Major problem for would-be missionaries: student debt

When we left for the mission field back in the day I had about $5000 of student loans to pay off, and my wife had none. I didn't mind the idea of just continuing to pay it off (I think the payment was $110 per month) but my wife felt it would better to use some of our savings to pay it off, so we did.

But I went to an inexpensive state university and lived frugally. What about students who go to private universities and maybe don't live so frugally? And what about the rising cost of higher education in the USA? They can accrue a very large amount of debt pretty easily. What then should missionary agencies do when one of these students approaches them and applies to be a missionary?

This timely article addresses some of the complexities involved and proposes a creative answer.

Check it out here.

EN 51, 52: pre-evangelism and evangelism

It is sections like 51 and 52 of Evangelii Nuntiandi that often confuse evangelical Christians. What evangelicals call evangelism is here called "pre-evangelism" though Paul VI says that even this first proclamation of the Gospel is indeed part of the larger work of evangelism.

What catholics call evangelism is what evangelicals often call discipleship or simply Christian education. By evangelism Paul VI is talking about, it seems, everything from the first proclamation of Jesus' name to the tribal leaders who have never heard it, to, presumably, catechesis and continuing education for grownups at their churches. The difference is that one view seeks to share the message and secure a commitment to it; the other seeks to deepen a person's allegiance to that message, wherever they may be on a spectrum of spiritual maturity.

We should not be surprised that evangelicals tend to identify that initial proclamation as the act of evangelizing, because "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The fact is that Paul has to explain that this pre-evangelism is in fact part of evangelism: She carries out this first proclamation of Jesus Christ by a complex and diversified activity which is sometimes termed "pre-evangelization" but which is already evangelization in a true sense, although at its initial and still incomplete stage.

Perhaps this tendency to lump in frontier mission (taking the Gospel to where it has never been heard or to where there is no witness to it, like much of the Middle East) with the rather amorphous and all-encompassing term "evangelism" is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church has been so inactive in the Muslim world over the past decades.

It is certainly in line with EN (and Redemptoris Missio by JPII) to affirm a central role for this "pre-evangelism" sort of evangelism in the ministry of the Catholic Church, though I don't know of anywhere that this is actually happening with reference to the Muslim world.

Sundry Items of Interest

Delicious pickings from around the globe:

Food prices are going up all around the world. Did I mention that the next big war will probably be about food and water? Not oil...

Comoros military mobilized against rebels. Why is this important? Because Comoros is generally on all the lists for least-evangelized countries in the world, especially when you look down the road ten or 20 years. Any one called to Comoros? Really pray about it.

Iranian preacher evangelizes Muslims in the UK.

What Makes a Church Missional?

I am a big fan of (Bishop) Lesslie Newbigin, who was a total genius and deeply influenced my thoughts on everything from postmodernism to missiology to the doctrine of election. I am also a firm supporter of the missio dei movement, which I will post more on.

Churches in N. America and Europe desperately need to become missional or missio-centric, otherwise they really will die. This is a good article and please think about your own church when you read it.

One key question: what is your church doing to evangelize non-Christians? About a third of the world population has NO WITNESS at all to the Gospel. What are you doing about it?

What Makes a Church Missional?

[...]

A 1998 book titled Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America was the first work to introduce the concept of a missional church. The multi-authored book grew out of the Gospel and Our Culture Network, a group of professors and pastors that sought to bring the World Council of Churches' discussions of missio dei ("the mission of God") and Lesslie Newbigin's missionary insights to bear on North America. According to Missional Church, the American church had been tied to a "Christendom model" of Christianity, wherein the church focused on internal needs and maintaining its cultural privilege in society. The decline of Christendom provided the church an opportunity, they said, to rediscover its identity as a people sent by God into the world as gospel witnesses.

Such ideas often provoke resistance. After pastoring a church for several years, a friend of mine started recommending changes. Instead of leading the entire service herself, she involved various church members. She also suggested that the church advertise in the yellow pages and think of ways to reach those without a church home. [...]

So how can the missional church overcome its tendencies to domesticate an expansive, biblical vision? Missional Church suggests that Americans first need to look at how their various church traditions can inform a missional identity.

We need to ask questions like: What does it mean to be missional and Anglican/Episcopalian? The Anglican Communion can contribute a rich, liturgical heritage to the missional church, while a missional vision can maintain such rich liturgy as an instrument for God's kingdom.

What does it mean to be missional and Reformed? The Reformed emphasis on the power of God's Word and Spirit can give the missional church a more fully biblical theology, while a missional vision can remind Reformed believers that the Word is sent evangelistically into and for the world.

What does it mean to be missional and Lutheran? The Lutheran tradition's theology of the Cross can bring a much-needed Pauline emphasis to the missional church's theology of the kingdom, while a missional vision can remind Lutherans of the centrality of the kingdom reign of God.

What does it mean to be missional and Mennonite? The Mennonite tradition of "the way of Jesus" can sharpen the missional church's vision of itself, while a missional vision can keep Mennonites culturally engaged in God's mission to the world.

[...]

IHT: A Friendlier North Korea

I have said before that I think the opening of North Korea is very important for Christianity in general. Specifically, because once it happens there can be no doubt that the energetic South Koreans will evangelize thousands and bring in a large harvest of new believers. South Korea is already second place in the world in terms of most missionaries sent per capita, after the USA.

Pray that North Korea would be opened to the Gospel and that the people would experience greater liberty. Pray for the salvation of the leaders of North Korea.

And read the article here:

North Korea shows South a friendlier face

Missionaries to an unreached tribe?

Ever wonder what it is like to be a missionary to tribe that is unevangelized? That has little or no access to the Gospel, Christian formation, pastoral care, or discipleship? This is a great blog of an evangelical family who is carrying out that work today. There are many such tribes and groups around the world.

Here is the beginning of their most recent post:

OlsonPhilMissions:

Dear Friends and Family,

The last time we communicated, before our recent update, Ginny was just recovering from a serious and sudden illness. She is back up to full strength now, as if the incident never even happened. We have an amazing God!

It has been almost a whole year since we came here. Wow, that is hard to believe! We are deep into language study now. We have our good days and bad days, as one might expect. Yet we have every confidence that God is guiding us and watching us through every step. I have summarized the things that have happened with us below.

As we move along, we must keep in mind the reason we are here – God sent us here to take His Gospel to an unreached tribal people group. The things we are struggling with now – language studies, equipment breakage, sickness, etc. – these are all part of the Lord’s continued preparations for us so that we can represent Christ to the people He is sending us to.

The Karenga and you!

I posted some info on the Karen people the other day and made the egregious error of saying they lacked Christian witness. There are some subsets of the Karen that indeed have almost no Christians, such as the Pa-O Karen of Thailand, but in general the Karen do have Christian witnesses among them, including indigenous believers.

But let me now introduce you all to the Karenga of India! (Not related to the Karen at all, but you can see how they might be confused.)

The Karenga are ethnically related to Bengalis and speak Bengali, they are all Hindus. Their population is about 43,000 in India (and about 1400 in Bangladesh).

All the information I could find on the Karenga was at Joshua Project.

The first step that we as Christians must undertake is to learn about the Karenga, and to do the research needed to get a basic understanding of their culture. I am sure that there are Christians who know plenty about the Karenga, especially Indian Christians who live with them and among them, as well as probably some missionaries who know some. There may also be historical records and books that have ample info on the Karenga scattered across the library stacks of Europe and America. But the issue is that this information is not available.

One way to start accumulating this information without actually going to India or Bangladesh and living there is to start a website, much like the ones for the Karen people or for the country of Morocco which I have linked to in the past. If you put an e-mail address on there people who know about the Karenga could forward you information. You could also, in your spare time, visit some libraries and see if you can turn up old info on the group.

Then a short term trip of one or two weeks could be undertaken. This would be something like a fact-finding mission. It would involve prayer and going to the cities and villages where the Karenga live and taking pictures, listening to people's stories and memories, and observing their religious practices. The short term mission (one or two weeks) would not need to take place right away.

So here is an outline for how globalization can assist in the mission of the church to the unreached. Many people want to support missions but they say, all I know how to do is computer stuff and administrative stuff. Setting up a website these days is easy, even a simple blog can work at the beginning. If you have a college degree (in any discipline), then you also have the skills needed to act as a collector of knowledge and data.

This act of collecting knowledge, and then mobilizing prayer based on this knowledge, is a foundational first step in reaching the unreached with the Gospel of our Lord and the hope of salvation. If you are interested or have any questions send me an e-mail: winterlightning a+ safe-mail d0+ net.

Abu Daoud

AFM: The Most Unreached

Here is a really outstanding list at the website for Anglican Frontier Missions. It is a list of the 25 most populous unreached people groups in the world. That means that these groups have no indigenous Christian presence of any kind. Such a list presents a great challenge to Christians everywhere.

People Group Profiles

Fields, Rocks, and Boulders

This was written a man who was living in a country where there is NO native Christian population. Say you are in Syria, Egypt, or Jordan--chances are that people know where a church or two are and may have a few Christian friends or neighbors here and there. Not in his country. I will be publishing some of his material over the next few months. His style of writing is quite different than mine, but I find his insights helpful.

I remember with joy the last time our families visited with each other. We chatted for long hours about culture, religion, and compared out differing circumstances in our two countries.

This information cannot be found on the internet. For security reasons his real name is not used. I have opted rather to simply call him 'Abd al Haq--servant of the Truth.

Fields, Rocks, and Boulders: The Gospel and Muslims I
by 'Abd al Haq

There is a purpose to the conversations (evangelism) that we have with those we live among. That purpose, in evangelism, is declaring The Story. However, for me, most of those that I come into contact with have absolutely no idea of what our beliefs are or how we live our lives. So, most often, my purpose in these conversations ends up being to break ground. There are tons of analogies out there concerning what we are doing. Some say we are scattering seed, others say that we are clearing the rocks from the field so that we can scatter seed, I even had one friend say that this was what he thought he would be doing prior to arriving in the Middle East, but has since discovered that his role is not to remove rocks … because they are not rocks, but gigantic boulders! And now he sees his role as breaking the boulders up into little chunks so that they can be moved and then the field can be prepared and then the seeds can be planted.

While I’m a little more optimistic than he was, I do think that we need to always consider our audience. In the case of what is written below I would like to make it very clear that this material is intended for those who have had virtually no contact with disciples of Jesus that are actually obedient to the Scriptures. In many cases people may think themselves somewhat familiar with “Christians,” but this does not in any way mean that they are even remotely familiar with what disciples of Jesus believe or how we live our lives. That is my typical audience and that is who this material is intended for. So, the hearer may not be ready for The Story. They may get hung up on some of the foundational things. If this is the case, then they simply are not ready and we should move on until they have submitted to the truth that they have heard and are ready for more. But we should also rejoice that a seed was planted, or a rock moved or maybe even that a boulder was chipped at!

Mission to Morocco

Are you called to be a missionary to Morocco? Is your church as a community called to support the country and the missionaries there? It is one of the least-reached nations in the world. It once had a vibrant Christian population but that was extinguished long ago. Now there are signs of life though.

Please read this website carefully and consider how the Lord would have you support the church's mission to Morocco:

Arise Shine Morocco

Feast Day of Saint Columba

Yes, it's one of those strange things that we Anglicans do. Yes, we're Protestant; and yes, we observe the feast days of the saints--sometimes.

And June 9th is the Feast Day of one of my favorite saints: Columba of Iona. He died on June 9th many years ago. He was a wonderful missionary to the Picts of what is now Scotland. There is a goodness and wholeness in remember God's wonderful provision of apostles and messengers throughout all of history. The Holy Spirit did not stop working after the book of Acts!

In 563 he traveled to Scotland with twelve companions, where according to his legend he first landed at the southern tip of the Kintyre peninsula, near Southend. However, being still in sight of his native land he moved further north up the west coast of Scotland. In 563 he was granted land on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland which became the centre of his evangelising mission to the Picts. However, there is a sense in which he was not leaving his native people, as the Irish had been colonizing the west coast of Scotland for the previous couple of hundred years.[1] Aside from the services he provided guiding the only centre of literacy in the region[citation needed], his reputation as a holy man led to his role as a diplomat among the tribes; there are also many stories of miracles which he performed during his work to convert the Picts. He visited the pagan king Bridei, king of Fortriu, at his base in Inverness, winning the king's respect. He subsequently played a major role in the politics of the country. He was also very energetic in his evangelical work, and, in addition to founding several churches in the Hebrides, he worked to turn his monastery at Iona into a school for missionaries. He was a renowned man of letters, having written several hymns and being credited with having transcribed 300 books personally. One of the few, if not the only, time he left Scotland after his arrival was toward the end of his life, when he returned to Ireland to found the monastery at Durrow. He died on Iona and was buried in the abbey he created.

From Wikipedia (where else?)

Recent Stuff on Yemen

As you may know, I have a special love for Yemen and its people. The country faces such great difficulties that seem totally insurmountable. Yemen is one of the least-reached countries in the entire world. The Gospel is almost entirely absent there. There are NO indigenous Christians other than a few converts from Islam, and they form less than .01% of the population. That is, statistically insignificant.

Pray for Yemen:

Yemen hopes to lure tourists

Yemen Faces Locust Outbreak

And here is the most alarming of them all: Tensions Flare in South Yemen:

Demonstrations and armed conflict in southern Yemen are heightening fears of growing instability in the impoverished nation, already battling an insurgency in the North.

Yemen has experienced marked instability since September's 2006 presidential election.

In the northern Sa'ada province, about 60,000 soldiers have been embroiled in a guerrilla war with about 2000 Zaidi Shi'a rebels since January. Tens of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting and military bombing, and many are without shelter, food, water, and medical care.

Previous Posts on Yemen are here:

Abuse of Women in Yemen

Challenges for Yemen

Pray for Yemen

The (Sorry) State of the Mission

So how is the church doing in her mission to save the world? Not very well, after 2000 years. There have been some bright patches here and there, great visionaries from among all the traditions: Catholic (Saint Francis Xavier, Saint Augustine of Canterbury), Orthodox (Saint Innocent of Alaska, Saints Methodius and Cyril), and Protestant (Bp. Michael Solomon Alexander of Jerusalem, Henry Martyn, and really this list is quite long, PBTG). But overall, we have been putting almost all of our resources into evangelizing other Christians.

Which is nice and all.

But it's not what Christ told us to do...a small problem.

Kyrie Eleison. Irhamna ya Rrab. Miserere nobis. Have mercy, O Lord.

Read it and weap, then repent and fast and ask God how you can be part of the church's mission to the unreached:

Despite Christ’s command to evangelize, 67% of all humans from AD 30 to the present day have never even heard His name.

• 648 million Christians today (called Great Commission Christians) are active in Christ’s world mission; 1,352 million Christians seem to ignore this mission.

• Non-Christian countries have been found to have 227 million Bibles in place in their midst, (more than needed to serve all Christians), but they are poorly distributed.

• 124 million new souls begin life on Earth each year, but Christianity’s 4,000+ foreign mission agencies baptize only 4 million new persons a year.

• 91% of all Christian outreach/evangelism efforts are expended in World C locations, where the Gospel is already rooted and the church is thriving.

• 818 different un-evangelized, ethno-linguistic peoples have never been targeted by any Christian agency to date.

• 40% of the church’s entire global mission resources are being deployed to just 10 overly-saturated countries already possessing strong citizen-run home ministries.

• 98.7% of people have access to scripture in 6,700 languages leaving 78 million in 6,800 languages with no access at all.

• Only 1 out of every 4 missionaries is working in a pioneer ministry among non-Christian peoples of the major religious blocs.

• Of foreign mission giving, 87% goes toward work among those already Christian, 12% goes for work among already evangelized non-Christians, and 1% goes for work among people groups in the un-evangelized or unreached category.

• Out of 648 million Great Commission Christians, 70% have never been told about World A’s 1.6 billion un-evangelized individuals.

• Every place on Earth can reasonably be targeted with at least 3 of the 45 varieties of effective evangelism.

Read it all at Shawblog.

The Most Curious Country...

Western Sahara anyone? Western Sahara? Yep, it's country, there on the W coast of Africa, just south of Morocco. It is one of the least-reached countries in the world. I think that, foreigners aside, it is about 100% Muslim. Also, the population is pretty small.

Good article on this rare and unique country which has been under the control of Morocco for quite a long time now:

Western_Sahara