Lausanne World Pulse – Learning from Ants: Missionary Teams and the Skyscraper Analogy
By Justin Long
For denominations,
- International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB-SBC), four thousand workers
- Assemblies of God, 3,500 workers
- Mormons, forty-three thousand workers (mostly short-term)
- Catholic Society of Jesus (Jesuits), twenty-five thousand workers
This gives one pause for thought. How can forty-three thousand teams—perhaps eighty thousand to 160,000 people—be recruited, deployed and sent? Trained and equipped? Networked and informed? Cared for? We might be tempted at this point to throw up our hands and say, “It can’t be done.”
Yet the simple fact is that it must be done. Black and white digits on the page hide the people. In your mind’s eye, seek them out. Billions of faces: red, yellow, brown, black, white. Men, women, children. Old, young. Being born, living, growing up, dying—without ever once hearing the name of Jesus, without understanding the good news.
If they are to hear the good news, workers must go among them, bringing them the gospel. Whether the workers are nearby locals or foreigners from around the world, someone has to go. And if someone is to go, then they have to be sent. This implies some structure for sending them. They must be recruited, given a certain amount of training, have their support issues resolved and be able to get to their destination. For maximum impact and sustainability they should be linked with others as well.
Three Types of Sending Structures There are probably three “types” of sending structures: skyscrapers, pyramids and swarms. In this issue we will discuss skyscrapers. In the months to come we will discuss the latter two.
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