On the playing field of global ministry, the global church is wide open

A few years back, some friends and I watched part of a high school football game at a crowded stadium. We were only there for a few minutes but one play in particular stood out. The offense was backed up against their own goal line and were having a hard time moving the ball forward. As they prepared for the next play, one of the wide receivers ran towards the sideline as though he was going to leave the field, but he didn't. He waited by the edge of the field where some of the coaching staff stood near him, making it look as though he was no longer in the game.

As soon as the ball was snapped, he started sprinting downfield, waving frantically to get the attention of the quarterback. The defense never saw him. He was so wide open that all the quarterback had to do was lob the ball in his general direction and he could have jogged all the way to the end zone for an easy touchdown.

But the quarterback never saw him.

Whether he was too preoccupied with the defense coming against him, or had his attention confined only to what he was expecting and had planned for according to the play he had called is unknown. What is known is that because the quarterback did not step back, see the big picture and change his plans accordingly, he failed to see an unexpected opportunity and so he missed a chance to blow the game wide open.

Making the most of unexpected opportunities

God is raising up the global church, calling people to Himself from language groups all over the world that were unreached as little as a few months ago. We have an opportunity to serve the global church, by training and equipping them to grow in discipleship.

Making the most of this opportunity for the advance of the Kingdom of God requires three things:

• Trusting the global church
  
• Freedom-promoting missiology
  
• Staying current with a changing world

Trusting the global church

An unfortunate assumption: Effective cross-cultural ministry depends on our direct involvement & continued oversight.

The inevitable result: The global church is crippled and is not able to learn reliance on the Holy Spirit and dependence on the Word of God without the mediation of the missionary.

Although there are wonderful examples to the contrary, the last 200 years of missions have often displayed a disappointing lack of trust in the global church. There is often a lack of an exit strategy or a plan beyond remaining indefinitely to "serve" the young congregation. By contrast, the Biblical model is more along the lines of leaving the church before they feel they are ready, so that they learn to rely on God and on His Word instead of the missionary.

When [the believers in Ephesus] asked him to stay for a longer period, he declined. But on taking leave of them he said, “I will return to you if God wills,” and he set sail from Ephesus. –Acts 19:20-21

Paul eventually did return and stayed with them longer and when the time came for him to leave (though they still did not want him to), Paul committed them to God and His Word so they would be able to truly grow and flourish, moreso than if he stayed with them:

“And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” –Acts 20:32 [ESV]

Paul's approach requires a willingness to take the risk of trusting the global church, and ultimately trusting that God truly is Sovereign and will accomplish His purpose in the church. Paul knew what it was like to be disappointed at the lack of growth and rapid slide into error of some of his congregations after leaving them (e.g. Galatia and Corinth, to name two.) But he also knew that the alternative was worse – creating a church that was dependent on him and anemic in its faith because it had never been tested or had the opportunity to grow and learn from its mistakes.

Paul's context for ministry is not the same as today (for instance, he likely did not have language learning considerations to deal with due to a common language in use in the Roman Empire) so a direct comparison may not be possible. But at the conceptual level, it is notable that his missiological strategy assumed that he was not going to be in any one place for extended periods of time and because of it, he was well-positioned to avoid many of the dependency-related and lack of growth problems that can plague strategies that adopt (or default to) an “open-ended presence” approach.

And he stayed a year and six months [in Corinth], teaching the word of God among them. –Acts 18:11

Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. –Acts 20:31

There may be situations where longer periods of time are necessary (e.g. resistant people groups, some translation projects, etc.), but it seems that the Biblical model is specifically designed to not create missionary-dependent congregations (or, by extension, ministry projects). It also makes it so that the Good News gets spread farther, to more people groups, in less time.

What if the default assumption for cross-cultural ministry was that it was for a shorter duration of time, in more places, with follow-up visits as needed, instead of necessarily assuming that "real" missions is spending dozens of years in the same place?

Freedom-promoting missiology

An unfortunate assumption: God gave us our Intellectual Property to advance the business of our own mission.

The inevitable result: Restrictions of Intellectual Property Rights and copyright law are allowed to hinder sacrificial partnership and the equipping of the global church for ministry.

Paul demonstrated what it means to care more about the advance of the Kingdom than that the Kingdom be advanced with our own name in the footnote:

Those others do not have pure motives as they preach about Christ. They preach with selfish ambition, not sincerely, intending to make my chains more painful to me. But that doesn’t matter. Whether their motives are false or genuine, the message about Christ is being preached either way, so I rejoice. And I will continue to rejoice. –Philippians 1:17-18 [NLT]

Paul knew he had the right to make his living from the preaching of the Word:

Do we not have the right to eat and drink?... Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk? Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? –1 Corinthians 9:4,7-12a [ESV]

But Paul also knew that the advantage of giving the Gospel away for free were so significant that no price was too high to make it happen:

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ... What then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. –1 Corinthians 9:12b,18

What would happen if every church, mission organization and person adopted this model? What if we all assumed that God gave us our Intellectual Property to advance His Kingdom at all costs, even if someone else got the credit for it?

Staying current with a changing world

An unfortunate assumption: The way we've always done things will continue to be as effective on into the future as it was in the past.

The inevitable result: Missed opportunities to advance the Kingdom in new ways, to a new generation, in new people groups.

Like the quarterback that failed to see the big picture and recognize an opportunity that was outside of the play he had called, it is easy to get stuck in the rut of "we've never done it that way before." This can lead to unfortunate situations where one can wind up on the wrong side of a new opportunity.

The Internet and mobile phone technology may be the greatest opportunities for the advance of the church in recent history. But because every device on the Internet is a copy machine (i.e. making verbatim copies of any digital content, instantaneously), it is easy to see the very technology that is the road into the future of ministry as a threat to the preservation of a business model dependent on leveraging copyrights for further ministry. If anyone can give copies of the ministry content to others for free (and as soon as the ministry content is on the web, they can), then the owner of the content has a decision to make: they can either promote and facilitate the free distribution of the discipleship content (and, we would encourage, with the freedom to translate and adapt it for effective use in any language and culture), or they will find themselves on the other side of the opportunity, trying to find ways to limit the free distribution of the ministry materials.

This is not an indictment of any ministry or person who chooses to sell their discipleship resources to make their living. Doing so is, as mentioned above, a Biblical model and is not being criticized. The point here is that:

1. Even the secular world is finding that "Free" (or possibly, "Feels like free") is the inevitable price of an online world.
   
2. The global church is not economically able to pay the "wages" of workers in relatively more affluent cultures.

Being able to respond well to a changing context for global ministry calls for thinking outside the box (which, as a colleague pointed out, requires not having the "box" in the same room while it is being thought outside of) and developing strategies that make the most of the opportunities before the global church – even if it requires significantly altering the way ministry is done.

An open door

The opportunities before us today for the advance of the Kingdom of God are significant. From the rise of the global church to the free & instantaneous electronic distribution of discipleship resources over the Internet to the 4 billion mobile phones in use in the world, there is an open door for ministry before us. By trusting the global church (and that God is Sovereign in His church), adopting freedom-promoting missiological strategies and being purposeful about making the most of the changes occurring in the world today, we put ourselves in the best possible position to advance the Kingdom of God around the world.