[55 Minute Read]

The year has almost gone and we are on the cusp of our (Western) Christmas celebrations. It is an appropriate time to reflect on some trending issues and consider their affect on global missions. In short, from my perspective the global pandemic continues to frustrate the plans of missionaries and missions around the world. 2021 has been a year of great suffering and set-back in terms of health and well-being, with a resource crisis on the horizon. The stress created by the pandemic has amplified competing social and theological convictions, resulting in increased polarisation. Geopolitical instability is also growing, with potential to be an additional threat to missions strategies. And yet, God’s purposes prevail. The question remains: are we fulfilling or frustrating those purposes? To help us frame our answer, let us consider Mary’s song.

Prophesy

Mary declared that, by blessing her with child, God had fulfilled promises to Israel that the Lord would scatter the proud and haughty and bring down those who assume rulership. Simultaneously, He would promote the humble. God has ‘flipped the script’. To further illustrate the practicalities of the Lord’s actions, she sang that He would satiate with fine things those who are in want, but those with much will be left wanting. Presumably, the wealthy would retain what they have, but it would be unsatisfying and paltry compared to what the Lord promises to provide for people who look to Him for their deliverance. Mary may have declared these things in the present continuous tense, but the great inversion obviously did not happen immediately. For the most part, it is still not apparent today. As is common in the prophetic tradition, it is an ongoing process—fulfilled, being fulfilled and yet to be fulfilled.

The proud will be humbled, and the humble will be elevated. Those who “imagine in their hearts” (KJV) that they are in control and have control over others will see that they control nothing of eternal consequence. Conversely, those who are tossed around and weighed down by the whims of the wealthy, privileged, and powerful will receive eternal satisfaction and an inheritance of “good things”… if they hold to their dependence on God.

Contrary to the assumptions of some, the promise of God’s blessing is not for the poor as such. Mary’s song reiterates the perspective of the entire biblical canon—they are promises reserved for those whose desperate dependence is on God. Those in material need are certainly more susceptible to leaning on God, but the promise is specific to the covenant—to Abraham’s children. As we eventually find out in the New Testament, these are children of faith rather than bloodline, and everyone without exception is invited in.

We Christ-followers, most of us Gentiles, are included as children of Abraham (Romans 9:30). That in itself is evidence of a great inversion. Many of the powerful amongst the Jews, proud of their heritage and smugly confident of their inheritance (as evidenced by the teachers of the Law in Jesus’ time), were left behind in God’s purposes as God-seeking Gentiles believed in the resurrected Christ and received the promised and ever-present Wonderful Counsellor, God’s Holy Spirit.

Within Mary’s song is a warning to us all though. Christian leaders can become as smug as the teachers of the Law were. The Magnificat is a warning to all who would presume to rule over others. Church history records many inversion events that had the powerful and influential within the Church running, while the marginalised ascended. The Protestant movement is one such occurrence. However, after 500 years of ascendancy, the movement (which includes Evangelicals) appears to be being brought down, at least in its Global North form. Its primacy is being replaced by new expressions of faith that are emerging among the marginalised in the Majority World. Christianity is now a Majority World religion, growing in prominence amongst the poor across the earth who are desperate for God’s deliverance, even as the Western Church is struggling to stem its decline—its influence diminishing despite its best evangelistic and diplomatic efforts. This is not an opinion. The empirical data tells this story. We have reached the inflection point of another inversion

Inflection

An “inflection point” is a geometric term that marks the place on a chart where a data curve starts to take a significant change in direction (e.g., from growth to decline or stagnation to growth etc.). This is not to be confused with the business term “tipping point”, which is more related to finally getting an uptake or return on investment. We have also become accustomed to speaking of “paradigm shifts”, but they tend to be slow moving changes of perspective or frames of thinking that solidify over decades. An inflection point is not directly influenced by anything we do or the way we think, it is an evidence-based point where data shows that a shift has happened. It does not indicate why or what influenced the shift. When it comes to social shifts, the forces influencing changes are many and complexly interrelated. It is best left for social historians to ponder.

We live in an age where data is currency and its collection and analyses in real-time are big business. The missions ‘industry’ is woefully unprepared for the data economy, let alone adequately collecting and analysing data for God’s glory. Missions research tends to be narrowly focused, such as academic theses or specific internal investigations into a missions issue (as the Mission Commission has done in the past with Member Care and Missions Mobilisation). We should also look to analyses outside of the missions community to reveal what is happening in the wider world. As I do so, in keeping with Jesus’ warning to “first get rid of the log in your own eye” (Matthew 7:5), I will limit the scope and implications of this paper to the inflection point of inversion happening within the global missions community.

Across numerous metrics, COVID-19 is marking a global missions (indeed, a global Church) inflection point in history. It is not so much that the change has happened unexpectedly, but that the pandemic has both amplified and awakened us to the fact that things have changed. The data reveal significant changes to our shared global reality and global missions with it.

Purpose

As I reflect afresh upon Mary’s song at the end of 2021, in the context of the fresh COVID-19 Omicron surge, I echo the confession of many missions leaders in acknowledging that we have been and are being humbled by this global pandemic. It is forcing us to reorient the “imagination in our hearts” and renew our desperate dependence upon God in our world’s persistent unpredictability. Furthermore, God has done this, for God’s purposes.

I am not suggesting that God has orchestrated the plague, but as with all things, God uses crises for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes (Romans 8:28). The key here is to discern what God’s purposes actually are, beyond the missions platitudes. In what ways is God’s great inversion in process as we pass the inflection point? Who are the proud being scattered and brought down and who are the needy being raised up in the global missions community to fulfil God’s purposes?

Lately, I find myself reflecting more on God’s purpose than God’s mission. Although it is subtle, there is a difference between the two. That is not to suggest mission is not important, but if we prioritise God’s mission without appreciating God’s purposes, we will fail to correctly discern our role and responsibilities in the new world ahead of us.

The word “mission” carries with it an implication that we are sent to do something. This is ἀποστέλλω apostellō in the biblical Greek, which is rendered in Latin as missio. In contrast, “purpose” suggests meaning more than method; that is, the reason why something is happening or will happen. In the biblical Greek this is πρόθεσις prothesis, the intention or determination that precedes action (e.g. as in Ephesians 3:10). I wonder if we read the Bible through the lens of purpose (why/intention) more than the lens of mission (what/action), could we better discern the next era of global witness for God’s people around the world? For example, circumstance may be forcing an inflection point change in our understanding of mission, but God’s purposes still prevail. So, what does the data suggest is changing?

Pressures

Through this period of humbling, traditional missions organisations and border-crossing missionaries are losing some of their agency, their ability to achieve the goals to which they aspire. We all know the frustrations. Borders have been raised, travel has been restricted, everyone now requires an additional passport—a valid vaccine passport—to help protect themselves and those they intend to visit from COVID-19, and permission for expatriates to dwell longer-term is being restricted in more nations. Furthermore, increasing national, indigenous, and sub-culture identity formation is escalating intolerance of the imposition of ideas from the ‘outside’.

We hoped access limitations were just temporary frustrations. After all, we adapted to the travel restrictions that emerged in the wake of the September 11, 2001, event in New York. Evangelical missions strategies, which grew out of the 1970’s and accelerated in the 1990’s, were soon back on track and, in certain cases, accelerated (e.g., ministry to Muslims).

In 2020, we hoped the world would open up again once the vaccine rollout was underway in 2021—plans for gatherings were locked in, missionaries remained or returned to their fields, and donations spiked for traditional missions organisations as people with means responded generously to the needs created by the pandemic. Giving money was at least something they could do, and missionaries were close to those who needed assistance. As often happens, a sudden crisis could be leveraged to gain missions resources.

Then came the Delta variant, and now Omicron, and the next, and the next, until we eventually get to the point where vaccines and therapeutic treatments prove to the health authorities that they can downgrade the pandemic to an endemic illness—one that we learn to live with and one that no longer causes severe ill health, for those who can afford treatment that is. Pfizer’s experts estimate that we will not reach an endemic phase globally until 2024. In the meantime, our missions strategies either stall and die or adapt to new realities.

On the theological front, we are experiencing a major shift as the democratisation of knowledge, facilitated by digital technologies, influences the global Church. For better or worse, individuals and groups can now emancipate themselves from dominant, imposed, and oppressive systems of ideas and their supporting structures. Authorities are undermined and people of all religions and other backgrounds are “deconstructing” their beliefs. In worst case scenarios, heresy and conspiracy theories multiply, but it also enables biblically authentic global theologies to flourish, no longer suffocated by a Euro-American Evangelical orthodox consensus. A new sense of biblically authentic theological freedom is emerging on the ‘margins’. Our historic inflection point is revealing an inversion.

Generationally, this inflection point has revealed a major shift in global concerns. Environmental sustainability and climate change have joined humanitarian justice and poverty alleviation as locations of systemic sin, which demand intentional theological, Church, and missions engagement. Inclusion and equitability are associated with these concerns, which can no longer be ignored.

We are ending 2021 with missions facing the possibility of further prolonged travel restrictions, increasing insurance costs, missionaries with significant trauma care needs, an economic downturn that will reverse the donor optimism of 2020, increasing resistance to imposition, challenges to narrow thinking about missions, and a desperate job market potentially luring expatriate ministers back home with attractive remuneration packages and work-life balance options. Is this not a significant inflection point for missions?

Perspective

The Lord is frustrating the plans we have “imagined in our hearts” and the strategies that global missions boards have invented and invested in to fulfil those plans. Proverbs 19:21(NLT) feels like an “I told you so”, from the Lord: “You can make many plans, but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.” The Lord’s purpose prevails, not the Lord’s mission. They are not mutually exclusive, but I fear our comprehension of God’s mission has become too defined in certain Evangelical circles and it will inhibit the innovation necessary for us to participate in God’s purposes more effectively (and biblically) in the new era ahead. Is it possible that we have dabbled in a little too much in eisegesis as the global missions community has been attempting to motivate God’s people to achieve a certain type of mission rather than equipping them as disciples to serve the Lord’s purposes?

For example, consider the way Evangelicals have understood “sentness” for the past 240+ years. The interpretation developed within its colonial expansionist context, such that we now too easily interpret apostellō to mean crossing a divide of significant difference—from “home” to “other”. This is implied by what we understand to be “cross-cultural” for instance. If our ability to cross borders or cultures continues to be hindered because of this pandemic and its long-term impact, are we no longer sent? In John 17:18, Jesus located the destination of his and our sentness as ‘into the cosmos’ or physical world. As He was sent from the Father’s place to the world, so ALL who follow Him are, by default, sent from our place with God and one another into the wider world—wherever the Spirit of God leads us to make our habitation. Sure, Paul and Jesus’ disciples travelled in fulfilment of their specific apostellō calling, but they are the exception in Scripture, not the rule. Those who received each of the epistles were multiple thousands of homebound disciples, dutiful citizens of the cities or regions in which they came to know and witness to Christ (e.g., Rome, Galatia, Corinth, Colossae, Philipi, Ephesus, Thessolonica, Laodicea, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and more).

The overwhelming evidence is that the vast majority of Christ’s followers throughout history and even today do not permanently leave their hometowns let alone their home nations. Does that indicate widespread disobedience to the Lord’s commission? Or could it be that Evangelical missions of the past 240+ years have imposed their Empire expansion assumptions onto the Father’s sending of the Son? Could we be locked into a particular interpretation that will hinder us from participating in God’s purposes during, and as we emerge from, this major turning point in human history? What if, as Jesus’ disciples, we were enacting our sentness whenever we interacted with wider society beyond the bounds of our covenantal communities in-Christ (churches)? How might that reorientation influence our participation in fulfilment of God’s purposes? What does God’s mission look like from that perspective and how might it allow for innovative methods to emerge as we navigate our way into the future of missions?

Innovation

‘Innovate’ has become one of those trendy terms over the past 20 months of the pandemic, like ‘pivot’, ‘unprecedented’ and ‘uncertainty’. Peter Drucker’s “innovate or die” adage is often quoted, but within missions and Christian ministries in general, rarely is it well understood. In his book, The Innovation Crisis, Ted Esler, leader of Missio Nexus, the missions alliance in the United States, laments that they have struggled “to find contemporary examples of innovative ministries.” (p16). He goes on to define innovation as, “the use of something new to create solutions. It can include invention, the creation of something new, or it can be a mixing of existing things to create something new.” (pp. 14-15).

While businesses that can afford to invest in complex research and development can adapt ahead of an inflection point, successful innovation is more often a happy accident. Another well-worn proverb is, “necessity is the mother of invention”. Innovation tends to emerge from a place of desperate need rather than intentional change. Motivation to make innovative shifts is not there until the way we have done “it” before no longer works. As we consider the implications of a coming inversion beyond this inflection point, missions leaders had better start looking for the new ways to do “it” (whatever their “it” is) if their organisation is going to continue to serve the purposes of God going forward.

Problems

Confronted by stories of people without Christ in newly colonised nations, sending organisations were created to send and support missionaries to bring those people the gospel and help them access its perceived benefits—usually “civilisation” as defined by the colonisers.
Confronted with a call to stop sending missionaries to nations with established churches, the Evangelical missions community discerned new “unreached” fields for which to raise missions resources.
Confronted with declining donor support (or a distaste for fundraising), missionaries started marketplace businesses in an attempt to generate funds to enable them to carry out their ‘mission’, or they found a professional job that puts them among the people they felt called to minister to.
Confronted with missionary trauma, missions organisations developed member care departments and other care services multiplied to meet demands.
Confronted with declining long-term missionary commitments, organisations restructured to manage short or medium-term missionary sending and remote/serial short-term missions service.
Confronted with rapidly growing indigenous movements to Christ in formerly unreached nations, cross-culturally trained expatriate missionaries positioned themselves as guides, coaches and, in more traditional settings, teachers and mentors.
These confrontations and their matching innovations are, of course, greatly simplified. There are complex social realities behind each of the illustrated responses, but the point is made—problems generate innovations (for better or worse).

At the Missio Nexus 2021 Missions Leaders Conference, “Innovate 2021”, Patrick Fung (OMF International Director and Mission Commission Executive Committee member) presented a biblical and historical reflection on innovation as it pertains to the purposes of God. He noted that, “Christian innovation ultimately is not so much about a new method, but rather gives a new insight, fresh meaning, a new way of seeing the world while embracing the unchanging gospel, God’s truth expressed by traditions.” (Patrick’s transcript notes, p1). COVID-19 should be opening our eyes to new ways of seeing a hurting, desperate, divided world and the gospel-led solutions required. Not from the perspective of the proud, “in the imagination of our hearts”, but from the perspective of the humble, whom the Lord calls and sends to serve His purposes, as God did with Mary. We are all containers of His grace.

Pioneers

If we dare to move on from our Evangelical missions paradigm of 240+ years, we will see that God’s purposes are being fulfilled in exciting new ways by people we would not expect to be considered “missionaries” in the traditional sense. For example, indigenous followers of Christ among formerly unreached people who have been instrumental in leading thousands of their countrymen and women come to know Christ from a different religious background. Justin Long, a missions researcher, calculates that 1% of the world’s population belongs to one of 1,350 relatively recent indigenous movements to Christ—that is, ~70 million new believers in fewer than two decades.

Migration is another locus of innovation that too few missions organisations are adapting to. In the late 2010s Majority World Christians migrating to the Global North were recognised as revitalising our faith in post-Christian nations. This has unfortunately been called ‘reverse missions’, but such terminology continues to privilege the Global North in the narrative and does this phenomenon a disservice. Those who are promoting their faith with a spiritual dynamism and confidence foreign to their new locations are effectively migrant missionaries, whether or not they serve in a recognised religious capacity.

It should be noted that this tends to be a one-way flow. People do not intentionally migrate toward discomfort unless there is sufficient motivation to do so. Traditionally-sent missionaries do not migrate permanently to the Majority World (unlike many missionaries of the colonial era). The new era of missions ahead of us will challenge our modern “expatriate” tradition of sending. But the question remains, if the only way to follow God’s leading to enter and minister in a foreign land is to migrate permanently, how readily will Westerners or the otherwise well-to-do answer such a call?

COVID-19 has greatly inhibited official migration for the time being but the refugee and asylum crisis has accelerated in 2021, affecting for instance the USA (1.7 million) and Europe (a 70% rise compared to 2020). It is estimated that 84 million people, including 35 million children, were forcibly displaced by mid 2021. With geopolitical tensions and power-posturing, civil wars and unrest, economic crises, and climate change impacts growing and likely to motivate more people to seek a better life for themselves and their children elsewhere, the opportunities and need for ministry among diaspora on the move is only going to increase.

Displaced people experience unfathomable tragedy and trauma, but among these marginalised ones are those fulfilling God’s purposes, even as they flee/relocate. Our traditional Evangelical missions lenses may have blinded us to them, but communities of displaced people already have missionaries among their number. What innovations can the global missions community create to equip these refugee servants of Christ and enable them to achieve the purposes to which God has called them even in such dire circumstances?

There is another type of destination that millions of people throughout the world are escaping to. This too is both a context for missions activity and a source of missionaries if we have eyes to see them. That place is the virtual world. JP Arceno, the Mission Commission’s Synergist (issues leader) for Tech, states that 61% of the world’s population is connected online in some form. That is 4.8 billion (let that number sink in) internet users. Outreach, evangelism, missions—whatever you wish to call it—is happening in online gathering points among a huge pool of human beings who are otherwise unreachable with the gospel, but this context is not yet recognised in mainstream missions consciousness beyond our static information sharing sites and apps.

Emerging virtual reality and holographic technologies are creating new opportunities for interactive access to millions (or billions even) with the gospel. Unless the tech we’re already using manages to keep pace, within 5 years we will look back and laugh at how we maintained some semblance of community in two-dimensional space via Zoom and live video feeds.

It is all very well identifying new vistas for missions service and innovating ways to meet new social and environmental problems being brought into focus by the emerging generation of leaders, but one of the biggest issues that illustrates our inflection point in history is that of reconciling difference and understanding unity in contexts of systemic imbalance. What does it mean to belong, and how does it relate to the future of missions?

Inclusion

Prior to our point of inflection, harmony meant something like “do not rock the boat”. A US American in a predominantly Australian and New Zealander missions group, may have experienced their complaints and suggestions falling on deaf ears (or, more likely, mercilessly ridiculed). A woman with leadership gifts would be restricted to sharing those among the locals and not presume to lead others within her missions group. If an organisation determined their international language was English, any non-English speaker seeking to join would need to learn it before they learned the language of the people they wished to minister to. These situations and the like, where majority rules or rules rule, are no longer acceptable.

Privilege

The pushback is related to the democratization of knowledge and the undermining of objective authority as the paradigm shift toward relativism is cemented. Today, whenever a system inhibits the flourishing of a person or group, according to that person or group’s standards, that system is open to be questioned. It is pointless lamenting this turn or trying to fight against it. It has happened. Adapt. Just as the Church has adapted at inflection points throughout Christian history.

Homogeneity (living with people of like mind) is not an option in cosmopolitan societies. Even people who live in communities with others like them are exposed to difference online or via other media. Withdrawal or retreat into ‘sameness’ leads to stagnation (or worse) not growth. As an example of how dangerous the lack of diversity can be, consider online echo chambers that are a well-known source of toxically antisocial behaviour.

Our new era is dominated by an attitude of ‘each to their own’, an attitude that is increasingly global due to our interconnectivity. This is led by the central core value of the individualistic ‘free world’: personal choice. Except, that does not work when people from diverse backgrounds, with diverse opinions are thrown together into a community—whether a neighbourhood or a missions group. As the COVID-19 vaccine campaigns have highlighted, there are necessary limits to the privilege of personal freedom when the wellbeing of an entire society or group is at stake. Sometimes it is necessary to relinquish one’s own preferences for the benefit of others or the whole. While many societies struggle to learn this, the New Testament writers believed that it should be habitual for followers of Christ.

A missions colleague once told me, “If you’re feeling comfortable in the group, that’s a problem.” It is a problem because you are likely to be enjoying privilege in the situation. It reveals that you are part of the dominant perspective and have the most to benefit from your easy participation. There is a disciple-growing case to be made for every participant in a group of believers to experience discomfort as part of their participation. Our exposure to difference matures us as believers.

Todd Johnson and Gina Zurlo confirm that, in 2021, 47 percent of the global missions force is from the Majority World. This is a dramatic rise from just 12 percent in 1970. This should not be surprising, since Christianity itself has been a Majority World religion from the turn of the century. If the Global North continues its trajectory of missionary decline, we will very soon see an inversion—missionaries from the Majority World in the majority. We could debate who Johnson and Zurlo count as a missionary, but to what end? Are we merely seeking to defend a position of dominance in the global missions community? Is there resistance to Majority World missionary inclusion? Or more to the point, could there be some fear of what might happen if Majority World leaders increasingly took control of the missions narrative… and resources?

Reinhold Titus, an international missions leader serving with OM, completed his Redcliffe College MA this year with a thesis entitled, Fostering Globally Inclusive Organisations: Exploring Inclusivity in Western Founded Global Mission Organisations through the experiences of senior African leaders serving in them. His analysis of qualitative interviews with 11 African missions leaders is a revelation… and an indictment.

As is usually the case, a thesis reveals merely the tip of the iceberg uncovered by the researcher. If a phrase makes the cut, it is significant and representative of all that cannot be said. Fortunately, I had the privilege of discussing the research with Reinhold and I also know the lived experience of many of his research participants. This phrase early in Chapter 5 summarises much, “One of the key barriers identified through this research was Western cultural superiority, tied to factors including the Enlightenment, colonialism, and others. The data reflected Western organisational members’ superiority mindset and Western dominance in leadership and decision-making, which led to silencing of (Majority World) voices.” In addition, “the concept of Western culture, practices, and standards being assumed as superior and normative (commonly now known as ‘whiteness’) frequently came up in the interviews.”

Early in the pandemic, issues of racial inequality arose afresh from a flashpoint series of events in the United States of America sparked off by the unjust deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in police custody (March 12 and May 25, 2020 respectively). The ensuing protests sparked a chain reaction that spread “Black Lives Matter” protests around the world.

Prescription

F. Lionel Young III is another researcher who published findings this year. They included revelations of systemic and historic racial inequalities in missions organisations. His conclusions were published in book-form as, World Christianity and the Unfinished Task. An excerpt from the book was released this month as an article in Christianity Today. In the article, Lionel notes that “It is important for Western Christians who are engaged in world missions to understand that white supremacy in all its forms has been rejected by the non-Western world.” Furthermore, and this is worth quoting at length,

Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America want (and deserve) to work with the church in the Western world as coequals in the gospel for the cause of global missions. Church leaders in the non-Western world are keenly aware of the history of subjugation that they and their forefathers have endured. They do not want to be ignored, bypassed, looked down on, or patronized by the Western church—arriving in their country to carry out their work independently as though no African, Asian, or Latin American church actually exists. They want the Western church to serve with them in common witness. They also want Western church leaders to acknowledge them, respect them, and listen to them. They want Western Christians to first understand their needs and then come and serve alongside them.

At our inflection point in global history, Mary’s song must challenge missions organisations and missions leaders to seriously wonder if we are the proud that God is bringing down in our contexts. If we are the ones to be scattered as the great inversion affects Christian missions. There is one way to ensure that we are not. It is the prescription Dr Luke writes just two chapters after his record of Mary’s song. A prescription delivered in the voice of John the baptiser… repent! Let Luke 3:7-18 serve as a warning for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. As the crowds asked, “What should we do?” when they heard John’s rebuke, note carefully how John explained to them what repentance looks like. Repentance is a form of innovation. A problem is highlighted that demands a solution. The solutions John proposed are practical, just, and directed in favour of the marginalised who are oppressed by those being challenged by the prophet. Missions leaders, we need to “go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).

Conclusion

I have never known Mary’s song to be as popular as it is right now. It seems to be the favoured passage in most end-of-year updates that I have received from believers, as well as featured in numerous social media posts. Perhaps it is a passage especially pertinent to Christmas time at an inflection point, when there is heightened attention on injustice. Whenever I see a concentrated cluster of interest like this, I cannot but conclude that the Spirit is saying something to the Church. Each commentator has a slightly different perspective of who is being pulled down and lifted up, but few identify themselves as the proud. Yet, the healthiest way to read the passage is with the fear of the Lord and a penitent heart. How is my privilege negatively affecting those to whom I am sent? Who are the poor and marginalised, relative to my social and economic standing and privilege (for there will always be people more disadvantaged than ourselves)? How can I sacrificially serve the purposes of God as the Lord continues His great inversion?

We ALL carry a sense of entitlement; it is part of sin’s influence in us. We must rid ourselves of it as we move beyond the inflection point into the future of missions. An inversion is happening. It is amplifying the need for greater inclusion. Only greater inclusion will help the global missions community and its subsets be successful in innovating for God’s glory and the world’s well-being in the days ahead. Our ministry in the world is one of reconciliation, after all (2 Corinthians 5:18). This is the purpose of God—to reconcile all things under Christ’s shalom. The inclusion research discussed above implies that there still exists a strong sense of entitlement by (‘white’) missionaries from Europe and its global diaspora. But the victims of exclusion carry just as much entitlement. It may be entitlement unfulfilled, but it is entitlement nonetheless. One of the first marks of a disciple is that the Holy Spirit tempers our sense of entitlement. This is grace. As we receive all that God offers us in Christ, we realise that we are not entitled to anything but God’s wrath (Romans 2:5-11), and yet… Christ.

We know we have been elevated in God’s great inversion when, with eyes opened to our state, we receive grace and the Holy Spirit’s empowering to love one another sacrificially, deeply valuing each other, and serving with the attitude of Christ (Philippians 2:1-11). The love of Christ in us, with us, and through us, will ensure we transition this inflection point onto the right side of our generation’s great inversion experience. With Mary we too will sing, “Oh, how my soul praises the Lord. How my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour!” (Luke 1:46-47 NLT).

Pray

• Father God, forgive us for presuming our privilege is something we can wield to fulfil Your purposes. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. So that we will recognise when our privilege is negatively affecting others. And give us a heart to serve. So that we will sacrificially lay aside our privilege for the benefit of others. Empower us, as you empowered Your Son. So that we will endure suffering as necessary for the well-being of this world both now and forever. Amen.
• For safe spaces to hold courageous conversations that allow diverse voices to contribute towards biblically-informed innovative ways to navigate the great inversion beyond our current inflection point.
• For patience to endure the frustrations we are all facing, and strength of resolve to engage in practical solution-finding wherever God has placed us.
• For the next generation of called-out ones who are even now being equipped with the skills and gifts to help lead us into the new era ahead, in new contexts, with new tools, and new methods, as we all seek to participate with God in the ancient purpose that the risen Lord Jesus Christ is bringing to consummation. Maranatha, come Lord Jesus. Amen.

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[50 Minute Read]

This essay was originally published in Transformation: an International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies, November 2, 2020.[1] Reproduced here with permission for its COVID-19 information. The original publication can be found: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0265378820970225.

In this essay we affirm that missions[2] is shaped by the life and experience of the Church, both past and present, and this in turn is the function of both the work of the Spirit of God and the interaction of the people of God with their contexts. In line with this position, we examine the impact of COVID-19, highlighting some elements of the global context of missions, and trends in world Christianity and missions. We then explore how global missions is in a process of realignment that has the potential to be enhanced through embracing the conditions COVID-19 has imposed on us. Finally, we consider the need for deep reflection on our identity if we are to take the opportunity to bear faithful witness in this moment

The Spirit works in mysterious ways. We know from theoretical works that while crises like COVID-19 lead to much suffering, they can also lead to religious change and transformation.[3] In this sense, the locations of crises can be opportunities for local ministries and transboundary missions activities. This is an opportunity to take stock and envision global missions in ways that are, perhaps, more appropriate for this moment in history.

The first part of this essay, therefore, begins with a broad perspective on the global missions context, and trends in world Christianity and missions. Here, the pandemic is highlighted as a particular crisis facing humanity.

While the COVID pandemic has been global in extent, its impact and response have been experienced in widely differing ways that make the pandemic a profoundly local phenomenon.

1. The Context of Global Missions

That we talk about trends at all is an indication that ours is a globalised generation, aware of the big picture and able, to some degree, to reflect in global perspective. Thinking of trends can be helpful, as long as it does not obscure the reality that the local is always ‘exceptional’. There is a tension here: we seek to understand the global while at the same time learning to listen and pay attention to the uniqueness of the local. While the COVID pandemic has been global in extent, its impact and response have been experienced in widely differing ways that make the pandemic a profoundly local phenomenon.

It is important to hold this global-local tension if we are to avoid unhelpful confidence in analysis that can leads to a fixation with strategies that in turn undermine dependence on God and sensitive listening to the Spirit and the local context. At this moment, the world population stands at 7.8 billion people, of whom more than 50% are urban, middle class and older than 30.[4] An aging,[5] middle class[6] and urban population[7] are trends, but such data masks huge diversity in national and local contexts.

In terms of global issues, it is suggested that COVID-19 is but one of three major challenges dominating the landscape. Reflecting on missions, on what it means to bear faithful witness today, we need to recognise all three, since they are inextricably interwoven and mutually reinforcing in their impacts.

1.1 COVID-19 and Poverty

We have entered an era of pandemics—some new (SARS, MERS, Influenza H5N1, Swine flu, Ebola, Zika), while others are long known diseases like malaria, yellow fever, measles, and dengue. The uncertainty and restrictions caused by COVID are likely to be with us for the next 2-3 years, but it will not be the last novel virus to cause disruption. Most new epidemics have been zoonotic, that is, caused by a virus jump from an animal host. This is likely to continue and probably increase.[8] COVID-19 has been unusual in its spread and scale of disruption caused both by the disease and by attempts to contain it. COVID-19 is intensifying many of the major global issues threatening communities, including extreme poverty, the environmental impact of climate change, food and water insecurity and gender violence.

Between 1800 and 2017, extreme global poverty fell from 85% to 9%, with the biggest drop from 50% to current levels happening since 1966.[9] Much of the drop took place due to changes in China’s increasingly urban population and more recently to the rapid economic growth occurring in parts of West and East Africa. At the same time, average life expectancy has risen from 31 years in 1800 to 73.2 years in 2020.[10] Although extreme poverty has been falling, 2020 will mark the first year in decades when that trend is reversed.[11] The situation in Africa is particularly severe, where incredible economic growth in some contexts is now in reverse. It has been estimated that those suffering from acute hunger globally could double.[12] For fragile states and communities, COVID is simply another body blow.

The myth of limitless growth has been brought into sharp relief…

1.2 Environmental Disaster

Human beings do not respond well to slow onset disasters.[13] Unlike COVID-19, the climate crisis is a genuine existential threat to our world. Drought, fires, storms, flooding, rising sea levels and the relentless extinction of species combine to threaten global food and water security and habitable space.

The huge reduction in the global economy, ground and air travel reduced global CO2 has reduced global CO2 emissions by an estimated 7% for 2020 if some restrictions continue till the end of the year. Yet for global rise in temperature to stay under 1.5 degrees rise, we would need a similar reduction (7.6%) every year this decade.[14]

Climate change and the global economy are interconnected. Morgan Stanley estimated that 16 climate events cost the USA alone a staggering $309bn in 2017.[15] According to a Financial Times report, the then Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, warned in 2015 that ‘Once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late’.[16]

Fundamental questions about the sustainability and stability of the global economy are not just driven by COVID-19 and climate change. The myth of limitless growth has been brought into sharp relief by events such as the 2008 financial crisis. As activists around the world urge their governments to ‘Build Back Better’[17] following COVID-19, it is clear that simply greening the economy will not be sufficient. We desperately need a new economic model that moves us from an economy of consumption to one of needs-based, sustainable production in which all benefit.[18]

The impact of colonialism lives deep in the psyche of oppressed communities fed by continuing daily realities of inequality.

1.3 Racism, Post-Colonialism and Neo-Colonialism

Global insecurities have fed the rise of populist, authoritarian regimes.[19] This in turn connects with a third global issue intersecting with COVID and the Climate Crisis; that of racism and the legacy of colonialism globally. The focus on systemic injustice and inequality has been heightened following George Floyd’s unlawful killing in the USA. This sparked global outrage from Brazil to Beirut, Syria to Singapore and generated solidarity among populations who feel oppressed by dictatorship, brutal policing and unaccountable political authorities.[20]

Forces of globalisation, whether economic or cultural, have generated a counter-narrative expressed in nationalism, frequently allied to religious radicalism. These forces need to be seen against a postcolonial backdrop where as recently as 1914, 85% of the earth’s landmass was controlled by European and, predominantly, British powers. One hundred years may seem a long time, but the impact of colonialism lives deep in the psyche of oppressed communities fed by continuing daily realities of inequality. Opposition to globalisation, experienced as a form of neo-colonialism, can be understood as a profound struggle for identity and belonging.

The comments above are a very brief commentary on three global trends that profoundly affect World Christianity and Christian missions. Space precludes any exploration of other equally important issues such as urbanization, migration and displacement of peoples, the changing nature of economic and military power with the rise of China, corruption, the impact of Artificial Intelligence and technology allied to fundamental questions of what it means to be human.

More than at any point in history, the church is faced with the opportunity to demonstrate the sign of the Kingdom through a united people sharing a common identity in Christ.

2. Trends in World Christianity

Following the comments above, it is worth pointing out that churches and Christian Non-Governmental and Faith-Based organisations continue to be central players in efforts at poverty reduction, education, and health care. This is not just true of those contexts in which state actors are unable or unwilling to provide basic services. In the UK, Christian groups have been at the forefront of the hospice care movement, food banks, and community initiatives to support young mothers and infants, the care of the elderly and so on. As state provision becomes increasingly costly, the space for Christian action grows. In Muslim contexts, Christian service, provided unconditionally, remains a central way to bear faithful witness to the grace and goodness of God.

Those who identify as Christian have never reached beyond a third of the world’s population and by 2050 this is set to fall to 31%. Islam, in contrast, estimated at 26% in 2010, is set to rise to 30% by 2050. As Andrew Walls famously reminded us many years ago, Christianity, unlike Islam, is not territorial. The shift in Global Christianity from North and West to South and East is well documented. The multiplication of Christian denominations reflects these demographic shifts within World Christianity. By 1984, in Africa alone there were over 7000 independent denominations in 43 African countries, representing new expressions of church that are unrelated to earlier mission efforts.[21]

While recognising the shifts in geographic locus, perhaps we have been slower to recognise the extraordinary growth in diversity of the church in the past 50 years. As recently as the 1990s there were numerous countries, including many majority Muslim nations in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, in which there was no known indigenous church. Today we can rejoice in vibrant communities of Christ-followers in every nation. We will pick this up below but suffice it to say here that significant movements towards Christ have been documented from within Islam, Hinduism, various strands of Buddhism and ideological contexts of communism. Only secular materialism appears resistant to significant church growth.

The church has not only become more diverse through multiple movements to Christ within particular communities. Diversification has occurred through people on the move, whether that be those from Sumatran Muslim tribal groups finding Christ in Jakarta mega-churches, Afghan migrants in Germany, or Christians on the move such as Sudanese refugees in Cairo, Filipino maids in Hong Kong or Nigerian businesspeople in London. The UN estimates that at the end of 2019 there were 79.5 million displaced people, 85% of whom were hosted in developing world countries.[22] This does not include the millions who have migrated for economic reasons, studies or family connections. While we have tended to describe the Church by geography, ethnicity or religious background, these categories are increasingly inadequate descriptors in today’s world of kaleidoscopic movement. More than at any point in history, the church is faced with the opportunity to demonstrate the sign of the Kingdom through a united people sharing a common identity in Christ. Given the earlier comments about racism and post-colonialism, this sign is profoundly needed.

Two other trends are worth mentioning briefly. Firstly, we note the increasing persecution and the marginalisation of Christianity. Open Doors, in their 2019 report,[23] noted a number of major trends shaping persecution of Christians:

• Authoritarian states are clamping down and using legal regulations to control religion. Examples include China, North Korea and Vietnam.
• Ultra-nationalists are depicting Christians as ‘alien’ or ‘Western’ and trying to drive them out. Here examples include parts of India, Myanmar, Turkey, Nepal and Bhutan.
• Radical Islam has moved from the Middle East to sub-Saharan Africa and seen in armed insurgencies in Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Niger as well as Somalia, Yemen and Libya.

If persecution reflects attack from outside, we should also note internal factors that render the Church vulnerable from within. Counting the number of adherents is no measure of strength, as demonstrated by those contexts where 25, 40 or even 80% of the population profess Christian faith and yet society does not remotely reflect the Kingdom of God. Kenyan scholar, George Kinoti laid the blame at the feet of Western missionaries who brought a ‘spiritual’ gospel that failed to integrate discipleship with every aspect of communal living and society.[24] There was a reduction of the gospel of the Kingdom in ways that separated the kingdom from the King. Kinoti does not blame those missionaries but points out that they failed to recognise how their worldview was shaped by their own culture.

This is not unique to Western missions in East Africa. The global Church consistently underestimates the degree to which context shapes us, resulting in failure to develop Biblically authentic, contextualised discipleship. Like woodworm that can eat the heart from a mighty tree, leaving it vulnerable to sudden and catastrophic collapse in storms, superficial expressions of discipleship are always deceptive. We may think the Church in a given location is healthy due to size when it is in fact vulnerable to rapid decline due to an inability to reflect theologically and act courageously in contextually appropriate ways. The historic North African church is an example of an apparently large church going into catastrophic decline, and most assessments today suggest internal factors as the cause rather than simply Islamic conquest.[25]

With this brief overview of trends in global context and world Christianity, we now consider how these are reflected in world missions.

Missions reduced to sending is increasingly ill-adapted to today’s very varied missions contexts and is increasingly out of step with our understanding of the nature of missions.

2. Trends in World Missions

3.1 The Prevailing Cross-Cultural Missions Paradigm

The prevailing missions paradigm is under pressure and COVID is accentuating fractures that have been there for some time. Within Protestant expressions of Church, the idea that missions is centred on sending developed in the late 18th century, flourished in the 19th and came under increasing pressure in the 20th. However, Dana Roberts comments, ‘By the end of the 20th century the most significant development in the structure of missions was not the end of the missionary movement but its transformation into a multi-cultural, multifaceted network.’[26] Missionary sending had moved from ‘West to rest’ to ‘from everywhere to everywhere’. Newer missions movements are now contributing tens of thousands of workers from Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, notably South Korea and, more recently, the Philippines.

This movement has resulted in the formation of hundreds of new missionary sending agencies as well as the internationalisation of historic agencies who now generally function as multicultural organisations and teams. Newer expressions of sending are described as ‘reverse mission’, with those from the Global South and East moving to evangelise the post-Christian West.[27] As missions agencies have struggled for legitimacy in a global context, larger churches, mega-churches and networks have sent workers directly.

These realities might suggest that the modern missions paradigm, focused on sending and the cross-cultural missionary, is alive and well. While some hail these innovations as a new era of missions, we suggest these developments simply reflect modifications to an existing paradigm that is waning. This understanding of missions is faltering for numerous reasons, including:

• Unsustainable financial systems in both old and newer sending contexts.
• The proliferation of missions agencies and Christian Non-Governmental Organisations, too often doing their own thing without relationships with the Body of Christ locally.
• Visa restrictions arising from a range of circumstances, including suspicion of outsiders and the existence of locally trained professionals.
• An emphasis on short-term sending. Long-term is reduced to a few years, resulting in decreased cross-cultural ministry preparation, language and cultural acquisition.

More important than these issues, missions reduced to sending is increasingly ill-adapted to today’s very varied missions contexts and is increasingly out of step with our understanding of the nature of missions. The current system has shaped missions from historic sending contexts but also the new missions movements from Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. It fundamentally fails to take account of the degree to which the sending model of missions reflects a Christendom view of the world.[28] Alan and Eleanor Kreider have shown that the ‘sending and going’ model fitted within a broader Christendom paradigm, in which four elements were tightly interwoven:[29]

I. Missions defined by geography, with parts of the world ‘Christian’ and parts ‘not yet Christian’.

The current paradigm of mission still maintains the importance of geography with phrases like ‘the 10/40 window’. However, in some parts of the Protestant missions movement, geography has largely been substituted with ethnicity, with the focus on ‘people groups’ coupled with anachronistic readings of the Greek term ‘ethnos’ in the New Testament. While for many this remains compelling, this approach increasingly fails to take into account the complexities of identity and movement that characterise the global context and especially the growth of the Church in all nations.

II. Missions as the responsibility of the Church.

Today we recognise that mission is God’s—the missio Dei—and that we are called to participate in God’s mission. None-the-less, the legacy of Christendom assumptions about missions are so strongly embedded in missions language, structures and systems that it is possible to affirm the missio Dei and at the same time take over the work of missions, ignoring what God is already doing and focusing on our statistics, strategies and resources.

III. The goal of missions as the establishment of the Church.

When missions is the responsibility of the Church as an institution then, naturally, institutional concerns will define the content of missions. When cross-cultural workers come from local church contexts shaped by Enlightenment thinking, church concerns may be reduced to ‘spiritual’ activities and all that flows from that in terms of a dichotomised gospel in which the Kingdom is separated from the King, as mentioned above. Our understanding of the work of missions continues to suffer from a reductionist view of the nature of God’s mission.

IV. Special agents are required for missions.

In 1974, the Lausanne Covenant noted that, ‘evangelization requires the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world’.[30] Nearly 50 years later, missions continues to be promoted and practiced as something done by Christians with a special calling, among particular kinds of people, focused on gathered church activities.

COVID, far from being a frustration to the mission of God, could be just the restraint to the global missions industry that we need if we are to reimagine how different parts of the Body of Christ act together to support faithful, holistic, local witness.

It may be that the perpetuation of a Christendom view of missions, where missions is primarily based on cross-cultural sending, is the single biggest obstacle to the whole people of God taking responsibility to step out and participate in the fullness of God’s mission. COVID, along with the climate crisis and post-colonial context, offers an unparalleled opportunity to realign our understanding and practice of missions. This realignment will grasp two key realities.

First, the centrality of the people of God in a locality as the primary human instrument for missions in that context. The growth of the Church in every nation over the past 30 years means that the primary witness to the gospel of the Kingdom is no longer dependent on individual cross-cultural servants but local worshiping communities of disciples. This is not to suggest that local churches exist in every community or ethnolinguistic group, but all these groups are accessible to near neighbours.

The call for a shift in focus from cross-cultural missions to local faithful witness is nothing new. It was Roland Allan’s challenge to the mission movement over 100 years ago, with the challenge to trust the Spirit of God at work in the new churches and let go control.[31] Dr Jay Matenga, Executive Director of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission, has been listening to conversations of missions leaders globally through the COVID pandemic and sees a number of emerging themes including transformative collaboration, whole-of-life discipleship, and technical advancements in the service of missions. However, the strongest theme is the call to an indigenous future.[32] COVID, far from being a frustration to the mission of God, could be just the restraint to the global missions industry that we need if we are to reimagine how different parts of the Body of Christ act together to support faithful, holistic, local witness.

We should not underestimate the challenge. The legacy of Christendom missions remains deeply embedded in our churches, denominational structures, and agencies. If we are to ‘build back better’ in missions there is an urgent need to explore the assumptions and theological constructs that underpin over 200 years of Protestant missions. Key to discerning what God requires of us in ‘missions’ today is the development of new language. Missions itself is a term freighted with assumptions, wrapped up in its Latin origins (missio, ‘to send’). If missions is no longer conceived primarily as physical sending and going, then the label itself must change.[33]

This is not to suggest there is no place for cross-cultural going. Nor does it deny the Biblical theme of Trinitarian sending and going which in turn is to be reflected in the people of God. Rather, we believe it is time to disengage the sending of the whole church into the world (cf. John 17:18ff with 20:21) from the modern missions movement that has laid exclusive claim to its interpretation. This exclusive claim continues to marginalise large sections of the Body of Christ. Just as the COVID pandemic has reminded us of the locatedness of the experience and response to the pandemic, we are also reminded that faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over everything and everyone (Ephesians 1:9,10) is borne out principally through indigenous witness.

This brings us to a second reality that must shape the faithful witness of the Church. The pandemic, impact of climate change and heightened awareness of racial injustice are powerful reminders of the brokenness of our world and the iniquitous inequalities and injustices that define countless lives globally. We are reminded that God’s mission is more than simply the rescue of lost souls from a disintegrating planet but the renewal of all things (Revelation 21:5) and healing of brokenness and alienation of all things in heaven and earth (Colossians 1:20). A narrow, reductionist, spiritualised understanding of missions fails to take into account the Biblical story, God’s self-revelation and God’s call on God’s people to faithful witness through life, word and transformed community from Genesis to Revelation. This moment provides a fresh invitation to the Body of Christ to join together what we have so often torn apart; being and doing, living and speaking, serving and prophetic proclaiming, abiding and going.

3.2 Embracing Identity

One of the obstacles to making deep change is the challenge it brings to our sense of identity. I was recently talking with a cross-cultural worker in Central Asia. He had left everything to become a church planter. He explained the struggle he felt as his role had become that of encourager and supporter to the indigenous leaders. He was undergoing a crisis of identity. Whether we believe it is theologically right or not, we cannot escape the reality that who we are is so often shaped by what we do. Disruptive times can be a gift in which we may discover anew our dependency on God in our engagement with God’s mission, and the Biblical narrative provides plenty of examples of how this can be so. Take Abraham and the story recorded in Genesis chapter 20:1-2,

Now Abraham journeyed from there to the region of the Negev and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While he was staying in Gerar, Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” So Abimelech king of Gerar had Sarah brought to him.

Twenty-four years after the calling to leave country, household and family, now aged 99, the story of Abraham and Abimelech is sandwiched between a series of momentous encounters between Abraham and God. During his 99th year God appears to Abram and changes his name, reaffirms his covenant through circumcision (chapter 17), appears at his tent and again promises a son, reveals his plans to judge Sodom and Gomorrah precipitating a remarkable intercessory conversation (chapter 18), destroys the cities on the plain (chapter 19) and finally gives the heir of the promise (chapter 21).

Quite a year of encounters. Yet in the midst of them, we are reminded that Abraham is still a family of no fixed abode. Wandering in a land not his own, surrounded by those not his own, Abraham still lives with insecurity and fear. He was afraid for his life, for Sarah was beautiful and he was concerned that one stronger than he would overpower him and carry off his beautiful wife. This fear first surfaced years earlier on a visit to Egypt. Fear led to deception, ‘she is my sister’, and this became the protective mantra. Twenty-four years later, fear releases behaviour that has become the default.

The wanderer identity is a gift, pointing us to a place of vulnerability and dependence on God

The story unfolds with Abimelech taking Sarah but God intervening to protect both her and Abimelech. It is a remarkable narrative for students of missions, in which the pagan Abimelech turns out to fear God more that the man of God Abraham! However, what is of interest here is the way Abraham describes himself when confronted by Abimelech…

Abraham replied, “I said to myself, ‘There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife. And when God had me wander from my father’s household, I said to her, ‘This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.” (Gen 20:11-13).

‘When God had me wander from my father’s house…’ The Hebrew is literally ‘when God caused me to wander from my father’s house’. It is almost as if Abraham is blaming God for his predicament, his sense of insecurity and fear. After all these years, Abraham is still struggling with his identity. How might it have been different if Abraham had embraced the wanderer identity, uncomfortable though it is? Whatever Abraham’s struggles at this point, his identity as a wanderer becomes embedded in Israel’s identity: ‘you are to declare before the LORD your God, “My father was a wandering Aramean.’ (Deuteronomy 26:5)

The wanderer symbolised the insecurity and vulnerability of Israel’s origins. This is recalled by King David when he finally settles the Ark in Jerusalem, celebrating in song,

When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings: “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.” (1 Chronicles 16:19-22).

The wanderer identity came to signify not only vulnerability but the faithfulness of God and his ability to provide and protect in the midst of insecurity. Here is the point for us today as we are faced with the suffering and loss and the disruption of cherished certainties: the wanderer identity is a gift, pointing us to a place of vulnerability and dependence on God.

The wanderer identity, of stranger and alien in a land not our own, is picked up in the New Testament in the epistle of 1 Peter. In his opening greeting, the writer addresses ‘God’s elect, strangers in the world and scattered in…’ Note the juxtaposition of identity: elect and stranger. Both are true. Peter, rather than holding the wanderer identity at arm’s length, as something imposed by God, urges his readers to embrace it. “I urge you to live as aliens and strangers in the world.” (1 Peter 2:11)

Insecurity and fear are powerful emotions, triggering behaviour that becomes ingrained over the years. The danger is that, rather than embrace the opportunity for change, we fall back on what we know, on that which soothes our sense of identity. Abraham’s story reminds us that fear is very rarely a healthy driver of behaviour. Instead, we are invited to embrace the identity of the wanderer, an identity that is not primarily about geography but a posture of dependence, vulnerability, and daily obedience.

Conclusion

We began by saying that missions is shaped by the life and experience of the Church, both past and present. COVID-19 is particularly noteworthy, in that for many around the world it represented a level of crisis this generation has not seen before. The experience of COVID-19 has been truly universal. For multitudes of others, it has multiplied the vulnerability, marginality, and suffering they already faced. For all of us it is a warning of the dire consequences that will inevitably follow if we do not take climate change seriously and radically alter the way we organise our work and relationships globally.

At the same time, we have sought to demonstrate the opportunity that this disruption provides to reimagine missions and realign the way we participate in God’s mission as our faith is nurtured through dependent on God. Whether we are willing to do this will be shaped by many factors, not least our sense of identity as followers, as those who bear faithful witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over everyone and everything.

Footnotes

1. This paper is part of a co-authored, longer paper eventually to be published by the journal of Torch Trinity Center for Islamic Studies, Seoul.
2. This version of the article alters the use of missions and mission for Mission Commission use. Our reference to missions (plural) follows missiological conventions developed by David Bosch (Bosch 1991), Christopher Wright (Wright 2006) and others who distinguish between mission (singular) as God’s loving self-revelation and engagement with the world, and missions (plural) as the missionary ventures of the Church, privileged to participate in the mission of God. The use of mission (singular) is rooted in the Latin term missio Dei, ‘mission of God’, from Karl Hartenstein who applied it to summarize Karl Barth’s intratrinitarian missiology (Hoedemaker and Spindler 1995).
3. See, for example, sociologist Rodney Stark’s work on the impact of pandemics on the growth of the early Christian movement. Rodney Stark, The rise of Christianity, Princetown University Press, 1996
4. H. Ritchie & M. Roser, 2019, ‘Age Structure’, retrieved from Our World In Data, https://ourworldindata.org/age-structure , accessed 11 July 2020
5. S. E. Vollset, S. Goren, C-W. Yuan, et al., 2020, ‘Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study,’ in The Lancet, 14 July in DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140- 6736(20)30677-2, accessed 15 July 2020
6. H. Kharas, 2017. ‘The Unprecedented Expansion” in Global Economic and Development at Brookings, February, https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2017/02/global_20170228_global-middle-class.pdf accessed 17 July 2020.
7. H. Ritchie, 2018, ‘Urbanization’, Our World In Data, September, https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization, accessed 17 July 2020
8. E.P.J. Gibbs, ‘Emerging zoonotic epidemics’ in Vet Record, 157 (22), https://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/157/22/673.short, accessed 17 July 2020
9. H. Rosling, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World – And Why Things Are Better Than You Think, London: Sceptre, 2019
10. ‘World Demographics,’ 2020, https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/world-demographics/, accessed 11 July 2020
11. ‘Understanding Poverty,’ in The World Bank, 16 April 2020, https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty/overview accessed, 17 July 2020
12. P. Anthem, 2020, ‘Risk of hunger pandemic as coronavirus set to almost double acute hunger by end of 2020’, World Food Programme Insight, 16 April. https://insight.wfp.org/covid-19-will-almost- double-people-in-acute-hunger-by-end-of-2020-59df0c4a8072, accessed 17 July 2020
13. See ‘Key definitions’ 2020, Platform on Disaster Displacement, https://disasterdisplacement.org/the-platform/key-definitions accessed,13 July 2020
14. Quéré, Le et al., 2020, ‘Temporary Reduction in Daily Global CO2 Emissions,’ Nature Climate Change. 10, 647–653 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x, accessed 17 July 2020
15. Morgan Stanley, 2018 Weathering the Storm: Integrating Climate resilience into real Assets Investing, 1-16, https://www.morganstanley.com/im/publication/insights/investment-insights/ii_weatheringthestorm_us.pdf, accessed 17 July 2020
16. C Figueres. & B. Zycher, 2020, ‘Can we tackle both climate change and Covid-19 recovery? 7 May, https://www.ft.com/content/9e832c8a-8961-11ea-a109-483c62d17528, accessed 17 July 2020
17. ‘Covid-19 can be an historic turning point in tackling the global climate change crisis’ 2020. 25 June, https://www.theccc.org.uk/2020/06/25/covid-19-can-be-an-historic-turning-point-in-tackling-the-global-climate-crisis/, accessed 17 July 2020
18. See, for example, K. Raworth 2017 on ‘Doughnut Economics’, https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/, accessed 13 July 2020
19. J. Muis & T. Immerzeel, ‘Causes and Consequences of the Rise of Populist Radical Right Parties and Movements in Europe’, Current Sociology 65 (1) October, 2017, p. 912
20. B. Daragahi, 2020, ‘Why the George Floyd protests went global’ Atlantic Council, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/george-floyd-protests-world-racism/, accessed 13 July 2020
21. D. Robert, Christian Mission: How Christianity became a world religion, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, p.73
22. ‘Figures at a glance’, 2010. UNHCR, UK, https://www.unhcr.org/uk/figures-at-a-glance.html, accessed 17 July 2020
23. L. Laury, 2019, ‘5 Major Trends’ in Open Doors USA, 16 January, https://www.opendoorsusa.org/christian-persecution/stories/5-major-trends-influence-global- persecution-christians/, accessed 17 July 2020
24. George Kinoti, ‘Hope for Africa and what the Christian can do’ (AISRED, Nairobi, 1994). Quoted in Phil Dow, The School in the Clouds, Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2003, p. 208.
25. See R. Daniel, This Holy Seed, 2nd Revised edition, Chester: Tamarisk Publications, 2010
26. D. Robert, Christian Mission…., p.73
27. Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, ed., See World Christianity’s in Western Europe: Diasporic Identity, Narratives and Missiology, Oxford: Regnum Books, 2020
28. See M.W. Stroope, Transcending the Modern Mission Tradition, Oxford: Regnum Books, 2020
29. A. Kreider & E. Kreider, Worship and Mission after Christendom, Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009, p. 16.
30. ‘The Lausanne Covenant,’ Lausanne Movement, Clause 6, https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausanne-covenant, accessed 03/08/20
31. Roland Allan, Missionary Methods: St Paul’s Or Ours?, London: Robert Scott, 1912
32. Leader’s Review 2020, No.2, https://weamc.global/lb2020-2/, accessed 09/10/20
33. Michael W Stroope, Transcending mission: The eclipse of a modern tradition, London: Apollos/IVP, 2017

Pray

• For missions practitioners, thinkers and leaders to consider afresh the arc of Christian history and the history of missions, to let go of that which is no longer fit for purpose, and seek Biblically authentic ways to adapt their missions activities and objectives to current contextual realities.
• That men and women involved in missions-related activities within their home nation would be strengthened and encouraged as they see the Kingdom of God emerge where it was not previously well represented.
• For the expatriate missionaries who remained ‘in-country’ during the COVID-19 crisis, that they will embrace the changes around them, adapt to ‘identity shifts’ as necessary, and find ways to help their local ministry partners to navigate the challenges that COVID-19 has presented them with.
• For fruitful transboundary relationships that will facilitate the sharing of resources to help with crises, particularly in parts of the world that are in most need of assistance, so that Jesus’ name will be glorified there.

[25 Minute Read]

The Church in Asia needs to be allowed to reinvent herself in order to flourish in Asian contexts.

1. Issues of Concern

This essay gleans from numerous dialogues among Christian leaders, including a research study involving 40 local pastors and missions workers in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand; a roundtable discussion between some of these regional leaders and about 60 Singapore church and missions leaders, followed by a series of 6 in-depth focus group discussions. In addition to these, SCGM organised four other forums with Asian thought leaders, from Japan to India, and also participated in regional meetings such as the Asia2020/21 Congress monthly webinars and a Lausanne Movement ‘Listening Call’ involving 50 Southeast Asian leaders.

The selection of issues mentioned here are really long- standing concerns for the Church in Asia, but during this time of crisis the problems, which were swept under the carpet or suppressed, re-surfaced and those that were already brewing, were exacerbated.

1.1 Unsustainable and Irreproducible Missions

From the research study among Southeast Asian pastors, one of the greatest worries, especially during this worldwide crisis, is their continued reliance on financial support from foreign sources.
A budget is a reflection of the way an organisation operates. It is apparent that the way many churches in these developing countries function—its structures, systems, and activities—are largely modelled after churches in developed countries and therefore cannot be sustained by local resources and are reliant on foreign aid. Foreign, resource-laden models of church planting are viable only for communities that are more affluent. We see a clear correlation between the problem of unsustainability and the adoption of methods that are not appropriate to the socio-economic reality of local churches in impoverished contexts.

A missions worker noted, “churches got shut down and Christianity stopped, but not Buddhism, because Buddhists don’t worship congregationally in large numbers.” It was also noted by a few local pastors that house churches or churches with healthy cell structures are not as affected by the pandemic restrictions. The life of these churches—worship, evangelism, and discipleship—is decentralised, organic, simple and in the hands of the laity. This contrasts with those that revolve around a centralised building, with organised high- budget activities led by a few skilled leaders trained to handle specialised programs that would not be manageable and reproducible by devoted lay Christians The saying ‘Don’t give them fish but teach them to fish’ may be true, but what fishing methods are we teaching?

The Church in Asia needs to be allowed to reinvent herself in order to flourish in Asian contexts. The Cambodian head of a denomination recognised that “the crisis has been a challenge, but at the same time, it is also an opportunity for the church to explore new ways of doing ministry.” These “new” ways are, ironically, ‘old’ customary ways of the local people that the church had never been given an opportunity to explore.

Discipleship is not Bible study. Jesus did not sit around with his disciples and read and analyse text.

1.2 Insular and Irrelevant Discipleship

Another key issue of local pastors from the research study, and also raised at the Lausanne Movement gathering, concerned inadequate discipleship. Pastors are anxious about the spiritual well-being of their members, especially during this crisis. However, the problem does not lie so much in the quantitative lack of discipleship as a qualitative mismatch of the mode of learning and the content of discipleship with the people’s ways of life.

A missionary in Laos spoke in a way that might seem radical to some, “the problem is that we think that discipleship is Bible study. Discipleship is not Bible study.” Jesus did not sit around with his disciples and read and analyse text; He was in the fishing boat, harvest fields, or at a well in the mid-afternoon sun, talking to others about faith and life, where they were and from what they were doing. Much of the current discipleship approaches employ literacy methods which are not suitable for oral learners, who instead ‘catch on’ and ‘absorb’ the essence of truth through song, chants, meditation, rituals, and various art forms.

Furthermore, much of the translated follow up and discipleship materials are largely theological and about doctrines and personal piety. A leader from Myanmar lamented, “Christianity… does not deal with the everyday, real-life problems of people and the problems of society. Religion and everyday life are two separate things.” The dissonance in understanding what faith is, and thus the kind of discipleship Asian Christians need, may be felt in this honest comment. One of our participants recalled speaking with a Buddhist monk.

When the monk was asked about what he found difficult to understand in Christianity, he replied that he struggled to understand the way Christians define sin. In his understanding, sin in Christianity was failing to believe in certain doctrinal beliefs. In Buddhism, sin is greed, ill-will and delusional pride—the wrong that is committed in thought, speech and actions. Conversion from sin is change of behaviour, unlike conversion in Christianity which is perceived to be a change from one religion to other simply by saying that one agrees with a different set of beliefs. In Asian mindsets, the locus of faith and discipleship is life. Religious teaching that revolves around abstract doctrines makes no sense.

This dissonance leads to a profound disconnect. Shallow discipleship results in syncretism and high turnover rates, and worrisomely, the abandonment of faith by young people, as pointed out in the next paragraph.

The older generations see themselves as guardians of doctrinal ‘Truth’ and tradition—both of which the young, particularly the Gen Zs, regard as ‘oppressive.’

1.3 Disengaged and Disenfranchised NextGen

This point was a main issue raised at the Lausanne Movement ‘Listening Call’. Several Christian leaders voiced our concern over the inability of the Church to engage and keep even our own Christian children, who are not being discipled as followers of Christ by the Church but as followers of the world through social media.

It was recognised that leaders had to make more effort in listening and understanding the young and the things they are concerned about. However, I think the stumbling block lies in Christian leaders’ obsessions about the supposed “pristine purity of the Christian faith” (a phrase used by an Indonesian leader). The older generations see themselves as guardians of doctrinal ‘Truth’ and tradition—both of which the young, particularly the Gen Zs, regard as ‘oppressive.’ So, the very thing that is cherished as sacred to one is deemed as evil to another.

Two Millennials who work closely with Gen Zs explained to me that the Gen Zs are children who were born into the Age of Social Media. They held onto devices from their early infancy, and they have been nurtured in a world of subtle but intense power-plays that affect their sense of security. They are thus particularly sensitive to the issues of imbalance and abuse of power and the plight of the marginalised and victimised. Ideals of liberalism and feminism resonate well with them. Therefore, the Church’s stand on issues such as LGBTQs or liberalising of certain laws, or rather the Church’s approach in dealing with such issues, comes across to the Gen Zs as hypocrisy, bigotry, abuse and oppression. To engage the Gen Zs, the church may need to appreciate what is noble and praiseworthy (Phil 4:8) in some of these postmodern ideologies, relate to them in that language and re- construct a more gracious and compassionate response.

Just as there is a great gulf between the older and younger generation, there is also a huge chasm between the world of Christians and the world of non-Christians of the same people group.

1.4 Foreign and Unamicable Christianity

This has been a perennial problem. Christianity in Asia has been considered for centuries as a ‘white man’s religion.’ Many authors have described the alienness of Christianity in cultural anthropological categories, and how Christian faith and practice needs to be expressed in culturally sensitive ways. The foreignness of Christianity and its socio-political implications deserves further discussion.

From our research study, it was noted that local churches with foreign connections tend to have weaker relations with their local communities and local authorities, and during times of crisis, it becomes a problem. The insecurities and fears arising from the current pandemic have precipitated more pronounced ethnic and religious tensions and heightened nationalistic sentiments. The Church is commonly perceived by the non-Christian community and authorities as a foreign entity on Asian soil, and in some places, an undesirous foreign element. Christianity is unhelpfully intertwined with certain mannerisms and politically-charged agendas that are not congruent with Asian identities, core values and philosophies of social order. It is thus seen through a xenophobic lens.

At two of the Asia2020/21 webinars, an Indian Christian thought-leader suggested that Hindunization, and possibly Sinicization as well, is a backlash from perceived antagonisms and threats to national identity, culture and social stability. Another speaker from Middle East/North Africa insightfully pointed out that Christianity is a minority group in many Asian countries, and we need a ‘theology of the minority’ to guide our relations with the majority. Asian Christians need to learn what it means to be good, patriotic, Christian citizens, living and behaving humbly and peaceably as minorities, in the places God has ordained for us to be. We should avoid contending imprudently against indigenous policies of social order, therefore unwittingly coming across as “minions of a Western agenda”. Can the Christian faith not transcend political ideologies? Jesus said, “Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” and “My Kingdom is not of this world,” to which, the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, unthreatened by Jesus, found no fault in Him.

Models and methods of doing church need to be contextualized to local resources and methods.

2. A Way Forward

A profound change in the way Asian Christians view our own social, economic, and national cultures and a more nuanced approach of contextualization are seen as possible ways to resolve some of the issues. Models and methods of doing church need to be contextualized to local resources and methods. Discipleship needs to be relevant to local issues that people face, and it needs to be administered through local modes of learning. For the younger generation, a contextualised gospel could show how Christ liberates the imprisoned, frees the oppressed, protects the rights to life of the prostitute condemned by the religious institution. The church needs to be re-envisioned as an integral part, a cooperative partner and an agent of transformation within the socio-political framework of Asian societies.

How might Asian Christians do contextualization? Reading from Acts 15, at least four lessons may be drawn out from this classic example of contextualization.

2.1 Listen to and Empathise with the Other

The Jerusalem Council accepted that circumcision “troubled their [Gentile] minds” (vs 24) and made it “difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God” (vs 19). They had listened, appreciated and empathized with the non-Jews. Doing ‘critical’ contextualization and exegeting culture is more than intellectually analysing doctrinal meanings and functions of symbols, customs or rituals. We need to intuitively capture the affective meanings as well—the psychological, familial, social, and moral implications. Rather than coming with an evaluative mentality, assessing what is right and wrong, appreciating the culture of another needs to be approached with gentleness, humility and compassion.

2.2 Discern the Moving of the Holy Spirit

Barnabas and Paul could not deny the hand of God at work, through signs and wonders, among the Gentiles (vs 12). It was evident that God was willing to embrace the Gentiles as Gentiles, uncircumcised, and in all their cultural Gentile-ness. Peter validated this and recognised God’s initiative in reaching out to the Gentiles (vs 7-9). James, similarly, discerned the movement of the Holy Spirit among the Gentiles (vs 13, 15, 17, 28). See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland (Isa 43:19). Contextualization calls for prayerful discernment of God at work in unfamiliar yet creative and exciting new ways.

2.3 Renew Our Theological Interpretations

Paul, Barnabas, Peter and James saw that God was doing something new, and what they saw renewed their hermeneutical paradigm. Re-reading an old prophecy from Amos 9:11-12 in an illuminating new way, James radically redefined what ‘people of God’ meant—from one that was ethnocentric, exclusively referring to Israel as God’s chosen, to one that includes “the rest of mankind” and “all the Gentiles” (Acts 15:17). Similarly, Paul had a different theological interpretation of the Jewish doctrine of circumcision (Gal 1-2, 1 Cor 7:18-19, Phil 3:2-3). He emphasized on the spirit of the law, rather than its letter, censured the legalistic interpretation of the law of physical circumcision and preached about the circumcision of the heart by the Spirit (Rom 2:25-29). In both these cases, instead of imposing predetermined theological conceptions, the Jerusalem Church allowed God to transform their long- established theological ideas. The hermeneutical process that we see here is one that oscillates between text and context, one that is sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit in the present and God’s continued authorship in writing history.

2.4 Safekeeping the Unity of the Body

The Council did not just ‘repeal’ the law of circumcision for the Gentiles, they negotiated a holistic response.

They recommended that the Gentiles continued to follow certain purity codes, so as to mark out their identity as followers of Christ and also to maintain the unity of fellowship between Jews and Gentiles. The Council exercised the principle of 1 Cor 10:32-33 of not being a stumbling block to anyone—Jews, Gentiles or the Church of God. Contextualization involves a complex negotiation among different parties. It is not just a theological exercise; it is a relational endeavour.

Reimagining Christian Practices In Asia

Contextualization of Christian faith and practice in Asian contexts cannot be tokenistic; it is not just donning of exotic externalities, or linguistically transposing theological compositions from a Western to an Asian key. A Korean theologian exhorts Asian Christians not to be “too enamoured by Western theologies,” instead, we should “read Scriptures through raw Asian eyes” and re-interpret the Bible through the paradigms of the great philosophical traditions of Asia.

Theologizing within Asian worldviews will lay the foundation for a more profound engagement with Asian core values and local wisdom, even those that underlie ideologies of social order, progress and polity, and this will allow for the re- imagination and re-creation of Christian practices that would make more sense to Asian minds and would tug Asian hearts. It will also strengthen the Church’s resilience in the midst of crisis and stimulate the growth of the Church across the generations and in all parts of society.

Pray

• For the leaders of churches and ministries throughout wider Asia, that the Lord will speak clearly, through the Spirit of God, revealing ways to adapt and strengthen the faith in their contexts.
• For those who would bring an ‘expatriate’ influence with them into Asian contexts, that they will have divine wisdom  and sensitivity to know how to appropriately engage and humbly allow a local Christian voices to lead initiatives, innovate solutions and establish strategies most appropriate to their contexts.
• Encouragement for all followers of Jesus in Asian contexts, where living one’s faith “out loud” can be subject to a negative response from those of another majority religion, resulting in persecution even. May the peace of Christ reign in their hearts and the Holy Spirit strengthen their spirits as they live faithfully together in-Christ.
• For more opportunities for theologies developed and lived out in wider Asia to be known and applied in other parts of the world, as a blessing to all nations.
• That the Spirit of God will keep reflective practitioners anchored to Holy Scripture even as they consider how God’s work in the past can be applied to their needs and witness in the present as followers of Christ.

[30 Minute Read]

In this article Dr Mary T. Lederleitner, a Mission Commission Deputy Leader, encourages church and ministry leaders to courageously engage in research projects to better understand the problems their ministries are facing. The global pandemic has re-set our ‘normals’ and there is much to be learned from the new environments that are emerging around us. Often we avoid research because we do not understand or value it or think we cannot afford to conduct it. Here, Mary helps us see how helpful it can be and how it can be conducted at relatively low cost, while leveraging resources that may already be within our grasp 

Sometimes when we are in the midst of challenging times it is hard to imagine how we can do something substantive—something that might make a lasting and strategic difference. We face many obstacles and new constraints as the pandemic marches on. It’s easy to wonder if we are simply stuck in a waiting area for it to end so we can do meaningful ministry again.

Thankfully that is not the narrative or reality that needs to guide our steps as we lead mission organizations and churches around the world. COVID-19 can provide us with a time to pause and deeply reflect upon what we’ve learned in the journey so far, where we sense God might like us to be 5-7 years from now, and what we need to understand and learn in order to grow into that calling.

What does it take to do cutting edge, excellent research?

1. Funding & Research

I had an unusual experience about a year ago. I left one meeting and, on my hurried walk to the get to the next one on time, a colleague told me I had just won the 2020 Christianity Today book-of-the-year award in the missions / global church category for Women in God’s Mission: Accepting the Invitation to Serve and Lead. The book was based on research I conducted with talented women from about thirty countries.

The news seemed surreal, and my mind had a hard time absorbing it. As soon as I got to the next meeting my boss, who had also just learned of the news, told a denominational leader we were meeting with that I had just won the award. The denominational leader asked a question that has stayed with me ever since. He said, “Mary which foundation did you partner with to pay for the research?”

I burst out laughing because at the time I did the project I was raising my own support. My salary was significantly lower than what most of my peers were earning and I had to cover the costs out of my rather small allotment of resources. However, what I did have turned out to be far more important. I had the kindness and goodwill of missions colleagues and gifted women who trusted me enough to share their stories and wisdom with me. The honor I received from Christianity Today was merely a reflection and credit to those remarkable women who participated in the project.

I’ve thought about that question so many times since then. What does it take to do cutting edge, excellent research? Does it require a wealthy patron or foundation? Sometimes their financial gifts can expand the scope of research, and their partnership can be quite significant. But are their gifts essential, to the point that we can do little unless we are the recipients of these types of grants? My experience with that recent book project, as well as research I did for my dissertation and for a prior book titled Cross-Cultural Partnerships reveal that meaningful and potent research do not need to be limited to people who are fortunate enough to receive large financial grants. But if these are not necessary, what is? And do the lessons I’ve learned have any applicability in light of the fact that people who read this blog are from so many diverse cultures and contexts? I guess that is for each person to determine, but here are some things that come to mind as I have pondered these questions.

2. Meaningful Research

What makes research meaningful and powerful? There are several reasons why research projects I have been able to do over the years have been fruitful, and these usually have little to do with outside funding. As I reflect on these different experiences, I think they are the same qualities and issues that, when they are present, make it ministry.

2.1 Let love motivate

The most basic issue behind meaningful and influential research is the motivation that is driving it. Why is that so important? I believe it is because underlying motivation tends to infuse and influence every action taken in the project, and it is frequently ‘felt’ or ‘experienced’ by those who participate in it.

Unfortunately, lots of people are doing research to build their CV’s or resumes, to get a job, or to compete in the world of higher education for promotion, tenure, etc. Since excellent research takes a great deal of perseverance, I have found that it requires a motivation deeper than self-interest. I believe love needs to be the root for something good to emerge from research. Love also ends up being the motivation for taking the following steps as well.

There are thousands of people working diligently in God’s Kingdom who would genuinely benefit from research addressing issues they are facing.

2.2 Tackle an important problem

The more experienced I get, the more I am surprised by how many years people spend researching things that no one really cares about, given that there are thousands of people working diligently in God’s Kingdom who would genuinely benefit from research addressing issues they are facing. It seems like a waste of talent and poor stewardship of time and resources to engage in research that is not developed in dialogue with ministry practitioners. Otherwise, what is the purpose? Furthermore, what is the opportunity cost from what is not happening in the Kingdom for all of those years spent doing work that hardly anyone will ever even read? Is it to get the privilege of having someone call you Dr.? If so, that seems like a profoundly shallow outcome.

But what happens when you turn your heart for research towards tangible problems that ministry leaders in global missions or churches are facing? Suddenly, deeply busy people perk up and start paying attention. That is when you will begin hearing, “You mean someone cares enough about what I am doing to want to research it so we can be more fruitful? I’m in!” It is at that place that collaboration begins to occur in a significant way, and it is far more valuable than money.

If you put yourself in other people’s shoes you start to think of research processes differently.

2.3 Develop a process with integrity

There is another critical aspect to conducting meaningful research: your reputation. How do you treat people? Are you a user or are you a blesser? Do you just care about your own success and effectiveness or do you care as much or more about the well-being of others? Can people trust you with their stories? Will you put yourself in their shoes so to speak, and care enough to see the world through their eyes? If so, that is the starting place for designing a research process that has integrity.

If you put yourself in other people’s shoes you start to think of research processes differently. For example, at that moment, you begin to not just consider the questions you want to ask but also the impact those questions will have on the people who will participate in the research. You begin to think about how much time is reasonable to ask of busy people. It also impacts the timelines you develop to collect data. Do you form those timelines based upon what is easy and convenient for you, or do you allow margin, realizing your research is not the center of everyone else’s universe? Do you realize and care that they have other tasks and responsibilities, and do you remember that it is for your privilege that they are willing to share their time, stories and insight with you and not something you are entitled to have?

Undertaking research in a variety of cultures and contexts means thinking through the implications, sensitivities, and risk people incur by participating. For example, how do the nuances of honor influence your research and how would questions and processes need to be crafted to protect people from being dishonored by their contribution? In other cultures it might be more appropriate to use appreciative inquiry, examining what is working well rather than focusing the research on what is going poorly and what isn’t working, so this would need to be sensitively considered.

Most of us have been in conversations and situations where people seemed to have had an agenda. They said they wanted to talk but they acted like they already knew the answers, or only wanted you to say what they wanted to hear. As a researcher, are you asking genuine questions and allowing people to answer in their own way, without creating leading questions or cutting off their responses? How are you ensuring their true answers are able to be heard? Or will you take their comments out of context to make points or come to conclusions that misinterpret what they meant?

2.4 Value everyone with dignity and respect

One aspect of research that has shocked me more than anything else is how much people have thanked me after they took time out of their busy schedules to participate in a research effort that I needed to accomplish. ‘Why in the world’, I’ve often thought, ‘are they thanking me when they are doing me such a huge favor?’

This kept puzzling me until I realized something very important. In life rarely does someone come to us and ask what we genuinely think about an issue that is deeply important to us—and then they actually listen. Maybe some get that experience in therapy, but they likely have to pay for it. When qualitative research is done well, with genuine open-ended questions designed to help people tell their stories and think through what is important to them, it is a deeply meaningful and respectful experience for those who participate in the process.

2.5 Translate findings for practitioners

Sadly, since so much research is done to fulfill academic requirements, like a capstone project for a Master’s Degree, a thesis for a D.Min., or a dissertation for a PhD, many people never go further to translate what they learned. To interpret it out of “academic lingo” into language and communication pieces that busy practitioners can relate to and understand.

I am concerned this is a significant reason missiological research frequently does not impact local church practice. Many missiological gatherings involve a person reading his or her paper for 20-30 minutes, there are a few moments for questions, and then on to the next paper. Most busy pastors and missions practitioners do not want to attend those types of gatherings, nor do many have time to sift through dense academic writing. Yet we researchers wonder why our work is not impacting how mission and ministry are done? It takes additional works to translate research into formats and platforms that busy people can absorb.

In this next era, let’s make excellent research a priority for our churches and ministries.

3. Research During & Post-Pandemic

In this next era, let’s make excellent research a priority for our churches and ministries. Here are a few ways to significantly move research forward in your context

3.1 Identify needs

What issues are tripping you up and hindering your ministry? What internal obstacles are you facing? For example, do you have a robust succession plan or is there an inadequate internal leader development pipeline? What is hindering people in your ministry from developing to their full potential? Are you struggling to be more effective at a certain type of ministry? Are you unclear if you are truly being effective at what you are trying to accomplish? Are there new areas of ministry God is calling you into that you have never engaged in the past? What are the biggest issues and concerns that you believe will hinder your ability to live into the next stage of your church’s or ministry’s calling? Get clear about what your most important issues and challenges are and focus your research there.

3.2 What is in your hand?

We can look at ministries that receive large grants and financial gifts and feel like we are lacking in what we need to accomplish God’s purposes. We can become so easily fixated on what we do not have that we begin to lose sight of what God has already given us. That mindset is more debilitating than almost anything else, so you need to work hard to switch your focus. As God asked Moses (Exodus 4:2), “what is in your hand?” Who could you talk to in order to learn more about these issues? Talk with your community to see if research has already been done about the issue, or a similar one. Are there books you and your colleagues could read together? If so, which ones might be most helpful?

New research usually requires you to go right to the source. For example, if you are struggling to find ways to share the gospel with a particular people, how might you be able to talk with them directly about the obstacles within the confines of a research project? Are there people you are working with who have insights in these areas, who can help move your ministry forward? If so, is it possible for them to come together and form a new task force with that focus?

Many churches and ministries have people on staff with advanced education, such as masters and doctoral degrees, that required them to undertake a research project. Tap their expertise. Many ministries enable those in their midst with a gift for research to set aside time to learn together and with others outside of the ministry. Some of these colleagues can set 10-20% of their time aside for research and others might even be able to devote 80-90% of their time to research. It is also possible to collaborate with research institutions like the one I work with at Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, seminaries in your region that have a research institute, communities like the WEA Mission Commission, Evangelical Missiological Societies, etc.

3.3 Maximize technology

A lot of quality research in global missions used to be so expensive because it often involved so much international travel. An unexpected but positive outcome of the pandemic is the accelerated use of technology. People who used to avoid using different forms of technology are now engaging them regularly. People are also becoming more and more creative about finding meaningful ways to connect. Capitalize on what we are all learning in these areas and build research strategies that utilize these new and helpful technologies to meet with people for conversations, interviews, focus groups, etc.

4. Accelerate Ministry Fruitfulness

Research, if done well, can profoundly accelerate the impact of your ministry. It can enable you to overcome obstacles, find new opportunities and become fruitful in your work much more quickly. It can help you to raise the ceiling of what your ministry can accomplish and empower your colleagues to make their best contribution for the sake of God’s kingdom. Consider making research a strategic priority as 2021 continues, during and after the pandemic, and you might be quite surprised at what even a small investment will yield in terms of ministry fruitfulness!

Pray

• For discernment with churches and missions concerning what areas of their ministry need to be investigated and what methods are best used to investigate it, as we move into the post-pandemic era.
• For wisdom to know who to include as participants in research and for favor, that they would be willing to participate at no cost so that the research can proceed and findings be published to bless a much wider sphere of ministry.
• For an openness to change in the global missions community as new evidence comes to light that suggests a need for significant shifts in missions strategy and objectives (while retaining biblical integrity).
• That we will see a growing among of research emerging that is of practical benefit, conducted by reflective practitioners, for missions (and church/local ministry) practitioners.

[15 Minute Read]

Looking back at 2020 and how the world has been dramatically affected by COVID-19, there is one word I will take into 2021 and it is “community”. In many positive ways, community has stepped in and helped people affected by the pandemic, directly or indirectly. Believers of all sorts have been looking out for their neighbours, shared their goods, their time and even sometimes their lives. I believe, community will be even more important as we face 2021 with all the unknowns, where leaders are asked to lead into the fog. No one of us can face the pandemic on our own. We need each other in the missions community to discern the fog and lead into the future courageously.

Community is not a building, institution or an organisation. It is both a feeling and a set of relationships…

1. What Is Community?

Community, according to various definitions, it is a group of men and women who lead a common life according to a rule where members share common cultural and historical heritage. It can be very local but also the community can be found in a nation or across nations where a group shares common characteristics or interests and perceives themselves to be distinct in some respect from the larger society within which they exist.

Community is not a building, institution or an organisation. It is both a feeling and a set of relationships that the members of the community form and maintain to meet common needs. The sense of community comes from shared experiences and shared history.

In the Biblical sense, it is a community of believers who follow Jesus. Their following has direct outcomes and impact in the wider communities the live amongst. First, they share a sense of responsibility for each other and then for the wider community they are part of.

A thriving community of believers is one where we work towards being united in mind and thought (1 Cor 1:10). Together we walk in the light and have fellowship with one another and together experience Jesus cleansing us from all sin (1 John 1:7). We bear each with other and forgive one another (Col 3:13) and carry each other’s burdens (Gal 6:2).

Prayer is an important element, and we pray for each other so that we may be healed. Especially in these COVID-19 times when so many people are struggling.

It is this community of fellow believers who out of love for one another share their means with anyone who has need. See Acts 2:44-47, where we also read that God added to their numbers daily.

Everyone is invited to participate, contributing their own skills, giftings, and resources such that, in the end, each member feels a sense of reward.

2. Engaging In Community

In my reading on community building and how to go about it best, I found two diagrams very useful and I would like to introduce them to you…

The Community Engagement Cycle starts with the identity and leads to reward. To belong to a community, you need to identify key core members who together will form the identity of the community.

The community initiator (or core group) needs to then earn the trust of the wider group and get the members to buy-in into the larger vision. This is where values play a critical role.
Everyone then is invited to participate, contributing their own skills, giftings, and resources such that, in the end, each member feels a sense of reward. They want to feel appreciated, strengthening a sense of belonging. From there, people will be encouraged to invite others into the community.

Applying this to communities of believers, our identity is based on a common foundation: Jesus Christ (1 Cor 3:11). As believers we start trusting him and each other. In our Christ-centred communities there is space to be, to believe and to belong. As discipleship develops, people will become active participants and know that they, together, are building the Kingdom of God. The rewards are many, including appreciation from our brothers and sisters, but our real reward is eternal, with Jesus reserving a place for each of us.

The second diagram, The Commitment Curve, highlights the journey of entering the community and moving from being passive, becoming more active to the point where it is possible also take on increasing responsibilities. This all happens over time.

For people to grow into greater responsibility in a growing community, and not fall off into inactivity, members of the community must keep moving through the four stages of the Community Engagement Cycle: being reminded of their identity, reinforcing trust, permitted to participate and rewarded for their contributions, which reminds them of their identity, and so on it goes.

Communities of believers need to keep people as our priority when we do missions in this new year ahead of us.

3. Why Is Community Important For Missions?

3.1 It is about people

Whatever we have done in the pandemic, and will do in 2021 and beyond, it will have direct impact on us personally and as mission partners. Foremost, it is about people.

Though Christmas looked very different for most people in 2020, it was also used as the most creative and evangelistic opportunity that some regions have seen for many years. For example, I know of situations where many churches were closed for Christmas. So, Christians got together in their communities to bring church to the people. From Christmas alleys decorated as drive throughs across a whole town in the UK, to devotions on a playground attended by people who had never entered a church in Germany, to friends inviting their 100 neighbours to attend a Christmas carol service with a 5-minute devotion held by the local neighbour and youth pastor to which 80 people came while observing appropriate physical distancing.

Christian communities in Africa and Asia collected food to distribute during Christmas, sharing God´s love among the most needy. Health workers received care packages from churches to thank them. Churches raised food packages for thousands in the UK. Some decorated advent windows each of the 24 days in December and invited all for a Christmas stroll around the town or neighbourhood. This was taken up by many people from whom it had been a very long time (if ever) since entering a church building.

Jesus is out to save people. People matter. People matter most to God. And communities of believers need to keep people as our priority when we do missions in this new year ahead of us.

3.2 It is about building God’s kingdom

The stronger a community is, the more connections it will have between each member, and the more impact it will have. As Christians engage in their local communities and build relationships, the more opportunities they will have to share and be the Gospel to people who otherwise would never hear about Jesus.

A community of believers never seeks to simply meet their own needs but is commissioned by God (Mt 28:18-20) to go into the world to be the salt and light (Mt 5:13-16) wherever they are located.
A lot of countries have reported a new open door to share the Gospel as people are asking more faith questions during this pandemic period. The vaccine is on the horizon, and people are getting vaccinated, yet the pandemic continues to shake the securities of many people. Where churches and missions agencies have creatively shared the Gospel online and offline, people have responded. Globally, we do see and hear that God is daily adding people into His Kingdom.

Though we rejoice with churches getting more clicks and views on their Sunday service stream, we rejoice even more when people decide to follow Jesus. We are not into building our own little kingdoms, but as collective communities of the body of Christ, we are his hand and feet.
If we really want to know our local communities, it is important to know who the main players are. Who are the leaders? The official and informal leaders? Where are the faith communities? What are the current needs? Where can a church make a difference? Where can churches unite together, bridge divides and bring peace?

Jesus’ first friends and disciples did exactly that. They stepped out in faith and left behind the things they were comfortable with. They became more like Jesus every day and spread the Gospel wherever they went.

Let’s become community builders like never before…

4. Lessons For The Missions Community

Let’s become uncomfortable in 2021 and share the Good News in ways we have never done before, expecting God to walk with us and reveal the power of the gospel. Let’s become community builders like never before, building communities online and offline, within and outside.

Some incredible missions conferences have taken place online in 2020 which were fantastically led, were inspiring and created community. It is possible to build a sense of community online. Churches have created some amazing events over the past few months as well, experimenting with what it means to share the Good News within an online community. Let’s be innovative and think even more out of the box, for His name’s sake. And once we can have in-house, in-person meetings again, and meet people face to face, let’s keep online activities going to reach even further.

Finally, another lesson is that community drives retention. People interested in faith will explore your community when they feel wanted and welcomed. Let’s make sure everyone is made welcome and integrated, online as well as offline.

Together, let’s make the year ahead of us count, where our communities flourish and grow in God.

Pray

• For leaders of churches, ministries and missions as they seek to build flourishing organisations by building great communities in-Christ.
• For all those who feel like they do not belong to a community such as is described above. Pray that they would find a place among fellow followers of Christ, where they are welcomed and able to contribute God’s best gifts toward the wellbeing of that community of faith in-Christ. May all Christ-followers find a communal space where they can grow into greater responsibility and positive influence for the benefit of the Kingdom of God and the public good.
• That our witness as communities of Christ-followers would radiate loving kindness and wellbeing to a world where relationships are too easily destroyed. In this way, all over the world, with our publicly manifest unity reinforcing our explanation of the gospel, we stay on mission and glorify God.

Starter Resources

https://cmxhub.com/build-a-thriving-community-from-scratch/
https://cmxhub.com/the-cmx-community-engagement-cycle/
https://www.thnk.org/insights/building-a-community/

[30 Minute Read]

     English

   Português

So, during the December 31st ‘cross-over’ night, ritually observed to mark the end of the passing year and usher in the coming ‘new’ year, wishes are made of better prospects ahead. In the coming year, strategic plans for better and more effective outcomes are launched. Paths and roadmaps towards more impactful ministries are outlined. Slogans, ‘rhema revelations’, mission statements, and new year resolutions are rolled out. Of course, a number of prophetic declarations about several aspects of the moment-defining events and futuristic phenomena are churned out by various ‘oracles’, most of which claim to be speaking from the Lord.

Introduction

The same annual New Year ritual of projections and prophesies marked the end of the year 2019 and the beginning of 2020. The permutation conjured by the apparently mystical form of the number ‘2020’ made the predictions, the rhemas, the slogans, the mission statements, and prophetic declarations all the more attractive. Unfortunately, none of those ‘crystal ball’ gazes captured the ‘rising storm from the East’ that was already gathering strength and swirling towards the ‘West’… and inevitably flowed towards our corner of the world around the first quarter of the year 2020—to West Africa. We are experiencing this ritual again as we leave 2020, but this time something has changed. We are less certain.

“Africa has recorded fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths than other parts of the world.”

1. False Predictions

When the COVID-19 wind arrived on the African horizon, there was palpable fear in the hearts of the African people concerning how our corrupt governments, underdeveloped economies, poor health facilities, and battered social structures could survive in the face of the pandemic power of COVID-19. After all, it was causing the supposedly super economic powers, well advanced in their technological prowess, with well-developed health facilities, and well nurtured social systems, to buckle!

Predictions about the calamitous impact of COVID-19 on Africa and the African people came from very authoritative sources. For example, The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) predicted in April that, “Anywhere between 300,000 and 3.3 million African people could lose their lives as a direct result of COVID-19″. [1] The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned African countries to “prepare for the worst” [2], while Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in a CNN interview on April 10, said: “It’s going to be horrible in the developing world. And part of the reason you’re seeing that case numbers don’t look very bad is because they don’t have access to very many tests… Look at Ecuador. Look at what’s going on in Ecuador. They’re putting bodies out on the street. You’re going to see that in countries in Africa.” [3]

The situation, however, proved far different from the predicted outcomes. “But Africa has recorded fewer COVID-19 cases and deaths than other parts of the world. Despite the poor quality of health systems across the African continent, the case fatality rate (CFR) in Africa is among the longest [sic] globally, hovering around 2% against Europe’s 6.3%, South America’s 3.4%, North America (3.9%), and a global CFR of 3.7% as at August 7.” [4]

Several factors have been presented as the reasons why the predictions have not happened at the scale feared. Also, some measures that were taken by governments, individuals, organizations, communities within Africa in different ways and forms, were identified as having contributed to the exciting songs of relief that are being sung across Africa. Just as the pandemic itself impacted the Church and her missionary enterprises, the factors and measures which have disproved the predictions have also served very advantageous purposes for the Church and her missions.

Michal Shalem & Michal Lebenthal Andreson, in their article in The Jerusalem Post of March 14, 2020, highlighted various factors necessary in turning the corner in moments of such unprecedented emergencies like the ones thrown up by COVID-19: “Overcoming crises of this sort require the ability to quickly adapt to a new reality, to decentralize authority, to think differently, and to implement creative tools and strategies. Facing a new and unexpected challenge requires operating different tools and developing a new implementable modus vivendi (way of life).” [5]

In this essay we will explore the underlying measures in terms of how they played out as undertaken by the different constituencies and entities in Africa that have accounted for the commendable outcomes being highlighted in the stories about how Africa has prevailed against the COVID-19 pandemic so far.

The same characteristics and a few other measures identified in the efforts of the sections of the African Church and mission communities in Africa are explored in the following two examples: the Movement for African National Initiatives (MANI), and one of the oldest Western Missions that has worked in Africa for nearly a century.

First, for clarity, let me list the measures Shalem and Co. identified in the quote above:

1. Quick adaptation
2. Decentralization of authority
3. Thinking differently
4. Implementing creative tools and strategies
5. Operating different tools
6. Developing a new implementable way of living, a working arrangement that allows for peaceful co-existence despite perceived differences. [6]

…the common experience of the whole world: ‘disruption of the normal’ and the ‘imposition of the new-normal’ in all spheres of life, activity, ministry, relationships, and societal functions!

2. Discerning Times and Ordering Steps in Missions

2.1 Missions in and from Africa

When it became obvious in the Movement for African National Initiatives (MANI) that all the plans that we had made for this year (2020) and for our pending 4th quinquennial Continental Consultation (scheduled for March 2021) were under serious threat due to the pandemic, we had to pause to listen to God and to one another under the theme: “what are we hearing or learning from God in our regions and contexts in times like these?” [7] The following questions were drawn and distributed among the various regional and ministry network coordinators for reflections and investigations concerning the impact of COVID-19 in our regions and contexts:

1. What has changed very drastically in our contexts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic?
2. What are the challenges, constraints, and limitations the Church, individuals, and the society in general now face in our contexts because of the pandemic?
3. What should we be doing differently now?
4. How should we adjust, jettison, or innovate our past approaches to still fulfil the Great Commission mandate from now onwards?

Responses to questions 1 and 2 were obvious and consistent with what has become the common experience of the whole world: ‘disruption of the normal’ and the ‘imposition of the new-normal’ in all spheres of life, activity, ministry, relationships, and societal functions!

The responses to questions 3 and 4 presented us the ways and means that now dictate and direct the “Next Steps” measures that we are adopting in remaining committed to the fulfilment of our understanding of the Great Commission mandate in times like these.

From the summary of the responses, here are what we gleaned, which have reshaped our ministry focus and approaches…

Q3. What we should be doing differently now?

• Improve awareness of the changing dynamics of the context and paradigms of missions, the concept of the UPGs, and the need for more creative and strategic approaches to doing missions.
• Be more strategic, innovative, and embrace more efficient use of resources, time and technology in our ministry efforts.
• Re-examine and reorder our priorities.
• Find new and appropriate ways of doing missions as well as new giving models to finance missions.
• Look afresh at what it means to be a church, including emphasis on really being a loving and sharing community.
• Explore new training and outreach techniques to do missions that allow disciples to grow without the need of physical buildings.
• Move away from large, in-person consultations, to smaller, networked gatherings with more consistent engagement online.

Q4. How should we adjust, jettison, or innovate our past approaches to still fulfil the Great Commission mandate from now onwards? 

• Embrace new technologies for ministry purposes.
• Look at new ways of gospel transmission in unreached communities.
• Train our members on new and creative ways of fund raising and financial investments.
• Focus on raising, training, equipping and empowering local/national believers.
• Proactive research on and promotion of new categories of harvest-fields, harvest-forces, and best approaches of engaging each.
• Promote household churches; train more small group family heads and leaders, in the expectation that small group churches will become especially important.
• Strategic, healthy partnering is more crucial than ever.
• Exercise more intentionality in regular online networking platforms while maintaining disciplined and strategic use of the digital space.
• Promote ‘prayer evangelism’ and prayers for frontline workers.
• Every believer should be equipped to understand and be carrying out their role in the fulfilment of the Great Commission ensuring that the whole Body of Christ is mobilized and being a witness for Christ wherever and in whatever condition they find themselves.

2.2 Missions from Outside to Africa

One of the oldest missions from the West that has been working in Africa for almost a century also had a reflection and a resetting retreat at the onset of COVID-19 involving all their global stakeholders. The intent was to identify how they will remain relevant and more strategic in their ministry efforts in the ‘new-normal’ world. By the end of the retreat they concluded that they needed to continue to ‘be’ and ‘build’ a “truly global missions community”. The following are gleaned from the resolutions:

• Be intentionally innovative.
• Equip, strengthen, and work with local churches in our receiving contexts for missions.
• Identify and develop local workers and leaders.
• Engage local beneficiaries in all aspects of missions.
• Be rooted and invested in our communities.
• Regionalize services. [8]

The two examples of MANI and the older mission from the West working in Africa underscore what Shalem & Co. also emphasized in their article in The Jerusalem Post:

In emergencies, decentralization of powers and transfer of control to the ‘field’ is a necessity. Relying on local factors accustomed to work in routine situations will ensure better results and in fact allow to continue business as usual at times of crisis. Managers at the local level see what needs to be done firsthand and when given the freedom to manage and manoeuvre are able to control the situation. [9]

Africans had to reach into their innate capabilities to draw strength and inspiration to tackle the pandemic.

3. Creativity, Innovation, Contextuality, Adaptability

Sustainability of the missions enterprise in terms of general welfare of the missions force and the resourcing of missions programs and projects became a far-fetched imagination in a situation where the economies of countries have been battered, scarcity of provisions is prevalent everywhere, where individuals and organisations (including churches) have slid into survival mode and generosity has become a secondary consideration in peoples’ bid to plod through life.

3.1 Opportunities Born Out of Crisis

The economies of the majority of African countries are import-dependent. When it comes to social services regarding health, etc., African countries tend to look to the West for help to provide support facilities and aid packages for the citizens. But due to the universal impact of the pandemic, which has been more pronounced in the donor-countries of Europe and North America, there was not much assistance coming from those traditional bases of aid to Africa. So, Africans had to reach into their innate capabilities to draw strength and inspiration to tackle the pandemic.

One of the leaders of the missions movement in Nigeria released a statement in which he advised Nigerian missionaries to take up the practice of cottage farming, backyard horticultural practice, including other innovative farming methods like growing vegetables in pots hoisted onto tree trunks, and making use of every available space to produce whatever type of foodstuffs than can grow in such places. The purpose was for missionaries not to suffer malnutrition or hunger and to avoid spending the scarce finance they had on awfully expensive foodstuffs during this period. Many missionaries who took that advice seriously and practiced what was suggested are progressively becoming self-sufficient in raising their own foodstuffs for their sustenance and more—a means of generating extra income.

During lockdown periods when movement was restricted, offices and factories closed, the markets were not regular, businesses clamped down, and sources of income were jeopardized, the government tried to provide and distribute palliative measures. However, missionaries did not qualify as beneficiaries of such assistance. But thanks be to the Lord that some missions support agencies took up the challenge to provide missionaries with support in cash, materials, and even visits. One family provided for 25 missionary-wives in the Christian Missionary Foundation (CMF) fields, with about five million naira (N5 million = $10,500US) to set up various empowerment (income generating) projects in their locations. These happened in June at the peak of the pandemic here in Nigeria. It was also during this period that another Christian support group continued to provide several missionaries in Nigeria and other African countries with regular monthly support (including about US$570 per month for 10 missionaries in CMF), plus the purchase of five motorcycles for five other missionaries of CMF. Two other local churches in Nigeria have been regularly supporting numerous missionaries (including 7 & 11 CMF missionaries respectively). We now have a greater level of local support for our missionaries and the field projects during this crisis period than ever before.

Apart from helping individuals to minimize the risk of being infected, many people (including missionaries) became involved in processing and supplying those alternative ingredients for preventive and curative therapies.

3.2 Resilience & Adaptability

Further in their Jerusalem Post article, Shalem & Co. stated, “The basis for national and civil resilience, among other things, is to foster local government’s internal capacity to cope and be able to act independently in an emergency.” [10]

Being aware of the scarcity of personal protective equipment (PPE), testing kits, and other medical supplies needed by frontline health workers, as well as for treatment and caring for patients, “Tens of thousands of health workers fanned out across the continent, taking temperatures and screening for the disease. In research labs and businesses of every size, people got to work. Scientists in Senegal developed a $1 COVID-19 testing kit and used 3D printing to make ventilators. In Nigeria, tailors sewed masks and personal protective equipment.” [11]

3.3 Creativity, Innovation and Improvisation

“In other places across the continent, people readily adopted non-pharmaceutical interventions despite PPE shortages, which people in Western countries were slow to do.” [12]

The Governor of our state in Nigeria was among the government officials that contracted COVID-19. When he recovered, he shared the measures that were put in place to ensure his recovery, the kind of treatment he received, and what constituted the efficacy of such treatments that accelerated his recovery. He brought together a team medical, nutritionists, etc., to assemble the local equivalents of the conventional treatments he received and translated them into the local languages. They pointed to alternative, available and affordable ingredients for such treatments and ran a series of TV, radio, and public hearing sessions in which the people were educated on the best prevention measures (the washing of hands, social distancing, and mask-wearing as well as what to take to boost the immune system), and the curative measures if one tested positive.

Apart from helping individuals to minimize the risk of being infected, many people (including missionaries) became involved in processing and supplying those alternative ingredients for preventive and curative therapies. One missionary wife I know of has been producing, processing, packaging and distributing alternative ingredients such as turmeric, garlic, ginger, black seed, flax seed, black pepper, cinnamon powder, etc., which are immune-system boosters, antioxidants, along with Vitamin C & D supplements.

3.4 Leveraging Technology

“In Ghana, the COVID -19 pandemic spurred people to adopt innovations in health care, from apps that help diagnose corona-virus symptoms to drones transporting blood samples.” [13]

Training, meetings (seminars, consultations), communications and regular contacts, church services (including holy communion and payment of offerings and tithes) have been going on quite regularly, with minimal costs, and in most cases attracting more participants that would have ordinarily participated during in person gatherings. Technology has proven a vital tool in accomplishing more with minimal logistics and financial investments. In fact, this new normal might become a permanent normal even when the pandemic inhibitions go away.

More people would have died from COVID-19 in (Nigeria) were it not for the mercy of God.

5. The God Factor

The African Church is regarded as a praying church. Because of the numerous economic, political, social and natural challenges and crisis the African continent and people face, we do not have any other alternative than put our trust in the Lord and beseech His Throne of Grace for help in our times of need. We believe very strongly in and appropriate this special covenant relationship with God as declared in Isaiah 19:19-25: 

In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the LORD at its border. It will be a sign and witness to the LORD Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, he will send them a saviour and defender, and he will rescue them. So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and keep them. The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

As many people search for and seek to explain why the predictions about how COVID-19 was going to devastate Africa have so far not happened as expected, there is the divine angle that must be considered. Solomon Zewdu stated as follows: “There is a lot, the argument goes, that we still don’t know. Here’s my sense of the issue: What we don’t know about Africa and COVID-19 is far less important than what we do know. Because the things we do know are amazing and important and have surely contributed to Africa’s overall success in weathering this disease.” [^14]

That which we still do not know belongs to the divine realm. As stated in the following lines from Isaiah’s prophecy in Chapter 19, God hears and answers our prayers: “When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, he will send them a saviour and defender, and he will rescue them… The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.” The following examples attest to this fact:

1. The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) Pastor Adeboye, said that “more people would have died from COVID-19 in the country were it not for the mercy of God.” He submitted that “the prayers of Nigerian saints saved the country from recording high COVID-19 deaths. Even Melinda Gates’ prediction that African streets could be littered with coronavirus-laden corpses has failed to materialise, it appears, that was God protecting the continent”. He narrated how a friend of his asked him, “what is it that you people did in Nigeria? I told him our secret is we cried to God for mercy. God showed us mercy. God looked down from heaven and saw that we had nothing, no resources and we prayed”. [15]
2. “COVID-19 is a passing phase and as a people of faith, we seek God’s intervention daily on our knees asking Him to help our world and to help Africa overcome this deadly virus. We declare collectively and we believe so that there will be no dead bodies littering the streets of Africa.” [16]
3. “But my own gut feeling is that God has a role to play in all of this. At the beginning of this pandemic, I used to pray for God to heal the land until it occurred to me that God was actually healing the land.” [17]

Footnotes

1. https://www.uneca.org/covid-19-africa-protecting-lives-and-economies.
2. https://apnews.com/article/caa613fb8004d3cd2ecae13201d7b745
3. Chukwuma Muanya, Why Africa is Least Affected by Deaths From Covid-19, The Guardian Nigeria, May 19, 2020.
4. Paul Adepoju, Covid-19: The Sky Hasn’t Fallen Yet in Africa, Health Policy Watch, August 15, 2020.
5. Michal Shalem & Michal Lebenthal Andreson, Corona: Crisis Or Opportunity, The Jerusalem Post, March 14, 2020.
6. Shalem et al, Ibid.
7. MANI paper, What are we Learning/Hearing from God in Our Regions & Contexts in Times Like These?
8. Kenya Commitment (SIM International).
9. Shalem et al, Ibid.
10. Shalem et al, Ibid.
11. Solomon Zewdu, Africa: In the Fight Against COVID-19, an Unsung Continent (Deputy Director for Global Development in Ethiopia and Africa, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).
12. Zewdu, Ibid.
13. Stacey Knott, COVID-19 Drives Health Care Tech Innovation in Ghana, VOA News, May 23, 2020.
14. Zewdu, Ibid.
15. Pastor Adeboye, COVID-19: Our Prayers Saved Nigeria From Coronavirus. The Realm News, November 1, 2020.
16. Bishop Seun Adeoye, A Statement Issued in Nigeria by World Bishops Council Spokesman in Africa, Wednesday, April 15, 2020.
17. Muyiwa Adetiba, Covid-19: Why Africa is Not Picking Dead Bodies on the Streets, Vanguard Nigeria, August 2020.

Pray

• For the merciful hand of God to respond to the cries of God’s people and continue to be with all of Africa as the pandemic mutates and spreads.
• Especially for South Africa, possibly the hardest hit of the African nations.
• Prayers of praise and thanksgiving for the gifts of innovation and creativity emerging from within Africa, may the Spirit of God continue to inspire new initiatives that will bless Africans and be a blessing to all nations.
• For miraculous supply for African pastors and missionaries who are dependent on the generosity of others to support them to minister; also for the capacity to generate their own supplies under God’s guidance.
• For fresh revelation about how best to conduct missions in contexts of great suffering and need, that Christ will be known and God will be glorified among all people.

[30 Minute Read]

1. Introduction

This essay summarises the findings of that consultation by understanding the impact of COVID on ISM globally, recognising what the Lord Jesus is doing. Finally, there are some suggestions for best practices and areas for strengthening ISM to the glory of God.

Our world has been irrevocably changed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning with international students in China unable to leave campus since late January 2020, the epidemic-now-pandemic impacted ministries all over the world. From every angle, this has been a year of uncertainty and disruption. As 2020 draws to a close, the pandemic continues in second and third waves; the socio-political landscape reveals growing fault lines and fears. No wonder ISM leaders are struggling with the mismatch between old models and new realities, while organisations wonder if ISM is still a viable or meaningful ministry in a COVID-19 world.

How will organisations get out of the foggy, unpredictable and ambiguous context of a multiplicity of losses?

2. Global Fellowship

In a time of turmoil Jesus comforted his disoriented disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1). In the unity of the Spirit and under the lordship of Jesus Christ, the consultation participants enjoyed and expressed their biblical fellowship to love international students with the transforming gospel. Much was shared between ISM leaders regarding gaps in their ministries and wisdom gained. The consultation was valuable for hearing what was happening with ministry on the ground, appreciating the diverse issues in each context, and how leaders and organisations were wrestling with new realities.

3. New Normal

COVID-19 has thrust us into a VUCA environment which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity (sometimes also called Assumptions).[3] Not only does the pandemic keep hidden its future trajectory, but populations and policies impacting international students are changing in unanticipated and unpredictable ways. This essay will not address trends in international education per se, but trends in ministry amongst international students. The new (but evolving) normal is, frustratingly, not static. We don’t even know what we are adjusting to! It is a time of change, but the missio Dei remains unchanged.

The new normal necessitates a high reliance on digital technology not only for connecting and ministry with students but as the platform for team activities and ISM staff and volunteer training. How will volunteers and staff meet new students and establish connections in an online world? Ministries are faced with the online vs in-person tension. By necessity, or for convenience, some gravitate towards online modes of interaction, while others feel the human craving for real-life contact. How can ministries operate in this dual reality: technology being used effectively to bring people close who remain physically separate?

Throughout 2020 we have witnessed a decrease in globalisation together with a rise in nationalism, racism and social unrest. International students either live “always on” in the online world, or self-isolate behind the no-camera Zoom screen because of fear or fatigue. But underneath lurks the longing for human togetherness, community and in-person acceptance. Simultaneously the pervasive uncertainties appear to be driving students to ask even more the big questions of life.

The new normal—lower student numbers and less contact—begs the question, Is ISM still viable? Complicating the picture is the shift in international student population numbers and makeup, which is dynamic across regions, with some locations reporting more students year-on-year.[4] One person commented on scale and resources, saying that current models and systems will engage only up to 20% in any city in their region. So, even with reduced student numbers, there is still much gospel work to do! Therefore, ISM is indeed still a viable and meaningful ministry area.

How will organisations get out of the foggy, unpredictable and ambiguous context of a multiplicity of losses? Or can they? Is this temporary? When will we return to “normal”? COVID-19 prevention regulations, which restrict movement or contact, keep changing and governments continue to adjust visa requirements. Furthermore, a whole new category of international students is emerging: those studying online at a foreign university while residing in their home country. Should we consider these “international students” and how will we minister to them? Some organisations are still going through a phase of grieving the comfort and familiarity of tried-and-true ministry models. They are yet to enter the acceptance stage of healthily stepping into new uncharted waters. It’s just plain hard. These tensions take their emotional toll on leaders, staff, volunteers and Christian international students.

For the global Church to faithfully fulfil the God-given privilege of loving the stranger in our midst, the worldwide ISM movement must recognise and engage with this new changing normal.

Ministries will do well to create a culture of innovation where leaders and workers are trained to be innovative.

4. Agility

To adapt successfully to the new dynamic normal, which is the VUCA environment, ISM leaders and organisations must be agile. “VUCA Prime” (pictured) is a four-part behavioural leadership response to counteract each of the four VUCA elements with a different VUCA: increased Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility.

Understanding the realities and opportunities is also essential. We are seeing “ISM without borders”—old boundaries now fallen thanks to the on-ramping of digital ministry. The geographical “border” of ministering to students in one city or area has disappeared for one can now reach any student anywhere. Ministries that focused on one ethnic group which have seen those student numbers evaporate could diversify right where they are. Or they could keep their ethnic focus but expand to include students in other cities or countries, even non-transient students in the sending country. The ‘onlining’ of ministry can be exciting, but it can also blur the vision. Organisations must be clear on their vision and they must work in harmony with others.

Ministries will do well to create a culture of innovation where leaders and workers are trained to be innovative. One participant wrote, “The complexity of the current situation may have revealed our outdated structure in our ministry and there are gaps in leadership readiness, dynamic resources allocation, and the need for smaller agile teams.” The dynamic environment demands new ideas, new ways of thinking, new paradigms. We need to be amphibians working in “hybrid” ministries, comfortable with the changing landscape and tensions of an online world. The pandemic crisis is a gift from God to spur on wise changes, to help people think in new ways. The demand for innovation means identifying those in an organisation who are gifted in that way and bringing them to the table, re-training for innovation and recruiting those naturally inclined to think outside the box.

Innovation is not only for ministry structures and models but also for cross-organisational networking and strategies. Thankfully in the ISM space, we have seen more leaders connecting, a significant increase in prayer and renewed passion for integral mission. Silos within organisations slow innovation, because silos isolate leaders and teams from one another, such that they function exclusively within their own boundaries. Cross-silo leadership and mutuality will build meaningful and rewarding connections within and between organisations.[5]

The pandemic has only exacerbated the us/them divide, the distance between locals and foreigners.

Before this year, we had already witnessed the emergence of non-Western destinations for international education. China has been on the rise for some time, and other contexts such as Malaysia, India and the Philippines have seen growth. Cultural homogeneity, non-English speaking context, students’ expectations of non-Christian host countries and non-Judeo-Christian cultural heritages have meant that even before COVID-19, different sets of issues arise when it comes to the establishment and indigenisation of ISM outside the West. The pandemic has only exacerbated the us/them divide, the distance between locals and foreigners. Unlike established ISMs in the West, ministries in new regions are not only establishing themselves but also now dealing with pandemic-related pressures.

The global ISM movement will do well to be sensitive to the unique challenges in non-Western contexts, including the complex path of local church involvement. In Latin America we have seen both a need but also a growing collaboration between churches and para-church organisations in the ISM field. Conversely, in some Asian contexts it is sensitive, even illegal, to invite churches to participate in ISM. So, some assumptions about collaboration as the key paradigm and model for ISM work are questionable and even uncomfortable in some parts of Asia. How can theology and contextualised missiology provide sound models for ISM where church involvement is not straightforward? We must leverage new efficiencies and connectedness within the ISM global community to support new ministries in these challenging contexts. The consultation called for regular interactions for ISM workers to exchange best practices from various contexts and suggested the idea of regional ISM consultations.

If nothing else, the pandemic has reminded us of our frailty as creatures in a sin-sick world.

5. Care

If nothing else, the pandemic has reminded us of our frailty as creatures in a sin-sick world. Under “caring for people” the consultation identified needs and responses appropriate to this season of weakness. Addressing the pastoral care of international students is both a great need and a great opportunity.

The economic, social and emotional needs of international students and their dependents have spiked. Mental health challenges have become all too common and isolation leads to loneliness and depression in some students. Health and hygiene issues compound the fear of the foreigner, resulting in new personal boundaries. This means some modes of in-person ministry, previously open to ISM workers, are now sadly not permitted. Similarly, the spread of COVID-19 outside of Asia means that non-Asians in Asia are seen with suspicion as potential spreaders to be avoided, feeding the pre-existing xenophobia so prevalent already. Studying online, perhaps even in a time zone different from their place of enrolment, disrupts normal habits of sleeping and eating. Under the sovereignty of God, the pandemic in 2020 has come hand-in-hand with destabilising racial tensions, geopolitical aggression, terrorism in Europe, and notable unrest in Nigeria and Ethiopia. Any ministry among international students must recognise and attend to these felt needs because they are pathways to deeper questions and meaningful relationships.

Many of the difficulties mentioned above also impact ISM workers, and member care was highlighted in the consultation as a critical need. By “ISM workers” we mean paid staff or volunteers ministering amongst international students. These face the stressful uncertainty of employment, the effects of “Zoom fatigue”, the refusal to meet from previously friendly students, fragmentation of teams and the questioning of the whole enterprise. ISM leaders need to care for their people by understanding these pressures and accommodating them. In late October, ACMI in North America organised a virtual retreat specifically to care for ISM workers.

ISM leaders also require this care, as they face the additional burden of being brokers of information, the nexus between organisations, and most importantly leaders who champion the inspiration of a sound vision. There is a need for higher-end organisational support, which in our new online-capable and borderless world can happen much easier. The informal exchange of ideas between ISM innovators and thought leaders will be mutually enriching and yield long term benefits.

The familiar and effective methods of eye contact and smile have been stripped away. Investing time and money in social media to reach new students has yielded poor results.

6. Ministry Models

The courage and agility to reassess and reinvent ministry models was a clear theme at the global consultation. At the head of this challenge was the simple question, How can new students be met and welcomed in a context of social distancing, mask-wearing and often fully-online registration and orientation? The familiar and effective methods of eye contact and smile have been stripped away. Investing time and money in social media to reach new students has yielded poor results. In response to all this, some organisations have focused on establishing contact with new students through existing networks and relationships—via the still present international students or departed returnees. This indirect contact facilitated through trust may end up being more fruitful.

Another emerging idea was to experiment with “scrappy” ways of connecting. One example is to host small gatherings by word-of-mouth in parking lots next to student residences, where social distancing is honoured but students can still receive a welcoming smile in person. This notes a shift more generally toward small group equipping and small-scale community.

Again, on the topic of local church mobilisation, some ISMs are looking to more intentionally involve churches from the same ethnic background as new students, both to advise on strategic ways to connect and to actually do that by reaching out themselves. These locally present and culturally familiar relationships may help international students to have “both feet on the ground” in their new educational context, rather than being torn by a heart always at home, tethered there by an always-on social media stream.

As ministries gain a deeper understanding of students’ needs, they’ll be better equipped to meaningfully and sensitively connect with new students. This will have a direct flow-on effect of helping ministries to establish or increase their legitimacy in the eyes of the educational system. Imagine, “Your organisation has something valuable to offer our international students, so we invite you to the table to discuss and execute practical and pastoral care to them.” What an invitation!

Fewer numbers of students, plus this holistic engagement, facilitates pastoral care and provides a context for deeper discipleship of students already known. Christian formation and ministry training for international students can perhaps go to new heights with more ministry energy across fewer relationships.

In the messy rush to establish effective means (often digital) to connect with international students, the consultation voiced the need to “stick to the basics” of ministry. That means relying on the Bible as the bread and butter of discipleship ministry with constant prayer, both done and modelled. ISMs must not just “hold out until it’s all back to normal” and bury their heads in the sand but must embrace the challenges and the opportunities within the digitisation of relationships.

Utilising digital technologies can help ISMs to streamline ministry training, conquering the distance, through mentoring, coaching and training on Zoom. Students and their families have become comfortable with digital communication which also opens the door to powerful and effective relationships with students’ parents and families back home. The vital work of returnee ministry, which involves both equipping international students for re-entry and aiding with (re)integration in a Christian community, also benefits from the ease of online communication.

We come back to prayer again and the bedrock of daily dependence on the Lord Christ.

7. Foundations

In the tumult of a COVID-19 ravaged 2020, the consultation participants noted the essential need to strengthen our foundations as a movement. Even prior to now, we have witnessed a healthy uptake in prayer within this movement. This makes explicit our commitment to the Lord of the Harvest who does the will of his Father, who receives all who come to him, who establishes and brings down kingdoms, who cares for the broken-hearted and builds his church. Ministry to international students must not, on any account, come loose from our joyful obedience to Christ Jesus who gave himself up for us and commands us to share the gospel with every person in every place.

Indeed, the Lord God Almighty is still sovereign and at work. And international student ministries could do well to reflect on the theology of hope. In the face of discouragement and disillusionment, unprecedented change, disruptive and patternless situations, what does the gospel of hope have to say to ISM leaders, workers and volunteers? In the face of racial fear and fragmentation, how does the gospel of peace touch our ministry area? How does a theology of diversity address racism and xenophobia biblically? In a world sick and dying from this new virus, what is the biblical interplay between safety, risk mitigation, courage, sacrificial self-giving love and picking up one’s cross daily? As climate change continues unabated, and global poverty worsens, where is a theology of creation care and integral mission? International students themselves will be asking these questions. Such questions open the door to much deeper discipleship from outward-facing Christians in host countries.

We come back to prayer again and the bedrock of daily dependence on the Lord Christ. Ministry to, with and beyond the diaspora of international students can only bear fruit if ISM workers lean into the leadership of the Spirit as we are “struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within [us]” (Col. 1:29).

8. Future Action

The following suggestions are offered for future action to support ISM globally.

1. A series of theological and practical papers on ISM in a COVID world.
2. An annual online global ISM consultation, perhaps in person every 3 years, for fellowship, networking at the global level, and sharing of wisdom and best practices.
3. A consultation at the Asia regional level, or for emerging non-traditional ISM contexts. This will aid the regionalisation of ISM for mutual support.
4. Workshops based around common issues and needs in ISM. A clear distinction should be drawn between training/webinar (content delivery with minimal interaction), workshop (some content but mostly facilitated and directed co-learning), and consultation (minimal content, mostly seeking input from attendees).

Footnotes

1. WIN stands for Worldwide ISM Network which is an issue group within the Lausanne Movement. The WIN Catalysts are Yaw Perbi, Francina de Pater, and Phil Jones.
2. Representatives from Tanzania, Argentina, Mexico, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Malaysia, Japan, China, Singapore, UK, Germany, Netherlands. The WEA Mission Commission (WEA MC) Executive Director was able to participate, as WIN is a “docked network” with WEA MC.
3. From Kirk Lawrence, Developing Leaders in a VUCA Environment, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. https://www.emergingrnleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/developing-leaders-in-a-vuca-environment.pdf (2013).
4. One example is the University of Amsterdam reporting a 22% increase on new international student enrolments this academic year. Bijl, Hanna “Fors meer inschrijvingen Amsterdamse universiteiten”, https://www.parool.nl/amsterdam/fors-meer-inschrijvingen-amsterdamse-universiteiten~bb2263d2/
   (30 October 2020).
5. Tiziana Casciaro , Amy C. Edmondson and Sujin Jang, “Cross-Silo Leadership” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/05/cross-silo-leadership (May-June 2019).

Pray

• For international students’ emotional and mental well-being, especially for those locked-down in foreign lands with only distance communication with home available. Pray that their prayers for help will be answered by Christ-followers nearby. Pray God’s protection around those frightened by xenophobia and that the peace of Christ will calm trauma.
• For international student ministry staff and volunteers as they reach out to encourage and bless international students in innovative ways in spite of the difficulties and distancing. Pray for supernatural connections online between believers and students seeking friendship and meaning through this crisis.
• For wisdom for the Worldwide ISM Network leaders as they champion ISM as a strategic opportunity to bring people from many nations into God’s holy community in Christ.
• That churches will release people into ISM outreach and welcome international students into their families and church community.
• For funding required to support ISM ministers and ministries, for resources to learn and use new technologies and surplus funds to invest in the lives of international students.

[20 Minute Read]*

A GAP YEAR NOONE WANTED

But in 2020 airports around the world have become eerily deserted, like ghost towns as international travel has almost shutdown. TCKs’ inbuilt propensity for travel has been dramatically curtailed. For some, travel this year has been the result of sudden and sometimes traumatic disruption and the comfort and appeal of once-familiar airports has been overlaid with stress-filled transits to uncertain destinations.

One family I know were comfortably adjusted to being in three different countries: parents in Indonesia, a brother and sister in boarding school in south India and two older brothers studying in Australia. When India went into partial lockdown on the 17th March the younger sister had a stressful unaccompanied journey back to Indonesia via Singapore. Her older brother remained at school, preparing for his Cambridge A Level end of school exams in June. When the second, more stringent lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Modi on 24th March he managed to travel eight hours by road to Bangalore airport to catch one of the last flights out of India to Abu Dhabi and then on to quarantine and isolation in Melbourne. Other students were not so fortunate.

The educational impact has been especially tough for those completing their schooling and transitioning to college/ university.

Another Australian family based in Central Asia, had four children at the same boarding school, but they were unable to leave in time and were ‘trapped’ at school for a month until they managed to board an evacuation charter flight to the UK. Their mother joined them three weeks later, but they were marooned for several more weeks until they miraculously managed to board a flight from Germany back to Central Asia to be reunited with the rest of the family.

These are typical of many similar scenarios and experiences of sudden departures and disruption to life, education, family and friends. The educational impact has been especially tough for those completing their schooling and transitioning to college/ university. Probably the hardest emotionally, has been the loss of eagerly anticipated rites of passage for school leavers: leavers’ programs, graduations and a host of related activities and events which were cancelled. In the case of Hebron School, where the students above were studying, there was a hastily arranged Graduation in the auditorium the day before the lockdown, attended only by resident staff and a few stranded students. A pale shadow of the real thing, but huge credit to the staff and students for doing this—it will be remembered as the most unique Graduation in the school’s 120-year history! Other schools arranged virtual Graduation programs (see below) but many students were abruptly uprooted and displaced from all that was familiar — building RAFTs [1] to facilitate healthy closure, farewells and transitions, just could not happen.

There has also been much anxiety resulting from incomplete final exams and uncertainty about entry requirements for further studies, and the related visa and travel restrictions to join courses in the passport country or chosen place of study. For those who were able to get into their chosen course there has been the imposition of lockdown and online classes.

Friends… left stranded from family and friends for a prolonged period of time, has definitely left a deep, negative psychological and emotional impact—feeling scared and vulnerable…

Roshan, an Indian TCK in this situation wrote:

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative ripple effect in my life. I often feel bored, almost trapped as I stay in the house 24/7. For the first few months there was a tension that would loom in the air of the house. I could not see, touch or feel this microscopic foe, yet its effects were all around me. That fear was truly bone-chilling.

During the lockdown I was left to my own devices in the house, for the most part, and kept myself busy, by learning an instrument, learning to cook, and reading fairly extensively.

I’m extremely grateful to have spent this time with my family, who were relatively safe in the house, but I can’t say the same for quite a few of my friends, who were left stranded from family and friends for a prolonged period of time, which has definitely left a deep, negative psychological and emotional impact—feeling scared and vulnerable, with just walls (literal or figurative) around them.

Roshan’s older sister Monica (who suggested the subtitle of this article) was completing her Law degree and secured a job with a Human Rights NGO when the lockdown commenced, and she returned home:

With COVID, I have spent the longest time with my family in the past five years. Though we all have our set day and order and functions and temperaments, we somehow navigated through and spent time playing games, experimenting with food, watching movies… I won’t say that it has been perfect, but we have managed to sail through.

Monica’s broader reflections indicate a mature sense of responsibility and optimism for the future:

This lockdown has brought up so many questions about structures and injustice across the globe and as the young generation who are supposed to take the world forward… we have somehow been entrusted the job to find solutions for this Post-COVID world. That definitely makes me so afraid. Despite my anxieties and worries about my future, God has constantly been showing me that He is in control. God’s timing in planning out my future and my work, has been a blessing this COVID season and on many days, it gets me through. God’s reassurance is what has been my guiding force for the past few months.

My faith became more internally vocalized and I was able to practice what I think, believe and say. This I believe, was a blessing in disguise—it was the isolation I never knew I needed.

An additional challenge for TCKs of all ages who have been forced to leave their homes and return to their (often unfamiliar) passport countries, as well as the loss and grief inherent in that, is that many have returned to face quarantine, lockdown and isolation. This is hard enough for adults, but even more so for TCKs who are used to rich socialisation in cross-cultural contexts. ‘Re-entry’ (often a misnomer for TCKs) is invariably challenging but made more difficult when TCKs are unable to attend school, church and youth groups, meet with extended family members and all the other social interactions that usually help the transition and re-entry process.

Sharon, another college student in her final year, sees the value of the pandemic on her spiritual growth:

Coming home and being cut off from religious gatherings [at her college] was what I needed—and that was what the pandemic gave me… the silence I needed. It gave me time to contemplate my views, my thoughts, my values, the way I see God and the way I see my fellow human beings. It helped me build a more regular spiritual journal where so many of my thoughts that were only cluttered and mismatched in my head came to meet on ink and paper and were consolidated and made sense. My faith became more internally vocalized and I was able to practice what I think, believe and say. This I believe, was a blessing in disguise—it was the isolation I never knew I needed.

Adult TCKs are not immune from the impact of COVID-19. Our youngest son Aidan, born and raised in India, sent me a WhatsApp message a few weeks ago that simply stated:

Missing India but thankful to have some photos to look through.

He is a man of few words, but this immediately resonated with me and my own experience as a TCK forty years earlier—a sense of longing for my heart-home. There was a deeper significance in his short message, for that was the date he had booked to fly back to India to attend a classmate’s wedding in Delhi and to visit his alma mater in south India. This was his first opportunity after five years, to return to the land of his birth, his ‘heart-home’ and it was thwarted by COVID-19. I rang him as soon as I received his message to talk about it. He was not angry, just frustrated, and disappointed, and philosophical—but I understood what he was feeling and was able to empathise and encourage him.

Aidan, like many TCKs, loves airports. He loves flying—so much so he is now a commercial pilot (still flying because he’s a flight instructor), so he’s likely to spend a lot of time in airports in the future, if his ambitions are realised. But right now, his desire and plans to return to India, his native place, are grounded.

Jonathan is an American TCK who has spent most of his life in Thailand. He was President of the Chiang Mai International School Class of 2020 and gave the valedictory speech at Graduation—to an empty auditorium but an online crowd. In his speech Jonathan quoted Einstein’s aphorism: ‘Life is like riding a bicycle—to keep your balance you must keep moving’. He encouraged his classmates to keep moving despite all the obstacles that have been thrown their way by Covid-19, and to maintain their balance as they move on through life. He also exhorted them to be grateful to those who had supported them through these difficult months. His speech can be viewed on Youtube—it is worth watching to the end.

Be willing to learn and listen: waiting is part of our world, now.

Gratitude despite adversity seems to be a common theme for these TCKs—it is a healthy antidote to anxiety and despair. Another common theme in their stories and feedback has been their experience and awareness of God in their lives. Monica shared an article written for a Christian student magazine in which she writes:

In God’s timing when everything comes to a standstill is the best moment of our lives where we can rediscover ourselves. This is a time to reorient our lives to God and make Him the centre of our lives. Because, in the “Instant Culture” we forgot that waiting is part of what it means to be human, more importantly, what it means to be a Christian.

As Human beings, we all like to think we are in control and we often forget that only God can see into our future. God doesn’t give us those quick answers or results. In fact, God has purposed us to constantly wait! So that we would be entirely dependent on Him!

She then draws on the experience of Joseph [arguably a TCK] to illustrate her point:

Take the life of Joseph, for example. Joseph was forced to wait on the Lord, but while he waited, he got busy doing what he could. His good attitude and work ethic resulted in promotion along the way! This story reminds us that God is not inactive when we are waiting. When you are waiting on God, most often He is working behind the scenes to put all the “missing pieces” in our lives in place before He fulfils our desires or request.

Be willing to learn and listen: waiting is part of our world, now. In the new normal, until things get smoother, we may have to wait, for longer periods. God’s waiting room is a classroom! In the process of waiting we learn obedience… God’s promises may take a long time to wait. We may have to take decisions, contrary to our plans. These decisions may not involve the ‘comfortable yes’. It will be a terrifying yes, but a yes which will place us straight into the arms of JESUS.

As [TCKs], let us remember that time is never wasted with God. HE shapes and moulds HIS children and in our lowest, most vulnerable moments, He will walk with us, despite, the fear, and anxiety we carry with us.

Joseph in his trials, disappointments and frustrations had learnt this lesson which he tried to impress on his brothers: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.” (Genesis 50:20).

For all of us, TCKs, ATCKs and those who care for TCKs, the words of Proverbs 19:21 remind us (especially in this COVID-19 year) that our plans and expectations are in God’s hands: “People may plan all kinds of things, but the Lord’s will is going to be done.” (GNT)

Footnotes

[1] RAFT is an acronym well known in TCK care circles related to transitioning well from location to location. It stands for: Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, and Think Destination.

For further reading: see also this very practical article by Lauren Wells: ‘Caring for TCKs During Covid’ with reference to other useful resources.

Pray

• For all the TCK/’missionary kids’ you know who are experiencing disruption right now. May the Lord be with them and shaping them in unique ways for future service.
• For parents and teachers seeking to ensure that non-adult TCKs are able to continue their education and social development in the midst of this crisis. Pray for God to give great grace and the ability to endure the challenges of learning new educational methods and technologies.
• For more counselors and member care providers to be available for TCK support. Pray that TCKs (and their parents) will be bold enough to reach out for help, and know where to find it.
• For adequate processing of trauma in such a way that it produces fruit-of-the-Spirit growth, ultimately for the benefit of God’s Kingdom throughout the world.

[15 Minute Read]*

The whole world has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Different nations, areas and groups have been hit in different ways. A single virus has brought a wide range of results and responses. While fear and self-protection dominate many hearts around the globe, God’s children in Church Planting Movements are responding by looking for ways to manifest God’s kingdom in this challenging situation. As the saying goes, “we are all in the same storm, but we’re not all in the same boat.”

Movement leaders from various parts of the world have shared some of the responses God’s people are seeing in their respective locations. My compilation of these accounts are as follows…

A leader in Africa says: “People are thinking about their neighbours intentionally—both physical and spiritual needs.” A leader in South Asia shares: “We are feeding as many as we can because Jesus fed the needy; then we tell them that Jesus also gave spiritual food and ask if they want spiritual food. I’ve never seen so many people coming to faith as they are during this lockdown.” Another leader describes the sacrifice of some, in order to bless others: “At present we have 30 people giving out food by sacrificing one meal a day.”

Big challenges produce big miracles.

This approach of open-handed blessing in the name of the Lord is bearing gospel fruit in many places. Another leader in Asia says: “We have started 35 new house churches since lockdown and fed about 3,000 people. Many of them came to Christ and we plan to do follow-up after the lockdown even as they disperse to other provinces. We are encouraging believers to bless neighbours, pray for them, and visit in small numbers. Every house church has taken initiative to bless their neighbours. Almost every day, believers are going out, and (at the time of the report) have shared with 4,000 people, and 634 have believed.”

Again, from South Asia: “Our national partners have done a great job identifying opportunities to meet needs and delivering food. They have also taken every opportunity to share the gospel and have seen numerous salvations across the field.

There have even been a few baptisms in spite of the lockdown! The food distribution is opening a natural opportunity to share the gospel and follow up. Our leaders have been extremely careful and conscious of local restrictions on social distancing and in many cases have received special passes from officials to deliver food.”

Another Asian leader reports: “Many of our leaders have been serving and making food for their neighbours, without us telling them; they were willing to share and saw the need.” He adds: “We need to focus on discipling people; it is very easy to get [positive responses] right now but we need to feed them with the word of God.”

Movement leaders are seeking God’s wisdom for opportunities—not only for the present crisis, but afterward as well. One African leader says: “We are learning to be creative in moving forward and responding to the crisis by using all the opportunities to reach those in our area. We are praying that we will be well-prepared for the harvest when the crisis ends.” Another adds: “Big challenges produce big miracles. We are planning out what God wants us to do after the crisis ends. There is a huge opportunity.”

God is also using the crisis to connect movements with others in new ways. One leader reports: “In the past, churches with buildings didn’t like Disciple Making Movements. Now these churches are being forced to the house church model and are asking us for help. We are out almost every day to help those leaders keep engaging their people. We are training them how to do house church.”

Another shares: “We have been given greater access to media by the government. In most places we don’t have internet, but we can do a teleconference with seven people. We meet with all of them every two weeks, and they meet with each other every week. We have a Bible study that can be shared over the phone.”

‘Are you guys men or angels sent to us? For the past three days we have had no food. We were going hungry and nobody came to help us.’

These are just a few of the ways movements are responding to COVID-19. We praise God for how He is working through His people to show His glory in the midst of this pandemic. The reality of God’s kingdom is being made manifest in very practical ways through these difficult situations. Here are some extended testimonies of ways the Lord is working…

One leader reports: “Recently our team found eleven Muslim families living without food. They were very surprised when our team brought them bags of food. After receiving the food, one man said, ‘Are you guys men or angels sent to us? For the past three days we have had no food. We were going hungry and nobody came to help us.’ Later, as the relationship developed, we began to share the gospel and the love of the Lord Jesus. Now six of the families are in a discipleship process, and we hope they will accept the Lord soon.”

From Southeast Asia: “Before we distribute the food we have packaged, we pray first, so the Lord will show us the right people to receive the food packages. We have received several testimonies of spiritual fruit [God has brought from this ministry]. For example, Mr. D had been a devout Muslim, but since we have been ministering to the people, he has begun to open his heart to receive the gospel message. When my wife read a WhatsApp message describing their situation, she immediately contacted Mr. D and asked him to come to our house. The next day he came to the house and began to tell me his situation. For three weeks, he had received no calls for his job. He was already experiencing economic hardship, even unable to buy milk for his child. When we handed him the package of staple foods (plus milk and vitamins for his child), he was very touched, and cried while thanking us. During that interaction, my wife and I shared the gospel message and told him that the blessing he had received came from Isa al Masih (Jesus Christ). After a while, Mr. D became more open and willing to put his trust in Jesus. We led him in prayer, and he is now one of the people we are following up.”

From Africa: “We want to distribute food to 2,000 [focus group] families (2,000 families = 12,000 persons) in the next month. We have already trained 500 families of Muslim Background Believers from that group, who can visit 1,500 families around them to bring them food and share the gospel with them.”

… a large number of people coming to faith.

From West Asia: “Families who have received the food and supplies have shown deep gratitude. One family even asked if they could share what they’d received with others. They’ve referred others who are truly needy to the believers who delivered the food so that they can also receive help. Their eyes are being lifted off their troubles, to consider the needs of others. The believers who have distributed the food have been able to explain to the families that the living God, who hears their cries, is the source of the provision. They have been intentional about beginning relationships with those who have received the food and plan to follow up with those who have expressed interest in getting to know God. Their faith and the faith of those who hear about this work has been greatly strengthened. They’ve grown in compassion for the needy and have learned to work with others on the team to take action to meet physical needs.”

From other places in Central Asia, South Asia, and East Africa (where we cannot give specific locations and details, for security reasons), we are seeing tremendous response to various services. In some places, the believers are giving water where people did not have access to drinking water or water for washing. In some areas they are providing sanitation supplies (masks, soap, antiseptic, etc.) to help impoverished people who have to choose between buying food and buying masks. In one village, God specifically led a small team to bury the bodies of some people who had died from COVID-19, whose families and fellow villagers refused to bury them due to fear of infection. The team knew it was a health hazard, but God told them very specifically to do this, despite the rejection and fear. As a result, many of the families of these people wanted to know why they had done this, which resulted in a large number of people coming to faith.

While we praise God for his work in these places, we note that tremendous difficulties remain in many areas. Challenges include lack of resources, fear (in some areas making it almost impossible to talk to people), government barriers, and difficulties in receiving outside aid.

However, as the above stories show, the Lord is working in and through his children in movements, to provide for and bless those in great need. Often, out of their own material poverty and spiritual riches, they are sharing with others, for the glory of Jesus and the advancement of His kingdom. In this way they imitate the active faith of the Macedonian believers described in 2 Corinthians 8:1-5. Their poverty wells up in generosity, to touch others for the glory of God.

Pray

• For wisdom for leaders of movements around the world as they encourage believers to love their neighbours in practical ways.
• For wisdom and discernment for believers, particularly with regard to protecting their health and that of their families as they minister with compassion and share with those in need.
• That the gospel will be seen in the demonstration of kindness and generosity and that hearts will be open to receive and believe the explanation that God is working in their midst through God’s people.
• For strong and enduring faith for all believers at this time, for boldness and for inspiration to know how best to be a blessing to neighbours and neighbourhoods.
• Praise God for the collaboration between house churches and established churches as COVID-19 has become a great leveller. May such unity be a powerful witness to all.

[40 Minute Read]

MC Response

The Other Pandemic

COVID and the Cost of Corruption

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a drastic human toll, infecting millions and killing hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.  This is not only a health crisis but also an economic and social one. Throughout the world, the virus has compelled governments to severe lock downs, causing the most brutal recession in living memory. The impact of the virus, however, is not the same for everyone.

The pandemic is exposing the devastating effects and actual risks of the “other pandemic”: systemic corruption. Often being dismissed as “normal” or simply too “political” or too big to address, systemic corruption has been largely neglected by the Church. However, we cannot afford to ignore this injustice anymore. Systemic corruption (as the institutionalized practice of abuse of power and public trust) has severely crippled the ability of most countries to deal with the health and economic costs of the pandemic. The amount of health care funds lost to graft and embezzlement alone is staggering. Various sources estimate that more than 10 percent of global healthcare spending is reaped by bribery and embezzlement, amounting to losses of more than $500 billion annually [1]. This estimate does not account for other corrupt practices that undermine the access and quality of health services such as pervasive clientelism, cronyism, nepotism and favouritism.

Corruption is like gasoline poured on the flames of a pandemic.

To add insult to injury, the pandemic has served as a perfect setting for increased corruption. Shortage-induced bribery, diversion of emergency response resources, and kickbacks in emergency procurement processes are just a few of the prevalent forms of corruption being manifested during this pandemic. This raises the social, human and economic costs of the crisis, particularly for the most vulnerable of society. Where patients can pay bribes or use personal connections to receive prompt access to care, the most vulnerable are left at the bottom of the waiting list. If bribery and connections are used to circumvent quarantine measures, there is a potential higher infection risk posed to the overall population, further intensifying the humanitarian crisis.

A recent piece published by Carnegie Endowment put this way: 

Corruption is like gasoline poured on the flames of a pandemic. Healthcare systems already debilitated by graft will struggle to address the most basic of needs during the crisis. Citizens who can’t afford to pay bribes may be locked out of access to testing and treatment, a problem that would accelerate the virus’s spread. Those who can bribe their way out of quarantines will probably do so… And government attempts to convey public health messages are likely to fall flat in places where decades of corruption have deeply undermined trust in the state.[2]

The pandemic has triggered massive amounts of public spending around the world to deal with its health and associated economic costs. Levels of international financial aid are unprecedented; the IMF alone has already provided about US$90 billion to help 80 countries deal with the pandemic and has pledged a total of $250 billion. [3] But evidence shows that the effectiveness of this financial aid will be severely weakened in contexts of widespread corruption. [4] Several reports of fraud and corruption have emerged related to public spending associated with the COVID-19 crisis. [5]

Civil society actors in countries around the world are demanding that there be strong safeguards and accountability for emergency assistance related to COVID-19. In Latin America, thirteen national chapters of Transparency International, the largest anti-corruption NGO in the world, presented specific proposals to mitigate the risk of corruption in public procurement as part of the region’s response to the pandemic. [6] Among these chapters is the Association for a Just Society (Asociación para una Sociedad Justa or ASJ in Spanish), a Christian NGO in Honduras and member of the Faith and Public Integrity Network (FPIN [7]). ASJ, together with many other civil society groups, is actively monitoring the health and other public expenditures being made by its respective country government. AJS is an inspiring model of engagement of a group of believers in the fight against governmental corruption in their own community.

We need to build cultures of integrity, including values of fairness and honesty, citizen participation and political engagement and social capital.

Corruption, as an expression of profound injustice, should matter to believers, in relation to our own behaviour and witness and to the social order in which we live. The pandemic crisis is a wake-up call for the church, its leaders and all followers of Jesus, that fighting corruption is central to our integral mission. Corruption matters to God immensely.

Corruption destroys a nation (Proverbs 29:4). It is an outright theft of funds, resources, opportunities, hopes and the ability to develop our God-given potential and capacities. It is a cancer with corrosive effects on the political, economic and social development of societies. It is the worst obstacle to alleviating poverty. It is the denial of justice and an obstruction to shalom, the wellbeing of all in society. Furthermore, as the pandemic shows, it is a matter of life and death.

We are all hopeful that an effective vaccine will be promptly developed and equitably distributed for COVID-19. However, no simple vaccine can be developed for this “other pandemic”. There is no single panacea against corruption.

For the last three decades, mainstream international organizations, national governments and experts have been promoting and implementing anti-corruption measures. Changes in constitutional structures, new laws on transparency and accountability, and new anti-corruption agencies are some of the most common tools. These reforms are primarily about legal and institutional changes, expecting that these will deliver actual changes in behaviours and shifts in culture. Yet overall, these reforms are not producing a sustainable transformation of societies towards stronger public integrity and lower corruption. Countless evaluations, corroborated by our lived experiences, tell us there has been little change. Despite decades of reforms, and billions of dollars invested, most countries remain as corrupt or are even worse than before the reforms.

There is a growing realization within the anti-corruption community that fighting corruption is not simply a technocratic endeavour, but one that involves deeper changes in cultural and social norms about how citizens relate to the state and among themselves. Legal and institutional reforms are mediated and conditioned by the prevailing political culture and social norms of societies. In societies where norms of privilege, particularism and favouritism prevail, it is hardly surprising that merely changing formal laws or institutions will have no effect. Worse, as many cases show, these changes may be manipulated and abused to the detriment of those demanding honest public services.

Expert voices are emphasizing that societies need to build stronger cultural or normative constraints against corrupt behaviour. Legal changes are not enough. We need to build cultures of integrity, including values of fairness and honesty, citizen participation and political engagement and social capital.

The Church, its leaders and believers at large, are well positioned to be agents of positive transformation.

The Church, its leaders and believers at large, are well positioned to be agents of positive transformation. We need, however, to ask ourselves: How are churches and their leaders modelling and instilling values of public integrity and responsible citizenship? To what extent are churches encouraging collective action to influence the governance structures and practices in society?

Tragically, we must admit that the picture is not very encouraging. Public integrity and corruption are issues virtually absent from pulpits and theological reflection. Professions of faith are not accompanied by attitudes and behaviours of public integrity. We witness too many instances where church leaders and believers are participants in corrupt practices, or passive and indifferent to its presence and devasting effect on communities—particularly on the poorest and less advantaged in society.

We pray that the COVID-19 crisis will prompt us to be a transformed Church actively engaged and committed to help cure the “other pandemic”.

Footnotes

1. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/04/13/how-global-corruption-threatens-u.s.-pandemic-response-pub-81545
2. ibid.
3. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19/COVID-Lending-Tracker
4. For example, Ebola: https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/04/13/how-global-corruption-threatens-u.s.-pandemic-response-pub-81545 and US relief efforts during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: https://thefactcoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/TI-Factsheet-Emergency-Spending-Recommendations-42218.pdf
5. See: https://www.occrp.org/en/coronavirus/
6. https://www.transparency.org/en/press/coronavirus-sparks-high-risk-of-corruption-across-latin-america
7. FPIN is a global network of Christians who pursue public integrity work in their local communities, nationally and globally. For further details, see https://fpinetwork.org/

Corruption Implications

A Mission Commission Response

Roberto Laver wrote, “We are all hopeful that an effective vaccine will be promptly developed and equitably distributed for COVID-19. However, no simple vaccine can be developed for this ‘other pandemic’. There is no single panacea against corruption”. He goes on to say that he and other experts believe solutions lie with transforming the hearts of societies, to build cultures of integrity that value fairness, honesty and full participation for all members of a society. This has to be part of our missions engagement with the world. Spiritual regeneration and our transformation as believers in loving community must flow out to positively influence society around us as a blessing to all. Positive social impact is part of a church’s reason for being. For that to happen, for us to be salt and light, we first need to ensure our own house is in order. As Peter declared, judgment “must begin with God’s household” (Peter 4:17 NLT).

We should all be acutely aware by now of how widespread corruption can be—even within churches and missions. In this article we will focus primarily on finance related corruption, but groups of believers are not immune to other types, like the misuse of power and privilege. We all remain susceptible to manipulation and deceit. Temptation can get the better of any of us.

The damage caused by corruption anywhere, but especially in churches, ministries and missions, is wide ranging and deep… the abuse of trust is not easily resolved.

An Indictment

Todd Johnson, Gina Zurlo and others have been exposing various forms of corruption as part of their research for the World Christian Encyclopedia.  In May 2015, for an article in The Review of Faith & International Affairs they wrote,

Christians, like members of many other religious communities, are especially susceptible to affinity fraud—fraud exploiting the trust that exists within the religious community. Often in these cases, a trusted pastor or other leader makes a case for a remarkable profit on an investment. Though it is “too good to be true,” many still invest because they trust the leader. In the case of Ponzi schemes, the first investors receive their promised profits, but only at the expense of the later investors. These schemes collapse when enough new investors can no longer be recruited to make payments to the existing ones. [1]

The case of this sort best known to the Mission Commission and the Global Member Care Network starts back in the mid-1990’s with the NCI (Nordic Capital Investment) special investment fund, in which members of YWAM and the Le Rucher missions retreat centre invested savings. [2] The call for accountability regarding that case continues to this day. [3] The damage caused by corruption anywhere, but especially in churches, ministries and missions, is wide ranging and deep. As any relationship counsellor knows, the abuse of trust is not easily resolved. When asset loss is involved, the impact and hurt is long lasting.

Painful examples such as the NCI deception, provide a ‘reality-check’ to the depersonalised statistics on corruption that Johnson and Zurlo reveal in their annual World Christian Encyclopedia updates. Todd Johnson estimated in February 2020 that US$52.6 billion will be lost this year to ecclesiastical crime—funds “stolen from money that Christians give to churches, para-church organizations and secular organizations all over the world.” [4] In light of an increase in the amount of money now passing through the hands of churches and ministries for global COVID-19 relief, US$52.6 billion is likely a very conservative figure. Even at this conservative estimate, the level of funding stolen from Churches, ministries and missions exceeds the estimated TOTAL amount of funding given for foreign missions by at least US$6 billion! [5]

We donate to ministries and missions because we have faith that our generosity will be wisely used to achieve the purposes for which they are given. These days most donors are aware that a portion of donations are rightly used to support organisational infrastructure and the administration of related projects, but there are limits to what we consider as acceptable deductions. Experiences of embezzlement, misappropriation, mismanagement, misallocation or excessive redirection of funds can quickly undermine the faith of donors and hinder future giving for all charitable causes. Therefore, we must all be careful to avoid such potentialities. If fighting corruption is to be included as part of integral mission, we must first make sure our ministries and missions are not prone to corruption.

Culture Transformation

Laver noted that, “We need to build cultures of integrity in our societies, including values of fairness and honesty, citizen participation and political engagement and social capital.” That is much easier said than done. It first requires a transformation of the human heart, and the influence of many such transformed persons. The least corrupt nations of the world are so largely because their societies have long been influenced by Judeo-Christian (Biblical) values. The promised benefits of secularism are only possible because of the residual assumption of Biblical values that remain in societies. The further they move away from the knowledge of God, the less influential those values will be.

Values do not influence societies overnight, and people do not change their ways quickly. There needs to be sustained education and modelling of what the Bible calls justice and righteousness. Values arising from Godly ethics not only need to be seen as beneficial and attractive for a society, the power to live according to such values needs to be offered. We speak, of course, of the Holy Spirit who makes all this transformation possible. Secular humanism knows nothing of this power, so will never attain such transformation.

The global missions community has an opportunity to lead by prophetic example in showing how transformed lives can impact societies for the better. Workers in missions live at the coal face of whole-of-life gospel ministry in places where the gospel is not well understood. Integrity in finance and positional power stands alongside justice, mercy, reconciliation and other attributes that are integral to the whole message of the gospel. We should no longer limit our focus on teaching new believers about abstract concepts of the faith, we must root them in real-world implications that require attitudinal and behavioural change. A disciple of Christ, being transformed by the Spirit of God, will embrace integrity as part and parcel of their new life, but they need to be taught what it means.

A standard must be established and modelled—by church and ministry leaders no less. Selfish gain, greed, misuse of power and position and related vices must be exposed as unacceptable in the shalom Kingdom of God. This was made mortally apparent in the fledgling Jerusalem Church (see Acts 5:1-10).

Develop robust accountability everywhere, guided by Biblical standards of integrity, while being sensitive to the cultural nuances of each context.

Create Accountability

To avoid the possibility of corruption, churches, ministries and missions need to strengthen their governance and accountability structures much the same way as Laver noted that governments and corporations do with anti-corruption measures. This means being willing to be a lot more transparent about how things are done and how resources are used, as well as inviting regular independent reviews or audits.

The Mission Commission holds its leaders and all Mission Commission Associates to a high standard of integrity. The most recent expression of this is The Grenada Covenant formed in 2006, which remains in place. [6] Furthermore, the Mission Commission not only reports to the World Evangelical Alliance’s Missions and Evangelism Department Director who reports to the Secretary General and (ultimately) the WEA’s International Council, but it is also governed internally by an active Global Leadership Council with a proactive Executive Committee. The Mission Commission’s accounts are audited along with the WEA’s finances, as well as being transparent to the Global Leadership Council and others involved in the managing of resources, with necessary checks and balances in place.

Todd Johnson observes that,

Nonprofit organizations—especially those that begin as small, under-resourced volunteer-run organizations—face even tougher challenges in combatting financial fraud. Because they often focus on their mission rather than strong administrative practices, a neglect of financial concerns can easily result. This neglect can be exacerbated when they enjoy tax-exempt status, as in the United States. Nonprofits also tend to be more trusting of their employees, assuming that they share the organization’s philanthropic goals. Charities that experience embezzlement—and many do—try to handle it quickly and quietly to avoid ruining their reputations, undermining their work, and thus receiving fewer donations. Consequently, most nonprofit fraud goes unreported. [7]

 In developed nations like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Western European states, UK, and the USA, charities are subjected to rigorous governance, accountability, reporting and auditing processes to mitigate corruption. Still, corruption exists and is regularly exposed. Fraud can happen for years before it is finally discovered. No system is foolproof. Christian organisations in some of these nations agree to submit to a higher standard of accountability to further avoid the possibility of corruption. For example, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) in the USA [8], the Council of Christian Charities in Canada (CCCC) [9], and the CMA Standards Council in Australia [10]. Accreditation with these independent standards-setting and evaluating organisations provides churches, ministries and missions with an extra layer of accountability and has the benefit of strengthening trust with their members and donors.

Seeking to meet global demand from Christian organisations for more accountability training, Gary Hoag (former ECFA International Liaison) established Global Trust Partners in 2019. [11] Global Trust Partners provides replicable training and resources to strengthen organisational governance and accountability. In their words,

Global Trust Partners is building a multi-national team of qualified consultants and trainers to establish a global stewardship network that can help develop robust accountability everywhere, guided by Biblical standards of integrity, while being sensitive to the cultural nuances of each context. Note their aim: “to build trust and grow local generous giving…” If post-pandemic missions becomes more indigenous (or near-culture oriented) as many suspect, raising funds locally will be a very important factor. Trust building will be essential. Training and resources such as those provided by Global Trust Partners should be prioritised.

Missionaries would be wise to follow the lead of mature local believers who should discern how best to tackle corruption in their own contexts.

Champion Anti-Corruption

Members of churches, ministries and missions need to be anti-corruption champions wherever the Lord calls them to minister. This means to prophetically expose and stand against institutionalized practices of abuse of power and public trust wherever they are identified. Wisdom ought to prevail, however. In many missions contexts overt criticism of corrupt practices could result in painful push-back, prosecution, deportation or worse. Therefore, expatriate missionaries would be wise to follow the lead of mature local believers who should discern how best to tackle corruption in their own contexts. Expatriates must remain aware of the contextual factors at play and not be too quick to judge something as corrupt according to their home-culture values. Universal principles do apply [13], but cultural values must also be considered, while keeping Biblical ethics in mind. All this assumed, quality anti-corruption training can help missions workers help locals fight corruption on their terms for the betterment of their societies.

We close with these good practice tips from Todd Johnson, that can help avoid the possibility of corruption by way of fraud or embezzlement within Christian organisations:

• Take proactive measures. Organizations that have means for reporting suspected embezzlement (such as hotlines) tend to catch cases of fraud before they become massive. Other proactive measures include more frequent managerial reviews, internal (not just external) financial audits, and closer monitoring of the actions of employees (especially those with access to money).
• Know who has access to money. Whether on a single computer or a network, financial information should be accessible only by those who absolutely need it. Users should have unique identification numbers and be required to change passwords periodically. Only the appropriate leaders should be able to delete or change transactions.
• Provide financial training. Small groups lack the resources of larger organizations, but even a little training for managers and staff members will equip them in spotting ecclesiastical crime.
• Monitor employees (and volunteers). Most fraudsters are first-time offenders, so preemployment background checks are unlikely to catch potential criminals. Thus, continuous monitoring of individuals, no matter how much they are trusted, is necessary. This includes how people are spending their time or money (elaborate vacations, new houses, cars, etc.); unusual changes can be a sign of potential embezzlement activity.
• Provide education about the consequences of fraud for the individual, the organization, its mission, and its clients.
• Take action. If you suspect criminal activity, discuss it with an accountant, trusted friend, or business colleague. Most importantly, find an attorney who specializes in these cases before taking matters into your own hands.
• Have insurance coverage. (Where possible,) this is critical for any business or organization with employees. Insurance coverage is a source—and often the only source—for recovery of lost assets. [14]

Footnotes

1. Johnson, T. M. Zurlo, G. A. Hickman A.W. Embezzlement In The Global Christian Community, The Review of Faith & International Affairs. Vol 13 No. 2, 74-84. Available to download from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277977397_EMBEZZLEMENT_IN_THE_GLOBAL_CHRISTIAN_COMMUNITY
2. There are various accounts of this deception available online, perhaps the most well documented is the PETRA People Network blog maintained by Kelly and Michèle O’Donnell (https://petranetwork.blogspot.com). A concise (older) Christianity Today report can be read online here in the context of other examples of ministry-based fraud: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/june/fleecingfaithful.html.
3. The petition for information related to NCI remains open: https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/shine-the-light-together/.
4. https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/ecclesiastical-crime/
5. See point 66, “Income of Global Foreign Missions” in Status of Global Christianity, 2020, in the Context of 1900–2050, downloadable here: https://www.gordonconwell.edu/center-for-global-christianity/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2020/01/Status-of-Global-Christianity-2020.pdf
6. https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/ecclesiastical-crime/
7. https://weamc.global/who-we-are/integrity/
8. https://www.ecfa.org
9. https://www.cccc.org
10. http://www.cmasc.net.au
11. https://www.gtp.org
12. https://www.gtp.org/about/
13. An example of ‘universal principles’ is the United Nation’s development of the 10^th Principle of the UN Global Compact. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/mission/principles/principle-10.
14. https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/ecclesiastical-crime/

Pray

• For the Lord, who sees all, to convict us of any lapses of integrity in our lives and organisations.
• For willingness to be accountable, vulnerable and transparent in our use of resources and in our relationships.
• That we will be sensitive to areas that are susceptible to corruption so that we may put protective measures in place, without becoming paranoid or overly suspicious of our colleagues and partners (as the Russian proverb says: Доверяй, но проверяй, [Doveryay, no proveryay], “Trust, but verify”).
• Protection over our relationships and hearts, that we will not be easily swayed by the confidence of deceptive people and wooed into a false sense of trust in plans and strategies that promise outstanding returns. Let us guard ourselves against greed and envy.