Tag: missions

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Where does the North American Church fit in the Global Movement?

The following notes I took at an insightful couple of presentations by missiologist Paul Borthwick. This topic is addressed more fully in Borthwick’s new book: Western Christians in Global Mission: What’s the Role of the North American Church?   (See also My Highlights from the book)

Since they are notes, I haven’t made the attempt to write them as prose, but mere bullet points. Maybe this will be helpful to you. (download a PDF)

Connection Tour by Missio Nexus – Serving the Great Commission Community of North America with Paul Borthwick
Tuesday, May 28, 2013 @ US Center for World Mission

Topic of the Day: WHERE DO WE FIT? What is the role of the North American Church in the Global Mission Movement – Paul Borthwick

Truth be told, this book is full of anecdotal opinions – coming from his extensive work alongside indigenous leaders, not a “full scientific survey”

Does North America have a role in the future of global mission?
Paul’s answer is a firm — “It Depends” ☺

We must avoid both extremes of:
1) get out of the way of the Majority World Church (his preferred term for the Latin, African & Asian Church conglomerate)
2) continue to clamour for superiority in global mission

Some people use the “baton has been passed” to the Majority Church analogy
Fundamentally this is wrong because – we can’t leave/quit the race.

We do have something to offer the Majority World Mission Movement – We have a longer history and more mistakes made. They don’t have to make our mistakes again!…we need to pass them on.

We in North America are somebody else’s “ends of the earth”

Majority World churches asked a penetrating question, “ Will the North American Mission Movement march in the Global parade if we aren’t leading it?”

5 Tensions For North American Mission Agencies/Movement:

1) What does it mean to be an international agency?

  • a. How many Africians (internationals) do we have on our board?
  • b. What does it mean to be international …equal seat for everyone?
  • c. Where will we partner with national leaders?
  • d. Partnering with indigenous agencies?
  • Eldon Porter – help North American agencies via Missio Nexus

2) How elastic are we with theological tolerance?

  • – International theologizing (self-theologizing)
  • – Nigeria question – what do you think of Benny Hinn? (people were healed by touching their TV when he was preaching/healing
  • – “The rest of the world doesn’t know that the Book of Acts is over. They really believe that stuff.”
  • • Where do relatives fit in theology, “whole households” African and Asian questions are familial, not individual
  • • Do we have the capacity to suspend judgment on some theological issues?

3) What does Biblical Partnership look like?

  • a. What does it mean? Who is the PRINCIPAL partner?
  • b. Are we a Golf Team (bunch of individuals tabulating a group score) or a Rugby Team (everyone key and in the scrum)
  • c. Westerners think of partnerships in transactional terms – time ending,
  • d. Africans think of partnerships in family terms
  • i. Recommendations to do partnering without money
  • ii. Then after trust and relationship do small amounts of money, culturally appropriate
  • iii. Highly Recommend – Mary Leiderleitner’s book Cross-Cultural Partnerships : Money and Missions

4) What is the role for the North American church in pioneering and leaving?

  • Our greatest strengths
  • • Initiative
  • • Positivity
  • • Forward looking/ Future
  • ( sometimes its actually Naïve optimism )
  • We must Listen & ask questions (Facilitator’s)
  • Observe and listen 4Xs as much as we talk! (2 eyes & ears, 1 mouth)

Letters to Dear Dr. Robert A. Blincoe, in the book are insightful:
Western Christians in Global Mission: What’s the Role of the North American Church? (Kindle Location 2170). Kindle Edition.  

5) What is our role in globalizing the North American Church?

  • -The conviction “we have a story to take to the nations” is diminishing.
  • -Today it seems “Missional” just means my neighborhood
  • – Stop speaking mission-ese
  • Our churches role in the great commission –
  • “back translation” What do you think? 30% would be great(business mind)
  • 1040 Window (2 weeks before April 15th) ☺

 

Part/Session 2 – Where do we fit? (Geared to Local Churches / Mission Pastors)

We are in a time where Mission is From Every Nation To Every Nation!

3 Trends in the Local Church Mission Action
1) Same Old, Same Old Group
(Just keep doing it the same way)

2) Heck with Mission Agencies, Let’s Do it Our Own Way
(streamlined, but a little dangerous & no collaboration)

3) Let’s Stay Home
(fix America first, the Majority World has more converts than us)

5 Challenges in Local Church Global Mission Engagement
1) Under 30 challenge

  • a. People don’t give in the same way
  • b. People don’t go in the same way
  • c. Do they have a long enough attention span to do pioneer mission?
  • d. Unreached people groups are long, hard work

2) Global Local Challenge

  • a. Across the street, across the ocean
  • b. World religions are here, not an exotic something from over there.
  • c. Here and There
  • i. Offer an introduction on talking to ethnic people, other religions, help give people practical tips
  • ii. Call on Mission Agency for help
  • iii. The first 5 questions you ask your Hindu neighbor, or an Islamic person, or Buddist…

3) Partnership Challenge

  • a. What are other people doing?
  • b. Intentional Reciprocity – are we going and what do they have to teach us (Co-equal partners)
  • c. Is their anything we can do to serve what God is already doing?
  • d. Take Listening trips…really listen…
  • e. Why is partnership a one-way street? Don’t treat it like a franchise, or a subsidiary!
  • i. Here’s what we have to offer…do you need this?
  • ii. Here’s what we would like to learn…
  • • Partnership is not based on transactional things (MOU’s) but on relationships
  • • Secondary Impact Partnerships
  • o Work with people who can go places that you can’t go… Latinos to Islamic pockets
  • o The Multi-Cultural face of our North American church is key to reaching our “global” world.

4) Short-term Mission Challenge

  • a. Lots of benefits, Lots of critiques
  • b. “Short-term missions is the first time in Christian Mission History when the missionary is the primary beneficiary.”
  • c. How do we link with locals?
  • d. Short-term mission trips, with a long-term effect.
  • e. Freak-show Missions – Draw a crowd and it can be used.
  • f. Poverty-voyeurs, pigeonaries (fly in crap all over everything and leave)
  • g. Please stop sending us your children – Mexico
  • i. Could not see poverty at home unless they go to Mexico and see people in a village in poverty
  • ii. What is the cost of short-term missions? What is the cost of NOT doing short-term missions?

5) North American Comfort Zone Challenge

  • a. Re-evaluate our lifestyles
  • b. Affluence comes naturally
  • c. How do we prepare people to downsize their lifestyle, living more simply
  • d. Example of MoveIn – commitment to be incarnational people in apartment, low-income housing
  • e. We have an addiction to stuff
  • f. Progress Paradox – Why does the richest place on earth have the most, mood altering, drug use, choices, different bottles of water?
  • Middleclass Americans actually are the Top 1% of the rich people who have lived in all of human history

Download/Print PDF of these Notes

See also My Highlights from the book

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Quotes from “We Are Not The Hero” by Jean Johnson

The finest book I’ve read thus far this year, is We Are Not the Hero: A Missionary’s Guide to Sharing Christ Not a Culture of Dependency by Jean Johnson.  This book, based on a combination of thorough research and personal experience as a seasoned missionary, is another that deals with the chronic issue of western-promoted dependency in missions.

Johnson updates this important topic with a clarion call to westerners (agencies, churches, individuals) to rethink how mission is commonly being done that could lead to dependency.

As a missionary in Cambodia, Johnson learned from personal mistakes about the unintended consequences of ministry unwisely done that was meant to alleviate poverty but actually deepened it. Through her copious research and hard experiences she has earned the right to speak on this topic.

We-Are-Not-The-Hero-BookI got introduced to this book by John Ward through the Book Review & Author Interview from Missio Nexus.
Thanks to Missio Nexus this INSIGHTFUL Author Interview is posted here

(35 minutes 34 seconds  17 MB [Right click the link and Select “Download as” to save])

I posted some of my favorite quotes from the book below…enjoy!
Problems, obstacles, and challenges can either become the markers of our limits and limitations or they can become a springboard…

Erwin McManus eloquently states, “Problems, obstacles, and challenges can either become the markers of our limits and limitations, or they can become the springboard into a whole new world.”4

High profile missionaries leave defeated people behind…

High-profile missionaries leave defeated people in their trail. Low-profile missionaries humbly empower the indigenous man and woman to be God’s instruments of noble purposes. “Being in someone’s shadow” is a common English idiom that says there is no room for us to be passive. But I suggest that a missionary leader who intentionally positions himself in someone’s shadow, with the goal to empower that person, is a great leader.

Perhaps we could say that a church is indigenous when any given people group experiences Christ through its five senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste—and not the foreigner’s five senses.

“We could list hundreds of helpful items to start churches, but we can count on our fingers and toes those few essentials that make the crucial difference between reproductive and sterile churches. Blessed is the Christian worker who knows the difference.” DR. GEORGE PATTERSON

In cases where the missionaries initially fill high-profile ministry roles, the local leaders have difficulty filling the shoes of those missionaries. The majority of missionaries serve in ministry roles to their fullest capacity, leaning on years of experience, plenty of resources, and ample equipment. Additionally, they often provide fringe benefits such as English lessons, jobs, medical teams, musical instruments, and equipment. When it is the local leaders’ turn to conduct ministry, they struggle to find acceptance because the church members miss the missionary’s charity, expertise, and charismatic personality. Lastly, there is the ever-present problem of failing to plant a truly indigenous church. Missionaries often conduct and model ministry based on church models from their own countries, albeit with some variation. Inevitably, the church develops a foreign personality, structure, and style.

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” PLATO

Planting churches by asking questions instead of giving answers takes discipline, creativity, and practice.

…using questions as a method to plant churches seems nonsensical— but I think it is a perfect way to plant an indigenous church.

Great quote by William Smallman:

“The incipient church can flounder and stagnate in its first generation if it has no leaders who think their own thoughts within the framework of the universally applicable Word of God.

“I summarize the experts’ definitions of the indigenous church in the following manner: An indigenous church is a community of believers under the lordship of Jesus Christ who culturally reflect the soul of the society around them and who have the desire and ability to sustain and multiply themselves in every facet of life and ministry.”

“Globalization offers amazing opportunities and unprecedented ways to efficiently connect, communicate, and influence one another. Unfortunately, globalization also allows the rubbish and icky stuff of different societies to cross boundaries at a rapid and influential pace. What does this mean to us? First, while we take advantage of the opportunities of globalization, we need to leave our icky stuff at home as much as possible. Second, we should take steps to ensure that globalization does not become another excuse for the West to practice paternalism in the disguise of advancing God’s kingdom.”

“I have created a saying that guides my cross-cultural work: ‘Day 1 affects day 100.’ In other words, what I do from the very beginning (on day 1) will either impede multiplication or enhance it within a given cultural context down the road (on day 100). In my early years serving as a cross-cultural church planter, I thought multiplication was something to be communicated when the church was more mature. I was wrong. The reality is that everything I say and do from that very first day onward will either empower indigenous believers with the spiritual authority, vision, and capability to multiply, or it will stifle them.”

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UNREACHED People Groups and our rationalization…

Almost every time I speak about unreached people groups, I hear a comment like, “We’ve got plenty of unreached people right here where we live, without worrying about groups halfway across the world.” And that’s true. There are more individuals living within already “reached” people groups, than there are in all the unreached people groups of the world. However, there is one major difference. Most people in the West have great access to the message of Christ through media, local churches, and believers. For 300 million people in the unengaged, unreached people groups of the world, there is no way, outside of divine revelation, to hear the message of Christ. There is no church, no missionary, and not one verse of Scripture translated into their language. How much longer will we wait until we go to these groups, and put them on our priority list for funding and manpower?

pauleshlemanBy Paul Eshelman // Director of Finishing The Task)

Read the rest of Paul’s article  in Mission Frontiers

 

Hear Paul tell the story of when God grabbed his heart for the unreached 

 

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In Memory of TRUE World Changers: Jim & Lyn Montgomery

Today I went to a Celebration of the Life of Lyn Montgomery…who entered eternity earlier this week to join her Lord and her love Jim. I have known Lyn only in these last 4 years, but I know I missed her most fun and fruitful days. The years wore on her beautiful body and soul, yet I long to know the woman that I heard the stories of today…at least to taste her carrot cake!

I’ve had the privilege of knowing the Montgomery’s son Len (who is an amazing man in his own right) and Len’s wife Mishal (amazing too!). My two boys are the same ages as their three boys (they have twin 6th graders). In fact, all those boys are right now at our house enjoying video games together!

I never had the privilege to know Jim either, as he passed in 2006. Never-the-less, I’ve been deeply impacted by his work, vision and writings.  He brought us in the church/missions world the idea, strategy and success of saturation church planting. On his shoulders, the ministry of DAWN (or Discipling A Whole Nation) was birthed. The most popular work of his, was DAWN 2000: 7 Million Churches to Go.   In modest numbers, the implication of Jim’s ideas have catalyzed more than 3 million churches around the world.  What a wake!

In a time of hype about movements and changing your world, Jim and Lyn are the true thing. I truly believe that even though less than 100 people gathered to celebrate the life of Lyn Montgomery in Anaheim today, there are thousands of saints in glory who welcome Lyn home because of her influence for Jesus around our globe. Certainly her Lord Jesus said, “Well done good and faithful servant!”

 

Links for you:

Jim Montgomery’s Writings – Free Downloads from DAWN

Jim’s Impact in starting DAWN Ministries (Discipling A Whole Nation)

From 2006 – Tall Skinny Kiwi: In Memory of Jim Montgomery.

Jim Montgomery telling the story of Campus Churches, Students of Peace and @JaesonMa

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What’s happening to missions mobilization? by Kurt Miller

Kurt Miller

World mission mobilizers are confronted by a bewildering array of opinions, facts, and new realities. Among them: The MARC Mission Handbook reports a leveling off in long-term missionaries. Patrick Johnstone of Operation World reports that 10,000 of the world’s 12,000 ethnolinguistic people groups have church-planting teams.

Field missionaries describe extra work generated by short-term teams and fear the consequences of some inappropriate conduct by “prayer walk” teams.

The AD2000 and Beyond Movement reports progress toward church-planting movements among the unreached, while missiologists track increasing resistance among Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims.

Such trends, among others, point to a significant division among mission mobilizers and strategists, perhaps one of the most important shifts since the end of World War II. The increased emphasis on the challenge of unreached peoples has highlighted two major streams of action.

(More here)

From thechurchplanter blog by Kurt Miller
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The Local Church’s Role in Mission

“The Local Church’s Role in Mission”
by Larry Reesor from Mission Frontiers (June 2000)

It is generally accepted that each individual who makes up the Body of Christ, His universal Church, is responsible to get the message of Christ’s salvation to the world. Each of us is called to be a “world Christian.” We must be reminded, however, that over 90 percent of the references to the church in the New Testament are to the local church. God values the life and ministry of local churches, the structure through which He primarily works. His work is primarily accomplished via relationships in and through local churches. Therefore, to put it succinctly, God’s mandate to reach the world is primarily to individual believers who together comprise local churches…
More HERE

Here is the latest from thechurchplanter blog…the blog connected to thechurchplanter mini-magazine of Kurt Miller