by Jim Reapsome
It was late summer 1939. I was relaxing on the streets of my hometown, thinking about visiting my aunt’s market stand for something to eat. Not a care in the world. Until I glanced at the headlines in the newspapers being hawked on the street corner. A huge, foreboding statement jumped out at me: CRISIS IN EUROPE.
It was late summer 1939. I was relaxing on the streets of my hometown, thinking about visiting my aunt’s market stand for something to eat. Not a care in the world. Until I glanced at the headlines in the newspapers being hawked on the street corner. A huge, foreboding statement jumped out at me: CRISIS IN EUROPE.
Since then I have survived many crises. The trouble is, I don’t know which ones were real and which ones weren’t. The word has been stripped of its emotional impact because every time something scary comes along it’s labeled a crisis.
The missionary enterprise has fallen victim to the same complex. Now that I’m hearing about a recruitment crisis, I recall many previous recruitment crises feverishly discussed among missions people. It seems that we’re always in danger of falling short of workers. We invest in huge studies to discover why some missionaries leave the field. We try to figure out how to adapt our recruiting to changing cultural patterns. How can we recruit Boomers, Busters, Gen-Xers, and golden agers?
I’m a bit skeptical about the current “crisis” in recruiting new missionaries. For one thing, the crisis is not documented; it’s purely anecdotal. Some agencies say it’s a crisis, but the feeling is by no means universal. Some churches look in vain for new recruits coming up through the ranks, while others have candidates waiting in line.
Second, by what standard do we pronounce the current missionary pipeline in danger of drying up? If we measure it by the number of people we say we need, we will always have a shortfall. Occasionally I hear of agencies saying they need 600 or 1,000 new missionaries. That alarms me, because I’m not sure we need all the people we say we need. In some cases, we need fewer but better qualified workers.
Third, is this a crisis in full-time, career missionaries, or do we include everybody? No one can say there’s a crisis in recruiting short-term workers. Their number seems to skyrocket every year. We have come to accept that most career people will have had some previous short-term experience.
For the sake of argument, suppose there is a legitimate crisis. Then what? What changes must we make to attract more serious, professionally trained missionaries?
When the crisis in Europe in 1939 exploded into a crisis for the United States on December 7, 1941, there was only one response—mobilization for war. Everything that did not contribute to the war effort was put on hold. Factories, farms, whatever—they all had to produce for the war. Our lives were significantly rearranged.
Some churches have not adopted a mobilization strategy. They are not on a war footing. That’s true in perhaps too many cases. World evangelization has not galvanized these churches. They do not eat, live, and breathe world missions. Therefore, they do not produce missionaries from their ranks.
The same holds for some mission agencies. Some of them do not sound a commanding call of what they are doing. They address a multiplicity of needs but find it hard to focus on one thing that will attract recruits. How do they articulate their strategic plans? Do you sense they are on a war footing for front line engagement, or are they more like the old USO running canteens serving coffee and doughnuts?
Some of them need to streamline their application processes. They need to apply more skills to answering inquiries promptly, especially from people who at first glance don’t seem to fit their mold. They should offer general guidance to people who don’t know the first thing about missions, and not expect people to be experts. It should not take forever for new recruits to get to the field. How can they shorten this time?
When we have done our best to examine what we’re offering prospective candidates—and that must include frequent updating of our Web sites—we must energize our people according to our biblical convictions. Sometimes in the midst of crises we forget there is a God in heaven who controls these things.
Many agencies were founded on the bedrock of faithandprayer. Yet in our search for better recruitment strategies we overlook the only strategy Jesus had, which was to pray for workers. Perhaps agencies could suggest to churches that once or twice a year they call a day of fasting and prayer for more workers.
We also tend to forget that our mission is really God’s mission. From day one he called people, and he continues to call them. We might wish he would call more of them a lot faster than he does, but that’s really up to him. God called Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others. Jesus called the Twelve and the apostle Paul. The Holy Spirit called Paul and Barnabas.
Our God is a sending God. He sends his workers. There is no recruitment crisis in heaven. Of course, we face some disobedient, lazy Christians and their churches. But God continually dredges up some sparkling gems from the ashes and uses them to change the world. Happy are we if he uses us to stir up his people to work in his vineyard.
Playing to our strengths
Any good coach will develop strategy for game day to take advantage of his or her team’s strengths, and to minimize whatever weaknesses exist vis-a-vis their opponents. Against a bigger team in basketball, for example, a coach might capitalize on his team’s relative speed by putting on a full court press.
This principle of maximizing one’s strengths and minimizing one’s weaknesses is also important to the missions enterprise, but it is often forgotten. “How so?” In the all too common, “competency requires self-sufficiency” syndrome, that still permeates too much of our practical decision making. Instead of a full court press, we try to out rebound the big guys!
We often develop our strategy based on an underlying assumption that we have to overcome our inherent weaknesses directly and all by ourselves. This we do either by an inordinate exertion of energy and resources, or less honestly, we talk down the importance of our weak areas. The fact is we can’t do everything, and more importantly, we shouldn’t even try.
This would be an opportune time to talk about spiritual gifts and how God has equipped specific individuals (and perhaps organizations) for specific tasks, and to remind each of us how all this multiplied gifting is essential as it works together to achieve God’s purposes. And all of that would, of course, be true.
It is an equally opportune time, however, to sound a less familiar theme. God has not only divvied up the means (via spiritual gifts) to achieve his purposes, he seems to have divvied up some of his passions as well.
Differing emphases are likely to be found among all the stakeholders in the grand scheme of missions, whether they are local churches, denominations, denominational agencies, interdenominational agencies, trainers and educators of every variety, or mobilizers of every kind. And these differences are usually both legitimate and healthy. They are, furthermore, as likely to exist on a global level as at a local one. While debates about holism and the nature of mission (see the articles pp. 278-302) are in my view important and healthy, they do sometimes skirt the obvious truth that God has called us to do many things, both individually and corporately. We neglect or disparage any of them to our peril. At the same time, not everyone gives the same energy and enthusiasm (i.e. passion) to every task.
“Does that mean we can be selective in our obedience?” Not at all, but it does recognize that many of God’s commands are corporate in nature, not individualistic. (The unfortunate nature of the English language, which has no way to distinguish a plural “you” from a singular one, certainly can cause confusion in how we read Scripture.) While we all have a responsibility to care for the widows and orphans, we don’t all have a passion for it. The same is true for visiting the prisoners, evangelism of every kind, AIDS education, or any other ministry activity which comes under the rubric of “making disciples of all nations” or of “loving our neighbors as ourselves.”
What I’m sayingisthat we are not responsible to, nor could we in any case, bring a uniformly high level of enthusiasm personally to every task for which the church is responsible corporately. And that’s OK.
“What is our responsibility in these areas then?” Certainly not to ignore the obvious need at hand simply because it’s not our passion. But at the same time, not to feel guilty because we lack personal passion for every God-given task which the church corporately must embrace. What we are to do, however, is to recognize and rejoice in the passions of others. That in turn requires us to avoid jealousy, competitiveness, and gainsaying, even when we feel that the success of another’s passion might diminish resources or support for our own.
If our passion is direct evangelism we should give ourselves to it with all our strength. If our passion is ministering to human need we should give ourselves fully to that. If our passion is facilitating indigenous ministries, or training harvest laborers, or mobilizing resources, we should devote our energy fully to that. But whatever piece of God’s grand purpose captures our own passion, we must maintain the ability to celebrate the passions of God’s other servants. The work they do is part of our responsibility, too.
We must never speak badly of “someone else’s servant” (Rom. 14:4), and we must never confuse our own particular passion for the sum total of what God wants to accomplish in our world. As for resource competition, we serve a rich God. In our clearer-thinking moments we should realize that if we are doing his will, a resource shortfall is not going to be an issue.
The variety of ministry we see is all part of God’s plan. It’s really just other servants playing to the strengths, the passions, that he has given them. And the best part is that we are all playing on the same team.
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EMQ, Vol. 35, No. 3. 262-263. Copyright © 1999 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.
