The Changing Face of the Church: How Will RMM Respond?
By Joe Showalter, president of Rosedale Mennonite Missions, and Paul Kurtz, RMM director of global missions
Missions isn't what missions has been. The current state of the Christian church around the globe calls us as North Americans to rethink our and strategies as we respond to Jesus' command to "make disciples of all the peoples."
The next chapters of Christian mission and expansion are sure to read very differently than those written in the past two centuries of (largely) Western missionary enterprise.
Consider:
- In the past few decades we can now truly say that the church has become both global and international. Recent books such as Whose Religion is Christianity? (Lamin Sanneh) and The Next Christendom (Philip Jenkins) address the fundamental shift that has been taking place.
- In 1800, only 1% of all evangelical Christians lived outside of North America and Western Europe. By 1900, that figure had climbed to 10%. As the third millennium begins, estimates are that about 70% of the world's evangelical Christians live outside North America and Western Europe.
- A breathtaking movement is gaining steam within China, where the church is preparing to send 100,000 ready-to-die missionaries into the least-reached parts of the world. Back to Jerusalem (Paul Hattaway) tells the captivating (no pun intended) story.
- Church Planting Movements are emerging in many parts of the world, characterized by exponential reproduction of churches planting churches. In Southeast Asia, for example, three churches with 85 people grew in four years to 550 churches with 55,000 believers. Stories such as these coming in from so many corners of the globe remind me of Habakkuk 1:5: Look at the nations and watch-and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told.
What are the implications of all this? What impact must it have on our values and practices? What new models ought we to incorporate into our work? What should we be learning about church from the new Christian majority?
As the North American church continues to slip further and further toward irrelevance, should we not reevaluate the roles we play? Should we not think twice before we send missionaries from North America who have not seen their own church plant churches, who have not seen their own church engage the world around it in such a way as to bring true transformation? Can they lead where they've not been led? A passport and a plane ticket do not a missionary make. If this is an indictment, it is not of missionaries but of us, the North American church.
Dallas 2003
In November 2003, a group of Rosedale Mennonite Missions administrators joined a number of RMM senior missionaries at a church planting conference in Dallas, Texas. At the close of the conference, we took an extra day to debrief and "re-vision" for RMM's future. Our goal was to begin to formulate some guiding principles for our work in this new and ever-changing missions environment.
We all recognize that we have much reason to be grateful to God for the fruit of the past decades of RMM's ministry on four continents: North America, Central/South America, Europe, and Asia. Thousands of people will be worshiping the Lamb on the throne because of the faithful ministry of our workers.
At the same time, we understand that at our current rate of reaching the world, we're losing ground. Conservative Mennonite Conference's rate of growth in the United States is possibly keeping pace with our own CMC population growth, but is scarcely enough to make transformational changes in the society around us. In our foreign mission efforts, we've often had better results, yet we should hardly be complacent.
At a strategic planning session a couple of years ago, one of our office staff answered the question, "What should RMM stop doing?" with "We ought to stop messing around." As we explored the sentiment behind that statement, we agreed that we've too often been unfocused in our vision, careless with our resources, and haphazard in our planning.
The first draft of the following statements was formed there in Dallas late last year. What you read below is a reorganization and revision of those statements. We've processed them with the RMM board and received their affirmation to move ahead with the focus and vision these statements call us to. We submit them humbly here, recognizing that the statements themselves and the principles and strategies they represent will need further refinement. We welcome dialogue with any of you on any part of the statements.
First, what is our mission?
Our mission is to establish locally rooted and led, rapidly reproducing churches, prioritizing people groups and locations that are least reached with the Good News.
While we have no illusions of being able to snap our fingers and begin a Church Planting Movement (CPM), we do understand that there are plenty of things we can do to either encourage or inhibit such a movement of God. A grain of wheat doesn't grow just because it's a grain of wheat. It grows when it is placed in the proper environment. We want to provide the proper environment for God to bring life.
And we want to pay attention to those people and places that are most needy. Robert Coleman asked those of us who attended the recent prayer conference on the Rosedale Bible College (RBC) campus, "Why should anyone hear twice before everyone has heard once?" We want to put a dent in the huge number (25% of the world's population) who are currently isolated from Christian witness. This priority of the unreached will be evident in our personnel statistics, finances, and focus.
How will this mission be accomplished?
1. We will fast & pray.
Prayer is the work of this ministry, and we commit ourselves to living our lives and conducting mission work as though we believe it. We will continue to look for new and creative ways to permeate our ministry with prayer.
Fasting represents our commitment and desire to connect to God and his enabling power in spite of personal discomfort. We want God's broken heart to be mended as more and more of his lost children come home to him. That's worth sacrifice.
People don't come to know Jesus without prayer. It's as simple as that.
2. We will work in humility, repentance, and brokenness.
Our posture will be as servants to the emerging church and ambassadors of Christ. We are desperate for God and passionate for what is on His heart for where and how we work.
We will not overlook the reality that while we in the West have the lion's share of the world's monetary wealth, we are in grave danger of spiritual bankruptcy. We're told that our North American continent is the only one where the Christian church is shrinking in size.
Humility will dictate that we from a dying American Church will approach our mission with our eyes and ears wide open and our mouths mostly shut.
3. We will facilitate, coach, and mentor nationals to plant churches.
We will intentionally keep ourselves as North Americans in peripheral rather than central roles as we facilitate the planting of churches in other cultures. Effective church-planting requires an understanding of both the Biblical nature of the church (the seed) and the culture (the soil). The seed we are seeking to plant is a spiritual community capable of nurturing, protecting and reproducing itself. As the seed interacts with the soil, new churches are formed.
A striking feature of church planting movements is their indigenous nature. By God's grace, the churches we birth will emerge with fewer Western fingerprints on them, which too often stunt their growth.
4. We will employ thorough research, strategic planning, and consistent training.
"The men of Issachar understood the times and knew what to do about it." (1 Chronicles 12:32) Research removes the barrier of ignorance that immobilizes us from doing the right thing. It produces information that has never been known before-information that sometimes radically impacts our ministry and enables us to "know what to do."
We've all heard the line, "If you aim at nothing, you'll be sure to hit it." We want to be intentional in our work, just as a builder works from a blueprint to produce a house that stands strong and beautiful. Strategic plans serve us (not the other way around) and can be adjusted as new information is discovered and put back into the mix.
Because the mission landscape is changing, we will need to reeducate ourselves. We'll need to create and find opportunities for being mentored so we can mentor others. We expect to work with Rosedale Bible College to design a missions program with these priorities and objectives in mind.
5. We will respect and empower the nationals.
Unwittingly at times, we bring our own cultural trappings to an emerging church setting in such a way that they indeed become trapped! For example, if we teach and model that once a church reaches 15-20 people or more, it needs its own building in which to meet, and we send money or work teams to build a church building for them, it makes us happy and it makes them happy. But unfortunately, when they go to a neighboring city to plant a church, they can't do it "right" because they don't have the resources to provide a building for the new plant.
If a church planting movement like I described above were dependent on Western money to provide buildings for each new church, the movement would quickly stall. It would simply be impossible to keep up with the demand. We must ensure that programs and structures are locally initiated and led as far as possible, and are reproducible in their own context.
6. We will minister holistically to spirit, soul, and body.
While we are first and foremost spiritual beings, we are also physical and emotional. As Jesus went about, he preached and taught but he also cast out demons and healed. Spiritual lostness and poverty may be the world's deepest need, but it also needs food and water and clothing and health. Holistic ministry allows people to experience the Kingdom of God and can lead to community transformation.
7. We will work in gift-based team settings.
We have sometimes made the mistake of sending missionaries alone to ministry assignments that needed more gifts and/or energy than the missionary could provide. Our ministry will be more effective in many situations if we are surrounded by a team with a full complement of gifts.
8. We will participate in strategic partnerships to more effectively reach the world.
The task of seeing a church planting movement established in the countries where RMM works is a big one and we cannot do it alone. It compels us to work together with others to accomplish the task.
As Paul Kurtz, Tom Beachy and I traveled in North Africa in January, we encountered the teamwork and vision of the North Africa Partnership, a group of 100+ ministries of many types from around the globe. I was moved as I experienced their humble commitment to work together so that North Africa can know Jesus, to lay aside their personal agendas so that God's agenda can move forward. As teachers, translators, radio broadcasters, video producers, social workers, and more team together to see the church emerge, the church of North Africa is being birthed. What a testimony to the power of God!
9. We will seek to apply the same principles here in North America and within CMC.
This is possibly the toughest part because it will come at the greatest risk to us. But could we do it? Could we Conservative Mennonite Conference pastors facilitate church planting movements in our own communities, or in the cities nearby? Could our CMC churches cross the boundary (wall) between us and the secular world we live in, and see transformational change in our communities? Could we figure out how to rapidly reproduce disciples, leaders, and churches? Could we be part of a movement in the body of Christ that will turn the tide here in North America?
It's a grandiose vision, perhaps, but grandiose visions can become reality-one life at a time.
We believe these statements represent a challenging yet invigorating response to the changing face of the church. We appreciate your prayers and your partnership as we work together to invite the nations to worship Jesus!
Originally published in the August 2004 issue of the Brotherhood Beacon. Used by permission.