All People to All People All Over the World

Missions has changed in wonderful ways during my lifetime.  The greatest growth of the church in the last decade has been in the “global south and east”, which is making a major impact on how we do missions around the world.  The Lord is working in dynamic ways expanding His kingdom and raising up a new generation of missionaries from the developing world.  It is no longer “the west reaching the rest”, but it is rather “all people to all people all over the world.”

The church in the south and east is fast becoming a major sender of missionaries to the least reached peoples of the world.  That is certainly true in Africa.  In my travels around the continent I am seeing a growing passion among African church leaders to be raising up, equipping and sending the next generation of missionaries both to least reached peoples around them and around the world.

This is why two of our Ten Year Goals are to see:

•  Every national partnering movement, church, and organization multiplying healthy churches among all people as we come alongside of them
•  Every national church partnership is a missionary sending movement

The heart of the church in Africa resonates with these goals.  However, there are major hurdles before us as we seek to come alongside the church in Africa to partner with them in this new missionary movement. 

The first hurdle comes from the history of ministry in the developing world.  Argentine leader Daniel Bianchi gives a good overview of the problem in the following excerpt from his article “Scripture and the Global South Church”:

The church in the South tends to look at herself through the eyes of the North. For centuries, the message to the churches in the South has been something like “You can’t do it. You are too young. You don’t have the resources. You need help”. When you convince someone that he needs help you also convince him that he can’t help others, somebody said. The church in the South needs to regard herself as valuable, capable and responsible as the rest of the church. The church in the South ought to realize that she has much to offer. For many the lack of financial resources, expertise and technology causes her to feel like a “second class partner”. The church of the South has much to give in personnel, commitment, passion, suffering, etc.

 http://conversation.lausanne.org/en/conversations/detail/10471

The second hurdle arises from the economic challenges the church in Africa is facing on all fronts.  There are young committed leaders who are ready to go to the least reached peoples on the continent.  However, they are struggling with the question of how they will provide for their families as they go.  Over the past 12 months my colleagues in ReachAfrica have trained over 1,000 African church planters many of whom are ready to go to least reached communities on the continent.  They are constantly faced with the challenge of how to support their families.  This is an issue that we are urgently working with them to solve.

Some in America today are saying that the church in the west should be supporting these African missionaries and providing the funds for them to go.  After all we have financial resources in abundance and they have willing missionaries in abundance.  That sounds good, but raising support from the church in the west is at best a short term partial solution that limits church planting movements from starting where multiplication is truly taking place.  In addition, it can lead to western “ownership” of the missions endeavor.  As one of my mission leader friends told me several years ago, “Whoever controls the money really owns the ministry.”  We want the church in Africa to own this new missionary movement!

I am convinced that we must rather be looking for ways to come alongside the church in Africa to see indigenous church planting and funding models that will work there.  We must look at business as mission and bi-vocational models that will work both in rural an urban African contexts.  Ministries that will multiply over time must be indigenous, reproducible and sustainable using local resources.  This is one of the biggest challenges facing us today. 

I will be meeting with our Africa Division LeadTeam in two weeks and this issue will be one of the main topics of our discussions.  Please pray with us that the Lord will give us wisdom as we seek appropriate ways to use the resources God has entrusted to us to partner with the church in Africa in order to see healthy churches and ministries multiplied among all people on the continent.