discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 85
From Every Nation 85
Center in New Haven, Connecticut, are attempting to track down and record
the stories of non-Westerners who have served as cross-cultural missionaries.
Some of their work is now available online within the “Dictionary of African
Christian Biography.”
Ramifications
Mission organizations face stiff challenges in globalizing their mission force.
For example, there are financial issues to work through. When missionaries
from different countries are sent out and supported by the same mission agency,
the question must be faced: Should missionaries coming from Switzerland and
Swaziland get the same level of financial support? If, in the name of fairness, it is
decided that they should be supported at the same level, the Swazi will likely be
paid more than any pastor or church leader in his home country while the Swiss
will be seen by his countrymen as being forced to get by on a very low income.
Mission boards will need to prayerfully think through such issues of financial
support. Some majority world churches with their own mission boards utilize
tentmaking strategies to get missionaries overseas where they work in service occupations.
How do those missionaries, some of whom are working at low-paying
jobs, interface with relatively well-supported Western missionaries?
A few organizations promote a system that brings to mind comity strategies
from the past. In the 19th century, countries such as India were carved up
among various mission boards with each agency or board having a particular
geographic area assigned to it. Called comity agreements, these territorial assignments
were an attempt to eliminate overlapping evangelism efforts and
make sure all parts of a particular country heard the gospel. For a variety of
reasons, the comity system fell apart. One problem was migration of believers.
For example, when Baptist families moved to a Presbyterian area, they often
dropped out of church or else tried to start a Baptist church on their own
rather than adjust to Presbyterian worship styles, beliefs, and forms of church
government. Another problem was that some groups were more zealous about
evangelizing than others, so the comity strategy didn’t really succeed in making
certain all areas of a country were equally evangelized. The boundaries created
for various mission boards also dampened the natural movement of the gospel
through friendship, family, and clan networks stretching across areas assigned
to different denominations or mission boards.
Today, some groups promote a world evangelism strategy in which the
West is asked to provide the money with the majority world providing the personnel.
That seems a little like a comity agreement in that it places limits on
what each group will do. One problem is that it assumes God will quit calling
North Americans and Europeans to missionary service. Stopping the flow of
Euro-American missionaries would also damage the cultural exchange effects