Strategy

Equipping the Church

The Church is central to our philosophy of missions. We labor among our partnering churches, primarily equipping them for cooperative mission sending in four areas:

• Training Missionaries. Aspiring missionaries need their local church to faithfully disciple them in the faith and develop them for ministry. While seminaries and organizations may be at times helpful, the training of missionaries is the responsibility of local churches.

• Appointing Missionaries. As in Acts 13:1-4, the Holy Spirit reveals whom is to be set aside and released for the missionary ministry. Yet the local church ought to affirm and appoint missionaries to service, as they would an elder or deacon.

• Sending Missionaries. Churches send missionaries out from their church and into ministry. The role of our society is to assist churches to faithfully send out missionaries to strategic locations, joining faithful missionary teams all partnering churches may trust.

• Supporting Missionaries. The burden and the privilege of sending and supporting missionaries is given to the local church. Our society works with partnering churches to help them faithfully support their brothers and sisters in a manner worthy of God--prayerfully, financially, and practically.

The Core Missionary Task

Though the core missionary task is far from sequential, the ministry is best understood in 6 phases:

• Entry: from language and cultural acquisition, research, and relationship building, everything the missionary does to attain meaningful access

• Evangelism: verbal proclamation of the gospel, among non-Christians, with a call to respond

• Discipleship: deliberate ministry among Christians to help them follow Jesus and grow in their knowledge, character, faith, and obedience

• Church Formation: process of starting, strengthening churches into healthy, maturing, multiplying churches 

• Leadership Development: intentional training of biblically qualified elders, deacons, and missionaries

• Partnership Development: entrusting the people of God (filled by the Spirit and equipped with the Word) as partners in the gospel

The missionary must work in a manner, dependent on God, with the end in sight from day one: partnering with faithful leaders and healthy churches.

Indigenous and Near-Culture Church Planting

Indigenous Church Planting: the most effective means of planting churches among unreached people groups is to mobilize indigenous believers and churches to plant churches among their own people groups.

Near-Culture Church Planting: the second most effective means of planting churches among unreached people groups is to mobilize near-culture believers and churches to pioneer church planting until indigenous churches have been planted and indigenous leaders have been appointed.

The Benefits

1. Obedience: Frequently and unfortunately, the first generations of Christians under the ministry of a foreign missionary implicitly learn they do not have the expertise nor ability to do the work of ministry, yet when local believers are equipped and released for ministry, they are obeying Jesus' commission upon the entire church.

2. Immediate effectiveness: Language and culture acquisition (L&CA) are paramount obstacles for a foreign missionary, taking decades to master. Indigenous missionaries obviously have the necessary language and culture to function among their own people, and near-culture missionaries are much more expedient in their L&CA.

3. Identification: Increasingly among these most resistant people groups, an anti-Western bias pervades, meaning Western missionaries are rejected more so for being Western than being a missionary. Indigenous and near-culture evangelists frequently have a more suitable identity to whom they preach the gospel.

4. Physical challenges: Migration magnifies emotional trauma and physical injury, even among the most admirable foreign missionaries. Indigenous and near-culture peoples are typically able to persist in long-term ministry with a much lower rate of attrition.

5. Stewardship: For many factors, Western foreign missionaries often require more funding (often times exceeding 1,000% more) than indigenous or near-culture missionaries require in most locations. For the cost of one foreign missionary family, if resources were redistributed, the Church can exchange 1 foreign missionary for 10 indigenous or near-culture missionaries.

6. Partnership: "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in truth" (3 John 4) is a statement of gospel partnership. There may be no better way to celebrate an illustrious heritage of missions among a people group than by passing the baton, seeing the mission field become the mission force, partnering as co-laborers.