The World Awaits

What fascinates me is that whether explicitly as in the Evangelical position where you intentionally place the bulk of your workers in the most receptive areas, or implicitly in the Pentecostal view in that you go where the Spirit is working, what you end up with is a kind of blank spot for what to do with the places that are not currently receptive/responsive. Going to the responsive/where the Spirit is working in terms of a mission principle is wise, as long as there is an important qualification that is made very clear. The qualification is simply this: we need to pour resources and personnel into receptive/responsive peoples who have few believers and church movements. Once you take away the controls provided by that qualification, mission stops being taking Christ to where he is not known and becomes church renewal or cross-cultural workers helping or doing evangelism that can or should be done by local Christians. And this is precisely where the problem lies today. Without the qualification this general principle can actually move us in a direction away from taking the Gospel to those who have the least access.

This issue highlights the need for what I call a theology of the hard work. Two things make this missiological oversight much clearer than perhaps at any other time in the history of Christian mission. The first is the massive success of the Christian mission around the world, and the second is the increasingly clear data about all the places where the church does not yet exist. There is a clearer line than ever between work that is fraternal in nature, assisting already strong church movements to develop, and that which is pioneer in nature where the first generation of believers needs to be won and the first church movements planted. In such a condition the principle of receptivity/responsiveness without the qualification of going to the least reached will nearly always result in workers being placed where the church exists rather than where it does not exist. An unintended consequence of the receptivity principle and the Western passion for tangibility and quantification has shaped a view of mission that makes results the primary evaluative tool for determining success. The downside of this is that anything that does not produce results is avoided, and many important activities that are preparatory to harvest are neglected. This value system then is transmitted from the West into the newer emerging missions, making the criterion of successful mission numerical results alone and discouraging any activity that does not meet that standard.

I believe that a critical component that we are going to need to develop in terms of our theology of missions if we are going to seriously engage the unreached world is our stance toward non-responsive, historically slow to respond groups. I call this a theology of the hard work. Without it we are doomed to neglecting the foundational tasks of clearing the fields, preparing the ground, and planting the seed needed for harvest. In the remainder of this section I will sketch out briefly the outline of a theology of the hard work.

The idea of a theology of the hard work came to me one day as I was reading through John 4. I have always been very moved by 4:34 where Jesus says his meat is to do the Father’s will and finish His task. But on this particular day as I read further a statement jumped off the page and gripped me. In 4:35-38 as Jesus is talking to his disciples about the present harvest, he makes the statement that others have done the hard work (vs. 38), and they are now reaping the fruits of those labors. When I went back and worked through commentaries on this passage, I discovered that scholars are not really sure of the antecedents that Jesus is using here. Who are the “others”, what harvest Jesus is talking about, where did he send them to reap, who are the reapers drawing their wages, and so on. What is quite clear however, is that Jesus is acknowledging here the well known agricultural fact that in order to get a harvest you must do hard preparatory work first. It encouraged me greatly that Jesus recognizes and honors the hard work. He notes that both the sower and the reaper rejoice together (vs. 36). I have always appreciated the urgent eschatological view of our Pentecostal forefathers and mothers, but living among a slow response Buddhist people it has bothered me at the same time because such a view, without intending to do so, tended to devaluate the preparatory hard work where the ground is still hard. I was excited to find out that Jesus is not only aware of the need for hard work to be done but he applauds it.

A theology of the hard work is founded on Jesus’ acknowledgement of the role of hard work in preparing for a harvest. He lets his disciples know that they are standing on the shoulders of others; that those who have gone before have done the really difficult labor and now they will reap. Today, in the excitement of the worldwide expansion of the church there is a diminished tolerance for the often backbreaking labor of preparation for a harvest. I found a quote in an essay on mission societies citing a letter from an Irish missionary to Iran requesting prayer for the slow progress of the gospel in then Persia. He said, “I am not reaping the harvest; I can scarcely claim to be sowing the seed; I am hardly plowing the soul; but I am gathering out the stones. That, too, is missionary work; let it be supported by loving sympathy and fervent prayer.”[1] The wonderful harvest today among Iranians did not grow out of a vacuum, there was preparation. We need to revive the perspective of heaven in order to instill steel into the souls of the workers that will go to places that require preparation before a harvest will be gained

Another factor in a theology of the hard work is one that comes from empirical observation, that the non-responsive may be so not because they are resistant to the Gospel, but because they have never heard the message in a way that makes sense to them. We are hearing a growing number of reports from many places, with some being in what are regarded as highly resistant blocs of people, where peoples that had never responded in the past are coming to faith in Jesus in large numbers. This is often associated with a presentation of the message of Christ that is disconnected from Western forms and which helps converts remain in their sociocultural context while faithfully following Jesus. Resistance and non-responsiveness often turn out to be not the problem of the people group, but rather the messengers and the version of faith they are trying to proclaim. If our strategy does not include a missiology that legitimizes going to groups with the smallest response and fewest Christians we are making a large strategic error, potentially cutting off those who would respond to a message put in their context.

A theology of the hard work revives a theme that is prominent in the Gospels that we will be hated for Jesus’ sake (see for example Matt. 5:10; 10:21-25; 24:9). With the huge expansion of the Christian movement around the globe it is easy to forget how divisive Jesus can be in certain social settings. We need to hear his call to his followers to endure and hold firm when they are hated, reviled, and persecuted for their identification with him. Finally, I think there is more theological work to do in the area of understanding the spread of God’s glory among the nations at a larger level than just the salvation of individuals. It is right for us to long for the people that we work among to experience eternal salvation through Christ, but we also have to adjust our horizons to the larger picture and remember that the goal of missions is the glory of God. It is also right for us to pursue bringing glory to God by turning people who have been rebels, and who love darkness to his light and truth. There is no doubt that the growth of the worshipping community in all its diversity of the various tribes and tongues is a major part of bringing glory to God. Yet we have to admit that there may be more to this that remains unseen to our eyes and is not yet understood.

When I was a missionary candidate we had a speaker whose name I no longer remember, who was laboring in one of the toughest unreached blocs of people in the world. One of the statements that he made rang in my heart, giving me a brand new perspective on what it means to serve among the unreached. The gist of it was that even if no one ever is saved, it was worth it to live among the people and share the message and bring glory to God by proclaiming his grace and mercy in Christ. I think that if we are going to sustain activity among the unreached world that we need to refine this vision of the glory of God more so that workers see it as honorable, noble, and pleasing to God to spend their lives telling the story of Jesus in a place where at that given time in history there is limited response. We cannot let the good concept of church growth become some kind of idol that keeps us from spending time with the unreached because they are not immediately responsive to the preaching of the Gospel. If we lower the bar to church growth only and then neglect these major blocs of unreached people because they are not easy to win and add to our churches we may protect ourselves in the eyes of our peers, but shortchange the glory of God by not bearing witness to his saving work. I believe that a robust theology of the hard work will be used by the Holy Spirit to break through the fear of failure that is a major inhibiting factor in having individuals and mission agencies embrace such groups.