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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 158 158 Contrasting Philosophies and Strategies of Mission have not been clearly articulated. Mission strategy has to do with envisioning and developing structures and systems for extending the church into new areas and communicating the gospel in all parts of the global mosaic of cultures. Strategizing forces believers to focus on God’s purposes for the world and to come up with ways they can assist in accomplishing those purposes. While what works in one place will not necessarily work everywhere, some characteristics that will enhance every mission strategy are: • Shedding unnecessary foreignness • Looking for relevant methods of communication • Establishing viable roles in the community • Working relationally • Looking for things in the culture and language that could be redemptive analogies • Having missionaries live among the people rather than clumping together where a missionary subculture develops • Getting missionaries to commit time to assimilating the culture of the people (mother tongue language, history, social structures, institutions, leadership style, aesthetic values, literature, religious beliefs, and core identity issues) • Establishing multigenerational church planting and discipleship movements that express biblical faith Let us bear in mind that the best methods cannot do away with the difficulties of our work which come from the world, the flesh and the devil, but bad methods may multiply and intensify them. 15 —John Nevius, missionary to China and Korea One strategy issue has to do with the way to do evangelism. The ways evangelism takes place can be divided into two categories: mass evangelism, where the gospel is communicated to people in large groups, and personal evangelism, where the gospel is presented one-on-one to an individual. John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, Charles G. Finney, Luis Palau, and Billy Graham are examples of those who have had success doing evangelism with large crowds of people. While Jesus regularly used mass evangelism, He also talked to people one-on-one as happened in the episodes in John 3 and 4 with Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Paul Orjala used to say that a major reason for church growth in Haiti was that Haitian believers “gossiped the gospel” throughout their country’s network of open-air markets.
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 159 Depending on God? Contrasting Philosophies and Strategies of Mission 159 Making plans while praying and searching for God’s will is not a denial of divine sovereignty but an acceptance of the fact that God works through faithful servants . . . Many movements stagnate because Christian leaders have not developed the creative capacities for strategic planning. 16 —Gailyn Van Rheenen, former missionary among the Kipsigis Occasionally someone will rebel against the idea of doing strategic planning. They say church leaders and missionaries should just depend on God. Actually, good strategies or plans entail having diligently sought the mind and will of God. Paul had a strategy that was conceived in prayer. Other missionaries have followed his model by being outstanding persons of prayer who also devised and followed strategies and plans. David Livingstone, for example, was found kneeling by his bedside at 4 A.M., having died in prayer. Livingstone was also a man of strategy who sought to map the interior of Africa for future missionary work. There was no contradiction in Livingstone’s life between his dedication to prayer and his trying to work strategically. Modern missionaries use a variety of strategies. Harmon Schmelzenbach III has combined a new strategy with an old one as he captains a boat around the islands of the South Pacific in the style of missionaries in the 1800s. However, in his 21st-century island-hopping ministry, Schmelzenbach uses modern technology to show the JESUS film and raise up groups of new believers that are formed into churches. Missionary George Patterson, who planted more than a hundred churches in Honduras, emphasized the development of reproducing chains of churches that he called daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter congregations. In the model exemplified by Patterson’s work, evangelism and discipleship are done mainly along family and kinship networks. Missionaries stay in the background. Rather than utilizing a lengthy training program people must complete before being handed responsibilities, leadership is quickly raised up with new churches being linked to experienced pastors who mentor new leaders who then are expected to begin mentoring other new ones. Formal ministerial education is done on the job following the Theological Education by Extension model. Highlighting the Need: The 10/40 Window In 1989 Luis Bush got <strong>missions</strong> strategists talking about the 10/40 Window (see plate 11.1). That was what he started calling the oblong area of the globe
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discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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