discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 155
Contrasting Philosophies and Strategies of Mission 155
American model of church planting has included the construction of buildings
as a part of the strategy. The place that building construction has in one’s philosophy
will determine important things about the shape and size of church
multiplication efforts.
4. Sturdy Construction Versus Work-in-Progress
Another constituent element of many philosophies of mission relates to
when missionaries feel comfortable stepping away from leadership roles. The
choices along this particular continuum involve the comfort level of leaders in
terms of what they can tolerate in the way of loose ends. Some want to build
quickly and get the scaffolding down; others move ahead more carefully, wanting
to be sure they build in ways that will last. Strategies based on the extremes
of this constituent component of a philosophy of mission produce very different
results. One example is what two denominations have experienced in Haiti.
Both groups have been there over 50 years and both are rooted in the same theological
tradition. One group has three churches, all of which are being pastored
by missionaries who say they are having difficulty recruiting and training reliable
Haitian leaders. The second group has more than 500 congregations, all
pastored by Haitians. While the results are rarely so far apart as happened in this
case, the example does illustrate how one’s philosophy can shape the end results.
Naturally, there are hazards to both extremes. When large numbers of people
in a culture come to faith in Christ, questions will be raised about the
movement’s validity. Some will wonder if the movement is, as African theologian
Tokunboh Adeyemo has lamented about African Christianity, “one mile
long, but only one inch deep.” 9 Another downside to accepting a work-inprogress
can be illustrated by the experience of Karl F. A. Gutzlaff in China in
the mid-1800s. Gutzlaff was a tentmaker missionary whose secular job did not
leave a lot of time for pioneer evangelism work. He recruited large numbers of
Chinese itinerant evangelists, even setting up a school to train them. At one
point Gutzlaff had 300 of these evangelists who were supposedly distributing
New Testaments he provided and reporting back the numbers of converts. For
a while, Gutzlaff and his Chinese workers seemed to be doing well. The reports
he sent home of conversions and Scriptures distributed made other missionaries
to China look unproductive.
Unfortunately, Gutzlaff had not developed an effective accountability system
for his workers, and it was eventually discovered that many of them were deceiving
him. Quite a few were opium addicts who simply made up conversion statistics.
To support their opium habit, they were selling Gutzlaff’s New Testaments
back to the printer who was then reselling them to Gutzlaff. The flaw was not in
Gutzlaff’s strategy; the flaw was in a faulty system of accountability.