A Church-Centered Paradigm Shift

Churches and ministries are recognizing the need for a shift in how they do missions. For too long parachurch ministries have operated independently of local churches. And the damage is evident. Ministries seem to drift from the mission, calling themselves Christian in name only, like the YMCA. But what guarantee do we have that your favorite ministry won’t drift? What grounds a ministry to the gospel? What can ensure that a ministry’s members are truly Christian and remain faithful to that identity?

This is the task of the local church, and only the local church. Only a church can identify someone as a Christian and in good standing with the church. The church is the pillar and buttress of the truth. Every outpost of God’s kingdom in this world is responsible for knowing the truth of God’s Word and holding fast to it through the preached Word. All other parachurch ministries are not designed for this specific task. The church alone guards the who and the what of the gospel. For more on that see Jonathan Leeman’s short book about church membership.

But parachurch ministries alone are not to blame. The church has let go of its responsibility too. I am not going to speak about other kinds of ministries. I simply want to focus on the relationship of the local church to missionary sending agencies. Churches, especially small churches, have convinced themselves that they don’t have what it takes to do global missions, and so they turn over their people and their money to agencies that have been all too eager to comply.

Yet, as I said at the beginning, churches and ministries are growing in their awareness of this problem. Hopefully, that is why you are reading this now: You sense the divergence between the agency and the church and desire to see local churches regain their rightful position in missions leadership and agencies rightly meet churches’ needs. So, the question is, how do we see this paradigm shift occurring? How can we encourage it? How can local churches take a leadership role in global missions? And how can missions agencies become appropriately church-centered?

As I have talked to churches and missions agencies, I have found three shifts occur that help bring about this change. What brings about a paradigm shift in thinking about missions as centered in the church? Here are three shifts:

1. A Foundational Shift. We must be convinced from Scripture that the church is at the center of missions. A biblical basis for the centrality of the church in missions will captivate your heart and bring about the lasting change that is needed. This is not just a methodological fad; this is God’s design and plan. He wants the church, with its unique design, administration, and functions, to be the city on the hill shining the light of the gospel into the darkest corners of this earth. If you see it in the Bible, then you cannot deny it, and you will have to restructure your agency or your church accordingly.
2. A Conceptual Shift. The second change that I have found comes when we see missions as integral to the church and not as competing with other ministries. Most churches conceive of missions as simply one of the programs among a myriad of other programs that are each competing for the same pool of money that is the church budget. This too requires a conceptual shift. Missions is not one program among many. Missions is THE program of the church. Everything your church does is to be connected to the Great Commission. This is what God has called the church to be busy about. If it is not connected to the Great Commission, then maybe we shouldn’t be doing it.
3. A Functional Shift. Lastly, we need to see a change in the way that we function too. Missions in our churches and our agencies need to truly function in a church-centered manner and not in a missionary-centered manner. The missionary-centered function is practically all about the missionary. The missionary receives a call from God. The missionary asks for support. The missionary goes and we watch. We send money and receive newsletters. And the mission is all about what the missionary does. But it should not be so. It’s not the missionary’s mission; it’s the church’s mission. The church is called by God to go, and the missionary goes on the church’s mission. The church should own and strategically lead the mission, while the missionary remains submissive and even replaceable. Churches, please relieve the burden from your missionaries by owning the mission and giving them the privilege of submitting to your leadership.

Most churches and agencies don’t even know that there is another way or that this problem exists. The fallout should be evident though: ministries departing from their calling, and missionaries roaming untethered or crashing and burning. But God’s Word makes clear that he has a particular organizational plan for the spread of the gospel to all nations. God’s design for his glory spreading to all nations is local churches from beginning to end. Churches send, and churches are planted. Missions agencies can help. So, more needs to be said about how they can do that well while keeping the church at the center of the mission. For now, though, how is your church or agency doing in grasping these three shifts?