Mark's Blog

This post was the third installment of a series on Rethinking Mission Work in Churches of Christ.  I plan to publish that series as a small book this spring.  

Although both of the first two posts in this series contain serious areas of concern with respect to the way Churches of Christ do mission work, today’s post is where we really want to get to the most critical issues of all!

In the first post of this series, I talked about the process in which those who want to become missionaries must prevail. In the second post, we reviewed the limited number of support/oversight opportunities available to the potential missionary in Churches of Christ.

Local churches Are ill-equipped to truly oversee foreign mission work.

Typically, churches who agree to provide oversight of a foreign mission effort have very little idea of what they are really agreeing to. For most congregations, total oversight means they have hired another employee (the missionary) and that they have ultimate responsibility for the missionary’s

• complete job performance,
• all monies given by them, both personal and work-related funds,
• all work-related decisions, including those made by the mission congregation.
• all doctrinal issues and/or congregational practices
• growth strategies, including types of facilities

Any serious differences in opinion in any area or dissatisfaction within the overseeing church results in loss of financial support, the premature return of the missionary family, and often the complete termination of the missionary efforts at that site.

The most common variation on the total oversight model above is financial oversight, which usually means the overseeing church simply provides regular financial support to the missionary and as long as no criminal or moral irregularities occur, they are satisfied and continue this relationship of benevolent neglect until one of the following occurs

• the missionary chooses to return to the States,
• the overseeing church loses interest in the missionary—often because of excitement about a new missionary, or
• the mission site is not seen as one that excites the overseeing congregation any longer, often because a new site seems more appealing now.

Attempting to Educate Local Churches

Mission professors at our Christian colleges as well as several groups like Mission Resource Network (MRN) and Sunset (SIBI) have tried for years to educate churches of Christ about missions. In spite of valiant efforts, the truth is that most congregations are woefully ill-prepared to provide oversight of a foreign mission work—much less several works at multiple sites.

We need to seriously consider whether it is realistic to expect every congregation to develop mission expertise—and then not only to continually renew this expertise, but also to educate succeeding generations.

Here are the difficulties that battle against education as the solution to the serious flaws in our missions paradigm:

• Very few congregations have members who have any personal experience in mission work. The most experienced have often only visited a foreign site for a few days.
• Knowledge gained through expert instruction is secondhand information that too often becomes a mission template that may or may not be appropriate for a specific mission work or site.
• Turnover in mission committees or elderships who oversee missions is enough that even if some members are satisfactorily educated, what about the new ones who replace them?
• The education that our institutions offer must by design be general, that is, mostly general policy oriented. In the application of these general policies to a specific site, whose judgment prevails—the missionary on site or the overseeing church who now has been through the mission policy course?

In my opinion, Alexander Pope was right when he said, “A little learning is a dangerous thing!”

Responses

Recognizing the weakness of the church education model, many larger churches have responded by limiting their mission focus to only a few workers that they fully support in one or few sites for long periods of time. By limiting the number of workers and the number of sites, they are able to gain a degree of expertise and feel more competent about their oversight.  With longer missionary tenures, overseeing churches are able to pass down this expertise more easily.

The challenge of this corrective measure, however, is that it puts a virtual cap on the number of workers on the field, limiting the number to what a relative handful of people in a few large churches feel comfortable managing.

Other churches deal with the oversight dilemma by limiting their active responsibility to financial oversight only—although they are often reluctant to admit this. As long as the missionary reports regularly and accounts properly for the funds, these churches are happy. They may or may not have any emotional relationship to the established church or mission site. They do not wish any further commitment as long as they can report to their congregation that they are doing mission work.

Smaller churches (under 500 members), since they do not feel capable of major financial commitments, are rarely willing to accept oversight responsibilities. They limit their involvement to sending checks to the larger churches and enjoying the visits of “their” missionaries, when the larger churches bring the missionaries home on furlough.

Conclusions:

Exceptions exist to every statement I have made, but Sherrylee and I have been involved intimately in missions in Churches of Christ for over forty years. If you will accept the general truth of what I have stated, then these are the necessary conclusions!

1. Most missionaries self-select and quality of preparation/training varies widely!
2. The number of missionaries that Churches of Christ can send to the field is limited to those that large churches can and will both oversee and financially support.
3. The number of Christians directly involved in sending missionaries is virtually limited to the number on mission committees in large churches.
4. The oversight of missionaries is done primarily through financial control, usually by people with even less training or experience than the missionaries themselves.
5. Spiritual oversight is grossly neglected.
6. The number of missionaries in Churches of Christ is limited to those who either have good large church connections, and/or good fund raising personalities—neither of which are essential qualities for doing good mission work.

In the next posts, we’ll talk about alternatives to the current paradigm, but my suggestions are out of the box—just warning you!