David Mays
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Recently
I have seen several articles that seemed to try to persuade people that local
cross-cultural evangelism is "real missions.” I agree with them but I don’t understand why the authors seem
to presuppose that Christians think only overseas missions is “real missions.” In my experience people in local churches accept
as missions not only cross-cultural outreach (both globally and locally) but a
great many other ministries as well. I
noticed more than a decade ago that conservative or fundamental churches
tended to see missions as "foreign missions" and mainline or
"moderate" churches tended to see missions as social
ministries in their own communities or the nearby city. The latter perspective seems to be
growing. It is
not unusual for half or more of a church's missions budget to be allocated to
a large variety of ministries in the U.S. such as Bible colleges;
scholarships for church kids; campus ministries; Christian camps; retirement
homes; pregnancy centers; half-way houses; women's shelters; house-building,
food pantries and services for the poor; church mission trips to do service
ministries in U.S. cities; and other good ministries which are not primarily
cross-cultural or evangelistic.
Stories of churches purchasing a new organ or paving their parking lot
out of the missions budget are rare but true. One church asked their children to give money for "helping
other children come to know Jesus."
It was explained that their money would be used to purchase playground
equipment for the church, presumably to make the church attractive to
unchurched children. Parachurch
organizations discovered a long time ago that church missions budgets are
often large, ill defined, whimsically administered, and the only likely
source of funding from the church. Further,
missions has traditionally been a high priority for churches. So they frame their ministries as “missions”
and appeal to the missions budget for support. The principal of a local Christian school sees the school as a
missionary enterprise and himself as a missionary. A Christian legal aid organization refers to their agents as
missionaries. Someone recently wrote
me a letter saying he was becoming a “missionary” with Crown Ministries. In many churches the category of missions
has become very broad, almost synonymous with ministry. Whether the ministry is primarily for
internationals, for people of the same culture, or for Christians doesn’t
seem to matter. It’s all missions. Perhaps
the missions budget has subconsciously become, in the minds of some leaders, the
"miscellaneous budget."
"Miscellaneous" does not convey a sense of priority, let
alone urgency. Thoughtful church
leaders don’t deliberately allocate 25% or more of the church budget to
miscellaneous: they focus their funds on their key purposes. I wonder if the expanding scope of
missions is contributing to the decline of the priority of missions in the
local church. |