discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 77
ing sent out solely by European and North American churches. Indeed, as has
been noted, the missionary-sending paradigm of recent centuries was that
Christians from have nations went as missionaries to have not nations. There is
now a move back to the pattern of Christianity’s first millennium in which it
was expected that the receivers would quickly turn into senders. Indeed, the
Lausanne Covenant, which was signed by representatives from all over the
world, talked about the urgent need to get missionaries flowing “ever more
freely from and to all six continents.” 1
The church is not primarily an institution; it is an expedition. 2
—Honorato T. Reza
Fortunately, “from every nation” is not just an unrealized ideal. Those
mental lists people still have of sending and receiving countries are completely
outdated with churches in many countries doing both. There are now more
than 2,500 missionary sending agencies in the world, of which only about a
thousand are based in Europe and North America. That means authentic crosscultural
global missionary outreach is being done by believers from many
countries as vibrant churches from Africa, Asia, and Latin America step forward
to accept the Great Commission as their marching orders. “Missionaries,”
Rob Moll has written, “are going from just about every country to every other
country.” 3 The participant list for the mission conference that ratified the Lausanne
Covenant is evidence of that trend. Those signing that covenant in
Switzerland represented more than 150 nations, a dramatic increase from the
20 nationalities present at the 1910 Edinburgh World Missionary Conference.
Majority World Mission
From Every Nation 77
In order to track the missionary activity of denominations and mission
agencies in what were formerly labeled as receiving countries, many missiologists
use a category called majority world mission. Among the cross-cultural
missionary efforts in this category are those from areas of the world where per
capita income statistics would make one wonder how there could be enough
money to effectively support any kind of world evangelism effort. Astoundingly,
Rob Moll of Christianity Today has estimated that the number of Protestant
missionaries from the majority world now equals and may well be greater than
those from the Western world, with something over 100,000 coming from
each of those two global groupings. That number of majority world missionaries
represents a recent explosion because in 1973 there were only 3,400 non-