Audio Transcript:

Welcome to Missions on Point, the Propempo perspective on church and missions.

Welcome and thank you for joining us on episode 211 of Missions on Point. This is the concluding episode of a series on church planting. In this episode, I want to focus on some Seeds of the Future. This particular series is not intended to be very technical or deeply missiological with lots of statistics and citations from dissertation level studies and works. I trust you've been able to follow along through the series and we come to this concluding look into the future. The first point we'll get into is English church planting in foreign cities. This has been popularized through the City to City church planting network and others. There are several precipitating reasons for why an English church plant in a foreign city might be a really good thing. First of all, most international type churches that use English as the medium of communication in church in major cities have for some time slid off to the left theologically. And almost by nature of their inter-denominational or multi-denominational stance are unwilling to take strong views on biblical doctrine. Therefore, they just slide to the left liberally in theology, generally speaking.

So strategically, it's a great opportunity to move in with fresh blood, fresh leadership and have a really strong, healthy biblical church in that city. Secondly, strategically there is a really good reason to have a strong English church that is multinational and multi-denominational, but biblically strong in a major city. Thirdly, having a strong international English speaking church can be a great platform for reaching some of the nationals or others in the country that are not English speaking. But because of the presence of the English speaking church, there is room for some discipleship that may be even underground, so to speak, to reaching those people and languages besides the English population of businessmen, diplomats and others who may choose to use English as their medium for worship for whatever reason. In my view, if the English church in a foreign city, that international church that uses English as their medium, doesn't have a conscious plan to reach the local people and the local subcultures of the city, then that's not a particularly strategic church plant.

Second major thought in Seeds of the Future is that current movements will dribble away in history. New schemes will be invented to capture the imagination and drain strategic missions' finances into the next new thing. This happens about every decade or so. For some reasons, mission agencies and missiologists are susceptible to new ideas. Often it's because of an American inclination to pragmatism to want to see more statistics and innovation and however you may measure it, some level of effectiveness in church planting. They love to report increasing numbers at whatever cost. In fact, I think we could say, if we looked behind the scenes, that whatever studies have been done on the most recent wave of movements have been after the fact, those numbers have been largely debunked, or statistics that don't match their desired goals are ignored or lost. I would like to say from an objective point of view that it's embarrassing to see how foolish mission agencies have acted in this respect in the last dozen years or so.

It's interesting to look at these movements in the light of cultural missiology. Missionaries have known for hundreds of years that we'll say Third World cultures grant a lot of deference to the foreign missionary. What that means is Third World cultures tend to want to gratify the missionary. They want to please the missionary. They want to learn whatever they can from the missionary. They want to gain whatever they can from relationship with the missionary. Missionaries who follow a decisionalism mentality are doomed to ultimate failure. Ministries that depend on people signing a card or raising their hand to indicate decision to follow Jesus will not be able to find those who made such a decision three years later. I remember being personally feeling offended by a newsletter by a well-meaning missionary who was showing The Jesus Film around rural villages in Africa. And the report was that 10,000 people responded to the invitation of the film.

Now, it seemed that the intention of the newsletter was to say that 10,000 people came to saving faith in Jesus Christ. But upon closer reading, the wording actually said that 10,000 people attended the showings of the film. Don't you see how this kind of shallow decisionalism and reporting can mislead people and donors to think that these methods are actually effective? America's propensity for pragmatism can be the death of effective spiritual work in missions. The third major thought in Seeds of the Future is actually related to this. We will live to see general effectiveness or ineffectiveness of current church planting movement schemes. My personal opinion is that there are four levels. A. Sincere, traditional or proclamational model church planters will adapt a few ideas from movement schemes and become more effective. B. Sincere, biblical minded movement adopters will largely abandon strict movements models and become more effective or leave the field.

C. Hardcore movements adopters will leave behind a wake of exposed, inflated statistics and become mission teachers or consultants. D. Most of the indigenous people who have been, "Discipled," using a strict movements structure will be inoculated from biblical Christianity and revert back to their previous religion. Wow, I bet you didn't expect to hear that today. Just bookmark these opinions in your mind and see if in three to five years they don't all come true. In Seeds of the Future, number four is there will be a new trend of missions agencies being started or changing to be more biblically local church centered in their ecclesiology and missiology. What this means is, A, there will be a shift to respect and come alongside local churches in the training and sending of missionaries to the most strategic fields remaining on Earth. B. There will be an increasing body of resources to help churches and mission sending agencies to do this better.

C. The number of missionaries being sent will drop dramatically. But as a result of being better trained and shepherded, the missionaries that go will stay longer and be much more effective in ministry and have a clearer focus about biblically sound local churches as their end goal results. And D. Local sending churches will have a renewed awakening of understanding their role and the missionary task in missions. This will positively impact their own spiritual health and ministry in their own church. I highly recommend the new book Missions on Point: The Local Church at the Heart of Ecclesiology and Missiology, which is available on Amazon, to help unpack this local church centric missiology and practically how to do it in the local church and in the sending agency.

In view of this Seeds of the Future theme, I'd like to go all the way back to Matthew 28, the most recognized form of the Great Commission, where Jesus says, beginning in verse 18, "All authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age."

As we have said in other places, both in writing on our website at propempo.com and in the new book, as well as this podcast, this Great Commission cannot be completed without establishing a strong biblically healthy church. The going to make disciples of all nations is pretty clear. The disciple making means genuine evangelism and making of disciples. Which takes time and assumes some level of mature Christian leadership in the making of the disciples. The disciples are identified with Christ by baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is a clear and public declaration of their repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

And then those same leaders, biblically qualified leaders, like First Timothy three and Titus one qualified leaders, are teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you .and we make a good argument that all that I have commanded you is really all of the New Testament. It's not just the narrative portions, it's not just the gospels, it's all of the didactic portions as well. It is all of the New Testament. And it results in a local church because these people who are committed believers are regularly, we would say weekly, coming under the teaching of the Word of God in order to obey and transform their lives to be those that please God. The big picture for the future is that we have the same clear picture from the first century. People who know the Lord and know the Word want to send out qualified workers so that other churches with believers in every nation can be planted, all worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ to the glory of God. By God's grace, may it be so.

Thanks for joining us today on Missions on Point. We trust that you'll find more help and resources on our websites at propempo.com and missioserve.org. We are so thankful for those who support us, enabling us to produce this podcast. Now to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.