Lausanne World Pulse has just published their most recent articles which you can check out at http://www.LausanneWorldPulse.com. Here is one section that caught my attention:
The broadened concept of “mission” which seems prevalent in our day equates all that the Church does as mission. We might ask ourselves if we have so diluted the term “missionary” that it has become a catch-all word with accrued baggage that allows for almost any kind of overseas work or anything vaguely connected with the gospel to be called “mission.”
As a result, we have career “missionaries” who bear little resemblance to the New Testament apostle or evangelist (perhaps the closest counterpart to the non-biblical term “missionary”). This is not to criticize the good work they have done, nor to impugn their motives; however, when “missionaries” are engaged in ministry that does not result in planting reproductive fellowships of saved, baptized disciple, then we do well to reevaluate our present situation. What does it say about our concept of mission when evangelicals are “disturbed by the continuing flood of church-planting teams into various people groups in the world”? Should we not rather be disturbed if this were not done?
--Stephen Davis
