The Missional Church
The nature of the church is missional, through the fact that its existence is powered by the Great Commission. The book summarizes the culture of today’s American spirituality and its relation to the apostolic church. The main question is, “What would a theology of the church look like that took seriously the fact that North America is now itself a mission field?”
Five Key Insights
1. The missional nature of the church – The place which the church takes in the surrounding world/society defines its nature as missional. How it interacts with the surrounding worlds identifies the church’s response to the needs of individuals and groups of people and results in its success/failure to fulfill its original mission. A valid point was the statement that the witness of the missional church is characterized by its integrity.
2. Recovering missional identity – Recovering the church’s original New Testament identity has been a subject of discussion for many various ages in church history. The volume of works written about it has indeed increased in the latter part of the 20th century. The discussion in the book claims that as truth, self, and society are rediscovered in postmodernism, the churches of North America will recover its missional identity. Thus, the individual search of identity will reflect on the corporate search of the church as a community and as the Body of Christ. Chapter four further claims that the churches missional identity is shaped by the gospel of the reign of God which Jesus preached.
3. The Holy Spirit and the community of the missional churches – The Chapter on the Holy Spirit, although very informative, did not integrate the connection between the Spirit and Missional outreach to a practical paradigm, but it was mostly a theoretic and philosophical proposition.
4. On spiritual leadership – the discussion on spiritual leadership is based on the axiom that leadership is focused on the reign of God. Only then the church assumes its mission. Solving problems and creating unity within the church is reached through the same focus on the reign of God.
5. The secular surroundings – the vision of the church may not align with the secular surrounds. Actually, it may often completely contradict them fulfilling its role as a prophetic utterance. At the same time, social, political and economical factors may oppose the message and the mission of the church, thus creating an atmosphere in which the church grows against the grain.
On MISSIONS…
Missions Test 1: Mission, Method & Message (2012)
Missions Test 2: Means, Motive & Opportunity (2012)
Missions Test 3: Missionary Testament (2012)
MissionSHIFT (Part 1): Paradoxes in Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 2): Free Will Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 3): WebMissions – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2011)
M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position (2010)
8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit (2009)
Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture (2009)
Read also: Why I decided to publish Pentecostal Primitivism?
MISSIONS TEST 3: Missionary Testament
Dony K. Donev, Cup & Cross Ministries International
The following World Missions series were sparked by a partial sign with the words “Missions Check,” we saw in Atlanta on our way to a mission’s trip to Europe just a weeks after the great tornado of 2011. We’ve observed the events that followed for over a year now, thus launching these series with a purpose. After serving in various ministry positions around the globe as a part of the Church of God for over 20 years, we have built a solid platform as a response to current problems and issues on the mission filed. In the past seven years alone, our ministry team has survived several consecutive denominational splits, and coming on the other side still preaching Jesus Christ and Him risen, this is what we have to state…
Check the Facts
Let’s face it – the simple truth is that as Pentecostals, we like to exaggerate. We love it when the numbers speak for themselves. The examples are so many that anywhere we look we find more numbers than actual people. The pastoral monthly reports must be there to ensure our way of life. Some even put a pen to the missionary’s statistics in order to calculate that every $33 or $55 or $77 given to missions returns as one saved human soul.
But do these numbers tell our story right? Hardly so! For who can count the tears shed in one’s intercessory prayer? And who can count the words of one’s heart cry toward God? Jesus Himself considered 99 as equal to the one lost, and the poor widow’s offering as much as all given by the rich. Seems appropriate to suggest that these are the real facts that count in the Kingdom of Heaven and they are the facts we should consider even in this earthly life.
Check the People
When you get down and personal with the issue, the problem is not in the numbers, but in the people who create them. Because before they are seen by all around us, facts are created first and foremost in the hearts of people and there lays the weakest link of any group of people. Wrong attitudes like jealousy, gossip, unconstructive criticism, disloyalty to leadership and negation of goals will ultimately affect the performance and can even destroy the group.
Even secular corporate companies for years have searched for people with a certain level of emotional intelligence (EI), defined as the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups. It is said that EI has a direct effect on maximum performance and building relationships with personality. But working in the spiritual world, the control of emotion is not sufficient. What the church needs is people with spiritual intelligence (SI); and not merely a corporate based combination of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ), but a truly Pentecostal, in-the-Spirit formed form of spiritual inelegance identified with spiritual knowledge, professional training and adequate experience in the ministry.
Check Yourself
The truth of the matter is that many see neither the people nor the facts, but are out for number one. This self-indulging political agenda has brought us to a point in the history of our church where we are not who we say we are anymore. The contrasts in our identity are so many, that five Pentecostal generations later, we stand at the verge of unprecedented identity crises for which very few have realistic answers or solutions.
1. Check your overall motives for missions and ministry. Thirty days of solitude fasting always helps clear the mind and the body from unnecessary baggage.
2. If there is sin, it is you at fault, not someone else. Make sure it is dealt with in a timely and proper fashion or it will destroy you within.
3. Forgive without forgetting. This means to keep on forgiving every time you remember the fault of the other person. If your brother has offended you, it is you that needs to find forgiveness (Mt. 19)
4. If you see one fallen by the road, it is you that must take care of him/her. You may be the only solution for the problems nearest to you.
5. Take responsibility in owning your feelings. Bitterness is a strong weapon in the hands of the enemy, but even negative emotions are a powerful tool in the hand of the Lord.
6. Express yourself. Start a blog and keep posting at least twice weekly. Then sum it all in a book and publish it. You will be surprised how many followers will find you.
7. Start preaching out of your comfortable zone, without a pulpit or set time. Broadcast it on uStream, publish it on YouTube. Whatever it takes you, get out there and just preach Jesus.
8. Appoint a morning hour for prayer and keep it just for you and God regardless of what may be going on around you.
9. Read all the books you were supposed to read in seminary. If you missed seminary, now may be a good time to submit your application.
10. Find other ways to grow. Not just as a professional or an expert, but as your own person. Be a self worth being.
11. Whatever you do, do not stay in the dry, out in the desert. There is a whole new promised land waiting for you. Surpass the midlife urges to bottle up your emotions and just keep on walking.
12. Remember: the place where you are going is worth all the effort.
Related articles:
Missions Test 1: Mission, Method & Message (2012)
Missions Test 2: Means, Motive & Opportunity (2012)
MissionSHIFT (Part 1): Paradoxes in Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 2): Free Will Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 3): WebMissions – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2011)
M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position (2010)
8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit (2009)
Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture (2009)
Read also: Why I decided to publish Pentecostal Primitivism?
MISSIONS TEST 2: Means, Motive & Opportunity
Dony K. Donev, Cup & Cross Ministries International
The following World Missions series were sparked by a partial sign with the words “Missions Check,” we saw in Atlanta on our way to a mission’s trip to Europe just a weeks after the great tornado of 2011. We’ve observed the events that followed for over a year now, thus launching these series with a purpose. After serving in various ministry positions around the globe as a part of the Church of God for over 20 years, we have built a solid platform as a response to current problems and issues on the mission filed. In the past seven years alone, our ministry team has survived several consecutive denominational splits, and coming on the other side still preaching Jesus Christ and Him risen, this is what we have to state…
In times of hardships, when every church, family and person are tested and tried, missions must remain the front line of our church, the harbor for the lost and the heartbeat of God within us. In fact, missions are the only spiritual process that keeps a church alive during crises. For without a heartbeat after the Heart of God, a church is simply dead and dying…
But how do we know if our church is indeed missional and not mission-minded in name only? How do we know if we pass the MISSIONS TEST? Here are several guidelines:
(1) MEANS: Follow the Money
They did in the book of Acts right when the first mission wave in the early church was gaining speed. Literally! And while money is not the foundation of missions, merely its means to accomplish the plan of God, it sure helps to have it when you are in the mission field (speaking of one’s own experience).
The transparent report of church’s finances show a lot about the church itself. If the larger flow of finances is pointed inward, being used for church and family only, your church is not missional. To put it simple, the moment you vote to decrease money for missions, you are decreasing the mission’s outreach of your church – how far your church reaches with its mission. Yes, overspending must be always eliminated and smart stewardship of any missional budget is essential, but they should never alter the flow of finances to missions toward the internal needs of the church; because the rerouting back to the intended recipient will be virtually impossible. For such shift inevitably affects not just numbers and members, but the very ecclesial identity redefining the church from a missional extravert to a cognitive introvert congregation.
(2) MOTIVE: Follow the Structure
The missional structure of a church is initially invoked by an internal, organic, process of motivation produced by our very identity as a people of God. Prominent psychologists today tell us that the internal motivation is that pure, primitive, productive force which drives us from within. And it is no different in missions, where a fine line between calling and career is drawn. For once Missio Dei becomes a professional occupation for a primary payout, the point of missions has already been lost. And if the point of existence for a church structure is not the mission to the world, the church is probably not fit for the Kingdom. So Jesus told the rich young ruler.
A lesson learned from the drying banks of Rio Grande. We can trim a river, direct it and guide it to serve our needs, to produce power for electricity, to provide watering for farming, but it will soon loose its God given source of internal power to flow and will dry out. Altering the natural structure of missions if and when needed, must be done with the understanding that it may ultimately dry it out from within. Therefore, changes in the structure and praxis of missions should only be driven by a return to the first, primary model invoked by the search of God’s heart for lost men and under the direct leadership of the Holy Spirit.
(3) OPPROTUNITY: Follow the Spirit
Spiritual power comes from one source only – prayer in the Spirit. Spiritual power for missions must be prayed for, waited for, expected and exercised, anticipated and acted upon. And while individual prayer affects both the person and the church, nothing moves the Heavens like the continuous, corporate prayer of a congregation. This is what we learn from the day of Pentecost. And based on this, is the true test for mission readiness: The last time you had a church wide meeting, with the sole purpose to pray for the missionaries you’ve sent, is the moment your church ceased being missional. For being missional is “not an act, but a habit” – not a price, but a process. And not a single goal, but one constant going and striving toward the fulfillment of the Great Commission.
As a partner in the Great Commission, our church must carry a message, not merely a political involvement or social concern, but of a spiritual message, both in origin and in practice. For if you preach what you’ve not prayed through, you preach nothing but yourself. And if you have no message to share with the world, your mission endeavor is but a religious vacation to a foreign land. Therefore, our prayer for missions is foremost one constant call to the Spirit for new opportunities in the harvest. For it is ultimately God, who creates the opportunity of Missio Dei as His severing plan for saving the world. And if a church is to follow the call to be missional, it must abide in a relationship with God – the visionary, initiator and empowerer of missions. (Mission Ready, 2014)
Related articles:
Missions Test 1: Mission, Method & Message (2012)
MISSIONS TEST 3: Missionary Testament (2012)
MissionSHIFT (Part 1): Paradoxes in Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 2): Free Will Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 3): WebMissions – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2011)
M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position (2010)
8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit (2009)
Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture (2009)
Read also: Why I decided to publish Pentecostal Primitivism?
MISSIONS TEST 1: Mission, Method & Message
Dony K. Donev, Cup & Cross Ministries International
The following World Missions Series were sparked by a partial sign with the words “Missions Check,” we saw in Atlanta on our way to a mission’s trip to Europe just a weeks after the great tornado of 2011. We’ve observed the events that followed for over a year now, thus launching these series with a purpose. After serving in various ministry positions around the globe as a part of the Church of God for over 20 years, we have built a solid platform as a response to current problems and issues on the mission filed. In the past seven years alone, our ministry team has survived several consecutive denominational splits, and coming on the other side still preaching Jesus Christ and Him risen, this is what we have to state…
A people is a group owning a vision. Vision is what we do today in order to have a better tomorrow. Mission is the things we do to accomplish the vision. And if mission without a vision is blind, mission without a message is blind without a tongue. It feels and it hears, but it can never fully perceive and speak to be heard.
A mission is distinct by the method via which it brings its message. These three are ultimately and intrinsically connected. If mission is what we do, method is how we do it, then message is what we want people to know after we have done it…
But the method of bringing the message quite often changes the message itself. Thus changing, adapting and altering the ministry method must be done with careful consideration of the long-term shift they create not merely in our mission, but on our own Pentecostal identity as well. While adjustments may be needed in missions as the world around us changes, the message must remain the same at all cost. For who is the source and the ultimate agent of change, except the author of the message – God in whom there is no shadow of change?
A good number of churches in the 21st century are choosing to abandon their mission programs as dysfunctional and obsolete in order to follow a more corporate-based model of becoming mission-sending agencies and/or partners with such. While this may be financially and structurally beneficial, such paradigm cannot work for any Pentecostal church with local or global representation without changing forever its corporate identity.
At the same time, there is no need to restart or reset missions, for Mission Dei is not a circular, seasonal or repetitive process in human history. It is solemnly based on the ultimate, one-time event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This salvific monument on the stage of eternity neither needs, nor will it ever repeat and recycle itself again into history. And it most certainly does not need our human participation to be reset into a new century. The only restarting that is ever needed is our own resubmission at the old rugged cross on Calvary.
Changing our missional structure to fit, the ever-changing world we live in, is a reaction, generally done post-factum if not too late. And any reaction is simply not leading, but following. Which bids the question, is the church leading in this world or is our mission being reduced to the needs of the current social system. For the Bible still calls us to be not conformed to this world, but transformed by the mind of Christ. To be not merely a culturally relevant church, but a Bible-based alternative culture in a sinful world.
The lesson of the contemporary and culturally relevant church should have been learned centuries ago by Byzantine Orthodoxy. For it is not the change of the world that affects the outcome of ministry, but the change of the church by transformation within. And it is there that the preservation of our cross-fixed, blood-washed, and power resurrected identity must remain constant and unchanging. Thus, we find simply irrelevant, any call for a culturally relevant church, which causes the change or yet even the loss of the message of eternal salvation.
Related articles:
Missions Test 2: Means, Motive & Opportunity (2012)
MISSIONS TEST 3: Missionary Testament (2012)
MissionSHIFT (Part 1): Paradoxes in Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 2): Free Will Missions (2011)
MissionSHIFT (Part 3): WebMissions – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2011)
M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position (2010)
8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit (2009)
Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture (2009)
Read also: Why I decided to publish Pentecostal Primitivism?
Evangelism and World Missions
Empowered by the vision for a continuous revival within the church of the 21st century, we have chosen to make the mission of our work this one statement: We help churches grow.
One of the approaches we have taken to accomplish this ministry goal is Evangelism and World Missions:
- We have ministered for over 30 years now on three continents, 25 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico (Map of our global ministry)
- We have spent seven consecutive years in missionary work in Bulgaria ministering to over 300 local congregations (Map of our ministry in Bulgaria)
- Since 1990, we have helped in the planting and team training of over 25 churches in Bulgaria as well as the Bulgarian congregations in Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Atlanta, London, Spain, Cyprus and Palma de Mallorca
Beside personal presence and team building strategies, we implement the media in virtually every approach of ministry. We have published several research monographs as well as film series about our ministry work. Our team holds a weekly TV program called the Bible Hour. (Learn how we help churches build their own and unique web presence)
See also how we help churches grow through:
Mission-Minded Missionary or International Harvester?
A New Perspective on the Idea of Mission Work
By Kathryn N. Donev
I have never seen myself as “mission-minded.” To be honest I don’t even really know what this statement means. Maybe it is an out-dated phrase, but during my college years I would constantly be faced with these words. Then when I married and moved overseas I met many people whom identified with this saying. However, I noticed that many of these “mission-minded” people enter the international context completely the opposite because they were lacking in culture sensitivity. And for the most part, this unfortunate insensitivity was unaware to them. Without being sensitively aware of your location there is limited connectedness to the people to whom you attempt to minister. And in addition when there is the other barrier of language, one at times works in a context of misunderstanding and ineffectiveness regardless of how “mission-mind” one may be.
So before answering the call to missions and going on your first cross cultural experience, there are a few things to consider:
1. Be informed about the cultural differences of the people you are trying to reach because your good intentions may be misunderstood and even offend.
2. Keep in mind you are not going on a site-seeing tour but to help others see the true light.
3. Just because something makes sense in your language, doesn’t mean it will make sense interpreted into a foreign language. Clichés are to be avoided.
4. Remember that you are going to lift up others and not yourself. The song that says “It’s all about YOU,” actually refers to Christ.
5. Consider that the people you are ministering to are real and not objects to be put on display in a savvy PowerPoint after returning home from your trip.
6. Just because you go to a foreign country doesn’t make you a missionary.
7. It is when you put yourself in the shoes of the people you are helping, that you just may learn some do not even have shoes to wear.
8. Aid is not the answer to all problems. Sometimes the people you are going to assist have real problems and spiritual needs.
9. It is not the power of money that saves souls, but the power of a Heavenly Father.
10. There is a major difference between being “mission-minded” and being an international worker.
If you want to genuinely minister to another, you have to meet the needs that they have and not the ones you want them to have. Not everybody is in need of a pair of socks or a toothbrush. Not everybody has a cookie cutter problem that can be fixed with one solution, which is found in a brown paper bag. If you want to be effective on the field, consider the difference of being an international worker versus being “mission-minded.” Perhaps, you should listen to where God is calling you to work and not be influenced by emotions of where it would be exciting to visit. And just maybe consider embracing the idea of working tirelessly instead of simply being mission-minded without a clue. Consider that perhaps the answer of you not being effective in your context is not to go across seas to try to be effective in another context. It’s great to have your mind on missions, but it is insufficient to only think about missions on a whim; if this is even what this statement “mission-minded” means at all.
MissionSHIFT (Part 2): Free Will Missions
Contextualization of the Gospel for a postmodern generation is imperative. For missions, it is where the rubber meets the road, as the work of God through His Son to save creation, essentially comes to the question if God Himself contextualized his message. But instead of covering all related problems at hand, my desire is to write about one contextualization issue related to our work in Bulgaria. {see my article}. It is a theological issue with a strong practical implication in the ministry as it covers a wide range of issues from free reformed theology to the personal salvific experience focusing on the free will of man. My interest is not to take sides and defend a position in the argument, but rather to review its contextualization as a case study in the Bulgarian missionary context in the past 200 years {see my background}.
Although Bulgaria was first Christianized around 8 AD and officially became a Christian state a century later, Eastern Orthodox faith has become but a nominal, culturally comfortable, national religion a millennium later. When first western missionaries “discovered” the Bulgarians, they were a small ethnic group on the Balkan Peninsula under the rule of the vast and powerful Ottoman Empire. British and American missionaries began with translating the Bible in spoken Bulgarian, establishing schools and missions, publishing and educating the people. Only then did they move toward establishing churches and eventually were instrumental in the restoration of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as an autonomous autocephaly.
By that time two major mission agencies worked in synchrony in Bulgaria – the American Board, working predominantly in Southern Bulgaria, and the Missionary Society Methodist Episcopal Church, which established churches north from the Balkan Mountains in Bulgaria. Obviously, the Methodist church was Wesleyan Arminian in view of free will and with very socially proactive renewal theology in mind. The American board, however, was presented by predominantly Congregational and some Presbyterian ministers, who as graduates of leading reformed universities in America at the time, should have been very strong Calvinists and reformed oriented in their theology. But they were not.
Dr. Elias Riggs, one of the translators of the Bulgarian Bible, a missionary for over half a century in the Near East Mission of the American Board was a prime example for that. A superb theologian, author of many revolutionary works and outstanding communicator in the native tongue of several Balkan nations, he never accented on his reformed view for salvation. He certainly believed in predestination as pointed out in an extensive commentary of the Bible he published. And he had the opportunity to strongly defend his position in a number of occasions, while publishing the first Bulgarian newspaper Zornitsa, printed by the missionary press in Constantinople. {see URL of series with English Google translation}
But Riggs chose to regard the theological view of the majority of Bulgarians, who believed in free will as traditionally Eastern Orthodox do, as well as his Methodist colleagues with whom he worked closely for a number of years. Realizing that the Bulgarian nation under Turkish yoke and Greek Orthodox religious oppression needed exactly free will to move toward national identity realization, he published a multitude of articles defended the freedom and will of every man, woman and child. He defended their right to read the Bible in their mother tongue and to have an independent church with services held in the Bulgarian vernacular. And when tens of thousands of Bulgarians were slaughtered by the Turks in the April uprising of 1876, Riggs led the international correspondence involving a number of leading missionaries and journalist who reported to their respective agencies and newspapers the horrible acts of genocide they witnessed in Bulgaria.
Historians have long regarded the fact that this very media action created a process of social transformation which led to the liberation of Bulgaria only two years later and its establishment as an independent state shortly thereafter. But all of this would have been impossible, if Riggs and his fellow colleagues held strong to their theological views, disregarding the understanding of God which the local people, the local existing church, and the theological need one whole nation had.
But the story does not stop here. When Communism took over Bulgaria in 1945, the evangelical church was outlawed and services for the next half century were held underground. But Bulgarian believers never accepted the oppression of individual freedom and religious liberty as God’s will for them. Virtually all evangelical denominations during the Regime, including Baptist and Congregational, were free will believers. It was their only way to survive the persecution of the atheist social dominion and to see Bulgaria transformed at the end, after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
It was not until the turn of the century, that some missionaries in Bulgaria began speaking of reformed theology in the new Bulgarian postcommunist context. Modern day Hyper Calvinists approached Bulgaria with their “Christian reconstruction,” which created a temporary clash between Bulgarian protestant identity and the newly introduced message. It was a good thing to see and understand new theological trends applied in Bulgaria.
But a decade of trying to apply this theology over the Bulgarian churches proved without any result. Virtually all existing Bulgarian protestant denominations subscribe to the free will theology while claiming historical evangelical roots, identity, theology and praxis; thus continuing the missional contextualization on which Bulgarian Protestantism was built 200 years ago. And it just happens, that today, in the beginning of the 21st century, it is this very foundation, historical roots, church identity, Biblical theology and evangelical praxis based on the doctrine of free will that the people of Bulgaria need for one new social transformation of mindset and society in order to reach their potential as a church and a nation in the new era of Postmodernity. Who says God does not work in mysterious ways anymore?
MissionSHIFT (Part 1): Paradoxes in Missions
The following thoughts on missions deserve a proper introduction, which defines my personal approach in responding to the issue at hand as drawn from both experience and education. They are defined via my being Bulgarian born, American educated, and having served as a national worker in my home country for over 20 years while having dedicated 11 years to the earning of three higher theological degrees from Baptist and Pentecostal educational institutions. Ministering with my American born wife in Bulgaria has demanded a response to a number of vital questions in the missional context of the ministry, which vary from micromanaging how to go through today to a much broader and purposefully strategic planning for the future of the Bulgarian Evangelical Movement as a whole. The most important result of this process has been the foreseeing and training of a new missional and visionary generation for the ministry to which we have dedicated our lives in the past several years on both formal and personal levels. Thus, finding a working paradigm between 21st century theology and current missiological trends for us personally has not only been an interest in trends and thought, but a way to survive post modernity and do actual ministry.
History of Missions
With this said on our personal ministry history and missional experience, we turn to the historic overview of missiological trends in the first essay of MissionSHIFT, which has sparked some controversial responses in the book. The text is undoubtedly interesting and fulfilling, while presenting a much needed juxtapose with the similar historical attempt in the third essay of the book. However, the reader is surprised by the quick jump through the Constantine era, which quite frankly forgoes Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism, major contributors to two main branches of Christianity and main players in a period some one millennial long when evangelicalism simply did not exist. And while it is understandable, how these two church institutions may remain far to the interest and knowledge of the Western mindset, it also must be stressed that this very period of church history is responsible for setting the stage for the Reformation and the birth of Western English speaking church as a whole, as both Luther and Wickliffe draw from Eastern Orthodox missiological trends to justify their own call for the reformation of the church and identify themselves with the earlier Bogomils’ movement.
Globalization of Missions
When exploring virtually all branches of Christianity, it is clear that globalization of missions begins nowhere else but in its localization as a ministry of the congregation. With this said, the consideration that missional terminology and action emerges localized in predominantly in North-Western setting is a dangerous one. Philip Jenkins’ Next Christendom has made a strong case for missional theology and action as related to the New Testament church emerging nowhere else but in the East, beginning in Israel with the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ. And while Jenkins’ prediction stops with the Americas and perhaps Australia, our dialogue with his work in 2004 projected that the missional message of the Gospel is completing a full circle around the globe, going from East to West, and returning back to its starting point in Israel. Any opinion that characterizes church missions as purely or predominantly an Western endeavor is imperialistic at best, regardless of its cultural and anthropological context. Missing to discover there is a world existing around us till now, does not make us missionary pioneers, but it does makes us ignorant.
Donors and Sponsorship
The same argument is valid for the opinion contributing the success of missions (in the 19th century and beyond) to (again predominantly western) donors and sponsorship. While the contribution of philanthropy and financial support to missions cannot be denied on any logical ground, eliminating all other factors toward missional success is quite a dangerous endeavor. Even at this contemporary time of missional history, missional agencies make the argument that a one time offering of some $30 is sufficient to save one human soul somewhere in the world. This cheapening of missions through placing a cash value to its ministry must be stopped at once. No price could be assigned to the human soul, no other but the blood of Jesus. And any evangelical mission having embraced such approach is no different than the 16th century papal pontificism of indulgencies and must be reminded of Luther’s 95 Thesis again. It is a terrible, horrific mistake to define the Missio Dei as missio mammon. {http://goo.gl/jZTjk & http://goo.gl/fDzS}
Back to the Basics
The discussion also introduces the so-called “three self model,” which is still practiced by missional agencies around the world. The idea is to start and build a church abroad to a point where it becomes self-sufficient, as in most cases the new community church resembles the parenting church in theology and praxis. The problem arises with the understanding that the meaning of “self-sufficient” changes quite a bit with time and location, to the point of being meaningless today in the context of globalization and postmodernism. If once upon a time, “self-sufficient” meant a church network growing globally, but directed from one locality somewhere in the northwestern hemisphere, it means this no more and most probably it never will. It is simply impossible to create a self-sustainable paradigm of a church movement with truly global growth and leadership localized to a certain geographical, economical, philosophical or social region.
Missions and the Trinity
Possibly the best point in the discussion in relationship to the first essay was made as a call for the recovery of the Trinitarian view on missions (p.44). The 1960s shift of missions from the Church to God and the world is also properly acknowledged as a step in that direction. So is the discussion about anthropological or God centered missions, which Jesus fulfilled 100% both ways. The argument for a Trinitarian Mission seems most necessary in our current evangelical-charismatic context, but when your historical observation on missions misses the role of the Eastern Orthodox Church, where the doctrine of Trinity is theologically confirmed, it leaves a very little argument in favor of Trinitarianism. And even more, it leaves one movement without its historical identity as a Trinity believing church.
Evangelical or Not?
But instead of picking from doctrines and dogmatic, perhaps the discussion on 3rd millennium missions needs to be focused on the main missional shift, namely the moving of the focus of missions toward evangelicals. It seems like what needs much more deconstruction in terminology is the view on missions as an evangelical entity (about p. 20). Before defining missions as evangelical, it will be beneficial to redefine anew the term “evangelical,” which gains quite a bit difference in consistency when contextualized to postmodern globalization.
The social role of the Gospel is unarguably its strongest motivator for the move from this world toward the Kingdom. It is this move that constitutes the very basics of missions and mission mindedness. The preaching of the Gospel not only does not exclude but motivates a social transformation through the salvation of the person, which serves as the personal motivator, first for transformation of one’s mentality and then for social transformation. Translation of the Bible, focus on education, upbringing of culture and national belongingness were not only procured by early missionaries, but become the very essence of a paradigm that move whole communities toward a chance. And the church was the author of such movements, effectually advancing whole nations toward a democracy based on puritan principles.
The early Reformers drew from the same evangelical principals as modern day reformed theologians and practitioners do. Yet, it must be dully noted that reformed theology and praxis in the modern missional context of globalism and postmodernity is a minority at best. The fastest growing and largest Pentecostal charismatic wing is far from ever subscribing to basic reformed principles as divine predestination, preteresitc or postmillennial eschatology. And this does not make us less evangelical. On the contrary, it demands the rethinking of a new theological view on missiologoy, which forgoes 16th century reformism and addresses modern day evangelical churches by speaking to the issues of today. For if a person cannot chose salvation, a person cannot chose anything at all. {goo.gl/FCCso}
So What Should Missions be Like?
Before all, missions must remain practical, which denotes being created by people who have practiced missions in order to be able to others that will practice the ministry mission. If ministry is the practice of the Kingdom, missions is its outposts far beyond the walls and the borders where things are but practical. Only when missional thinking is practice oriented, can become a practice of mission. My practical advice for Missions in the 3rd Millennium follows with several characteristics of the ministry of missions in the 21st century. Our missional approach must be:
1. More mission minded than agency structured
2. More missionary focused than leadership centralized
3. More operational than organizational
4. More result oriented than self and strategy containable
5. More praying than thinking while more feeling, than cognitive
6. More giving than fundraising oriented
7. More focused on the Dominion of the Kingdom, than the denomination.
Liked this publication? Here are some more articles on missions:
» 8 Simple Rules for Doing Missions in the Spirit
» M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position
» Church of God Eastern Europe Missions: Leadership, Economics and Culture
» First Bulgarian Mission in Chicago (1907)
M3: Missions for the Third Millennium – A Public Position
by Rev. Dony K. Donev, D.Min.
The time of changes in the world of missions is at hand. The search for a new paradigm for doing missions in the beginning of the 21st century has begun. Much like in the world of the internet, it cannot be a closed-circuit reinstallation of the same old software, which changes the interface, but not the structure; or a copyrighted etalon designed to be used by a tender legal minority. It must be an open-source, people oriented, social networking, body-like organism of believers that practice the Bible providing the diakonia of missions to peoples and nations in a need of salvation.
This necessity for a fresh evaluation of the way we do missions in the Spirit is based on issues which older missional paradigms were unable to adequately address. Rethinking of world missions today, includes rethinking the global problems of economic crises, world terrorism, immigration and open border markets. Problems that point not to new frontiers in some unknown cosmic future, but back to the old countries upon which modern day civilization was built.
Churches and missionaries, then, cannot afford to simply follow any secular, political, social or economical wave, but must propose Biblical solutions, which surpass both the understanding and history of the natural world to the realm of the Kingdom of God – the sole solver, provider and proprietor of the restoration of God created humanity, social justice and every relationship within the universum for eternity.
It is there, in the very Kingdom identity, or the lacking of such thereof, that the problem of ministry in missions is found. And this problem is deep, penetrating the very soul and make of the church, changing it from a community of mission minded believers willing to dedicate their lives to missions, to an agency that sends half-prepared, half-sponsored, half-aware missionaries to a mission filed where cultural, leadership and financial dilemmas hit them as a hurricane and never seize to oppose their call to minister in a foreign land.
Several characteristics are apparent immediately. The ministry of missions in the 21st century must be:
1. More mission minded than agency structured
2. More missionary focused than leadership centralized
3. More operational than organizational
4. More result oriented than self and strategy containable
5. More praying than thinking while more feeling, than cognitive
6. More giving than fundraising oriented
7. More focused on the Dominion of the Kingdom, than the denomination.
A proposal of such caliber must begin simultaneously at three starting points. First, perhaps not by importance, but by legal requirement, a professional counsel is a must. Many mission agencies follow the secular practice of debriefing missionaries, who have been on the field for a long time as part of their reentry. It is expected that post-missional experiences are often defined as problems requiring a professional counselors. But there are so many more cultural, financial, leadership, church and purely structure related problems. For example, how can one ever imagine doing missions in the 21st century without assertive financial planning in difficult times and rapidly changing international currencies, or political and security advisory in times of ever-present global terrorism? If addressed properly by in-house professionals beforehand, most of them can and should be easily prevented in the ministry of the missionaries. Thus, released from the burden of solving problems they are not qualified to deal with, missionaries will be allowed to fully focus on their main goal: namely, the salvation of eternal human souls.
Second, but equally important, are some very practical implications concerning the church recognition of the ministry of the missionary. Unfortunately, even in the beginning of the 21st century, some of the leading Pentecostal denominations in the world do not have the ministry of missions present on their ministerial report forms, as if it simply does not fit there. Others are yet to include missions as a ministry occupation on their voting registrations for business meetings at assemblies.
And finally, a word about the Prophetic Utterance of Pentecostal Missions. Historically, we, the missionaries baptized with the Holy Ghost, seldom followed models and paradigms. Our guidance has been that prophetic Word, that utterance of the Spirit, that divine guidance and Heavenly call that are never wrong. We went without knowing. We prayed without ceasing. We prophesied without seeing in the physical or even purposefully refusing to reckon with it. We preached without a season, for preaching was the vibe of our ministry and the life of our churches. And this made us Pentecostal. Even more important, this made us powerfully Pentecostal and Pentecostally powerful.
And if indeed, it is true that this very power is being lost today, it means that the very identity of our movement has changed from power giving to power needing – from powerful to powerless. The main questions that must be raised then are these: “What is the prophetic word for Pentecostal missions in 21st century?” and “What does the Spirit wants us to do?” And their answers could be found in the restoration of Pentecostal preaching, prophecy and prayer, as the foundation of any paradigm or model on which we continue to build the Ministry of World Missions.
