Revolution in World Missions

Chapter 17, The Water of Life in a Foreign Cup When we think about the awesome challenge of Asia, it's not too much to ask for a new army of missionaries to reach these nations for Christ. And tens of thousands of native missionaries are being raised up by the Lord in all these two-thirds world nations right now. They are Asians, many of whom already live in the nation they must reach, or in nearby cultures just a few hundred miles from the un-evangelized villages to which they will be sent by the Lord. The situation in world missions is depressing only when you think of it in terms of 19th-century Western colonialism. If the actual task of world evangelization depends on the sending of the white missionary, obeying the Great Commission truly becomes more impossible every day. But, praise God, the native missionary movement is growing, ready today to complete the task. The primary message I have for every Christian, pastor, and mission leader is that we are witnessing a new day in missions. Just a few short years ago, no one dreamed the Asian church would be ready to lead the final thrust. But dedicated native evangelists are beginning to go out and reach their own. Even more exciting, you have a role. God is calling all of us to be part of what He is doing. We can make it possible for millions of brown and yellow feet to move out with the liberating gospel of Jesus. With the prayer and financial support of the Western church, they can preach the word to the lost multitudes. The whole family of God is needed. Thousands of native missionaries will go to the lost if Christians in the West will help by sharing resources with them. This is why I believe God called me to the United States. The only reason I stay here is to help serve our Asian brethren by bringing their needs before God's people in the West. A whole new generation of Christians needs to know that this profound shift in the mission task has taken place. North American believers need to know they are needed as senders to pray and help the native brothers go. The waters of missions have been muddied. Today, many Christians are unable to think clearly about the real issues because Satan has sent a deceiving spirit to blind their eyes. I do not make this statement lightly. Satan knows that to stop world evangelism, he must confuse the minds of Western Christians. This he has done quite effectively. The facts speak for themselves. The average North American Christian gives only 50 cents a week to global missions. Imagine what that means. Missions is the primary task of the church, our Lord's final command to us before his ascension. Jesus died on the cross to start a missionary movement. He came to show God's love, and we are left here to continue that mission. Yet this most important task of the church is receiving less than 1% of all of our finances. Remember, of the Western missionaries who are sent overseas, many are involved in efforts of social work in the two-thirds world and not in the primary task of preaching the gospel and planting churches. And approximately 85% of all missionary finances are being used by Western missionaries who are working among the established churches on the field, not for pioneer evangelism to the lost. Consequently, most of that 50 cents a week the average American Christian has given to missions actually was spent on projects or programs other than proclaiming the gospel of Christ. But a shift has taken place in the past six decades or so. At the end of World War II, almost the entire work of the Great Commission was being done by a handful of white foreigners. To these Christian mission leaders, it was impossible to even imagine reaching all the thousands of distinct cultural groups in the colonies. So they focused their attention on the major cultural groups in easy-to-reach centers of trade and government. In most of the Asian nations, nearly 200 years of mission work have been accomplished under the watchful gaze of colonial governors when the era finally ended in 1945. During that time, Western missionaries appeared to be a vital part of the fabric of Western colonial government. Even the few churches that were established among the dominant cultural groups appeared weak. Like the local government and economy, they too were directly controlled by foreigners. Few were indigenous or independent of Western missionaries. Not surprisingly, the masses shunned these strange centers of alien religion, much as most Americans avoid Krishna missions in the United States today. In this atmosphere, the thought of going beyond the major cultural groups, reaching out to the unfinished task, was naturally put off. Those masses of people in rural areas, ethnic subcultures, tribal groups, and minorities would have to wait. Teaching them was still generations away. Unless, of course, more white foreign missionaries could be recruited to go to them. But this was not to be. When the colonial-era missionaries returned to take control of their churches, hospitals, and schools, they found the political climate had changed radically. They met a new hostility from Asian governments. Something radical had happened during World War II. The nationalists had organized and were on the march. Soon political revolution was sweeping the two-thirds world. With the independence of one nation after another, the missionaries lost their position of power and privilege. In the 25 years following World War II, 71 nations broke free of Western domination. And with their new freedom, most decided Western missionaries would be among the first symbols of the West to go. Now 86 nations, with more than half of the world's population, forbid or seriously restrict foreign missionaries. But there is a bright side to the story. The effect of all of this on the emerging churches of Asia has been electric. Far from slowing the spread of the gospel, the withdrawal of foreign missionaries has freed the gospel from the Western traditions that foreign missionaries had unwittingly added to it. Sadhu Sundar Singh, a pioneer native missionary evangelist, used to tell a story that illustrates the importance of presenting the gospel in culturally acceptable terms. A high-caste Hindu, he said he fainted one day from the summer heat while sitting on a train in a railway station. A train employee ran to a water faucet, filled a cup with water, and brought it to the man in an attempt to revive him. But in spite of his condition, the Hindu refused. He would rather die than accept water in the cup from someone from another caste. Then someone else noticed that the high-caste passenger had left his own cup on the seat beside him. So he grabbed it, filled it with water, and returned to offer it to the panting heat victim, who immediately accepted the water with gratitude. Then Sundar Singh would say to his hearers, This is what I have been trying to say to missionaries from abroad. You have been offering the water of life to the people of India in a foreign cup, and we have been slow to receive it. If you will offer it in our own cup, in an indigenous form, then we are much more likely to accept it. Today, a whole new generation of Spirit-led young Native leaders is mapping strategies to complete the evangelization of our Asian homelands. In almost every country of Asia, I personally know local missionaries who are effectively winning their people to Christ using culturally acceptable methods and styles. Although persecution in one form or another still exists in most Asian nations, the post-colonial national governments have guaranteed almost unlimited freedom to Native missionaries. Just because Westerners have been forbidden, the expansion of the Church does not have to cease. For some diabolical reason, news of this dramatic change has not reached the ears of most believers in our churches. While God, by His Holy Spirit, has been raising up a new army of missionaries to carry on the work of the Great Commission, most North American believers have sat unmoved. This, I have discovered, is not because Christians here are lacking in generosity. When they are told the need, they respond quickly. They are not involved only because they do not know the real truth about what is happening in Asia today. I believe we are being called to be involved by sharing prayerfully and financially in the great work that lies ahead. As we do this, perhaps we will see together the fulfillment of that awesome prophecy in Revelation chapter 7 verses 9-10. And lo a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God, who sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. This prediction is about to come true. Now, for the first time in history, we can see the final thrust taking place as God's people everywhere unite to make it possible. What should intrigue us, especially here in the West, is the way the native missionary movement is flourishing without the help and genius of our Western planning. The Holy Spirit, when we give Him the freedom to work, prompts spontaneous growth and expansion. Until we recognize the native missionary movement as the plan of God for this period in history, and until we are willing to become servants to what He is doing, we are in danger of frustrating the will of God.