Friendly Elephants, pt. 1: Why are we still sending missionaries to ____? Aren’t they already reached?
While nearly every Bible-believing church desires to be effectively engaging with the Great Commission, many carry some latent misunderstandings of what “missions” is and what it should and shouldn’t be accomplishing. These perspectives most often arise indirectly, and are the slight objections that linger just beyond the spoken heart. The things many faithful churches and church members secretly believe, but wouldn’t speak aloud either so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, or risk sounding unspiritual. They’re the elephants in the sanctuary. Friendly elephants perhaps, but elephants nonetheless. Yet, why shouldn’t we speak them aloud? In this series of 3 posts, I’ll speak them aloud for you…or some other less spiritual person, and address them as best I can.
Why are we still sending missionaries to ______? Aren’t they already reached with the gospel?
There has been a great deal of attention focused on sending missionaries into the 10/40 window and to various unreached people groups. This attention is both a good and appropriate response to our command to take the gospel into all the world. In order to be faithful stewards of the good news of reconciliation between God and man, we must take this message to the uttermost parts and do it with diligence. Yet, if this were all that we were focused on doing, it would likewise reveal a misunderstanding of our Great Commission task at the outset. It was indeed our Lord’s commission to “go,” but the verb clause that follows then is, “make disciples.”
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
The misunderstanding underpinning the Why are we still sending missionaries to…? question, is that some rudimentary form of evangelism is the end goal of missions. We ought to properly understand that disciple-making is the target we are aiming for, but this then brings broader and more complex questions, namely, When is discipleship accomplished?
“Then He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.””
The original call of Jesus to his disciples was not only to be converted to faith, but to become fishers of men. That is, men who would replicate their faith many times over. Do we tend to think of foreign peoples as fish, rather than as co-equal disciples and ministers of the gospel and missionaries with the same Great Commission calling? Is there not some lingering paternalism in our original question? Anecdotally, I can assure you that the self-same deacon questioning the worthiness of a foreign field for our resources, is the same who would adamantly insist that America needs missionaries, and with no sense of irony. Never in the history of the world has there been a nation so inundated with resources and access to the gospel. If America still needs missionaries, EVERYWHERE needs missionaries, full stop.
Allow me to draw an imperfect analogy, but one which might prove helpful. Suppose the gospel is a 6-cylinder engine (just bear with me here). An engine is a very useful machine, and if we deliver this lovely piece of machinery to a people who have never had one before, we have given them a precious gift, yet few of us would surmise that the delivery in itself was sufficient. We would need to teach people how it works and how to use it(no, I’m not suggesting a pragmatic or utilitarian approach to the gospel), what to do and not do with it. In order for it to be most effective among this people, we would realize we need to train a mechanic or two who can fix the engine, and then they would need to be at such a level of understanding and skill that they could then train others to be mechanics. The engine would need a supply of oil and gasoline and we’d need to create a supply chain to maintain that access, or even determine if building a refinery might be a good option. We would then realize that it would be altogether better if these folks didn’t rely on us to supply engines, but they could manufacture their own. Then they could further supply other peoples with engines and train them to use them and create all of the infrastructure we created which allowed us to bring them the engine in the first place, and the distribution of engines would grow exponentially. All the while, technology and engine efficiencies would be progressing and evolving and it would require a great deal of input and interaction between the peoples to keep producing the best and most efficient engines.
This is more accurately what missions looks like. We need to take the message to all corners of the earth, but a good stewardship also requires that we take the time and invest the resources to empower not only self-sustaining gospel ministry through local churches, but effectively reproducing churches themselves. Our goal is ultimately to multiply not only churches, but missions movements within those churches to catalyze further missions movements.
The picture is so much bigger than even the simplified one we’ve painted here, so the next time you’re tempted to question whether or not we really need one more missionary to ______, consider that God may have ordained _________ to carry the gospel to that unreached people, and said missionary is a God-ordained integral factor in the supply chain that will make that happen.
