1. May I Have this Dance? (MICN Missiology Series by Andrew Lupton)
Have you been in my [dancing] shoes before? I can’t help but notice when I attend a missions conference or find myself in a room with my Mission to the World (MTW) colleagues, I’m often the guy with the ministry that raises eyebrows. I love my sending organization, but let’s admit it, we and the people we hope to reach and resource don’t really fit the typical missionary narrative. Often missions agencies and support networks don’t really “get” us and what we do.
Perhaps you, like me, find yourself on the edges of conversations about and missiology and philosophy of ministry as missions organizations strategize and cast vision. But when you step foot inside your international church on Sunday, you’re not on the edges of the mission at all. You’re right at the center, at the intersection of what God is doing to reach the nations and the next generation. What do we do with that disconnect?
Very few people liked their first middle school dance. Picture the would-be dance partners standing on opposite sides of the dance floor, awkwardly eying the other but without the courage and coordination to move closer. Does the awkward tension between missions organizations and international churches mean that each should stay on their separate side? In many ways, that would be easier. You stay on your side of the mission and I’ll stay on mine. No one gets their toes stepped on or looks foolish. But I would argue that if we really are called to be strategic agents on God’s mission by leveraging all God’s resources for God’s redemptive purposes, then we cannot sit out this dance.
I want to invite you and your leaders to fumble onto the dance floor with me. Let’s dream together about healthy partnership, collaborative movement on the mission of God with the organizational dance partners God puts in front of us. But to get there we’ll need to first be able to articulate the mission of the international church. What is our missiology? What do we do and why do we do it? If a missions organization wanted to partner with you (via financial support, accountability, or human resources), could you explain what you do and why you do it?
A World on the Move
For our starting point, take a look at this sacred slice of history in which we live. Where do we find the unreached and how do we reach them? For decades missiologists like the late Ralph Winter influenced and inspired generations of disciple-makers to break through barriers, to go where no one had gone before, in order to reach the unreached. Such courageous inspiration toward world evangelization was drawn from missionary heroes like William Carey, Hudson Taylor, Jim Elliot, and Amy Carmichael.
But toward the end of his life, Winter noticed a shift in our world. In Scattered and Gathered: A Global Compendium of Diaspora Missiology, Sadiri Joy Tira recounts a conversation he had at that time with Winter. He prophetically challenged Tira, who now serves as The Lausanne Movement’s Catalyst for Diasporas, saying, “The world has changed. The Unreached People Groups are now scattered all over the world. …your generation will have to deal with mass migration and globalization.” 1
Missiologist Christopher Wright adds urgency to Winter’s challenge, saying, “We live in a world on the move…. There are more migrants in the world today than probably at any time in human history.”2 This unprecedented rise of global mobility, and the accompanying diaspora people group, present missional opportunities to which we must adapt and respond as Christ’s church.
Do you hear what they’re saying? The mission is no longer from here to there, but from everywhere to everywhere. Sociologists Haas, Castles, and Miller note in The Age of Migration, International Population Movements in the Modern World that the reality of global migration “is part of a transnational revolution that is reshaping societies, politics around the globe. …the old dichotomy between migrant-sending and migrant-receiving states is being eroded.” 3
With that erosion comes an adaptive challenge for God’s people on God’s mission. The Lausanne Movement is leading the global church through this adaptive challenge by developing the framework of Diaspora Missiology, defined in the Seoul Declaration as “a missiological framework for understanding and participating in God’s redemptive mission among peoples living outside their places of origin.” 4
What ministry vehicles are we to lean on in the midst of this missiological shift? I propose an increased focus on and investment in the international church movement as a strategic vehicle for missions agencies and sending organizations in this highly-mobile and rapidly-changing missional climate.
Questions of Belonging
Members of the global diaspora often ponder, “Where do I belong when I feel like I belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time?”5 The ultimate answer to this question of belonging is that we belong to our God in union with Christ and to the beautifully international family he has saved and incorporated into himself. But within Christ’s diverse and dynamic kingdom, where do we belong? More and more, the answer is within the international church community.
If international churches are where the globally mobile belong and are strategic vehicles in this new age of migration, then how are they to be utilized for the mission? Are they to start organically or through intentional international church planting movements from the outside? Could they be sustained internally given the unstable lifecycle of their members? Should they operate independently or would such autonomy open the church to dangerous theological shifts? Many international pulpits are filled by pastors who are funded with external funds. Could international churches embrace a model where their leadership decisions are first made because of theological alignment and gifting and secondarily made because of financial constraints? What role should outside agencies like missions agencies have in this process? Should international church have anything to do with missions agencies?
Some experts in international church prescribe a healthy distance from missions agencies. They even urge against filling leadership roles within international churches with missionaries of those agencies. Their fear is not unhealthy financial dependence. Rather, decades of experience ministering within international churches have taught them that missionaries often arrive to the field (the host culture of the international church) with a singular, and often dogmatic, mindset about how “church” should work. The ambiguity inherent within international church ministry leads to missiological friction. Both sides settle for a healthy distance. International churches operate autonomously while missionaries do the job their agencies sent them to do.
This siloing is a missed opportunity to advance the mission of Christ’s global church at the unique time in history in which we find ourselves. Rather than operating in separate spheres of influence, what if churches and missions agencies could leverage their strategic placement within the kingdom of God to move the mission of God forward together?
What do you think? Do international churches and missions agencies belong together on the mission of God? How have you experienced missiological friction with missions organizations? This is the first in a series of articles for INCENDIUM to delve further into this conversation. Stay tuned for more next week as we revisit the biblical DNA of the international church.
Andrew Lupton
1 Sadiri Joy Tira & Tetsunao Yamamori, Scattered and Gathered: A Global Comopendium of Diaspora Missiology (Kindle edition, section: Preface to the First Edition).
2 Ibid., section: Foreword.
3 Ibid., section: Introduction
4 Ibid.
5 From Bushong, Lois J., Belonging Everywhere and Nowhere: Insights Into Counseling the Globally Mobile.
