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World Mission of the Church - Lesson 13

Major Issues in the Context of Missions

It’s helpful to summarize what you need to know as a pastor to communicate to people about missions and what the pathway is to getting prepared to serve as a missionary. Every continent should be a sending and receiving continent. Short term missions is the best thing and worse thing that has happened to the local church.

Previous to the beginning of the audio, there was a video shown that is not available to us. It was an account of the breakthrough of the gospel into a culture.

Timothy Tennent
World Mission of the Church
Lesson 13
Watching Now
Major Issues in the Context of Missions

I. The Rise of the Non-Western Church

II. Urban Context of Missions

III. Access and Viability Criteria

IV. Short Term Missions

A. Advantages of short term missions trips

B. Six tough questions

1. What is the goal or motivation for short-term missions?

2. What is the cost of short-term missions?

3. Where are we sending our young people?

4. What is the witness of short-term missionaries?

5. What is the impact on field resources and personnel?

6. What is the impact of short-term missions on long-term missions?


Lessons
About
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Transcript
  • For people who are pastors or will serve as pastors, this course will expose you to what you need to know about missions to be effective in the local church. This is also a foundational course for people who are preparing for missionary service by considering topics dealing with practical and theological aspects of missions. For everyone, regardless of your vocation, this course will challenge you to become a world Christian. (Note: It is helpful to know that a pericope [pair – ik – o – pay] is a section of scripture containing a teaching or describing an event.) 

  • Mission is the reconciling work of God in the world. Missions is the obedient, Spirit-led strategy and implementation of plans to fulfill God's mission in the world. The basis of the Torah is not untethered from a global heart of God for the nations of the world.  Even in the Writings and the Prophets, the covenant is being celebrated in the context of the nations of the world, including ramifications of both blessing and cursing.

  • Mission is the reconciling work of God in the world. Missions is the obedient, Spirit-led strategy and implementation of plans to fulfill God's mission in the world. The basis of the Torah is not untethered from a global heart of God for the nations of the world.  Even in the Writings and the Prophets, the covenant is being celebrated in the context of the nations of the world, including ramifications of both blessing and cursing.

  • As the early Christians experience missiological breakthroughs, they will cite the Old Testament because they see these events as a fulfillment of what had already been written. The Abrahamic covenant is cited to demonstrate how God is using the Messiah to bless the nations. The theology of Great Commission found in culminating texts in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and reinforced in Acts 1:8. Jesus repeated the Great Commission to his disciples in different ways and at various times. Matthew’s account begins by saying that Jesus is giving authority by the Father for the extension of His kingdom. God has given us a mandate to present the Gospel publicly to the world, not just to separate into a cultic community. The only main verb in the passage is, “make disciples.” God’s command is to disciple all people groups, not just people in each country.

  • As the early Christians experience missiological breakthroughs, they will cite the Old Testament because they see these events as a fulfillment of what had already been written. The Abrahamic covenant is cited to demonstrate how God is using the Messiah to bless the nations. The theology of Great Commission found in culminating texts in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and reinforced in Acts 1:8. Jesus repeated the Great Commission to his disciples in different ways and at various times. Matthew’s account begins by saying that Jesus is giving authority by the Father for the extension of His kingdom. God has given us a mandate to present the Gospel publicly to the world, not just to separate into a cultic community. The only main verb in the passage is, “make disciples.” God’s command is to disciple all people groups, not just people in each country.

  • The verses that contain Mark's version of the Great Commission first appear in later copies, but there are good reasons to treat these verses as part of the inspired text of the Gospel of Mark. In Mark, the proclamation is to be made to all creation. The emphasis in Mark is preaching. The emphasis in Luke is witnessing. The emphasis in John is sending.

  • Acts 11:20 describes the first time the Gospel is intentionally preached in a cross-cultural situation. A church was planted in Antioch and Saul and Barnabas discipled believers there for a year. The Antioch church sends them out, and they come back and report to them what happened. Both local evangelism to your own people group and cross cultural evangelism are important. 

  • There have been changes in missions between 1792 and the present. Many people credit William Carey with beginning the modern missions movement. The Moravians were taking the Gospel to places all over the world, even before Carey began his ministry. The eras overlap because it takes a while for new ideas to catch on. A key figure in Beachhead Missions is William Carey. In Carey’s book, “An Inquiry,” he challenges the inaction of the church in cross-cultural missions. He says God has given to the Church, the responsibility of spreading the Gospel   to other parts of the world, summarizes missions history, gives anthropological data and discusses practical issues people give for not going. Ultimately, people need to be open to the call of the Holy Spirit and willing to respond to the challenge. Carey’s motto is, “Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.” He and Judson wanted to plant churches in a new country. 

  • Hudson Taylor went to China as a first era missionary. Taylor travels inland and pushes the limits of what the missions organizations were willing to do. Frontier missions focused on the interior areas of countries, used a faith missions model for organization and funding, and recruited lay people, including students and women. Contextualization is preaching the Gospel in a way that is sensitive to the recipient.

  • The close of the second era, Beachhead Missions, came in 1974 when Ralph Winter gave his address at the Lausanne Conference on world evangelism. As a result, people began looking at missions in terms of people groups rather than geographic areas. The fourth era of missions emphasizes “by whom” the Gospel is presented. Lausanne II and the Global Consultation on World Evangelization took place in 1989.

  • In this lesson, you will learn that the “ten forty window” is one of the places where there is a concentration of unreached people groups. A window is a way to recognize the big picture while realizing that every local context is unique. The main focus is to look at each of the five mega-spheres and identify what is unique about each one.
  • The “ten forty window” is one of the places where there is a concentration of unreached people groups. A window is a way to recognize the big picture while realizing that every local context is unique. The main focus is to look at each of the five mega-spheres and identify what is unique about each one.

  • It’s helpful to summarize what you need to know as a pastor to communicate to people about missions and what the pathway is to getting prepared to serve as a missionary. Every continent should be a sending and receiving continent. Short term missions is the best thing and worse thing that has happened to the local church.

    Previous to the beginning of the audio, there was a video shown that is not available to us. It was an account of the breakthrough of the gospel into a culture.

  • By studying this lesson, you'll gain insights into the top ten key aspects of 21st-century missions, including their holistic approach, indigenous leadership, partnerships, technology, urbanization, short-term missions, Global South's influence, contextualization, business as mission, and diaspora focus.
  • Some mission boards are associated with a denomination and some are independent. Most missions organizations belong either to the IFMA (Interdenominational Faith Missions Association) or EFMA (Evangelical Foreign Missions Agency). Fundamentalist missions organizations each have a specific focus. The steps you go through before you go to the mission field are designed to help you get good training and build a team that will support you. Churches are tending to provide a larger percentage of support for fewer missionaries. Terms are usually 3-4 years at a time. Your first term is usually spent just learning the language and culture. Missionaries spend time between terms connecting with people and preparing to return. People often are more receptive to the Gospel when they are living in a culture other than their native culture. Air travel and email have made asynchronous relationships possible. People with professional training have access to some countries that won't allow people to come in as missionaries.

  • As you consider becoming a missionary, it is helpful to recognize areas in the world where the population predominantly identifies with another religion. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism are popular with large population groups in the 10-40 window. There are also large immigrant populations in locations throughout the US.

    The map referred to in the lecture with the world religions color coded is not available to us.

  • Hinduism is practiced by a large percentage of the people in India. It also has an impact on the culture and politics of India. Buddhism teaches that there is one path to spiritual enlightenment, as opposed to Hinduism that teaches that there are many. 

  • Understanding world religions affects our strategy and the way we do our ministry around the world. 

    Most people who need a gospel presentation are members of another world religion (e.g., Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism). We study other religions so we know the context of belief of that people group. Identification vs. extractionist model. By understanding the teachings of different religions, you can explain the gospel in terms they can understand. Muslims agree on many parts of the Old Testament but don't believe in the Trinity or that Jesus is God. Religions in China and Japan emphasize sincerity, orderliness and personal and public conduct based on precedent. 

     

Recognizing the responsibility of all Christians to complete Christ’s commission, this course gives an overview of the strategic and historical progress of worldwide missions today. The ways in which a local congregation can fulfill its worldwide biblical mandate are also considered.

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Dr. Timothy Tennent
World Mission of the Church
WM601-13
Major Issues in the Context of Missions
Lesson Transcript

We're going to continue this rather quick examination of the top ten things just to highlight a few things that don't appear in the article, perhaps, and to also make sure this is on the table in our classroom discussion. I think it's important that we look at these things. And number five, I do want to say a number of things that are not in the article by way of background, as well as some more details about what I mean by this. And actually the article, I believe it's this point where I just simply give the different windows of the world. But let me say more about that. People today going into missions have access to and are more inclined to think about the peoples that they're going to. More so than ever before. We have more data available today than ever before on the peoples of the world. If you have not familiar with the field of ethnography, ethnography is essentially a field of the social sciences which studies the peoples of the world, and it's something that is shared by Christians and non-Christians alike. There's just a lot of really good information available on peoples around the world. One of the criticisms 19th century is that the missionaries were ethnocentric, meaning that they thought their own culture was superior to all other cultures. Well, one of the points that I'm and Sonny makes is that, okay, there's no doubt you can find hundreds of references in 19th century missionary writing, which clearly points out that the Western missionaries typically believed their culture was superior. Now there's two side, two aspects of that which seem to be brought out.

[00:02:00] One, you cannot indict the missionary community for that unless you found that that was particularly true of missionaries, but not true of Western Europeans in general in the 19th century. So one of the facts is that the Western Europeans 19th century did believe that their culture was superior and the missionaries came out of that background. So therefore you can't fully condemn the missionaries for that without appreciating this is part of what it meant to be a Western European at that time period. So I think that that needs to be said. But the other part of it is I think there has been a bit of a post-modern kind of influence, which tends to say that all cultures are equal and there is no place for criticism of another culture. That's certainly, I think will be more likely present in your generation than certainly in the last several generations. But again, here we have to be careful because on one hand, that's true in the sense that there's a huge amount of every culture which would be neutral to the gospel, how people dress, how they eat, the way they speak their language and so forth. There's no reason why we should tell somebody or insist that English is a better language of discourse than Hindi, for example, or whatever language and all that. I think we need to accept that. And I think that that's fairly well accepted by your generation. What we have to be careful as is slipping into a postmodern view which would essentially mineralized every cultural distinctiveness to the point where we would say that no culture has anything to share or to help or not. No culture is can be criticized. There are many, many things and cultures that the gospel stands over against and would rebuke and then call in our own culture.

[00:04:00] And therefore it's highly, highly romanticized view of culture to somehow think that the cultures out there that there are these wonderful, pristine cultures that don't need the rebuke of the gospel any more than ours does. So therefore, we do go into cultures both with the wonderful good news of God's affirmation of culture. The incarnation happened in culture. That's the whole beauty of the Incarnation is that God didn't just become a man kind of in a generalized way, but God became a particular man. That actually is a very powerful point theologically, that the Incarnation represents God clothing himself in a particular culture, a particular language, to give people Christ really a certain kinds of foods, and on and on and on. He spoke certain languages that were prevalent in his day. Jesus probably trilingual, spoke Greek, Hebrew and in our mark. But there were other things he didn't know. He didn't speak languages, other languages and so forth. So that particularity is really powerful because it shows the fact that God does affirm culture. And yet there are many things about his culture as well as ours that needed the gospel. Rebuke. William Carey For example, when he went to India, he discovered the practice. Well, early on he found a young boy that was being attacked and drug into the town center, and they held him down and they poured molten lead in this young boy's ears. And the young man was immediately made deaf forever. He inquired as to why they did this to this young man, and they told them that this young man was not a Brahmin, he was a shoe drop. And what that means is, is the Brahmins were the high caste. The shooter is the low caste. And he had overheard a Brahmin reading the Vedas, their scriptures, and because he had overheard that he must be punished.

[00:06:01] So essentially it's like saying because he heard the word of God. I mean their, their view of the word of God, then he should be killed or made deaf. This was a practice that the Gospel would speak out against. There are many, many examples of the way cultures treat women that need to be rebuked. There are examples, again in India where one of the examples of this would be the practice of something which continues to this day in India illegally. I don't think I've ever had a summer in India where at least once while I'm there in the papers, it's not reported that Sethi occurred. Sethi is where a woman must be cremated with her husband when he dies. So a woman who is very much alive and well and healthy gets placed on the funeral pyre of her husband is burned to death alive. This practice is very important practice in Hinduism, and it is still practiced in villages in India today. But the missionaries working with some Indian reformers helped to make this practice illegal in India, and it is illegal and has dramatically reduced, though it still happens in India today. But those are just examples where the gospel would stand in judgment against the culture. So I think understanding cultures is a very important part of missionary work. The social sciences have played a very valuable role in this process. You can't overstate it because you don't want social sciences to run your mission missionary thinking. But for example, empirical data such as we find with the Global Christianity dot org website, that kind of data on peoples is very important. It's good to know who has scriptures, who does not have scriptures. That's a matter of point of empirical research.

[00:07:50] Who has access to the gospel? Who does not? Where do we have less than 5% Christians and people groups? That's really important data to have available to the church. Well, that's social sciences that gives us that kind of data and the statistical analysis to provide that information. Linguistics is a very important field for missionary work. The whole process of language learning, how we learn languages is very, very important. That social scientists communication theory, how to best communicate to people is something that we learn a lot from culture, anthropology, the way people live and the way they think and why they act and what they believe is very, very helpful in our analysis of people groups and how to preach the gospel most effectively with them. And even things in physical anthropology, such as what we call cognitive anthropology, how people think, how they make decisions in their culture is very helpful in learning to preach the gospel. There are ways that people in the East and people even first in China versus India think differently and they process information differently. And so this is very helpful information, which is all part of the what was now available, and it's very helpful for Christians to be aware of. So I think that today we should insist that our missionaries go out better prepared than they did 150 years ago, and we have the opportunity to give them that preparation. Number six I won't say any more about because I've said a lot about already, but there's a big difference in missions and evangelism. I think in the local church that distinction must be made. As I said before, it doesn't really matter to me if you don't like the mission's language versus the evangelism language. You can talk about our culture cross-cultural.

[00:09:42] You can talk about witnessing versus global evangelism, because as a local missions, foreign missions, I mean, I guess all those distinctions are helpful and can be used. I like distinction the best, but whatever it may be, you've got to make a distinction in those who have access to gospel and those who do not in this class were referring to evangelism as same culture witness where there is a viable church and cross cultural witness where there is no viable church. And the main point for me is the viability issue. The viability issue is extremely important in our missionary strategy because we have to think about those who do not have access and where the church is not viable. We must give that special consideration. There is a, I think, a latent racism when we would re evangelize places for the third and fourth time and neglect places that have never, ever had the first opportunity to hear the gospel. Now, Dr. Wilson's famous analogy was the telephone, which I mentioned in the telephone pole analogy. My analogy is it would be as if this is another way of looking at it. We had two rooms filled with people. One room had ten people in it, one room had 100 people in it. You had 100 opportunities to preach the gospel. You had gone 99 times into the room of ten people, and they had been some levels of response and rejection of the gospel. In that room. You had one more opportunity to preach the gospel. What room do you go to? And we're still primarily going back to the room with ten in it, and we're not going the room with 100 in it. And so we have vast numbers of people that have no access to the gospel and all the evangelism in the world and exciting messages and broadcast and literature and information in that room with ten people will never have an impact in the room with 100 people.

[00:11:43] There has to be some intentionality to go into that other room. That's essentially the situation the world is in that, yes, parts of the world represented. That's why be careful, because what would normally be said, if you ask most mission leaders, they would say, well, the 1040 window. That's certainly where the most of these peoples go. The problem with the 1040 window language is it's still about geography, still saying this ten degrees north, 40 degrees north of the equator. And that is helpful, I think maybe is a general answer, but I would just say wherever the people groups may exist. Empirical data would tell us that, and I'll show you a map today that will show you where the where they are or the top 40 of them are. And they're most of them are in the 1040 window. So what's happening is you could say that the room in the that's the smallest window you had. The vast 97% of unreached groups are in that area. And that's where we're not bringing the gospel. So to give an example from a missions point of view, there is a big difference between a person unsaved in Spokane, Washington, and say, person in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There's a big difference because of access. That's the difference from a point of view of salvation there. I guess there we can say that one person's loss of the person's loss. But for the point of view of mission strategy, we have to recognize the huge difference because of the opportunities to hear the gospel. And tomorrow morning at the very beginning of class, we're going to have the privilege of having Dr. Todd Johnson, just briefly in the first part of the class to show you the World Christian database and show you how we can see.

[00:13:42] One example is how many hours of gospel promoting information is available to someone in North America versus how much is available to someone in Saudi Arabia. It's unbelievable the difference in availability of the gospel in these various places. And he also will be available here too. If you have a something you'd like to know, like what are this and how many people that, then you can pose it to him and see how quickly he can give you the answer. He'll have that here before you. We'll take a few minutes just to show you the power of this database in giving you data and some of the handouts I normally give. I haven't given out this semester because a lot of that's available. I used to give out at the top most unreached countries and all that. It's all available now on the web. And so it's you don't need that. So back to my I mean, I've shown this chart before, I won't belabor it, but I basically have the missionary mandate. And the evangelistic mandate is two separate but related mandates that we have to focus on. Okay. Number seven of our ten has a lot of implications for church thinking as well as larger planning. Now, this is borne out of my own understanding of the biblical text and going back to our great Commission of Jesus. Because I think we've seen in Matthew's account the emphasis on discipleship. That is the single command form we saw in Mark how those who believe and are baptized being brought into a believing community shall be saved. The importance of community is very, very vital in how the Great Commission text unfold. And even, John, you have a sending church that sends out into the world.

[00:15:35] Jesus sends us out into the world as a community of gatherers. So we scatter to gather and we we gather to yet scatter. It's a very powerful kind of ministry that Christ gives us. And this happens in community. We're not just a bunch of individuals scattered about. And so I think that, in my view, one of the problems with how churches think about missions is they typically think about the conversion point as the goal. That's basically in people's minds. So what they say is we have people and you know, location X and use they think geographically and we want to see people in China become converted to Christ. We want to see people in Mauritania come to Christ. Of course, that's obviously a wonderful thing, but we can't think about people coming to Christ appropriately, biblically, without thinking of that in the context of community. Which means church planting. So I don't see and Paul and untethered evangelism that's not connected to church planting. The church sends Paul out. Paul is out planting churches. I think we've seen this all over the Great Commission. This particular scenario we looked at is very, very helpful. The problem is in terms of sheer money allocation and the global missionary effort, there is a lot more money being placed on the, you know, the missionary expenditure table to expose people to the gospel than to build them up in the faith once they become Christians. So what's happened is effectively the global evangelism thrust is moving faster than the church planting movement. In some places, it's so dramatic. It's almost scary. The most important place where this would be true, the Africa. Maybe this is overstating the case a point, but someone said to me, I really have a heart to go to Africa and evangelize people for Christianity.

[00:17:45] I would say, please don't do that. Please don't go to Africa to preach the gospel. What? Dr. Tenet. Are you crazy, Dr. Tenant, in discouraging people to go to Africa and preach the gospel? Well, almost only because we have so much evangelism going on. What we really need is someone to go to Africa to teach and to train and disciple. That's why our MP goes to theological college Zimbabwe. That's how we signal to teaching in Mozambique. That's why we were seeing the tremendous need. I spent time in in Nigeria teaching African Nigerian pastors. What a wonderful, wonderful privilege it was because they are so hungry for discipleship. And you have so much knowledge and background already in your seminary career that it would be a great gift to so many pastors around the world. And theology education is a great way that Gordon Conwell students can really make an impact. So what's happened is the vandalism thrust is moving so fast and the church planning thrust is moving slower because it's just as much faster than this thing. So what you're having is people are coming to Christ in Africa faster than they can be incorporated into a church. Now, in America, we don't think in these terms because we have such fairly good church planning that's already occurred that we need a lot more actually here. But that's another story. But essentially, we have such comparatively solid church planning. There's someone came to Christ in the North Shore, for example, anywhere in the North Shore. There are a number of really solid, good biblical churches they could go to, and therefore, in our case, we can get away with it almost we can almost get away with going around and just witnessing the people and then telling them, go find a church.

[00:19:43] But in India, you can't do that. There is no church to go to. You can't presuppose that someone who gets evangelized will then have the a church that they can connect with. So in much of the world, the church has to be planted. And so if you have a situation where the evangelistic trust is moving out ahead of the church, the interesting people are in some cases are Christians for years before they ever get to know another Christian. And any church can be started. This is true in China. This is true and Africa. It's true in India. And many parts of the world have this this difficulty. I don't be critical of the Jesus film, but let me just give you some statistics to show you. This is their own statistics in terms of how many now billions of people have seen the Jesus film, and now it's up to nearly 4 billion people have seen the Jesus film. Well, there's only over over 6 billion people in the world, and apparently 4 billion them has seen the Jesus film. It's unbelievable. Let me give you example. In the Jesus film, Jesus film comes to India. It's been all over India and it's people a lot of Hindus have seen it. There's various groups that do this, but particularly the Mormons and the Jehovah Witness have been best for this. They actually go on the website, they find out whether Jesus film is being shown and they will follow up the show in the Jesus film. So Jesus tomb is shown, they get up and they have a big presentation and then people, you know, can't respond verse wise. Then it goes to the next town and there's no one there. See to to pastor, to disciple, to plan a church.

[00:21:27] And so then the Jehovah Witnesses come in. So we're here to tell you more. So what we're actually doing is inadvertently. Helping to establish heretical cosmologies. I mean, this is a maybe a very negative take on the whole thing because the Jesus film has been wonderful use by God. But I'm saying that there is that problem in that gap period of those people where there's churches available. It's been a wonderful thing. But there is a certain people groups where there hasn't been sufficient follow up and therefore we have a real serious problem. So in fact, in Buddhist groups, they actually interviewed a number of people who watched the Jesus film before they interviewed Buddhists about Christianity and their view of Christ before they watched the Jesus film. And they interviewed them after they watched it, and many of them thought less of Christ after watching Jesus film before. Which was a big surprise because not normal around the world. And so a lot of it is because they were missing or misunderstanding what the Jesus film was trying to portray. And therefore even something like a film is a cultural interpretation of the gospel, even though it tries to follow the gospel of Luke and all that. It's still there's certain things about it that need follow up. It's just not something you can just show and assume that everything makes perfect sense. I mean, give you one example. When Eugene Nido went to the Buddhist world, he's a well-known linguist and missionary scholar. He gave someone a copy of the New Testament, a Buddhist man, and he said, Read it and come back. So he read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John came back and the man said, Well, what did you think? He said, Oh, I think Jesus is wonderful.

[00:23:20] I am so impressed by this Jesus. And tonight I was like, Oh, this is great. Well, tell me what what was it that impressed you the most after reading the Gospels? He said, the most really impressed me was that Jesus achieved nirvana in only four lifetimes. And he's like, What? He said, Yeah, because Buddha, it took Buddha a thousand lifetimes to achieve Nirvana. And Jesus did it in four because Jesus lived and he died. He lived and he died. He lived on He went into the Nirvana and he had read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as four successive lives of Christ. Not as four people telling the same life. Now, you know that would not happen in Hamilton, likely. It's something that, you know, you bring your worldview to what you see. In India, we actually, rather than use a Jesus film, we use a film called Dire Sagar. It means Ocean of Mercy. And we it's all Indian actors for our purposes is much more effective than the Jesus film because of its looks like India. It's done like an Indian movie. Now, if you know Indian movies. Any movies from Bollywood? That's right. Bollywood. They have their own particular genre. You have to have a dance scene. If you don't have a dance scene, it's not a real movie. So in the in the one we show, the gospel of Mark's rendition of the, you know, Herodias, who dances for the head of John the Baptist, that whole scene, you know, that is like 45 minutes of the movie. But they love it. And we just made the movie an hour, an hour longer. You know, it's a long movie. And but that that's part of it. And that's all the way. You know, Indian movies follow certain genres, you know, And you have to have, you know, you know, all the stuff.

[00:25:22] So here's an indie movie, another I'm talking about, But if you have you on it, you appreciate it. I just think that we have to be willing as a church to say that difficult thing to say that we're going to invest money in people who are already Christians in our mission effort. We're going to encourage people who are going out, doing teaching and training and discipleship and have that just as important in our minds as evangelism. That's why I gave you that chart that showed you the progress from no knowledge all the way to active propagate, cause that last part of the chart and the Ingle scale from conversion to active propagate is where the problem lies. But that's the period where you take those believers and make them into multiplication of the gospel in themselves playing church. And that's why I showed you the film yesterday. That was the beautiful inside of Mark Zuck, is that he I mean, if I was being carried on people like that, you know, how to speak rejoicing out or praise God, this is all being done. You know, it's a very mature person who says, okay, what's the next step? How can we take them to become themselves active propagator of the gospel? That's the point. Eighth point is the reality of the growth of Pentecostalism. It is the fastest growing segment of Christians on every single continent, including our own. This would include traditional Pentecostal denominations like Assembly of God and Church of God, but also it would include many, many new independent movements around the world that are largely Pentecostal in their orientation. Now, this is not meant to be a big push, you know, okay, it's all become Pentecostals. I think it's just important that you recognize this and be aware of it.

[00:27:14] It's a huge factor. Look at some of the statistics. If you 1900. That's 0.2. That's 2/10 of 1% of the world identify themselves with Pentecostal theology, for example, believing that healing is for today or believing that, you know, that the people speak in tongues or the gifts of the spirit. These type emphases that are that have been typically found in Pentecostal movements now. Believe me, the Holy Spirit does not belong to the Pentecostals, but the Pentecostals have been more reflective and serious about understanding the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in many of their churches that have revealed certain neglects in mainstream Protestantism. And therefore, I think there has been some value as well as abuses. But there has been a lot of value to what Pentecostalism has done. There's been so many books written on this, the globalization of Pentecostalism. It's a very, very well documented theme. If you look at the continent like continent, look in Africa, just in the last 30 years, the growth of Pentecostalism in terms of millions of people who are Pentecostal, this is the growing edge of the African Independent African Associated Church in India. We've planted 400 churches in North India. They're all what would be called Pentecostal churches is not a Pentecostal denomination per se, but it's Pentecostal churches. And everything that you would observe about their theology, their mentality, secessionism is not doing well globally. You look at Asia, look at the dramatic growth in Europe, even Latin America, tremendous growth of Pentecostal. I mentioned this has been the real breakthrough in Catholicism because Pentecostalism has typically drawn from a different class of people historically than has mainline denominations. And that was a huge impact culturally for Latin America. Christianity became a grassroots movement, not a top down Catholicism, and that made a huge impact.

[00:29:27] North America and even Oceania. You have seen in every case, Pentecostalism has experienced dramatic, dramatic growth. Yes. Why do you think? I think the the main reason is because Pentecostalism, there's actually several reasons. First is they have been very much committed to evangelism in a way that has been waning in the mainline churches. So the likelihood of a Pentecostal Christian regarding their denominational affiliation, but just in general, a Pentecostal Christian sharing their faith with another is unbelievably greater than a person in the mainline denomination. So they're just sharing their faith more. If you compare the likelihood of a methodist church, for example, planting another Methodist church here or even in the world, compared to the likelihood of a Pentecostal church planting of the church. Off the charts again. So they're committed to evangelism. They're committed church planting. And by and large, they have been more successful in reintegrating evangelism with social responsibility, social concern, because they came from the underside. They're much more aware of people suffering and hurting, and therefore, they have been very effective in many ways in many parts of the world, at addressing social concerns. Not as much larger structural issues of justice, but in terms of practical kinds of ministries to people in need. They've been very effective, and I think that's helpful. Look at the statistics here. This is just 19 in 990, ignored the frontier for two. That's a that's a whole nother discussion which women have time to look at. But if you look at the comparative growth of mainline Protestant churches have lost 14 million people in 30 years. That's a -10% of their size. The mainline Protestants worldwide have grown by 27 million. There are there is a lot of growth in mainline churches around the world.

[00:31:38] I mean, look at the Anglican Church in Africa, for example. But 70% of its size is by numbers. It's a lot. But as a percent of its size, it's still relatively modest. Orthodox and Catholics have grown by 52%, while populations grown by 25%, which means it's a drop comparatively. Anything that's less than 75% means it's dropping as a percent of world population. Look at the growth of Pentecostals in the same 30 year period. 567% up of 114 million. So that what that tells us is that Pentecostalism is increasingly becoming normative Christianity rather than marginal Christianity. Now, probably the best book on this, amazingly, is by none other than Harvey Cox, the famous liberal Protestant angry guy down in Harvard, who wrote about the death of God. I mean, city of God not mean not to say God, the death of God in a secular city. Harvey Cox has a book out called Far From Heaven, where he documents globally the growth of Pentecostalism as just as a scholar of religion, then Harvard. It is quite amazing. So you should be aware of this. And I think we need to include a greater conversation with Pentecostals in our thinking, because Gordon Conwell, we have a kind of ancient tradition here. We have a Baptist, a free church roots in many ways, a strong history of reformed theology. Yet we've had for last, what, 14 years or so, we had a Pentecostal president here. Our previous president was Pentecostal, somebody of God. So we have we have a very diverse traditions that Gordon Conwell and I think our perceptions of our diversity are different than the reality of it. We have over 100 different denominations. Gordon Conwell And so I want as a at least one professor, to give everyone here permission to talk about your tradition and to talk with each other.

[00:33:47] But I don't feel like anybody has a priority. I think we ought to be able to openly. To me, it's the beauty of Gordon Conwell. We have what I call true ecumenism here. You have, on the one hand, a common commitment to evangelicalism in biblical, historic Christianity. But within that, we have a lot of conversations about how God has worked in our lives, in our communities and our and we have everything from Episcopal in to to Pentecostal here. Yes. How you define it. Maybe not Pentecostal, but probably charismatic. I think one of the earlier chart included that in there figures that show the growth of Pentecostal and charismatic influence. I mean, typically Pentecostal has operated in its own spheres, and the Charismatic movement has been kind of the infiltration of Pentecostal theology into mainline churches, including Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, everything. There's charismatics now everywhere. So it's this is a phenomena that's not just isolate to certain denominations. That's why I try to say the very beginning. This is a phenomena throughout the church. So even if you have grown up in a mainline church, it's not unusual to meet people that have been influenced by Pentecostal theology and the Charismatic Movement. So this is kind of a larger example. So I would include that. Okay. Number nine, how missions are sent out today is changing dramatically. Some examples that may not surprise you. We are seeing a decline of the traditional full support denominational mission boards. This was the traditional way up until the second Arab missions that people were sent out. William Carry on down were sent out by a particular denomination. So you have the work of the Baptists, the work of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, whatever.

[00:35:55] And traditionally, they supported their missionaries full time. So it was unusual for someone to be out ministering on the world and being on a full support of the nomination. My great aunt spent 33 years in India as a missionary, and she was under full support of the denomination, the Methodist Church. Just to give you at least some of that denomination as my own nomination, we had at one point we had 2500 and some odd, but over 2500 missionaries around the world fully supported by the United Methodist Church. By the time I was growing up in the sixties, that had declined around 1500 missionaries around the world. And with this church, by the time I got into the ministry myself as this pastor, that had dropped down to about 900. A missionary supported. And today the number of full time missionaries supported by nomination of 10 million people is now about 300. And so not even 400 missionaries. So this is a precipitous drop in the number of fully supported missionaries, mainly because of theological reasons. The church has just lost its courage to preach the gospel somewhere. They just simply lost their courage. And they I remember when the Methodist Church announced this win probably in the late seventies, they announced a new policy. They would only go to a country that they got an official invitation inviting them to come from the church that's in that country, which immediately, of course, as you would quickly recognize, eliminated them from any possibility of reaching an unreached group. So they were saying, we're only want to go where we're invited. This is a great new step that we're not going to be imperialistic, will only go where the church invites us. Well, I can promise you there'll be no invitations forthcoming from Saudi Arabia.

[00:38:01] No North Indian people groups will be invited at this church because there's none invite. There's no one there to invite. So those kind of tragic mis theological blunders have been more increasingly found in these nominations. And the result is a decline of that. That has been more than picked up, though, by the rise of parish church faith mission boards. And I'll be later on showing you kind of how that fits in with structure. I'll give you a chart to show you how it fits in minute, but essentially this refers to. Organizations that work in support of whatever church that you come out of. These are organizations like Work with Bible translators, new tribes, missions, Frontiers, pioneers, A.I.M. used to be Africa in the mission. SRM used to be Sudan Interior Mission Now Society for International Missionaries. S I am I am OMF. Our MAF is one we have partnership with here one of the organizations Overseas Missionary Fellowship that was Hunt and Taylor's mission. It's now AMF. None of those are tied into a particular denomination. These are broader parish church faith mission boards. I have here a again, someone did the data. This is the kind of helpful research people do. But when William Perry went to India, even in our own history, I'd known Judson, for example, when he felt called to go into ministry, go into cross-cultural missions, there was no one to send him. There was no board, no organizational effort. And so one of the things I've written about in my other article which to read about Ed Judson is the real power of the modern period of missions has been the birth of the Mission Society. Or the mission board. These are organized groups that help to enable people to go into missions, provide structural and logistical support.

[00:40:06] So when Adam Judson wanted to go, he had to create the sending agency that would send him. So the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions was created by Judson and his friends in order to be sent to India. Kerry had to create the Baptist board that sent him to be a mass Baptist missionary society. Today, look at the size of this catalog, and this is there are many that aren't in here. I mean, like, for example, the indigenous missions are not in here. These are just North American mission boards. So now today, there are literally thousands of mission societies that are there to help you to go overseas. And many of these are in both of these categories. The vast majority are in category number two. There are many others that are part of the nominations, and we'll see more of that later. But, for example, you know, you have Shield of Faith Ministries, as I am EU-IMF. I mean, on and on and on. And these are categorized in the this catalog first by alphabetical. And it gives you the name the organization, all the information website one 800 number who's in charge of it and a little brief statement of their mission and purpose. And then when they were founded, what their budget is and how many people they have serving around the world and then where they're serving. It's also cross-reference. So if you were to say, well, I don't really know what organization, but I really feel like God is calling me to work in Bulgaria, I just open up Bulgaria at random. Okay, it's on page 300. I have a list of every organization in North America that sends missionaries to Bulgaria. That's very helpful information. So it's all available to you.

[00:41:56] Find out when they were founded and how many years. So, for example, Christian Aid Mission has 102 people working in Bulgaria. The canvas group for Christ has 11. You know, there's only one not going to look at all this. Youth with a mission has people in Bulgaria. If you look at the number of para church organizations has arisen, and my own view is per church organizations have been very helpful in serving the church, for example, with the Bible translators. I don't really believe that the local church can very effectively organize themselves to translate every language in the world into an indigenous language. That's a hard thing for a local church to take on or even a collection of culture. It's a hard kind of the matter of expertise that's required to do that. We need help and these organizations work. If there's not a church planning organization not trying to be a denomination, they're just saying this is one area we can serve the church. And it's a very, very valuable area. And there are many organizations like that that have been founded to help the church in certain particular areas. In the case of the group I work with, it's has its own in the name, but in America, English would be called good news for India and called India Border city, which are somebody. And that organization Basis is founded to plant churches in north India. It'd be very hard for a local church to have the expertise that they have because they have spent their whole lives there. These are all Indians. They understand the Indian context. So it's helpful to understand the role of Mission Board. Mission Society is very, very helpful, and that's very much on the rise today. Yes, it was coined by Cousin Taylor talking about how he raised.

[00:43:53] Outside of. No today, faith missions generally, because they have no denominational support, they generally will partner with you on raising finances for this. This is actually, I'll say more at this later on, but this is actually not a huge difference when you really look at it, because the fact is, if you're a pastor of a church, for example, you're paid by the freewill offerings of those in the church. If the church doesn't put their offerings in eventually won't be long for you won't have a salary. So faith mission is just an extension of that, that we we ask people to make contributions to support us. And nowadays many churches are collectively saying we want to support a missionary. And so effectively you have a salary, but it is not technically from a denomination, it's from a supporting church or a group of churches. And one of our changes that we're making this year and the Olympic program that we should have made years ago, but we're now insisting, for all the reasons that you now know I've mentioned, is class, that everyone who goes, no MP has a sending church. There's at least willing to pray for them and send them out because we don't want to create the situation. We're not tethered to the local church. For most people, that involves a church that's going to stand by them financially. And I found in my experience with graduates of Gordon Conwell, those who have good relations with local churches, both here and many back home, have never had any problem with support, never. We've never seen someone who's not been able to go. The problem has been with other people who have kind of drifted from church to church to church during the whole time here and have no relationships with a body.

[00:45:38] That's where the problem comes. So I really encourage you to connect well with the local church. The third way that missions are sent today is, of course, Indigenous missions. This has been a big factor. We have to now see that this is now as big a part of how people hear the Gospel than the organized efforts from North America or Britain or other Western countries. And then fourthly, an area we have not talked about much, but we want to at least mention it now. And that is making that is to say, people who are not asking for support from examination or raising support, but are involved in a particular profession. The kind of the main way this is done. So you go out as a professional. This is called made tenants and current. So maybe you're a travel agent or you are a computer technician or you are a doctor or nurse or whatever where you are self-supporting. When I was in China, I was a self-supporting missionary in China. I received a salary from the Chinese government. I received housing from the Chinese government. I received a little stipend. It wasn't much, but it was enough to pay for whatever I needed. I had needed no support. The only support I raised actually was the plane ticket over there, and that was it. And the rest of the time I was employed zero by the government and I was teaching English. I was an English teacher. And the advantage of English teaching is that one of the hardest things in any missionary has to do when you get into a new people group is how do you build relationships with unbelievers? And the great beauty of English language instruction is that you're immediately thrust into a situation where you have to get to know a lot of unbelievers fairly intimately.

[00:47:32] And we would have classroom all day long, and then we would in the evening would go out to the park. They had to have like so much conversational English practice and they all really wanted to learn English. So they come out and we talk about the Lord and they ask questions about the Gospel. In my case, all of our classes had what they call monitors. And this was someone from the government that monitored what happened in the class. Nothing. You couldn't use it to, like, preach or whatever. And so I had a mantra in all my classes. And so the rule was from the government. They said, you can answer any questions to ask you about religion or about your faith or whatever. If they use that language, but about your religion, but you cannot initiate any conversation about your religion. And this is communist China. So I said, Fine, I'm happy with that. But on your own you could do what you wanted. So in the class they would ask all kinds of questions. In fact, the monitors were the most curious. I had more questions about the gospel from the monitors now that from the students. And so it was wonderful. I was I kind of went to China a bit skeptical about the whole, you know, is this going to be young? We lost in the English language instruction. And when I really have the opportunity to really preach the gospel. But, you know, I had happened to baptize a young lady in the Yangtze River. I led over to the Lord. We had just amazing experiences, really preaching the gospel, and the Chinese was paying for it. It was great. It was wonderful. So. The tent making is a wonderful opportunity to.

[00:49:08] In fact, in Muslim countries especially, they typically ask you, what do you do for a living? It's like, Well, I'm just here building relationships. Hanging out because you're supported from back home and you're just there to kind of, you know, witness people like you just hang out. You're just building relationships. I mean, it sounds like this guy is really weird. There's got to be he must be CIA, you know? You know, mm5 or something. So they basically. Well, well, it's helpful to say, you know, I sell computers. Oh, that's of course, it makes perfect sense. You know, it just create a legitimacy to your presence in many countries if you have some kind of occupation. That's our M.P. This summer to Morocco has been led by Paul Martindale, who planted a church in Morocco when a few people has planted a muslim church in North Africa. Success with it's still thriving. He has over 20 years experience in Morocco is perfectly fluent in Arabic. You know what he did in Morocco for 20 years? He exported Moroccan leather. He was a moroccan. All right. You know, an expatriate exporter of leather. That's what he did. But he was also there as a witness for the gospel and planting churches. Yes, I've heard a lot about. And I just wonder, is that still really open in a lot of countries? There is still more opportunities to teach English than there are available people to go into those slots. In fact, the vast majority of English teachers around the world are not Christians. This is not a Christian idea. That Christian. Oh, let's go out teaching for the sake of the gospel. This is when I was in Wuhan teaching English. There were probably five or six universities there with large expatriate presence teaching English.

[00:50:59] We had ten teachers in my program, but we were the only Christian group in the whole city. So this is actually a quite a broad movement that the Christians are just playing a certain role in. Susan Griffiths has a book out called Teach Your Way Around the World, which actually has a alphabetical listing of every country in the world and all of the schools that hire English teachers and every additional book is gets bigger, not smaller. So I don't think that is diminishing. I think there has been a attempt to eliminate what she rightfully calls cowboy teachers. People who just kind of go out, Oh, I'm going to go teach English, who don't know a thing about teaching English. There's been attempt to find people who really do have some training in this area who know how to teach English. That, I think, has been a change. That's why we offer a course on it here so that you can learn how to teach English. Article Falls College. I directed an ESL program English as a second language program, where we train people to go out and teach English. And to this day, without any exception, even being a Gordon Conwell, I've never seen anyone go from sitting in the classroom to being on the mission field faster than through that. It is the fastest way to go from taking notes in the classroom to preaching the gospel and being a witness in the country. Another people group. Well, I've seen it over and over again. I have dozens of my students that are now in Central Asia and China as teachers, and they're long term workers. They've been there for ten, 15 years, having a great ministry. Yes. People who are looking for English teachers tend to.

[00:52:53] Yeah, that's a good question. We it's called Falls. We got around that by. We actually had our program that the ESL was in was under a degree called Cross-Cultural Studies Degree, and therefore that never really struck them as unusual. That of course in linguistics, of course in social linguistic courses and, you know, various things that seem very normal when you come from a seminary, it can be a problem. That's an ongoing issue that we have to grapple with as part of how that may affect not only that, but in any kind of work with Muslims or whatever. But you're not required to put down. I in in the always put down. Gordon Conwell what did you guys like? Gordon Conwell. That doesn't say much. Gordon Conwell, comma, the most esteemed graduate institution in North America. So I often will not just not use the words theological or seminary, though the word seminary doesn't necessarily, if you don't often know what that word means. Cemetery. Seminary, you know. So the word theological can be a problem, and it's actually worse as the word Bible. Like Bible college, that can really be so Columbia Bible College, very well-known school in South Carolina, changed their name to Columbia International University. That's they're now called officially. So those are, you know, linguistic issues. And we have toyed with the idea of producing diplomas here for certain of our mission graduates that just say, Gordon Conwell and even possibility of having legally adopted an alternative name for our seminary. That could go and some some diplomas like Gordon Conwell University. That is very possible. And that's something that we should be praying about because that is, for some people, this word theological or seminary can be a problem. I would say it's rare, actually, but it can be.

[00:55:00] Yeah, that's not really a problem. They don't know what that is. Divinity. I mean, it's a good faith deed, master. A divinity. I don't think it's a problem. By the way, religious studies, I mean, even the word like word, religion is not a problem. Every university has schools, religious studies, schools of cross-cultural, you know, and that's very normal. So the idea of religious studies courses in religion and all that is not a problem. And one of the things that we have in our degree is they're required to take courses in Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and our missions programs. So therefore, you see courses in their, oh gosh, introduction to Hinduism. Wow, it's great. You know, I mean that. So they don't strike them as necessarily a this was one big gigantic experience against Islam or something. It's like a religious school. Most countries have religious schools. So it's only a small group of people this has been a problem for. Yes. I imagine some of the. It could be. Yeah. I had an Indian who told me when I had an m Dev, I was going to India before I got any other degrees. I mean that situation now because my doctoral work is in an Indian thinker, an Indian philosopher, theologian, a person that was the leader of their nationalistic movement. So I can just oh, I did a doctoral work in India. And so when I got my Ph.D., I was given a ten year visa, which is hard to get in India and come and go as I please. But when you go to India, when I was M Dev, one guy asked me one time, What did you study in this school? And I said, I studied very ancient manuscripts. Oh, that sounds interesting, he said.

[00:56:43] So yeah, there are very ancient old manuscripts and we held them in the highest respect. Oh, that is fascinating. You know, that's been innocent as a servant. I mean. I mean. Lies at the heart of it. And this is a dove, because I tell them the truth. The Bible is a very ancient manuscript, you know, so you have to use a little savvy. Okay. Number ten. Yes. People thought. Yeah, that's a good question. I'll just say brief because this we go into some great detail in our introduction to t solve class, but. I think that it's important to operate an English language program with the highest level of integrity, which means that it is I think it's a sin to use something like that to get a foot into the country. And not actually gentlemanly do that. If you can get a visa to do that, you should do that. People who go to Turkey to sell computers and then they spend ten years there and never sell a computer, they just have the kind of phantom business. I think in the long run that's going to cause a disservice to the church. And I found in my experience in China that the best way to gain a hearing among Chinese people and are students I worked with was by being a good English teacher. And they respected that because they knew you're a good you really care that they learned English. And we had we tested them before and in middle and after the semester was over and they had made a lot of progress. And that was so meaningful to them that then they wanted to hear about the gospel. So I think the legitimacy of your tent making is important and it should be used.

[00:58:44] People talk that language. Oh, this is just to get you in the door. I don't like that language. Personally. I think it's a mistake, though. People use that. I think in the long run, having that integrity of the profession is important. Okay. Mission structures are changing because our kids have grown up. I'm using this a bit pejoratively just to make the point that when you first plant churches, there is naturally a situation where there is a senior and a junior and that's appropriate. It's like when you give birth to your children, when you give birth to a child, something new has come into the world and you have a responsibility for that child. It's not proper to bring someone into the kingdom and then leave them to die. We have that problem. So in the early mission wave, particularly William Carey and Adam Judson stage, and even in this underage people stage and that whole period, the mentality was we found a mission, you can call it Baptist Missions Fellowship, you could call it the Church of England Society, whatever you name it, whatever mission board you can think of. It was founded to go into the world over there somewhere, at least evangelize, hopefully planned churches. That was the paradigm mission to the world. Okay. Later on, as people begin to respond to the gospel in India, for example, or wherever that created new challenges, what do you do with these people that have now responded to the gospel? So we'll say you are a Baptist missionary working in India. Do you plant Baptist churches? Do you gather them in the Baptist churches? That's been one of the challenges, because that's what essentially happened. And in the mission circles, the term comity is a well known term in 19th century missions to describe the agreement that was reached among denominations working all over the mission field and comity meant we will restrict ourselves to work in certain areas of the city or of of land.

[01:01:06] And in other words, was so like in India, for a city like Bangalore, big city, that's okay. The Baptist could work in this part of the city, and the Methodists won't go over there. We'll let you work in that part of the city because it was creating confusion. Know that this Methodist and Presbyterians and people were like, Oh, these are all different religions. It was causing all kinds of confusion among people who had no context for saying, what is a Baptist, a methodist libertarian? So what happened is they created comity where they would say, we will respect ourselves to plant churches in this part of the city. You have that part of the city, the Pentecostals, that part of the city, whatever. And even when the Catholics this was done in some cases, but some cases of Catholics in product had their own kind of combative arrangements. So to this day, when you go to large cities, you'll find that typically the Baptist churches are all in one area and a methodist another and all this. So you create a situation where there are now churches coming up in the world and they were related to the mission back home in some way. But today that's completely changed. And today the whole comedy thing is dead. And what you actually have now is the emergence of indigenous churches. So now you have a mission board. There's no longer just relating to the unreached world out there. Like vast, teeming millions of Indians who haven't heard the gospel. But now you're so okay. We have gathered communities of believers out there. How does a mission board like OMF relate to a church? Among those who come to Christ amongst their work in Thailand. So therefore, if you had a commitment to go to the shrine who are unreached people, no viable church, that's mission to the world.

[01:02:49] So you have a mission that sends out people like now we're doing the early ethnography work and eventually you'll see someone come to Christ, but eventually that they, Sean, are going to form a church. And they're going to form an indigenous church because o AMF is not a church and they don't represent a denomination. So eventually the Shah will form a church. How does that mission then relate to a, quote, sovereign church, you know, an independent church out there in Thailand? That's a whole nother structure that we have to think about. And I would say in the last 30 years, this has been a huge part of how mission boards have adapted their thinking. We're not just relating to unbelievers how to evangelize. We're relating to now churches. We have a church and they have a church and they have their independence. We have ours. How do we get along? How do we talk to each other? And maybe the governments are different. Just just how many have to govern themselves? The same way we govern ourselves and our church polity and all of this. What if we affirm in baptism and we plant a church or we we allow it? We people come to Christ from an indigenous church and they all affirm believers baptism. How do we relate to all of this? How do we communicate this? And then the thing that's happening today, the third part of this is these churches are now themselves found missions. They themselves become missions, sending boards. All over Latin America is happening all over Africa. This is happening in India, even in South India. So because of that, you have now have mission boards having to relate to other mission boards that are present. So today, in our case, give an example of this.

[01:04:35] The organization Good News for India has a base in the US. That base in the US provides some logistical or financial support for the ministry in India. The ministry in India, which is good news for India, is essentially a training organization which trains people to plant churches. But eventually we begin to have all these Indians who graduate from a program and went out and begin to plant churches. Well, long as it was just two or three people, it didn't wasn't a problem because we could of we knew our graduates and we could oversee them. But over the years, the last 50 years, it's grown and grown and grown. So we could not oversee all of our graduates any more than Gordon Conwell could possibly oversee all of their graduates and all their church work. So another organization was formed completely independent within India called the CAA, the Christian Evangelistic Assemblies. That's an indigenous Christian ministry in India that plants churches. So now when they graduate, they go into CAA and that CAA is our organizational umbrella, which helps to plant churches and gives them the support and strategy and all that. So now you have a board in America, good news for India that's really trying to relate to an independent Indian mission, sending society. So this is the merits of part of what I experience all the time. So this is a very real issue in how we now have to rethink our paradigms, because most of us still think mission is about going to an unreached part of the world that's there. We've talked about that mission to the world is still a huge need out there, the great unreached groups in the world. But we also have the church working with existing churches and various partnerships, like a mission in the West that's working with Ollis in Southwest India, partnering with them to help reach North India because they have visas or they have they don't need visas and we can't get long term visas or whatever.

[01:06:37] And so that kind of partnerships are now more and more happening. And then we have to also relate to mission boards. So this forces partnership in ways that were not possible in some churches still think about missions independently of what God is doing in that country. So I still think about missions like we're going to go over to India and do so-and-so and not even think that maybe there are Indians who are just as committed to this as we are over here, and then we should be talking to them about what they think and what's going on. So that kind of partnership and discourse is very productive and helpful, and it's happening more and more. Questions or comments about this one. Okay. Well, we're going to stop there and take a brief break and come back to Modern. Missile techniques. And this will be material that will hopefully expand and help you to see how churches can take this and apply this in the local church.