What Drives Your Mission Strategy?
“I love this missions project, it’s cheap, easy, and makes me feel so good about myself.” As soon as I heard this statement from a church member, I thought to myself, “That’s It!”. This person had pinpointed a trend that I have noticed growing in my church and the churches I have consulted for quite some time now. The trend is Churches have planned and evaluated their mission strategies based on the wrong criteria.
In an attempt to engage church members in a mission trip or project, churches have begun to gravitate toward meeting the needs of participants instead of the recipients. After all, they are paying the bill to go or be engaged in the project or go on a trip. But is that what we should be doing? In essence, we are meeting the needs of the Christians Vs seeking to meet the needs of the lost. Trying to meet the needs of believers may be a good business and marketing strategy, but it can be dangerous when applied to developing a mission strategy.
In the next few paragraphs, I want to explore some trends that I have noticed that may be hurting our efforts to be effective in taking the gospel to places where it is needed the most.
Who is the customer?
In a market-driven world, the customer is the one who drives the agenda. That is why it is important for a business to understand who its customers are and what products those customers desire. A problem can arise when a business does not understand its target audience. That can also be a problem for churches. Many church leaders see their congregation as their customer in missions work. Whatever pet projects a group or person wants to do, they do, even if it has little Kingdom impact. As a mission pastor, I am constantly fielding requests from church members and outside para-church groups to do projects I know are ineffective. Ultimately, these projects have been developed with the Christian in mind, not the lost. Scripture has been clear in prioritizing our customers in Matthew 28:19-20, Romans 15:20, and Rev. 5:9, 7:9. Our customers are ethnic groups with little to no access to the gospel. Not Christians seeking a great experience on a mission trip. As Dr Nik Ripken says, “ The needs of the witnesses should never outweigh the needs of the lost”.
ROI Missions
A missionary friend once shared with me his conversation with a high-profile mega church. Their strategy for short-term trips was to go to places based on an ROI (Return on Investment) formula. The formula said that for every $10,000 spent on a trip, they would see a certain number of salvations/baptisms. This approach may sound good to some, but this strategy does not work in places where the gospel is under religious and governmental persecution. It fails because churches using an ROI approach seldom take trips to places that most need the gospel. Places and people groups where the ground is hard and results are slow to come. Places where a person could walk for days and weeks and never find anyone who could tell them about Jesus in that person's heart language. Churches using ROI as a major factor in where they go, only go to places already experiencing church planting and growth. Hard-to-reach places that do not respond in vast numbers to Jesus cannot support an ROI criteria.
Harvest Mentality
Similar to the ROI approach, some seek to capitalize on a hot “gospel” market that can maximize converts. In the missions world, one of our major goals should be to penetrate places where the “market” is not strong (See Romans 15:20). I am not saying we never go to hot markets to help make disciples, but far too many churches focus in these “hot” markets. Statistics show us that very few churches are going to the hard-to-reach places. Consider that only .03% of all money given to churches goes to the unreached parts of our world.
Local Christians are the best harvesters if a location or people group is experiencing a great harvest. They speak the language, know the culture, and live among the new converts. They have a far greater impact and are in place to work with what God is doing. Churches that only focus on harvest fields run the risk of not going to places that need the gospel most and failing to be strategic in their mission efforts.
Missions as P.R.
In a war-torn country, a missionary friend of mine was serving the people seeking to care for, feed, and share Jesus in a very difficult situation. He was partnering with another mission organization when he got a call asking him to set up a meeting with the local warlord who had control of that African city. The partner organization wanted to meet with the warlord and give him a Bible. My friend refused to facilitate this meeting. They asked again, and again, and again he refused, saying: “this warlord had more Bibles given to him than most Christians”. This warlord was one of the main reasons for the strife in this country.
After a long back-and-forth one day on the phone, one of the organization's leaders blurted out, “We need to meet with him because we cannot be seen as doing nothing”. The mission's organization was worried about PR. They also wanted to use the meeting as a PR ploy to raise funds back in America.
Unfortunately, I have heard this many times from churches here in America. Missions are viewed through a public relations lens. The concern is not as much for the needs of the lost people but more for how we would be perceived in the community if we did not act. Churches I spoke to over the years would rather do something ineffective, non-strategic, and wasting time and money than do nothing. Public relations is never a reason to engage or not engage in mission work.
Cause-Driven Missions
This type of mission work is called “the flavor of the month missions”. Whenever a popular cause arises within our culture, some churches seek to do mission work aligning with that cause. The problem with cause-driven missions is that the causes change, and usually, causes are determined by an outside source, such as the media or social networks, versus scripture. Some causes are good causes, and as the church, we should address them. However, there is a danger in allowing culture and the media to drive our mission efforts. It has the potential to have us do pretty good projects at the expense of doing the best projects. Causes will come and go, but the goal of planting sustainable, healthy churches among those with little access to the gospel cannot be altered. As a church, our goal in our mission strategy should be helping to do mission work based upon solid strategies that make disciples and plant churches.
I am not against using business or marketing principles in the church. However, I believe we need to ensure that the primary lens we look through in developing our mission trips is the Scriptures. The mandate of making disciples among ethnic groups who have never heard of Jesus is clear in many passages, including Matthew 28 & Romans 15. Using this lens may not result in great numbers of baptisms or great experiences for trip-goers, but it will help fulfill God’s plan of “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” worshipping around the throne (Rev. 5:9).