This week, David Sills contributes a challenging post. Sills teaches missions and cultural anthropology in the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Seminary. He blogs at www.reachingandteaching.org.
It doesn’t take much exposure to my writing, teaching, or ministry to discern that I am passionate about intentional discipleship and leadership development. I served for years in a country outside of the 10/40 Window and beyond the requisite 2% Evangelical statistical determination of an area that is “reached.” I wholeheartedly agree with the emphasis to reach the unreached areas of spiritual darkness. And yet I am also burdened from first hand experience with the needs of “reached” areas that still sit in spiritual confusion.
Take, for instance, a situation I faced a few years ago in a large city of an African country. To appreciate the impact of the spiritual confusion in this densely populated urban environment, you need to know that in this city there were Baptist churches spread throughout the city, as well as many other Evangelical churches. This is a country where the statistics tell us that 51% of the population self-identifies as Christian. Additionally, 31% of the population specifically claims to be Evangelical, whereas the same research organization reports that the USA is only 29% Evangelical. So, between the statistics and the prevalence of Baptist churches, this would most definitely seem to be a country where its people are sufficiently equipped to continue the work of making disciples, baptizing them, and teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded us. Yet, this does not represent the reality I witnessed. While there, I learned of unbelievable heresy running rampant and unchecked within the Church. The standard of Truth had been eroded.
As I sat with men who love the Lord and desire to serve Him faithfully, we discussed the Bible and ministry practices in the churches within their city. They were stunned when I began to explain why witchcraft, sacrifices, and worship to false gods in their Baptist churches were wrong according to biblical teachings. They desired to serve faithfully, but lacked the knowledge to do so. I learned that many of the men serving the churches throughout the city had come to the city from rural, tribal areas. Their churches were established during a time of great missions involvement and support from the Western missionaries. That had been a time of great growth and Kingdom expansion in previous generations.
Yet, we didn’t teach teachers and we didn’t train trainers. We had reached a generation, and even taught them in many instances, but we didn’t teach them to safeguard the truth and to pass it along in purity. A previous generation of leaders received the Truth we brought to many people groups within the country. Then we left, and the cities where we had established evangelicalism were flooded with immigrants from rural, tribal areas-and with them, their traditional religions. The newcomers had never been exposed to the Truth, and we did not train those we had reached to know how to deal with complicated issues of animism, voodoo, and syncretism. Little by little over the next generation, the foundation of Truth we had established began to erode.
This example is only one illustration of the reality that is unfortunately ubiquitous. For generations we have gone in great faithfulness to places of spiritual darkness, labored until we saw the fruit of a local church. We sometimes wisely focused on those areas of greatest influence and the largest people groups. At times, we established strong churches in capital cities and might have even established centers for theological education. However, as the missiological strategies shifted the preference and practice in deploying missionaries and financial resources to those lesser-reached places of greatest spiritual darkness, focusing on these places with established churches and theological education programs seemed poor stewardship. Funds for deployment of personnel diminished, and in most instances, we stepped away from theological education. What we did not realize was that at nearly the same time, the globalization and urbanization of the world brought massive movements of people groups whom we had not reached to the cities. We left and they moved in-and brought their traditional religions with them.
You can find many cities experiencing tremendous growth in the traditional mission fields of the world. We must recognize that the issue of urban missions does not focus on the 10/40 window only, nor on those areas that statistics deem as most spiritually dark. Instead, the missiological implications of urbanization have actually revealed that our work is far from complete in places where buildings have crosses on the top and evangelical names on their signs. Many areas where research, or a cursory drive-by glance, seems to indicate that they are “reached” and “done,” sit in spiritual confusion. Spiritual darkness and spiritual confusion are equally tragic and result in the same eternal destination. Of course, we must go to the unreached cities of the world, but we must also be faithful to our task and be obedient to all of the Great Commission, teaching those we reach to obey all that Christ has commanded and helping them to see their responsibility to teach others to do the same.