The Curious Thing We Do with Missions

As I work my way across different cultures each day on IBG projects, I find it curious how we can all view similar things much differently. Not wrong, per se, just differently. I’ve written recently on how we view comfort and safety differently in the west than the majority church, and some dangers to guard aginst in our western worldview. Another curiosity is the “Missions Committee”.

Now, let me state up front that I LOVE mission committees, missional people, missionaries, missions pastors, and even Mission Impossible. You folks are awesome, so keep going! I’m merely observing that the way we go about implementing Jesus’ command to “Go and Make Disciples” in Matt 28 in the west is vastly different from how it is often done (and done well) in the majority church. And our approach has both benefits and unintended consequences.

Let’s start with benefits of the Mission committee approach. Our western culture is a can-do culture. Let’s get organized and get ’er dun! Putting a Missions Pastor or Missions Coordinator in charge of missional outreach is a very natural way to organize in the west. It provides efficient management and control, and centralized allocation of resources. It puts ministry process in place. These are not bad things. They mirror how our western society operates and so these structures are easier for congregants to recognize and engage with. It’s natural to organize this way.

It also ensures there is someone, or some people, waking up each day on point to shepherd and guide the “here, near and far” outreach ministries of the church. Again, this approach is incredibly efficient! The danger comes when we fully delegate the role of “outreach” to the missions committee. After all, my read of Matthew is that it is the responsibility of each believer not to “Go and make missions committees”, but, rather, “Go and make disciples”.

There was a radio show back in the 1940”s titled “Let George Do It”. When I was young, that phrase was still used by some older folks when they didn’t want to take something on. When we create recognizable western structures for missions work, we must also guard against our natural tendency to “Let George Do It” - dismiss the task as someone else’s responsibility. I’ve probably got a few missions pastors standing and cheering on this point. It’s not that people are overtly neglectful. We recognize someone is in charge and we culturally defer to them.

When I survey some of our ministry partners around the world who are shepherding huge movements to Christ, I find it curious that I do NOT see missions committees. I don’t see Missions Pastors. I do see Pastors, elders, coaches and ordinary folks all equipping their entire congregations to go do outreach. It’s not as efficiently structured as our model of outreach. In fact, it’s messy and organic, yet it bears much fruit.

When you look at the task of introducing someone to Christ, it is almost always in a relational context. Relationship work can be messy and non-linear, yet organic relationship works much better than structure when someone is sorting out conflicting belief systems.

To be sure, the majority church benefits greatly from the organized resourcing and equipping of the western church. But folks, I see opportunity here. That same God who works through many ordinary believers in the majority world to introduce people of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or animistic backgrounds to Jesus Christ has the same power to reach the millions right here who have placed their hope in their 401K, science, education, political systems, or nothing at all. There is a spiritual curiosity in the next generation that we have not seen in a generation.

We might, however, miss some opportunity if we leave the task solely to this curious entity called the missions committee. How might your local church pivot today to bring the entire congregation into disciple making?

Give Hope! Give Life! Give Bibles!