It’s Time to Bring the Missionaries Home
When I left pastoral ministry to become a missionary, a few pastoral colleagues told me I’d “left the ministry.” Their thinking was that pastoring is “real” ministry, while missions is less than ministry. It’s difficult to believe people can think like this, but some do.
But even my denomination unknowingly reinforces this idea. For decades now, its annual directory of credential holders has been titled “Ministers and Missionaries.” For my fifteen years as a local church pastor in the US , it’s safe to say I fit into the “Ministers” category. And then, as a missionary for twenty years, I was required to pay dues to keep my ministerial credentials, but I was listed as a missionary and not a minister. Now that I pastor pastors as a full-time pastoral coach, I’m not sure where I fit.
But I digress. The point is that many do not see missionaries as “ministers.”
I would argue that while many missionaries are pastors, most US pastors are not missionaries – they are not missional in their ministries. They are not crossing frontiers (societal, cultural, linguistic, economic, political, medical, generational, etc.) to present the Gospel. Or if they are crossing frontiers, it is not to present the Gospel, but only show “compassion.” Commanded by Jesus to go, making disciples of all nations, too few pastors can honestly say they are seriously attempting to make disciples in their own cities and nation, much less all nations.
Many US pastors are not really involved in missional ministry, not in the New Testament sense.
The primary focus of their ministries is their ministry and its maintenance. Most of their energy is spent on taking care of those who are already present. Little energy is invested in those outside the fold. For some pastors, efforts to reach people outside the church are not so much about making disciples, as they are growing their church size or even enlarging their own personal ministries via the web, events, and in-house services. I know this may offend some, but it’s time we do so if we are serious about loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and might, i.e., about keeping His commands – including His final great command to go into all the world making disciples.
It seems that little attention and action are being given to reaching our cities and nation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Or if churches are giving serious effort to making disciples across America, it’s time we face the hard fact that what we’re doing isn’t working. Not even close.
SURVEY SAYS
Consider the following statistics on the faith of AMERICAN ADULTS:
1. 65% describe themselves as Christians, down 12% over the past decade.
2. 26% describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or nothing, up from 17% in 2009.
3. 50% believe God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake.
4. 52% believe Jesus was a great teacher, but not God.
5. 80% believe religious belief is a matter of personal opinion and not about objective truth.
6. 55% don’t believe the Biblical account of the bodily resurrection of Jesus – they say this event did not occur.
7. 64% do not agree that only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s gift of eternal life.
8. 74% do not agree the Bible is the highest authority for what they believe.
9. Only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview.
Digging deeper into the numbers, one is left wondering how “Christian” American Christians really are. Ligonier Ministries and The Barna Group surveyed those who identify as EVANGELICALS* and found the following:
1. 23% of Evangelicals believe the Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths but is not literally true.
2. 36% of Evangelicals are convinced Jesus was a great teacher but is not God.
3. 36% of Evangelicals are convinced religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth.
4. 42% of Evangelicals are convinced that God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam – they agree with religious pluralism.
5. 56% of Evangelicals are convinced Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.
6. 9% of those who identify themselves as Christian have a biblical worldview.
To summarize:
1 in 4 self-described Evangelicals do not believe the Bible to be true.
Almost 4 in 10 self-described Evangelicals do not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Almost 4 in 10 self-described Evangelicals believe that religious beliefs have nothing to do with The Truth.
More than 4 in 10 self-described Evangelicals believe Jesus is not the only way to eternal life.
Almost 6 in 10 self-described Evangelicals believe God created Jesus.
Only 1 in 10 self-described Christians have a biblical worldview.
To put these numbers in context, read Barna’s 2009 report where you will discover that our trajectory is not upward but downward; America and American evangelicals are believing the Word of God less and less. We’re having great experiences, but we’re embracing less and less of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
MEANWHILE, ON THE “MISSION FIELD”
During the 20th Century, the church of Jesus saw dramatic growth in Asia, Africa, and South America as the Gospel was preached faithfully and fearlessly, and the church focused not on making converts but disciples. New believers were quickly and effectively assimilated into discipleship ministries and were quickly engaged in making new disciples of Jesus Christ. Over the past fifty years, that growth has been nothing short of explosive.
Consider just the continent of Africa:
In 1900 there were less than 9 million Christians in Africa. Today, the church numbers almost 700 million people (twice the size of the entire population of America). The past 15 years have seen a growth rate over 50%. Christians now make up about 50% of Africa’s population, making Africa, per capita, the most Christian continent on the planet.
The World Christian Encyclopedia reports: “Evangelicals were only 1.7% of (Africa’s) population in 1900 (and mostly in South Africa), but in 2020, 12% of the continent is Evangelical. Africa’s share of global Evangelicalism has increased from 2% in 1900 to 42% in 2020. If trends continue, more than half of all Evangelicals in 2050 will be Africans.
Now there are more than 541 million. In the last 15 years alone, the Church in Africa has seen a 51 percent increase, which works out on average at around 33,000 people either becoming Christians or being born into Christian families each day in Africa alone.
HOW HAS THIS HAPPENED?
The Assemblies of God has been blessed of God to be a part of this historic and ongoing explosion of church growth. In 2008, when asked why the church overseas is growing rapidly while the US church has plateaued, former Executive Director of AG World Missions John Bueno offered this observation:
“Most fellowships of the worldwide Assemblies of God are growing at an unparalleled rate, yet the U.S. Fellowship seems to have reached a plateau. People often ask me why so much of the church overseas sees such significant growth. Following are five significant reasons I believe most churches overseas see greater growth.”
1. They emphasize and practice the priesthood of the believers.
2. They prioritize ministerial training.
3. They focus on growth rather than maintenance.
4. They depend on and expect the miraculous.
5. They focus their resources on ministry rather than buildings.
In a recent letter to US constituents, current Executive Director of AG World Missions, Greg Mundis again emphasized the critical aspects of discipleship and training:
“Global church history shows that, even in great spiritual awakenings where many come to Christ, little or no permanent spiritual fruit remains unless people are grounded in the Word of God. Since 1914, the Spirit has led AG missionaries to establish Bible schools, currently numbering over 1700 in 130 countries.
“To complement the resident Bible schools, the Spirit guided Dr. George Flattery in 1967 to establish International Correspondence Institute, now Global University. This visionary approach to training pastors and leaders was far ahead of its time, and many hundreds of thousands of pastors have received training through Global University.”
Meanwhile, in the US, churches are consumer collectives rather than faith community of member-priests. Discipleship is on life support – hands are being raised, but disciples are not being made. The power of God is imitated but seldom demonstrated among us. Denominations are closing Bible Colleges and vocational ministry training centers. Others, still open, no longer focus on fealty to biblical doctrine or on training pastors and leaders, but have been transformed into indoctrination centers in the latest social causes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ and making disciples in all nations have little or no place in these spiritual cemeteries – church or school.
The American church is drifting from its God-given mission. And the first evidence, cited above, is our disintegrating doctrinal foundation. When the Word of God and the person and work of Jesus Christ are no longer the bedrock Truth of the church, we have completely lost our way. How are we to reach the world when we don’t know what we believe, when we no longer hold to the faith once for all delivered to the saints? By what means are we to reach the world and to what message and Messiah are we to call them?
IT’S TIME
It’s time to bring the missionaries home.
I don’t mean the Americans we have sent to other nations. These missionaries are ministers of the Gospel in the truest sense. They know in whom they believe. They are faithful to believe, live, and preach the Word of God. They are making disciples by every means possible. They are authentic missional ministers. They should remain where they are because God commanded the church to send them out to those nations. End of discussion. But in addition, God has called missionaries to the places and people they serve. And, as is so clear, God is using them in incredible ways in our day. God has called us to send our best to the nations and send them we have. It is time not to call them back to our home but to reinforce them in the lands they now call home, and reinforce their efforts with our partnership in more prayer and financial support.
How then are we to “bring the missionaries home?” In two ways:
FIRST, bring home what has made missionaries so effective in making disciples around the world:
1. Emphasize and practice the priesthood of the believers;
Not just the feel-good statement, “every believer a minister,” but the action of every believer ministering. Require that believers can’t be members unless they are actively ministering.
2. Prioritize ministerial training;
End support and close dead seminaries; reopen effective Bible Colleges and strengthen support for healthy seminaries. Come back to the New Testament ministry of mentoring and pastoral coaching.
3. Focus on growth rather than maintenance;
Make disciples instead of consumers. Make the mission statement of Jesus the mission statement of the local church: “We are going, making disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything Jesus taught – and we are beginning right here in our own church, whatever the numbers on Sunday.”
4. Depend on and expect the miraculous;
Allow the Holy Spirit complete freedom in our services and lives. With our tightly-timed worship services, we’ve turned the Holy Spirit out. Instead of inviting Him as Lord of our gathering, we require Him to break into His own house. We carry the same mentality out into our daily lives. Let us learn to live again as dependent on the Holy Spirit as we are the air we breathe.
5. Focus our resources on ministry rather than buildings;
Invest more of our money and ministries in ministering to people, less on facilities. The amount of money and time we spend on buildings is money and time we can’t invest in people. It’s time to be spiritually-conscious and redirect our investments.
SECOND, invite the spiritual children of our missionaries to come and invest in the churches who sent missionaries to them – the pastors, evangelists, teachers, prayer warriors, and disciplers of those nations.
Leaving their own lands and cultures, they will come not as Americans-to-Americans, but as true cross-cultural missionaries in obedience to the command of Jesus and in the power of the Holy Spirit. And they will come in the reforming and reviving fires that burn in the churches of their lands.
It’s time to use our God-given wealth to bring them to America to teach the American church how to reach this nation.
“It is interesting to listen to the comments that outsiders, particularly those from Third World countries, make on the religion they observe in North America. What they notice mostly is the greed, the silliness, and the narcissism. They appreciate the size and prosperity of our churches, the energy and technology, but they wonder at the conspicuous absence of the cross, the phobic avoidance of suffering, the puzzling indifference to community and relationships of intimacy.”
Eugene Peterson
Instead of using missions funds to take church attenders on a week-long Christian tour of another nation to have our “missions experiences” and photo opportunities, let us use these funds to bring a national pastor or evangelist to our church and light a fire in us and our church for our city.
Instead of taking our people out of the cities we aren’t reaching to go teach others who are already reaching their locales, let’s humble ourselves and invite believers from revival fields to come to America and help us. Allow them to use the Word of God to teach us, reprove us, correct us, and train us. Allow them to help us rediscover the way to the Upper Room, the ways of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost. It’s time we humble ourselves and admit that we need the help of the church around the world in reaching our own nation.
It’s time we bring the missionaries home.
It’s time we invite their spiritual children to come and show us the way back to the Cross, empty tomb, and upper room. It’s time we invite their spiritual children to come and show us the way back out into the highways and byways of our own nation. It’s time we ask them to come and show us how to be heart-renewed in our commitment to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and make disciples in our nation. Disciples who are grounded in the Word of God. Disciples who know who Jesus is and what Jesus did to save us. Disciples who live not for the next “experience,” but to make disciples of all nations, beginning in their own living rooms, neighborhoods, and churches.
It’s time to bring the missionaries home.
NOTE: *Evangelicals are defined in the historically accepted sense:
- The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe.
- It is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
- Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.
- Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.
Sources:
Pew Research: “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace,” October 17, 2019;
The Barna Group: American Worldview Inventory 2021
The Ligonier State of Theology 2020 Report
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