Trends and Traditions

There’s some clear trends among modern missions efforts in China. Missionaries and their organizations are, in general, moving…

• AWAY from urban centers, TOWARDS rural areas…
• AWAY from church-planting, TOWARDS supporting roles…
• AWAY from language-learning, TOWARDS English-based ministry…
• AWAY from bold witnessing, TOWARDS secretive witnessing…

These trends are… discouraging. But over the past couple weeks, I have happily been exposed to the works of several independent Baptist missionaries across the country who are bucking these trends. They are bright exceptions to the dull landscape that is Chinese missions. While I’m sure that there are good men of other affiliations who are equally opposed to these trends, I have yet to encounter a group in China with higher percentages of people moving in the opposite direction of the trends listed above. Though there’s not many of them, our missionaries, by and large, are ministering in Chinese. They are located primarily in big cities. They’re generally not afraid to witness. And they’re working in unregistered churches – many of them planting.

Since I’m an independent Baptist myself, I’d be more hesitant to glory in this tendency, were it not for a few things…

1.  Second Corinthians is my flavor of the month, and as Paul says, ‘all things are of God.’ There is no place for boasting in the ministry of the new covenant, for, at our most faithful, we are but executors of the message of reconciliation entrusted to us. So anything that our men in China have gotten right, they can only glory in the God who both founded and prospered their work. God is the architect of every church planted. He alone gives the language. He grants boldness. He puts us in strategic places. To glory in these things rightly is to glory in Him!

2.  We’re still not doing as well as we would wish. Our churches aren’t as strong or as numerous as they should be. Our Chinese is not as good as it should be. We’re not as bold as we should be. So while I’m excited that we’ve got the right bearing, I think we all mourn the limited progress in that direction. It’s a good start, but not much more.

3.  This ministry strategy was not hit upon by creative problem-solving or innovative, out-of-the-box thinking. Rather, the opposite is the case: this strategy is the result of a lack of creativity! The biggest reason our missionaries in China are planting churches, learning the language, and living in cities is… well, they’re traditional. It’s just what we’ve always done! Our missionaries’ works in China are almost embarrassingly similar to what we do in the West, and to what we did as missionaries fifty years ago. It’s ironic that what many perceive to be our churches’ most critical weakness in the States would prove to be our most critical strength in China!

These men are so traditional, it’s refreshing! Because all the creative ministries are just about played out! No longer is ‘using English to reach people’ a novelty – it’s a cliché. Speaking in missionary code isn’t much of a secret anymore. Targeting minority peoples is now the majority position.

Of course, these anti-trends are all connected to each other. Most of these men have been motivated in their language learning by a desire to be integrally involved in church leadership (this isn’t the place to discuss it, but this is undoubtedly one of the biggest reasons why people can’t learn Chinese – they have no such motivation). They can plant a church because they have been more bold in inviting and evangelizing. They’re in urban places because that’s where the bulk of people are. See? It’s really like they just couldn’t think of anything trendier to do!

Creativity in missions is overrated. How much is there really about the Gospel ministry that we’re comfortable fiddling with? We have a tendency to talk about ‘all these traditions that we’ve heaped onto the Western church.’ Which traditions exactly? The church-planting tradition? Many missionaries in China are so creative, they don’t even go to church. Or maybe the tradition of boldly declaring the Gospel? Many missionaries in China are so creative, they can be a Gospel witness simply by being a positive example. China has had quite enough of these novelties!

The Gospel ministry isn’t kindergarden. We don’t get points for creativity. Our standard is faithfulness to the biblical model. Anyway, little bit of a rant there at the end, but I wanted to share with you some of the excitement I’ve been feeling this week as I’ve learned about some faithful men serving in this country! Before you get sucked into any of the trends I mentioned at the beginning, either as a missionary or as a sender, know there’s another way. It’s not very creative, but that might be the best thing it’s got going for it.

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The Riddle’s Answer is in Your Heart

One of the questions that comes up most often about missions in China is about cultural adaptation. Probably due to the exoticism of China in their eyes, many Westerners find it hard to imagine themselves ‘living like the Chinese.’ While there is certainly a good and right place for studying new cultures, such efforts have a tendency to complicate a simple thing: empathy. The vast majority of cultural clutzes are not so because they fail to grasp the subtleties of Chinese society – they’re just universally clumsy. They’re awkward no matter what country they’re operating in!

G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Heretics’ has this to say about the analyzing of cultures, especially ‘ceremonial’ aspects of culture:

An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by traveling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one – absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The teamed man will say, for instance, “The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe.” To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, “The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral.” It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceeding natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

In another part of the same book, Chesterton emphasizes that what it is that makes us men is found far more in what we have in common than in what distinguishes one society from another. While a great deal of harm can be done by failing to recognize how a certain group of people is different from your own, an even greater amount of harm is done when you fail to recognize just how much like you they are!

So, for those of you who are wondering how you could ever learn to ‘live like a Chinese,’ I think Chesterton would suggest you first learn to live like a Englishman… or American or whatever. Be learned in empathy and you will rarely find yourself among strangers. When in China, a pretty good rule of thumb is to treat people like you would people in your homeland. Most of the serious cultural blunders I’ve seen would have been avoided just by sticking to that.

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WHERE: To People Groups?

Over recent decades a certain theory has grown to be the informed, missions-minded Christian’s default answer to the question: WHERE does the Great Commission send us?

The people-groups-focused understanding of the Great Commission goes something like this: ‘The Gospel is to be taken to all the different ethnolinguistic groups of the world; the priority of missions therefore is not that every individual would have an opportunity to hear the Gospel, but that there would be a Gospel community established within the borders of every one of these groups.’ Usually included in this explanation is something about the completion of the Great Commission being achieved when every group has an indigenous church, followed by some ‘good news,’ namely, that’s there’s only a few thousand remaining unreached people groups. Finally we are exhorted to direct our missionary efforts into evangelizing these remaining groups.

I find this perspective a little hard to believe for, well, a lot of reasons. Certainly more than will fit in one post. And almost certainly more than you are interested in hearing! But let me summarize my disagreements:

1) Biblical – I doubt the interpretation asserting that Jesus’ meaning was for the church to make a priority of evangelizing as many different kinds of people as possible, as well as the bit about the Commission’s completion

2) Theological – the people-groups interpretation seems at odds with what we know about God; and while postmillennialism cannot claim exclusive ownership of this theory, it certainly fits better with their understanding of Christ’s return

3) Strategic – even granting a certain understanding of ‘all nations,’ the change in missions strategy and activity that has emerged from a people-groups focus has not been positive

4) Historic – the church has for centuries understood the Commission of Christ to have all lost individuals as its target, only in the 1970s did we supposedly discover its true thrust

Not sure it would be of much benefit at this time to go into great detail on these three categories (I’m sure it’ll come up eventually, though). For now, I just want to let it be known that another viewpoint exists. Primarily because the people-groups understanding of the Great Commission has already attained that status so enviable among theories: that of perceived factuality. In other words, I don’t remember ever hearing someone explain this theory as ‘one take on what the Great Commission means’ and not ‘this is what the Great Commission means.’ Those who have not previously made it their business to know are often herded in by theories masquerading as facts. And so, for those missions-loving folks, just letting them know that there is another viewpoint out there may be enough to keep them from unwarily accepting a fresh-out-of-the-box interpretation of Scripture as orthodox.

Well, if it doesn’t mean ‘people-groups’, then what does it mean, you ask. An excellent question. One that you could answer easily yourself if you had never heard of ‘people-groups.’ The plain and obvious reading of the Commission is that the Gospel needs to be taken to all unbelievers, no matter where they are. And that’s what I take it to mean. Contrast with Mark, Luke, and Acts seems to verify that Jesus is pointing the disciples to all people everywhere. Isn’t that the same thing, you ask. Apparently not. Ask the missions organizations packing up and leaving South America. Ask the missionaries in China who have little interest in reaching 90% of the population because they’re Han. The traditional interpretation is just broader than the new: ‘all lost individuals’ obviously includes ‘all unreached people groups.’ But the reverse is not true.

I would like to say, in commendation of this viewpoint, that it really does have a strong theological foundation – it is people-group focused only because it is God-focused. Its advocates for the most part are also voices for the pursuit of God’s glory in missions. In defense of the seemingly (I would say, ‘truly’) illogical desire God has to save more kinds of people than just more people, they rightly insist that God’s ways of manifesting his glory are always right and good, though often not what we would expect.

All that to say, if you are on that side of this disagreement, I really like you! You’re the ‘good guys’ in my book! So why even bring this up? Well, for the same reason you do – because of a belief that a wrong understanding of the Commission will lead to a wrong strategy, and ultimately to a failure to obey. Where will we spend our limited manpower and resources? The people-groups theory, as enthusiastically confirmed by its proponents, leads to widely different answers to that question than would a traditional understanding.

(If you’re new to this entire discussion, I would recommend reading ‘Let the Nations Be Glad’ by John Piper. Though I disagree with his conclusion, I have to say it’s the best explanation and most biblical defense of the people-groups theory that I’ve found, particularly chapter 5 of the second part. I’d suggest a book endorsing the other side, but I am unaware of a single title written in defense of the historical view – if you know of one, I’d love to hear about it)

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WHO > WHERE

It is becoming increasingly common to hear Christian leaders say something like this: ‘the problem in modern missions is that the church is sending missionaries to all the wrong places.’ Contrary to impressions I may have given with my previous posts, I do not think that. The hang-up in the Great Commission is not primarily a ‘where’ problem. Here’s why…

I wouldn’t have believed how many missionaries are in China. It still blows my mind. Of course, they’re not all of the same stripe, of the same game-plan, or of the same ability. But they’re here. Even in the kind of second-tier city that we live in, there are hundreds of individuals living here ‘on a mission.’ And yet, there are remarkably few ripples. You’d think with this many missionary-types, the city would be under a constant Gospel bombardment. Unfortunately, this is hardly the case.

Now, I’ve only been a missionary here. But I would be willing to stake some cash that many of the red areas on maps of the ‘unreached’ would not be very different. I know that there’s pockets of truly unengaged people out there. But I’m talking about places like Western China, where the unreached minority peoples live. Many organizations in China are now concentrating the bulk of their manpower on the West. But very little is happening.

I know that I personally have a tendency to portray the real need in missions as a lack of laborers. Seems biblical, too. Didn’t Jesus call upon his people to pray for laborers to enter into the harvest? But that’s the problem. The obvious implication of Jesus’ words is that ‘laborer’ = ‘harvester.’ What if the ‘laborers’ aren’t harvesting?  And that’s a fairly accurate, albeit brutal, description of modern missions. Unprecedented workforce, impressively low impact. We’ve got laborers. But we need to pray for harvesters.

Go ahead – insist that we’re sending missionaries to the wrong places. Go ahead – reroute all the resources that you can to ‘unreached’ places. Go ahead – pack up the entire missionary force of some ‘reached’ area and Fed-Ex it to the reddest place on your map. And what will happen? Probably not much. You’ll turn the Middle East into Western China. More bodies, marginal impact. The red area might fade to magenta. As a veteran missionary put it, what we need in missions is not more ‘warm bodies.’ Something needs to change besides geography.

I obviously don’t mean there are no effective missionaries in the world! But I do mean that our averages are not good (not unusual that some of the best players play for the worst teams). And therefore, until we start producing laborers instead of ‘warm bodies,’ WHO questions need to be a higher priority than WHERE questions. Nor am I implying that the caliber of a missionary is measured by things out of his control, i.e. people’s response to the Gospel. But that certainly doesn’t lead to the conclusion that there should be NO expectations of foreign missionaries whatsoever!

Who’s to judge what’s effective and what’s not? Not me, and probably not you. But all of us make these decisions as supporters, as trainers, and as senders. The fact that it’s hard to tell who the right person is for the job should not lead us to shrug our shoulders and just send anyone. It should lead us to 1) prayerfully develop a plan for what kind of missionaries we send and 2) have a way to correct the situation when we inevitably make some mistakes. So here’s a couple possible WHO questions for missions-focused believers to consider:

CHURCHES: if someone in your church wanted to be a missionary, do you know the next few steps to get them to field-readiness? Often these hapless volunteers are left to find their own way – or even worse, immediately sent with much fanfare to the mission field – they will become the next generation of ineffective laborers. Do you have any particular questions to help determine if a candidate for missionary support is the right person for the job?

MISSIONARIES: do you have people that will help you honestly analyze your impact in a place? Of course, we are not responsible for people’s response to the Gospel. But we are responsible for the decisions we make subsequent to their rejection. Do you have overseers in your life that are brutally loving enough to tell you when you’re wasting your time?

ORGANIZATIONS: do you have any goals bigger than ‘protect the organization’? If you can’t name a couple things that would be worth getting every person you have in China kicked out, you’re probably not going to be very effective. Do you have a plan for your people to make a real, lasting impact? Do you have a plan to continually increase the effectiveness of your people on the field? Do you have ways to tell people on your team that they are ‘zero-impact’ men, and then ways to help them grow, and then ways to fire them if they’re not interested in doing so?

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A Grateful Christmas Post

Merry Christmas to everybody! Just wanted to say a huge ‘thank you’ to all of you that have contributed toward our church-planting project. Almost half of the money needed for the entire first year of the two new church plants has already been given. This is a huge blessing and encouragement to us, and helps to eliminate a big part of the stress of expansion!

Speaking of these two new plants, here’s a little update. One of the new churches is close to the first church we planted here in this city. I say ‘close,’ but there’s well over 50,000 people between the two locations! Maybe a mile apart. Cong Wei is doing a fantastic job here. Their attendance is averaging in the mid-teens right now, and they’re having new people come regularly. Cong Wei and his core people have been out inviting people (in below zero weather, by the way) to their services, and they had a great turnout for their Christmas service – about 40.

The other plant is led by the young man we recently ordained, Ning. His plant is on the other side of town in a part of the city that is developing rapidly. He and his wife have led a Bible study there for about a year, and they have already seen some wonderful fruit. Sunday I was there and saw him baptize three. The church is definitely more ‘from scratch’ than the other plant, mainly because of their distance from the original church. Cong Wei had a handful of people go with him from our church to help him get rolling, but Ning was kinda out of luck there. But he already has something of a core there, too, and their attendance is about the same as Cong Wei’s place – and their special Christmas service had about the same turnout.

I go to both of these churches about three or four times a month. It is a blast to preach to these brand new churches and encourage them in their efforts to reach their areas. Plus the new plants make the regular training times that I spend with these guys far more exciting – there’s always a lot to discuss. It’s amazing how pressure lengthens your attention span!

So thanks once again to all of you that have gotten on board with these two very exciting new church plants. I think you will find it a very profitable investment over this next year! Both of the churches are taking offerings and teaching their people to participate in giving, hoping to achieve a measure of financial stability as soon as possible. If you want to join these others and lend your hammer to the project, there’s definitely still room! Please go to ProjectChina.org to help out!

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WHERE: Some Clarifications

There is no surely no more accurate test of a writer’s ability than the way he is understood by his readers. So, yeah, I stink.

Anyway, my point is missed… The feedback I’ve gotten from the last couple posts is good, but those who are disagreeing with me are the ones I’m trying to agree with, and vice versa.

So let me summarize briefly what I do mean and don’t mean:

 1) I DO NOT mean that Christians should only go to areas of greatest need.

 2) I DO mean that missions endeavors should focus on areas of great need.

 3) I DO NOT mean that it is possible for an area to have no need of Gospel-proclaiming churches and believers.

 4) I DO mean that it is possible for an area to have no need of church-planting efforts.

Those are the bullet points. Below is some further commentary on these – feel free to ignore unless you’re still wanting clarification.

- When you say these things – about a place like Montana, instance, people think you mean no one should ever share the Gospel with people there! This, of course, is not my meaning. I think that in this age, believers will always be in the minority in any place, and thus there will always be a need to maintain a regular witness to the unregenerate majority.

- This means that TECHNICALLY, every place at every time is NEEDY. There are unbelievers everywhere. But as we are not responsible for the final response of unbelievers to the Gospel’s message, NEEDY of the Gospel does not necessarily mean NEEDY of another church. Different sizes of need, while alone insufficient to determine where we will invest our lives, do tell us a lot about what the plan to reach that area should look like. It tells us for instance, that the best plan to reach a place may not be to send a full-time church-planting missionary, but to cooperate with local churches to further the Gospel witness in an area.

- Any church ANYWHERE, whether in the States or in China, should begin to give and send for the advance of the Gospel as soon as possible. And all believers everywhere should continually wrestle with their own desire to meet needs all over the world – whether they’re in the Western U.S. or in India.

- The whole point of this series of posts was to say that there’s some places that are worth going that many people say are no longer worth going. I’m being read the opposite way now. This shows that people are afraid that unless you say, ‘go wherever God guides/leads/calls,’ there’s a slippery slope of defining ‘real’ missions in increasingly narrower ways. I understand these concerns: the ‘people-group’ theorizing that dominates modern missiology is an example of such redefinition. But I think there’s an in-between way, one that considers what kind of missions efforts it will take to reach different sizes of need.

- I made a couple big assumptions in the last post. Which I regret, trust me. I assumed that the person considering where to go as a missionary was a certain kind of lifeboat. I assumed that he was a well-trained, full-time church-planter. I (unworthily) work with a wonderful team of such men, and it’s easy for me to assume that I’m talking to them about our plans for our team’s future. But let me make it clear (and another post will clarify further): if you are not trained, and not interested in planting churches, I’m not really concerned about where you’re going. The only place I wish you’d go is Apprenticestan. As my co-laborer put it succinctly, again in lifeboat terms, ‘make sure you’re sending lifeboats, not just boats.’

- I also assumed the person in question had not heard the voice of God commanding them to go to a particular place. I have never heard such a voice, so I often forget to allow for that possibility. Obviously, God’s direct calling would trump any other considerations. So, if that is you, do everyone else a favor and don’t try to rationalize why God called you there. Just say, ‘God called me, that’s all I know.’ After all, what could Philip say about going to the wilderness where he met the eunuch? Do you think he pretended for a moment that it was as ‘needy’ as Samaria? And it was evidently fine that it was not.

- No one is a missionary to a country, nor is anyone a missionary to the ’10-40 window’ – everyone will end up in a city somewhere. And that’s really the level at which these considerations have to be made. I imagine there’s some cities in the ’10-40 window’ that have about as high a church to population ratio as anywhere else in the world. So, my question is, what are you going to be busy doing in this city you’re going to? The few places in the States without churches are so small, the Gospel could be shared with every household in a matter of weeks. If no one’s interested, what’s your next step? Lay siege?

- I’ll talk more about this in the next post, but it’s a little more than obvious that I am not the right person to be making these calls, right? But that doesn’t change the fact that you and I are both making these calls everyday! How? By deciding where we personally will go as missionaries. By advising others as to where we see a need for laborers. By choosing which missionaries our church supports. By making a strategy for how our organization allocates resources. I concur with others who have spoken: how you make these calls is none of my business. But how I make them is! And I make them everyday, just like you.

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WHERE: Not Everywhere Is In ‘Huge’ Need

When I say, ‘we should send missionaries to all needy places,’ some people hear me saying, ‘we should send missionaries everywhere.’ Or in other words, the answer to the WHERE question is that all WHERE’s are equally needy, equally valid targets for missionary efforts. But I definitely have some doubts about that…

Montana was mentioned as an example of a place that might be ignored because of an apparent lack of need. But a quick internet search will provide you with the names of over a hundred Baptist churches (easiest to find; I don’t think they’re the only ones preaching the Gospel in Montana). That breaks down to around a church per 10,000 people. There are more Baptist churches in Montana than there are towns. Am I against anyone starting a church in Montana? Of course not. But do I think someone going there as a missionary is ignoring great harvests elsewhere? Oh yeah.

But I get why I was read like that. I didn’t say in my last post what I consider to be a HUGE amount of Great Commission work to do. So let me try to express myself better now.

Missions illustrations are always about lifeboats, so here goes… (this is a slight twist on the intro to John Piper’s chapter in ‘Let the Nations Be Glad’ about people groups). If you’ve got a couple lifeboats that both hold fifty people, and you’re called to two separate shipwrecks, one where 200 people are drowning, and another where there are ten people drowning, where are you going to send your lifeboats?

Now, if you’ve read Piper’s book, he sets up a similar scenario to illustrate that God’s ways are not our ways, and he may have strange, unfathomable reasons for wanting people from ‘both boats’. Strange that in this circumstance, the ‘we-need-missionaries-wherever-there’s-unbelievers’ view and the ‘we-need-missionaries-for-unreached-peoples’ view are likely to see it the same way: one boat should go each place!

But I think that most of us placed in a desperate position such as this would dispatch both boats to the wreck with 200 people. And we’d with sadness justify our decision the same way: if we sent a boat out to the second wreck, we’d be throwing away a chance to save forty lives.

Let’s take the illustration to another level of reality. Let’s say you get word that there’s already a lifeboat at BOTH locations! Doesn’t your decision become all the easier?

And that’s the difference to me between going to Montana and going to India (or to Eastern China or to Chile, for that matter). The difference between a huge amount of Great Commission work and a small amount. If the presence of churches and the scarcity of people don’t remove the need for missionaries, what on earth can? ‘Huge’ is about our capacity; it means ‘more than we can imagine accomplishing.’

Not huge: if the church to people ratio Montana enjoys were true of the city I’m in, there would be over 5,000 Baptist churches! (there might actually be ten, or 1 per 500,000 people) To give you an idea of our ‘lifeboat capacity’, we are challenging the churches we plant to give the Gospel to 10,000 homes a year. There’s not more than a couple of places in Montana that even have 10,000 homes.

Huge: many missions organizations are pulling their efforts away from parts of Central and South America. Many missionaries are getting the impression that it’s a waste to go there. But almost all of them will confess that there’s more to be done in most of the cities there than a missionary can hope to accomplish in his lifetime. Hundreds of churches need to be planted, millions still need to hear the Gospel. As long as you’re filling lifeboats, I’m for sending more. If one day you start rowing them back empty, I’m gonna think twice.

So, no, I don’t think all fields are equally needy of missionaries. You protest, ‘then why didn’t the Bible say anything about what to look for in a mission field?’ I would suggest that in the first century, any place with a lot of people qualified as needing a HUGE amount of work. Places like Montana just did not exist in Paul’s day. And in that sort of context, we find Paul making a priority of the major urban centers of his time.

So, yeah, call me old-fashioned, but I think the need for missionaries is related to the ratio of laborers to unbelievers in a place. I find it equally untenable that the need be related to the location of unbelievers OR to their ethnolinguistic grouping OR to their responsiveness to the Gospel. To my Montana co-laborers (whom I love and am thankful for): I suggest you work to demonstrate that the people of Montana are a unique unreached people group. Then you’ll suddenly get the flood of laborers you’re convinced you need!

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The WHERE of Missions

What differentiates one mission field from another?

In other words, is there any difference in being a missionary in South America and being a missionary in the Middle East? In China and in Western Europe? Is one more ‘real’ missions than the other? Last week, my friend suggested two big answers to that question:

1. The chance that a person in a particular place has to hear the Gospel.

2. The ability of the national church to reach the community it is in.

This answer comes in opposition both to the ‘we-just-need-missionaries-all-over’ view, and also to the ‘we-need-missionaries-where-there’s-lots-of-unbelievers’ view. There’s a lot riding on the answer to this question, whichever view you take. What’s at stake?

• where your church sends its missions dollars
• where a new missionary decides to go and serve
• where missions organizations center their strategies

In short, this question is the WHERE of missions. In short, though I agree with my friend, I think we still see the answer a bit differently. I agree that ‘lower chances’ of hearing the Gospel and ‘lower ability’ of national churches equals a greater need for missionaries. But I would just as soon drop two letters: ‘-er.’ Places that have a low chance of hearing the Gospel and where the national churches have a low ability to reach their community qualify as being needy of missionaries. Regardless of how they stack up against other locales. Meaning, if there’s a great need in one place, what does it matter how it relates to another place?* Going there is a wise investment of your life and obedience to the command as given to us by the Lord. An aspiring missionary need not search in desperation for the ‘neediest’ place on Earth – a place where there is still a huge amount of Great Commission work to be done is sufficient. 

For instance, if it is shown that a person living in X-landia has a 15% chance to hear the Gospel, does that mean they no longer need missionaries? Or does the number need to be higher, say 30%? There have been increasing attempts in recent years to emphasize just how small a chance a person has in a given place to hear the Gospel. I definitely get that, and want people to see the same thing about China. But to say your country needs missionaries more than X-landia is not the same as saying X-landia does not need missionaries. I think there are places needier of missionaries than China (e.g. North Africa) and less needy of missionaries than China (e.g. Central America) – but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a huge amount of Great Commission work to be done in all of these places.

This still leaves the question of how much work is a ‘huge amount’ – still subjective, I know. But this leads us to a discussion of what exactly the work of the Great Commission is, and beyond the scope of a single post. This is obviously just scratching the surface of a very important topic, but just some initial thoughts…

* In the past several decades, there has been a growing attention paid to the ‘unreached groups’ of the world. This perspective would not hesitate to insist that it indeed matters very much how one needy place compares to another. This is a considerably different take on the Great Commission than I am assuming here. More on this to come…

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Church Buildings: the Neighbors

Why rent on the bottom floor?

It seems most house church problems are neighbor problems. So when renting a house (residential space), it is important to pick a place where you think you can minimize disrupting neighbors with your services.

The easiest way to do this is to minimize the number of neighbors. If you rent on the bottom floor of an apartment building, that eliminates those who suffer most: the downstairs neighbors. Side note: in many apartment buildings, the bottom residential floor is actually the second or third floor, with the floors below part of a storefront commercial space. Since most businesses aren’t bothered by church noise, the result is the same.

Another neighbor-saving device to look for in a house is one where the living room has ‘buffer rooms’ on either side. If you can find one of these rare houses, your auditorium won’t share a wall with your neighbors. The other reason that renting on the bottom floor avoids neighbor problems is that it cuts out the traffic – especially elevator traffic. Nothing makes for frustrated neighbors like a five minute wait for an elevator because the house church just finished services.

How much noise is too much noise? Well, there seem to be two lines in the sands of time. Some people want you to hush up by five. Usually old ladies watching hawk-like over some homework-crunching adolescent. But for the most part they only lose their minds over the shout-to-make-yourself-heard noise. But around nine or so, everybody would like a little peace and quiet.

Another reason for renting low is the people you’re hoping will come to church. Students will tell you that they don’t mind hiking up five or six flights of stairs to come to church, and there’s often a price break when you get up in the nosebleed apartments (most buildings with eight or so floors don’t have an elevator). But older people and people toting a kid aren’t likely to be as sweet-spirited about it.

Again, these criteria really narrow your options. But if you look, they’re out there. The three churches here all rent in the bottom residential floor of their building (one on the first floor, one on the second, and one on the third!). One of them are in a building with an elevator, but it’s easy to opt for the stairs if the elevator’s on hold! Two of them are lucky enough to have ‘buffer rooms’. So far… neighbor problems have been minimal.

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Church Buildings: Commercial or Residential

When looking for a house for your church in China to meet in, the first big choice you’ve got to wrestle with is what kind of a house you want to meet in. While it is still common for unregistered churches to meet in houses, more and more seem to be moving toward commercial spaces. We still rent both kinds, and I think there’s something to be said for both of these strategies…

Commercial locations are…

- Big

Most houses are divided up into a bunch of little rooms. Office space obviously tends to be more open.

- Convenient

Commercial locations are generally easier to find and invite people to come to. They’re also more likely to be on the ground floor.

- Private

Your neighbors are usually other businesses, who are not easily upset by the noise of a church service. Plus, services are usually not even during normal business hours.

Residential locations are…

- Cheap

And not just a little cheaper. But make sure you don’t just look at ‘square footage per dollar.’ Far more relevant is ‘seats per dollar.’

- Inconspicuous

Commercial locations are cop magnets. Small businesses are potential bribe-payers. Something to think about before disguising your church as a business.

- Neighborly

Meaning, they seem more community-oriented. Soon, the whole neighborhood should know that there’s a church in building X. Though many house churches have people come from all over the city, shouldn’t every church aspire to reach all the households in their immediate surroundings with the Gospel?

We are becoming increasingly committed to the residential model. Why? In a word, reproducibility. It’s honestly difficult for me to imagine starting many churches in commercial spaces. Not impossible, just seems less realistic than churches – at least in their infancy – meeting in rented homes. Of course, if a church grows and wants to rent in an office building, knock yourself out. Families with a lot of kids often buy generic – but when a kid grows up and moves out, if he wants Mountain Dew instead of ‘Hillbilly Holler’, that’s his own business!

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