Lord willing, over the next few days, I will have the privilege to speak to some of the world’s most influential people: campus ministers and college students. On Saturday, I plan to be in Columbus, Ohio and on Monday and Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky, interacting with such groups. While the locations and audiences will differ, their interests are the same: How do we communicate the gospel via the means of college students serving as missionaries (in BOTH North America and throughout the world). I am planning on addressing this topic with two major points in mind:
1) We need to cast the vision before college students to obtain marketable skills and degrees to be used in the global marketplace, while they simultaneously labor to share the gospel, plant churches, and raise up/train elders for those churches.
2) We need a vision that involves reaching international students, teaching them to obey all that Jesus commanded, modeling before them a simple, biblical expression of the local church, equipping them, partnering with them, and sending them back to their unreached people groups as scientists, doctors, managers, entrepreneurs, teachers, etc., while they simultaneously labor to share the gospel, plant churches, and raise up/train elders for those churches.
Developing strategies and equipping approaches to carry out these points will involve a missiological shift when it comes to church planting.
We need to move away from believing that tentmaking is for the junior varsity missionaries who are not very committed to the Kingdom. Tentmaking is just as important today as it was in Acts 18; it is just that the evangelical Church does not believe it should be a priority for our church planters. (I want to direct you history aficionados to the early Moravian Church on the matter of tentmaking–or, see chapter 16 of my book Discovering Church Planting. I think you will be amazed at what the Lord was able to do with tentmakers.) We need to encourage our students to obtain marketable degrees and skills that will not only place them in strategic global positions for Kingdom influence but will also provide a means of financial support.
Providing international students with biblical teaching is a must; providing them with a massive dose of our culturally preferred expressions of Christianity (and equating that with biblical teaching) is not a good thing. We must move beyond the notion of simply reaching internationals with the good news and assimilating them into local church contexts that will not provide them with the necessary missional knowledge and skills that will translate back to their communities in China, India, the Middle East, etc.. We need to reach them, baptize them, and through membership in a local church (even planting churches with them), prepare them for the day when they will graduate and return to their nations, with both a degree in hand and a heart for church planting.
Much of what is modeled in our churches involves cultural preferences that do not connect with many international students (in this country), and will be a hindrance to Kingdom expansion if such students attempt to reproduce it when they return to their people. Remember: we know and reproduce what is modeled before us. So, how is our model that we will impress on these new brothers and sisters from different lands?
I am greatly looking forward to these meetings.
But what are your thoughts on these matters?
College seems to be the last frontier in America. Based on the books and articles I read that is where we can reclaim our lost sheep from church and give them time to make the faith and worship their own. It also seems to be the last time their is a general openness to the gospel.
However, in our media saturated society and high profile ministries, I think tent-making can be daunting to prospective missionaries. How do we start a model that is self-sufficient. It seems the really good ministers will be snatched up by a local church to either reach out to their college age students or as a pastor.
Yes, the model of church that international see in the USA may not be the most helpful or culturally appropriate in their home countries but I can imagine telling this to your average American church that has not much experience outside the American context and getting the response, “So, what are we supposed to do then?” Practically speaking, what you say sounds great in terms of helping internationals who come to Christ in the States to be prepared to return abroad but is it even possible to give them anything except a culturally American church experience in the USA? How would we do this?
Also, let us not so overemphasize tentmaking, business as mission, and so forth that we forget that many people groups with very small Christian population need well trained theologically minded full time pastors and Bible school professors to lead the church. Those serving as tentmakers are hard pressed for time – trying to plant a church and run a business and raise a family all at once has nearly killed some people.
Excellent points, Karl. Thank you.
Regarding your question of international students and “how”, know that conversations are starting to address this matter. No one (or church) can be culturally neutral. Therefore, anyone we reach will be influenced by our culture to some degree. The question is, “how much of our culture are we giving to them, without helping them to know the difference between what we prefer and what is biblical”? While the finger prints of the cultures of church planters will always be left on the new believers and churches, let’s work hard to not leave too many finger prints behind that would hinder the multiplication of disciples, leaders, and churches among the student’s people. Part of the answer is found in planing churches with them while they are in the States.
JD,
Thank you for this post. I wholeheartedly agree. As for those who are arguing against tentmaking as a viable ministry option in our post technological revolution context I have several thoughts in response to your critique.
First, there are theologically and missiologically trained individuals, such as myself, who are committed to tentmaking as a means to fulfilling the Great Commission. Such individuals both understand the demands that this will place upon them and are prepared to make sacrifices in light of this. Furthermore because of our commitment to tentmaking and desire to model it as a viable option we will not be “snatched up by local churches.”
Second, those who feel that the demands of family, church, and work are too great for a tentmaker to bear need to consider the strengths of church planting teams and how much of what gets labeled as “pastoral ministry” in modern American churches is simply superfluous nonsense that is either not vital to the life of the church or could be delegated to another individual. I would commend the chapter entitled “Brothers, Beware of Sacred Substitutes,” in John Pipers Brothers, We Are Not Professionals in regards to superfluous nonsense. Our church has three bi-vocational elders who share the responsibilities of pastoral ministry and I would argue that their preaching is some of the best exposition you will find in our city. All other responsibility is transferred to the deacons and the pastoral assistants whom they are mentoring. The church is three years old and has sent out one bi-vocational church planter who is currently training an elder body and gathering a core group of disciples in his city.
Finally, if we are to address reproducibility we have to come to the realization that much of what we do and enjoy in our American churches is simply unnecessary. Once coming to that realization the church must then decide to set these things aside to better serve the nations. This is difficult and many churches would rather die than give up their beloved traditions but it is what we must do if we are going to be good stewards of the international students in the flock. It is imperative that we model not only church but church planting as well. We must demonstrate and involve students in church planting if they are going to be church planters in the future.
If this still makes you uncomfortable I would recommend reading Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? and The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church.
Please let me know if there is anything that I can clarify.
Thank you, Keith, for sharing both your thoughts and from your personal experience.
Dr Payne,
As one of the Kentucky Baptist Convention’s Acts 1:8 team members who benefited from your talk in June, I can say the Lord used you to teach and challenge me in terms of international student ministry.
I was convicted of my lack of investment into my international Christian peers, whose faith has discipled me. Also, your words were encouraging reminders of why international ministry is important, and how participating in it can be a model of church planting as a missions lifestyle.
Thank you for the time you invested in our group: your words were in my mind as we ministered in Haiti alongside EDGE Outreach, which emphasizes empowering local leaders over generous white visiting missionaries. I can assure you that God is working in that nation through Haitians; we were only privileged to be a part of it!
Please continue to post on various issues in international student ministry, both to spur it and improve it.
Your brother,
Mark Reeves
(Student, Western KY University)
You are welcome, Mark. Thank you for your encouraging response to my post.
J. D.
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