Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

I was shoving a load of laundry into the washing machine when I heard voices from the adjacent den. “Is Sharon going to be a missionary?” the 10-year-old girl asked her father. I was staying with friends in North Carolina as I traveled, doing what mission agencies like to call “deputation” prior to going to the mission field in 1988.

He hesitated a moment, and then answered, “Well, something like a missionary.” Emerging from the laundry room a few minutes later, I asked him, “What is a missionary?”

“Well,” he thought a moment and then said, “It’s someone who goes and lives in a grass hut in Africa and starts churches.”

We might chuckle at this answer. I did, too, after I got over being appalled by it. Unfortunately, this limited interpretation of missions is not as rare as one might hope. While not everyone adds the bit about the grass hut, many missionaries are being told by supporting churches that if they aren’t doing evangelism and planting churches, they aren’t doing “real” missions.

This is nothing new. For at least the last 10 years, those of us whose primary task is training national leaders and equipping the local church have been sent packing by an increasing number of sending churches with the explanation that they support only those doing frontier missions. The premise seems to be that evangelism of unreached people groups is the only work God wants to have done in the world today.

Even missions researchers like Michael Jaffarian conclude that the most important contribution missionaries make is in the area of frontier missions. In his “Missions Research Ezine” of June 2003, he stated, “If the most important contribution that missionaries make to world evangelization is to get things started in new cultures or new places, then the most important contribution that missionaries make is in the area of frontier missions.”

To be fair, in another place in the ezine, he stated that he did not believe that the only legitimate cross-cultural missionary ministry is frontier missions. He is not alone, however, in making it clear that the preferred missionary ministry is in frontier missions, and where resources are limited (which, of course, is the case everywhere), then frontier missions should have priority.

I have no argument with either the significance of evangelism or the importance of evangelizing people in frontier regions. I believe every Christian everywhere should be involved in evangelism among friends, relatives, neighbors and others with whom they come in contact.

But is evangelism of unreached peoples really the most important missionary ministry? If so, then any missionary who is not a full-time evangelist among an unreached people group is doing secondary work deserving only the leftover portions of whatever missions resources might be available.

Jesus, however, told his followers to “Go and make disciples,” not simply “Go and evangelize.” Evangelization is one side of the coin. Discipling new believers and equipping the church to be salt and light in its society is the other.

Without discipleship and training, new believers fall prey to cults or simply disappear out the back door of an ineffectual church.

The Apostle Paul, certainly one of the early church’s most effective evangelists and church-planters, spent a considerable amount of time teaching and discipling church leaders. I can’t speak for him, but I wonder if he would consider the time he spent evangelizing more important than his teaching ministry. To read his letters is to sense his heart for the churches and his desire to see them grow strong. It seems to me that he would see both ministries as equally important.

Jesus said, “I will build my church…” It takes all kinds of ministries to build a church. Should we look at those who have been called to hammer and tell them that they should stop hammering because the most important work is sawing?

Some might say that sawing is most important, but hammering is needed, too. So the one who hammers should go ahead and do it. But is it helpful to rank the importance of the various jobs? Aren’t they all needed to get the job done? Can we really say that one part of the world is more important than another or that one task of building the church is more important than the others?

Churches and mission agencies are always going to make decisions about the use of resources according to their particular vision. That is legitimate. What is questionable is the assumption that their priorities are the most important ones and that missionaries who don’t comply are somehow less than “real” missionaries.

After all, the Scriptures make it clear that building the church requires a variety of talents and giftings. Why limit missionaries to only one “legitimate” activity in one “legitimate” region?

The job of the missionary evangelist in a region where there are no churches is critically important. But why not recognize as equally important the ministries of the thousands of missionaries called to strengthen and equip the local church to reach and disciple its own nation—and, incidentally, to send out foreign missionaries of its own?

Sharon Mumper directs the Magazine Training Institute (MTI) from Austria. MTI equips Christian magazine publishers in East-Central Europe and Asia.