Church-planting in hostile cultures in Asia (2)

Real missions faces real opposition. The Book of Acts, which is God’s “manual on missions,” teaches us that opposition is normal. However, most missions courses in Christianized countries omit this important truth. We would be shocked if our nation’s army recruited soldiers without telling them that their work would involve danger. But the recruiters of God’s army usually do not mention the possibility of danger. This is the main reason why the unreached millions remain unreached. This acute need is especially felt in many countries in Asia!

I remember being charged by a member of the “mission board” of a church where I had recruited some English teachers for China. He charged me with “recklessly endangering” the lives of their members by sending them to China to be “slaughtered by the communists!”

The atmosphere in the meeting was getting a little too passionate, when the pastor intervened and said in my defense: “He understands the danger fully and he has sent his own daughter there!” That remark silenced that member and woke the others to realize that I was not representing a travel-agency or job-agency looking for nice, safe places to send my clients to but  was recruiting soldiers to be sent to places that desperately needed to hear the Good News.

Because Bible-schools are not preparing their students for hostile countries, it is obviously follows that the mission methods that they teach are also not suitable for such countries. On the odd occasions that their students do go to hostile cultures (usually on short-term missions) they do not know how to be effective in these environments.

They do what they have been taught at their Bible-school, namely, methods that work best in “friendlier” cultures. They give out tracts to strangers – and when they are sent home for their foolishness, they go home with a badge of “martyrdom”! Needless to say, the poor local Christians will bear the brunt of real persecution for many months because of the folly of these “martyrs.”

Others are determined to plant churches in hostile cultures in basically the same way as they would in their home-country. Any other method of planting churches is considered as a “compromise.” They insist on sending men who have been trained to plant churches in “friendlier” countries, using methods that are suitable for those environments. The possibility that such men and methods are unsuitable never crosses their minds. In fact, they are quick to label such a suggestion as compromise.

Thankfully, such thinking is decreasing as more of them get the chance to see other cultures and realize that the they can be very different. However, the rate of decrease is slow because too many Christians are afraid to be labeled as “compromisers” – which is the biggest possible fbslur on one’s character in certain groups of Christians.

To these people the idea of sending Christians (eg, teachers, nurses) to build “bridges” into these hostile cultures is unacceptable. They will only send “real” church-planters (ie, those who are formally trained in an approved Bible-school to start new churches by preaching the Gospel). Needless to say, such mission boards do not have any missionaries in hostile (and needy) countries because such countries do not issue missionary visas.

Though Christian teachers or nurses can enter and stay in these countries and wisely and effectively share the Gospel with many of their students and patients and eventually plant churches, they are not considered to be “real” missionaries by these mission boards because they are not church planters in the traditional sense of the word.

If the Apostle Paul applied to be a missionary at one of these mission boards, he would probably be rejected because he was not a graduate of an approved  Bible-school and because he was a tent-maker, rather than a “traditional” full-time, fully-supported church-planter!