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11 for 11: Ideas That Work The New Role for Western Missionaries by Eric Swanson 11 for 11: Ideas That Work The New Role for Western Missionaries by Eric Swanson The Cambridge Seven were students from Cambridge University who in 1885 decided to become missionaries to China. Perhaps the best known of the seven was C.T. Studd. One afternoon I strolled down the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, CO, stopping at Art Source International— a purveyor of antique maps. As I was browsing through some documents under the title “Rare Maps,” I found a document taken from an 1886 world atlas titled The Distribution of Christian Religions Throughout the World. Using various sized circles, it depicted the number of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox believers in different countries and regions of the world. Here are a few of my findings: In 1886, Christianity was most prominently dispersed in the northern and western hemispheres, with 54 million Orthodox in Russia, 35 million Catholics in France, and 30 million Protestants in the U.S. By contrast, the continent of Africa had only 709,000 Protestants compared to Polynesia’s million; India had a mere 300,000 Protestants; Arabia, Turkey, Persia and China together had a paltry 89,000 Protestants; and 800,000 Catholics were in the countries of China and Japan combined. Since then we have seen a global shift in the distribution of Christianity. Today, Christianity is growing and spreading in almost every place except the United States. Metrics • Today, the U.S. represents only 12% of global Christianity. • Today, the world’s 50 largest churches are all outside the U.S. Some of the shifts trace back to 1886 when God began to wake up the church in the West to the needs of the world. In 1885, the famous Cambridge Seven packed their bags for China. In 1886, the Student Volunteer Movement launched as 100 students at D.L. Moody’s conference grounds in Mount Hermon, MA, signed the Princeton Pledge which says: “I purpose, God willing, to become a foreign missionary.” By 1887, those hundred students were serving around the globe. In 1888, Jonathan Goforth sailed for China Leadership Network • The New Role For Western Missionaries and John R. Mott was appointed as chairman of the Student Volunteer Movement. The movement’s motto: “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” In 1890, Central American Mission was founded by C.I. Scofield. In the same year Methodist Charles Gabriel wrote the missionary song “Send the Light” and John Livingston Nevius of China launched a ministry in Korea. In 1891, Samuel Zwemer went to Arabia while Helen Chapman sailed for the Congo. And in 1895, Africa Inland Mission was formed, the Japan Bible Society was established, and missionary Amy Carmichael arrived in India.1 The Western missionaries had started the work for their generation. Looking at the spread and vibrancy of Christianity today, one can only 1 conclude that the Western missionaries of the past generations—despite their flaws, ethnocentrism, bad wardrobe and culture bungling— actually did their job! Look at the evidence comparing global missionary conferences: “One hundred years ago, at the famous Edinburgh World Missionary Conference, delegates from the U.S., Canada, and Britain represented 85% of the delegates. At Lausanne 2010 [which invited delegates according to the percentage of world Christianity their country represented] less than 12% of the delegates came from these countries.”2 John Mbiti, a Kenyan scholar, notes that “the centers of the church’s universality [are] no longer in Geneva, Rome, Athens, Paris, London, New York, but Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa and Manila.”3 The largest churches in the world are not in Southern California or in Texas. In fact, “none of the fifty largest churches in the world are found in North America.”4 This history teaches us that the last century’s Western missionaries did their job in their generation. Trends The question we face as a result of these changes: How will we, as a missional people, approach our task in our generation? Three trends will influence how we answer: • Globalization: The world is flattening. This relatively new word refers to the interconnectedness of people, goods and services. The smart phone you carry in your pocket (which you are perhaps using to read this document) was most likely designed in the U.S. and manufactured in China, using components from Malaysia, Brazil and Thailand. For service you probably connect to a phone bank in India. Apart from the 1.5 million American Christians who go on short-term global missions each year, millions of Western Christians travel regularly outside the West on both business and pleasure. Passports and plane trips are a way of life. In short, Christians are already regularly going to all parts of our connected world. • Urbanization: People are moving to the cities. As of May 2007 more people live in cities than in rural areas. Urbanization is the largest migration in human history. Every major U.S. and Canadian urban area has a burgeoning immigrant urban population. In the past ten years more than one million foreign-born people, speaking 239 different languages (one-third from African countries) have settled in the Dallas / Fort Worth metroplex. In 32% of the area’s residences, English is not the spoken language in the home. Christians are not only going to the world, the world is coming to America. This fact should inform our strategy. • The rise of technology opens new doors to evangelism. Technology is the usage of tools, techniques, inventions or systems to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of exerted effort. What does technology do better today in global missions that we could not do previously? A generation ago, thousands of missionaries lugged portable projectors and bed sheets to remote villages to show the remarkable film, JESUS, in villages that had never had a film in their own language. Since 1979, the JESUS film, which has been viewed by billions all across the globe, has resulted in more than 225 million new followers of Jesus Christ. What is the technological dynamic equivalent of the JESUS film today? Questions PDA with Bible Leadership Network • The New Role For Western Missionaries Alan Roxburgh writes about liminal times in history—those periods when the tectonic plates of history are shifting; where what used to work, no longer works and where what will 2 work has not yet been fully discovered. In this era of liminality, there are two questions coming up over and again, which no one has figured out: • With the gospel growing largely outside the US, what is the new role of the American missionary? • How do North Americans transfer their passion for world evangelization to a younger generation? Predictions • Perhaps more answers lie not with the United States, but in other nations of the world. Maybe we need the followers of Jesus in places outside of North America to help define and clarify the role of Western Christians. Perhaps, just as the centers of Protestant Christianity in decades past (U.S., England and Canada) were primary sending centers of missionaries, the new centers of Christianity like Korea, China, Kenya or Brazil will take on the unfinished slack of the Great Commission. In short, we predict other nations like Nigeria, China, Korea and Brazil will pick up the slack that the Western world has not. Amidst a wash of missional uncertainty, there are some bright spots worth exploring. Austin Stone Church in Austin, TX (www. austinstone.org) is less than a decade old and has more than 6,000 who call “the Stone” their home. The average age of attendees in this college town is a mere 27 years old. Fired up by the fact that more than one billion people in the world have no church, Bible study or Christian witness, Global Pastor Joey Shaw and his team have challenged 100 people to go to an unreached people group for at least two years. So far, 90 people have stepped up to this missional calling. “In a couple of years we will ask God for another hundred,” says Joey. What if every church sent a dozen or so Volunteers from the Austin Stone Church at the Makarios School in the Dominican Republic people to the unreached peoples of the world? • Technology will greatly enhance the impact of global missions and make it possible for average people with oversized hearts to impact the world from their homes. Global Media Outreach (GMO) (www. globalmediaoutreach.com) has created 100 websites in all the major languages in a way that allows people who are searching for God or for answers to life’s big questions to connect with an opportunity to know Jesus Christ. Up to two million people each day search for God on the Internet and upwards of 45,000 indicate decisions for Christ with 5,000 a day requesting follow-up contact from a Christian. Former Apple executive and GMO founder Walt Wilson says, “We are the first generation in all of human history to hold in our hands the technology to reach every man, Leadership Network • The New Role For Western Missionaries woman, and child on earth…. This is not a distant dream. It is a current reality. Market forces in technology are driving us forward.”5 Technology creates a world without borders with many seekers and followers coming from what are normally considered “closed countries.” To see a live website of people inquiring about God or making decisions to follow Christ go to www. greatcommission2020.com. What if every church had a team of “online missionaries” that was regularly leading people to Christ and making disciples of the nations? The world will continue to change. Churches can respond by trying a little more of what they did last year, or they can take advantage of the way God is shaping today’s world of globalization, urbanization and technology. Yesterday’s missionaries from the West did their jobs. How will we and the rising generation do ours? 3 About Leadership Network About the Authors Eric Swanson, D.Min., currently works as Leadership Community Director for Externally Focused Churches, Missional Renaissance and Global Connection Churches. He is the co‑author of The Externally Focused Church, The Externally Focused Life, The Externally Focused Quest, To Transform a City and numerous articles on churches that are transforming their communities. His bio is at www.leadnet.org/ ericswanson Leadership Network’s mission is to accelerate the impact of 100X leaders. These high-capacity leaders are like the hundredfold crop that comes from seed planted in good soil as Jesus described in Matthew 13:8. Leadership Network is a division of OneHundredX, a global ministry with initiatives around the world. Warren Bird, Ph.D., who is overseeing the 11 for 11 initiative, directs the research division of Leadership Network, bringing a background of pastoral ministry and seminary teaching. He has co-authored 23 books on various issues of church vitality and health. His bio is at www.leadnet.org/ warrenbird To learn more about Leadership Network go to www.leadnet.org About 11 for 11 The idea behind 11 for 11 is to profile eleven specific ministry innovations (one per month) during 2011. The total series will also include Rapid Growth Churches, Executive Pastors and Key Implementers, Large Church Senior Pastors, Missional Renaissance, Next Generation Pastors, Externally Focused Churches, Multisite Churches, Leadership Development, Generous Churches, and Next Horizons. Endnotes 1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Christian_missions. Accessed December 16, 2010. 2. Christianity Today, December 2010 p. 35. 3. Jenkins, Philip, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford University Press (2002), page 2. 4. Livermore, David A. Serving with Eyes Wide Open: Doing Short-Term Missions with Cultural Intelligence. Baker Books 2006, Kindle edition, Locations 277-80. 5. Briscoe, Pete with Todd Hillard. The Surge: Churches Catching the Wave of Christ’s Love for the Nations. Grand Rapids, MI, Zondervan (2010) p.61 Resources The New Role for Western Missionaries is also available in these formats. • Briscoe, Pete, and Todd Hillard, The Surge: Churches Catching the Wave of Christ’s Love for the Nations (Zondervan, 2010). • Corbett, Steve, and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor — and Yourself (Moody, 2009). • Kling, Fritz, The Meeting of the Waters: Seven Global Currents that Will Propel the Future Church (David C. Cook, 2010). Contact Contact Eric Swanson at [email protected] if you’re interested in being part of a Global Connections Leadership Community. These gatherings focus on breakthrough ideas of increasing missional effectiveness on both the going and receiving sides of missions, with the ultimate goal and outcome of accelerating the learning, knowledge and application of innovative approaches to global missions. Leadership Network • The New Role For Western Missionaries 4