Mission (Christian)

A Christian mission has been widely defined, since the Lausanne Congress of 1974, as
that which is designed "to form a viable indigenous church-planting movement." This
definition is motivated a by theologically imperative theme of the Bible to make God
known. The definition is claimed to summarize the acts of Jesus' ministry, which is taken
as a model motivation for all ministries.

The Christian missionary movement seeks to implement churches after the pattern of the
first century Apostles. The process of forming disciples is necessarily social. "Church"
should be understood in the widest sense, as an organization of believers rather than
simply a building. Many churches start by meeting in houses.

Church planting by cross-cultural missionaries leads to the establishment of self-

governing, self-supporting and self-propagating assemblies of believers. This is the
famous "three-self" formula invented by Henry Venn of the London Church Missionary
Society in the 19th century. Cross-cultural missionaries are persons who accept church-
planting duties go to people outside their culture, as Christ commanded in the Great
Commission (Matthew 28:18-20).

However, Christian missions can more broadly mean any activity in which Christians are
involved for world evangelization.

In addition to theological doctrine, many missionaries promote economic development,

literacy, education, health care and orphanages, believing these causes advance the glory
of God. Christian doctrines (such as the "Doctrine of Love" professed by many missions)
may permit the provision of aid without requiring religious conversion.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 History of Christian missions

• 2 Modern missionary methods and doctrines
• 3 Controversy and Christian missionaries
o 3.1 Aid and Evangelism
o 3.2 Christian counter-claims
• 4 References
• 5 Bibliography
o 5.1 Positive or Neutral
o 5.2 Critical
• 6 See also

• 7 External links
History of Christian missions
According to the documents of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, the
Biblical authority for missions begins quite early in Genesis 12:1-3, in which Abraham is
blessed so that through him and his descendants, all the "peoples" of the world would be
blessed. Others point to God's wish, often expressed in the Bible, that all peoples of the
earth would worship Him. Therefore, Christian missions go where worship is not, in
order to bring worship to God.

In this view, the early historical Jewish mission is that of being a people placed in the
midst of the other nations, situated so that they could proclaim the Creator God that
blessed them. This view is confirmed in many OT scriptures, (cf. Exodus 19:4-6, Psalm
67) as well as the nature of the temple (its outer court was "the court of the gentiles").

Several teachers including John R. W. Stott believe that a prominent prophecy in the Old
Testament often unfolds continually and is certainly manifested in three situations, an
immediate historical situation following the prophecy, a church-based intermediate
situation, and an eschatological, end-of-time situation. Of course, Gen. 12:1-3 is such a
prominent passage.

The first, and most famous missionary was St. Paul. He contextualized the Gospel for the
Greek and Roman cultures, permitting it to reach beyond its Hebrew and Jewish context.

In the early Christian era, most missions were by monks. Monasteries followed
disciplines and supported missions, libraries and practical research, all of which were
perceived as works to reduce human misery and suffering, thus enhancing the reputation
of God. For example, Nestorian communities evangelized much of N. Africa before
Muhammad. Cistercians evangelized much of Northern Europe, as well as developing
most of European agriculture's classic techniques.

In the 16th century the proselyization of Asia was linked to the Portuguese colonial
policy. With the Papal bull Romanus Pontifex the patronage for the propagation of the
Christian faith in Asia was given to the Portuguese, who were rewarded with the right of
conquest. The Portuguese trade with Asia was profitable and as Jesuits came to India
around 1540, the colonial government in Goa supported the mission with incentives for
baptized Christians.[1] Later, Jesuits were sent to China and further countries in Asia. With
the decline of the Portuguese power other colonial powers and Christian organisations
gain influence.

After the Reformation, for nearly a hundred years, occupied by their struggle with the
Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant churches were not missionary-sending churches.
But in the centuries that followed, the Protestant churches began sending missionaries in
increasing numbers, spreading the proclamation of the Christian message to previously
unreached people. In North America, missionaries to the native Americans included
Jonathan Edwards, the well known preacher of the Great Awakening, who in his later
years retired from the very public life of his early career. He became a missionary to the
Housatonic Native Americans and a staunch advocate for them against cultural
imperialism.

As European culture has been established in the midst of indigenous peoples, the cultural
distance between Christians of differing cultures has been difficult to overcome. One
early solution was the creation of segregated "praying towns" of Christian natives. This
pattern of grudging acceptance of converts was repeated in Hawaii later when
missionaries from that same New England culture went there. In Spanish colonization of
the Americas, the Catholic missionaries selected and learned among the languages of the
Amerindians and devised writing systems for them. Then they preached to them in those
languages (Quechua, Guarani, Nahuatl) instead of Spanish, to keep Indians away from
"sinful" whites. An extreme case were the Guarani Reductions, a theocratic
semiindependent region established by the Jesuits.

Around 1780, an indigent Baptist cobbler named William Carey began reading about
James Cook's Polynesian journeys. His interest grew to a furious sort of "backwards
homesickness," inspiring him to obtain Baptist orders, and eventually write his famous
1792 pamphlet, "An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the
Conversion of Heathen." Far from a dry book of theology, Carey's work used the best
available geographic and ethnographic data to map and count the number of people who
had never heard the Gospel. It formed a movement that has grown with increasing speed
from his day to ours.

Carey's example was followed by a number of missions to sea-side and port cities. The
China Overseas Missionaries and Moravian Church are two of the more famous.

Thomas Coke, the first bishop of the American Methodists, has been called "the Father of
Methodist Missions". After spending time in the young American republic strengthening
the infant Methodist Church alongside episcopal colleague Francis Asbury, the British-
born Coke left for mission work. During his time in America, Coke worked vigorously to
increase Methodist support of Christian missions and raising up mission workers. Coke
died while on a mission trip to India, but his legacy among Methodists - his passion for
missions - continues.
Missionary preaching in China using The Wordless Book

The next wave of missions, starting in the early 1850s, was to inland areas, led by
Hudson Taylor with his China Inland Mission. Taylor was later supported by Henry
Grattan Guinness who founded Cliff College which exists today for the purpose of
training and equipping local and global mission.

The new wave of missions inspired by Taylor and Guinness have collectively been called
"faith missions" and owe much to the ideas and example of Anthony Norris Groves.
Taylor was a thorough-going nativist, offending the missionaries of his era by wearing
Chinese clothing and speaking Chinese at home. His books, speaking and examples led to
the formation of numerous inland missions, and the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM),
which from 1850 to about 1950 sent nearly 10,000 missionaries to inland areas, often at
great personal sacrifice. Many early SVM missionaries to areas with endemic tropical
diseases left with their belongings packed in a coffin, aware that 80% of them would die
within two years.

In 1910, the Edinburgh Missionary Conference was held in Scotland. Presided over by
active SVM leader (and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient) John R. Mott, an American
Methodist layperson, the conference reviewed the state of evangelism, Bible translation,
mobilization of church support, and the training of indigenous leadership. Looking to the
future, conferees worked on strategies for worldwide evangelism and cooperation. The
conference not only established greater ecumenical cooperation in missions, but also
essentially launched the modern ecumenical movement.

The next wave of missions was started by two missionaries, Cameron Townsend and
Donald McGavran, around 1935. These men realized that although earlier missionaries
had reached geographic areas, there were numerous ethnographic groups that were
isolated by language, or class from the groups that missionaries had reached. Cameron
formed Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate the Bible into native languages. McGavran
concentrated on finding bridges to cross the class and cultural barriers in places like
India, which has upwards of 4,600 peoples, separated by a combination of language,
culture and caste. Despite democratic reforms, caste and class differences are still
fundamental in many cultures.

An equally important dimension of missions strategy is the indigenous method of

nationals reaching their own people. In Asia this wave of missions was pioneered by men
like Dr G D James of Singapore, Rev Theodore Williams of India and Dr David Cho of
Korea. The "two thirds Missions Movement" as it is referred to, is today a major force in
missions.

Most modern missionaries and missionary societies have repudiated cultural imperialism,
and elected to focus on spreading the Gospel and translating the Bible. Sometimes,
missionaries have been vital in preserving and documenting the culture of the peoples
among whom they live.

Often, missionaries provide welfare and health services, as a good deed or to make
friends with the locals. Thousands of schools, orphanages, and hospitals have been
established by missions. One of the quietest, yet most far-reaching services provided by
missionaries started with the Each one, teach one literacy program begun by Dr. Frank
Laubach in the Philippines in 1935. The program has since spread around the world and
brought literacy to the least enabled members of many societies.

The word "mission" was historically often applied to the building, the "mission station"
in which the missionary lives or works. In some colonies, these mission stations became a
focus of settlement of displaced or formerly nomadic people. Particularly in rural
Australia, missions have become localities or ghettoes on the edges of towns which are
home to many Indigenous Australians. The word may be seen as derogatory when used in
this context in a derogatory or racist way.

[edit] Modern missionary methods and doctrines

A Christian missionary’s objective is to give an understandable presentation of their
beliefs with the hope that people will choose to convert from other faiths to Christianity.
As a matter of strategy, many evangelical Christians in Europe and North America now
focus on what they call the "10/40 window," a band of countries between 10 and 40
degrees north latitude and reaching from western Africa through Asia. Christian missions
strategist Luis Bush pinpointed the need for a major focus of evangelism in the "10/40
Window," a phrase he coined in his presentation at the missionary conference Lausanne
1989 in Manila. Sometimes referred to as the "Resistant Belt," it is an area that includes
35% of the world's land mass, 90% of the world's poorest peoples and 95% of those who
have yet to hear anything about Christianity.

In modern missionary strategy, mission stations are deprecated, because they were
historically ineffective. Mission stations normally created disaffected individual converts,
often seen as an outcast by their family and culture. In many cases, the only source of
converts to a mission station were the orphans raised in the station's orphanage. Also,
many mission station's converts were so alienated from surrounding cultures that they
were unable to get work outside the mission station, let alone act as cultural ambassadors
for Christianity. In some cases, these paid "rice bowl Christians" actively impeded
Christian conversion in the mission's schools and orphanages so that their own incomes
would not be reduced as more Christians came to depend on the mission station.

Modern pioneering missionary doctrines now focus on inserting a culturally adapted seed
of Christian doctrines into a self-selected, self-motivated group of native believers,
without removing the natives from their culture in any way.

Modern mission techniques are sufficiently refined that within ten to fifteen years, most
native churches are natively pastored, managed, taught, self-supporting and evangelizing.
The process can be substantially faster if a preexisting translation of the Bible and higher
pastoral education are already available, perhaps left-over from earlier, less effective
missions.

A key approach is to let native cultural groups decide to adopt Christian doctrines and
benefits, when (as in most cultures) such major decisions are normally made by groups.
In this way, opinion leaders in the groups can persuade much or most of the groups to
convert. When combined with training in church planting and other modern missionary
doctrine, the result is an accelerating, self-propelled conversion of large portions of the
culture.

A typical modern mission is a co-operative effort by many different ministries, often

including several coordinating ministries, often with separate funding sources. One
typical effort proceeded as follows:

1. A missionary radio group recruits, trains and broadcasts in the main dialect of the
target culture's language. Broadcast content is carefully adapted to avoid
syncretism yet help the Christian Gospel seem like a native, normal part of the
target culture. Broadcast content often includes news, music, entertainment and
education in the language, as well as purely Christian items.
2. Broadcasts might advertise programs, inexpensive radios (possibly spring-
wound), and a literature ministry that sells a Christian mail-order correspondence
course at nominal costs. The literature ministry is key, and is normally a separate
organization from the radio ministry. Modern literature missions are shifting to
web-based content where it makes sense (as in Western Europe and Japan).
3. When a person or group completes a correspondence course, they are invited to
contact a church-planting missionary group from (if possible) a related cultural
group. The church-planting ministry is usually a different ministry from either the
literature or radio ministries. The church-planting ministry usually requires its
missionaries to be fluent in the target language, and trained in modern church-
planting techniques.
4. The missionary then leads the group to start a church. Churches planted by these
groups are usually a group that meets in a house. The object is the minimum
organization that can perform the required character development and spiritual
growth. Buildings, complex ministries and other expensive items are mentioned,
 but deprecated until the group naturally achieves the size and budget to afford
them. The crucial training is how to set up a church (meet to study the Bible, and
perform communion and worship), and how to become a Christian (the finer
points of obeying God), usually in that order.
5. A new generation of churches is created, and the growth begins to accelerate
geometrically. Frequently, daughter churches are created only a few months after
a church's creation. In the fastest-growing Christian movements, the pastoral
education is "pipelined", flowing in a just-in-time fashion from the central
churches to daughter churches. That is, planting of churches does not wait for the
complete training of pastors.

The most crucial part of church planting is selection and training of leadership.
Classically, leadership training required an expensive stay at a seminary, a Bible college.
Modern church planters deprecate this because it substantially slows the growth of the
church without much immediate benefit. Modern mission doctrines replace the seminary
with programmed curricula or (even less expensive) books of discussion questions, and
access to real theological books. The materials are usually made available in a major
trading language in which most native leaders are likely to be fluent. In some cases, the
materials can be adapted for oral use.

It turns out that new pastors' practical needs for theology are well addressed by a
combination of practical procedures for church planting, discussion in small groups, and
motivated Bible-based study from diverse theological texts. As a culture's church's wealth
increases, it will naturally form classic seminaries on its own.

Another related mission is Bible translation. The above-mentioned literature has to be

translated. Missionaries actively experiment with advanced linguistic techniques to speed
translation and literacy. Bible translation not only speeds a church's growth by aiding
self-training, but it also assures that Christian information becomes a permanent part of
the native culture and literature. Some ministries also use modern recording techniques to
reach groups with audio that could not be soon reached with literature.

Recently, there has been a movement in the United States called home school mission in
which a Christian is encouraged to train their children in the faith. This has arisen in the
development of secular education that has increasingly excluded the Christian message.
As a result many groups have focused missionary effort within the home to ensure that
the children remain Christian rather than becoming secular as a result of daily training in
secular schools.

[edit] Controversy and Christian missionaries

Some governments (such as Islamic nations, Communist China and Russia), secular
anthropologists and sociologists object to missionary work among isolated indigenous
populations. Some consequences are claimed to have been apostasy from Islam,
disloyalty to the Communist Party, cultural assimulation, reduction of native language
speakers, and loss of native culture.In fact, Christian missionaries have been criticised for
having a general lack of respect for native cultures throughout history, even actively
working to undermine the religious customs and beliefs of many non-Christian countries.
This has been called Ethnocide and Cultural genocide and Cultural Imperialism.

The Christian missionary mindset is generally depicted as that of simple religious folk
with a pure desire to peacefully spread their gospel and message of love. In reality, their
methods of propagation are often anything but peaceful and usually leave behind a native
population stripped of their culture and often decimated.... In the words of one resident of
Thailand, "They [Christian missionaries] seemed that they did not show any interest for
our culture. Why? They are just eager to build big churches in every village. It seems that
they are having two faces; under the title of help they suppress us. To the world, they
gained their reputations as benefactors of disappearing tribes. They built their
reputations on us for many years. The way they behaved with us seemed as if we did not
know about god before they arrived here. Why do missionaries think they are the only
ones who can perceive God?"[2]

In India, it is charged by some that publicized persecution of Christians is, in fact, incited
by the exclusivity and exceptionalism of Christian missionaries. These tensions have
boiled over into violence. The governments of the affected states assert that most
conversions undertaken by zealous evangelicals occur due to compulsion, inducement or
fraud.[3][4] In the Indian state of Tripura, the government has alleged financial and
weapons-smuggling connections between Baptist missionaries and Christian terrorist
groups like the Nagaland Rebels and the National Liberation Front of Tripura.[5] Hindus
have claimed that these organizations persecute[6] and slaughter Hindus by the
thousands.[7] See also National Liberation Front of Tripura and [1].

You are probably wondering what is the aggression caused by Christians in India. You
may wonder how can a minority religion that is only 3% of the population cause
aggression in a nation of over 1,000,000,000 people. In the press, the aggression and
"persecution" of Christians is often publicized. However, it is never publicized how
Christian Fundamentalists often incite this cycle of violence and aggression.... Christians
believe that they have been commanded by Christ to go and "save" (convert) the people
of this world. This is also supposed to give them special merit when it comes to the day of
final judgment. While there are many Christians who today do not believe in this
exclusivity, there are a still large number of misguided Christians who still believe in the
exclusivity of Christianity and the concept of saving souls. It is this misguided belief that
breeds a hatred and intolerance for other religions. and from this hatred, these Christian
Fundamentalists begin their aggression to convert. And often they will go to any means
to convert even if it means violence. This website seeks to educate the world about the
atrocities that conversions bring and to bring this aggressive nature of Christianity to an
end.[8]

Often, some assert, coersion comes in the form of a pressure to convert through the
injecting of fear of dire consequences if they don't. "Missionaries are actually in essence
terrorists. Why? They come to us and say, 'If you don't do as we say, you are going to
hell! You will die! You will be judged! You are not part of us! You are children of the
Satan!' etc.etc. Aren't these sentences terrorising?"[9]

The Vatican, of late, is taking a somewhat different view toward proselytizing.

"In mid-May, the Vatican was also co-sponsoring a meeting about how some religious
groups abuse liberties by proselytizing, or by evangelizing in aggressive or deceptive
ways. Iraq ... has become an open field for foreigners looking for fresh converts. Some
Catholic Church leaders and aid organizations have expressed concern about new
Christian groups coming in and luring Iraqis to their churches with offers of cash,
clothing, food or jobs.... Reports of aggressive proselytism and reportedly forced
conversions in mostly Hindu India have fueled religious tensions and violence there and
have prompted some regional governments to pass laws banning proselytism or religious
conversion.... Sadhvi Vrnda Chaitanya, a Hindu monk from southern India, told CNS that
India's poor and uneducated are especially vulnerable to coercive or deceptive methods
of evangelization.... Aid work must not hide any ulterior motives and avoid exploiting
vulnerable people like children and the disabled, she said."[10]

In an interview with Outlook Magazine, Sadhvi Vrnda Chaitanya said "If the Vatican
could understand that every religious and spiritual tradition is as sacred as Christianity,
and that they have a right to exist without being denigrated or extinguished, it will greatly
serve the interests of dialogue, mutual respect, and peaceful coexistence."[11]

The meeting of religious leaders from the Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Judaism and
Yoruba faiths resulted in an agreement on ten points about proseltyzation, notably that if
done, it be with respect for other cultures[12]

The fictional movie The Mosquito Coast with Harrison Ford depicts this missionary
mindset and the damage some feel it can wreak upon native peoples. Another movie, The
Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which is factually based, tells of similar destruction
brought upon the Inuit culture by missionaries. See also Siqqitiq and these reference
works on the subject.

[edit] Aid and Evangelism

Another source of conflict regarding missionaries in the third world is the charge that the
aid that comes in response to various world disasters comes with a condition: that
assistance requires conversion. While there is a general agreement among most major aid
organizations not to mix aid with proseltyzing, others see disasters as a means to spread
the word. Innovative Minds, a Muslim software company "specialising in the application
of internet and multimedia technology for promoting a better understanding of Islam in
the west" has written a report[13] about just such an occurrence, the tidal wave (tsunami)
that devastated parts of Asia on December 26, 2004.

"This (disaster) is one of the greatest opportunities God has given us to share his
love with people," said K.P. Yohannan, president of the Texas-based Gospel for
 Asia. In an interview, Yohannan said his 14,500 "native missionaries" in India,
Sri Lanka and the Andaman Islands are giving survivors Bibles and booklets
about "how to find hope in this time through the word of God." In Krabi,
Thailand, a Southern Baptist church had been "praying for a way to make
inroads" with a particular ethnic group of fishermen, according to Southern
Baptist relief coordinator Pat Julian. Then came the tsunami, "a phenomenal
opportunity" to provide ministry and care, Julian told the Baptist Press news
service.... Not all evangelicals agree with these tactics. "It's not appropriate in a
crisis like this to take advantage of people who are hurting and suffering," said
the Rev. Franklin Graham, head of Samaritan's Purse and son of evangelist Billy
Graham.".[14]
See also A Dangerous mix: Religion & Development Aid.

The Christian Science Monitor echoes these concerns... "'I think evangelists do this out of
the best intentions, but there is a responsibility to try to understand other faith groups
and their culture,' says Vince Isner, director of FaithfulAmerica.org, a program of the
National Council of Churches USA".[15]

The Bush administration has in fact recently made it easier for U.S. faith based groups
and missionary societies to tie aid and church together.

For decades, US policy has sought to avoid intermingling government programs

and religious proselytizing. The aim is both to abide by the Constitution's
prohibition against a state religion and to ensure that aid recipients don't forgo
assistance because they don't share the religion of the provider.... But many of
those restrictions were removed by Bush in a little-noticed series of executive
orders -- a policy change that cleared the way for religious groups to obtain
hundreds of millions of dollars in additional government funding. It also helped
change the message American aid workers bring to many corners of the world,
from emphasizing religious neutrality to touting the healing powers of the
Christian God.[16]

[edit] Christian counter-claims

One Christian organization, Voice of the Martyrs, in contrast to reports of Christian

aggression in India, claims that Christians are also recipients of violent aggression in
India from "radical Hindus" (presumably Hindu Nationalists). One example is the brutal
murder of Australian Graham Staines and his family who had been evangelizing and
conducting aid work since 1965. The perpetrators say that it was the disrespect of Hindu
religious tradition following such conversions, such as the eating of beef (cows are
considered sacred to Hindus) which set them off.

Missionaries, however, say that "false reports" of forced conversion are a key weapon in
the Hindu Nationalist fight against both Christian missionaries and native-born Christian
Indians (this despite the fact that Hindu Nationalists such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh frequently cooperate with Christian groups in times of natural disaster[17] and have
a good relationship with many Catholic organizations overall). The government in India
has passed anti-conversion laws in several states that are supposedly meant to prevent
conversions from "force or allurement", but are primarily used, they say, to persecute and
criminalize voluntary conversion due to the government's broad definition of "force and
allurement." Any gift received from a Christian in exchange for, or with the intention of,
conversion is considered allurement. V.O.M. reports that aid-workers claim that they are
being hindered from reaching people with much needed services as a result of this
persecution.[18] Alan de Lastic, Roman Catholic archbishop of New Delhi states that
claims of forced conversion are false[19]

"'There are attacks practically every week, maybe not resulting in death, but still, violent
attacks,' Richard Howell, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India tells
The Christian Science Monitor today. 'They [India's controlling BJP party] have created
an atmosphere where minorities do feel insecure.'"[20] According to Prakash Louis,
director of the secular Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, "We are seeing a broad
attempt to stifle religious minorities and their constitutional rights...Today, they say you
have no right to convert, Tomorrow you have no right to worship in certain places."[21]
Existing congregations, often during times of worship, are being persecuted.[22] Properties
are sometimes destroyed and burnt to the ground, while native pastors are sometimes
beaten and left for dead