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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 142 142 Developing Tomorrow’s Missionaries government bureaucracies. And, along the way, missionaries will also teach, preach, and do medical work. One thing missionaries rarely do is pastor local churches unless they are in a pioneer setting mentoring a new believer who is about to take over. Working Themselves Out of a Job It used to be said that one primary task of missionaries was to “work themselves out of a job.” Today, rather than using the working-ourselves-out-of-ajob phrase, missionaries today talk about themselves as catalysts. By that they mean they are filling a role such as that of the apostle Paul during his missionary journeys around the northern rim of the Mediterranean. The catalyst metaphor is taken from chemistry where a catalyst is a substance that starts or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being consumed. At any point in the chemical reaction, the catalyst can be removed intact from the mixture. Using catalyst as a metaphor for missionaries is a recognition that these expatriates are aliens who are around for a while to get things going, but their presence will not be needed forever. To be sure, the catalyst metaphor has one major drawback. It can give the impression that missionaries remain unchanged by cross-cultural encounters. That is not true. Representative or Incarnational? As has been noted, God’s plan has always been to wrap His message up in people and send them to communicate that message to others. This makes the words of Paul about believers being envoys or ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) especially applicable to missionaries. As representatives of a government, ambassadors are entrusted with messages to deliver. When missionaries are seen primarily as ambassadors, delivering the Good News by direct evangelism becomes by far the most important thing to be done. Another way of looking at missionaries is to view them as “little Christs” or Christ-bearers. It has sometimes been said that Christians are the only Jesus some people will see. In this sense, therefore, the missionary is an incarnation of the gospel for another culture. Mark Elmore, mission volunteer in Slovenia, said it well, “If you minister out of love, you will never be a failure.” 12 Using the incarnational model with its emphasis on being the “aroma of Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:15) will foster a holistic approach to missionary work. So, which view is the proper model for the missionary: the ambassadorial representative or the incarnational “little Christ”? It is some of both, with each being ways that the missionary is fulfilling the Abrahamic covenant principle that when God blesses people, He expects that they will pass on the blessing.
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 143 The Pastor and Missionary Candidates Developing Tomorrow’s Missionaries 143 Spirit-filled leadership in the first-century Antioch church played a key role in setting people apart for missionary service and sending them (Acts 13:1-4). Missionary sending still follows that model. While the actual missionary sending contract will be signed by a mission board, the sending needs to start with the candidate’s home church. Clearly, therefore, local pastors play key roles in the deployment of missionaries. Mentoring In trying to highlight the importance of children and youth, people will sometimes call them “the church of tomorrow.” That is both true and false. Today’s young people and children are going to be the leaders of the church of tomorrow. However, they are also an important component of the church of today. God-called young people must do more than sit on the sidelines waiting to grow up and go off to a school somewhere so they can be trained for future ministry. If your Christianity doesn’t work at home, it doesn’t work. Don’t export it. 13 —Howard Hendricks Before being expected to take the gospel across cultural and language boundaries, potential missionaries of every age-group must discover and hone their ministry gifts and talents in their mother tongue and within their own culture. So, when people say that God is calling them to missionary service, their pastor should do more than offer a quick prayer and a pat on the back. The role of a pastor vis-à-vis a potential missionary is that of a mentor who encourages, instructs, and models. The pastor should take the lead in integrating people who feel a call into ministry roles. Training through hands-on experience is what Jesus and Paul did for their protégés. In the same way, missionary candidates need to become apprentices under those who have experience in ministry. While the goal of mission is not to clone the missionary’s home church in another culture, one’s home church is one of the best proving grounds (to borrow a phrase from industry) for developing missionaries. A pastor who is mentoring other called people is fulfilling the training imperative of 2 Timothy 2:2, “The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.” Among the things future missionaries can learn from experienced mentors is that in ministry, adrenaline rushes do not come every hour on the hour. Future missionaries need to learn that one of the most important things about ministry is faithfulness in doing the small things.
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