Why Do They Believe?

A recent post by Ernest Goodman really got me to thinking. While Ernest lives in Western Europe where missions work is difficult, there are other places in the world where missions work is not so difficult. I had a friend who would go at least twice a year to an Asian country on mission trips and would return every time announcing that thousands (no exaggeration) had come to faith in Christ. Every time. Thousands.

I want to believe that. I really, really do. I’m not doubting that thousands responded in some way to a visiting American’s presentation of the gospel. I’m just wondering what they were responding to.

Missions groups travel overseas taking doctors and nurses with them to provide free medical and dental care. Others go digging wells or building schools. I have no doubt that when the time comes to get a group of people together so that someone can preach the gospel to them that the speaker presents a clear message of repentance and faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins and new life.

Now, I don’t want to sound skeptical toward the work of the Spirit. That’s the last thing I want to do, or to convey here. I just hear these same sort of stories over and over and over again. And I hope every last one of them is true.

But envision yourself, as much as you can, as someone living in abject poverty. No education. Dirt floors in your home. No running water. Just enough food to survive (if that). No health care. No MTV or ESPN. No telephone. No automobile (though maybe a bicycle, if you’re lucky). Now some stranger comes into your town or village. He’s wearing nice clothes. By the standards of your village or town this person is one of the richest people in the world. He has three televisions, two cars, a house with carpet, indoor plumbing, electricity, a room for every person who lives there, travels to Branson to vacation, a telephone that he can carry around in his pocket, a closet full of clothes and will buy a meal at a restaurant that is the equivalent of an entire month’s wages for you (possibly more).

He comes and digs a well in your village and it doesn’t cost your village anything. He builds a school building and you are not out a dime. He cleans your teeth and pokes a needle in your arm to keep bad stuff from happening to you and your family, all for free. Then he tells you about some guy named Jesus and asks if you want to follow him. I think the obvious answer is that for all he has done for me, my family and our village I will run naked through the streets if that’s what he asks me to do (or if that’s what people in my village do anyway I’ll run through the streets fully clothed. Whatever). Just tell me you’ll be back in six months and bring more of that good stuff with you.

I don’t say any of that as an indictment against short-term missions teams. I really, really don’t. And I hope that if that sort of thing happens that it is very rare. I just wonder. And I propose that because as I think about our church’s future in missions I don’t want to be the church that either a) goes overseas to have a nice vacation masquerading as a missions trip; b) goes somewhere thinking we are the saviors of the world; or, c) doesn’t fully appreciate our need to consider what we are doing from the perspective of those we are seeking to reach, not just our own American evangelical, often revivalistic perspective where we actually leave people worse off than we found them because what we went hoping to give them was not what they actually received.

Things You Need To Know About You

Today I want to point you to the blog of Ernest Goodman. Ernest is a missionary in Western Europe. I consistently learn oodles of stuff about myself, about how I approach my faith, about how I lead others in living out lives as followers of Jesus, and especially about things I need to quit doing and things I need to start doing in reaching out to others around me, by reading what he writes.

When you visit his blog, go with your defenses down. Go as a learner. And be ready to hear the heart of someone who can teach the church in America a lot about how to reach our own culture, as explained from the perspective of one who is reaching out to people in a not-so-different culture.

How May I Help You?

Yesterday I barely scratched the surface of what missions/ministry in a post-Christian/postmodern western European context looks like.  Heck, in a week I only got a little scratching of the surface myself.  I’ve tried to think of my time over there in terms of the similarities/dissimilarities to ministry here in an American context that is, itself, becoming increasingly post-Christian and postmodern.  Churches in America are not growing.  Those that are are almost exclusively growing at the expense of other existing churches.  The American culture of today is much different from the one we knew even yesterday.  As Chris Erdman writes in his book Countdown To Sunday,

This world in recent years has entered a dizzying period of change, or, more accurately, a period of radical upheaval, which has made us much less certain that we know what we are doing and how to adequately prepare you for the mission of Jesus Christ.  We in the North American church are recognizing that the stable world of Christendom, in which the church knew its role as chaplain to society, is crumbling.  The church is no longer the center of Western culture, and the gospel that was once so influential is, at best, no longer interesting and, at worst, viewed as archaic and sometimes hostile to people wanting to build a new world.  There is little doubt that we are now living through a period of unprecedented global change.

The American church will soon face the same questions that are daily on the minds of those in western Europe.  Indeed, if we do not begin to ask those questions now we will likely wake up in 15 or 20 years and ask, "What happened??"

If you live near Stafford, Virginia or Atlanta, Georgia, or even if you don’t and you can make the trip out, head out to one of The Gathering events coming up in March.  As they say on their website (telleurope.org): "Learn how you and your church can make a lasting impact in Western Europe."  In doing so you may well learn how you and your church can make a lasting impact in your own home town.  Check the website for dates and details.  One detail I must share is that you can register for the ridiculously low price of $15 and lunch both days is included.

España

[Esglesia de Santa Maria del Mar, Barcelona, Spain]

I spent last week in Barcelona, Spain visiting with about 50 of our denomination’s missionary personnel who serve in western Europe.  I don’t think we Americans quite get what ministry in such a post-Christian/postmodern context is really like (and I include myself here).  Things that we do here in the states simply don’t work in many other contexts.  A backyard Bible club won’t work in France because non-Catholic groups are viewed as cult members (non-Catholics have had a rough history in France).  Who wants to send their children to be indoctrinated by a cult for a week?

In addition, western Europeans often view Americans as rude, obnoxious bullies.  It’s a reputation often well earned.  If you, as an American, go to many places in Asia you will immediately be a rock star.  People will flock to be your friends.  Not so much in western Europe.

In addition, most Europeans are postmodern.  They laugh at Ray Comfort’s banana, and probably at Ray Comfort.  OK.  So they’re not the only ones.

They can’t even sell out to the Creflo Dollar/Benny Hinn way to Your Most Successful Mission Work Now.  Go ahead.  Buy the Olympic stadium and put on your best Joel Osteenized version of spiritual self-help and fulfillment.  You still won’t fill the stadium.

All of that makes missionary work very difficult.  Add on top of that the sense of isolation from home, family, friends and the difficulty of making new friends and you have what one of our workers referred to as a "missionary graveyard."

But they’re being faithful to God’s call and that’s all that matters.  I already had such a high level of respect for what missionaries do before the trip that it’s hard to imagine that going up any, but it did.  I don’t mean to set them on a pedestal from which it would be too easy to fall.  I just have great admiration for their perseverance to work in circumstances that are so often terribly discouraging, all the while trusting God and keeping on.  I want them to know that they’re not alone.  I’m rooting for them.

Religious Spin & Sound bites

After three years of deliberation, examination and many discussions the Board of Trustees of the International Missions Board of the Southern Baptist Convention emerged with a policy guideline that has all the theological acumen of a third-grade Sunday School participant.  I want to respect the time and effort those people have given to this process.  I want to believe they were thorough in their work.  I want to believe they were shooting for guidelines that all Southern Baptists could be proud of and rally around.  But in the words of theologian Mick Jagger, "You can’t always get what you want."  And in this case we tried but didn’t get what we need, either.

For a year-and-a-half some of us have been asking the board to give us some kind of official doctrinal justification for policies guidelines that have been enacted which have now doctrinally eliminated people who can affirm our adopted statement of faith.  For the past twelve months an ad hoc committee of the board has been re-examining these policies guidelines only to emerge with the old statements essentially in tact and with no Biblical justification offered.  None.

What we got instead were sound bites within the document itself.  Just make the statement and assume it is Biblical.  If they did further homework it is not reflected in what they have publicly produced.  Southern Baptists deserve better than that.  We deserve better than to be told that "this is the way it is because we said so."  As participating Southern Baptists we have a right to know why.  Contrary to earlier claims, this document affirms that there were no systemic, ongoing problems on the field that were not already being adequately addressed by IMB staff under the then-existing policies.

Not only that, but from a practical standpoint these new policies guidelines will actually take the board right back to where all of this began where the problem was that the IMB Candidate Consultants were approving candidates for service only to have a subcommittee of the board override their decision and reject candidates.  Don’t they see that making these policies into guidelines they will be right back where they started?  The IMB administration asked for clarification so as to avoid the very situations that it has taken the board three years to decide will be the normal way of operating.  Calling it a guideline instead of a policy is nothing more than spin.  It is a way to achieve the same end result by using a "nicer" word.

I can’t express my disappointment too strongly and I can’t help but believe that the end result will be to the long-term detriment of the IMB and the SBC.

The Purple Association

Last week I mentioned my desire for a third way to function as a free association of churches in the SBC.  Southern Baptists are traditionally congregational, grass-roots, ground-up; though nationally, and even at most state levels, we have become much more like the Presbyterians, more top-down and provincial (meaning "limited in outlook," or tightly controlled, not "unsophisticated."  Well, I’m pretty sure Presbyterians aren’t unsophisticated, though this Baptist has been accused of such by his wife at the dinner table on occasion).  Thus, the free-churchman in me surveys the vacuous landscape for hopeful signs of change.

At one time, not so long ago, I would have been ready to jump on a bandwagon, any bandwagon, so long as it involved some level of sticking it to "the man."  The denominational man.  I think I’ve grown up a little since then.  I’m much more interested in moving forward in positive ways.  But for that to happen I believe it will require that we break out of the mold with which we have grown so comfortable.

Some have said that we need to work within the current system.  Bestow the crown atop the right head enough times that the trickle-down effect makes Ronald Reagan smile from the afterlife.  I say, no.  The system is broken.  Do you need proof?  Look at what some thought of the SBC in 1979.  We have had a wholesale change in those who occupy places within the same system.  They system didn’t change, just the people running it.  And what do we have?  Something that for practical purposes is little, if any, better than what we had before.

Need proof?  Go listen to Bob Pearl’s SWBTS chapel message.  Better yet, read Jim Elliff’s report on the state of the SBC.  Our churches aren’t any healthier.  Our baptisms are not on the rise.  The culture around us does not seek us out that they might ask us about the hope that is within us.  We can’t find over half of our own people.  We are known in the surrounding culture as being mean and judgmental.  I can’t tell you how many of the people in our church invite someone to church and are told that they wouldn’t step into a Baptist church for anything.

This is what we have become.  You would have to leave your brain at the door to declare that a success.  So we deal with those problems in one of two ways - often both: we grossly misdiagnose the problem and/or we publish a "thank God we’re not the CBF" article.  Meanwhile we languish.

So what do we do?

I have some thoughts.  Notice I call them "thoughts," not "solutions."  They may be good thoughts and they may be very poor thoughts.  They are mine, so whichever, blame me.

1. Form an association that is not geographically based to partner in doing what’s worthwhile that the current convention will not do - like fund missionaries who were baptized by immersion but didn’t subject the church to a test about how stringent their Calvinism is or isn’t.  I said an association, not an alternative convention.  We don’t need another convention.  We have too many of those as it is.  Much of what we have is superfluous.  Much of what our current conventions do is worthwhile.  In Oklahoma we have a great system of children’s homes.  We support centers for battered and abused women and children.  We have a fine Baptist university.  Other states support colleges, universities, hospitals and other worthwhile causes.  But associations choose causes dear to that free association of churches.  If missionaries are being left out by NAMB and the IMB then let’s find an agency that will send those people and band together to fund them.  In the mean time we will still send checks to NAMB and the IMB because we still support those people, too.  They may, however, get a smaller piece of the pie, because the pie is only so large and can only be split so many ways.
2. Connect electronically.  I’m not a technological genius.  I know just enough to be dangerous.  But I know that if I can carry on a video/voice conversation with my brother over my regular internet connection, and if John Maxwell can charge $129.00 for people to show up and watch him via wide screen, and as wired and connected as most of our state convention buildings and many of our larger churches are now, we should be able to bring the matters we need to discuss to the churches without requiring the churches to travel to some centralized location that effectively eliminates 90-97.7% of the available participation.
3. Quit worrying about what other people will think of you or your ideas, or what they will call you, or how they will label you, or who they will try to associate you with.  Prophetic movements do not, by nature, endear themselves to those who’s positions are entrenched.  At the end of your life you will not be given a "do-over."  Don’t spend your life worrying about what other people will think of you or say about you.  Live for an audience of One.  If I call you a moderate or a fundy, what is that to you?  If you call me a moderate or a fundy, what is that to me?  You know who you are and God knows who you are.  Unless you are working on some plan of upward mobility in the ministry none of that should matter to you.

There is already a movement in a positive direction that is growing out of the fiasco in the Valley in Texas.  Read about it here, here, here and here.

Purple Denominational Politics

I put little faith in Southern Baptist denominational politics.  I’m hopelessly hopeless.  It has been over a year now since the IMB instituted the new policies restricting missionary candidates.  NAMB actually beat them to the punch with similar policies.  It just went unnoticed.  And yet I continue to hear stories of those who have been called to missions, who are members in good standing in our Southern Baptist churches, yet who are prohibited from missionary service because, though they were immersed as believers, it was in another denomination that has been deemed unacceptable theologically.

Here’s the deal.  I want to support those folks.  I’m certain our church does as well.  I believe there are other SBC churches that want to, too.  I’m not in to starting some new denomination or joining some other one.  Baptists actually cooperate voluntarily and are free to form new voluntary associations when they feel it necessary.  Is it possible to form an association of churches who have a desire to support those the established channels no longer support?

I was hopeful that the roundtable meeting in Arlington next week might be open to that sort of discussion, but after speaking with one of the organizers and reading the comments of another attender I am no longer hopeful that such a notion will gain any traction.  I’ve been encouraged to bring it up if I feel led to do so, but have also been assured that all we need is to tweak the current system.  My problem is that tweaking the system seem like little more than rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

I believe the system is broken.  I also know that I’m probably one of the few who feel that way.  I’m  searching for a third way.

Church Planting - Art or Science?

Missions Misunderstood has an interesting post on the nature of church planting.  Me like what me read.  As a teaser, check out the last sentence:

We will remain on the sidelines of what God is doing around the world
because we are debating the science of Christianity and mission while
the artists are being used to build the Kingdom.

[Thinks to himself: I wonder how this might apply to pastoral ministry in America?]

To The Ends Of The Earth

I shared some wonderful conversation last week with a group that included Jeff Easley, International Director with The Aquila Project.  I’m often confronted by the dooms-day perspective on the world.  So many American Christians have such a self-centered perspective on the spiritual significance of world events - and our awareness of God’s work is so often a matter of self-inflicted ignorance (we refuse to become informed when there are so many good resources available to us).  It was great to hear some first-hand accounts about what God is doing in places like Myanmar, Cambodia and elsewhere.  Check out The Aquila Project and contact Jeff to see how you can become involved in resourcing others who are taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Future Church - UPDATE

IT’S HERE! IT’S HERE!  At the risk of over-promising and under-delivering, I really really really do recommend this article.

As of the time I write this the online version of Christianity Today has not yet made available what may be the most important article in this month’s issue.  They’ll eventually do so.  Read it.  It is an interview Andy Crouch has done with African bishop the Right Reverend Dr. David Zac Niringiye titled, Experiencing Life At The Margins.

In case you hadn’t heard, the church is growing in every part of the world - except for the west.  That means that, if the trend continues, the church in the west, including America, will be increasingly losing its voice to the voices of others.  In other words, the church will no longer be singing western solos, but will become more of an ethnically mixed ensemble.  If you don’t believe me ask the Anglicans.  They’ll tell you that some African and South American voices are speaking loudly and strongly to issues facing the Anglican Communion.

But that’s not why you need to read the interview.  You need to read it because it very well might make you a better pastor and/or church member.  Here’s a quote from the interview that will probably trouble American (and Southern Baptist) sensibilities:

"We need to begin to read the Bible differently.  Americans have been preoccupied with the end of the Gospel of Matthew, the Great Commission: "Go and make."  I call them go-and-make missionaries.  These are the go-and-fix-it people.  The go-and-make people are those who act like it’s all in our power, and all we have to do is ‘finish the task.’  They love that passage!  But when read from the center of power, that passage simply reinforces the illusion that it’s about us, that we are in charge."

Another good one is this: "How can American pastors be leaders if they haven’t seen what God is doing elsewhere [in the world]?"

Well, in the mean time you can check out the interview with Seattle grunge pastor Mark Driscoll.  Don’t worry, he doesn’t cuss in the interview.

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