Church Planting & the Mission of God
Missions in the Era of Partnership: 5 Implications
JON DENNIS
LEAD FOR VISION & STRATEGY
More than 150 years ago, Henry Venn coined a provocative term: the euthanasia of mission.
It sounds morbid, doesn’t it?
But Venn had a positive point to make. Indigenous pastoral and missionary leadership isn’t just possible; it is essential to the global growth of the gospel. Missions must enter an eventual stage of clear indigenous leadership. Jehu Hanciles, who has studied Venn extensively, puts it this way: Venn, who was the “secretary of the London-based Church missionary society from 1840-1872, coined the term … to describe the vital process whereby a foreign mission becomes progressively indigenous and independent.”
I saw a flash of the beauty of indigenous leadership nearly fifteen years ago in Nairobi. I was walking with Paul, a native Kenyan church planter. Paul is a Luo. His tribe are fishermen from near Lake Victoria, northwest of Nairobi. Paul is tall, calm, and peaceful – but exuberant in his faith. He has an exceedingly quick smile. To know him is to love him.
We walked through Mathare, one of Nairobi’s larger slums with nearly 500,000 inhabitants. Around us were the global characteristics of a slum—an open stream of sewage running alongside the dirt road. Vibrant storefronts of corrugated steel packed next to each other along the dirt road offered fruit, vegetables, a cybercafé, and electronics.
Suddenly, Paul, with contentment and joy, said: “This is my home. This is where I belong.”
I remember the moment clearly. His affection for a place where virtually no Westerners live struck me – indeed, most Westerners would find it impossible to live in Mathare. Yet Paul was happy. Though he was born miles away, this was his boyhood home. “He loves it,” I thought, “And he wants to pastor and evangelize here.”
Such is the beauty of the euthanasia of missions.
Some mission-minded Christians in the West might push back against Venn’s terminology. Do we really want to put our own missionary efforts to death? But Venn wasn’t the first to embrace the euthanasia of missions. The Apostle Paul joyfully envisioned such a stage in his own ministry. Listen to how he speaks of his own mission being complete in Romans 15:19: “From Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.” Paul spoke as if his work was done: “I no longer have any room for work in these regions…” (Romans 15:23)
Roland Allen studied Paul’s missionary approach in depth and concluded: “In little more than ten years St. Paul established the Church in four provinces of the Empire, Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia and Asia. Before AD 47 there were no churches in these provinces; in AD 57 St. Paul could speak as if his work there was done.”
Was Paul’s work done? Not entirely. His work of encouragement wasn’t done. His work of friendship and gospel partnership wasn’t done. But somehow, when he wrote Romans 15, he saw his role differently. He no longer felt responsible for pioneering work in those regions or even propagating work. He saw his role as being one of partnership.
For Paul, something was ceasing. But this is because something else was being born—indigenous mission.
Biblically, euthanized missions is beautiful when it comes about because the church has become established in a region. And euthanized missions is even more beautiful when it paves the way for true partnership, for global koinonia.
Might we be entering such an era? Are we already in it? More directly, what does church planting and global missions look like when the church has become established in a region?
What Venn envisioned and the Apostle Paul spoke of has begun to happen globally. We are seeing a global shift in Christianity.
In his book World Christianity and the Unfinished Task, Lionel Young succinctly says, “As the day of Southern Christianity is dawning, so is the era of partnerships.”
He elsewhere explains, “In the year 1900 more than 80 percent of the world's Christians were either European or Anglo-American - and nearly all of the world's missionaries were being sent out to Africa, Asia, or Latin America from Western nations. In an extraordinary turn of events, spanning a little more than 100 years, the demographic center of Christianity dramatically shifted to the Southern Hemisphere. Today the vast majority of Christians, nearly 70 percent, are African, Asian, or Latin American and nearly half of the world's full-time cross-cultural missionaries are being sent out from the non-Western world.”
These are exciting times, but they require us to rebuild our Western approach to missions. This will be a collective task, but I offer five implications for doing missions in an age of partnership.
1 - NOTHING HAS CHANGED
No matter what era we are in, the main aim of missions remains the glory of God.
The first man and woman God created were tasked with being his image-bearers throughout the world. Psalm 67 gives voice to the heart-cry of God’s people: “Let the nations praise you!” The end result of missions is that people from every tongue and tribe are praising God (Revelation 7:9-10).
John Piper memorably articulated this point in his book Let the Nations Be Glad!, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't. Worship is ultimate, not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.” Piper writes, “Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal of missions. It's the goal of missions because in missions we simply aim to bring the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory. The goal of missions is the gladness of the people in the greatness of God.”
No era of missions—not even a partnership era—changes that.
“The Lord reigns; Let the earth rejoice; Let the many coastlands be glad! - Psalm 97:1
2 - TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
A second implication is that pastors and church leaders have a privilege and responsibility to envision what such a shift means for their local church’s mission.
The Scriptures teach us that it is the job of pastor-teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry (Ephesians 4:11-12). David Platt puts it this way, "It is the responsibility and privilege of pastors to feel the weight of the nations and to fan a flame for the global glory of God in every local church."
As God’s appointed leaders, it is not sufficient to rely on timeworn ruts of missional thinking in our local churches. We must let the Bible, not tradition or history, shape our church’s approach to missions. As hard as change may be, we must usher our Western churches into a new era of partnership.
3 - DON’T GROW LAX
A third implication is that this recentering of missions cannot lead us to become lax.
As the global church rises and as indigenous leaders emerge, we may be tempted to pull back our missions effort. Euthanized missions could lead to complacency.
That’s not how Paul approached it. He ached and prayed for established churches. He sent dear brothers to follow up with them. He rejoiced in their highs and grieved their lows. He wrote them and they wrote him. Zeal for missions gave way to zeal for partnership.
And so it should be for us.
The church I pastor still supports traditional missionaries. It’s a critical part of missions. But we have also begun partnering with churches globally. We’ve found this is even more energizing to our church. Far from the global shift leading us to become lax, it has lit a fire within us.
By God’s design, partnership is mutually catalyzing. The euthanasia of missions isn’t morbid. It’s alive!
4 - REFINE OUR MISSIOLOGY
A fourth implication of this global shift in Christianity is that we must refine our thinking about missions.
It is the task of every generation to carefully bring God’s word to bear on their unique moment in history. Back when there were few indigenous churches in the developing world, a biblical approach to missions focused on sending pioneer workers.
But now much of the world has established indigenous churches. So our thinking around missions needs to focus on partnership.
Allow me to illustrate what I mean. I love Andy Johnson’s careful biblical definition of missions. He writes, “I intend to stick to the traditional and historic use of ‘missions,’ meaning evangelism that takes the gospel across ethnic, linguistic, and geographic boundaries, that gathers churches and teaches them to obey everything Jesus commended.”
But I wonder in this age if we might augment his definition this way, “Missions is evangelism and partnerships that take the gospel across ethnic, linguistic, and geographic boundaries, that gathers churches, and teaches them to obey everything Jesus commended.”
5 - PRIORITIZE THE LOCAL CHURCH
As indigenous churches emerge globally, we must partner with those local churches to establish still more healthy local churches.
As indigenous churches around the globe emerge, some churches have shifted from supporting pioneering missionaries to supporting parachurch workers. But while parachurch work has a role, the biblical epicenter of missions is the local church.
The local church is the incubator, cradle, and mother of Christians. Ephesians 4:11-16 explains that it is the means God uses to grow his people into the image of Christ. 1 Timothy 3:15 calls it “the pillar and buttress of truth.” So it’s likewise God’s primary instrument for declaring the gospel to the world.
The new era of partnerships should be rooted in local churches partnering together for the sake of revitalizing and planting other local churches in their respective regions.
Tim Keller has argued it this way, “The vigorous, continual planting of new congregations is the single most crucial strategy for (1) the numerical growth of the body of Christ in a city and (2) the continual corporate renewal and revival of the existing churches in a city. Nothing else—not crusades, outreach programs, parachurch ministries, growing megachurches, congregational consulting, or church renewal processes—will have the consistent impact of dynamic, extensive church planting. This is an eyebrow-raising statement, but to those who have done any study at all, it is not even controversial.”
Elliot Clark in his book Mission Affirmed seems to agree. He tells a story of what one indigenous leader said. "We don't necessarily want more missionaries," the pastor cautioned. "We want missionaries who come alongside the national church and work with us."
Venn’s euthanized moment is upon us.
I believe we must grapple with this new era if we want to be biblically faithful in our generation. The new paradigm must change our budgets, change our giving to missions, and change our view of our task. There is still a needed place for pioneering and parachurch work. But tectonic shifts are happening - beautiful gospel shifts - and they demand our attention. The need to adopt a new paradigm of missions, one that complements without replacing our current paradigm, is a matter of pressing stewardship—fiscal stewardship and eternal stewardship—because of the dramatic shift in global Christianity. Our approaches to missions must shift, too. Such a shift is very, very challenging to make and presents significant obstacles, but it is worth the effort.
