.wmausa.org

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Feature

When Two Bikes Split a Church

The Powerful Effect of an Act of Generosity

by Christopher Little

When my wife and I entered Mozambique in 1993, the United Nations listed it as the poorest country in the world. We had been exposed to poverty before, but nothing prepared us for what we were to experience. Our first night inside the country was a sleepless one—due to stifling humidity and the noise of roaming dogs. Within two weeks I lost more than ten pounds—and at the time, I didn’t have much to spare!

We went to work among the Makhuwa—an unreached tribe of 5 million people in the northern part of the country. We were temporarily stationed in the central part of the country, giving us an opportunity to get acclimated and begin ministry. Our assignment was to teach at the local Bible School run by the indigenous church.

As I began to get to know the students and the other professors in the school, I quickly recognized the disparity between their lives and mine. I traveled to school in a car. With further to travel, they had only their feet. I felt it was only appropriate to offer to purchase bicycles for the other two professors in the school. After mentioning it to them, they were thrilled with the thought! Without delay, I managed to get the bicycles. I felt very pleased when they showed up to class riding their bikes. But I had no idea what was to transpire thereafter.

One pleasant afternoon we received a visit from the provincial pastor and the church treasurer. Politely and respectfully, they sat down and explained what I had unknowingly done. I had made a grave mistake: I did not go through the proper channels before giving the bikes. They said they were not so concerned about the bikes themselves but the serious problems earlier missionaries had caused by handing out gifts. I quickly apologized and asked for forgiveness. They were very understanding but insisted that in the future I come to them first before demonstrating my generosity.

At the time, I thought the problem was solved. Little did I realize, it had only begun. I heard from my professor friend that the two individuals who visited me had told them to hand the bikes over. The professors resisted, saying the missionary “gave them to us.” They were accused of being stubborn, greedy and disobedient. Soon, they were sidelined, no longer teaching in the Bible school.

Deeply hurt, my two friends lost all fellowship with the leadership. One eventually left the church, starting his own denomination with some other disgruntled individuals. It is said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; I can testify from first-hand experience that the road to church splits is sometimes paved with the good intentions of missionaries! Out of my desire to be compassionate and unselfish, I had done more harm than good.

An Unexpected Orientation

We were later transferred to the north, the city of Nampula, to begin our work among the Makhuwa people. In His providence, the Lord led us to another indigenous church less than a decade old. The founding and directing pastor of the church requested that we start a Bible-teaching and leadership training program.

Very early in our relationship, the pastor oriented me on how to work among his people. He was very direct and clear: he did not want me to bring any outside resources into his church. Troubled by the desperate living conditions of his church members, I quoted Christ’s words about giving away not only your coat, but also your shirt (Luke 6: 29-30).

I will never forget his reaction: “Those verses don’t apply here!” His adamance was a response to the disasters he had personally witnessed as missionaries introduced foreign items—monetary or otherwise—into the local church. He wanted to do all he could to avoid the corruption and jealousy among leaders and the resulting lack of motivation for giving from within the church. Any other option was just not worth the risk for him.

The Gospels of Goods

As I got to know some of the leaders in the church, my wife and I quickly bonded with a particular brother, Bolacha (“Cookie” in Portuguese). He had an incredible testimony of what it meant to be faithful to Christ in the midst of adversity. He had four children, each of whom had died. That alone would have discouraged most people from being a follower of Christ. His wife was also ailing physically. He believed her pain was associated with demonic activity. In spite of his adversity, he persevered with her and prayed for her as a faithful Christian husband should do.

One day, Bolacha explained to me that there are two kinds of gospels in this world. The first one, the gospel of Christ, provides for forgiveness of sin, eternal life, and sets people free from the power of the devil. This Gospel involves suffering since Christ commanded us to take up our cross and follow Him (Matt. 16:24). The second gospel, the gospel of goods (“o evangelho dos bens” in Portuguese), is the counterfeit gospel which offers material wealth alongside the true gospel, enticing people to become Christians. In his opinion, the fundamental problem with the gospel of goods is that when the goods run out the people run away. He said he had seen denomination after denomination import shipping containers of food, clothes, etc., during times of drought and famine, attracting thousands of people. But when the shipping containers stopped coming the people were nowhere to be found. He felt our church was presenting the true Gospel of Christ so that people would not be confused about the way of salvation and what it means to be a committed disciple of Christ.

I didn’t recognize it at the time but Bolacha’s experience was similar to what Jesus encountered in His ministry. After feeding the 5,000 in Tiberias (John 6:1ff), the multitude began to follow Him. Jesus warned them, “You seek Me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled” (John 6:26 BLB). Hence, the people were interested in the goods of the kingdom without submitting to the King. Jesus would have none of it—and many of His “would be” disciples left Him (John 6:66).

Building Churches With Local Resources

Every year in Mozambique the country undergoes a long rainy season. It is normal for many of the mud and straw houses and churches to collapse. In the middle of one particularly heavy rainy season, our local church building fell victim to the rains. The church leadership soon began to strategize about how to rebuild. Wanting to do it with cement blocks—and not having the finances—the local pastor came to our home, entreating our assistance. Since other missionaries in town were building churches with outside resources, he wondered if I might be able to contact some people overseas to do likewise. Having learned my lesson from the bike incident and recalling the head pastor’s orientation, I had to say no. But I did offer to assist in any other possible way to rebuild our place of worship.

Another factor in my refusal to solicit funds from outside was my growing awareness of the historical and cultural context of the Mozambican people. Colonized by the Portuguese for 500 years, they had developed a clear sense of inferiority, understanding that they were inferior and incapable of taking care of themselves. Like many other places in Africa, Mozambique had a long, bitter war of independence. They threw out their oppressors in 1975. Thereafter, the Cold War forces butted heads on Mozambican soil. The first democratic elections ever held in the country were organized by the United Nations in 1994. Since then, Mozambique has opened its doors to all kinds of foreign investors, development agencies and missionary organizations. Some argue that this has opened a new period of exploitative neo-colonialism.

In view of the past and hoping for a better future, I felt it was necessary to promote the self-initiative and creativity of the Makhuwa. If not, they would continue to feel inferior and unable to do what God had called them to do without outside help.

So the church began its building project. Every member was designated to give a certain amount to the building fund. As a member of the church, I was convinced that I should be given the opportunity to contribute like anyone else. So, I gave my portion along with the rest of the membership.

About this time a pastor from the States showed up at our doorstep. His church had taken up an offering to help their poor brethren in Mozambique. Having heard about our church building project, he offered to pay for the remaining needs. It was difficult, but I told him I was unable to accept his money. He was shocked. He had never experienced anything like that before! He recounted how the Lord led his church to raise the money, brought him to Mozambique, brought him to me—and now I was obviously standing in the way of the Lord’s will by declining to accept the money. I attempted to explain that we were trying to encourage local believers to rise to the challenge of standing on their own two feet by trusting God to provide for their needs through local resources. He never really grasped the idea and left—speechless and disgruntled.

Though at times it was very slow, the church building project moved forward. At each barrier of progress, they would call an all-night prayer meeting, asking the Lord to act. I had been taught in church growth courses that in order for the church to grow a particular principle had to be put in place and adhered to. Yet, I learned from my Mozambican brothers that there is one unfailing principle God honors—the power of persevering prayer.

As believers in the church sacrificed, they were able to buy one bag of cement here, another there. Working side by side, slowly but surely and by the Lord’s grace, the church was rebuilt. And this time it was built stronger than ever before. It was not only built of cement blocks, it was built as local Christians and an outsider partnered together by using local resources to accomplish what God had laid upon the hearts of His people. I have the utmost confidence that there is very little that this church cannot do in the future. May their kind increase!

A Pertinent Plea

In the midst of the growing momentum for international partnerships in mission work, may we as an evangelical community begin to see and affirm the ingenuity and giftedness of the people we serve overseas. May we recognize the Holy Spirit’s power at work in and through us as we join hands using local resources to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that will not distract but draw all people to Him (John 12:32)!

Photo Credit: Carlos Felipe Parlo

About The Author

Christopher R. Little, PhD, who continues to advance God’s mission in Kenya, Europe, the Asian sub-continent, Mozambique, and Jordan. Until recently he has been a Professor of Intercultural Studies at Columbia International University. He is author of The Revelation of God Among the Unevangelized: An Evangelical Appraisal and Missiological Contribution to the Debate (William Carey Library, 2000).

Email: clittle@ciu.edu
Website: http://www.wmausa.org

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Feature

Popular Paths That Do Not Lead to Local Sustainability

by Glenn J. Schwartz

In the reports of some missionary societies, we have been learning recently about paths that do not lead to local sustainability. That is what has led to one of the largest mission organizations in the world being accused of mismanagement of a considerable amount of funds. The funds apparently did not reach the destinations for which they were designated.  There are two parts of this dilemma to which I would like to give consideration: legal implications and missiological implications.

The legal implications are rather straight forward.  This has to do with whether the laws controlling charitable giving are being followed as required by governments.  Is the advertising used to raise the funds accurate?  Are the funds received being used for the purpose for which they were designated?  Willful breaking of government laws can have dire consequences for those who knowingly break them.  One has only to look back over the past four or five decades to see how news headlines have brought down televangelists who have not followed government rulings.  Christian leaders should have a higher standard than the laws of government.  Unfortunately, too often Christians have drifted into questionable practices that have given the church a bad reputation.  But the main purpose of this article is not about how Christian organizations have been breaking government regulations.  Rather, it is to deal with the principles of common missionary standards.  It is in this way that funds are being misused, even if government rules may not be broken.

When looking at the missiological implications, it becomes apparent that this might well be the more significant issue regarding the management of kingdom resources.  For example, it is conceivable that all the rules that the government lays down are followed to their satisfaction.  But in missiological terms, it might mean that a significant amount of funding is being used in ways that violate sound kingdom principles.  In my writings elsewhere, I have explained the distinction between using missionary resources to either gather recruits or dependents.  That makes a huge difference in how funding for missionary outreach is used.  I will now give several examples of how missiological principles can be ignored in the use of funding.

First, one of the more popular ways that missiological rules are broken today is to promote using outside funding to pay local pastors and other church leaders.  This idea is very attractive as we are told that for only 50 dollars a month a pastor or evangelist can take the place of a western missionary.  While that seems to make economic sense, it violates the cardinal principle which is that indigenous churches should be self-supporting.  I learned recently that in one church in Asia, all the adults of a congregation were appointed as pastors or evangelists, and in that way they all qualified to receive funding from overseas to pay their salaries.   All the adults in the congregation were deputized!

What are the implications of following the self-supporting rule?  Think of what happened to the Christian movement in China when the bamboo curtain fell into place.  Because the missionaries promoted the principles of self-support, the church in China did not stop growing when outside support was cut off.  A church of about a million adherents in 1951 grew to fifty million in about thirty years, and much more since then.  Imagine what would have happened to the Church in China if western funding would have been used to pay local pastors.  Fortunately, the early missionaries to China had the foresight to refrain from “supporting nationals,” even at 50 dollars a month.  Some may say that the Christian movement could be completely stopped if outside funding were cut off.  There is ample evidence that outside funding is not the secret to continuing support of the church.  In reality, sometimes the church is awakened to its true responsibility and privilege when outside funding is cut off for one reason or another.  China is a class A example!

Those who insist on using outside funding to pay local pastors and other church leaders may be making themselves indispensable in the spread of the gospel.  It may take a fresh new look at how the gospel is being presented to overcome this faulty notion.  It bears some reflection on the quality of the faith experience when the Christian movement ends when outside support is taken away.

A second popular way that western funding is used to support mission churches is through the influx of short-term teams who use their labor and other resources to do for people what they could do or should do for themselves.  Much has been said or written recently on the pros and cons of short-term missions, but there is still a considerable use of outside funding and personnel used in this way in modern missions.  This kind of unhealthy dependency should be challenged by anyone who believes that it is the privilege of local people to build their own church buildings and support their own pastors.[1]

The phenomenon of short-term missions needs to be challenged on another level.  Short-termers need to be reminded that when they do for others what they can or should do for themselves, they may well be affecting the dignity and self-respect of those who should have full ownership of their own churches or other projects.

A third way that outside funding is being used has to do with income-generating projects which replace tithes and offerings.  Several years ago, I was walking down the street of a large central African city with two African bishops who were struggling with a major overdraft in their denominational budget.  They were behind by the equivalent of a million US dollars in their operations.  As we walked along, we passed a plot of land which their church owned, but which was not producing any income.  Adjacent to this plot of land they had a guesthouse which fortunately was earning its own way without having to be subsidized by the church.  I listened as they talked about what could be done with that sizable plot of land.  One bishop suggested that if they just built some flats (apartments) on that vacant land, the church would have enough income to balance their budget.  With their budget already in arrears it was unlikely that they would be able to get the needed funding for building the flats from the people in their church.  So the natural idea was to turn to the denomination overseas and ask for funds (given for missions) to be used to build the income-generating flats.

Now think of the implications.  Funds given overseas for evangelizing the unreached were being diverted to a place where the church needs an income-generating project to sustain itself.  Something is wrong with this picture.

Over the years of colonial rule in central Africa, outsiders such as western missionaries have often created income-generating projects such as bakeries, housing flats, bookstores or farms to increase the church’s income.  One church in Zimbabwe began a bookstore in which hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit each year were used to support church leaders’ salaries and other needs.  As economic trends changed, the profit they were earning went lower and lower to the point where the bookstore began to look to the church to cover its operating losses.  Now the business is not subsidizing the church, but the church is being asked to subsidize the business.

Each of the illustrations or categories above includes assumptions that should be examined from time to time.  One of those assumptions is that people are too poor to give tithes and offerings.  There is ample evidence today to show that this can be a fallacy in many places.  In fact, it can be shown that when believers— even those who are not wealthy— begin to make giving back to God a priority, they discover local resources which they did not know were available to them.   Sadly sometimes the outside resources, given by well-meaning people from far away, have blinded believers to their own resources close at hand.  Those who think they are doing churches a favor by paying their pastors or building their buildings with outside funding may be taking away the privilege that rightfully belongs to those believers who have been introduced to the gospel.

A rule of thumb to which I adhere is that the church is meant to operate on tithes and offerings.  Businesses are meant to operate on profit and loss.  When believers pay their tithes and offerings, the church gets legitimate income and is not competing with businesses that the members might be running.  Furthermore, the church should always ensure that funds given for evangelizing the world are not being used to cover losses in a poorly managed church-run business.  Church-run businesses are one of those paths that should be examined to ensure that it does not draw the church away from its primary intent and purpose.

I welcome interaction with those who are interested in issues such as these.  For further information, see http://www.glennschwartzministry.com  or www.wmausa.org.  I can be reached at the following email address: glennschwartz@msn.com.

[1] In my book When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement, chapter 18 has an in-depth treatment of the pros and cons of short-term missions.

About The Author

Glenn Schwartz and his wife, Verna, served as missionaries in Central Africa during the 1960s and at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission (now School of Intercultural Studies) during the 1970s.  He served as Founding Executive Director of World Mission Associates and currently holds the title of Executive Director Emeritus.  He is the author of When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement.

Email: glennschwartz@msn.com
Website: http://www.glennschwartzministry.com

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Feature

The Need For Bivocational Ministry

by Dr. Robert Reese

An evangelist from India arrived at a Christian college in North Carolina to raise funds to support some 60 fellow evangelists and preachers in Chennai. He asked to use the college as a base for fundraising and was given free room and board in order to do that. Since I was the missions professor at the time, I had several conversations with him and asked him whether bivocational ministry might not be a viable option for his work. He replied that the American missionary who started his work had always insisted that once a man committed himself to work for God, he should be a full-time worker and not accept any other work. I mentioned to him that the Apostle Paul had worked as a tentmaker in Corinth, and that I had met a pastor of a tiny Nazarene church in Vermont who had to support himself by frying hamburgers at a fast food restaurant! He answered that such a lifestyle would be unacceptable in his ministry.

Consequently, he made yearly trips to the USA to raise funds for the following year’s work, continuing the precedent set by his founding missionary of using American money to pay salaries for Indian workers.

The rejection of bivocational ministry has existed for a long time. Almost a century ago, Roland Allen tackled this thorny issue in two books published in 1923 and 1930. This famous missionary to China was deeply concerned with how much a paid clergy in mission situations was damaging the impact of Christianity. In the first book, entitled Voluntary Clergy, he said that his own Anglican mission had “abandoned the Apostolic conception of the ministry,” since the precedent set by the Apostle Paul was a voluntary clergy (1923:72)1. In the second book, The Case for Voluntary Clergy, he added that paying local mission workers divided all who preached and evangelized into two classes: those who were employed by the mission and those who worked without pay, with the former enjoying higher prestige (1930:201). Yet the paid worker “is financially dependent upon the mission. . . . In relation to his own people, or his congregation, he feels no responsibility to them, and they feel no responsibility for him” (1930:209). Ultimately, this system teaches Christians that “all growth depends on money” (1930:212). This in turn slows down the growth and maturity of the churches planted.

On the other side of this sad picture stand those who do God’s work whether they are paid or not. In a short article published in Mission Frontiers, I related some of the story of Isaac Ndlovu (whose Tonga name is Ndendela), a remarkable evangelist with whom I worked and whose main ministry was in the Zambezi River Valley of Zimbabwe (Sept-Oct 2013:36). In 2014, based on interviews and with his permission, I published Ndlovu’s story under the title “Who Needs a Missionary?”. One chapter is devoted to how he made a living, since he gave up a good job in order to share the blessings of the gospel with his own Tonga people, yet he never asked anyone for financial support. How, then, was he to support his growing family while doing ministry? From the start he planned to be a farmer like most Tongas.

We missionaries wanted to help him get off to a good start, so we helped him buy two cattle in order to start a herd of his own. The nearest cattle for sale were a hundred miles from Isaac’s home due to the tsetse fly whose bite is lethal to livestock. But the fly had recently been eradicated, and he personally walked the two cattle to his home on foot! After some years, he had a good-sized herd that provided milk, manure for fields and a source of money (by selling a cow) should the need arise. But he still lacked the regular cash needed for some things like school fees, soap, matches and some food (he grew most of his food as a subsistence farmer).

A fellow missionary loaned Isaac the funds to purchase what he needed to grow cotton, such as seed, insecticide and fertilizer. This gave him a paycheck once a year when his meager cotton crop ripened, but that was enough to provide the cash he needed for a while (including the repayment of the loan). When global cotton prices dropped due to the US government subsidizing American cotton growers, Isaac had to find other ways to make ends meet. He tried numerous other schemes to make money, but discovered that most of them took him away from his calling to ministry. Finally, he found a way to corner the welding market in his area, buying the necessary equipment from the sale of some cattle. Part of the equipment needed was a generator since his area has no electricity, but he still had an 80 mile round trip to buy diesel for the generator at the nearest gasoline station! In order not to detract from ministry, he partnered with his grown sons in this small business. Isaac’s first priority was ministry, with the bivocational part added on only to support his family, and he increasingly relied on his sons to conduct business as they came of age.

We often forget that bivocational ministry was used extensively on the American frontier, especially during the Second Great Awakening (1800-1830). Open-air revivals at camp meetings were followed by fiery evangelists who planted churches across the thinly populated countryside. Most of these preachers were neither well-educated nor financially supported. Only later did Americans come to rely on professional ministers, yet we often insist that our later model should be adopted even in situations where a bivocational ministry would be more appropriate. Especially in mission situations, shouldn’t we heed the advice of the Apostle Paul: “If others have this right of support from you, shouldn’t we have it all the more? But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of ChristChrist?” (1 Cor. 9:12, NIV) In many mission situations around the world, American support for local ministers of the gospel is undermining the gospel.

Credibility is established, however, when those like Ndlovu who are self-supporting evangelists prove by their lifestyles that their priority is making disciples.  We as outsiders need to be especially careful not to stifle local initiative but to encourage all those who believe God has called them to ministry for the sheer joy of sharing the Good News.

Photo Credit: ECHO/Martin Karimi

About The Author

Dr. Robert Reese is an Adjunct Professor of Intercultural Studies at Johnson University, Knoxville, TN.  He and his wife Mari-Etta, served as missionaries for more than twenty years among the Matabele people in Zimbabwe, Africa.  He is the author of Roots and Remedies of the Dependency Syndrome in World Missions, available through William Carey Library publishers.

Email: rreese@johnsonu.edu
Website: http://www.wmausa.org

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Feature

Doing Good That Is Good!

by Verna Schwartz

The following is a summary and excerpts of a book written by Dr. Robert Lupton entitled Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt those They Help (And How to Reverse it)

Many who have written about dependency issues have focused outside North America. However, Dr. Robert Lupton, author of Toxic Charity and Charity Detox[ii] (as well as numerous other books on unhealthy dependency), is an exception. He has picked up three words from the Hippocratic Oath and applied them to effective work among the poor:  Do No Harm!

Dr. Lupton is among the few on the American scene who have grappled with the best ways to transform inner city neighborhoods. This he did by immersing himself and his family into the culture of an Atlanta, Georgia neighborhood. Because he lived among those he was trying to help, it helped diminish the usual “us” and “them” mentality that is often characteristic of our attempts to help alleviate poverty. Becoming insiders helped him and his family to see firsthand the effects of “outside charity” on a local community. This led to many pivotal experiences for him. In one incident described in Toxic Charity, Dr. Lupton tells about an incident of sitting with a family in their freshly cleaned living room, decorated for Christmas, as the children waited excitedly for “Santa’s helpers” to arrive. These are his words:

“When the knock finally came on their front door, their mom greeted the visitors - a well-dressed family with young children - and invited them to step inside. A nervous smile concealed her embarrassment as she graciously accepted armfuls of neatly wrapped gifts. In the commotion, no one noticed that the father had quietly slipped out of the room [leaving] no one but their mom.

Not until the guests were gone and the children had torn through the wrappings to the treasures inside did one of the little ones ask where their father was.  No one questioned the mother’s response that he had gone to the store. But after organizing these kinds of Christmas charity events for years, I was witnessing a side I had never noticed before: how a father is emasculated in his own home in front of his wife and children for not being able to provide presents for his family, his wife is forced to shield her children from their father’s embarrassment, how children get the message that the ‘good stuff’ comes from rich people out there and it is free.” [iii]

From this time onward, Dr. Lupton decided that there was something wrong with that kind of charity! Over the years, he worked to transition food pantries into food co-ops where local people had ownership of the operation and could buy $30 worth of food for $3. Church clothing rooms became thrift stores where local people could not only buy clothing and other necessities at bargain prices, but these stores actually employed people from the neighborhood. As would-be helpers in surrounding churches learned how to listen, they began to discover that these “downtrodden” neighborhoods had some of their own resources that needed to be located and mobilized:  an entrepreneurial spirit, wisdom, churches that ministered at the local level and educators who cared. Several questions came out of this:

1. How does one build on what is already there in the community?

2. How does one bring hope where there has been hopelessness?

3. Are there ways that outside resources, carefully used, could help build up the dignity of a local community rather than strip away what little that was left?

Some of the principles Dr. Lupton discovered are good for inner-city ministry in the USA, as well as rural and urban development (or church planting) in overseas settings. Each of these are designed to protect everyone’s dignity, foster a local community’s spirit and productivity, and replace hopelessness with hope for the future. Quoting from Toxic Charity: [iv]

- Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.

- Limit one-way giving to emergency situations. (Allow the receivers the dignity of giving something from their own resources.)

- Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.

- Subordinate self-interests to the ends of those being served. (Beware of short-term mission trips that concentrate on the fulfillment of those who go while no one examines what happens to the receivers of “charity.”)

- Listen closely to those you seek to help, even to what is not being said - unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective care.

- Above all, do no harm.

Being generous definitely blesses the one who gives, but sometimes our one-way giving prevents the receiving community from realizing this blessing for themselves. Each time this happens, the sparks of dignity, creativity and community spirit - that God wants all of His children to experience - are slowly extinguished. Without realizing it, this can begin to form the slippery slope to dependency. Dr.  Lupton spells these out clearly this downward slope:  Give once and you elicit appreciation. Give twice and you create anticipation.  Give three times and you create expectation. Give four times and it becomes entitlement. Give five times and you establish dependency.[v]

Bringing transformation to hurting people in needy communities is best accomplished by concentrated effort at the local level over an extended period of time.  It is best to do this one community at a time, not spreading ourselves too thin. The pride and joy shining forth in such transformed communities makes it all worthwhile!

Books by Dr. Lupton are highly recommended for those interested in learning about the mobilization of local resources.

This summary was prepared by Verna O. Schwartz, former Administrative Secretary, World Mission Associat

Harper One, 2015, Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt those They Help (And How to Reverse it)

[ii] Harper One, 2011,  Charity Detox: What Charity Would Look Like If We Cared About Results

[iii] Toxic Charity, p. 32-33

[iv] p. 128-129

[v] P. 130

About The Author

Glenn Schwartz and his wife, Verna, served as missionaries in Central Africa during the 1960’s and at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission (now School of Intercultural Studies) during the 1970’s.  He served as Founding Executive Director World Mission Associates and currently holds the title of Executive Director Emeritus.  He is the author of When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement.

Email: vernaschwartz@msn.com
Website: http://www.glennschwartzministry.com

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Feature

Reflections on Locally Sustainable Healthcare

in Ghana, West Africa

by DR. Cameron R. Gongwer, MD

Early in my missionary life as a physician, I was sent to help develop a hospital and medical ministry in Ghana, West Africa. In the process I became concerned about issues of sustainability and dependency. I was the first medical superintendent and full-time physician to serve at the rural Methodist Faith Healing Hospital in Ankaase, Ghana.  People had prayed for many years that a doctor would come to lead the hospital. Local Ghanaians constructed the facility, and soon ownership transferred to the Methodist Church Ghana, who subsequently partnered with our mission agency in the USA.  Much of the initial capital to develop the hospital infrastructure came from American churches that partnered with missionaries sent to serve alongside Ghanaian Christians. Ghanaian healthcare personnel, either volunteers or hired staff, provided the health services. Facility leadership, however, resided with two missionary couples over a period of seven or eight years. When they left - and after I completed my on-field language and culture training - I began my work at the hospital and accepted leadership responsibility under the Ghanaian church’s authority.

As I started my work, I began to realize how much would be needed to make a full-fledged hospital out of what was really a small basic clinic with only 12 staff.  I also realized that this institution could either become a truly indigenous Ghanaian Christian hospital or it could become an American-influenced and supported medical center. It dawned on me that it all depended on our course of action. So I requested from my supporting mission agency some resources to better understand the issues. They recommended an eight-hour video series on dependency from World Mission Associates that my wife and I acquired and watched together. When we reflected on what we learned from the videos, we asked ourselves what we should be doing differently in the hospital and what we could continue as part of our ongoing incarnational approach to mission.  That became a turning point with subsequent decisions to pursue the goal of attaining full funding and staffing from local resources in order to avoid dependency and promote local sustainability.  Below I briefly describe three key things that we learned as we worked through what became an 18 year journey of collaboration with the Methodist Church Ghana. Our goal was to develop what has become an ever growing, 80-plus bed district hospital which is fully owned, funded and managed by Ghanaians providing quality physical and spiritual care to residents of their communities.

The following are a few observations to help understand how we got to where the hospital is today:

1) Local ownership and leadership are essential for sustainable and culturally relevant ministry.

We began efforts to encourage local sustainability by choosing to follow models and systems of organization and operation consistent with Ghanaian health authority standards. This included the formation of a hospital management team with mostly Ghanaian personnel from different departments and church representation, plus one or two missionaries. At first, the availability of well-qualified staff to lead departments was quite limited. As the hospital’s reputation for quality care grew, better-trained individuals were attracted to serve. Along the way, Ghanaians were placed in all levels of leadership.  I noticed that whenever I left for furlough, Ghanaian staff stepped up to manage affairs, which was essential during the growing phase. Eventually, missionary leadership phased out in order for Ghanaian leaders to take over.

Sometimes a chosen leader did not perform well, resulting in low staff morale, poor healthcare, division or even hints of corruption. If this happened, the church stepped in to oversee operations and to exert strong action with prayer to appropriately navigate the cultural, political, social and emotional issues that arose. Ghanaians rather than missionaries were best at resolving these highly contextual issues. Consequently, the church’s strong involvement amidst occasional threatening challenges allowed it to make crucial decisions in finding acceptable, qualified leaders appropriate for the context.

2) Collaboration rather than control prioritizes cooperative relationships for ministry.

Collaboration implies working together shoulder to shoulder to fulfill agreed-upon goals. Control seeks to direct and dominate. Collaboration seeks to contribute and cooperate. Effective collaboration requires cultural sensitivity, for which mission organizations generally try to recruit and train. My own pre-departure, on-field and ongoing training contributed largely to my longevity in full time mission service and ministry. The case of Ankaase Hospital has shown that a mission organization is capable of collaborating effectively across cultures with local leadership involved in providing healthcare. Putting the emphasis on relationship and mutual cooperation rather than taking control and creating dependency can better achieve ministry goals. It requires a dying to self, as Jesus commanded and modeled. When we love Him and our neighbor, then God’s will is done and His kingdom advanced.

3)  Long-term relationships build trust and respect.

Ministry is all about relationships. Sharing life together in community and building cross-cultural relationships over time is hard but rewarding work.  My life in Ankaase treating patients, working with staff, meeting the Chief and elders, attending funerals and weddings, buying goods from traders, lending and borrowing tools, supporting church projects, relying on Ghanaian friends for advice or assistance to navigate life, helping with chores, learning language and culture and making decisions are all examples of life shared together.  That is how discipleship happens. Working together created real-life opportunities to share with young men and women about biblical principles such as discovering Christ-like ways to handle problems and learning about forgiveness and redemption. Staying with a ministry calling through seasons of joy and sorrow, success and failure, celebration and suffering also builds lasting bonds of trust and respect.  To this day that mutual trust has contributed to the endurance and growth of ministry through the Ankaase Hospital.

Sustaining healthcare ministry through collaborative cross-cultural relationships relies on strong local leadership and sharing life together. Sometimes this means sharing ideas, network contacts, and support for mutual ministry interests. It also means open and healthy communication, commitment, and cooperation. Healthy interdependence is a more fruitful association than dependence or even independence. My experience working closely for many years with Ghanaian and expatriate missionaries is that faithful obedience to God’s calling, a focus on His kingdom and putting others above oneself bears good fruit. There is a Ghanaian proverb that says, “He who climbs a good tree is helped upwards.” Our collaborative efforts to advance the Kingdom of God through healthcare and other mission endeavors has and will continue to bear fruit that lasts as we love one another, use our gifts, abilities and resources to engage the world for Christ and meet the needs of a broken and hurting world.

To God be the glory for all He has done.

What  DNA  Are  We  Passing  on  to the  New  Generation  in Missions?

By Pastor Williams Phiri

Church Planter and Itinerant Missionary

Chipata, Zambia

When I was growing up as a young boy, I learned the value of hard work.  I learned about self-reliance from my mother who managed her own small business and supported me as God led me into a traveling ministry as an evangelist and church planter and, eventually, as a missionary.  I learned early on from experience that newly planted churches can be self-supporting, self-governing and self-reproducing.  Later on when I was called to missions, I was never satisfied to depend on my church for support.

When I presented my calling to the church, I was told the church didn’t have money, so they recommended that I raise support from overseas, perhaps from the USA and Canada.  This struck my heart, and I shared my concern with my mother and my sisters, believing that there would be a way to trust God for local resources.  We all agreed that it could be done.  My mother believed so much in God, and she was excited that I was going out as a missionary.  I began by selling all my personal possessions, including my bicycle and my cell phone, so that I could reach out to the Yao Muslims in Malawi and Mozambique. Through my meager income from my own small business, I managed to plant churches in Malawi, Botswana and northern Mozambique.

Today, I am an itinerant missionary travelling throughout east, central and southern Africa.  I have also been privileged to minister in Uganda, Tanzania, Brazil, Pakistan and Nigeria teaching the “DNA of self-reliance” — self-supporting and self-governing principles.

In our churches today in Africa, there is a basic assumption that local funds in the church are for the pastor’s salary, the church building and its “decorations” and maintenance of the property. Unfortunately, in many places in Africa there is a spirit of competition among the churches over who has the biggest church and who has the largest number of members, and yet they neglect missions.  The church needs to wake up and see its mission.

Unhealthy dependency has paralyzed the African church’s efforts regarding world evangelization.  The church feels intimidated when she thinks of this task, crippling even her ability to pray for the nations.  This timid image needs to be dealt with if the church is to do her part in reaching the nations.

How can this be done? That will be a subject for another time.  In the meantime, let us ask the Lord of the harvest to awaken a spirit of missions in the hearts and lives of all of us.

I welcome interaction with all who are interested in discussing issues of sustainability in the Christian movement.  I can be reached at pp.williams@yahoo.com.

About The Author

Dr. Cameron Gongwer serves with The Mission Society as a CoServe consultant in medicine and mission. He served with his family in Ghana for 14 years and now leads Crosspoint Global Health, a collaborative ministry that equips health workers for servant leadership. The Gongwers are based in South Bend, Indiana.

Email: camerongongwer@crosspointglobalhealth.org

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Feature

Dependency & Self-Reliance

My Personal Journey

by Glenn J. Schwartz

I consider it a privilege to be invited to participate in this special edition of Mission Frontiers dedicated to issues of local sustainability. In some ways, I was late in becoming aware of sustainability because for the first years of my missionary experience, I did not have the benefits of missionary training. It was only after spending the 1960s as an American missionary in Central Africa that I began to discover this whole new way of doing cross-cultural ministry, which was not dependent on major outside funding and outside personnel.

As time passed, I discovered that there were other parts of the world in which churches were being started from the very beginning without developing unhealthy dependency. I will share a few examples of how I came to know about them.

Before I became a missionary, I read a story about missionary work in French Indo-China, later known as Vietnam. Something in that story caught my interest. During the war, missionaries were forced to leave and were not allowed to return until after the war was over. When they were eventually allowed back, they saw the massive devastation, and being filled with compassion, they wondered what would be the best way to help the believers to rebuild their communities. They decided that one action they could do was to take responsibility for rebuilding the homes of the pastors in places where they had earlier planted churches. Imagine the missionaries’ surprise when their offer to help was declined by the church. The response of the church was: “It is our privilege to rebuild our own pastors’ houses.” It was one of the first lessons I learned in regard to respecting the dignity of those whom we are trying to help.

A second illustration comes to mind when I was a single mission worker in the early 1960s in what was then called Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. I learned about a group of young people from North America that came to work on a building project in a suburb of the city of Bulawayo. I heard a rumor that the group actually did not finish their few weeks on the project but left the building site early. I decided to visit the site to see if I could learn what had happened. The local builder was the only one left on the site when I arrived. I asked him where the visitors were. He said, “Sadly, we had to let them go.” When I asked about that, he said, “They worked hard while they were here even putting mortar between the bricks with their hands because they felt a trowel was not fast enough. But they did not know that we built buildings before they came, and we would build buildings after they had gone. The problem is that while they were here, they thought they were the only ones who knew how to build a building, so we had to let them go.” Some months later, I returned to find that someone had finished the project. Ironically, beside the main door there was a bronze plaque saying, “This building was built to foster goodwill between the youth of North America and Southern Rhodesia.” Knowing what actually happened makes that plaque sound somewhat ironic.

During my early missionary years, I came upon a small book titled The Indigenous Church written by Melvin Hodges, a missionary to Latin America. I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in the indigenous principle. Having read that book about 50 years ago, I decided recently to reread it, and I discovered that much of my thinking today about indigenous principles and sustainability was what missionary Hodges wrote in that small book. Some of the principles I believe today are exact quotes from his writing.

Another illustration comes to mind from my early days as a missionary in Zambia in the 1960s. This was long before I began to concentrate on indigenous principles. My wife and I worked among the Tonga people of Southern Zambia, which was one of the most rewarding times in my personal ministry. I traveled throughout rural villages sharing the gospel with those who were not believers and encouraging those who, for one reason or another, decided not to remain in fellowship with the church. One day, we visited a rural area where there was no established church. Believers met under a tree or sometimes in a nearby primary school classroom.

As we sat under a traditional grass shelter, one of the villagers asked if the mission would be willing to provide a church building for them. This piqued my interest as a young missionary, so I decided to ask a few questions. I noticed that the shelter under which we were sitting was completely made with local materials. Not one nail was used to erect it.  Then I noticed that about 30 feet away, there was a rural grocery store built with burnt bricks and a corrugated iron roof. I asked if the church or the mission provided the funds for building the grocery store. In unison they responded by saying, “No, we built it ourselves.” Their pride and dignity was evident.

On a similar occasion, a group of church leaders asked for a grant from the mission for a project they wanted to do. I asked why they were asking the mission for the grant, and I was given an answer that resounds in my ears to this day. Their response was, “We always ask first, and we are usually given. So why not ask!”

In the years following, I began to learn about places in the world where missionaries did not introduce outside funds for church buildings and pastors’ salaries. I also began to discover that even in places where people had been bogged down in unhealthy dependency, churches were able to break the syndrome and be delivered from their dependence on outsiders. This led me to conclude two things: 1) that unhealthy dependency can be avoided from the beginning and 2) it can be overcome where it has become entrenched. In other words, it is not a sickness from which churches must die. I soon found that the Spirit of God can awaken hearts and minds to the blessings and rewards of locating and mobilizing local resources to do His work.

Why is this so important? When new converts become dependent on outsiders for their own existence, they are using resources that should be used to further the gospel elsewhere. Outside funding should not continue for those who have already heard and believed. New converts are to be enlisted and recruited to join in the battle, instead of using resources which the evangelism team needs to move onward to claim the least reached territory for the Lord.

When we begin to grasp the importance of that distinction— recruits versus dependents— there will be a larger and more effective army carrying the banner for the Lord. And newly planted churches will not be a collection of dependents who slow it down.

As I reflect on my journey into issues of sustainability, I have been thinking about the needs of a suffering world. I have listened to recent reports of earthquakes and famines that cause refugees in many places. I am not unmindful of those who are suffering in these places. I have said often that Jesus commands us to help those in need. Our family responds to appeals for help in needy places because it is our Christian duty to do so. No one should conclude that what we say about self-reliance means that we do not have compassion for those in need. But at the same time, overcoming unhealthy dependency is one way to help churches see their privilege of becoming givers and not just receivers. May God help all of us to see how He would have us respond to those who are truly in need.

Photo Credit: Simon Davis/DFID

Photo Credit: UNHCR/F.Noy

About The Author

Glenn Schwartz and his wife, Verna, served as missionaries in Central Africa during the 1960s and at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Mission (now School of Intercultural Studies) during the 1970s.  He served as Founding Executive Director of World Mission Associates and currently holds the title of Executive Director Emeritus.  He is the author of When Charity Destroys Dignity: Overcoming Unhealthy Dependency in the Christian Movement.

Email: glennschwartz@msn.com
Website: http://www.glennschwartzministry.com

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Feature

A Recipe For Dependency

A Kenyan Story

by Fr. Evangelos Thiani

Christianity came to Kenya through the United Kingdom missionaries who accompanied their brothers, the colonists, in the second half of the 1800s (Baur, 2009). In fact, the missionaries were trying to “modernize” the African people by literally having them drop their culture and replace it with a more “advanced” European culture. This resulted in the missionaries demonizing many African concepts.While the Africans embraced Christianity, some of them were not happy with losing their culture — as well as their lands — to the missionaries and their colonists. Therefore, they initiated churches and schools, many taking the form of African Independent Churches (AIC) as well as independent schools. The name chosen in 1928 by schismatic groups coming from the Church of Scotland Mission (CSM) in Thogoto village of Kiambu County and Tumutumu village of Muranga County, both in central Kenya, was the Karinga church and schools.CSM later became the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), influenced largely by the East African Revival Movement.

The fact that many of the Kenyan liberation fighters, the Mau Mau, were members of the Karinga church, made it seem like there was no difference between anything Karinga and anything Mau Mau; thus not much help was forthcoming from the colonial government to the Karinga institutions. The Karinga primary and secondary schools, teacher’s colleges, seminary and churches were built on lands either bought or donated by church members. All development work, including building the churches and schools, equipping them, paying the teachers, the clergy and the subordinates, were all done using locally raised money. The money needed by the budget of the Karinga schools was raised through school fees, building funds, harambees (fundraising events), individual donations, sporting events, raffles, traditional dances and, in a few cases, government subsidies given through the Local Native Council. The Karinga churches raised money through Sunday collection baskets. For special projects, major fundraisings were carried out, which would involve an individual set membership fee or a harambee where prominent personalities or well-off members of the community would lead a fundraising drive.

In general, the Karinga church was able to care for her own workers and clergy, as well as covering all her institutional and church needs, including printing all of the church’s liturgical books and circulars. In the early 1940s, some leaders of the Karinga Church realized that the faith of their archbishop, Daniel William Alexander of South Africa, was part of a pseudo-Orthodox Church, and for that reason sought to join the Eastern Orthodox Church under the ancient Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, based in Egypt going back to 43 A.D. This move led to the split of the Karinga church, creating the African Orthodox Church of Kenya (AOCK) for those who desired to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. The African Independent Pentecostal Churches of Africa (AIPCA) was formed for those who desired to continue with their former connections. The people of the Kiambu/Nairobi area favored the AOCK and those of the Muranga/Nyeri area, the AIPCA.

The AOCK—having an AIC foundation—was self-sustaining from her formation in the 1920s, until Eastern Orthodox missionary subsidies came in the form of Christian generosity in monetary and developmental aid, theological education and foreign personnel. These Orthodox missionary initiatives intensified in the mid-1960s to 1970s, about the same time some African churches, like the PCEA in Kenya, were moving away from colonial missionary structures in adherence to the “moratorium on missionaries” agenda that was moving toward self-sustainability.

Many Eastern Orthodox missionaries started visiting Kenya, bringing with them money and much-needed Greek Orthodox Church essentials like liturgical vessels and vestments. They were also erecting new brick or stone Orthodox churches all over the country. They also equipped the Orthodox seminary at Waithaka and later replaced it with a modernized seminary and technical institute at Riruta in Nairobi West. They even offered financial assistance to the seminarians and clergy of the AOCK. All of this was a completely new experience for the formerly self-sustaining church.

Since the Orthodox missionaries did not involve the Africans in all these activities, the Africans started relaxing their offerings to the church and essentially started relying on the Orthodox missionaries’ money, leadership and managerial help, coming from Cyprus, Finland, Greece and North America. Just to mention but a few unhealthy dependency traits in AOCK up to the present, all monies running the AOCK administration—paying the clergy and workers, buying liturgical items and vestments, paying for fully sponsored theological and ministry formation education programs, building schools and churches (plus other projects)—come from Orthodox missionary agencies, churches and well-wishers from abroad. The AOCK parishes have continuously failed to run and maintain most of the projects initiated by the missionaries because these projects need the care or skills that cannot be supplied by the local parishes.

Also, the AOCK failed to produce a leadership structure of her own, one that would work for her better as an Orthodox Church in Kenya.  Instead, when the missionaries came, they abandoned all that they had used as an African leadership structure in the early days, following whatever the foreign hierarchy decided, even if it did not work. Multiple schisms have taken place within the AOCK as they struggle to break free of their dependence on foreign leadership by establishing their own local hierarchy, who understand the cross-cultural issues which were often misunderstood by foreign personnel.

While dependency is not new for churches planted by foreign missions, what has befallen the AOCK is unique in that it was once an indigenous church formed by local African leaders, but which the Eastern Orthodox missionaries—coming to her 50 years after her formation—turned into a mission-dependent church. Unfortunately, the 2000 year old Eastern Orthodox Church’s missiology is still silent about this situation and has not seen it as an issue, even after African church leaders have drawn attention to it.

Dependency in the Global South has to stop becoming the norm, but this has to be done by both African leaders and Western missionaries. It is time that the 1970s moratorium on Western missions becomes a reality for churches like the African Orthodox Church in Kenya. Foreign missions have to stop aiding the African church with money, personnel and leadership policies, for none of this will help the African Church in the long run, but will actually hurt her. While Christian generosity must not stop—because it is a core Christian teaching to help those in need (Rowell, 2006)—it is unfortunate that the only generosity that the foreign churches are willing to give the African Church is the help that they need the least. What is most needed by the dependent churches of Africa is learning how to stand on their own, using local resources and localized leadership structures and methods in their path to self-sustainability. The original indigenous church principle that the AOCK was based on must be reclaimed in all churches in Africa, but more so in the case of the Orthodox churches in Africa, both Eastern and Oriental, if the Orthodox church is to continue her existence in Africa beyond the 21st century. Otherwise dependency, which is choking this ancient church slowly, may end up extinguishing it. Join us in praying that no Orthodox churches will be extinguished.

I welcome interaction with anyone interested in helping to move churches from unhealthy dependency to the freedom of being able to stand on their own two feet with dignity.

Photo Credit: Ben Grey

About The Author

Fr. Evangelos Thiani is a married priest serving with the African Orthodox Church of Kenya, under the jurisdiction of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa.  He teaches practical theology at the Orthodox Patriarchal Seminary in Nairobi named for Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus and at the Bishop Gathuna Theological Seminary in Kiambu, Kenya.

Email: frevangelost@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.orthodox-church.or.ke/

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Feature

Good Intentions Are Not Always Good Enough

by Ralph D. Winter

The English intellect C.P. Snow asked the now-famous question, “Can we do ‘good’ when the foreseeable consequences are evil?” No, but what if the evil consequences are not easily “foreseeable?”

During and after the Korean war, American agencies raised money for Korean “orphans.” This was a major opportunity for Americans to support cute-looking orphans for $20 a month. Genuine concern in the form of powerful maternal and paternal instincts also supported this kind of cause.

Those orphans were so well treated that many Korean families decided to “orphan” one or more of their own children in order to assure them of enough food and clothing and relieve the financial burden of another hungry mouth. In such cases, American money was not helping orphans so much as splitting families—not the donors’ intentions!

This was not immediately apparent. “Direct” help continued to seem reasonable. Years later, a superb improvement took place and “child care”—not starving orphans—was now the cry, which helped the destitute family care for its own children. Later still, the larger concept of “relief and development” emerged whereby plans for helping the family earn a living began to replace simple relief.

That, in turn, gave way later to an even larger concept: “community development.” Rather than selecting certain families to help (and not others), the whole community was gently and sensitively led, where possible, to resolve problems, holding everyone back.

Sadly, not only did all of the earlier approaches have potentially negative side effects, leaving those “direct” approaches behind, but they made it increasingly more difficult to raise funds in America. People began to realize that “we know we can’t help even our own poor in America that easily, and, in any case, why not help our own poor first?”

By contrast, and even better than the kind of community development which seeks an overly idealistic secular solution to solve the overall problem, Christian missionaries have often found a more basic solution: namely, that preaching repentance from a life of lying, stealing and addiction to nicotine and alcohol has often had dramatic economic effects. High in the mountains in Guatemala, the town of Almalonga was widely known for its high income from vegetable production and its pervasive alcoholism. All of its relatively high income was squandered on liquor. When faith in Jesus Christ took root, the whole town went dry, and almost overnight its economic status changed dramatically—an astonishing transformation.

Thus, what “good intentions” might see to be a “direct” answer may not do as well as the Christian faith, which can slowly work its way into a community, change lives one at a time and eventually make a major economic difference to the entire locale. But to many increasingly secularized donors, this just does not seem as “practical.”

In other cases, well-intentioned gifts from America have allowed some organizations to make rapid strides in evangelism by “buying” away the leaders of existing church movements with relatively high salaries. This also happens in the midst of a crisis of some sort like an earthquake, flood or famine, when outside agencies come in with huge resources of food or medicines and they urgently need some administrators they can trust. Christians are a good bet. Key pastors are often pulled into these high-paying jobs. But when the crisis is over, these key people cannot readily adjust or be accepted back where they were before.

Some newer missions even “buy” whole churches, promising a monthly subsidy if the existing church will put up the new sign over the door of the church. Donors may be pleased with such quick results.

In one area of India, 400 churches (out of 4,000) planted by a standard mission were offered financial “help” from a money-channeling agency. The pastors directly needed whatever help they could get. After a few years, these churches were no longer planting new congregations since the subsidy per church could not automatically stretch.

One short-lived U.S. agency backed by a very good-hearted evangelical multimillionaire set out to generate low-cost audio cassettes by the hundreds of thousands to put the whole New Testament into the hands of village pastors in non-literate areas of the world. I cannot forget the sight of 6, quarter-of-a-million-dollar machines standing idle.

It was a “good idea,” but they soon found that in many rural villages of the world food is seen to be more necessary than Bible cassettes. One by one, Matthew, Mark, Luke, etc. cassettes were sold on the open market for reuse in other ways. Why? Pastors chose not to starve their children when they could give up one cassette per week and provide significant relief. The same thing can happen when motorcycles or other expensive tools are provided from the West. The people know of more urgent uses of that money.

One U.S. church took pity on a pastor from East Africa. Realizing that he did not have a car to get around his parish, they took up an offering for that purpose. They did not stop to think that in his economy he would be unable to buy gas for it. Nor did they realize the position it put him in relation to the other 600 pastors who had no car.

In many cases, whether we are concerned about the American inner city or a foreign situation, our basic intuition may be simplistic. In this country, the clearly good intentions of our welfare system have, in effect, made it profitable for millions of single women to have children out-of-wedlock or to urge their husbands to live elsewhere. Why wouldn’t similar misjudgments occur overseas?

The television show “60 Minutes” recently reported that 10,000 young women a month are drawn out of Eastern Europe into white slavery in Western countries. They interviewed enslaved women who “did not know what they were getting into.” They interviewed parents back home who thought their daughters were going away “to get a better job.” It was hard for “60 Minutes” to imagine what grinding poverty will do. Selling (in effect) daughters is widespread around the world, as is selling children in general. Their parents are reluctantly aware that others can “get more out of” their children than they are willing to— longer hours, more difficult work, etc.

This is partly why southern Sudan has continued to be a quarry of human chattel, whether children or adults. The answer is not as simple as buying the human beings who are procured from this part of the world. In some ways, this simply increases the flow.

It may appear that war is what brings on these problems. It is at least as obvious that incredibly damaging diseases make life untenable in southern Sudan, killing and maiming far more people than either war or slavery. But to the donor who wants to see results and “direct” answers, buying enslaved children or adults seems a good enough answer to the problems.

No wonder that many donors retreat to supporting nothing but evangelism, since that does at least safely deal with a very basic aspect of the problem. Our current mission theology does not incline us to fight the very origins of disease. That seems too “indirect” to appeal to donors who “want results.”

In fact, some strains of evangelical theology could lead logically to an essential hopelessness about human problems that directs attention away from almost all practical steps. Satan is gleeful no doubt over the confusion he is able to create where even major, publicly understood problems exist.

Just take my relentless example of nicotine addiction in the United States. Everyone knows that this captures 3,000 more young people each day, dragging them down into a horrible death. Chemically in the same class as illegal drugs, this vicious drug has the protection of many decades of cultural approval as well as continuing federal subsidy. I am astounded how the general public can be lulled asleep by a few funny ads on TV that poke fun at the tobacco industry.

Why would problems overseas be less complex?

Many donors are content to get “the duty monkey” off their back. They don’t have time to care what happens to their gift. They’ve done their duty.

Yet much of what is most needed in missions will not seem attractive to the donor at first glance. The most strategic works do not lend themselves to easy fundraising.

If the challenge of cross-cultural pioneer missions is inherently complex, that is not the fault of the missionary. We must almost expect that, for some, the real challenge of missions will be puzzling, baffling, infuriating and finally rejected. This is one reason so little is given to missions and so few actually give their lives over to this holy cause.

The reality is that nothing can be as safe and as strategic as using our funds to send out patient, resourceful, godly, loving, incorruptible people who stay on the field long enough to figure things out beyond first impressions and initial ideas and who work for an organization that has itself been out there long enough for insights to be passed on from one generation to the next. Ultimately, if we regularly support someone we know will be educated naturally and normally across the years as to the real situation.

About The Author

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Other

Perspectives ‘Opens Up Purpose’ in Your Life!

by Darrell Dorr

The Perspectives course is a ministry of Frontier Ventures that continues to go from strength to strength. During spring 2016, in the USA alone, about 6,500 students took Perspectives in 184 classes, and during July 2016 Perspectives leaders gathered in Baltimore for the Perspectives National Conference to prepare for an even brighter future. Meanwhile, Perspectives Global is growing fast in other world regions.

One student from spring 2016 reports, “This Perspectives course has opened up purpose in my life. My passion for missions has changed. I want to be a part of showing people the mystery of the kingdom of God. I have been entrusted with a charge to fulfill the gospel of Jesus Christ as my sisters and brothers have done before me... I give the Holy Spirit permission to have His ways and unleash in me something that I have never encountered before in my life.”

Have you taken Perspectives and commended the course to friends? If not, you have new opportunities this fall. Within the U.S. go to http://perspectives.org/ to learn about fall classes and the availability of $180 scholarships through Perspectives’ partnership with Urbana. Outside the USA, check out http://www.perspectivesglobal.org/ to learn about Perspectives in other languages and cultures.

Let Perspectives open up a new purpose in your life!

Photo Credit: MAtthew L. Crawley, matthewcrawley.com

About The Author

Darrell Dorr has served as an editor for Mission Frontiers, the International Journal of Frontier Missiology, Operation World and the Atlas of Global Christianity. Also an instructor and mobilizer for the Perspectives Study Program, he now calls greater Seattle home.

Email: darrell.dorr@frontierventures.org
Website: http://www.frontierventures.org

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Kingdom Kernels

Four Stages to “No Place Left”  in Our Generation

by Steve Smith

The theme of the previous issues has been a growing global movement to get to No Place Left for Christ to be named (Rom. 15:23). Our deep aspiration is to launch kingdom movements in which disciples and churches can multiply throughout an unreached people group (UPG), region or city. Our longing is to see Matthew 24:14 fulfilled in our generation—the gospel going to every remaining UPG or UUPG (unengaged UPG).

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations (lit. ethne), and then the end will come.
(Matt. 24:14, ESV)

Yet a people group or city will not be reached without a Spirit-empowered movement that can exceed population growth.

Church-Planting Movements (CPMs; also called Disciple-Making Movements (DMMs)) are kingdom movements in which disciples, churches and leaders multiply many generations throughout a place or people group. Such movements are not uncommon around the world now, but may be uncommon to most of us in our personal experiences. Practically how can our generation implement a comprehensive plan to catalyze God-movements that will get to No Place Left among the ethne of the world? With the majority of us lacking personal experiences in kingdom movements, how can we move toward this vision?

Four Stages to No Place Left (or fulfillment of Matt. 24:14)

A model is emerging which provides hope that we can greatly increase the frequency of CPMs among the unreached of the world. Over the last 20 plus years, the number of these movements has grown among groups from various worldviews and on every continent. But for a person or team that has never experienced a movement in a home context to see a movement start by the power of the Spirit in a people group that has no gospel witness is a huge jump. By taking steps toward this in smaller stages, we are getting to be more successful when a missionary team arrives in an unreached place.

That process is summarized as follows:

Home hub: A team (or individual) in a home culture finds a hub in their home culture to live out CPM practices among both the majority and minority/ethne populations of their context.

Field hub: As the team develops proficiency at home and begins to make forays into unreached areas, they move to a field hub among the unreached where a fruitful CPM team can mentor them for a year or more. The new team sees CPM principles in action in an affinity similar to the UPG on their hearts.

Unreached People Group (UPG) hub: The team then moves to a UPG in that affinity bloc, able to use the tools, or slightly adapted tools, seeking to launch a CPM/DMM there.

Multiplying Movements: Once a CPM emerges in that people group, rather than exit, they take the hot coals from the fire of that movement and help expand the movement to other nearby UPGs. At this stage, movements are multiplying movements.

Home Hub

Remember one important truth about launching missionaries from home hubs: This is a global task and home hubs should emerge in any country which has the church of Jesus Christ. A home hub can emerge in Manila, London, Rio, Delhi, Shanghai, Houston, Nairobi or Prague. Antioch sending bases should emerge wherever the church exists. Just as the Antioch church sent out 40% of its leadership to the mission field (Acts 13:1-3), the sending hubs of the world must sacrificially give their best to the greatest mission of the church.

Home hubs face two challenges. First is the willingness to adapt our priorities to Jesus’ Great Commission priority and make the sacrificial last push to finish the task. We do not lack the resources, just the resolve.

Second, though we sacrificially send people, we most often send missionaries who lack experience in multiplying disciples, much less multiplying churches, leaders and movements. Our missionaries are ill-prepared for the task ahead.

An ideal scenario would be that a missionary team leaving a home hub already understands and practices the basic spiritual lifestyle required to get to a kingdom movement at home—whether among the majority population or ethnic populations (especially immigrants to our home lands). The jump to a cross-cultural ministry is great enough. To add a ministry philosophy jump radically different than that of their home ministry sets missionary teams up for disaster.

Stage one of a No Place Left strategy is to form home hubs in our sending countries in which individuals and teams can learn to implement CPM methods full of faith—to reach the lost (not just the unchurched) with the gospel, to make and multiply disciples, to start and multiply groups and churches and to develop and multiply leaders from the harvest. This process can start with people like ourselves—from our own ethnic/cultural worldview—but expand to cross-cultural situations in our own cities and areas. Our missionary teams must learn to implement here the way they plan to implement there. Too many of the missionaries we’ve received around the world lack basic abilities to evangelize the lost, much less to disciple them in multiplying ways. For the sake of the lost, we must make these beginning adaptations at home.

Fortunately, a number of these home hubs are emerging around the world. Right now they are in early stages, but we need a concerted effort for churches to take up the calling to serve as home hubs. They must be willing to pursue a CPM/DMM model (perhaps in addition to their existing model) and provide a context of loving accountability in which individuals can be mentored to launch movements at home. Whether these mission teams rise up from that city or converge on that city, we need home hubs to emerge in every sending nation with a model that will work well among the unreached. The specific tools among the unreached will be adapted, but the kingdom principles and lifestyle will be similar.

As the team, in a context of multiple teams in the city, learns to make disciples who can make disciples among the majority and minority/ethne populations, they will begin to make short-term forays into various affinity blocs of the world to seek the Lord’s direction for a UPG to target with the kingdom of God.

Two things are needed to make home hubs a consistent reality: 1) Home hub churches in which the senior pastor and leaders embrace this model and the vision to send teams to finish the task abroad. They must bless and support experimental zones in which these teams can learn CPM principles. 2) Coordinators at these home hubs who will make the logistics of such home hubs work. A number of church leaders are willing to walk this path but need a champion to make the ideas a reality.

Field Hub

Logically, it would seem that learning to implement CPM principles at home would make implementing them in a UPG the next step. But the cross-cultural jump of applying CPM/DMM practices in a foreign context is so great that it is actually faster for teams to stop along that journey to be coached in a context in which a CPM is going or on the way. That context should be similar to the one the team will end up in.

For instance, if the team plans to target a Buddhist UPG in South Asia, it makes sense for them to take one or two years to base in a place like Delhi or Kathmandu with a field hub team of experienced CPM practitioners. In that context, they can walk the streets or dusty roads with these practitioners—both foreigners and nationals. CPMs are more easily “caught” than “taught.” In the spirit of those CPM efforts, they will find culturally-appropriate CPM tools, national partners, Great Commission coaches and increased faith that will equip them to launch into another UUPG of that same affinity bloc.

The time frame for this can be a year or two, but the goal is for them to learn and add value to the kingdom work there. Basic language study in a trade language may be appropriate during this stage. Once they have developed some proficiency in ministry, they will be ready to take the next step toward their own people group. Alternatively, it may become apparent to them that they are not suited for this type of pioneering work.

In many affinity blocs, field hubs are emerging—nationals and expats with CPM experience who are willing to receive a coach or a number of new missionaries from various nations. The hub team’s vision is the greater advance of the kingdom beyond their own city or people group. A number are willing, but one great obstacle hinders the development of field hubs: field hub coordinators. Coordinators are needed who will oversee the logistics of receiving new personnel and helping them get plugged in to the local efforts. Such logistics are beyond the purview of the CPM practitioners in that hub. The practitioners would gladly receive the missionaries IF someone would oversee the logistics. Perhaps this would be a retired couple, a family or single with the gift of service or perhaps a college graduate taking a gap year or two.

UPG Hub

When the team leaves the field hub to launch a CPM in an unreached area, it is less a matter of time than of proficiency. When the team has demonstrated the ability to give themselves to the high value activities of movements and produced the fruit thereof, they are ready to tackle their own UPG. In the early stages of leaving the home hub, a team may feel the two year stint in a field hub is a delay in the UPG strategy. But in actuality, it is very likely they will be able to fast-forward CPM ministry in the new context because they have already tasted, smelled and touched a CPM in a similar context.

A number of us who have been a part of CPMs well understand the dark period of trial and error to find the keys to unlock a movement in a people group or city. If we had had the opportunity to see it modeled for us in a context similar to our own, the waiting period for a breakthrough and the mistakes we made along the way may have been lessened.

A benefit to teams launching into a UPG after the field hub stage is that it is very likely they will have formed relationships with near-culture nationals who may move with them or come for short-term trip to help launch the new movement.

The UPG launch toward a CPM is the stage of this progression we are so familiar with: the missionary team that has been sent from a home culture to a foreign culture—yet with no experience or mentoring in the movement dynamics they seek to implement. Teams at this stage need much training and coaching in movement dynamics, which is where many of us devote our efforts.

Hopefully, the four stages can shorten the years of frustration that many teams experience in trying to launch a movement among the unreached. Four stages does not eliminate the need for training and coaching, but it makes that task much easier. We cannot dictate when God will launch a movement, but we can posture our lives to better move in conjunction with His Spirit (Mark 4:26-29).

Multiplying Movements

In the early days of CPMs, we often talked about an “exit strategy.” The idea was that when a movement began to spread among our people group, we were ready to exit the work and go to a new place. Now we realize we were a bit off in that thinking. Instead of exit, we should expand.

CPMs are much easier to start if the hot coals of a movement are transferred to nearby people groups! Disciples from within these movements already know how to walk a CPM path with a high level of faith. They know how to find people of peace, how to reach their households, how to plant the initial DNA of disciples who are fervent followers of Jesus and fishers of men. They know how to implement discipleship, church planting and leadership development methods that are simple enough that new believers can practice them and pass them on. And, these hot coals are similar enough in worldview, culture and language that they can get to the heart of this UPG much faster than distant-culture believers can.

In a number of places around the world, catalytic missionaries have decided not to exit but rather to expand the movement to cascade into other UPGs. They are launching short and long term teams of national disciples to start CPMs in these places.

To the growing vision to get to movements of multiplying disciples, churches and leaders, we must add “multiplying movements.” The great need here is missionary catalysts who will broaden their horizon from a movement among a people to multiplying movements among many peoples. We should emulate the Apostle Paul who picked up Timothy’s, Priscilla’s, Aquila’s and Epaphras’s from the fires of existing movements and helped them start fires in new places.

At the end of the day, we may never send enough missionaries from home cultures to finish the task. Fortunately, we serve a Lord who told us to pray to the Lord of the harvest for more workers—workers that would arise from the harvest (Luke 10:2). This was the King’s plan from the beginning to get to No Place Left in our generation.

To learn how you can connect to this process, write the growing global movement at:  NPLglobal@gcnow.org

About The Author

Garrett

Steve Smith planted a church in Los Angeles and then helped initiate a church planting movement (CPM) among an unreached people group in East Asia. The last ten years he has trained believers in CPM and currently oversees the work of the International Mission Board (SBC) in reaching Southeast Asian Peoples.

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Further Reflections

Are We Paying Attention to the World Around Us?

by greg.parsons@frontierventures.org

We “missions” people have a heart for the world. For me, that is usually focused on those who are very distant—say in North India or SE Asia or the Middle East. But last Saturday, for reasons I won’t explain, my wife was in the ER for 10 hours. She was then admitted, had surgery the next day and then stayed one more day in a very well-known hospital in the major city we were visiting—far away from home.

During our stay at the hospital, we talked with people we would have never had reason to meet or speak to. I wondered if any of them had talked with a serious believer in Christ before.

There were a lot of hurting people in the ER. They call it the “ER” for a reason, but I’m talking about the doctors and nurses too. A large percentage of patients during our stay looked like they lived on the street. Many seemed to have mental issues in addition to whatever physical problem put them in the ER. Several were alone, without anyone at their side.

A few men even threatened the staff or “everyone in the room.” One guy—offended by a staff person somehow—said he was Taliban and was going to blow up the place and the White House (not far away). Unrelated to that, there was actually a “lock down” for a few minutes that seemed to be a false alarm.

Most of the ER residents (doctors in training) were Caucasian, but we saw a number of cultures represented throughout the hospital. Once in pre-op, two female nurses came in speaking another language which I could not hear well enough to recognize. It was obvious they were close friends.

Once when they were working with my wife, I asked them where they were from, and one said “guess.” I said Lebanon, but should have realized it would be Iran. They immigrated about 15 years before and were both married with children. I asked about their religious background knowing it was likely Muslim. One said she wasn’t really anything, but I was pretty sure she said that for fear of what I might think of her. The other said quietly, to her friend, “we are Muslims…,” which I took to mean cultural Muslims—meaning they weren’t Christians or Buddhists or Hindus.

There are always a bunch of Filipino staff at most hospitals, at all job levels. One was the assistant to our daytime nurse—always bright and cheerful. Our main daytime nurse was African American and did an excellent job. Our night nurse got into nursing after years in the restaurant business with a relative. He was from Morocco. He was also a real character, the perfect person for such a job.

We didn’t have the time to talk with all of them about faith, but all of the ones who talked to us reacted positively. Here are a few reflections:

1. Are we really ready to speak winsomely, with grace and truth? If there is something you felt you need to do to prepare, like memorize a couple of parables or key verses in books like Proverbs or Romans, then do it now! And remember, you will get better at it—and in trusting the Lord to speak through you.

2. Are we afraid to share? With the negative climate towards Christians in the U.S., we need to ask ourselves if we are just fearful. I do not suggest we need to talk with strangers (like those I mention above) who are not interested. If that is the case with someone, then just move on. If you are talking with people whom you will see again, be praying for them and looking for opportunities God provides. Often, in church history, it has been life’s difficulties that draw people to Christ.

3. Are you trusting God and stepping out in wise, courageous faith? The Lord open some doors because we ask him to (James 4:2b). So why not pray “something into existence” (as John Piper puts it, based on James 4). Pray first that you will step out by faith—perhaps in an uncomfortable situation—and that He will open hearts to himself.

4. Just tell your story with Christ. People usually will not get mad at what happened to you. We don’t have to have a “canned” approach to sharing our faith.

People need the truth that is only found in Jesus Christ and the gospel he accomplished. That seems clearer today than any other time in our lifetime. We need that same power to reflect Jesus to the world.

About The Author

Garrett

Greg has been on the staff of Frontier Ventures (formerly USCWM) since 1982. He and his wife, Kathleen, have two children and one grandchild.

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