God has Changed! The Author Says So! | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

For the training of cross cultural missionaries, an important part of [the task] is to be reading about “new developments” and “breakthrough concepts” that can speed up the spread of the gospel. We want to be diligent to prepare these students to make use of the best practices that are possible. What is “man”s part” that we must carefully prepare our students to fulfill? What is “God”s part” we must clearly leave in His hands? We must know the difference.

 
In the spirit of keeping up to date, I picked up a recent book on Church Planting Movements…Stubborn Perseverance. The title drew me in as those two words DO SPEAK of a central component that we constantly put before our students. The book starts with two forwards by well-known authors in current missions thinking. Both heartily endorse the book as a carefully written case study of how a Church Planting Movement can be started. One of those writing the forward speaks of having already planted 20,000 churches! For someone like myself who took 14 years to see one church planted and another 6 to see it multiply, I was amazed. I do take heart that we read of Paul planting less than 20 churches in the course of his long missionary career, and that was in a context where Paul knew the language! Today, movements of 100, 500 and even 20,000 churches are spoken of. The listener is left to wonder… “How do you define the word “church”?” and “What message did “the followers” embrace?” “Did these ‘converts’ actually understand critical gospel issues?” But, I digress.
 
As I got into the book there were two immediate concerns that stood out. First, IT IS A NOVEL. It is not the “well researched account” of what happened in one people group. There is nothing verifiable within it. “This is the story of three couples who study the Scriptures and pursue a church-planting movement among the Sayang - a fictional Indonesian Muslim unreached people group.”[1] Secondly, the “three couples” are fictional, the book is an amalgam of renditions and made up “how-it-might possibly-go” types of conversations, and the people group is fictional. Yet this is meant to be “a study guide” for those looking to “see how” a CPM happens! There are too many subtle ideas woven into the story for me to address them all, but one stood out as reflective of the way serious thinking and discussing of current missions methods is not happening.
 
The idea I speak of is when the fictional leader, Faisal, is teaching the fictional disciple, Yusuf, about how to train small group leaders. Yusuf asks “But what if the small group leaders aren’t ready [i.e., they are not saved] to lead?” The reply is “We assure the group that we will prepare the leaders for the next story prior to each meeting, and answer any questions he or she may have at the time.” Then Yusuf asks, in disbelief, “Isn’t it risky for non-believers to study the Scriptures on their own?” “No,” Faisel replied, “The Holy Spirit is a very competent teacher. These groups will read the text twice and retell it twice. In a group process they will correct each other if some have misunderstood the text.” And, with the wave of a wand, 2,000 years of concerns about error, heresy, deviation, lack of clarity and the need for competent teachers are swept away. It seems God actually HAS changed. The author says so! No longer do gospel messengers need to worry about clarity, no longer is the Spirit of God’s anointing on His children needed. In today’s world, Paul would not need to write letters to clarify error; after all “the Holy Spirit is a very competent teacher”. God’s Spirit would not allow error to have crept into those baby churches Paul planted. Godly communicators aren’t needed, the author says so. Unsaved people are doing the work of gospel communication and it’s not a problem at all! “The Holy Spirit will straighten it out” is the reply of those who embrace today’s new methodology.

I have heard missionaries who embrace today’s method actually regret their previous language learning efforts, saying “I now understand that is God’s job. How arrogant of me to think that my ability to speak clearly was needed!” Do you find this hard to believe? The trend to put upon God what He has committed to us to do (i.e. make the gospel clearly understandable) is at the core of today’s “don’t-ask-hard-questions” approach to missions.
 
“Self correction” (the term for trusting the Holy Spirit to bring clarity out of poor communication) does away with previous concerns that we are misunderstood, or that the end product of unsaved people entrusted with gospel communication will miss the mark EVERY TIME! Do we have any examples of God using non-believers to communicate the gospel in scripture? No. But we don’t need to worry… “God is doing a new thing”. I have to wonder, in light of the “new way” that God is working, why does He need us to leave our homes in the first place? If God is communicating the gospel through unsaved people, dreams, visions, and first hand presentations by Jesus himself, why would anyone leave their home turf and run the risks involved in living incarnationally [1 Timothy:3:16]? Let’s just shout together, “Praise God, He is doing it!!!” and bask in the knowledge that if Jesus is making the gospel clear to people it will be PERFECTLY clear! Ahh…the brave new world of missions!

(Brad Buser, “God Has Changed! The Author Says So!”, The Radius Report, 5/4/17.