Mission: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

By Doug Priest

Yesterday 

Forty-four years ago, as a young missionary ministering in Kenya with a recent graduate degree in missions, I submitted an article to Christian Standard entitled, “Missions in the Eighties.” Though my focus was the coming decade, the 1990s, it might be instructive to see if those predictions still hold up today. In that article I suggested that the number of full-time or long-term missionaries from the Restoration Movement would decrease. Missions would become heavily influenced by world politics. Terms such as evangelism and missionary would be better defined and more precise. The church would become more involved and demand more accountability from its mission efforts. The old distinction between “independent missions” and “organized missions” would lose prominence. Missions would focus on being more culturally sensitive than in years gone by. More missionaries would be sent from non-Western countries. Bible colleges and seminaries would see stronger academic mission programs, and more professors teaching missions would obtain graduate degrees in the discipline of missiology. There would be more ethnic churches planted in America, and many people from all over the world would become followers of Christ. These predictions have held up over the ensuing decades, not just the 1990s.  

But there were trends at that time, in retrospect, which should have been noted. I did not foresee the growing emphasis on short-term missions, where within two or three decades more funds from our congregations would flow to short-term mission efforts. I neglected to consider urbanization and globalization. The predominant mission strategy of “unreached people groups” gained ground in the 1980s and maintained that position until 10 to 15 years ago. Few predicted that, politically speaking, the decades-long emphasis focused on Communism would switch to Islam. The highly charged dichotomy going back for 60 years of “evangelism vs. social action” was already being replaced by “holistic mission” which saw growing efforts to combat hunger, HIV/AIDs, illiteracy, the plight of refugees, women, and children. 

Today 

Just where are we today, in terms of the number of Christians in the world? Since 1900 the percentage of Christians throughout the world has not changed. One-third of the world’s population claim to be Christian, making Christianity the world’s most populous religion. Remaining at one-third of the population of the world over the decades, however, does not mean that the number of Christians has remained static. If 50 years ago the world’s population was three and a half billion, today it is seven billion. Therefore, the number of Christians had to double in that period to continue to remain at one-third of the world’s population. 

The biggest shift in world Christianity is that at the beginning of the 20^th century, the majority of the world’s Christians (80%) were in the Western and European world. By 2050 the majority of the world’s Christians (80%) will be from the Southern part of the world: Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Furthermore, the majority of Christians in Africa, Asia, and Latin America are primarily evangelical and Pentecostal or charismatic.  

Here at home, polls suggest church attendance is in decline. Numbers are obviously down since Covid, and many young people choose to leave the church when they reach college age. But it must be stated that those discouraging polls are examining traditional churches, those whose attendees are primarily of European descent. The polls that we hear so much about do not focus on Black and immigrant churches, which are growing at a strong rate. Contrary to the polls’ findings, the church in America is growing, just not primarily among white Protestants and Catholics. One wishes that the interviews of the immigrants crossing our borders asked not only, “Where are you from?” but “what is your religion?” The results might be quite surprising. 

From the 1980s until a decade or so ago, the mission programs in our colleges and seminaries were doing well. Lots of students graduated with mission majors, many students went on short term mission trips (sometimes yearly), and many became longer term missionaries. Their professors upgraded their degrees with missiology classes. Today, the situation has changed. Some Bible colleges and seminaries have shuttered their doors or changed their emphasis to include a stronger focus on liberal arts. Mission majors became fewer, programs were discontinued, and professors retired or moved to other employment. For the future, we wonder where mission courses will be taught, for whom, and by whom? 

Tomorrow 

Such a question misses an important truth, one already noted in this article—the global shift in the center of Christianity from the North to the South. There is a visible rise in the number of non-Western missionaries throughout the world. The number of missionaries from the South is greater than the number of missionaries sent from the North. One can go into our larger cities and find missionaries from Korea, Nigeria, or Brazil. They come because they know the church in America is declining, and they want to turn the tide.  

The older mission paradigm “From the West to the Rest” has now become “From Everywhere to Everywhere.” If a missionary feels called to minister to Afghans or Syrians, that missionary does not need to sell everything and move to Afghanistan or Syria. There are hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Syrians living right here in America. The same is true for other countries that do not welcome American missionaries. In fact, people can get into Afghanistan and Syria as missionaries. The recently published book, Soul by Soul: The Evangelical Mission to Spread the Gospel to Muslims, is written by a Brazilian woman and documents the mission work of Latin American believers serving in countries that would be hostile and likely unsafe for those with passports from the USA. Therefore, the question that confronts us in missions today is, “Are we willing to give up on our ‘we are in charge’ mentality and replace it with ‘we will willingly share resources’ with our international partners?” We must explore new mission models, such as the merging of organizations and collaboration, and we must let non-Westerners take the lead in mission. American mission sending agencies need to become more intentional or they will perish. 

Other trends that should affect missions globally are the aging of the world population, the increasing use of technology including Artificial Intelligence, and the rise out of poverty and into the middle class. Of course, the world’s population is still young, but with advances in medicine and infrastructure, people are living longer, representing a new mission field. Much of mission work was among those who live in poverty. However, current studies show that many of the world’s poor are moving out of destitute poverty and into the middle class. The war on poverty worldwide in the last two decades has become a success story. Here is one reason. 

An Illustration 

About 20 years ago Christian Missionary Fellowship (CMF) missionaries Keith and Kathy Ham decided they would leave their decade-long ministry with the Turkana people based in the desert of northern Kenya. Their new call was to the urban poor living in the capital city of Nairobi. Soon after relocating they were researching the slums to explore different models of ministry. They heard about Wallace and Mary Kamau who were using a mission model known as Community Health Evangelism (CHE). Wallace and Mary formed Missions of Hope International (MOHI) and within a couple of years CMF and MOHI formed a partnership with a memorandum of understanding. MOHI believed that the best strategy to reach the slums was to form a school and meet the parents through the enrolled children. The partnership led to sharing of resources and within 20 years the number of children enrolled in schools went from 50 to 25,000 and expanded beyond Nairobi and Kenya. More than 35 churches have been planted. Efforts like these explain much of the move out of poverty in places traditionally seen as poor. 

One of the new schools started was in the desert in northern Kenya where the Turkana lived and where Keith and Kathy Ham had worked. With so many children involved in the MOHI ministry, the Hams discerned a real need for further discipleship for the older children. They started a camp near the Indian ocean on the Kenyan Coast. Fifty children attend the two-week sessions. One two-week period is for girls and the next two-week period is for boys. The curriculum includes spiritual formation, discipleship, worship, nearby field trips, and teaching about the environment under the very biblical concept of Creation Care. The children who come to the camp have never been away from their home areas. They get to experience things they have never seen and engage in new activities, like seeing a zebra or swimming in the ocean. They make renewed decisions to follow Christ. The financial resources for the Angaza Camp come from the West. The camp leaders, teachers, and trainers are Kenyan, as it should be. American churches and Christians need to come to terms with their role changing from primarily senders of American missionaries to major funders of international missionaries and organizations. 

A Final Word 

None of these developments, of course, are a surprise to God nor a sign of faithlessness or failure on the part of the American church. They do mean that American mission sending organizations, churches, and Christians will need to discern God’s leading for future obedience and involvement in the Great Commission. The call to participate in God’s mission has not changed. 

Doug Priest, now retired, was director of CMF International for 22 years. He has taken the advice of Jesus to “consider the birds,” and wants you to know that there are 250 references to birds in the Bible.