World Mission of the Church - Lesson 15

Dr. Timothy Tennent
World Mission of the Church
wm601-15
Becoming a Missionary (Part 1)
Lesson Transcript

[00:00:01] Today, missionaries fall into a number of categories. I want to summarize them briefly to give you some feel for the missionary force. The two we've been talking most about would be in the first two categories that we've discussed in the class a lot long term regular missionaries, long term pioneer missionaries. Long term regular mean somebody working cross cultural with a viable church, helping them in discipleship or training of their own national missionary that they're sending out. There's a lot of legitimate reasons to do regular missionary work. I think not enough is done with Pioneer, but I think that is not meant to discredit regular missionary work. But this is where you're working with an existing church in a cross-cultural context. Long term pioneer missionary is someone who is doing direct work where the church is not yet viable or maybe even no known Christians. So this is when you're under the 5%, 50,000 per million situation in a particular people group, we would define as a pioneer missionary. And that could be a whole range of activities. You could be maybe starting a school because you can't plan a church. You could be doing other kinds of activities. They can be medical work. We're not necessarily defining missions here as a particular kinds of direct gospel church planning necessarily. It can be anything that is being done in name of Christ to promote the gospel in the long term and whatever that may be. God has done great things through people in various capacities. So those are all regular and pioneer missionaries. We discuss that a lot. So I think that's pretty much on the table. The third one we have not discussed is what's called an NRM, a non resident missionary. Now this is a situation which arises sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of strategy. 

[00:02:06] This is a person that is not physically resident in the primary location of that people group. You will say you have a heart for Han Chinese, but you don't live in China among the Han Chinese, but you are working among Han Chinese in New York City. Your ministry is totally to Chinese and many Chinese university students, maybe Chinese immigrant, newly arrived immigrants, whatever, but that is a nonresident missionary. So that would be a maybe a strategic reason or a well, let me give examples of strategic or necessity reasons. When Elizabeth Elliott and her husband and the others targeted the people group the Ark, as it is then known, the was in Latin America. They want to be resident missionaries. They had the initial contact with them, as you know, in the disaster. It was in Ecuador. They were all five men were killed at that point. It was not a strategic. It was a necessity that they not not send a church planning team among the outcome because the only comic of it had to result in this horrible disaster and tragedy of the deaths of these young men. So what did they do? They did what now is done very commonly around the world. They develop a nonresident missionary approach because every culture in the world, without exception. Well, since every every people group, every country in the world without exception, has multiple peoples in their groups that are displaced. And it would not apply to every unreachable group. But most all people groups have displaced people from that group. The United States alone, for example, is the only country in the world that has people from every other country living in it. Every country you learned in your test this week has at least one person in this country. 

[00:04:11] So that's true all over the world in some maybe more general sense that you have a lot of displaced people. So Elizabeth Elliott went and found some displaced alpacas that did live in the city. Get to know them, got to know their language for outside of that context. And then they were the ones that introduced them back into this culture. They play in the church. And she eventually baptized the very man who had speared her husband to death. That's all told in the wonderful story called Get Through Gates of Splendor. If you've not read that biography, it's a powerful biography by Elizabeth Elliott, and she tells about her experience living there with them as a resident missionary in my native, my kinsman. So these stories are very important because what we call that person, by the way, is a cultural sponsor. That's what it's technically called in mission circles. So you get to know somebody outside who becomes your sponsor that helps introduce you to the people safely and with with some help. I have another friend who this would be example of the necessity thing where he was in northwest China, working among a muslim group in northwest China. He was there for many years. He has five children, all of whom were born in China, raised in China, fluent in Chinese, had a quite long experience there. But eventually the government revoked his visa and he was told he had to get out of China immediately. He relocated to a part of Europe where many of these people have immigrated. And he still works for the same people group that he always did. But now he's in Austria rather than in China. But he's actually found that the people there have been displaced. 

[00:05:57] And this is true, by the way, around the world. The displaced people are often more receptive to the gospel than when you're in their original context. So, for example, if you had a heart for Turkish peoples, it's actually more likely that a Turk respond to Christ who lives in America or Canada than one who lives in Turkey. And so it can be a strategic thing to focus on Turks, one of the ministers, there's a whole mission board in this book that focuses on reaching Sikhs in Canada. And this is a very powerful, legitimate missionary activity in Canada. There are hundreds of thousands of Sikhs who have migrated to the North America, and many of them live in certain parts of Canada. And they found that, A, they're receptive to the gospel and B, they're willing to go back to North India. And right now, we can't send missionaries to work up in the Punjab because it's a it's a restricted area. So the best way to send people back to the Punjab is let them go back to their own people. And there's all kinds of cultural reasons why it's hard to break into the Punjabis. We actually have a really dynamic church prime minister and the put it in the Punjab from our ministry and our church planners, you know, where the turbans, the big beards, you know, the they have the calm and the, you know, the not the sword, the whole thing. I mean, and that's because they are Sikhs and they just hold on to their culture and they are preaching the gospel. It's very powerful to see these Sikhs, you know, worse than the Lord in these churches. But so that's a nonresident missionary. Work of Bible translators will often be working in a 15 year project to translate a Bible in a particular culture and seven years into the project. 

[00:07:43] They get kicked out and they can't return or they don't abandon the project. They just simply fly those people in that country out of the country for language work and help them with consult with them. They fly them back and they go back and forth and they work. They finish the translation and out of country. That's how English was done. Tyndale was unable to do English translation in England. It had to be smuggled in from the continent. So this is a very normal procedure. From the very beginning of Bible translation, you often have translations done outside the country. Same with China, same with Korea. First Korean Bibles and outside of Korea. First Chinese was outside of China. Many, many major language breakthroughs English, Korean, China, three kind of mine were done as non resident missionary work. So this is an important strategic as well as in some case necessity for working outside their people group. Another story had a young couple come to me when I was at Taco Falls College actually years ago who had a deep and obvious call and burden to work with Chinese. They were already learning the Chinese language. They're already learning all this about China and all the rest. And he was a big strapping redhead. So I was thinking, wow, you know, that's a hard push. Is he going to die his hair black like Hudson? Tighter, you know, But he was delicately committed to Chinese. Well, when he went through this process with the mission board, going through the the whole the interviews and so forth, one of the requirements of the board, he went, where was they get a physical, which does happen in some boards require that someone got a physical and discovered the wife had a very serious medical condition that would prevent them from living overseas, living in China safely. 

[00:09:35] So they were crushed. Well, after getting over that, they found out that within 15 minutes of their house. There were over 15,000 Chinese living either a support family or as students at the University of Georgia. And there there's not a single person working explicitly with Chinese who had come to the University of Georgia. And the families that were part of that family, they were all Chinese speaking, most of them. I mean, they're all Chinese speaking, but many do not know English in the extended families. And he, to this day, works among Chinese in Athens, Georgia. He's a nonresident missionary and he's been able fulfill his calling without leaving his hometown in his case. And he's literally from that town. So there are strategic ways that people have worked because of necessity or otherwise to target people very effectively. And there's a whole organization in this book dedicated just to international students, ISI International Students Inc.. That organization has done tremendous work in connecting believers with international students who come to the USA and other places to study. And it's a great ministry. Yes. Well, I think the problem is, is more structural. I mean, I think that's why we have this class and we have to help pastors because it comes down really to our leadership to understand missionary strategy and priorities, to see the value of it and to see the importance of it. Now, ISI has hundreds of missionaries that are fully supported that do a wonderful work. They're able to raise their support in many of the larger churches do invest both in work over there as well as cross-cultural work here. If you're, for example, have a heart for Islam. There are many, many churches in Detroit where there's so many Muslims that have very great ministries, and they see that as a real important missionary endeavor. 

[00:11:47] But I would say many churches don't have that mentality. So you have to you know, it's part of the job of churches to help train our people to think about the strategy of all of this. But, yeah, it is is a problem. The other category is a synchronous resident missionary. And these are, I think, well, you've already had one with you this week, and that is Roland Varner is a great example of it and for that matter myself as well. We're both examples of this. Both Dr. Varner and myself have a long term ministry in a particular place, in his case, Sudan, my case, northern India, where we have long term commitments and involvements and ministries. But it is not something that we're either able to, because of these problems or because of time and other commitments To be there full time is not really just a short term missions thing. It's his own ministry. He's involved in this. He has a ministry in the Sudan. He's doing translation work and you've heard some of the things he's involved in and there are quite a growing number of people that are involved in some kind of asynchronous work is particularly helpful because if you have Indigenous people on the field, it actually helps empower them to do the ministry. So one of the ministries I oversee a ministry that is a translation ministry in North India that translates various things into Hindi and also other other through the languages in North India. I'm in charge of it. I direct all of the decisions that are made and what we translate what we don't. I go there regularly, oversee our staff that are involved in the translation work, but that's happily going on even now as I speak, I'm working here and so it's very helpful. 

[00:13:39] Email has made this also really helpful. I get emails every week from India, people saying, This war that's happening, what do we do about this or that? And I can tell them what I think or I don't know, or give them some decision or whatever. We can maintain a ministry even though we're not always able to be there all the time. And for at least this stage in my life, the Lord has told me this is exactly where He wants me. But this is something that is a category that has growing and is something that is only possible because of modern air travel, really, and email that makes some of this more viable. The fifth category is tent makers already mentioned that this would be people who are professionals, who are self-supporting in a particular field that support themselves around the world. And we shouldn't underestimate how important that is today in the global missionary work, especially important because to make it happen, sometimes out of choice, sometimes out of necessity or strategy, necessity because there are places like China that don't permit any regular or pioneer or otherwise missionaries. So you simply cannot go out as a church planning evangelist type person. You can't do it. There are dozens of countries in the world that politically have closed the door to every people group within them. Now, there are other people groups that are unreached where there are no political reasons. You get to go to Senegal and walk in the airport with a sign on your neck says, I'm here to plant churches. You don't need a visa for an American to go to Senegal. You can just go with American passport and walk right in and plant churches. But other places like China, you simply cannot do that. 

[00:15:27] India, you cannot get a visa to do missionary work since 1975. So we're in a different situation where we need to use people and to take places. And so it's a necessity, but also it can be strategy. There are people who have worked within the university systems or in the high tech systems or electrification is a big thing. Even India has signed contracts around the world for people to help them electrify all of India, and that brings in all kinds of corporations. And there are Christians who work in those organizations and they're able to. Who meet and share the gossip within that group. So there are a lot of advantages to tent makers and it's something that's out there. And of course, there are the short term missionaries that we've already spent time with discussing last time, the short term missionaries. In the Walker saga, A PDA are defined as people that are between six months and one term. So that's very, very different than what we've talked about in this class for the two week trips short term. So when you go to the encyclopedia and you want to find out how many people are going on short term trips for two weeks, we have no idea. That data is not yet available. But this is represents tens of thousands of people that are doing this. And so it's a huge thing. We don't even know how big. But we saw from this class easily Number two, this class has participated in it. And therefore it's something we have to rise is a now a full category of the missionary force. And some of that is smart short term work. So that is not. But we should not discount this smart short term work is being done very effectively to promote the Great Commission and to further church planting work around the world. 

[00:17:20] Okay. Questions or comments about some of the categories of missionaries that are out there and how we might fit into that. Yes. The garden to the kitchen is. Oh, that's a good point. Most hit makers that are at least those that are wise will be sent up by a church and will go also collect support for prayer and encouragement along the way. People there are accountable to sometimes making jobs or such that you can be supported to live overseas, but you wouldn't be able to, for example, have a pension program. So when I went to Nigeria, I had a church in Georgia that said to me, We want to pay your pension while you're in Nigeria. And therefore, that was like a ministry, even though I was a, you know, in a sense getting paid to live, it wasn't pay for that. Ironically, though, that church called me up a week before I left and said, We're having a budget cut and you've been cut out of our budget. So I never had a pension, but it was okay. I didn't mind because I'm going to have it anyway. And that's a pretty good plan. But and that's about the intervening period. But that, you know, sometimes working that way or some churches will say, we will praise God that you're supported, but we will help your children go to a school. That's a school in an issue. They pay for children's schooling or some will pay for your trips back home. All kinds of things like that. And so a lot of support does flow to tent makers and they can still call themselves tent makers because of other kinds of considerations. One of the problems that we've found is kids coming home on furlough who didn't have like the latest Reebok shoes. 

[00:19:09] And of course, the kids didn't know, but they would get back home and feel embarrassed. It was just like, you know, kids because they don't understand, you know, it's hard to tell a child, well, come on now, we're missionaries, you know, And they come back home and they had spent a year in the school system. And so some churches have when their kids got home, they gave them, you know, some these $60 shoes that blink because that's what kids where I don't know, things like that, I don't know. There's all kinds of ways that churches have been able to help people. And I'm looking for my blinking Reeboks someday. But it hasn't come back from Indian wear, the latest Reebok, whatever. Okay. I think that's all we have time for. One more question. If I heard another more missionaries long term coming off the field that are going. Globally. Globally. There's no question the number of long term missionaries is increasing globally. In North America, the ratio is in decline. There are far fewer missionaries going out long term than have are coming back. And that's, of course, a problem for our overall picture of what we're doing long term. Okay. We will come back tomorrow for our last day together.