discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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mission,” Warren wrote. He urged believers to “shift from local thinking to
global thinking.” That is powerful stuff from a pastor most known for taking a
church of 3 members and building it into a megachurch of 20,000 people. In
The Purpose-Driven Life, Warren called on Christians to “read and watch the
news with Great Commission eyes,” and concluded that, “if you want to be
like Jesus, you must have a heart for the whole world.” 10
Some indication of the fascination people have with the concept of global
mission can be found in the level of participation in short-term mission. Such
participation in and support for world missions in local churches reflects how
well pastors have been developing members of their congregations into world
Christians, a phrase that means almost the same thing as missionary-minded.
Though world Christian has been widely used only recently, it was coined by
Daniel Fleming in his 1919 book Marks of a World Christian. World Christians,
said Fleming, are disciples whose life directions have been inspired and
transformed by a divine vision of the world. For world Christians, God’s global
cause is the integrating, overriding priority of their life.
New Questions
Throughout this book several strategic questions have been raised. There are
others that need answering. How does the Church get the Bible into all of those
languages that do not yet have it? How does the rest of the global Church interface
with the huge house church movement in China? Will leaders in the West be
able to cleanse themselves of vestiges of paternalism? In a changing world, can the
missionary enterprise be proactive as opposed to reactive? Will the Church hear
Rick Warren’s cry for believers to become passionate about global evangelism, or
will that cry get submerged in a cafeteria approach in which global mission is just
one of many good things the Church does? Will what looks like fruitful evangelism
in the Islamic world continue and can we do things to help it accelerate? Can
tomorrow’s missionaries be the strategists, catalysts, and facilitators that the mission
enterprise needs? As the Church grows rapidly in some world areas, will it
find ways to quickly develop the needed mature, reflective leaders?
New Expansion
The last decades have seen an acceleration of global evangelization initiatives.
There are more missionaries than ever before deployed around the world,
with the total expatriate missionary force from all branches of Christendom
(Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox) now numbering about
443,000. 11 Mission budgets have grown to new records, including a nearly 22
percent increase in one recent three-year period. According to the editors of the
Mission Handbook, that jump represents “the greatest [percentage] increase ever
seen from one edition . . . to the next.” 12