Send no Missionaries? Mistakenly Assuming there are Churches near by to Do the Job!

These statements are of Critical Importance: This article, though older, examines false thinking that still persists in 21^st Century missions.

Can Natives do it better in the 10/40 window? There is a Serious lack of understanding of the task that is ahead, and what it will take to accomplish it. E2-E3 Evangelism. There are few “Natives” near by to be a witness. All who go are engaging in E2-E3 Evangelism – even if they live next door.

Read this article.

“In recent years, a serious misunderstanding has crept into the thinking of many evangelicals. Curiously, it is based on a number of wonderful facts: the Gospel has now gone to the ends of the earth. Christians have now fulfilled the Great Commission in at least a geographical sense. At this moment of history, we can acknowledge with great respect and pride those evangelists of every nation who have gone before us and whose sacrificial efforts and heroic accomplishments have made Christianity by far the world’s largest and most widespread religion, with a Christian church on every continent and in practically every country. This is no hollow victory. Now more than at any time since Jesus walked the shores of Galilee, we know with complete confidence that the Gospel is for all men, that it makes sense in any language, and that it is not merely a religion of the Mediterranean or of the West.

This is all true. On the other hand, many Christians as a result have the impression that the job is now nearly done and that to finish it we need only to forge ahead in local evangelism on the part of the now world’ wide church, reaching out wherever it has already been planted. Many Christian organizations. ranging widely from the World Council of Churches to many U.S. denominations, even some evangelical groups, have rushed to the conclusion that we may now abandon traditional missionary strategy and count on local Christians everywhere to finish the job.

This is why evangelism is the one great password to evangelical unity today. Not everyone can agree on foreign mission strategies, but more people than ever agree on evangelism, because that seems to be the one obvious job that remains to be done. All right! There is nothing wrong with evangelism. Most conversions must inevitably take place as the result of some Christian witnessing to a near neighbor, and that is evangelism. The awesome problem is the additional truth that most non-Christians in the world today are not culturally near neighbors of any Christians, and that it will take a special kind of ‘cross-cultural” evangelism to reach them.

Let us approach this subject with some graphic illustrations. I am thinking, for example, of the hundreds of thousands of Christians in Pakistan. Almost all of them are people who have never been Muslims and do not have the kind of relationship with the Muslim community that encourages witnessing. Yet they live in a country that is 97 per cent Muslim! The Muslims, on their part, have bad attitudes toward the stratum of society represented by the Christians. One group of Christians has boldly called itself The Church of Pakistan. Another group of Christians goes by the name, The Presbyterian Church of Pakistan. While these are ‘national” churches in the sense that they are part of the nation, they can hardly he called national churches if this phrase implies that they are culturally related to that vast bloc of people who constitute the other 97 per cent of the country, namely, the Muslims. Thus, although the Muslims are geographically near neighbors of these Christians, normal evangelism will not do the job.

Or take the Church of South India, a large church which has brought together the significant missionary efforts of many churches over the last century. But while it is called The Church of South India, 95 per cent of its members come from only five out of the more than 100 social classes (castes) in South India. Ordinary evangelism on the part of existing Christians will persuade men and women of those same five social classes. It would be much more difficult - it is in fact another kind of evangelism — for this church to make great gains within the 95 other social classes, which make up the vast bulk of the population.

Or take the great Batak church in Northern Sumatra. Here is one of the famous churches of Indonesia. Its members have been doing much evangelism among fellow Bataks, of whom there are still many thousands

whom they can reach without learning a foreign language, and among whom they can work with maximum efficiency of direct contact and understanding. But at the same time, the vast majority of all the people in

Indonesia speak other languages, and are of other ethnic units. For the Batak Christians of Northern Sumatra to win people to Christ from other parts of Indonesia will he a distinctly different kind of task. It is another kind of evangelism.

Or take the great church of Nagaland in Northeast India. Years ago. American missionaries from the plains of Assam reached up into the Naga hills and won some of the Ao Nagas. Then these Ao Nagas won practically their whole tribe to Christ. Next thing. Ao Nagas won members of the nearby Santdam Naga tribe, that spoke a sister language. These new Santdam Naga Christians then proceeded to win almost the whole of their tribe. This process went on until the majority of all fourteen Naga tribes became Christian. Now that most of Nagaland is Christian —even the officials of the state government are Christian — there is the desire to witness elsewhere in India. But for these Nagaland Christians to win other people in India is as much a foreign mission task as it is for Englishmen, Koreans, or Brazilians to evangelize in India. This is one of the reasons why so far the Nagas have made no significant attempt to evangelize the rest of India. Indian citizenship is one advantage the Naga Christians have compared to people from other countries, but citizenship does not make it easier for them to learn any of the hundreds of totally foreign languages in the rest of India.”

(Crucial Dimensions on World Evangelisation, Arthur F. Glasser, Paul G. Hiebert C Peter Wagner, Ralph D. Winter. William Carey Library 1980 pg 105-107)