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 missions, churches have begun to gravitate toward meeting the needs of church members versus the recipients of a project or event. As my friend Dr. Nik Ripken says: “ The needs of the witnesses cannot outweigh the needs of the lost.”
In the following 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. A problem can arise when a business does not understand its target audience. This principle can also be applied to churches. Many church leaders see their congregation as their customers in mission 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 clearly prioritized 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.
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 determining factor of where they engage in missions will only go to places that are already experiencing great numerical growth. Places where they are not really needed. Places that are hard-to-reach, that do not respond in vast numbers to Jesus, cannot support an ROI criteria. Yet these are the places we need to go to the most.
Harvest Mentality
Similar to the ROI approach, some seek to capitalize on a hot “gospel” market that can maximize converts and have increased numbers for salvations and baptisms. 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 teh problem is 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.
In a harvest situation, local Christians are the best harvesters. 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”. In this situation the warlord was the main reason for the strife and starvation in this African country.
After a long back-and-forth 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. I admire the desire to do something, but public relations is never a reason to engage or not engage in mission work. We engage a people or an area for hope it promotes the gospel, not how it makes us look.
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 work 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 many 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).