(First published as an article in the IFCA "VOICE" Jan/Feb. 1985)

Can you define "Missions"? If you can, please do so! "Missions" is a term which has undergone a drastic redefining in the past few years.

"Missions" fifteen years ago meant something that was honorable - something that was based on faith - something that had meaning to most pastors - something that was a part of the church.

Is this a valid definition in 1989? Let us consider a few comments that pastors have made recently that might make you wonder if "Missions" really has the same meaning that it used to have:

1. "If I don't personally know or if someone doesn't recommend them to me, I won't have a missionary in my church."

2. "I get so much mail from missionaries that I just throw it all away without reading it."

3. "I've never had a missionary in my church that was going to country 'X', so I asked you to come.

4. "Our budget just won't allow us to have any more missionaries in to speak."

5."You can have five minutes in our morning service to present you work."

6."Oh, you aren't with the same mission that 'Joe Smith' is with - Oh, I thought you were when I asked you to come."

7. "If there are so many missionaries that can't raise their support, why don't they just get busy and minister here?"

8. "The missionaries that tell a lot about themselves are the ones that get the money in our church."

9. "We can't find a missionary in this state in the summer when it's hot, but in the winter when the weather is nice they are just thick." (What missionary shouldn't consider that one!)

10. "I am a missionary pastor, and I don't want to have anyone in until I am fully supported myself." (This writer has been a partially supported pastor and assistant pastor in churches for ten years and never once found that a missionary detracted from financial support given by churches. If anything, the people were challenged to a deeper commitment to the Lord which naturally bore fruit in the area of finance.)

This list does not include the many and varied comments from men that want to make it clear that if you don't belong to THEIR group, you don't speak in THEIR church. (The fact that missionaries from THEIR group are out raising support in OTHER THAN THEIR group does not seem to bother them.)

In and of themselves these comments and many others like them do not constitute a problem, but when a missionary is faced with such comments on a regular basis, he must begin to wonder about the status of the missions program in this present time.

When nine out of ten pastors say they have a full schedule or that their budget won't allow for any more missionary speakers or both, a person must wonder - just WHERE IS the LOR OF THE HARVEST working?

The Word tells us to pray that the Lord of the Harvest send forth workers. We can be very confident that the fLord of the Harvest has not changed, yet we have a unique situtation today. We have laborers ready, willing and able to go to the foreign field, but they cannot because they lack the financial support from the church. Are we really praying as we ought? Are we really committed to missions, or are we just giving lip service to the lost world around us?

Many pastors relate that they receive 3 to 5 requests per month from missionaries seeking funds. Many veteran missionaries are returning home to raise additional support in the middle of their term. Others are unable to return to the field after their furloughs because they have lost so much support.

This is NOT written as a missionary pointing a finger at the church but as a concerned Christian asking both the church and missions where we are in relation to where we were twenty years ago as churches and as mission agencies.

What has happened to "missions" in the last fifteen years? May a few suggestions be made for considertation?

STUFFISHNESS

We have fallen into the trap of materialism right along with the rest of the world. As a group many Christians are so tied up in keeping ahead of the payments that they have no time to serve the God that provided the job that allows them to live as high as they do.

In some Christian circles you hear the pastors discussing how neat the building is at so and so's church, or how modern a complex such and such put up. Where in the Scripture is the emphasis placed on the building in which we meet? Is it not the people that are the church and the emphasis in Scripture, and are they not the ones that we are to be building up? Would it not be more honoring to our Lord to be discussing how beautiful the assembly at so and so's church is growing or how mature such and such's group is getting?

SELFISHNESS

In the economic times in which the church and mission agencies are laboring today are we not becoming overfocused on maintaining OUR program with the limited funds that we have available? Have we not lost the concept of helping other ministries and relying on the Lord to supply the needs for both our ministry as well as the ministry of others?

Have all the Lord's cattle on the thousand hills been sold because the beef prices have fallen while the feed prices and inflation have been increasing? Never! Indeed, one must think that the cattle are overfatted because the church has been too self-sufficient in recent years to call upon their Lord for financial assistance.

Are we not so tied up in maintaining our own programs and schedules that we forget to allow time for others to come in to challenge us with their burden for the lost?

Are we so tied to our schedule and our budgets that we can't squeeze in an outsider now and then?

SHELFISHNESS

Have we not placed many things of twenty years ago on the shelf in deference to more trendy items? How many times have you heard a sermon on the "Seeking After Holiness" or maybe "The Denial of One's Desires" or maybe "The Striving to be Fruitful" lately. Instead, we hear sermons like "A Challenge to Love" or "Approach to Helping"" or "Let's Lean on One Another." All are needed, but there seems to be very little said about the holiness and godliness that we see so often in the Word.

If we were living holy and godly lives, then would it not be that the love, help and support would naturally come along? Indeed, maybe we wouldn't have to work so hard at love, help, and support when we needed to gove it, for it would be coming forth out of a true heart, not one that has a servant's attitude because the person knows that that is what is expected of him (or her, as the case may be).

SHELLISHNESS

Many churches and agencies are so tied up in their programs, forms, questionarires, evaluations and goings on that they have little or no time for the purpose for which they are in existence - that is spiritual reproduction, edification of the saints and glorification of God.

In church after church members of twenty and thirty years still can't teach a class or give you a reason for what they believe, much less give a defence of the faith which they hold. Where has the edification been? Where has the training been? Where has the discipleship been? (Indeed, some of the above may come from the lack of commitment on the part of individual church members.)

When planning church programs, are the lost around you ever considered in your plans? Do you consider the lost when you change the time of your worship service for one week? How would a lost person feel if he came to your church on Easter or Christmas and found that he was too late for the service because the time had been changed?

Are your programs aimed at making newcomers welcome, or are they a bit foreign and embarrassing to newcomers?

We are in the business of reaching the lost, not isolating ourselves from them!

So often in the Old Testament our Lord so lovingly recounts all that He has done in the past for Israel in the hope that they will realize He is the only source of satisfaction and success. We as churches, organizations and individuals need to look back over the last thirty years and see what God has done. We need to evaluate the results from our corporate and individual lives - are they as fruitful now as they were in the past? If not, why not? We need to look at ourselves through the eyes of our Lord, not through our eyes that may be misfocused by pressures of the world and self.

Again, it is to be stressed that this is not the finger of accusation from a frustrated missionary but a voice of concern about what has been seen in recent months.

This is not to say that there are not some fantastic goings on in the churches. Indeed, God is truly working in some assemblies. May He have a freer reign over other assemblies and individual lives in the future to produce the same type of results!

Missions - is it what it used to be in your church or organization? Is it as much a part of your personal life as it was a few years ago?

Half the world is without the Gospel. The church is not keeping up with the increase in population. Is Missions what it was in past years?