Recently I received an email containing the following question about missions in many of our churches. I have included the main content of the email and the questions that were posed. I didn’t post any answer the first time, but when the brother posted it a second time I wanted to send in my thoughts.
He writes – Gentlemen:
Missions is the main thing we have going for us as a fellowship, but our missionaries are in deep trouble. I can attest that the exchange rate is hurting us deeply. Inflation is rampant. Churches are having fewer services in which missionaries can have a hearing and get deputation services in. Many of our younger preachers seem not to have caught the vision of what a
vigorous missions program can do for a church. Islam is eating our lunch when it comes to evangelism. Yet many of our fields are seeing dramatic results. National missions emanating from our own foreign works are in the ascendancy.
If missions is the mission of the church, what can we do to get going again with missions as a central theme of our movement?
Let’s have some discussion and some creative thinking.
What should we critique?
What might we do better?
How can we implement some better ideas?
Some of our best minds are beginning to think about these things and we have some things to contribute. We ought to have part in the discussion. If we can amass some meaningful contributions I am sure we can get it heard in the
right places.
Bob
My reply:
Dear Bob
I apologize for not responding sooner. Thanks for putting it out again.
What you say about missions is true, that it is the main thing we have going for us as a fellowship, however I believe the trouble comes from the fact that missions is not the main thing of our churches. You mention that many of our
fields are seeing dramatic results with national missions emanating from our foreign works and this is true. The reason for this is the cyclical pattern, where those foreign works are now reaching their stride and are more in line with where we were as fellowship churches years ago. They are always a little behind us here in the states. Unfortunately unless we do make some dramatic
changes HERE they will also follow us and soon come to have the same trouble on the mission fields as we have here at home.
The problem as I see it is that missions is not the main thing in our churches. It should be! The churches really have no other biblical reason to exist than to evangelize, train and send out all we can to fulfill Christ’s commission. But a great many of our churches have for too long been involved in omphaloskepsis. Instead of leading our churches to lift up their eyes to see the unreached world and facing the reality of Islam, nationalism, and other isms outrunning and out winning us they have been excessively introspective, self-absorbed and concentrating on the non essentials.
I believe we must see a return in our churches where everything we do is for the purpose of getting the Gospel message around the world. Each of our ministries should be put to the test. Does this do something that will help our church better reach the world? If not, why do we have it? We have lost that vision and we have certainly lost that FOCUS.
Because of this loss of focus and the passion that it gives us, many churches have discontinued some of their services. Because of the loss of that focus and passion many churches are re-tooling and trying to do a myriad of other things that will bring in the crowds to pay for the mega million dollar buildings that have become the new focus. The last few years the trend has been on how to change our look so that we could be more appealing, more relevant and more successful among the peers of our ministries. This has brought on more omphaloskepsis. Our churches are more beautiful, our services are more appealing, our messages are more relevant, but all of that has missed the target – reaching the world. In this huge quest for relevancy we have
forgotten that the most relevant thing to every man, woman and child in the world is the question of their eternity and where they will spend it. What could be more relevant?
It seems to me that we have been seeing the changes, some call it progress, in the areas of our church music, styles of worship, styles of dress and etc, etc, yet as many have sat in introspection they have decided that these were things that were necessary in order for us to better do what we need to do to reach people. Maybe it has helped some. But now it is time again
for our churches to “lift up their eyes” and remember the ONE mission that we have and put our everything into that. I don’t think we need to keep looking for new ideas, we just need to get back to the MAIN idea. Only when we get our eyes off our selves, how we sing, how we dress, how we do this or that and get them on our MISSION and make it again our main focus and passion will we be able to return to more spiritually healthy ministries and be able to address
some of the woes that you mention.
Reaching the World from Jupiter (Florida)
Ron Maggard
