The Last Frontier

By an Anonymous Missionary
Delivered at the 1999 Southern Baptist Founders Conference

 

Woe to him who builds a city with bloodshed, and establishes a town by crime. Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the peoples labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:12-14).

 

         One of the things I love about Scripture, one of the glories of Scripture, is its honesty. The book of Habakkuk is a book of a complainer. The basic structure of this book is two complaints and a prayer. Complaint number one, "Judah is full of injustice God, why don't you do something?" And God says, "Ok, I will, I'm going to bring Babylon and destroy you." Complaint number two, "Wait a minute, your answer was worse than the problem." God's answer, "Wait until you see the whole picture." In 2:2-3 the Lord responds,

 

         And the Lord replied, "Write down the revelation and make it clear on tablets so that a herald may run with it, for the revelation awaits an appointed time, it speaks of the end and will not prove false, though it linger wait for it, it will certainly come and not delay."

 

And what is the final picture? We see it in 2:12-14, "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

Now think about the prophet's environment; internally the people of God were being destroyed by corruption and idolatry. Josiah's reforms hadn't outlived him, and already the people had returned to ways that were utterly displeasing to God. Externally, the nation was facing impending disaster from Babylon, and it is in this setting of internal corruption and external disaster, that one of the most dramatic promises of Scripture is made. "The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." It is a promise whose foundation is nothing less than the sovereignty of God Himself. Consider Habakkuk 1:6, "I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people." So much for superpower pretensions! Babylon may have thought it was in charge, but it is God who raised up the Babylonians to do His will. In 2:13, it is the Lord Almighty who has determined judgment. The promise is based on the fact that whatever the condition of the people of God and international politics may be, God is sovereign and He is going to accomplish his purposes, not in spite of, but through everything that man can throw at the people of God. The content of the promise is nothing less than the knowledge of God's glory. I don't need to remind this group of people about this, but one of the most encouraging things that I am hearing right now that is coming out of our missionary learning centers is that people are being told that the point about missions is not us, the point is God. That is a pretty significant development within our organization. I just had a two-year journeyman join me as my administrative assistant, and I was curious to find out what he learned when he had come through orientation, and that is the one thing that stuck in his mind. He said, "This is not about me, this is not even about the nations, it's about God. He is the point, His glory is the content of the promises, and everything else we do, evangelism, and church planting are all aimed at that end."

A time will come when all missionary effort will cease. A time will never come when worship ceases. As I heard at my own baccalaureate service from seminary, the whole point of what we are doing is to recruit for the choir, to recruit for the choir of heaven. But the scope of this is stunning because it is that "the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of His glory." It is universal and overwhelming, "as waters cover the sea." When you think about that literally, the sea is miles deep in places; to that extent, "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God's glory." That is the big picture. That is what God intends to do, and you can see this from Genesis to Revelation. God's intention is nothing less than to entirely reclaim this planet for His glory.

Because of that perspective then the book of Habakkuk goes on to end in a prayer. But this time it is a prayer largely of praise, it's a prayer that expresses joy in the face of reality; remember, reality hasn't changed. Judah is still corrupt, and the Babylonians are still coming, but the prayer at the end of Habakkuk is a glorious expression of praise to God and as a result of it, the prophet finds renewed strength for the task in the middle of one of the worst times in this nation's history; he knows how it's going to end. That is the big picture at which we are looking. In the face of corruption within the people of God, which is as true today as it was then, in the face of an external world of tyranny, injustice, and determined opposition to God and His work, God's agenda for human history is that "the earth be filled with the knowledge of His glory as overwhelmingly as waters cover the sea."

What is the current reality then? God gave this prophesy through the prophet centuries ago, where do things stand now? What is the world like now? What are we doing about it? And perhaps, most significantly, what should you be doing about it?

 

What is the world like?

First, what is the world like? I want to give you a little history lesson on the history of missions. In the late 18th century, evangelical Christianity was largely confined to northwestern Europe and the eastern part of what is now the United States. There were other churches in other places, whether the gospel was heard is another matter. Then the modern missionary movement started, in the beginning with people like William Carey and others, largely as a movement to the coasts of the unreached world, and the unreached world was just about everywhere. So you had people like Carey going to Calcutta, which is on the coast of India. You had Judson going to Burma, and he actually went inland for a while, but it wasn't on his own effort. You had people going to the coast of China; there was a movement to the coasts, to sort of beachhead for the gospel in places where Christ was not yet known.

The second wave occurred in about the middle of the 19th century when people began to realize, "Hey we've only touched the edge, we've only touched the fringe." So there was a substantial movement inland, and many of the great faith missions were started in that time, indicated with that word inland in their title, specifically showing that we are not going to be content to stay on the coast where the foreign powers have their military bases, and it's safe; we are going inland. And hence, you had, Africa Inland Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, China Inland Mission that's now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. There was this great move to go from the coasts, where it was relatively safe, to the inland, so that many people lost their lives because they gave up the protection of the Colonial powers in that day.

That's the way things have been for quite a while, until the great Lausanne Convention in 1974. Ralph Winter, in addressing that convention shook up people incredibly by, for the first time in a significantly public way, exposing the reality that we had not even touched a large portion of the human race. That yes, there was a church in just about every country, not all of them, there were at that point still about five with none in it, but there were hidden peoples, there were people groups hidden in these countries, that no gospel witness had yet reached.

Well, where were Southern Baptists at this time? This was the 70's and we were where we had been for a long time, with our heads in the sand in the glorious splendor of our isolation. We were ignoring what the rest of the Evangelical world was saying, so that things continued with business as usual. Then something really very radical happened in the mid 80's: the Board invited a man named David Barrett, one of the most significant missions researchers in the 20th century, to join the Board.[1] He happens to be Anglican and British, and our Board invited him to come as a consultant. The convention had adopted Bold Mission Thrust in 1976, and the goal was, more or less, the evangelization of the world, and the Board wanted an outside observer to come in and see how we were doing. What Dr. Barrett said was, you are not only not going to achieve Bold Mission Thrust, you are incapable of it; you are structurally incapable of fulfilling the Great Commission as things stand right now. To break it down, he came up with some categories that we have continued to use, along with much of the Evangelical world, in thinking of the world not just as the world, but in really three parts: World C, World B, and World A. World C is the Christian world; we use the term loosely. Dr. Barrett and I had some argument over this. He defines it as anyone who calls himself a Christian. I tend to think that probably God doesn't look at things quite the same way. This includes every denomination that has any affiliation of any sort with Christianity. Nevertheless, there is World C; it is the Christian world, the world where there is some affiliation or identity with the Christian faith. World B consists of those who do not in any way identify themselves as Christians but are around Christians, with a gospel witness accessible to them. Our missions effort were all aimed either at World C-those who call themselves Christians but who have no lively faith in Christ-or at World B-those who are around Christians.  The fact is that we were not doing anything at all for the last part, World A-that part of the world that not only had no identity with Christianity but also had no access to the gospel whatsoever.

 

World A-People Groups

We had no structure to tackle World A at all.  Well, what is World A? World A, first of all is made up of people groups. When the Scripture refers to "nations," it is it not referring to political units, but it refers to "people groups." As Americans we sometimes have a very hard time grasping that because of the relative homogeneity of our society, and the manner in which things sort of get blended together. Ethnic identity, compared to the rest of the world, is a fairly minor deal in this country. That is not the case in the rest of the world.

People groups are defined as distinct by virtue of language. You have no idea how blessed you are to live in a country where you can travel 3,000 miles, and people speak almost the same language. I lived in Boston for a while, and it's questionable up there! We speak English, not only does our whole country speak English, but most of the world is at least learning English. This is not the case in most countries. Did you know that in the country of India alone, according to their own statistics, there are 1,652 distinct languages in the country? Even a small country like Afghanistan, small as it is, has about 23 million people in it with 50 different languages spoken in that nation. Most educated men will speak one of two trade languages in Afghanistan. I said educated, though only seven percent of the population can read. So that tells you how extensive intercommunication is. In India, out of the 1,652 languages, according to the 1993 edition of Operation World, 46 of those 1,652 have the Bible, 35 additional ones have the New Testament, and 60 more have portions of Scripture. That's out of 1,652 languages. Of the 50 languages in Afghanistan, one has the entire Bible in a dialect that most people cannot read. Even most of those that can read cannot read this dialect. Two have the New Testament in an accessible form, out of fifty languages. If you don't speak the same language, you're not going to communicate the gospel. The linguistic diversity of the world is an astonishing thing.

People groups can also be distinguished by history and by religious heritage, even when language is held in common. A classic example that most people are now aware of to some extent is Yugoslavia. The Serbs, the Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims all speak the same language, Serbo-Croatian. But a Serb is Orthodox, a Croat is Roman Catholic, and a Muslim is obviously a Muslim. It all goes back to history-the history of conflict between the Ottoman Empire back in the early middle ages. Those people speak the same language but they hate each other, and they have hated each other for a very long time; and that's probably not going to end anytime soon because the blood vendettas have gone on from generation to generation to generation.

Again, as Americans we have very little sense of history and fail to realize that what happened in Kosovo in the 14th century is a crucial, deeply felt, emotional issue for every Serb, because they are still living with the consequences of it. We didn't have a history in the 14th century but for them it's a living reality. So people are separated by history and by religious affiliation. Actually, someone better put it, a Serb is someone who doesn't go to the Orthodox Church, a Croat is someone who doesn't go to the Catholic Church, and a Bosnian Muslim is someone who never goes to the Mosque. It's not even a matter of actual religious practice; it is a matter of identity, and identity separates people.

Sometime people groups are separated by geography, where you have mountain ranges and deserts, where people speak the same language, but simply have no access to one another. Sometime political boundaries can end up dividing a people group. The people group that I was assigned to until the past year is a good example. The Soviets basically sealed their southern border. Previously, after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviets cut off all communication, so that about half my people group was north of that border, half south of it, and they went their separate ways, with even their languages diverging, just in the span of 70 years. So there are a number of ways in which people groups can be defined. The important thing to realize is that there are barriers to the natural expansion to the church all over the world, serious barriers-barriers that unless someone makes a point of crossing, the gospel will not reach beyond them.

 

Unreached people groups

So, World A is made up of people groups, and more specifically, it's made up of unreached people groups. This again is one of the things that I can't stress enough because it's sometime difficult for Americans to grasp, but my part of the world is full of people groups that have few to no believers. The people group I worked with consists of 13 million people. When my wife and I arrived on the ground in 1992, we were the first Christian workers of any organization allowed in. Out of that 13 million, there was one known believer. One! There were no churches. None-zero, among them. There was not a Bible anyone could read, much less any other literature; there was nothing, absolutely nothing. That can be multiplied across Central Asia. Within Central Asia in 1992, when I work began in earnest after the fall of the Soviet Union, there was not a single people that had more than four believers in it. We're talking about a region that has about 100 million people in it with not a single people group having more than four believers. Bless the Lord, today there is not a single people group in Central Asia proper that has less than a couple of hundred believers. But still, that's a couple hundred out of a hundred million.

World A is made up of people groups, it's made up of unreached people groups, people groups with no access to the gospel. The reason it's in that condition is that it is made of unreached people groups in restricted access countries. I am responsible right now for a sub-region that spans fourteen countries and territories. There is not a single one of them where you can get a missionary visa. In every one of these, evangelism is either illegal or very highly restricted. Often, for example, it is okay to evangelize the Russians who remained behind after the Soviet Union collapsed, because a Russian is after all a Christian in the minds of the local Muslims. For that matter, communism is Christian because communism is Russian, and Russians are Christians. People in most of the world cannot separate ethnic identity from religious identity. But evangelism among Muslims is illegal and just not permitted. Bibles, literature, and electronic media are highly restricted, though there again, it is okay to bring a Russian Bible in, but it is not okay to bring a Bible in one of the local languages. There is persecution, either official or unofficial, varying in intensity, against local native believers. It can vary anywhere from losing your job, to in one country that is very dear to my heart and part of region, almost inevitably being killed.

 

Martyrdom

Martyrdom is a serious thing. I think most of you know, I hope you know, that there have been more martyrs for the Christian faith in the 20th century than all previous centuries combined. It's one thing to read about it in a book, it is another thing when it happens to your friend. It is something to share the gospel with someone, knowing full well that the consequences of doing what you earnestly pray they do, may very well mean that they die. It puts us to shame. I had a 17 year-old boy that was from the most restricted country in my region that I had the privilege of being present when the Holy Spirit brought him into new life. And I remember asking what he thought would happen to him. He said, " Well, I don't think my father will kill me; I'm not sure." We talked about it for a while, he said, "My neighbors certainly will kill me if they find out." Finally this 17 year-old kid looked at me and said, "If everything you said about Jesus is true and I now know that it is, then He is worth more than my life." Those were not pious words; those were the words of a 17 year-old boy who didn't know if he would be alive that night because of his stand for Christ. That is the world I live in, it's a world of authoritarian governments with no guarantee of civil liberties, governments that are not afraid to monitor or stop the work of the gospel.

We live in a place of unparalleled freedom here in the States, but that is not the world in which my co-workers live in Central Asia. My wife was once on the phone with a co-worker when a voice broke in and said, "Would you please slow down, you are talking too fast, and we are having a hard time understanding you." We could usually hear the radio playing in the background of the KGB agent who was monitoring our phone calls. My mail would come to me opened with a letter opener and taped shut, just to let me know they had been reading it. Some of our co-workers were having troubles with their e-mails, so they went to the local e-mail server and said, "We've lost some of our messages." They replied, "Oh, no problem, we have them right over here," and reached and took a disk and handed it to them with all of their e-mails on it-just to let us know, they read them all. One of my co-workers this past spring was on his way out of his country, and I hope you understand that I cannot name in a public setting any of these countries specifically or any of my co-workers. He was on his way to a conference. He was stopped at the airport and strip-searched. He was taking out with him a disk that had on it the text of the children's Bible in his language that had just recently been translated. It was confiscated and lost, and some people were thrown out of his country as a result, and his status is very tenuous at this point. In another part of our region, there were some folks who were working on the translation of the Scriptures for the first time ever into that language, when the police came in, confiscated the computers, confiscated all the disks, confiscated all the work that had been done, arrested the believers, beat them and threw them in jail. They are still there; that was several months ago. In another place, where we were beginning to see some fruit for the first time ever-it is a very, very tough area-all the foreign workers that were there had their visas revoked, and all the believers were arrested and are still in jail. That's World A-a world of a bewildering variety of languages and people groups, who through history have had no access to the gospel and where there is a determined effort to keep things that way.

How big is it? Well, World A has major blocks, the Muslims, the Hindus, and the Buddhists. There are one billion Muslims in the world. They make up 20% of the world's population and are growing quickly. There are 716 million Hindus, and they make up 13% of the world's population. There are 613 million Buddhists, and they make up 11% of the world's population. Now some of these folks do have access to the gospel, but not many. At the very least, World A comprises 25% of the world's population. The figure we use at the Board for all people groups of whatever size, that have yet to have a significant gospel witness is around 2,400 different people groups. Thirteen to fourteen years ago, we were doing nothing for any of them; bless the Lord today we are targeting eighty people groups; we are targeting the largest eighty but that is 80 out of 2,400. So, what are we doing about it? That is picture of the world that I'm working in, the world that God called me to, and that I pray He calls many of you to as well.

 

What are we going to do about it?

What are we going to do about it? We are motivated and fueled by some basic convictions, and I want to tell you that I am not just speaking for myself here. I have been a Calvinist for years. I was one when we joined the Board, they knew it, they took me anyway, and now suddenly I find that I am not even remotely alone. These are the kinds of convictions that underline and motivate what we are doing.

 

God's intention

The first and most fundamental conviction is God's intention. God's intention for the world is to call to Himself a people from every tribe, and tongue and people and nation. God's intention for His church is to make disciples from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. God's method for accomplishing his intention is the proclamation of His Word. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ," it's not just going to happen. It's going to happen by the means God has ordained, and we are that means, and none other.

 

No resistant people groups

The second basic conviction is that there is no such thing as a resistant people group. One of the things that I often get is, "You're working with Muslims? You can't work with Muslims, they are resistant!" It was said last night, I really can't say it any better: are there degrees of being dead? Is a Muslim in Central Asia any more dead than your unregenerate neighbor next door? Does it take any more of a miracle to bring my Muslim friend to Christ than it did to bring you or me to Christ? I don't think so. It is a miracle for any of us. If God has said He is going to call a people to Himself, it's going to happen, period. There is nothing that any human, or any demon in hell can do to stop it. Muslims are not resistant, they are neglected; the problem is with us. The problem is that we have allowed ourselves to be so motivated by fear, to be so motivated by an obsession with comfort, that we've stayed where it is safe. So the vast majority of all Muslims, to put it in human terms, have never had the chance to be resistant because we haven't taken the gospel to them. It was true a few years ago, bless the Lord, it is no longer true today, that only 2% of the Protestant missionary force in the world of all denominations combined was trying to reach Muslims that make up 20% of the world's population. God is doing a mighty work in our day. The numbers of our co-workers has increased greatly in my region alone, that of the Central and Southern Asian region. My massive region is one of fourteen in the world, and has 26% of the world's population. A lot of those people are down in South Asia, so because the region is too big, it is broken up into sub-regions. I am responsible for the sub-region of Central Asia. In my region alone, two years ago, we had 214 total workers-that's long term, short term, two years or more. Today we have close to 500, so we have more than doubled in two years, and we now make up about 10% of the total force of the Board. You combine the other regions that are tackling World A, and we probably make up about 20%, which is a big improvement over two-percent, but still that is 20% trying to reach all of World A-about half the world's population.

There is no such thing as a resistant people; the only reality that matters is a sovereign God who is capable of taking a heart of stone and turning it into a heart of flesh, who is capable of calling the dead to life and who has said that He would honor the preaching of his Word by calling a people to Himself through it; He will do it, and He is doing it. What we are seeing over and over again is that when we go, God is waiting to use us to call people to Himself. And it's happening, it's happening all over World A. We cannot publicize the statistics; you will not find them in Commission, on 82,000 websites, because we dare not publicize the statistics for fear of backlash on the part of governments and other forces. But the fact of the matter is that God is right now calling a people to Himself from among those that you would least expect. I wish I could tell you some stories, but it would get people killed if I did, so I won't.

 

Taking the long-view

The third basic conviction that fuels our obedience is the importance of taking the long view. Paul says, "One sows, another waters, but God makes the harvest." There has been, in my mind, some really, really, bizarre talk about a dichotomy between harvest fields and going to unreached peoples. The reason a harvest field is a harvest field is generally because there are those who have spent years laboring, sowing the seed, watering the ground, and picking up the stones. A classic example is Africa. You heard last night about the explosion of the gospel in Sub-Saharan Africa. That explosion followed a century of seemingly fruitless labor on the part of missionaries. Sowing the seed, being faithful, sticking it out, being willing to persevere, and God was doing His slow, imperceptible work. When God had suddenly done all the preparation the He knew needed to be done, there was an explosive harvest, and it continues to this day. We cannot expect to simply waltz into a place that has had no exposure whatsoever to the gospel and boom, we will have a harvest on our hands. It does happen sometimes; God is totally in control and He can do whatever He likes, but that doesn't seem to be the way He usually works. So we have to go in prepared to say, "I will give my life for all of my life, and if I see no fruit, that is God's business, not mine." Here again this runs so counter to the culture of the West today. It is very difficult to get members of my generation or those the younger to commit to anything, even if it is good, for more than a few years. To say, "To really be effective, you need to go and be lost in an area, Kipling called the back of beyond, for the rest of your life, and you may see nothing, you may see God do something and you may not, that is not your business, your business is to stick it out and be faithful and that's it." That's not an easy message for people to swallow, but we are convinced that without that perspective, without that attitude, we cannot expect to see God do through us what He intends to do. If He doesn't use us, He will raise up someone else.

 

Centrality of the church

The fourth basic conviction that not only fuels what I am doing, but that I have also discovered increasingly fuels the work of our entire IMB, is the centrality of the church in the work of God. This is a major development and recent development. It wasn't too long ago, that if you asked anyone from what was then the Foreign Mission Board what out task was, they would have said, "Our task is evangelism." That is not what you hear now. It went from our task is evangelism to our task is evangelism that results in churches. Now it has gone from our task is evangelism that results in churches to our task is evangelism that results in church planting movements that are totally out of our control, so that we can leave and go somewhere else. That is what we are after. There is an encouraging revival in ecclesiology among our workers. Again, I have never really been real secret about what I believe, and what my convictions are, and so when I was asked by my regional leadership to spend a couple of hours at our recent region-wide annual meeting talking about the importance of the church, and then take some workshop sessions to give a Biblical ecclesiology to our workers, that said a great deal about the direction things are going. As I stood before a bunch of students from our "Two Plus Two Program" for seminaries that have folks do two years in seminary and then come two years to the field to finish their degree, the only negative comment I got was, "Why am I just now hearing this?" There was no resistance, there was no resentment, in spite of giving a pretty detailed, extensive ecclesiology, so much so that people were saying, "This is great, why am I just now hearing this?" So, there is a heart, a spirit, a thirst, to go back to the Scriptures and examine what the church is and to embrace it's centrality in the work of God, recognizing that God actually has something to say about what it's supposed to be like. God's Word actually regulates the church, and that's now accepted and embraced by our workers. Those are the basic convictions. Now there is a final, very important one.

 

The will of God

Our fifth conviction is that no government on earth has the right to veto the expressed will of God. No government on earth has the right to tell us that we cannot fulfill the great commission within their borders. No government on earth can tell us, "You've got to stay out, we are going to keep our people in bondage to Satan," they can't do that. So, they may not grant us a missionary visa, which is their prerogative, but they are not going to keep us out. That doesn't mean that we then throw up our hands and say, "Well, until they agree that it's okay to obey God, we don't have to." So what do we do? What do we do in this wonderful, weird world called World A? First thing we do is to start with the people group; that's our focus, our basic unit of operation. First we assign a special kind of missionary called a "strategy coordinator." These aren't places we can just waltz into; we've got to figure out how to do it and how to do it right, and so we assign someone who's first job is to learn everything they can about that people group, about their setting, to learn what can be done, to learn how it is possible to get the witness of the gospel to that people. As that person learns (it is usually a couple, they develop a comprehensive strategy that include things like, mobilizing massive prayer for those people, developing tools such as seeing to it that the Bible is translated. Almost everywhere we are working there is no Scripture to work with, so it is kind of hard to begin. How many of you are familiar with the Jesus film produced by Campus Crusade for Christ? It's an incredibly effective tool that basically puts the Gospel of Luke in video form. We try to get it dubbed into the language the people are working with. We also work with other agencies that do radio broadcasting to see how can we get this language, this people, included in a regular radio broadcast of the gospel. The strategy coordinator works with other evangelical organizations in order to give a cooperative effort to the job. This has been a radical change.

I went to an inter-denominational seminary. One of the reasons why I was at first very reluctant to even consider our Board is because of it's appalling reputation for isolationism; those days are totally gone and dead now. As a matter of fact, at a conference we hold each year for all the organizations working in Central Asia, in almost all the people group partnerships, the organizer and facilitator of the partnership is one of our IMB workers, because we are passionately committed to not wasting effort, and not wasting money in our attempts to bring the gospel to these people. The strategy coordinator determines modes of entry that we call "platforms." So you can't go in as a missionary; but they are perfectly willing to take doctors or engineers or teachers or nurses or almost anything but preachers. They are willing to take you, knowing that you are a Christian, knowing you are coming motivated by the love of Christ, and knowing that when people ask you questions you are going to answer them. So, it's fine that I can't be a missionary but I can be a Christian, motivated by the love of Christ to share the good news of Jesus with people and to serve the people by, in my case, teaching English, so it's fine that I can't be a missionary. What we have discovered is that for years we had been allowing governments to keep us out. Sure they locked the front door but they left door back door wide open. Just about everywhere within my sub-region, with full honesty about our spiritual identity, we can get in. We are watched, we have to be careful, we have to be discreet, at times very discreet, but we can get in. So, the strategy coordinator looks at the big picture and thinks, how can we bring a full court press on this people group, to bring the gospel to them in every fashion and form, to penetrate every level of that society with the good news of Jesus Christ. The strategy coordinator determines the strategy, determines the modes of entry, the platforms to be used, writes job requests, recruits personnel, and then goes with the team, ideally, as the team leader, as a player coach to implement that strategy. That is our basic means of approach. We can get in with the good news; we just have to do it intelligently.

We need people-this is the hard part. This is where you start coming in. What we need badly are workers. We need workers that are, as it were, dually competent. We need people with a marketable secular skill of some sort, but also people that are competent in the ministry of the gospel. We haven't done too well at producing those types of doubly competent people. We will get folks that have good secular skills so that we can easily get them a job in the country; but all too often they don't have a clue how to share the gospel with somebody, and they certainly don't know much about the church and what needs to happen to establish it. Or we got folks that have good ministry training experience but can't demonstrate real integrity in their platform because they really don't know how to do anything but preach. Those folks don't last; the government throws them out after a short amount of time. What we need are folks with a sort of dual competency. It can be produced. People can be trained along those lines.

The joy and responsibility that we have in my part of the world is laying the initial foundation for the immerging church. It is incredible and amazing. It is amazing to see churches spring up where there has never, ever been a body of people worshiping Christ before; but it is also very frightening because we realize that folks look at us-these new believers look at us-as the models for what the church is supposed to be. One of the things that frustrates me most due to the prohibition against traditional missionaries in my part of the world is that the folks that to tend to be most attracted and sign on, particularly with other organizations, are folks that have very little theological training, very little Biblical knowledge, and so foundations are being laid that we will regret for years to come. Our goal is to lay a good foundation, so there are things we don't do. There are things that for the sake of the integrity of the church, and for the sake of its spiritual health, we refuse to do. We do not pastor churches, period. Whenever one of our folks steps into the role of pastoring a local church, what we are saying is, "Only the well educated, wealthy Westerner can do this, I am afraid none of you are qualified." That is the message that comes across, whether we say it or not. What we find is that local leadership never springs up if we are willing and step into the leadership roles. We don't build buildings. I plead with you, please don't build buildings; please don't pay to have buildings built for churches. The church did really well without buildings for the first 200 years or so of its existence. When foreign money comes in to build a building, church growth, of the healthy sort, tends to stop. We have seen it all over the world. As a region, we have made a comprehensive statement that we will never build a building. Our folks are in a persecution situation anyway, so they don't need to be visible. Churches meet in people's homes; sounds sort of familiar from the New Testament. Where foreign money comes in to build buildings, to subsidize salaries, the health of the indigenous, immerging church tends to go down the tubes.

We also don't institutionalize leadership training. We've seen that in parts of the world where the statement is made that for it to be a real church you have to have a seminary trained and ordained pastor. Pastors get sent off to the West, or to somewhere to the big city, and guess what? They never come back to the hard places, and if they do come back, they don't fit anymore, and they are not really able to minister effectively. We strive to train people in ministry, and not train people for ministry. There is a world of difference between those two things because our goal is to leave. Our goal is not to stay there. Our goal is to be available to God for starting something that gets out of control so that we don't need to be around anymore. Our goal is to establish a good enough foundation of biblical understanding that what we say we believe about the church can be true of them too, that the local church can actually be autonomous. We as Baptists have had far too great a tendency to act like we believe in congregational polity in America, but like we believe in Episcopal polity across the ocean. Yet the same Holy Spirit that is capable of leading congregations here to the truth through His Word is just as capable of doing that overseas as well. And it is sheer racism on our part to act otherwise. Our goal is to leave. A lot of people talk about it, our goal is to actually do it, and bless the Lord, we already have one situation since we started our work in Central Asia in about 1992 in which we've had one team that has redeployed elsewhere because they set a goal within this one particular people group of a church for every thousand within that people group, and they met the goal. They met the goal in the span of about five years. So they are somewhere else. We are not going to stick around to control those people; we prefer to leave Christ as Lord of those churches. So, that is what we are doing.

 

What should you do?

 

What should you do about it? Here is my challenge to you, and here's what I want you to hear from all of this.

 

Pursue reformation of the church

The first thing I plead with you to do is to pursue reformation of the church. For the sake of the reputation of the gospel overseas, and for the sake of the quality of the workers we receive, I plead with you to pursue the reformation of the church. These two are not enemies; missions and reformation are best friends. Unless there is genuine reformation in the church our ability to continue pursuing what God has called us to is going to be severely compromised.

 

Learn about God's world

The second thing I encourage you to do is become a life long learner about God's world. It is really kind of embarrassing how ignorant Americans are about geography. I meet people in Central Asia that can name all fifty states in America to me, and then they will ask me, "What do most Americans think about?"-and they will name their country-and I have to tell them that 99% of all Americans don't have a clue that their country exists. I encourage you to become a lifelong learner about the world. Give the Holy Spirit weapons to use in your mind. I encourage you very strongly to get Operation World; you will learn a lot about the world through it. Get a world map, put it up on your wall, and start reading newspapers or magazines that actually talk about the world. I would commend The Economist, a British publication that has some of the best world news in it. Get to know the world. Find out what is out there beyond our shores. Get to know missions. Read, if you haven't, Let the Nations Be Glad! Read books like the new one by Patrick Johnstone, The Church is Bigger Than You Think. Become a lifelong learner, not just about missionary support, but about missions and the role in which it takes place.

 

The call of God

My third encouragement to you, and this is perhaps the most crucial of all addressed primarily to you pastors, is to come to grips with the call of God, and then take the lead in your churches. One of the most difficult things we face when we come back to the states is what we call pastoral avoidance. The pastor is often the bottleneck that keeps a proper focus on missions from happening in the church. I think this is because pastors really haven't dealt with coming before God and asking why they have been called to obey the Great Commission by not going. It can be dangerous to deal with it. I had a friend who preached a mission sermon and his wife came forward in response, stating that she felt called to missions. He said, "What am I going to say to the congregation." She unsympathetically said, "You're the pastor, you figure it out." They are serving in South Africa now.

 

How do you obey the Great Commission?

You need first to come before God and not ask if you are called, but ask how you are called. Acknowledge before God that you are called to obey the Great Commission, and the Great Commission does not just extend across the street; it extends around the world. Lay yourself open to go anywhere. I was one of those really stupid people that tried to set limits on what God could do with my life. When I accepted my call to the ministry-which is a really stupid way of putting it-when I finally gave into what God knew would happen anyway, I made a deal with God. The deal was, given the fact that I was obviously not the sort who was cut out for oversees service that I would stay in America and be a pastor. I have spent the last seven years in Central Asia. The things I have discovered is that living in a place where we had no heat in the winter, and it was 14 degrees outside, living in a place where the electricity is off more than it is on, living in a place where you could spend all day hunting for anything you need to buy, is where I'd much rather be than here. My family and I are mourning the fact that we have to be in the West right now, just because that is where the office is. We don't want to be there, we want to be back where we were; we want to be home in Central Asia. The reason is clear: there is no greater joy than being on the cutting edge of what God is doing. I've had a far better life than any of you have had for the last seven years, being in one of the hardest places to live in the world. I plead with you not to set limits on what God can call you to do. In fact, I plead with you to say to God, "I'll go to the edge until You tell me that my role in fulfilling Your call to the edge, keeps me here." Until you have done that, you cannot be the kind of leader God is calling you to be within your congregation. Until you have dealt with that, and know with certainty that being willing to go anywhere, God has called you to stay here, until you have settled that issue, you cannot lead your congregation to be biblical in it's fulfillment of the Great Commission. Settle the issue: come to grips with the call of God, and then as He leads you, follow; and if He leads you to stay, then take the lead in your church in making it a missions-minded church and a missions-oriented church.

 

Pray

The way that you can do this is to transform your church's prayer life. It has been said, and I think that it is true, that in our prayer meetings we spend more time keeping the saints out of heaven than praying sinners into it. Prayer meeting should be one of the most dynamic times of the week, and it's usually not, you and I both know it. I encourage you to incorporate prayer for the world in every level of your church life. Make your prayer meetings, not a time when the pastor prays a short prayer and then you really have Bible study, but a time when you get on your knees and do battle in prayer, doing battle for the world. I plead with you to pray for your workers on the field. We sorely need it. Spiritual warfare is real, but spiritual warfare is usually not what people think it is. The enemy doesn't need to do spectacular things since he has so many more effective tools, such as discouragement, dissention, and distraction. When you live in a place where it can take you eight-hours to find light bulbs to buy-and I am not exaggerating-or you have to stand in line for three hours to pay your phone bill, and you have to do this every time you make an international phone call, it is easy just to get distracted by the busy-ness of life; we need your prayers. I plead with you to pray for your workers that God would keep us focused, that God would keep our minds fixed upon the reality of His glory and His sovereignty, and not on the circumstances around us, that God would keep us united, and that God would keep us pure.

One of the toughest things I have had to face coming into the responsibility I have now is dealing with the reality of sin on the part of missionaries. It has been heartbreaking. That is too mild of a word; it has been shattering. The enemy will do whatever is conveniently at hand to derail the work of God. We had the work in a city that is dearest to my heart nearly destroyed by immorality on the part of one of our workers. Pray for us please. We desperately need it, and so do the nations. You guys have the theology to pray correctly, to pray the kind of prayers we need; none of these wimpy prayers, "Oh please Lord bring people to the point of neutrality so they can decide for or against." Pray them into heaven! "Lord, change their hearts, Lord break down barriers, Lord, change governments." I have prayed many times for a political ruler, "Lord, convert him or remove him." Pray powerfully, specifically as you learn about the world for the nations that need to know the gospel. If you need material to pray about, give me your address, and I'll see to it that you have it. Believe me, I have plenty of stuff that can be prayed about from our part of the world. One of my assignments for my new assistant is actually to put together a sub-region wide comprehensive prayer guide, or the sort that we can afford to publish publicly, which is a bit touchy. You will realize that some of the prayer requests go out deliberately vague to protect believers and workers so that we can't name specific places or names, but God knows the aim of your praying. I would really love to have the churches represented in this room focusing their prayers on our part of the world. Pray.

 

Give

Give: yes, I hadn't talked about it, but I have to talk about money. We are the best-supported missionaries in the world, and I am very appreciative to you and to all the congregations that support us. The Cooperative Program, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, make it possible for us to focus our attention on our task, rather than raising support. It is estimated that the average faith missionary spends 40% of his or her time raising or maintaining support. We are free to spend that 40% of our time focusing on the task of bringing the good news of Jesus to the lost. God has been doing good things in our convention, and the funding is up, but the needs are up even more. Again, my region more than doubled in the span of two years; our budget did not more than double. Our budget increased about 30% for a 100% increase in personnel. Given the kind of region we are, we find ourselves with the need to do first-time translations of the Bible, first time dubbings of the Jesus film into a new language, first-time broadcasts over the radio into a new language, and we have platform needs. So I encourage you to examine what you do with your money and ask how it reflects what you think is important. I'm not going to say anymore, I'm meddling now, I know. But there is a lot of stuff that we look at and say, "That would be nice, but we can't afford it," and I'm talking about stuff like translating the Bible for the first time or feeding people who are starving to death. I encourage you to give.

 

Go

But finally I encourage you to go. My prayer for this week, out of the people sitting in this room is that God will raise up workers who will take the gospel where it has never been heard; and I selfishly pray it happens in Central Asia. We pride ourselves as a denomination as having the largest mission board of any, but really it is a pretty pathetic showing, don't you agree? There are over 500 people in this room. There are more people in this room than there are Southern Baptists trying to reach the 1.3 billion in my region of Central and Southern Asia. If you take the number we claim are Southern Baptists, and the number of workers in the International Mission Board, what it boils down to is that it take 3,000 Southern Baptist to produce one missionary. If you take a more realistic statistic it may drop to only 2,000 Southern Baptists to produce one missionary, but that is also one of the worst percentages of any evangelical denomination. So whom do we need? We need all ages, we don't' just need the young. I live in a part of the world that has a much more biblical perspective on age than does America, for someone with white hair will be shown respect and listened to in a way that a kid like me will not. We need people who are willing to say that there is no such thing as retirement, that it's just an opportunity to devote full time to taking the gospel to where it's never been heard. We need all professions. We can use preachers though we have to train them harder. We also need people with good secular skills that have been discipled well in their local church, and are well equipped to share the gospel. But the key thing above everything else is that we need people who are humble and contrite of heart, who tremble at His Word. I'll take someone who's humble and teachable over someone who's talented, any day of the week. We need folks who are willing to say, "The gospel is worth more than my life, " who are willing to say, "I will be obscure for the rest of my life if that's what it takes," who are willing to say, "I'll be inconvenienced for the rest of my life if that's what it takes, because the incredible joy of the gospel makes all the rest of that stuff look petty and pale and insignificant."

I plead with you, pursue reformation in your churches, become a lifelong learner about God's world, come to grips with God's call and take the lead in your church. Transform your church's prayer life, give to the work of missions, and most of all, I plead with you to come. I am standing here, asking you to come over and help us. I pray that by the power of the Spirit, God will call some of you to do just that.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "Board" refers to the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (IMB), formerly known as the Foreign Mission Board.

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