"Missionaries" to Tulsa

Sometimes just thinking gets me in trouble. I guess it’s not really the thinking; it’s when I open my mouth about what I’m thinking. When I was studying for the credentialing process, I started wondering: Why do pastors and missionaries go through a completely different set of courses from each other? (Am I the only guy who wonders about stuff like this?) I know that the Bible materials, the hermeneutics, the homiletics, and other things are the same. But, aren’t these two considered (in most Bible schools and seminaries) different schools, or at least different departments? Pastoral ministry on the one hand and missions education on the other?

Why?

Now, I know that I didn’t go to a Bible college or a seminary, but I have a lot of friends who did. A lot of friends. Close, personal friends. Plus, I had to take a miniature version of “Bible school” at the institute level in order to become ordained. We’re talking 33 courses on everything from church history to church polity, from Roberts Rules of Order to the most basic of doctrines—orthodoxy, and orthopraxy—with a little preaching, a little administration, and a little leadership thrown into the mix. So I have a clue.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not foolish enough to think of my education as an equivalent to that of the greatest American seminaries. I am well aware that I drew the short stick there. But, I was only required to take one course on cross cultural communications and another on world religions. And according to my unscientific surveys of friends, that’s not too far off from “real” Bible schools.

In the last 10 years, I’ve done quite a lot of self-educating in the study of missiology. (Once again, the short stick, on the short bus.) And I have been surprised at what I have learned. Your experience may be different from mine. However, after a childhood of observing shaky 16mm movies of missionaries who had turned naked African “savages” into Americanized “Christians” wearing shoes, long pants, white shirts, and ties, it wasn’t hard for even a child to see what was wrong with this picture. Needless to say, many years ago I bought into a more indigenous method. At least with regard to “foreign” missions—a method that did not violate the “Prime Directive.”

But more recently, in the starting of a new church, I came to the conclusion that while this method is being used all over the world (hopefully), it hasn’t been tried in America—at least not in the last 50 years, if ever. And, with church attendance at less than 20% of the American population on any given Sunday, it might be time to appropriate indigenous mission methods on American soil.

You can take this or leave it, since I am the “short stick” guy. But I have been working on a five step summary of the indigenous method. So, at the risk of over-simplifying, here are the basics of how one might accomplish such an endeavor. I will merely list the steps here, but I will attempt to explain each one with a succeeding blog chapter.

1. Learn the language.
2. Immerse yourself in the culture.
3. Contextualize the Gospel into the language and the culture of the indigenous.
4. Allow the Holy Spirit to draw the indigenous.
5. Empower and send the indigenous to reach their own.

I don’t like the verbiage of “strategy” when it comes to the Gospel. It objectifies the “target audience” and has militaristic overtones. But, these simple steps could certainly qualify as a broad guideline and a methodology for rethinking our approach to church and to mission in America.