Ministry and Mission Exam 2

First Era of Modern Missions Movement

• To the Coastlands

• European dominance

• Late 1700s - 1900

• William Carey’s book published

• Baptist Mission Society founded

Second Era of Modern Missions Movement

• To the Inland Areas

• American dominance

• 1865 - Late 1900s

• Hudson Taylor founds China Inland Mission

Third Era of Modern Missions Movement

• To the Unreached Peoples

• Non-Western dominance

• Non-geographic strategy 

• Mid 1900s - Present

• Cameron Townsend emphasized linguistic groups

• Donald McGavran emphasized ethnic groups

• Ralph Winter emphasized unreached people groups

Fourth Era of Modern Missions Movement

Indigenous leaders, workers, and collaboration

Main Questions for the Last 50 Years

• What is mission?

• What is evangelism?

• What is our social responsibility?

• Who is the main target for missions?

• Where is the main venue for missions?

What is mission?

Wholistic balance is being restored (Integral mission)

What is evangelism?

Growing understanding of relationship and discipleship

Social responsibility?

More structural and global concerns

Who is the main target for missions?

Growing importance of daily life and service for the marginalized

Where is the main venue for missions?

Growing importance for works in public arena

Results and Implications of Missional Questions

• Missions move toward being holistic

• Ingenuity of our faith in life and relationship is important for evangelism

• Our works in public arena will be ever important

• Understanding of prayer and spirituality needs to be awakened

• All people need to be empowered. Local churches need to be empowered.

Polycentric Mission

Every continent both sends and receives missionaries. It is not just coming from the West any more.

The Home Arena

• Role of Agencies

  • Local church

  • Denominational mission board

  • Independent mission agency

• Rising of national workers

• Rising of Non-Western churches and workers

  • Out-sourcing is more cost effective

  • The number of North American missionaries is declining 

• Those who control the money still often control the ministry

  • New partnership roles are needed

Strategic Arena

• The largest percentage of people in the world is unreached (42.5%), but most missionaries are going to reached peoples

• 1040 Window

  • Most unreached people groups

  • Most unreached population

  • Most of the world’s poverty

• Urban populations are increasing

  • 62% of all Christians live in urban settings

  • More than 100 million street children

• Explosion in short-term missions

  • Missions seen as a “project” rather than a “process”

  • Live as foreigners rather than identifying with the people

  • Greatest effect on the “goer”

  • Partnerships are a needed alternative

• “Tentmakers”: Doing missionary ministry while working in a non-religious occupation

• Digital Window (66% of the world)

Challenges of Globalization

• Commodification: all of life is now for sale

• Deteriorating Community: feeds individualism and materialism while starving community and other social dynamics that give life deeper meaning

• Poor: wider gap between rich and poor

Opportunities of Globalization

• Provide worldview answers

• Build life-affirming Christian community

• Evangelize and plant kingdom communities among the world’s poor

Global Arena

• Largest percentage of Evangelicals in Africa

• Pluralistic world (lots of religions)

  • Islam is not far behind Christianity as most popular religion

  • Hostility and intolerance towards Christians is on the rise

Challenges for Missions

• Discipleship

• Leadership Bottleneck

• Post-Christian West

• Revival of Fundamentalism

Signs of Hope for Missions

• Realization of the scope

• Globalization of the task force

• Incredible shrinking world

• Unprecedented partnership

Judges 2:10

Generations should teach the generations after them to know the Lord

1 Chronicles 12:32

It is important to understand the times to know what to do

Daniel

Distanced himself from the culture when it opposed God, but learned about the culture in great detail to know how to interact with it. He did so with others. We have to decide how far to immerse ourselves.

Jonah

God calls us to people and places we may not choose ourselves. 

Jesus

Jesus lived in a place and time in history. He engaged the culture around him, such as when he told stories using illustrations and parables from their culture.

Paul

Paul follows the social conventions of where to hold public debates. When speaking in Athens, he uses references the culture knows to point to Jesus.

Gospels

Model for us the need to know our audience and communicate in ways that reach them.

• Matthew to Jews

• Mark (probably) to Romans

• Luke to Gentiles

• John to Greeks

Culture

Learned and shared system of knowledge, values, and feelings that are used to

• Define reality

• Interpret experiences

• Generate appropriate strategies for living

• Adapt to spiritual, social, and physical environment

• Innovate in order to change themselves as their environment changes

(Michael Rynkiewich)

How often is culture changing?

Always!

Incarnation

God has come to us in Christ, through whom holiness has come to the unholy. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we may now go to others where they are.

John 17:14-19

We are not of the world, but neither are we to be taken out of the world. Jesus prays that we may be sent into the world under the protection of God.

Imago Dei

We are made in the image of the creator, which means we also create. The question is what kind of culture do we create as we engage culture?

All cultures have attributes that are…

• Congruent with the Gospel

• Incongruent with the Gospel

• Neutral in regard to the Gospel

Dangers of engaging with the world

• Syncretism: we become so close to culture that we become part of it, and it changes us

• Sectarianism: we divide ourselves from culture so much that we no longer have any influence

What is God’s plan for engaging culture?

the local church

Contemporary Gospel

• Gospel of self-enhancement and sin management

• Purpose is to answer these questions

  • What do we do about original sin?

  • How do we go to heaven when we die

Two Gospels

• Gospel of saving individual souls from hell and abandoning earth to destruction

• Gospel of saving earth (including individuals) from human sin, beginning with us

2 Main Reasons for Misunderstanding the Message of the KoG

• The Matthew Problem

  • Refers to the “kingdom of heaven,” which people interpret eschatologically

  • Matthew substitutes the word “heaven” for “God” in alignment with his Jewish audience

  • However, we are instructed to pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The kingdom is coming to present-day earth.

• The John Problem

  • Only uses “kingdom” a few times. Otherwise, he refers to “life”/eternal life

  • Eternal life doesn’t only refer to life in heaven. John 17:3 defines eternal life as knowing (being in relationship with) God and Christ

What does the kingdom of God entail?

• The kingdom is where things are as God wants them to be

  • “Good” set out in Genesis’ creation account

  • Wholeness (God’s intention) vs. brokenness (what sin causes)

• Tikkun Olam (“repairing the rift”)

  • God promised to help us by sending a Messiah

• A life lived in a network of interactive relationships 

  • With God, other people, animals, and land

• A matter of both personal and social transformation

What must the gospel of the kingdom produce?

Disciples who learn a radical new way of life and participate in the transformation and mending of the world

Is personal transformation the end point?

No! We are transformed to transform the world. We are to be the salt of the earth and light of the world.

What is the church in relation to Gospel 1?

A warehouse to store a growing inventory of souls awaiting their final shipment to heaven.

• Mission: increase inventory and protect from spoilage, damage, wastage, and theft

What is the church in relation to Gospel 2?

A community of spiritual formation.

• Mission: Train people to be agents of the KoG who live in the way of Jesus and bring healing and transformation to the world.

Culture in the 40s-60s

• Most people went to a Christian church

• Right and wrong were clear

Changing Culture in the 60s

• Different religions became more present in mainstream society.

• Right and wrong not as clear

• No authority in tradition or history

• Only authority in friendship and experience

Modern Era

• Local Judeo-Christian Atmosphere

  • “God” is the Judeo-Christian God

  • Ethics based upon the Judeo-Christian worldview learned from family, even if one is not religious

• “Nutrients”

  • Monotheism

  • Rational

  • Religion

  • Systematic

  • Local

  • Individualistic

  • Propositional

  • Absolute Truth

Postmodern Era

• Global “Pluralistic” Atmosphere

  • All religions are equal

  • Christianity has a negative, “finger-pointing” reputation

  • Ethics based on the cultural level of acceptance and personal choice learned from media and peers

• “Nutrients”

  • Plurlaism

  • Experiential

  • Mystical

  • Fluid

  • Global

  • Communal/Tribal

  • Narrative

  • Preference

Self in Modernity

Objective Self: removed from culture and context

Self in Postmodernity

Situated Self: immersed in culture and context

Three Worlds

• Pre-Modern World

  • Church and evangelism is rapidly growing

• Modern World

  • Stable church

  • Evangelism mainly consists of religious transfers

• Emerging World

  • Church and evangelism barely exists

Values of Modernity

• Objective Self

• Unanimity

• Rational

• Scientific

• Exclusive

• Individualistic

• Egocentric

• Functional

• Industrial

• Local

• Metanarrative

• Compartmentalized

• Relevant

• Relational

Values of Postmodernity

• Situated Self

• Pluralistic

• Experiential

• Spiritual

• Relative

• Communal

• Altruistic

• Creative

• Environmental

• Global

• Local Narrative

• Holistic

• Authentic

• Relational

How should the church respond to postmodernism?

The response is not to become postmodern, but to rethink creative ways of engaging the postmodern culture for Jesus

Things to Guide the Church in Engaging Culture

• Scripture

• Tradition/Community (local, global, historic, and future)

• Reason

• Experience

These lead to wisdom and discernment

What does postmodernism mean for the church?

• We can’t assume everyone is going to learn, relate, and think the same way

• We can’t blame emerging generations for believing what they believe

• We shouldn’t expect postmoderns to one day “wake up” and become modern

• Modern leaders may have a difficult time understanding post-Christian ministry

What is a missional church?

• Views its calling to examine the culture, discover where God is at work, and join Him there

• Uses missionary questions to examine culture

• Adapts its ministries and values to best represent the gospel

Fresh Expressions

Describes planting new congregations which are different in ethos and style from the church which planted them. They are designed to reach a different group of people than those already attending the original church. There is no one model to copy.

A Fresh Expression of church is…

• Missional: benefits non-church goers

• Contextual: knows and listens to community

• Formational: aims to form disciples

• Ecclesial: aims to eventually start church

Process of Starting a Fresh Expressions

• Listening

• Loving and serving

• Building community

• Exploring discipleship

• Church taking shape

• Do it again

Underpinned by prayer, ongoing listening, and relationship with the wider church

Forms of Fresh Expressions

• New Monastic communities

• Hybrid Cultures: Transnationality and Glocal

• Art Rediscovered

• Hip-Hop Church

• Experiments in Truth

• Micro-Communities of Jesus

• Online communities

Values of Emerging Ministry to Postmodern Culture

• Discipleship

• Multi-cultural values

• Missional 

• Incarnational

• Alternative Communities

• Proclamation and Teaching

• Worship

• Generous Orthodoxy