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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 156 156 Contrasting Philosophies and Strategies of Mission Self-Government, Self-Support, and Self-Propagation In 1854 Henry Venn began talking about getting churches on mission fields away from their dependency on the mission organizations that planted them. By 1861, Venn and Rufus Anderson were expounding on the three-self principles: self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. In 1890 Presbyterian missionary John Nevius used very similar concepts in helping birth the Church in Korea. Nevius felt strongly that foreign funds should never be used to pay local pastors. Although the three-selfs of Venn and Anderson fueled a thrust forward in indigenization, it has become clear that a Three-Self church is not automatically indigenous or contextualized. A church, for example, that is governing itself and caring for its own financial needs and reaching out to new people could still be thought of as a foreign transplant by non-members. So, while the three-self formula has been helpful, it is incomplete in describing the eventual goal of missionary work. Because the three-selfs are largely external things, Paul Hiebert suggested adding a fourth self, self-theologizing, as a criteria for authentic contextualization. 10 Where the pace is slower, there will be great temptation to use mission funds to pay church workers. This almost always creates an unhealthy economic dependency, developing what Brett Elder has called an “ecclesiastical welfare system.” Elder points out that rather than birthing strong churches, economic dependence generally breeds status-quo stagnation characterized by feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and futurelessness. 11 In contrast with what tends to be a one-by-one addition in the sturdy construction philosophy is the multiplication mentality of those who believe things can move more quickly. Multiplication refers to replicating the expansion of the Church described in the New Testament. A multiplication mentality emphasizes the idea that the Church must be aggressively expanding. The focus in multiplication is not on laboriously building up individuals or working to consolidate existing churches but on multiplying believers and ministries. 5. Truth Encounters Versus Power Encounters Another continuum of attitudes that often go into a philosophy of mission relates to how the gospel message should be delivered. People on one end of this attitude continuum are sold on apologetics. For them the gospel needs to be presented through truth encounters in which reasoned arguments are made for the truth of the gospel. Those holding positions on the other end of the continuum like to point to power encounters in which the Creator of the Universe defeats evil in dramatic ways, demolishing obstacles to His kingdom.
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 157 Contrasting Philosophies and Strategies of Mission 157 David Brainerd’s brief missionary career tends toward highlighting power encounters. His journal entries speak of hours in prayer and then of God dramatically breaking in on church services. Brainerd’s first journey to the forks of the Delaware included an incident that caused a tribe of Indians to revere him as a prophet. It happened one evening while Brainerd was camped near an Indian settlement where he planned to preach the next day. Unbeknownst to Brainerd, he was being spied on by warriors waiting to kill him. Australian pastor F. W. Boreham described what happened: When the braves drew closer to Brainerd’s tent, they saw the paleface on his knees. And as he prayed, suddenly a rattlesnake slipped to his side, lifted up its ugly head to strike, flicked its forked tongue almost in his face, and then without any apparent reason, glided swiftly away into the brushwood. “The Great Spirit is with the paleface!” the Indians said; and thus they accorded him a prophet’s welcome. 12 In the early 700s a missionary serving in what is now Germany decided that drastic measures were needed to communicate the gospel to the people he was trying to reach. So, in front of amazed onlookers, missionary Boniface chopped down an oak tree dedicated to the thunder-god Thor. It was an inyour-face power encounter act showing there was no supernatural power in either the tree or the god it represented. Boniface’s chopping down of the sacred Oak of Donar triggered such a turning to Christ that Philip Schaff has called the action “a master stroke of missionary policy.” 13 Another example of a power encounter came in 1946 during a severe drought on Fogo island in Cape Verde. Believers began praying for water and one night in something reminiscent of what happened with the Israelites at Horeb (Exodus 17), water began flowing from a rock. 14 Cape Verdian believers often point to that flowing spring as the sign of Yahweh’s power and presence. While those on the truth encounter end of the continuum would argue the importance of showing rationally why Christianity is true, those on the power encounter end insist that Yahweh always shows himself worthy of worship and adoration in dramatic ways. Paul Hattaway’s The Heavenly Man is a good example of the reports of divine intervention characterizing the house church movement in China. On the apologetics end of the continuum, one could point to how encountering the truth of the gospel transformed wellknown authors such as Lew Wallace, C. S. Lewis, Charles Colson, and Lee Strobel. An evangelistic tool like the Four Spiritual Laws pamphlet would be an example of a printed truth encounter way to present the gospel. Strategies Strategy refers to the approaches and plans used to reach one’s goals. Strategy grows out of the various philosophical positions one holds even if those
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