How are we doing in bringing the good news of Jesus to the people of the world?
It has been over 200 years since the cobbler and pastor, William Carey, argued that the Lord’s final command to his people still applies to the church. Here is that command:
Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all I have commanded you (Matt. 28:19-20).
It seems strange today that Carey had to argue his point. To many of us it seems so obvious since the work of taking the good news to those who haven’t heard has been presented to us repeatedly throughout our lives as disciples of Christ. The vast majority of people who respond to the gospel hear about Jesus from one of their own people, rather than from a foreign missionary. This is, in fact, the way it has always been and now followers of Jesus are found almost everywhere. This has prompted some people to think that we really don’t need to put so much effort into reaching people who have never heard of him.
However, consider the following facts:
- The world is now majority urban, with Asia and Africa driving global urbanisation.
- Around 2020, the middle class became the majority of the global population and by 2050, it will have increased by 2 billion individuals.
- People aged 60 years and older represent the fastest-growing global population, projected to increase from 1 billion to 2.1 billion by 2050.
- Observing the average annual rate of change per year, by 2050, Africa is projected to have the highest percentage of global Christians.
- Nigeria has more Protestants than any other country on earth.
- Pentecostal and charismatic expressions of Christianity are the leading edge of Christian growth around the world.
- Total global refugee numbers have risen markedly since 2010.
All these facts, and many more, are brought to us by the recently published State of the Great Commission Report. The report is the product of a multi-year global collaboration of over 150 experts to ‘understand where the greatest gaps and opportunities are for fulfilling the Great Commission.’ The Lausanne movement, who organised the collaboration, is the ongoing network of gospel advocates, churches and organisations that came out of the great Lausanne Congress of 1974. The report is in preparation for the fourth such congress which is to take place in Seoul in September this year.
The report is not just an exercise in spreadsheet missiology. There is a sustained attempt at theological and missiological reflection on the Bible in the light of the contemporary global context, and vice versa. I encourage you to check it out on the Lausanne website.
To whet your appetite, here are three of the key questions that are addressed by the report.
What is polycentric Christianity?
The worldwide movement to Christ has become more thoroughly global than at any other time in history. Not only are there churches across every continent but many of those churches desire to reach out to the rest of the world. With the exception of Europe, every region in the world both sends and receives more gospel workers than fifty years ago. This is what is meant by polycentric Christianity – there is no one centre from which gospel workers radiate.
One way this should challenge our thinking and practice of gospel ministry is in how we seek to partner with our brothers and sisters in other countries. There is a voice that says, often quite stridently, ‘Don’t send workers, send money.’ The writers of the report, however, recognise the difficulties that can arise with that mindset. After all, the wealth that is held by the Lord’s people is not evenly distributed, and with money comes power.
This throws up three challenges for a polycentric church: firstly, how to encourage generosity and accountability in those who hold wealth; secondly how to create healthy channels between those who hold more wealth and those who hold less wealth; thirdly how to create new sources of funding.
We should not want to create dependency, such as happens for example, if a church in Wales pays the salary of a pastor in Mizoram. That is to deny the dignity of the receiving church, and leaves them open to accusations of corruption or of being lackeys of foreign powers. The sharing of resources, therefore, needs to be sustainable and based on interdependence.
There is the need for foreign established missions to promote healthy collaboration and partnership that values all kinds of contribution in making missions possible. Making space for interdependency allows the growth of local initiative, innovations and creativity, enabling the locals to give out of their God-endowed resources as necessary.
What is community?
There are big shifts happening in the way people perceive home and place. Many people around the world today do not have the same felt need to be rooted in the place they grew up. These sentiments are strongly influenced by urbanisation, migration, digital technologies and a growing individualism that has been encouraged by the rise of the middle class around the globe.
Many people no longer live their lives surrounded by people who speak their language and share their sense of ethnic identity. Rather, hybrid identities and novel communities are developing that challenge traditional perspectives on community. How should this influence the way gospel workers, both insiders and outsiders, go about seeking to reach a population? No doubt this will be hammered out in discussions over the coming months, something in which I am particularly interested.
What is ministry in a digital age?
I am watching this discussion as a bit of a sceptic. Not that I don’t use digital technologies: I am writing this on a laptop and sending it by email. However, I am concerned that a wholesale uncritical embrace of digital technologies demonstrates a suspension of the discernment we need to resist the most pressing face of the world in our cultural moment.
For decades now, missiologists have made much of the incarnation as a model for intercultural ministry. The Bible tells us that, ‘The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’ (John 1:14). God didn’t zap the earth with a string of code; he came to us in the flesh. John remembered vividly how the Lord Jesus ate with them, walked with them and spoke face-to-face with them.
Although none of us can or needs to be incarnate in the same way as the Son of God was (and is), there is something peculiarly powerful about a real flesh-and-blood person leaving their home and going to live among the people of another community. They embody the gospel as they go.
You might object and say that, with the tech we now have, we can share the gospel among unreached people so much more easily and efficiently. That argument also scares me. Call me reactionary, but the idea of a ‘VR-church’ in which ‘worshippers join live sessions in immersive digital spaces and interact through avatars’ does not excite me. As with many in the Lausanne movement, I am glad to see that I am not alone.
