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Discipleship on the Go and the Financial Woes of the IMB
Posted by Strider in Church & Missions, IMPACT Features
The IMB is still in financial trouble. A few years ago a friend of mine in another country had 20 new families coming to the field to join him in the work he was doing all across that dark unreached nation, today, we are not getting new people on the field in any great numbers at all. The Board is still downsizing and my budget is still a shoestring or less. Does this mean that we have failed? Does this mean that God will spread the Gospel around the world without us? Have we missed the bus and be forced to content ourselves with stories of what we used to do for world missions? I don’t think so but it will require something of us. It will require change.
We have been in a long process now of evaluating our strategies. This has been a painful process that has caused hurt and division from time to time. We don’t like change and it seems that it always has to be someone’s fault. If something is right to do today then we must have been doing it wrong yesterday. And if that change is now based on a verse of scripture then the wrong we were doing yesterday must have been evil and those rotten apostate missionaries were a bunch of losers. Well, you can see that none of that makes any logical sense but when dealing with people and feelings we rarely employ either logic or sense. Kind of a sad reality considering many of us (myself included) used to be pastors.
IMB strategy is all over the place today. You can find cutting edge teams working in weird and wild ways to get access to restricted countries and you can also find what you found fifty years ago. There are still places where guys in ugly green polyester suits wander down dusty roads with a Bible in their pocket telling people about Jesus. Now, I love these guys with no fashion sense in either the country they live in or the one they are from meandering down the road with a vision of building a building and filling it up with local believers whom they can train to take over this new organization called church. They have faith and God always honors faith. But we need to move on from that. In 1997 we moved on in a big way in many places. We scrapped whole ‘mission stations’ and started talking about teams in new and radical ways. Well, the talk was new and radical anyway. People- even Baptists- have worked together for a long time. But now we value teams differently. We need teams of American personnel in order to set up a work anywhere. These teams should meet together, do church together, and complement each other in the work they are doing. Much of our leadership training now involves how to start a team, not destroy a team, pull a team back together, or scrap a team and start a new one. We talk often about the team cycle of Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing (although admittedly the last two are hypothetical for most of us). I am no longer a Strategy Coordinator I am now a Team Strategy Leader. From SC to TSL- how many of you knew about that change?
None of that is going to work. I know, I know, another over the top statement from Strider but hear me out this time. Toward the end of his tenure Jerry Rankin was talking about needing 8000 missionaries to complete the task of global evangelization. I don’t think 8000 would have done it anyway and even if that is what it would take we don’t have it. Our numbers are going down to 5000 and it is unclear how long we will support that in the face of economic upheaval, spiraling food and oil prices, and a very weak dollar. So, do we give up? Of course not. We read the Bible and ask God for answers. A couple of years ago I was reading Acts 20 when I came across verse 4 and saw something weird. Luke was giving his travelogue of Paul’s adventures and he records who went with Paul as he made his way back to Jerusalem. Acts 20:4 says:
Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus.
Riveting stuff, I know. But did you notice among all these traveling fellow workers of Paul how many guys from Antioch or Jerusalem there were? None. Paul apparently did not have a job request form that he sent back to his home agency to rustle up new workers. These guys are from Berea, Thessalonia, Derbe, Asia, and he had others from lots of other places which were all places that he himself worked. Paul proclaimed the Gospel in lots of new places and the natural thing for him to do was to take those guys with him as a part of their own discipleship and to fuel the work of expanding the Kingdom.
This methodology addresses a number of issues. One, it is real discipleship. Paul did not offer a class on the nature of God and how to start a church. He took these guys with him and demonstrated what he believed and what he practiced. Churches where not registered organizations with buildings they were groups of followers of Jesus who had a passion to go to the next city, county, country and tell others about the Savior. Second, Paul’s chief resource was people and he found those where ever God called him to go. As we often say but seldom practice; the resources are in the harvest.
Can I practice what I preach? Well, I am trying. I work with two national teams of church planters and I am starting a third. I have two new American workers who are focused on unreached people groups and I am telling them to build up a national team. We can’t wait for our budget to turn around. People are dying and going to @#!*% now. God is opening up opportunities to access people everywhere now. We have to move in faith and we need to be demonstrating that faith to as many local believers as possible. That is real discipleship.
One more paragraph from me and then you can hit the comment stream. Southern Baptist Churches back in the US need to be on board with this and support us to do it. We need better relationships and partnerships between missionaries and US churches. Missionaries who are working in more isolated areas and with mostly nationals need fellowship, visits, e-mails, Facebook messages, packages, and love and care. Churches need to fill the gaps left by budget shortfalls. I have greatly benefited from churches who have paid for media projects so that my people can hear the Gospel in their own language in books and in film. But if all this is good for the missionary in the middle of nowhere then is it not good for the church in the US? It is. We need to put these principles to work in America by discipling men and women, taking them out of the pew and into active ministry. We need to reevaluate church planting in new areas and work on training locals to lead instead of trying to find someone from Texas to go and pastor in Vermont. Paul moved with the Spirit as far and as fast as he was called to. We are living in a rapidly changing world and we must do the same.
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Strider,
I pretty much agree with everything you say here. If I am understanding you correctly, this pretty much goes hand in hand with the last part of my last post, where I advocate us as Americans being more committed to helping those in other countries and other cultures step up to the front lines in Great Commission work. And, from my perspective, it should not just be because a downturn in Stateside missions giving demands it. Even if that were not the case, I still think it is a better way to work. Maybe even, God is forcing our hand with the economic problems to wake us up to this.
Having said that, this, by no means, means that SBC churches and believers should not be doing everything possible to give more to the IMB and to send out more American missionaries. It is both/and, not either/or.
A few practical follow-up questions to what you write here:
1. What is a viable model for national co-workers to make a living? In some contexts, bi-vocational workers who are able to fund themselves may be the best answer. I know that, according to the textbook, that is how it is supposed to work, But, out in the field, how many national workers are really able to support themselves and their families this way? I’m sure this differs somewhat from context to context. Should Southern Baptists be involved in any way in helping to fund national workers?
2. Should the nationals we disciple and who become our team members on the field necessarily be people we ourselves win to the Lord? I know that the purist version of New Directions says yes. But I have seen IMB workers doing their best to go by the purist version of New Directions insist on spending all their time with lost people, in hope of winning some, discipling them, and training them, while at the same time neglecting relationships with the national church, and church leaders. Usually this line of thinking goes along with saying something about avoiding “contaminated DNA” in the new churches in the envisioned CPM, that comes from people with experience in traditional churches.
Ideally, I would like for the leaders and the believers in the already existing national churches (wherever there are a few) to think we are there to support and work side by side with what they are doing, and not working behind their backs, as it were. This doesn’t mean we have to throw all our eggs in the basket of traditional churches. But it does mean recognizing and embracing the whole Body of Christ in the region in which we work.
This is fantastic Strider,
“This methodology addresses a number of issues. One, it is real discipleship. Paul did not offer a class on the nature of God and how to start a church. He took these guys with him and demonstrated what he believed and what he practiced. Churches where not registered organizations with buildings they were groups of followers of Jesus who had a passion to go to the next city, county, country and tell others about the Savior. Second, Paul’s chief resource was people and he found those where ever God called him to go. As we often say but seldom practice; the resources are in the harvest.”
This is way to biblical! The problem is ….is that the SBC has become overly pragmatic and political. We need to tear that out of the heart of the SBC and return to the biblical flow of evangelism and work with God as he builds His church.
This is not rocket science…. although many would like to make it as expensive.
Effective post!
Blessings,
Chris
Good questions David, I am sorry to be so long in answering but we have an electricity shortage here now and we only have power in the daytime.
As to your first question this has been a controversial issue for some years now. For local pastors the issue for me is easy, they ate and supported themselves before we came and they can keep doing that once we are here. But for Church Planters it is harder. In wealthier countries there may be employment opportunities in places we want to go but in many places there is no work and the local church is no where near able to support their own going out. In my context I pay guys to do humanitarian aid and get them where they need to be to do ministry but this option is becoming less and less viable in other countries. Business start ups have been used. I talked to guys in one country who had helped national CPers start up hundreds of businesses which all failed. They said, “Of course, most CPers are not businessmen but they don’t have to be. The business only has to last long enough for them to get a church started and then once it fails they move on and let the local church grow on it’s own.”
As for Question 2 I myself do work with guys who were already part of the local church. The issue was to find guys who were willing to do things in new ways- not build a building but start house-churches. For this reason I have had two teams for some years now but after spending significant time teaching here locally we have some guys who are ready to start a third team. It is definitely a case of both and.
Thanks Chris, yes the main reason for this suggested methodology has much less to do with saving money and much more to do with real biblical discipleship. Thanks for the encouragement.
Our experience where we went, and who we worked with is there is a lot of unorganized efforts and seemingly a real lack of communication between those on the field asking for help, and then those coming to help. Maybe the missionaries are over worked. Then they need to stop trying to cover all the bases and do the thing they do well. Volunteers (at least we did) spend sacrificially to come over to help, not to be on the sidelines. We didn’t want a vacation where we spent more time trying to find a place to eat instead discussing what we came over to do.
I do understand your frustrations Karl. There are some M’s who handle volunteers really well and the work is advanced well with their help but these are the minority really. There has to be a lot of communication before the trip and realistic expectations set. I find that on many days I spend more time trying to find food than doing the work I came to do. This is the nature of some of the difficult places we work. This wears us out and many M’s are tired and seemingly as needy as the people they came to serve.
Many things worth discussing here Strider. I share your concern over financing at the IMB and strategy decisions and indecisions that are being made.
I know that the recent economic problems in the states have been part of the financial woes at the IMB but I think it has largely been the fault of unwise financial decisions and practices. Rankin’s latest reorganization began about the time funds were drying up. It was an extremely expensive change with people being moved around and new bureaucracies being setup. In the end it has turned out to be as you mentioned once, an unmitigated disaster. For years we have had too many people flying around the world for too many meetings. We have trained and trained and trained until we have forgotten what we were training to do. Money was spent on materials and resources that were not reproducible in the cultures where they were being introduced but pressure was put on SCs to raise funds to do big projects. I am doing all I can to persuade churches back her to give but I wish I have the opportunity to influence how the money is being spent in RVA.
We should always be looking for better strategies and new ways to accomplish our tasks. That doesn’t mean that the old ways were wrong or unsuccessful but the times change. I am pretty much a traditionalist and am very slow to change but when I can see ways to carry out evangelism or church planting or discipleship training better I welcome change. I liked your comment that if it is right to do something different today does that mean that what was done in the past we wrong. Of course not! That reminds me of the time several years ago when Jerry R was making one his speeches about the great things that were happening with new directions and he would always throw a statement about the old bureaucracies and bad way things were being done in the “mission stations”. I told him then that in the future there would be something to take the place of New Directions. How would he feel if that was accompanied by statements about the failures of New Directions. That may be taking place now.
I agree that teams are the heart of any strategy we must implement. There are many teams doing wild and weird things to get access to restricted countries as you say. The most important things is what are they doing after they get access. I know some that are accomplishing amazing things. Often they cannot publish what is happening but God is being glorified.
In East Asia we implemented a team strategy back in the late 80s. Everyone in our “mission station” was serving on a church planting team. (I am not sure what a “mission station” is but I guess we had one.) I was a CP team leader. We had not heard the term SC at that time. On our team we worked primarily with national Baptists. My two primary co-workers were Baptist laymen but we also had several navigators and Campus Crusade folks involved at various time. There were also some we led to Christ who were invaluable in our efforts. The primary church start is still doing well and at least two churches have been started by our original team members as well as some small groups that have been meeting for many years. We receive no money from the IMB or churches in the states except for providing missionary support. It was not a CPM and did not fit the CSI mold so not much is mentioned of it today.
In 1997 we were glad to see CSI was catching up with us. We were hoping to share with them some of the things we had learned. We soon discovered that as David Rogers has mentioned they had some different ideas about team strategy. As David mentioned we were discouraged from working with established churches or our Baptist Co-workers and we received the purists version of New Directions. That was a mistake that we are still suffering from. We were required to send our team leaders to another country to be trained by people who had never served with our people group and often had never started a church or seen a CPM. Leadership was imported from other areas to lead us in implementing their strategy. Even though they were able to turn in great reports nothing much was accomplished or remains of their strategy.
We work in many different situations around the world. Some work in Muslim countries where their very lives are in danger and those of their national co-workers. Some work in Communist countries where believers can be persecuted or imprisoned. Some work in regions with few Christians and strong historic religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism or Folk religions but they are free to work openly and with little opposition. Some work as David did in regions where there is history of Christianity but the gospel has been watered down. In some places a house church strategy may the best or only strategy possible. In some there could be house churches or church buildings. It should be up to the local believers to decide what best meets their needs.
Strider said, “But if all this is good for the missionary in the middle of nowhere then is it not good for the church in the US?” I was always amazed that after New Directions we asked our nationals to use a house church strategy but we brought pastors and laypersons out to help in training and leading who were almost invariably from large mega churches with choir robes, Family life centers and auditoriums that would seat thousands. What do you think our co-workers thought of that?
Ron, we need to meet someday and talk. I don’t know how to comment on all of the points you bring up but as usual I agree with much of what you have said. Your last paragraph made me laugh. You know we planted a ‘house church’ here in Mordor and then as different issues came up among the nationals we expats realized that we had just advocated and planted a church that none of us had every been to or had any experience with! We started a house church for ourselves the next year and have loved the experience. But, when pastors in the US want to come out and do pastor or leadership training with the guys we work with what do we tell them?
As you know I am in Arkansas. I will look you up this fall or if you want to find me, many people at the state office know how to get in touch with me. I am planning on visiting with you. I’ll buy lunch.