discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 79
From Every Nation 79
entered Korea a little more than 100 years ago. South Korea is now a leading
missionary-sending nation, supporting more than 13,000 foreign missionaries.
Operation World says that with large numbers of missionaries from India being
sent cross-culturally within the borders of their own country, that country
rather than South Korea could claim the title of the world’s second-largest missionary-sending
country. 6
Phill Butler of InterDev reports that non-Western Christians now account
for as much as 80 percent of the personnel in various strategic partnerships. 7
Some people have been tempted to take this and other statistics as a sign of declining
spirituality in the West. Butler came to a different conclusion, saying,
“This should be seen as amazing good news, a striking return on investment
from mission efforts over the last years” 8 (see “Global Missionary Team” sidebar).
In Butler’s evaluation, the sacrifices of previous decades by churches in
the West are bearing wonderful fruit.
Plate 6.2 indicates how global the missionary force has become with missionaries
now coming from most of the countries of the world. Because the
Church cannot truly be the Church unless it fully embraces global mission,
then the missionary zeal of majority world churches should be celebrated and
further encouraged.
The mention of non-Western missionaries may bring to mind names from
the first half of the 20th century, such as Santos Elizondo, Hiroshi Kitagawa,
Samuel Krikorian, Rochunga Pudaite, and David Ramirez—all of whom went
back to their own people in Mexico, Japan, the Middle East, India, and
Nicaragua. However, immigrants like these people who went back home to evangelize
are not what majority world mission is about. To be sure, God has used
people like those mentioned in extraordinary ways. Though the Kingdom accomplishments
of these immigrants going back home to preach the gospel need to be
celebrated, they are not the temporary scaffolding of the missionary enterprise.
Rochunga Pudaite would be, of course, the one exception on this list. To be
sure, the first dozen or so years of his ministry were spent in Bible translation
work among his own people, the Hmar of northeast India. That part of Pudaite’s
life story is told in the film Beyond the Next Mountain. Later, however, Pudaite
broadened his ministry to found an organization called Bibles for the World, a
global mission ministry that uses Scripture distribution as an evangelistic tool.
More than “Warm Bodies”
Some have rejoiced in thinking that one of the best uses of majority world
missionaries would be for them to go to countries where Westerners might
have difficulty getting visas or resident permits. One must be careful, however,
not to view the majority world missionary force primarily as a source of surrogates
for Western missionaries. Majority world mission movements also should