The National Church: Do They Want Us? (Urbana 70)
by Byang H. Kato
I appreciate the privilege of being at Urbana, not just for the topic that
is mine, but to be able to tell you that in spite of all the mistakes of mission
boards and missionaries, missions as a whole have been a success. I stand as
a living witness of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done not only through the
Sudan Interior Mission, but through missions as a whole. There are many students
here and a few of them overseas who have in one way or another been influenced
by the work of missions overseas. And so, in spite of all the mistakes, and
in spite of all the weaknesses of humanity, on behalf of Christians from overseas,
I want to say to the congregation here, you from North America in particular,
"Thank you very much for all that you have done over the years for missions."
The national church - does it want us? After so much has been said, I think as we speak about the national church our primary concern is with the church in Latin America, Africa and Asia. And I will focus mainly on those areas. But the church is the church universal. And so, when we speak of a church needing the ministry of another church, we should bear in mind that the church in North America needs the ministry of Christians from India, Congo, or Brazil as much as the people in those countries require the services of Christians from North America.
As Christians, we need the services of one another. Every Christian - no matter how mature, no matter how well he can expound the Word of God - still needs and appreciates the services of Christians who have been gifted by the Spirit of God. And just as Christians need one another, so churches also need the services of one another. The Lord Jesus Christ in the parable of the seeds (Mt. 13) pointed out that the world is the field: North America is just as needy as Africa, Asia and India. Christians of every race and color need the services of one another.
I want to make an appeal to my black brethren. My heart has been saddened when I have heard some of my black brothers here in North America say that they are afraid they might not be accepted in Africa. You are very much needed; we regret your absence. Do you know that about a tenth of the African population now lives in North America? More than 20 million of the 200 million people of Africa live here in the United States. How many blacks do we have as missionaries working in Nigeria, Ghana and other parts of Africa? There are problems involved, and Tom Skinner has pointed them out. But we hope solutions will be found, and we plan to work together so that we will see more black faces as missionaries in Africa. There are cases where black missionaries have come and the way they have been received is just beyond description!
Before we deal with a missionary as a professional, we want to point out that there are endless opportunities today in many countries, especially in Africa, where a North American can witness without necessarily being directly involved in a missionary society. There is a need for born-again Christians as private businessmen, employees of oil and other companies, professors, Peace Corps workers and tourists. Such people can often go where personnel under missionary societies may not be welcome. People in such categories are appreciated by the church for their part in building up the kingdom of God at large. They can also make a direct contribution to the life of the church. They can supplement the work of missionary societies, provided that they appreciate the position of a missionary and see the validity of the existence of a local church.
We want to mention in passing that the ripened mission field of foreign students studying in North America should present a challenge to the Christians of this Christian-orientated continent. A foreign student influenced for Jesus Christ here will go back to his country someday as a missionary. Unfortunately, many students have been disillusioned because of their experience here. Hence, hospitality and college friendship can go a long way.
The General Director of The Evangelical Alliance Mission expressed the mind of most, if not all, evangelical mission societies - and national churches when he said recently, "I sat with the Field Council on a number of occasions when the matter of placements was studied. Always the problem was the same - there were not enough missionaries to meet the urgent needs of the work." I myself have sat in a number of mission council meetings. In every one of them, the matter of stationings has been the longest on the agenda. Usually, an average missionary on the field has two or three possibilities for stationing. Being human, of course, he can be in only one place at a time. I have yet to meet a national church leader who can honestly say missionaries are no longer needed. Circumstances have curtailed the number of mission personnel in foreign countries. But the church of Jesus Christ has been helpless in many of these situations.
Although churches have been established with national leadership, there is still a tremendous need for mission personnel. The national leadership needs to be trained in the Scriptures, in the ministry of the Word, in administration and in technical skills of various kinds. For example, the ministry of teaching in government schools in some countries is an area which the national church cannot yet handle. In this case, finance and personnel are problems. Evangelism in the middle- and high-class community requires higher qualifications. The fact that the urban population of less developed regions of the world will increase 4.1 percent, compared with 1.9 percent in the more developed countries, according to a U.N. report, presents a challenge to the evangelical church. People with specialized training are much in need. The young church is not set in a position to meet the demands.
The main concern today is the type of missionary wanted or not wanted. This has to be the question because of the tremendous change that has taken place in countries overseas. Not only civil rule has come of age, but the ecclesiastical voice should also be listened to. The grown-up son wants to be recognized as a partner in the business. Both the church and the mission need to recognize this fact. Theological problems are no longer the exclusive concern of the older churches. The full effect of Vatican II is yet to be felt, and it will be felt worldwide. For these and many other reasons we must give serious thought to the type of missionaries wanted today. No one person can speak for the whole world. But the following general principles should cover many situations.
Needless to say, the first basic requirement for a missionary is that he be rightly related to the Lord of the harvest both in salvation and in daily living. The young church has enough problems with her carnal Christians who do not live a dedicated life in the Lord. The missionary should be there to counsel and not to be counselled. This proper relationship includes the assurance of his call by the Lord of the harvest.
The national church is not interested in receiving a missionary who comes with a selfish motive. The sense of adventure, shelter from the complex life of the jet age and "the glory of the battlefield" may be some of the reasons for ruined mission stations which today stand as monuments to failure. One sometimes wonders if it is not this kind of selfish motive that underlies some of the so-called missionary deputation which usually consists of showing out-dated and irrelevant slides. To go because of a mere sense of sympathy for the physical needs of the people is not a good enough reason. Such a person would do better to go under a philanthropic organization. Anything less than the spiritual motive is a tool in the devil's hands.
Social work has already relegated the ministry of the pure gospel to the background
in some missions work today. We should learn our lesson from the "social
gospel" venom seen in advanced countries. The gospel truly is for the whole
man. But man's greatest need is the salvation of his soul: "What will it
profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?" (Mt.
16:26)
We are not minimizing the significance of providing for man's physical needs.
Jesus Christ himself fed the hungry and cured the sick. But spiritual needs
should be the basic concern of the church and the mission.
Educational and health services being provided with the help of the government of the countries concerned have often been criticized by new arrivals on the field. One needs to understand the situation overseas before becoming critical. In many cases it is absolutely necessary and has promoted the work of the gospel to have these amenities. But again, evangelism should be the hub of every activity of a missionary and a missionary society. Any program that does not help evangelize or promote church growth quantitatively and qualitatively should be carefully reviewed.
The national church is in search of a good example in administration, doctrine and practice. Unity both of purpose and of sound evangelical doctrine is required. If a new missionary cannot agree with the society that has brought the national church into being, his presence will be detrimental to the work of the church. Individual theological idiosyncrasies should not be allowed to cause division in the young church. "Think sessions" should have their place, but no one should try to win individual less-instructed believers into one's particular viewpoint against the general position of the national church. The spirit of dissension is condemned in the Word of God (I Cor. 3).
Positively, the national church is very much in need of a missionary who, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is led to "become all things to all men" (I Cor. 9:22). We need someone who is coming, not with the sense of superiority in race or education, wealth or culture, but a person coming as his Master came into the world, "not to be served, but to serve" (Mk. 1,0:45). This calls for humility and sacrifice without one's being aware that it is a sacrifice.
"What a waste!" has been the sort of attitude that people in the homeland have had regarding an educated person's going to the mission field. While it is true that some elites have defied the popular opinion and gone forth, the image of an average missionary has been a high school graduate who has also graduated from a one-or two-year Bible school. The Lord did use them and he is still using people of this caliber. They surely "served the Lord in their own generation." But it is the feeling of the church today that we need more educationally qualified missionaries. This is no reflection on present missionaries. Rev. Allen Thompson, Director of the West Indies Mission, underlined this point when he said recently, "In missions today we need men of theological orientation."
A missionary is usually looked upon as a genius with the final answers on every issue. The church is faced with such issues as church union, situational ethics, God-is-dead theology, church government, Bible translation and authority of the Scriptures. It is true that the degree of growth in churches overseas is not the same. But we cannot deny the fact that as the church has taken root, it is bound to tackle these and/or similar problems. The battle on the mission field will be theological within the next decade. A missionary going abroad should therefore be acquainted with major theological issues of the day. The manifestations of liberal tendencies may come in a different pattern in developing countries. But a well-trained person can detect them and offer the corrective measures.
Secular qualification is also a requirement, on the part of both the church and the government, but more so in the case of the latter. To warrant his presence, in the country, a missionary should possess knowledge that can contribute to the economic progress of a country. Possessing a college degree or a professional certificate is a status symbol and a key to many opportunities for witness. The days when just anything will do for the foreign field are past in many countries. Spirituality is no substitute for knowledge. The greatest missionary who ever lived was among the "Who's Who" in his days. Probably this is why more than half of the New Testament was written by the apostle Paul.
Our Lord was involved in the ordinary things of life in his days. He shared in people's joy (Jn. 2) as well as in their sorrow (Jn. 11). A missionary who would follow the steps of the Master in involvement is what we want. Circumstances may preclude his learning the local language. But where at all possible he should do so. Respect for other people's culture, even though it militates against good American or Canadian culture, will open many avenues for witness.
We want a missionary who will be involved in the life of the local church. In the involvement, the lesson of partnership needs to be learned by both the church and the missionary. The missionary should feel himself part of the church where he is serving. Some missionaries, however, have made the excuse that their home church wants them to maintain their membership at home in absentia. Churches in North America should be reminded that their many years of missionary service overseas have not been in vain. Since the Lord brought his church into being in Africa or Asia or Latin America, then everything should be done to support the church. There should be no strings attached if the offering has been made as unto the Lord.
The older churches should change the old philosophy of supporting the missionary rather than the mission. Supporting the missionary rather than the mission has caused suspicion within the national church. Why should the support be cut off as soon as a missionary is withdrawn from the field, even though a national is doing exactly the same ministry? This has allowed the accusation of colonialism to stand.
Although it is not the purpose of this paper to deal with the matter of finance, we want to digress a little bit. Where the national church is weak economically, financial support can be used effectively without weakening the church. There are cases where the national church could employ some nationals to do the job a missionary would do. But lack of funds has prohibited this. With support from overseas, carefully channelled through the right means, the Lord's work could see real progress.
Evangelicals are far behind in theological education. Just one example: In Nigeria where there are at least half a million evangelical Christians, there is only one seminary, belonging to one denomination, that offers a Th.B. degree. Nothing higher is available. Christians of other theological persuasions can offer Ph.D. degrees. Unless funds are made available from the older churches, the young church overseas stands in the danger of being overwhelmed by liberal theology. In Africa it is much easier to get a scholarship for liberal theological studies than for evangelical. In his evaluation of evangelical missions activity in Africa, Dr. George Peters of Dallas Seminary correctly pointed out, "It is evident that evangelical missions have not taken the ecumenical movement seriously enough. The evangelical younger churches as a whole are not able to withstand the pressures and the play on nationalism on the one hand and the promises and enticements on the other. Bold and tactful than cold denunciations, is urgently indoctrination, needed."
The problem of racism in North America is beginning to have its influence overseas. A church that hypocritically sends a missionary to evangelize Africa but shuts out Negroes from her precincts in North America may wake up someday to find her missionary returned with shame. We cannot wait for problems in North America to be completely settled before we face the urgent task of mission call; however, a would-be missionary should communicate his convictions to his home church first. The Lord of the harvest has outlined the program for us: "You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
Does the national church want missionaries? The answer is emphatically positive. These are days of harvest in many fields. The net is breaking. We are beckoning to you to come and join us, draw the net. We are not inviting you to come and be the boss. Neither are we calling you to come and serve us. But we want you to come, realizing that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Master of the harvest. We are all going to be partners under the Lordship of Christ, for we are "workers together with him" (2 Cor. 6:1).
[in 1970] BYANG H. KATO was working with the Sudan Interior Mission in Kagaro, Nigeria. He was formerly the General Secretary of the Evangelical Churches of West Africa, representing churches which have grown out of the SIM ministry in Nigeria.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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