Saturday, December 29, 2012

Partnering with Foreign Missions

As I get ready to head off this week for a short term mission’s trip to Ghana in West Africa, I thought it appropriate to record some thoughts. Something is afoot in missions. During the 1800’s, Britain led the way as the largest missionary sending country on the planet. Now they are a post Christian society.

During the 1900’s, it was the United States. But those days of fervent missionary zeal are slipping away from these shores. Now, during the 2000’s, the United States is becoming more a mission field, than a sending field as our country has gone more and more secular and lost the vision and the passion to save a sin cursed world.

Now, the center of Christianity has gone abroad. Actually, there isn’t any center anymore because Christianity is thriving in such unlikely places as China and Iran, and Africa. But the trend is for the Christians in each country to reach their own people, not to rely on foreign missionaries to come and minister cross-culturally.

Back in the 1980’s, an Indian man named K.P. Yohannan felt a deep burden for the lost multitudes in his own country, and he founded a mission organization called Gospel for Asia. Actually, it was formed in 1979. But he championed the idea that it was much more cost effective to support a native pastor on the field than to train an American in the culture and language and send him over at great expense for a period of four years.

How long does it take a person to learn a new culture so they can communicate effectively? How easy is it to overcome cultural barriers? How can you get an affluent American to live like the third world populations in abject poverty? How can you get them to forgo the comforts of home and adequate medical care far from anything or anyone familiar?

But a native pastor doesn’t have any of those worries. Train them in the Word of God, give them a bicycle, and away they go. They are right at home, because, well. . . they are at home. And they can do it full time for a few hundred dollars a year, rather than several thousand dollars each month as is the case with an American sent missionary.

One of the missionary families our church has supported, for instance, is shy about $2,500 per month of their need to go back to the field so they can minister again in Papua New Guinea. But the amount of money they are short each month could support a native pastor for a full year.

Not to mention, many of the most needy fields are closed to missionaries. The communist and Muslim countries don’t readily open their borders to those coming in to proselyte their people. So it requires one of their own – their fellow citizens – to reach them, someone who is already there.

Well, that’s the philosophy of IPM (International Partners in Ministry), the mission agency sponsoring this trip to Ghana. They provide, not missionaries on the field, but aid to the native pastors and workers.

For instance, I‘m going to Ghana to teach at the Solid Rock Baptist Bible College in the Master of Divinity Program. It was founded by, and is operated by, the Solid Rock Baptist Mission which is entirely operated out of Ghana by natives. They plant churches, operate Christian Schools, and train and place native pastors. They are doing a great and effective work throughout West Africa, and they only need a little help, which I can in part supply.

IPM came along side them at their invitation to help in areas like providing qualified seminary instructors as well as financial help in the construction of their new school buildings. But that is where I come in. I’ll be going in January to teach a one week course on the Pastor’s Family. I and one of their career missionaries will be sharing the teaching duties. My share will be to teach on child training and family devotions. I will be training native pastors from the Word of God so they will be better able to reach their own people throughout West Africa. We are partnering in their ministry.

This is something I have wanted to do for a long, long time - something I have felt God has wanted me to do for a long, long time. Now it is becoming a reality. I will be using the teaching gifts God has given me to, in part, replicate myself in those native pastors. I feel blessed and privileged to do this, and I feel blessed for your support and prayers as I go.

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