Zambia Hunt

A Word of Caution to my American Church Friends. We appreciate your heart for the gospel and desire to invest in missions worldwide. Please don’t lose that vision and burden born out of your commitment to a biblical theology of missions! However, your strategies to accomplish missions may hurt or defeat the goal of producing healthy, reproducing churches in Africa. Here are six strategies to beware of:

Directly supporting men not under the authority of a local sending church.

Many “free agents” in Africa attempt ministry without local church mandate or authority. Some view ministry as a means of income, but many sincere brethren want to serve the Lord, but mistakenly assume this can be done without local church accountability.

The Great Commission was given to the local church. The twelve, who became the elders of the first New Testament church in Jerusalem, were commissioned by Christ. They were commanded to remain until the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and then they would become His witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem and spreading to the end of the earth.

The church in Jerusalem heard of a gathering of new believers in the Greek city of Antioch. They sent their first missionary, Barnabas, to work with these new believers and teach them the doctrines of the faith. Barnabas called Saul out of Tarsus, where he had been ministering in obscurity, to join him in nurturing a healthy church in Antioch.

Every Christian is called to be a witness for Christ wherever they go and in every place they find themselves. They are to proclaim the gospel and disciple new believers in the knowledge of the truth. However, they must be commissioned by and accountable to a local church if a church is to be established.

Placing yourself in the position of providing primary accountability for the mission-planting church for a brother who is “foreign” to you.

The local church best manages this accountability by sending the brother to the ministry, providing oversight during the ministry, and ensuring that the ministry is being accomplished by the missonary.

Taking the responsibility of direct support to a cross-cultural originating missionary or church planter instead of channeling your support through healthy cross-cultural, church-to-church partnerships.

Supporting overseas pastors with monthly support short-circuits healthy church planting by taking the place and responsibility of the local assembly. Entire organizations exist in the west to directly support “national” missionaries, the weakness in this approach is that the relationship is primarily between the foreign organization and the man, minimizing the connection to the local sending church, or ignoring that completely. Direct missionary support that bypasses the accountability of the sending church is often counter-productive to seeing healthy reproducing churches established.

Buying into pop-missions culture and philosophy suggests there is a quick methodology for raising leaders on the field and growing healthy, reproducing churches.

There have been many of these ideas that have come and gone in the past 50 years. Crusades where foreigners come to preach the gospel, and then leave without any ability for significant follow up. The “house church” movement, the “Short-cycle Church Planting” movement, or the “Person of Peace” ideology are a few examples.

Assuming that you no longer need to prepare your best, sacrifice, and send them out from your local church to the fields around the world, the fields are white unto harvest. 

A cultural sense of capitalism must not drive church-planting Missions, where mission strategy is driven by economic considerations instead of obedience. Yes, it costs more to send your church member to the field than it might cost to partner with a cross-cultural church for planting, but you are called to prepare servants and send them from your local congregation.

Falling for the idea that engaging in assorted Christian social projects in a foreign country is the same as doing missions.

Community social projects may flow out of gospel missions, but they are not the same thing as gospel missions.Our focus in missions must be on gospel proclamation and prayer as central to the mission of God while not ignoring physical and social needs. A lack of gospel integration in any efforts to meet physical and social needs renders that ministry no different than what is performed by governments and other NGOs. Missionary friend, you may find yourself involved in numerous works of compassion, but if you do not make gospel proclamation central in those works, you are not doing the mission God sent you to do! Luke 4:42-43 Early the following day, Jesus went out to an isolated place. The crowds searched everywhere for him, and when they finally found him, they begged him not to leave them. But he replied, “I must preach the Good News of the Kingdom of God in other towns, too, because that is why I was sent.