Transitions

Let’s remind ourselves of the four stages of mission work before talking about the transitions between them. 

 

• A Pioneer stage-where the Gospel first is brought to a group with no existing Christians or church movement.
• A Paternal stage-where expatriates train national leaders as a church movement is emerging.
• A Partnership stage-here the missionary and the national leaders work as equals.
• A Participation stage-in this level expatriate missionaries are no longer equals, but work only at the invitation of the national church.

What happens in the transition periods of overlap is that while the work of mission has progressed to stages three and four in many places, there is a recognition that pioneer work is still needed. In Hudson Taylor’s day it was the peoples of the vast inland territories. In this century through the work of Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran it was seen that the need for pioneer mission no longer could be accurately described in terms of nation states and geo-political boundaries as in the past, but rather in terms of ethno-linguistic groups.

 

In African and Asian national churches, the cry for "more workers for the harvest field" is so widely spread that mobilization events for missions have drawn as many as 70,000 (Korea, 1995) with increasingly direct commitment to missions. Thus, the Holy Spirit seems to be calling out a whole new committed mission force from around the world. With surprising speed, global, national and local church partnerships for least- evangelized peoples are fast becoming the way forward. God is birthing a missions mobilization movement that is not North American, African, Asian, Latin American, South American, European or Australian--it's just Christian and global!