Sure, every small thing that I am part of to help the downtrodden of humanity—"the least of these"—can be considered "missions"...but what happened to the BIG PICTURE of Jesus' commission to "...make disciples...teaching them everything I have commanded you"??
The purpose of this article is to ask some fundamental questions that are designed to provoke a change of perspective for most who read it and conclude that the "best" has been traded for what is "good" in the matter of the Great Commission of Jesus—AND to offer ideas about what you can do if you find yourself within this majority.
The essay will be offered in three parts—one part each week. My sincere prayer is that you will look at your life from Jesus' perspective of the Kingdom of God and get closer to Jesus by seeing his heart in the matter of which I write.
After the tsunami in Indonesia, the earthquake in Haiti and the hurricane in New Orleans, not only are the large NGOs beginning to look at the effectiveness of their efforts (billions invested...very little making a difference), churches are now asking the question, "What might we take away from Jesus' words when he censured his disciples, saying, 'the poor you will always have with you...'?" (Matthew 26)
After almost 14 years in Ecuador, touring the country and seeing the effects of 100 years of mission work, I have joined a growing body of missionaries in making the observation that the commission of Jesus has gotten distracted, meaning that while our hearts are in the right place—our wallets are open and we are willing to give our time—we still somehow miss the mark of Jesus' final words to His disciples—The Great Commission of Matthew 28. So what has happened?
The answer to the above question is both simple and complex. The simple part is implicit through the reading of Jesus' words in Matthew 28: 19 "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." The complexity is in how we have detoured so far from the plan Jesus so plainly laid out for us.
Is the Western church spending billions each year (man-hours and dollars) doing what Jesus commissioned us to? Or have we detoured toward some other made-up version of missions that our hearts more readily identify with? Are our energies and resources focused on Jesus' "plan for the ages," or are they gobbled up by a very noble notion of Jesus' commission to the church that misses terribly what He has called every believer to?
Before going on, I would like to say clearly that I have no doubts whatsoever that the work of the church (Eph. 4:7-16) will be accomplished, and Jesus will return! I would also like to set the stage for the rest of what I write by saying that my essay is not some cynical discourse on the hopeless condition of a section of the "end times" church. But rather, sensing the leading of the Holy Spirit to speak to those Christ followers who might read my words, it is an opportunity to do some self-assessment and soul searching, where the question gets asked, "Where am I positioned in the Great Commission of Jesus?"
Since the time of Jesus' ascension, the "plan for the ages" has gone through 3 major stages and we are now in a 4th—slowly turning toward home! The evidence is showing up all over the world—a new move of God in motion that John Piper (in his book Don't Waste Your Life ) describes as an emerging force toward finishing the work, led by the church in the East and the South. Piper makes the case that the West is not left out of the race to the finish, but rather that if the church in the US is going to join the charge, she will have to leave her present notions of the Great Commission and get back to the prescription Jesus gave in Matthew 28. Piper makes his case pointedly…not to do so makes for a wasted life.
So, if the Western church has truly derailed from the most direct path of Jesus' commission, the questions are: "What does that look like? Why is it important that I understand how the church has detoured from such a clearly marked path? What does it look like to get back on-track?"
To start with, I will address the second of the three questions just posed: Why is it important that I understand how the church has detoured from such a clearly marked path? Simply put, and please indulge my pointed analogy, like an alcoholic needing to realize why he wants a different life than the one he has in order to take the necessary steps toward having a better one, the Western church must face the brutal reality (the why and how) of its "End Times" misdirection before it will take the measures required to change it.
So . . . how did we get to where we are now? Before I attempt to frame the answer to that question, I think it is important to state that the force of my essay is not aimed at the apathy of the church (those who have just gone to sleep in response to the true meaning of being a disciple of Jesus), but rather how passion and energy have been misguided by well-intended, great hearts—instead of following the instructions clearly articulated by Jesus.
Nancy Gibbs, in her Time Magazine article "Doing Good Badly," gives us a glimpse of how it all starts—the prescription is big hearts and a bold "can do" attitude—when she says, "Need and desperation inspire dreams of glory. Everyone wants to be a hero. Everyone wants to help." There is no disputing that the biggest, most generous hearts in the world reside in the U.S. We are givers. One would have to compare the American heart to the rest of the world to really know how true that statement is. But the bigness of the American heart (especially the Christian heart) is not the issue! The question is whether what we are after is getting to the bottom of what Jesus called us to as followers of His example—and more specifically, what to prepare for and how to go out and do it.
Another issue to look at is not just the direction of our effort to do kingdom work, but also to evaluate how effective we have been in the work we have done. Statistics show that billions (man-hours, dollars and materials) are wasted in much of what is considered Christian missions. Gibbs article speaks of this waste, taking place in both secular and Christian endeavors. The point of her article is not to criticize the direction of one's heart—who would think to attempt that? It is to stress, however, that often, good hearts do harm and that one's heart in the right place (being all that matters) has its limits in well doing. My own experience over the last 14 years has shown that the statistic above is sadly accurate within the realm of Christian missions, regardless of whether it is an epic disaster that pulls on the heartstrings or what is discovered to be everyday life in some remote part of the world. Gibbs commented, "After the 2004 tsunami, aid poured in from all over the world. It included tons of outdated or unneeded medicines that Indonesian officials had to throw out. People sent Viagra and Santa suits, high-heeled shoes and evening gowns. A year after the earthquake in Pakistan, so much unusable clothing arrived that people burned it to stay warm. It may make us feel good to put together children's care packages with cards and teddy bears—but whose needs are we to really trying to meet?"
Before Sharon and I came to Ecuador we worked with an orphanage across the Mexican border—two hours from our home in California. One day, we took a truckload of clothing to the orphanage. As the people from the church that accompanied me were sorting through the articles that we brought, I decided to take a walk around the orphanage compound. I came upon a large building with a padlock on its door, and I noticed that at the top of the tall door there was a piece of wood missing. Curious about what was inside, I found a way to make a ladder and I climbed up to take a look. Inside this room there was a mountain of clothing given by others over a long period of time that had become a nest to several hundred rats.
Should we go on to talk about how it's supposed to be done, or do we need a little more perspective from reality to prepare our hearts for the direction that Jesus is pointing us? In my years of missionary service in Ecuador, I have thrown out thousands of dollars worth of expired medicines and truckloads of clothing. We have built restrooms (toilets) and installed water purification systems, built church buildings and many other projects like the ones just listed—all without being able to trace the the heart of Jesus' commission (making passionate followers of Jesus who are in turn making other disciples for Christ) to the hundreds of hours invested or the enormous amounts of money spent. All that time, all that money--and all without even a single example of a disciple being made for the kingdom that Jesus has commissioned us to build.
The kinds of stories like the ones told above do not foster a sense of the heroic, nor do they provide a platform for making people feel good; so missionaries don't talk much about such things.
The last 50 years of "humanitarian missions" have produced little visible evidence of people equipped to help themselves through the kinds of aid given to them. Likewise, the Western style church planting effort of the last 20 years (build a church building, find a leader... and then move on as quickly as possible to do the same thing over again, somewhere else) demonstrates a similar result. K.P. Yohannan (missionary to India) describes in his book "Revolution in World Missions" this approach to the Great Commission…an effort that has left a lot of church buildings abandoned to other purposes with the installed leaders modeling something quite different than what Jesus said would result from His commission to the Church. Recently I spent several hours talking to the mother of three of the kids in our project about her experience growing up in a community that was evangelized by Rachel Saint (wife of bush pilot Nate Saint, who was killed, along with Jim Elliot and three other missionaries in 1956 while trying to reach a Huaorani community near our project in Ecuador's Amazon rain forest. Carmen was born into the community and baptized at age 12. She told me that today there is no congregation in the community and most of the leaders are alcoholics.
So if this is not what Jesus sent us to do, then what is?
Absolutely…there are other stories of staggering success peppered among those described above that I want to tell you about…which is really the whole reason for writing this series in the first place. I want to illustrate what makes the difference between success and failure in the matter of missions…share with you some ideas about what can be done differently—that I promise won't leave you with the awful, cynical taste that you might find in other articles discussing the same issues.
In spite of the overwhelming waste and misdirection in that last 30 years of mission work, there is a new move in missions emerging in the world with wonderful examples of disciples being made in the image of Jesus (people actually living the message that Jesus taught and modeled), carrying the work forward through a myriad of projects but with the same ultimate process and product—lovers of Jesus who are going out themselves to do the same work he did.
To be continued next week: "What are the characteristics of genuine missions as Jesus modeled and taught?" At the top of this article I cited Jesus words from Matthew 26. Read the context and then meditate on verse 13 in preparation for the next part of this article.
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