At the Ralph D. Winter Research Center, we recently had a speaker come and share in a small session with us and a few colleagues. I decided that it might be worthwhile to provide a few notes, thoughts, and reflections from that time together.
The positives of decentralization and the end of historic missions structures: The speaker mentioned this early on. Often, this is described as moving into a post-Christian world or the decline of the mission movement. However, our speaker seemed to think that this can be seen as a positive, since it is the end of structures that mostly favor the Western, the wealthy, the white, and the male. Similarly, I had a conversation with a colleague in Asia who shared of their movement away from big events and large gatherings to smaller deeper engagements that yielded fruitful approaches to missions at the ground level. Granted, I have also benefitted from connections and relationships formed at large events. However, the “real work” mostly happens afterwards when we are collaborating and following up from our various spaces. Anyway, perhaps, a reduction of resources and larger processes does not have to be a bad thing, especially if it allows us to focus in on our smaller networks, communities, and tasks. It leads to a rather different operating and planning structure, but one that can also favor deeper relational engagement and even change. It is often hard to drill deep into one’s work and focus in the time on the side at larger conferences or even with meetings that are focused on budgets in the tens of millions on up. These meetings are undoubtedly important. However, it is difficult to see how the discussion at those meetings really works down to the person sitting in South or Southeast Asia with a small group of Muslims, Buddhists, or Hindus and helping them work out how they might manage steps forward with Christ within their relational networks. Often, those exploratory conversations cannot happen, because there is not time in larger spaces, so the bigger church and ministry models that have somewhat of a global cultural feel take over; however, the reduction is often seen in developments and discipleship at the local cultural and communal level.
This leads to a lack of interest in the deep exploration of people’s heritages and backgrounds. The speaker had done significant research on persons from another religious background who had come to faith in the diaspora. However, these persons now were often disconnected from their cultural traditions, families, and holidays. The speaker mourned this; however, her interviewees often were confused. For them, they had found faith in Christ, which was worthy of celebrating. Why should they mourn the loss of family or friends, when they have found this gift that offers something eternal?
They had moved beyond their families and upbringings, and in my experience, the church does not typically ask questions about those old connections. The church has become their family now, so why must they think back to their biological and cultural roots?
This offers both a pretty shallow understanding of salvation, as something that happens in the future versus something that actively impacts our relationships and networks as well as a shallow understanding of the church as a more religious social club. However, church relationships are supposed to bleed back into the culture and not be an end to themselves. It has always struck me that one note about church leaders made in the letters of Paul is that they must be well thought of outside of the church. I would imagine that this is one idea that is severely neglected in our day. Often, church leaders are selected and evaluated by their local church communities and not the persons in their neighborhoods or work places who do not belong to the family of God. However, if church leaders don’t engage with the world outside of their building or rather community, then, who is supposed to and who ought to be a light in those spaces?
The speaker also noted that context often influences how these converts share. When meeting in their homes, it is easier for conversations around pain and the inability to engage with one’s family and community to come up. For various reasons, interviewees may avoid these conversations in the church, because they assume that church members do not care about their relationships with their families and communities. And if one were to reengage in these relationships, they would face a lot of questions and concerns. Are they falling into sin at these festivals? Are they worshipping idols? Have the back slidden? Our inability to understand the other does not just impact the surface level. It impacts how one walks around in the world. We overlook and don’t reflect on our own traditions and how they may or may not connect with God’s word, but we rigorously critique the traditions of others, often, because they are foreign, and we do not understand them.
This ultimately leads to a misunderstanding of what church is and its day-to-day practices. It leads to the defense of one’s conversion and practices afterwards rather than ongoing reflection, which could help one share their faith and the peace of God in the communities of their heritage. We end up with people losing relationships for the sake of God and their church community rather than the further flowing of the gospel into these communities and seeing how these communities might grow, preserve tradition, and slowly change through the movement of God’s people and His Spirit. The same God who moved through Jew, Gentile, and Samaritan communities in the Scriptures desires to move through all the nations and cultures of the world. However, that movement will undoubtedly raise questions and debates among those in the church, as it always has going back at least to the time of the New Testament Scriptures. There is opportunity for growth in all of these communities, but do we have the time to listen, ask questions, chat, mourn losses, and see if God may be able to bring renewal to our practices and relationships?
