mini-missions convention

We had a missionary family from AGWM come and spend a couple of days with us - they minister in Madrid, Spain focusing primarily on street evangelism - it is working there quite well. They pretty much use the same method as one sees at The Way of the Master (The Use of the Law in Evangelism). I like the method and have used it myself from time to time - given the circumstances it can be quite effective. They are a great family and it was a blessing to have them here. Please consider lifting Joy up in prayer as they discovered she has breast cancer. There is a website: Kilometer Cero that tells a bit more about what they do.

Missions again

A few posts back I talked about different things I think about missions. One particular part of missions I want to highlight is the term "unreached," what it means and what it does not mean. The term unreached is a missiological term missionaries have been working to define and clarify so that it is very specific. It is a technical term that has been hammered out so to speak and refers to a rather specific situation. Unfortunately, it has become a bit of a buzz word in the American Church not unlike the term "missional" has been in danger of becoming, if it isn't already.

Here is a rather unfortunate example where the term "unreached" is misapplied and used as a buzz word that sadly and unnecessarily ends up pitting home missions against world missions. (Let me know what you think, and if you agree.)

So what does the term "unreached" mean? To what context/situations does it apply?

To start, "unreached" refers to a very specific socio-cultural (even linguistically unique) situation. It has to do with the idea of a specific group of people who have very little to no access to the story of Jesus such that there are very very few to no near neighbor witnesses who can relate to them the message of the Christian gospel. It also refers to a situation where a specific people group has no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize it own people.

So then what is a "people group"? It refers to a specific group of people who have their own socio-cultural-linguistic distinctives such that they differ from another group and barriers of misunderstanding can exist. If you go to the Joshua Project website, you see that they also note that they quote the 1982 Lausanne Committee Chicago meeting's definition of a people group which reads, "For evangelization purposes, a people group is the largest group within which the Gospel can spread as a church planting movement without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance."

So, if you browsed the article linked and looked over the Joshua Project website you'll probably notice that unwed moms, teenagers, addicts, disillusioned college kids, homeless people, divorced or single parents, etc, do not fit the specific missiological classification of an "unreached" people group.

Would you agree?

Missions Question of the Day

Who was the first missionary?

missions quote of the day.

But things have changed. I have been in a missions convention where I was the only person who knew a foreign language, where I was the only field based worker, where I was the only person actually engaging lost people on a regular basis. During a year at one of our schools and in touring 10 of our colleges on a preaching and teaching tour sharing the vision for the least-reached in Asia Pacific I have not yet once been approached by a person of any age who says, “I want to go to a place and spend the rest of my life where the church does not exist and preach the Gospel and plant the church of Jesus Christ. People tell me they want to lead teams, that they want to travel to “lots of countries,” that they want to get a seminary degree and go teach somewhere, that they want to find a place that uses English to go pastor, that they want to travel and do crusades, or hold babies in an orphanage. The list goes on and on. These activities are not wrong in and of themselves. In the context of Assemblies of God missions we have always done these things, and for the most part they are good things. But at the same time we did not get to 50-plus million adherents world wide with a cross-cultural staff that saw any of these activities as the controlling center of what they were about. The center of our labors has always been evangelism, church planting, and the training of national ministers.

-Alan Johnson regarding the decline in emphasis on cross-cultural missions in the Assemblies of God in America. I think it could be applicable to more than just the Assemblies of God - I think emphasis on cross-cultural mission has been in decline in the American church at large.

Also, please know my post on missions is not targeted at those who cannot go or are unable to go.

If you want to see the rest of the paper go here.

missions? to whom?

As I wrote in my past post, one problem facing the issue of Christian mission is, what is it? I noted a quote by Stephen Neill that "when everything is mission, nothing is mission." The point he is making here is that often times the concepts of mission and evangelism often get conflated such that there is no difference and it all becomes the same thing when they should not be considered the same.

To whom should missions be focused? Well, in my opinion, primarily to those people in the least reached people groups or iow those who have the least access to the gospel. Least access?



Are you familiar with the missiological concept of what is called the "10/40 Window"?

The "10/40 Window" is a term coined by Christian missionary strategist Luis Bush in 1989-1990 to refer those regions of the eastern hemisphere located between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator, a general area that in 1990 was purported to have the highest level of socioeconomic challenges and least access to the Christian message and Christian resources on the planet {and often most resistant to the message of the Christian gospel]. The 10/40 Window concept highlights these three elements: an area of the world, with great poverty and low quality of life, combined with lack of access to Christian resources. The Window forms a band encompassing Saharan and Northern Africa, as well as almost all of Asia (West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia and much of Southeast Asia). Roughly two-thirds of the world population lives in the 10/40 Window. The 10/40 Window is populated by people who are predominantly Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist, Jewish or Atheist. Many governments in the 10/40 Window are formally or informally opposed to Christian work of any kind within their borders.

I think however, that concepts of unreached people groups have expanded a bit and are not just limited to the 10/40 window. Many folks from various unreached people groups now live right here in the US and Canada and in large parts of Europe.

Here is a question to consider. How might Irem, a Turk, Ahmet, a Banjar and Tin Sau, a Bama be lost or "unreached" in way that "Lee" in Dallas, "Carlos" in Costa Rica, and "Hae Yung" in South Korea might be lost or "unreached." The first set of names are folks in a people group not a country per se. The issue is one of accessibility to the gospel message. Not all things are equal in our world. The idea of being unreached is a specific missiological concept that refers to a specific groups accessibility to the gospel message - unreached people groups not only don't have access to the gospel - they do not even have the potential to hear about the story of Jesus unless there is a near neighbor witness who can share it. While all people are equally lost theologically (eg. Rom 3:23) not all have equal access to the story of Jesus - so "Lee" in Dallas, "Carlos" in Costa Rica, and "Hae Yung" in South Korea are lost yet because there is significant Christian presence in their respective nations, they have greater accessibility to the gospel message. In case anyone wondered, South Korea has several of the largest churches in the world numbering well over 700,000 congregants. However, Irem, a Turk, Ahmet, a Banjar and Tin Sau, a Bama live among unreached people groups where there is no near neighbor witness to the gospel - even if they wanted to learn more of Jesus they most likely would not be able.

It is to these folks the priority of Christian missions should be focused - unreached people groups - people who are sociologically and culturally without Christian witness - though that is not the case presently. Presently, nearly 90% of Christian ministry/missions is targeted to the already reached and Christianized parts of the world - while those most in need of the gospel message go without.

missions

I want to point everybody to my friend Eric's blog site where he links us to the website World Map - it is an excellent missiological tool and resource for intercessory prayer for world missions!

Do give it a look see!

I personally cannot think of a more important issue for the church than the task of world evangelization - it should be the primary focus of the church in my opinion. Everything we do should be motivated by missions - the desire to take God's salvation to the ends of the earth!

Some questions I have:

How can a truly biblical theology be anything less than a theology of missions?
How can a truly trinitarian theology be anything less than missions focused?
How can a truly systematic theology leave out the importance of missions?

Have you considered the fact of the 6 billion people in the earth - as much as 50-60% remain estranged from Christ?

Romans 10:14 "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?"

Isaiah 6:8 "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?"

Pray about it.