What are the Alternatives?
Posted November 10th, 2009 by Ernest
Sitting in one Starbucks, looking across the street at another.
Most of the time, when people make decisions, they’re not really choosing from among all the options. Call the filters, call them limitations; but things like popularity, availability, accessibility, cost, visibility, availability, and ignorance all come into play- narrowing the field of choices to (usually) just a few. Many of us who would like to see things change find ourselves pointing out the problems of a broken system. But those who are involved in the system, especially those who are invested in it, tend to stick with it because they don’t see any alternatives. The current, broken system is better than nothing, right?
What are the alternatives? In each of these cases, churches and individuals act according to what they’ve been taught. They do what others are doing, they do what they think they can. They go where they think finances, prudence, and church leadership will allow. They spend what they think they can afford. They act when they think it will help them. They don’t always even know why they do what they do (and don’t don what they don’t do.)
We need alternatives. We need to know about churches the orient their entire existence around the mission. About the value of humanitarian trips to our obedience as believers. That the Great Commission is the church’s responsibility. How churches can do so much more than paint houses and prayerwalk. That the people groups of the world are not static, and that obedience is the best strategy. If we don’t know, it’s unlikely that we’ll do anything different.
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Unless writing a lot makes one a "writer," Ernest is a former missionary. After more than six years in Western Europe, he moved to Portland, where he drinks too much coffee and over-analyzes human behavior. For more about Ernest, visit the About page where you can read a long-time reader's interview with him. Or, if you don't mind waiting a very, very long time, send him an email.
6 Responses to “What are the Alternatives?”
December 3rd, 2009 at 7:30 am
I ask the same questions that you do, but as a missionary I think I can answer the fourth question: because there is not an ongoing dialogue and natural building of relationships around the mission trip. In my experience, no matter how much communication I’ve done with my supporting churches and individual supporters (they hear from me a minimum of every other month), I don’t hear back from them. Two years go by with hardly a hello, but all of a sudden in Year Three I’m contacted by several because they’ve decided on their own to “do” a mission trip here. Once the trip happens, they disappear into the ether again.
So the reality is that it’s difficult to treat them as a partner when they’re silent for a couple of years, appear with their agenda, then leave without further contact. I’m not asking for big attention, but these are people I know hardly anything about nor have interacted with at all. I can’t be friends/partners with someone who’s not responsive, so the only way I can see them is as labourers or people to be babysat.
December 4th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
C. Holland,
We had a similar experience while we were on the field. Churches (well-intentioned thought they may be) don’t always seem willing to be in a relationship with missionaries. I think the situation requires even more of the missionary- it isn’t enough to be an “expert” in local culture and customs anymore. Now, missionaries have to be experts in the culture of partner churches, connecting the dots of why missions is relevant and how direct involvement can make them truly missional back home.
You mention that your supporting churches hear from you monthly. What if they heard from you daily? (I know you post regularly to your blog, so maybe they do?). Facebook and Twitter are great ways to be even more active in people’s lives and build relationships.
Don’t be discouraged! This is exactly why I’m working with the Upstream Collective to influence the conversation toward mission. There are churches out there that “get it,” and many more are starting to. We need to change the way people think about missions in order for them to be peers in the work. The question I was trying to ask in my post was- How do we do that? I think that casting a vision for an alternative to the status quo will be the first step.
December 4th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
One of the ways we’ve been trying to initiate change in our next ministry is by way of partner support or what I’ve learned as “People Raising.” In our last ministry, we were almost completely supported by congregations. This time around we’re trying to almost be completely supported by individuals and emphasizing the team/partnership aspect of our work. This includes a real education of the responsibility of senders and the regular communication through short updates rather than monthly tomes.
One thing you wrote really struck me and that was that “the Great Commission is the churches responsibility.” To often we’re getting caught up in the social gospel (which is important) but to the exclusion of the redemptive Gospel. Maybe its because the social gospel is more palatable to the world because it doesn’t necessarily convict of sin?
You’re right though. Those who don’t know of an alternative will continually do the same thing.
December 5th, 2009 at 4:44 am
Excellent post. We do need alternatives, and posts like this are needed to make us aware of the fact. No changes will ever be implemented until we are made aware that our current actions could be improved. Keep up the good work of drawing our attention to what things might be like if we would be willing to change what we are currently doing.
I linked to your blog on my own today. Thanks.
December 5th, 2009 at 9:18 am
It is because of these issues we (as a family) are compelled forward. We believe we have a ministry to the least, lost and last – the unreached – AND a ministry to the Body of Christ. We are sent to both. And much of what we do is educate/disciple the Body of Christ about what missions is. Our heart for that is particularly strong because we didn’t follow our call for years because we thought of missions as one thing: going to seminary and then years of training and then years in a mud hut in Africa. And we didn’t have a call to a set nations that we had sensed; we just knew we were called to go and make disciples of the nations. It burned within us. But we didn’t know how to make it happen and the one way we knew didn’t fit what we knew God was laying on our hearts. So we just avoided the whole thing (and nearly destroyed our lives in the process).
(big breath) So, that is why we feel called now, in part, to spend time mobilizing and educating others. God did not mess up telling the Body of Christ to make disciples of the nations, and He didnt’ mess up giving us all a variety of gifts. Every gift set can be used on the field helping finish the task. We enjoy helping see people released into their giftings in cross cultural contexts! And in the context of the various spheres of society.
December 7th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Bryan, welcome to the movement. We need people like you who hear the command to go and aren’t afraid to heed not knowing what it’ll look like. That’s what this site, mine, and many others are trying to accomplish. Stick near these fine men, add their sites to your RSS reader and grow!
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