Missions in a Flat World

When you telephone for technical support regarding your new vacuum cleaner, you might very well talk to a tech in Bangalore, India, a tech who may even be a member of First Baptist Church in Bangalore. Many people work in the phone banks of multinational companies in Bangalore, a city that is wired to the world with fiber optic nerves. Connectivity is a new fact of our shrinking globe.

The majority of believers today are non-Western and non-White, so missions leadership of recent decades is undergoing a radical change.

In his 2005 best-selling “brief history of the 21st century,” New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman informs us, The World Is Flat. Among the ten flattening factors that level the world are the marvels of Internet technology. Through such technology, we have equal opportunities to communicate with any city-whether Chicago or Shanghai. We are introduced to a new global realm, new collaborative processes, and new participants not affected by distance; China and India are suddenly major influences in the global economy. The implications for missions are staggering.

How will our missions efforts unfold in a flatter world? The center of gravity of the Christian world is rapidly moving south as we observe explosive growth of the church in Africa, Asia, and South America. “Receiving” churches are becoming sending churches at an accelerating pace, raising new questions for missions strategists in America.

The majority of believers today are non-Western and non-White, so missions leadership of recent decades is undergoing a radical change. At a global missions strategy conference in Brazil in 1999, the 160 missiologists gathered from fifty-three nations, whereas twenty-five years earlier, most had come from America and a few from Europe. At the 1999 conference, 60 percent of the presenters were non-English-speaking, and 77 percent were non-Americans. Strategic leadership in missions is advancing around the globe.

So we must ask,

• Is there still a place for American missionaries overseas?
• Should we develop specialists mostly in ministries other than church planting?
• Should we invest primarily in national workers in their own lands?
• What about the spiritual decline in our own land?
• How do we respond to globalization in economics and communication?
• Are the core issues of fundamentalism truly important when we consider the unsaved world?
• Does the resurgence of Islam affect us at all?

Partnerships

Emerging missions paradigms revolve around parity among the international partners in the missions process. A place will always exist for American missionaries overseas; the Great Commission mandate is still in effect for all believers. But the American missionaries to other countries will engage less in leadership roles and more in collaboration efforts. Fewer will be pastors, and more will be mentors of pastors who serve as their associates. Church-planting teams will more commonly be made up of foreign and national partners in ministry as our missionaries facilitate the entrance of trained national workers into pastoral leadership.

A new model of corporate partnering is emerging: mission to mission. Missionaries sent out from south Brazil through a Brazilian fundamental Baptist mission agency are already in Mozambique, carrying out church planting and medical ministries. They will soon be joined by Baptist Mid-Missions missionaries who will partner with them and will be careful to respect the Brazilian initiative. The forming of associations of independent Baptist churches around the world is often the result of long-term investments by mission agencies. Partnership associations in India, Myanmar, Ghana, Togo, the Philippines, Liberia, and elsewhere share the convictions that drive our churches.

Prioritized Focus

Many of our churches have turned their eyes to the 10/40 Window, a term coined by Brazilian missiologist Luis Bush. This region, extending from latitudes 10 degrees to 40 degrees north of the equator-from West Africa to East Asia-comprises most of the unreached people groups today. Many of the fifty-nine nations in that region are among the most tightly closed to missions efforts. To catch up on where we have fallen behind, some churches are designating up to half of their missionary support to work and workers in the 10/40 Window.

Ministering in those closed nations calls for implementing creative alternatives to conventional ways of entering countries. Christians who have professional skills welcomed by those countries find they may enter with a passport identity other than “religious worker”; after fulfilling their promised duties, they may begin serving the Lord. Such positions include teaching English, teaching in the local university in their areas of expertise or advanced degrees, running a computer cafe, training in small business administration, running a guest house or resort for travelers (including missions teams), and working in a host of technical fields now in demand around the flattening world.

This factor also opens doors for mature Christians who have retired from their professional careers but who still have many years of service ahead of them. With established expertise and retirement income, they could invest five to ten years in establishing a bridgehead for Christ in a restricted-access country. More second-career missionaries are making their marks for Christ.

Our churches send out skilled people, young or not-so-young, as “missionaries,” but in restricted-access nations, they are known in terms of their professional activities and Christian testimonies. These individuals can’t serve as pastors of churches, so, instead, they serve as disciplers, mentors, and trainers of local church leaders.

Supporting National Workers

Wouldn’t it make sense to concentrate our churches’ limited finances on national pastors and evangelists who live more cheaply and work more effectively than our missionaries? This possibility varies from location to location. Many nations have few national pastors to support and still need foreign pioneer missionaries to establish works in their regions. Pastors of established churches ought to be supported by the churches they lead. So we favor the support of national church planters either during the phase of establishing the churches they will later pastor or as they serve as ongoing church planters in various areas.

Much of the support of national church planters may be directed through U.S. mission agencies to national mission agencies they have helped establish. Using this channel allows for accountability and distribution by national leaders who know the workers’ needs. It also enables us to focus our giving on nationals who perpetuate the very convictions of their spiritual ancestors whom our churches sent out in the first place.

After all, the purpose for missions programs in our churches is to reproduce the Biblical convictions of sending churches among all nations with appropriate cultural adaptation. Missions-minded churches define their convictions by the missionaries they elect to support as their representatives on the fields of the world. So fundamental Baptist churches work through agencies of similar convictions to multiply themselves around the world. The sharing of resources takes on new dimensions in a flatter world when some churches have more people and some have more funds.

Practical Separatism

Does it truly matter whether our missions endeavors are separate from evangelical and ecumenical ministries around us? Absolutely! The early ecumenical movement arose from the heart of world missions and resulted in the World Council of Churches. Today the ecumenical movement increasingly makes inroads into evangelical churches and organizations that fail to recognize ties to global apostasy. The charismatic movement freely crosses over from evangelical to Catholic to ecumenical functions and organizations. Spiritual discernment is giving way to careless cooperation and “sloppy agape.”

Missionaries define their convictions by what they refuse to stand against as well as by what they stand for. This is a day that calls for crystal clear convictions in doctrine, ethics, and fellowship. The Biblical approach to ecclesiastical separation is based on a clear Biblical understanding of the church and what constitutes Biblical fellowship and cooperation. This is true even when we can enjoy personal fellowship with other believers with whom we would not cooperate in ministry because of our different convictions.

Further, evangelical movement toward cooperating with Roman Catholic ministries in many nations will only dilute our message and dull our cutting edge for outreach. It is vitally important for missionaries to understand that the new Catholic mentality and conciliatory approaches are strategies to bring us “separated brethren” into the sacramental unity of the “one true church.” At the same time, the new openness creates opportunities for witnessing that are unparalleled in recent history. South America, for example, is in harvest phase after generations of sowing.

Militant Islam

Recent publications have drawn attention to the worldwide impact of the resurgence of Islam. Factors such as Israel’s establishment as a nation and the Middle East’s development of petroleum have led to a polarization in people’s responses to Islam. In our flattened world we must deal with new power centers, even as technology facilitates the distribution of the Scriptures and Bible studies to nations that resist both. Our wise approaches to Muslims will face closed doors in areas of Islamic domination but will find open doors among Muslims who live as minority groups.

The Internet Revolution

The virtual omnipresence of websites minimizes the importance of “location, location, location.” A URL becomes a real location. Instant research, infinite catalogs of new and used goods, and interactive communication are now at the fingertips of more than 80 percent of missionaries around the world. Schooling for missionary kids and seminary education are now available online. The virtual classroom takes ministry training across the miles and the cultural barriers wherever Internet access is available, even by satellite in that last remote village. Teleconferencing can replace some overseas visits. Online forums allow people in remote locations to brainstorm common concerns. And now, more than ever before, pastors can take part in deliberations regarding their missions and missionaries.

In our flattened world we must deal with new power centers, even as technology facilitates the distribution of the Scriptures and Bible studies to nations that resist both.

When computers were new, missionaries would pray about whether to get one. Now computers are so essential that missionaries pray about which ones to get.

The Short-term Explosion

New capabilities in communication and transportation make it practical for churches to send out ministry teams and work teams for brief periods of service. The rapid increase in the number of college students and church folks gaining firsthand experience in missionary service ought to result in a new surge of recruits who return to needy fields as career missionaries. In fact, of those called to career ministry, a high percentage have experienced short-term missions trips. But only a small percentage of those who serve as short-term missionaries actually return to the fields. Short-term missions should not be viewed as an inoculation against missions, allowing a mind-set of, “I’ve paid my dues; I did my ‘missions thing.’ Now let me get on with life as I planned it.”

Member Care

Stresses on missionary personnel are more demanding than ever before. Fewer missionaries are continuing to serve for a fourth term or beyond as they stop to deal with personal or family issues that keep them off their foreign fields. So our mission agencies are doing more to encourage and enable missionaries to enjoy full and productive careers on their fields. Agencies have put into place a host of “vitamin-laden” resources to support missionaries on the frontiers, including counseling, supportive visits, online and in-house training, spiritual and professional resources, family guidance, schools and ministries for missionary children, supportive ministries to single women, and downloadable sermons and seminars. They even offer specialized services that most churches would find themselves hard-pressed to make available to their missionaries. As a result of such support and resources, missionaries are obtaining advanced degrees during furloughs and while on the field to enhance their ministry capabilities.

Churches, too, are taking the initiative to care for their missionaries. Churches have always sent out their best people to do their hardest work. Now churches are equipping missionaries with advanced communications equipment for instant messaging (now with audio and video) to enable two-way interaction that can help both stay on task for Christ.

Changing World’s Unchanging Mission

Some things never change. The gospel does not change. The Bible does not change. Our commission does not change. The correlation of hard work to success (not just results) does not change, even as we read in Acts 21:28 that some men in Asia cried, “Help! This is the man [Paul] who teaches all men everywhere.” Those who fish often seem to catch more than those who only contemplate the currents and seldom cast a line.

But the world is certainly changing. Power centers are shifting. Priorities change. Worldviews are blending, but not toward a Biblical consensus. The open doors for communication confound the closed doors for missionaries. New methods, new international personnel, new support resources, and new patterns for collaboration encourage us to let the gospel flow across a flattening world.

William Smallman serves at Baptist Mid-Missions as first vice president and director of Lifelong Education. He served as candidate administrator for nearly twenty-five years. Previously, he and his wife, Doris, served in Brazil, joining Baptist Mid-Missions in 1968.

*Author’s Note: 10/40 sources sometimes have conflicting data on the same website. The following websites were used in collecting the data listed above:

www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~samkong/mission/1040.php (no date indicated)

ad2000.org (1999)

www.thinkwow.com/surgeup/10-40_window.htm

Related Resources

Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).

W. Edward Glenny and William H. Smallman, eds., Missions in a New Millennium (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2000).

Stan Guthrie, Missions in the Third Millennium: 21 Key Trends for the 21st Century (Bletchley, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom: Paternoster, 2000).

David J. Hesselgrave, Paradigms in Conflict: 10 Key Questions in Christian Missions Today (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2005).

Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

William David Taylor, ed., Global Missiology for the 21st Century: Reflections from the Iguassu Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000).

Richard Tiplady, ed., One World or Many? The Impact of Globalization on Mission (Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2003).