Something New Under The Sun Part 3

New Goals

With all this change, one understandable question is what hasn’t changed? Well, let’s name a few things: 1) the unique saving power of Jesus Christ; 2) the changeless truth of God’s word; 3) the value of godly men and women surrendering their lives to missions; and 4) the compelling vision of all people coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ. These unchanging truths link every missionary from the Apostle Paul to the newest IMB appointee. Each one longs to see a lost world redeemed. Consequently, the IMB vision statement has never been more relevant than today: We will lead Southern Baptists to be on mission with God to bring all the peoples of the world to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

We still have a long way to go to fulfill this vision. Each generation of missionaries moves us closer to that vision by setting goals that draw us ever nearer. Goals serve as intermediate steps on our journey. If they are good goals, they stretch us as far as possible in the direction of our vision.

The history of Southern Baptist foreign missions is filled with the pursuit of new and challenging goals that bring us ever closer to a dream of seeing all peoples come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. When we began over 150 years ago, it was the goal of supporting missionaries in far-away lands that united us as a denomination and ultimately forged us into a major global missions force. It’s difficult now to realize just how radical and innovative that goal was. History records that it met with opposition, and its success was far from certain.

Through the subsequent years of the Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I and the Great Depression, it became the worthy goal of many Southern Baptists not to allow our foreign mission enterprise to collapse. Through decades of economic crises, we managed not only to sustain the work but to expand into new mission fields on five continents. By the 1950s, our agency was well along a course that would eventually send and support more missionaries than any Protestant denomination in history. The goal that fueled this growth was a vision to take the gospel to millions who had never heard it. This period of growth and expansion helped to define the current state of our Southern Baptist foreign missions enterprise by creating the largest Protestant mission agency in the history of the world.

After decades of growth, Southern Baptists in the 1980s once again looked to their vision of all peoples coming to faith in Christ and asked if more could be done. It became apparent that more than massive numbers of missionaries would be required if we were to see an entire world reached. This realization led Foreign Mission Board leaders to draw all of our missionary efforts into a united goal of evangelism that results in churches. No matter how specialized the ministry or missionary approach might be, all Southern Baptist missions would be strategically aimed at evangelism that results in churches.

The impact of this new goal was quickly felt. Initially, as with previous goals, some questioned it. Does this mean that my ministry is irrelevant? A missionary doctor in a teaching hospital asked. The same question surfaced from missionaries serving as school teachers, seminary professors and business managers. Over time, however, most missionaries came to see that the new goal didn’t bypass their ministry contribution. Instead, it offered a unifying purpose to all our missionary efforts—lighting the way ahead and moving us closer than ever to the fulfillment of our Great Commission vision. As our missionaries pursued this goal, impressive results followed. Within a decade, the number of baptisms doubled from 110,000 per year to more than 220,000. Likewise the total number of churches overseas rose in 10 years from 11,500 to more than
21,000.

Over the next few years, this concerted focus on evangelism that results in churches came to be seen as normative and definitive for all missionary personnel serving with the Foreign Mission Board. Each of the goals that have characterized our agency over the past century and a half have moved us closer to the fulfillment of our vision. As we embrace new goals, the old ones aren’t abandoned, they are subsumed into the whole. Today, we are again revisiting our vision and embracing a new goal. It is the goal of church-planting movements among every people group on earth. If our previous goal was so effective, why change it? Because we believe we can do better. By the early 1990s, our global baptism rates had peaked at around 300,000 per year.

Despite our best efforts at evangelism resulting in churches, much of our work around the world had plateaued. Although we could point to an increase in the number of new converts and new churches each year in many countries, we were falling farther and farther behind the exploding rate of population growth around the world. As long as we compared ourselves with ourselves we might feel good about ourselves. After all, we were recording some growth each year. But when we looked to the millions who were going to hell each day without a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, we determined that we must do better.

Look, for example, to Kenya, one of Southern Baptists’ most productive growth fields. Over the decade stretching from 1985 to 1995, despite Baptist growth rates in excess of 14 percent, evangelical Christianity as a whole (including Baptists) grew at a rate of only 3.25 percent per year. Meanwhile, Kenya’s population grew at 3.34 percent per year. Despite a strong harvest in this country, born-again believers have not been able to keep up with the population-growth rate. In the developing countries of the world, which have 38 percent of their population under the age of 15, how can we hope to fulfill our vision?

In the midst of our search for more effective ways to reach a lost world, God has revealed some remarkable breakthroughs in evangelism and church planting that is happening in some of the most unexpected corners of our globe. In these situations, evangelism is resulting in rapidly multiplying churches in a phenomenal way that is vastly outstripping population-growth rates.

One example can be seen among a Hindu people in India. Initial evangelism and church planting began among them in the early 19th century. However, 170 years later there were still only 28 churches among this population of 90 million people. Furthermore, progress in reaching the people had ceased, with no new churches planted among them in over 40 years. Over the last few years, however, things have changed radically. Between 1989 and 1991 eight new churches were suddenly started in this formerly stagnant setting. By 1994, the number of churches had grown to 78, the following year to more than 220, a year later to 547! Then by 1997 there were more than 1,000 new churches among this predominantly Hindu population. The growth rate shows no sign of slowing, as 800 new churches have been planted in the past year. In all, a total of more than 50,000 new converts have been recorded in the decade between 1989 and 1998.

Certainly one could describe this situation in India as evangelism that results in churches, but that seems to be an understatement. A more appropriate term would be a church-planting movement. A church-planting movement is a rapid multiplication of indigenous churches within a people group. We are currently monitoring more than two dozen church-planting movements around the world in every imaginable context.

While International Mission Board missionaries around the world continue their efforts at evangelism that results in churches, God is surprising us with church-planting movements in a wide array of settings. It’s as if He is saying to us, Look to the nations, watch and be utterly amazed. We are watching. We are amazed, and we are taking notes.

What is evident is that only God can start a church-planting movement. However, we are learning how to cooperate with God in this divine activity by removing obstacles that conflict with His desires. Along the way, we are finding that church-planting movements are not limited to one type of people or cultural condition. They have broken out among literate and nonliterate peoples as well as rural and urban peoples. Churches as well as the untouchables. We are seeing church-planting movements among Muslims in the ear East, urban Han Chinese in China, Khmer Buddhists in S o u t h e a s t Asia, cultural Christians in the former Soviet Union, christopagans in Central America and animists in
Africa.

In a Buddhist country in war-torn Southeast Asia, a Strategy Coordinator found a people in desperate need of hope. Missionaries had brought the gospel to the country decades earlier, resulting in the planting of six churches, but they had never envisioned the possibilities of a church-planting movement.

Although the Strategy Coordinator was an accomplished church planter himself, he chose deliberately to work through others in this setting. Gathering ten local church planters around him, the missionary poured into them his vision, his passion and his insights into effective church planting. The results came quickly. The six churches that had not reproduced themselves in decades acquired a new vitality. Within a year they had grown to ten churches, then twenty the following year. By the end of six years the number had climbed to 194 new congregations!

Of course, the real aim of church-planting movements is not just an increase in the number of churches, but rather to see lost people come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Again and again, we’ve learned that planting new churches is the surest way to increase the number of new believers. Recently, among a Chinese people group, an explosive church-planting movement multiplied three churches into 550 in only five years’ time. More importantly, the church-planting movement resulted in some 55,000 new believers. The growth continues today with little sign of slowing!

Church-planting movements seem to be God’s way of racing ahead of the exploding number of lost people that are being added to the world’s population every day. With church-planting movements, there is a genuine hope of seeing an entire world come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Any wonder why IMB leadership has been quick to adopt this new goal of church planting movements among all peoples?

In a real sense, the leadership of the International Mission Board is continuing its tradition of embracing new goals that move us ever closer to fulfilling our Great Commission vision. This new goal of a church-planting movement among all peoples includes a commitment to evangelism that results in churches but raises the bar to a new level of expectations in hopes that all our missionary personnel will initiate and nurture church-planting movements among all peoples.