Apostolic Missiology: Part 3-Missiological Shift in Western Contexts 6

We now come to the next post in this series on Apostolic Missiology.  In case you missed it, you can read the first and second posts HERE and HERE.  This series is taken from a portion of a presentation I did at the Church Planting Missionary Forum for the North American Mission Board in February.  Here is the PowerPoint Presentation from that event: NAMB CPM Forum 2010 Presentation.  While I have been told the audio will be posted at the Church Planting Village website, as of this post, it is not there.  You may want to check this page from time to time.

In this post, I wish to set before you a theoretical model of history to assist us in thinking about where most of us are in our missiology that leads to our field practices when engaging western societies.  I am writing this post, while making broad generalizations for heuristic purposes to assist us in moving into a healthy missiological direction for missionary labors (At this point, I need to once again direct you to the disclaimer that I made in the second part of this series, reminding you that I am not pitting missionaries against pastors.  Please read this, before you send your emails. 🙂 ). 

As a society moves from an historical point in time when they were without the gospel, to a time when they became Kingdom citizens and developed a well-established Church, four shifts seem to occur:   

From Simplicity to Complexity

Whenever the gospel typically enters into a pioneer area, the message, methods, and models used tend to be simple in nature.  While such is not always the case (e.g, use of the mission station paradigm), many times the missionaries operate without much complexity.  There is a desire to sow the gospel, teach the people simple obedience to the teachings of Jesus, and empower them to be the Church among kith and kin.  Such biblical simplicity helps foster the rapid dissemination of the gospel and the multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches.

Over time, as the gospel continues to spread and the Church matures, infrastructures, organizations, and methods tend to become more and more complex.  What began as missionary activity with few elements beyond biblical simplicity, develops into a highly structured paradigm for ministry and mission. 

Of course, such development is not always a bad thing.  For it is a sociological reality that most organizations move from the simple to the complex.  Sometimes such structures and organizations are necessary for healthy growth and development.  Problems arise, however, when such complexity hinders the rapid dissemination of the gospel and the sanctification of the churches.       

From Apostolic to Pastoral

A developing leadership is needed for a maturing Church.  Such is a good thing.  What began as apostolic labors transitions to pastoral ministry. 

As the number of Christ followers increase within a society, the need for such missional engagement diminishes. The need for pastor-teachers (Eph 4:11-12) to oversee the new churches to equip them to do the work of the ministry increases.  People are no longer asking the Philippian Jailer question (Acts 16:30), but rather “How do we now live as followers of Jesus?”

From Apostolic Missiology to Pastoral Missiology

As the Church becomes more pastoral in her functions, and less apostolic, missions in that society becomes filtered through a pastoral lens instead of a apostolic lens, resulting in a pastoral missiology out of which the Church then develops any on-going missionary methods.  Evangelistic? Yes. But such is not sufficient if a sizable portion of the population requires missionary labors before they will become Kingdom citizens.

From Missionary Methods to Pastoral Methods   

Remember, our methods are derived from our missiology (see Part 1).  So, if a community of believers shift from a missiology being apostolic in nature to a missiology being pastoral in nature, then the evangelism, church planting, and leadership development methods will reflect such shifts.

A result of a pastoral missiology applied to a post-Christianized context is generally a failure to think and function missionally, but rather with more of a pastoral approach to missionary labors. 

A pastoral missiology leans toward maintenance and the conservation of structures and organizations.  Such is the nature of pastoral ministry—even for many of the most evangelistic pastoral ministries.  And this nature is a good thing–for a pastor and an established local church.  Pastors are called to be pastors.  The heart of the pastor is rightly aligned in this direction for the sheep. 

Unfortunately, a pastoral missiology misapplies this good desire to the mission field, and finds satisfaction in the planting of churches with believers who have been Kingdom Citizens for a long-time, rather than with recent converts from the harvest fields.  A pastoral missiology typically wants to maintain and control rather than empower and release others to be and function as the local church in their context.  By way of an historical analogy, a pastoral missiology understands missionaries to be like a scaffold, but desires that scaffold to remain attached to the building (i.e., the local body of believers), once the construction is complete.

As long as the society consists of a large percentage of believers, a pastoral model alone is many times sufficient for engaging the peoples.  However, western contexts have moved deeply into post-Christianized waters.  Such a transition has now created the need for both pastoral paradigms and a return to apostolic missionary teams.  For the Church to operate with only one model, is like trying to fly an airplane with only one wing.  The Church in the West, particularly in the United States and Canada, has been attempting such an aeronautical impossibility for a long time. 

The final post in this series is coming soon.  Stay tuned.