discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 57
Structure Issues
Doing Mission Together 57
Gathering the Harvest
Another reason Christian mission efforts have been more than making
holes in water is that they have generally been done in the context of a sending
community seeking to create other communities. To be sure, there are stories
of resolute individuals who have valiantly set out to try to bring God’s justice
and shalom to the world all by themselves. However, in missionary deployment,
God’s call is only one ingredient of the recipe. Other ingredients include
the sending church making sure there are supporting supply lines in place, systems
of accountability, and structures to guarantee long-term continuity.
The difference that working within a structure can make in long-term results
can be seen in the ministry of two men in Great Britain in the 1700s.
John Wesley and George Whitefield were two well-known evangelists of that
era. While Wesley is widely talked about today, George Whitefield is little remembered
although it is said that during his lifetime he preached to more people
face-to-face than did John Wesley. Accounting for the difference between
the residual effects of Wesley’s ministry and those of George Whitefield may be
Wesley’s creation of a follow-up system within the context of a faith community.
Though Whitefield was seemingly more successful in attracting crowds than
Wesley, Whitefield did not provide for long-term follow-up of converts. He
preached and called for decisions but left follow-up to other people. After Wesley’s
death, the Methodist movement he began and organized lived on. After
Whitefield’s death, it soon became hard to point to any discernible long-term
impact of his ministry.
Research on a mission board or agency should ask what is done to guarantee
long-term continuity of the work of that board or agency. It is very risky to
gauge the effectiveness of evangelism by raw numbers of conversions without
taking into account the structures being organized to carry on outreach and
discipleship ministries. Indeed, in the first few centuries of Christianity, benchmarks
other than raw numbers of conversions were often used for gauging mission
success. One marker of successful mission work in Early Church history
was the appointing of an indigenous bishop. The appointment of a local leader
as a bishop was a signal that evangelistic outreach had been fruitful and leaders
were emerging who could oversee churches.
End Result
Although missionaries are one of the most visible elements of global mission
efforts, they are not the most important element of the mission enterprise.
The key issue is not even the number of converts or their quality. The most
important bottom line involves the clusters of churches that result from the