Ronald Johnson in a 2004 article entitled, “Mission in the Kingdom Oriented Church” (Review and Expositor, 101, pp.473-95), lists a number of hurdles that prevent local churches from being the church in mission. For him, the “corporate hurdle seems to be the most formidable.”
“The corporate model has caused churches to invest in cooperation as the model for mission and to fund home and overseas missions by sending money to central mission agencies. The passion for mission has been delegated, along with funds, to the work of agencies who send others on mission for the churches. As a result, the passion (sometimes, if any) of local churches for mission has been generally local or community based and has not been inclusive of the world except through the work of the mission sending agencies they sponsor. The average church member is led to feel that giving money to missions is the sum total of mission involvement in the world.” (page 476)
This is so true! May my generation be the ones to call people to an active lifestyle of mission that includes giving money, but is not defined by giving money. Good word, Stroope.
This reminds me of some of the criticisms some Baptists in the nineteenth century had for those who were seeking to establish such mission agencies and Bible societies. One of their main arguments against cooperative mission work was based on the fear that such work would remove the work of mission from the local church. Although these primitive Baptists never grew to be as large as those Baptists with large mission agencies, their warnings are still good to hear.
For more on this, see The Kehukee Declaration and the Black Rock Address.
We (the Church) have done the same thing in most areas. The government takes care of the poor, the schools teach our children, the hospitals birth our babies and the funeral homes bury our dead. We have abandoned our responsibilities to others in the name of convenience. When we (the Church members) begin to take care of our own, we can then begin to see the Glory of God in our midst. We will then also see how badly the lost need this same thing. And we will have something to offer them.
Mark, you are right. It is when we take care of more than our own in all of these areas, that we give witness to the grace, love, and hope of our God.