Three Hills Worth Dying on in Missions

At a [2019] missions conference in California, the pastoral staff were explaining some difficulties they were having within the missions department. Recently they had become convinced that their overseas church planters (missionaries) needed to be held to some common standards regarding language fluency and better definitions for what qualified as a N.T. church. Unfortunately, many of their missionaries had been overseas for quite some years and it was turning into a herculean task to convince them, and some in the church, that while in the short-term these standards would be challenging, in the long-term, for the sake of the church, it would be worth it.

Stories like this are quite common. As a growing number of churches want to know more details about what their missionaries are doing overseas, what methods they are using, and how they measure “success”, the accountability will ratchet up. The pushback to this can be quite strong though….I am reminded on a regular basis that some of the things we openly question, and standards that we will advocate strongly for, put us in a slim minority these days. There is an unquestioned orthodoxy in missions today and woe to the one who steps out and questions it. The stories are too many, the movements are too large, and, dare I say it, the interests are too vested for it to be called into question.

But, there still remain hills worth “dying on” in the world of missions. Not because they are my home church in San Diego’s hills or Radius International hills, but because they are Biblical hills. Surely there are principles that we can pull from scripture, not stories, that are worth mandating for our mission’s department, our missionaries, and ourselves as we seek to see the gospel spread to every people group on earth. Let me propose three.

• Men do not naturally come to a clear understanding of the gospel.  In Acts:8:30And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?
See All... we read: “So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?”  And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.” (emphasis mine). No one naturally seeks God, or comes to gospel clarity, without a working of the Holy Spirit through the clear teaching of scripture. Syncretism is real (the mixing of the previous belief system with the introduced one) and dangerous. The missionary or missions committee who believes that gospel truth will naturally bubble to the surface is not dealing in reality. Truth must be painstakingly taught for it to have a chance to take root. Paul himself asks for prayer from the Colossian church that “I may make the message (gospel) clear”. (Col:4:4That I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak.
See All...) If Paul with his full fluency in the languages he taught, his worldview knowledge of Greek, Roman and Jewish culture, and his incredible gifting was concerned that he might not make the gospel clear, how much more should we?

• Good Ecclesiology is critical.  I am constantly mystified how poorly thought-out quips or out-of-context scripture tend to sneak out when some speak of the church. Examples of this would be “Where two or three are gathered in my name there am I among them” Matthew:18:20For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
See All... (a common “proof text” for the smallest element of a church). Another is “God didn’t call us to plant churches but to make disciples” Matthew:28:19Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
See All... (the implication being that churches will spontaneously come into being if we just make disciples). Or the new one “The church is so Western” (this is code for ‘the church overseas should look nothing like your home church’).  But upon closer examination, these statements fail the burden of proof. Matthew 18:20 was referring to church discipline, not as a model for church structure. Those who read only Matthew:28:19Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
See All... and stop there miss HOW disciples are made, and part of that teaching is how they are to gather as churches. There ARE objective standards of a strong N.T. church. Those are neither Western, Eastern or belonging to any particular culture. The church is the city of the living God, the golden candlestick, the inheritance, the bride of Christ. Let’s know her and speak of her in a way that honors her husband.

• Discipleship takes time. If there is one dominant theme to the stories that are so common in missions today it is…. speed. Speed at which the gospel is understood, speed in disciples being made and speed in those disciples spreading out to make their own disciples. Can disciples of Jesus Christ be made in quick bursts, or is it inherently a longer-term task? Jesus spent 3 years with his disciples; Paul also 3 years with the Ephesian church elders. Then there are Silas and Timothy. I often think of the conversations on ships, walking the trail, in jail, or time watching Paul teach that each of these two men was privileged to see. And remember in all of this Paul did not have to learn Silas and Timothy’s language or the Ephesian language. Jesus had 30 years of growing up in Jewish culture and using the local language before he began his 3 years of ministry. For the modern-day gospel messengers, those are luxuries they do not have. Speed, if the N.T. serves as our model, is antithetical to discipleship.

There are hills worth dying on in the world of missions. Those hills though will rarely be discovered if we rely on numbers, stories or experience to guide us. We will only end up with emotions and pragmatism as our guide. We must allow the infallible guide, the Word of truth, to inform our theology, which will inform our missiology, which will inform our methodology.

(Brooks Buser, "Three Hills Worth Dying on in Missions,” Radius International Newsletter, 3/7/19).