Mark's Blog

Building a new airplane is easier than changing out an engine while the airplane is flying! For existing churches, shifting to a new model for doing mission work is more like the latter than the former.

I recently had a lengthy conversation with the minister of a new church plant about how his church could adopt a new paradigm from the beginning of its existence; I also have been approached by a person wanting to do missions that would like to explore establishing a different way of doing support/oversight.

I’m eager to continue these conversations and work on the very practical questions that arise when building a new plane—but I’m also scheduled to talk to a couple of established churches in the near future who have established mission programs, but who feel the need for re-thinking the way they do mission work.  This is the more difficult–but not impossible— task!

A Plan for Transitioning

Step One:  Reach consensus on the desire for a better model for the church’s missions program.  If the call for change is coming from the elders, perhaps the preacher, then it is easier for the mission committee, the current missionaries, and the members of the congregation to be persuaded.  The lower in the church hierarchy the call for change begins, the more difficult it will be to reach consensus.  The most resistant person/group is likely to be where the most ownership/control of the mission program currently lies—unless they are the ones calling for change! 

Step Two:  Establish the goals and the broad parameters for the new model.   For instance, if a church wants to adopt a greater member-driven, relational model as I have been suggesting, then the goals might be something like these:

1. 80-100% of the total membership of the church will be actively involved in mission activities, including local outreach of every kind, short-term missions, youth missions, internships, and co-mission groups that support missionaries with prayer, oversight, and financial support.
2. All future missionaries will be raised up from among our members.
3. Current missionaries will transition to support from a Comission* group over the next three years.
4. More members will contribute more funds to support more missionaries than ever before.
5. The church’s Mission Committee will be transformed into a group whose sole mandate is to achieve the mission goals of the church as stated above.

Step Three: Begin to educate and to implement!  Start by reconstituting the Missions committee—perhaps with new people, but not necessarily. The most critical factor in reconstitution is that the new Mission team is 100% on board with the new model.

This is the team who is now responsible for educating members, for instance, about Comission groups. These are the people who will need to work with the preacher and ministers, and especially with the youth and adult education program to encourage a vision and a desire for missions of all kinds from all members.

It might be that those on the earlier Mission committee who are closest to the established missionaries would be enlisted to help them understand the change and to assist them in developing a plan/strategy for building their Comission group.

Yes, there is a process of deconstruction that is occurring; the old engine has to come off. The biggest fear, I suspect, is that in the process of attaching the new engine, the plane crashes, that is, the current missions efforts disintegrate.

Here are some of the bad scenarios that could occur:

1. The people with power won’t give it up! It could be an elder or elders, it could be a missions committee chair or person, or it could be the missionary the church has supported for thirty years!  If they cannot be persuaded, then either they have to be removed from their position of power or the plan to change has to be abandoned.  There is no workaround here!
2. Supported foreign nationals are virtually unknown to the local members.  National evangelists on American support have to be put in a different category from American missionaries on church support. We cannot lightly abandon people who have no other obvious means of support. The American church has a moral obligation to help their national worker find a new means of support and to continue helping them until they do. (This is one reason I’m almost always opposed to national preachers getting American support.)
3. Members are not willing to support a current American missionary.  Since we are talking about moving to a relational model of support/oversight, an American missionary that has no relationship with Christians in the U.S. is going to have great difficulty building a Comission group.  Since relationships were not originally a prerequisite, I do believe a church would have to provide a missionary ample time and opportunity to establish new relationships before moving them out of the budget.

I’ll close with some lines from Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll that seem somehow appropriate here:  How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle! 

Next, I want to address one of the strongest criticisms addressed to me in the course of these latest posts: “Mark, you have a very low opinion of the church!”  What do you think?