Paradigm shifts are always resisted! I want to address today some of the resisting comments that have been posted about Re-Thinking Mission Work!
I said that our system is broken because we require our missionaries to first be good fund-raisers. Some argued that the skill set for fund raising is similar to that of a good missionary, so it is a legitimate filter. If they can’t raise money, how could they be a good missionary?
No doubt, good people skills are a prerequisite for both raising funds and missions. Other broad skills like perseverance and the ability to communicate would certainly fit both tasks, so this argument is not farfetched. However, here’s a short list of skills necessary for a good missionary that are not necessary to be a good fund-raiser:
- Prayerful
- A thoughtful student of the Word
- An effective teacher of the Word
- A vision-caster
- A team builder
- Cross-culturally sensitive
- A lover of language—often, the ability to learn a new language.
- A lover of people, not just a manipulator of people
- Extreme faith and trust in an all-powerful God
I said that we need greater access to better pre-mission training for more people! Several suggested that our Christian colleges offer plenty of good preparation.
They are right about the quality of training that our Christian universities offer. It is excellent! But access is the real issue. The general mission preparation is designed for 18-21 year old, full-time students working toward a bachelor’s degree.
- What about the 90% of young people in churches of Christ who do not attend a Christian college?
- What about the young professionals who are called to the mission after graduation?
- What about families—Dad, Mom, and kids—who are called to the mission?
- What about those who can commit only two years? Is it reasonable to ask them to prepare four years for two of service?
- What about early retirees and mature Christians? How will they be trained?
I know about summer seminars, but how many short courses would it take to prepare a novice missionary?
I am happy to report that the idea of required apprenticeships resonated with many of you! It is an idea that I will try to flesh out more in a future posting!
Several readers pointed out the benefits of supporting national workers instead of Americans. I’m a firm believer that American missionaries should all be temporary and that training nationals to reach their own people—and to send their own missionaries—should be given high priority. I am strongly opposed—with rare exceptions—to putting national evangelists on American church support. The problems created by supporting nationals are immense! Sending money is not a substitute for Going!
I have not called for any kind of centralized organization, but some of you who commented did! Several suggested that the historic stand against missionary societies was never well grounded. I believe that we can achieve our goal of better mission work done by more missionaries without a centralized bureaucracy—but not with cooperation. I doubt that we Americans can create a centralized organization that would not succumb to wielding big financial, political, or personal bludgeons, so that’s not the direction I would like to see us go, even if we could get beyond the doctrinal issues.
Look around! The Mormons have over fifty thousand unpaid, full-time missionaries! All of their missionaries go through several weeks of training at one of the seventeen Mission Training Centers, located throughout the world! Mormonism—which began in the U.S. about the same time as the American Restoration Movement– continues to be a growing world-wide movement with over 14 million members!
What other models for supporting and overseeing mission work are you aware of? Can the current model among churches of Christ be improved by learning from other religious groups?
Mark's Blog 
I totally agree with this and some of the other things written about missionaries. Apparently my husband and I stink at fundraising as we never seem to raise the amount that we truly need and often have no supporting congregation, yet we’re very effective in the mission field. My whole family (4 of us) have been working in China for 2 years and we also worked in Japan for 3 months. We love foreign missions, but have found that we’ve hit a wall. We don’t have any support and feel totally forgotten by our family out there.
Often groups will not train us because we don’t have a large team, and also because we can never seem to find a congregation to actually commit and follow through with supporting us. Now after 2 years working in a foreign land, we’re ready to move on. The church here is established and running fine thanks to all the works of many missionaries and if another American never came to this particular city the church would still grow.
We want to move to another country to work, but unfortunately we don’t have the money it takes to make the move. We are extremely discouraged because we don’t fit the mold. We’ve been told many times that we can’t do mission work because we’re black and the people won’t be receptive, because we have kids and that’s too difficult, or because they don’t like the groups we’re trying to reach out to (i.e. they don’t think the Father is powerful enough to reach them).
I’m beyond frustrated. My husband and I sit here night after night looking for “cheap” opportunities or congregations who are willing to support us and we’re overwhelmed by the amount of support for mormons, baptists, x church name here so long as it’s not church of christ. We have begun to feel that our fellowship makes too many excuses and that’s why the work isn’t getting done. Then if we join up with one of these other groups who will actually get us trained and get us out into the mission field, we become a shunned people back at the CoC. You can’t win no matter what you do, right?
I agree that not everyone can get to these Bible Universities out there. For 19 years I was a Christian and had no idea that these universities even existed because in our rural black neighborhood no one had ever heard of them. I didn’t even know that black people did mission work in foreign fields. Now I’m proud to be one of the few who can say it’s possible, the only question now is how long will it continue to be possible?
Just as you mentioned we were not called to missions until after we’d been married 5 years and had 2 kids. Then my husband decided to go back to school and heard about World Mission Workshop. We haven’t fit the “mold” from day one for any of this and we can count the number of people who encouraged us to continue in this work on 2 hands. I’m thankful for those few though because they’re the ones who helped us get here. Without them our lives would be drastically different.
Here’s to another missionary family who has to turn in the towel and return to secular work because there’s no senders out there. Can you tell that I’m frustrated and ashamed by this? It’s not right and I do believe these congregations will be held accountable for not sending people who are willing and able to go. I just have one plea that I find myself making everyday, “Who will send us? We’re laborers ready to harvest the fields, but we can’t afford to go.”
Re: Mormon’s 14 million. And the theology of the mormons is only very slightly more preverse than is christianity. Maybe the CofC could tweek their theology a bit to move ahead of the mormons in this regard. My guess is that since the CofC only promises eternal life, whereas the mormons promise godhood the CofC could up the ante by promising godhood AND free beer.