the Glocal Trekker Blog

There have been several articles in the past year from many mission organization publications dealing with laymen, churches, and even other ngo's (non-governmental humanitarian organizations) that are working around the world and and their impact on missions. At heart, I believe the real question that we struggle with is when the world is won for Christ, who will win it? Who will lead it? Who will be up on the front edge? My response is two-fold. First, we all will. Second, typical, normal, everyday national and international laymen will be up on the front edges--not religious professionals. Why? Theologically, the Great Commission was given to the whole church, not religious professionals like me. It is my job not because I'm a religious professional but because I'm a follower of Christ. Those of us that are religious professionals are to be more than anything equippers for the entire body--not the superstars. Biblically, you cannot ignore Antioch. It wasn't the Apostles. It wasn't the missionaries sent there (there weren't any--it was these two lay guys who are on fire and a church emerges out of what they are doing.) Practically, we will never be able to fund enough missionaries, institutions, and organizations to do what God has called and commissioned the entire church to do. The Great Commission is great because it will take all of us. It's too great a thing for a handful of people or institutions to accomplish.

Why do we segment everything all the time? Haven't we learned there is no break between the sacred and secular? Now we want that division between the "vocational" and the "avocational"? What a stupid debate. Who is most important the vocational missionary (Paul) or the laymen (Antioch businessman) who owns the Great Commission and does business globally in secular non-Christian societies to bless those societies and model what faith looks like? You have to have both and trying to implement a pecking order is arrogant, prideful, flesh filled, and self-centered. Kind of reminds me of Jesus dealing with the apostles when they were arguing over who is the greatest. We now have over 15 couples out of NorthWood working world-wide as vocational missionaries. We have others in the pipeline. I do believe we are in need of radical redefinition of missionaries almost to the extent of the radicalness of what Carey did in his day. I also believe we are in need of our missions institutions radically redefining. Many of them are and I love it when I'm in the room of some of the leading missions organizations and they struggle with this openly and honestly. I believe God's going to bless them. I also believe when the world is won for Christ the whole body will be up on her feet--read Glocalization.

Mission institutions have to respond to this because like never before laymen are rising up to engage the world--with or without institutions. What do they do with them? Laymen who are educators, businessmen, health professionals, etc. go and see things and want to do things. That's good as long as it fits into the overall strategy of the local missionary or mission agency. But, if it doesn't, that's percieved as a headache by some mission agencies. Is the point "the missionary" or "the Gospel?" If the point is the "Gospel" then you want that seed planted all over the place in a thousand ways springing up in uncontrollable enviroments. If it's the "missionary" then we must preserve the institution. I'm convinced many mission institutions really want short-term mission trips, because if that's the case, then the missionary will always be the focus--no short-term trip, approach, changes any nation. I don't support short-term trips. I support and promote long-term, comprehensive, kingdom, wholistic, local church, engagement from a church to a city using all of the members vocations to engage the society as a whole--not just religious work. This is how business, communication, education and other people operate in domains globally. Why can't the church? Why? Because as a Christian there is no sacred and secular divide. And be-bopping all over the place doing a little project here and one there isn't and hasn't changed anything.

So many people today are worried about the form the Church. For God's sake, how inward focused, self-serving, have we become that we're more concerned about our own nests than we are a world that's suffering, hurting, and in need of the hope that we believe we have. My call to the church is not innovate and contemporize, but "Get up on your feet!" And then, "Move 'em chunky legs!" You can put a dead or lethargic body in a new set of clothes, but it still ain't dancin! Mission preceeds form--only live things multiply--another book on the way in a few months.

What is this all about? Sadly, the American church has never been that global. Part of that is our geography and isolation on the Western Hemisphere. That's why we speak one language--except for our immigrants. We understood globalization primarily as economics at first. Globalization is so much more than economics. The most globalizing force in the American church has been the mission agencies, until the past 30 years. Globalization radically has changed the world. Laymen began to engage the world. Businessmen would come home from global trips and challenge their pastors to do something with what they had seen. The response was to call the denominations or churches missions agency to do a project in that country with the missionary, which isn't always bad if the missionary gets a global world. (I contend you can live around the world and still not be global.) These guys don't want a project, they want to engage their life and business for kingdom endeavors. Neither the local church nor the institutional agencies know what to do with these guys and feel threatened when they start moving because they put money and activity behind it. The other reality is the missionary who gets globalization is incredibly indespensible in strategically harnessing and focusing those resources for an intentional impact.

There has never been a time, or as condusive an enviroment, for mission agencies and institutions to engage the world like there is today. If it happens, Mission agencies and institutions are going to have to:

1. see themselves as connectors of the whole body of Christ to the whole world.
2. release control or lose any control at all because people aren't going to sit around and wait.
3. train not just local culture and practices to a missionary but global culture and practices.
4. redefine how missionaries work, what they do and how they operate.
5. be a revolving door not just of sending western missionaries but of "global" missionaries from every society.
6. be a recieving entity for missionaries coming to America who feel called to work here . . .
7. value local churches and laymen beyond just seeing them as cows to milk for their institution (I'm convinced the key to raising funds is not asking for money but partnering and doing things together--there will be more money than they could ever imagine.
8. view themselves not as funders of people who want to be vocational missionaries but partners "gospel" seed planters of the kingdom throughout the world.

There have been new churches not just to reach the lost, but because in history the church refused to be relevant and listenning to those coming up. Mission agencies run the same risk. People are going to work with people that are willing to work together and ignore those who aren't willing to partner. The days of a huge bearacracy telling a church that is funding it what it can and can't do are numbered. Getting a bunch of young guys in a room and telling them "we want to hear from you" won't cut it. Getting a bunch of youngs with a radical "newlight" missionary--saying there's a city, now take it, and the skies the limit. You empower them all, you infuse enthusiasm, and you learn from one another.

And, I could go on and on and on because more than anything I long for "thy kingdom come, thy will be done. . . " and one day I accidently stumbled outside into this new global world and and I saw this massively active, complex, simple, and big God who was orchestrating everything and it changed my view of an Old Church and a New World to a lamb on the throne and masses from every nation worshipping, and so shall I see and be a part of one day--but why not this day . . .