Spiritual Profiling: Missionary Toolbox #8

According to leading strategy trainers within the International Mission Board of the SBC, one of the best ways to understand an unreached people group is by building a Spiritual Profile. This happens to be the final tool in the missionary toolbox for creating a people group profile. Here are some good questions to ask:

1. What is the predominant religion of your people? when did it start? how did it start?

2. What calendar events does this religion influence?

3. What are the life events celebrated through this religion? how?

4. Is religion a choice or coerced?

5. How does this religion view family? outsiders?

6. Who is in leadership within this religion? How did they get there?

7. How does this religion interact with Christianity? how many Christians are there?

8. What is the ration of Christian churches to the population?

9. Do the people have access to the Bible? gospel presentations in media? mission organizations?

10. Are the people oral learners or literate?

11. What has been the growth of evangelism within this people group in recent years? why?

The Problem of Pastoral Training in Russia

The issue of the best place to train pastors came to my attention first when I was a missionary in Russia. There are some common complaints voiced in Russia regarding the lack of Russian leadership, such as the lack of young men in church in general, the expense related to receiving education, the lack of opportunity for seminary training, the western leaning of modern theological institutes, or the overall rejection of formal academic training by local churches. In the US in the previous decade, there was an upward trend in enrollment in seminaries and bible colleges (especially considering the bachelor's level). “After 20 years without a net increase, enrollment at 118 Bible colleges climbed 1 percent in 2008 and 3 percent in 2009.” [1] But in Russia, the trend is reversed. Over the past decade, student enrollment in both bible colleges and seminaries has fallen drastically.[2] This could be perhaps because of the strong dependence on western financial support that has tapered off in recent years. At Moscow Baptist Theological Seminary, for example, “Since 2004 the seminary has been run in collaboration with Russian Leadership Ministries (RLM) in the United States, which provides 90 percent of the support for its needs.”[3] Moreover this financial issue is exacerbated by the fact that the average Russian student may expect to earn a monthly salary equivalent to two hundred dollars[4] while the average cost of seminary is twice that amount.[5] Because of poor economic conditions, most Russian churches could not afford a full-time pastor.[6]

There is a truly disproportionate under-representation of men in Russian Baptist churches. Mark Harris notes,

A great deal of this problem can be traced to WWII, when a major percentage of the

Russian male population died. During communist times, preachers were considered to be "active believers" and therefore dangerous to the regime. Being a preacher was risky, and many spent time in prison for it.[7]

Because of the leftover negative attitudes about non-Orthodox religious expressions, a “minute number of men were supported for ministry, and the vast majority of preachers held full-time jobs elsewhere.”[8] Under the communist regime, each person filled a government-directed vocation whereby she contributed her part back into society. Communists, therefore, “viewed any man receiving his salary from religious work as a parasite on society.”[9] Under communism, even the most basic educational opportunities were often withheld from Baptist adherents.

As a result, “few methods of formal training were thus available to preachers. There was a course offered in an extension school, but apparently few took the course. Therefore, by necessity, informal training was the dominant method.”[10] This problem is further complicated when local Baptist churches in Russia harbor animosity toward seminaries or bible colleges or refuse to re-integrate seminary graduates back into their local church life.[11] This is important, because evangelical institutes have been established. The first Evangelical Bible School was instituted in St. Petersburg in 1913. According to Peter Penner, former rector of St. Petersburg Christian University,

its operation was disrupted in 1914 when the First World War and later the Russian revolution put an abrupt end to most religious activity, irrespective of denominational affiliation. From 1925-1929 the school was able to continue with a one year programme preparing pastors and preachers for the Evangelical Christians and Baptist churches.[12]

Within the Russian mindset, education is necessary. However, many Russian students

“tend to see education as a way to gain prestige, and the receiving of some sort of diploma will become the basic issue for them.”[13]

      It is for this reason that there are some recent initiatives “to seek public recognition for church leaders, and in the opinion of many this is dangerous to the spiritual training of young Russian men and women.”[14] However, this had tended to lead toward the adoption of any western approach most readily available. Harris notes that “Russian training programs have been heavily dependent on Western teachers, and this has had some negative effects on the attitudes of Russian pastors and students.”[15] This is in conflict to Russian Baptist identity as Penner notes, “evangelicals in the [Former Soviet Union] are not a more or less contextualized continuation of western culture and history. They are a reform movement that grew out of the Russian Orthodox Church.”[16]

      Western models and methods for theological education have come under public fire in recent years in Russia. Noting the “lack of systematic teaching in the [Russian Baptist] Church,” Alexander Negrov, current rector of St. Petersburg Christian University, claims that Russian evangelicals have not made adequate progress toward localized theological inquiry.[17] Penner cites persecution as a possible cause, noting that Baptists “were persecuted by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Czarist regime, then persecution came from the side of the Soviet communist ideology.”[18] Under persecution a theology of suffering did indeed develop as did

a Bible oriented theology which helped them to survive as a movement, but which is not explicitly formulated. Cultural and historical elements have caused the Bible to become the foundation of all theological thinking for the evangelicals in the [Former Soviet Union], while the hermeneutic key for the interpretation of Scripture is their experience and the specific context.[19]

Perhaps this is why some Russian Baptists see suffering within their doctrine of the local church as a process through which true disciples are refined.

---

[1] G. Jeffrey MacDonald, “Seminary: Not Just for Pastors,” Christian Century 127 (Jan 26, 2010): 12-13. Cited 21 February 2010. Online: http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=8155.

[2]  Hunter Baker, “Is Church Attendance Declining?” Christianity Today (November 2007): n.p. Cited 6 March 2010. Online: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/novemberweb-only/145-42.0.html.

[3] “History of the Moscow Theological Seminary of Evangelical Christian-Baptists,” n.p. [cited 12 February 2010]. Online: http://www.moscowseminary.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32

&Itemid=57.

[4] “Average Monthly Earnings Hit All-Time High in Russia,” Pravda, August 4, 2005. n.p. [cited 11 February 2010]. Online: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/04-08-2005/8687-salary-0.

[5] According to Sasha Tsoutserov, Director of the Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary, “The cost of training a student at the Moscow Seminary is an equivalent of US$4,000 per year (full ride).” Quote on “Sponsors,” n.p. [citied 12 February 2010]. Online: http://www.moscowseminary.ru/en/sponsors/sponsors.htm.

[6] Mark Harris, “Toward an Understanding of Russian Baptist Preaching,” Paper Presented to Mission Consulting Group, (Pasadena, Calif.: Mission Consulting Group, 1996), 7.

[7] Ibid.

[8]Ibid.

[9] Ibid.                                  

[10] Ibid, 8.

[11] Throughout the past twelve years, this writer has personally witnessed the refusal of some local Baptist churches to accept or ordain graduates from Moscow Baptist Theological Seminary, even if those graduates were originally from the congregation. Various reasons were cited in associational meetings throughout the years 1998 – 2002, the most frequent of which was the fear that seminary training was dangerously outside the theology of the local church.

[12] Peter Penner, “Contextual Theological Education among Post-Soviet Protestants: Case Study 1: The Development of a Masters Degree at St Petersburg Christian University,” Transformation 18:2 (2001), 124.

[13] Mark Harris, “Proposal,” 2.

[14] Ibid, 9.

[15]Ibid, 10.

[16] Peter Penner, “Contextual Theological Education,” 116.

[17] Alexander I. Negrov and Miriam Charter, “Why is There No Russian ‘Protestant’ Theology in Russia? A Personal Outcry,” Religion in Eastern Europe 17 (1997), 33.

[18] Peter Penner, “Contextual Theological Education,” 121.

[19] Ibid.

Athletes in Action: Sports Missionary Method

No matter where I go, it's hard to find a place that hasn't been impacted by the missiological interaction between missions and sports. Athletes in Action (AIA) is a Great Commission Christian agency at work in Russia as well as in seventy-four other countries. Athletes in Action is an Ohio-based international missions arm of Campus Crusade for Christ (CRU) and was begun in 1966 by Dave Hannah. At work around the world, AIA uses sports as a medium for sharing the gospel sometimes in places where a traditional missionary is not allowed a public religious ministry. In 2008, AIA published Vision and Direction for the Future, an annual report from its trustees to its constituents and financial supporters. Another more brief document, the AIA Fact Sheet, highlights its strategic projects and events as well as its domestic and international ministry teams. Its board of trustees has a broad range of representatives from many aspects of Christian and secular business as well as many sports authorities. With a budget of almost $23 million and over two hundred thousand volunteers, AIA uses sports not just as an avenue for witnessing but also discipleship, taking the principles of Christianity and applying them to sportsmanship. As an arm of Campus Crusade for Christ, founded by Dr. Bill Bright in 1951, AIA clearly has the same evangelism philosophy for showing “people how to know and experience God’s love and plan for their lives” (AIA Fact Sheet, p. 2). Whereas Campus Crusade has a broad range of missions applications, most notably its international broadcasting of the Jesus Film, AIA is focused specifically on athletic venues for reaching a more targeted audience. My personal interaction with AIA began in 2000 when sports missionary John McIntosh helped Pennsylvania-based Push the Rock do a sports missions trip to Bryansk, Russia. We continued to work with AIA in St. Petersburg and Moscow as we hired two young women to serve as sports missionaries with our team. One of those, Jessica Lenderman, has continued her sports missions endeavors through the International Sports Federation.

             

The AIA Missionary Method

AIA’s missionary method revolves around “five focus areas” that it calls its “key measurements” (Vision, p. 2). Using evangelism, discipleship, staff growth, staff recruitment, and finances as the baselines for evaluating its performance, AIA builds a quantitative foundation for discussing its missionary method.

AIA utilizes a decision-based approach to gospel presentations and seeks to use sports events as both the drawing medium and the opportune moment for establishing contact with unsaved athletes and young sports enthusiasts. After initial contact is established through the universal language of sports, a gospel presentation is translated and materials such as sports-oriented Bibles and other Christian literature are freely distributed. Because initial contact is usually brief and nonrepetitive, there is a strong draw for immediate decision-based conversion through a prayer of commitment. For follow-up, the new believers complete a commitment card that is then passed on to either residential AIA representatives or local church partners. For deeper discipleship with its athletes, AIA workers establish regular contact for bible study. Local websites are also maintained for ongoing follow-up.

            In essence, AIA defines its goals each year in terms of how many witnessing opportunities its representative had, how many first time decisions were made for Christ, how many athletes were involved in local chapters of AIA, and how many people AIA maintained on staff. In 2008, 914 staff were able to present the gospel to “over 85 million people in 75 countries around the world” (Vision, p. 1). AIA recorded over seven thousand first-time decisions for Christ and attracted almost three thousand athletes into AIA discipleship programs. The agency  was able to establish a presence on 125 college campuses and among “35 professional sports teams” (Vision, p. 7).

            AIA is a missions agency, albeit not necessarily in the traditional sense. It is an international agency designed to reach other cultures and people groups through the use of nontraditional and “universal” language, the language of sports (Vision, p. 1). The Vision and Direction for the Future document contains five testimonials from 2008 as to how AIA met its strategic missional goals in Poland, China, Holland, Canada, Nicaragua, Israel and America. According to a second strategy document entitled AIA Fact Sheet, AIA was involved also in some other key missional events like a Super-bowl breakfast, an All-Star Celebrity Golf Classic Breakfast, and some international ministry events in eighty-five countries around the world. In the fact sheet, AIA states that its goal is “to use the unique platform of sport to help people around the world with questions of faith” (Fact Sheet, p. 1).

            According to these two documents, AIA sees its missionary activity as primarily evangelism and discipleship. Local church planting or church growth does not play into AIA’s strategy, but as a branch of Campus Crusade for Christ, AIA sees itself as a parachurch organization in support of the larger activity of the universal church. AIA does not seek to train local church leadership in any way other than to perform specific tasks related to its own sports activities. It also does not employ church polity in its direction or performance, but it does partner with local evangelical church leaders for ongoing projects in targeted locations. AIA seeks to embody the fuller essence of being parachurch while at the same time maintaining its own autonomy from any local church.

Missiological Implications

The missiological implications for AIA’s method are tremendous. Because it is a decision-based approach for conversion, it represents a western rational model for evangelism. As such, AIA may have to work to overcome some cultural barriers within eastern settings where individual decision is not as highly valued as group thinking. The application of Christianity to specific western cultural behaviors as evidenced in sports is their method for discipleship. One disciple admitted that “competing hard is okay” after he learned that it was a tenet of Christianity (Vision, p. 3). This too is a cultural difference in countries where competition is seen as a negative trait, much less a Christian one.

It is project based designed to reach large masses with evangelism but target specific groups for discipleship. For example, in one event in Nicaragua an AIA mission team “spoke to 1000 people, with an estimated 100,000 more potential viewers” in a television broadcast (Vision, p. 3). It maximizes short-term trips rather than establishing long-term incarnational presence. Usually these trips are one week long.

It uses internationally recognized avenues such as the Olympics as platforms for sharing the gospel. These large-scale events are often nationally recognized and therefore hold greater potential than any one church’s missionary activities. Moreover, this stance contradicts the church planting movement mentality behind some of the more recent evangelical missions agencies’ work to maintain outside foreign influence at a lower profile.

Like many other American ministries, AIA’s strategy is numerically-based and results-driven. Therefore, careful attention is required for reporting witnessing opportunities, decisions made, and disciples gathered. However, it does not record baptisms or church plants as these are activities of a local church. When AIA presents itself not as a missional arm of the church but as a parachurch missional agency, it stays true to its primary task as an external pioneering presence.

AIA is support-based through business. It is not a tent-makers’ ministry. Many involved in AIA’s international missionary service support themselves or either find their support from independent businesses, but no outright solicitation is made from local churches.

It is talent-based leadership equipping. It is cutting edge in that sportsmen can see themselves as missionaries. There was a time when missionaries would not have thought of sports as a gospel medium, let alone as a platform for ministry, but AIA is proving successful in changing the paradigm of traditional missions within this venue.

It opens doors in locations where traditional missionaries might not be able to go. This leads to a discussion of the target not as geographic or ethnic but cultural or subcultural, with the specific affinity being sports. Whether or not interest-based affinity grouping can be considered part of a biblical missiology is a question that missiologists have only begun to ask recently.

That is why there is a question of indigeneity. AIA does not address any cross-cultural training or language acquisition for these one-week trips. There is no specific cultural training outside of intensive preparation for survival as an expat in a foreign field. Therefore, the long term impact of these short term trips can truly only be measured with the evangelism results that AIA has set in place. A trip is designed to produce converts to Christ and volunteers to the sports projects.

            Sports is a medium for evangelism, like teaching English as a Second Language, drama presentations, or humanitarian aid. It is a language for reaching those that the local church might not reach otherwise. AIA is standing in the gap as an independent missions arm to garner those who only speak “sports”. AIA’s strategy is make that medium a missionary tool is both unique and successful.

Review of Tucker's From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya

Ruth Tucker published From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions to chronicle missions activity, but it also chronicles cultural conflicts. Tucker’s book is a missions survey from the time of Paul through the 1970s. Most interesting is the cultural phenomenon that ensued during the 20^th century as a changing America became the prime missionary sender. Issues like women’s rights and the waning primacy of evangelism in mission work became controversial, but they spilled over onto the mission fields. Because it is clear that these cultural issues of the sender affected the field during the 20^th century, there is a question as to how much cultural issues of the 21^st century will affect missions today.  

Single Women in Missions

Gender discrimination in the late 19^th century was met with some missionary activism, notably by Lottie Moon. Although some missions groups created entire “female agencies” (p. 232), the Foreign Mission Board had to contend with an independent streak in Miss Moon that caused a significant amount of contention with supervisor T. P. Crawford. Outspoken on women’s rights and equality, Miss Moon wrote forcibly in her letters about the needs for single women to be treated on the same level as ordained men.

            Her plight raised the question as to the effectiveness of a single woman on the mission field. There are some advantages to being free from family responsibility. But loneliness and depression often overtake singles. We don’t know whether Moon ordained men to be pastors, but she did start churches. This is not necessarily acceptable in all cultures, so the role of a single woman serving under authority raises the question as to just how much can be accomplished without the presence of a man. Regardless of her poor interpersonal relationships on the mission field and aversion to mission authority, Lottie Moon was successful later in her mobilizing more women to go to the mission field. Working out a theology of missions based on Scripture demands some restrictions to be placed upon certain activities of women in church planting still today.  

Evangelism Replacement in Missions

The story of John Mott and his insistence on the primacy of evangelism in missions became a sore spot for the work of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM). If missions’ “aim should not be conversion” (p. 273), then social ministry, anthropology or ecumenism replaces the unique claims of the gospel and thereby invalidates missions. But this liberal element that affected SVM during the early 20^th century bled over into the mission field, and many missions efforts began to be defined by their benevolent work or student activity rather than by souls saved or churches planted. Unfortunately, there are still elements of this displacement today as missionaries question the validity of missiometrical reports on annual salvations and baptisms. Tucker inadvertently raises the issue of what constitutes real mission work if there is no gospel shared.

Nationalization in Missions

Yet another missiological issue that Tucker raises is the growing trend of nationalization among those who are being saved. MacGavran and Winter were key players in the late 20^th century in the indigeneity debate. America began to transition from a colonialistic model of missions to more contextualized and indigenous work. Although this has been a welcomed change, it raises crucial questions regarding what elements the indigenous cultures will now throw into their own theologizing and missions endeavors. More missionaries are now embarking from what was once considered mission fields themselves, and they will be taking with them their own culturally controversial ingredients.

Conclusion

A major contribution of this book to missiology is not just the historical mini-biographies but the lessons that each teaches for future work. Issues like women's rights and the minimalization of verbal evangelism blush at the mention of some more recent cultural controversies of the western church. As the sending of missionaries is shifting from the West to other cultures, these new senders should become aware of and learn from the mistakes of the American past century. Hopefully, some errors can be avoided in doing so. 

Review of Eitel's Paradigm Wars

In Paradigm Wars: The Southern Baptist International Mission Board Faces the Third Millenium, Keith Eitel’s primary premise is two-fold: 1) the Gospel mission got a bad reputation because Landmarkism hijacked its movement, that somehow the Gospel Mission Movement was the host and landmarkism became the symbiote, and that for this anti-missionary reputation it was rejected, and 2) the net result was that the Foreign Mission Board ended up adopting the Gospel mission’s values anyway.

After a brief introduction wherein Eitel states his thesis, Eitel begins his argument in chapter two by giving a historical background to the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in 1845 and outlining the main SBC influencers of that time, namely landmarkism and antimissionism. He then moves to a historical turn-of-the-century survey of the Gospel Mission Movement in chapter three, wherein he studies the documents of Tarleton Perry Crawford and his cohorts who left the SBC to form the Gospel Mission. In chapter four, he identifies what he calls post-modern trends in the Foreign Mission Board (FMB) from 1910 to 1997. His final chapter concludes with a restatement of his thesis that the Gospel Mission Movement has been misunderstood because of its misuse by landmarkism.

Eitel believes there has been an underemphasis of Gospel Missionism in modern missiology, largely due to the negative influences of landmarkism. He attempts to trace a symbiotic relationship between the two and then conclude that the same thing is happening today with postmodern terms. In fact, he introduces the thought with this statement: “this study concludes that the Gospel Missionism Movement was a blending of both enlightenment and post-modern missiological ideals. It was an incipient, evangelical version of a post-modern missiological paradigm that should inform contemporary missiological practices, especially within the SBC” (p. x). He expounds on that purpose by saying that “the study is designed to determine the extent to which Gospel Missionism reflects elements of both enlightenment and post-modern missiological ideals, thereby indicating whether it was indeed a prelude to post-modern tendencies among Southern Baptists and their foreign missions efforts” (p. 2). (The term “post-modern” is not to be confused with the popular rendering of the word, but to be understood within the framework of theology as a rejection of enlightenment and division, a term that Bosch later defined as “ecumenical.”)

It might be a simple guilt by association, but “when Crawford, and the other Gospel Missioners, issued a clarion call from China that was in sympathy with elements of landmark ideology, Landmarkist leaders seized the Gospel Mission Movement for their own ends and not the reverse” (p. 39). So Eitel leaves the reader with an implied question: who is possessing whom? Eitel says the Crawfords' ideas were not new at the time, “but were calling on the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to embrace methods that were radically different from prior practices” (p. 56). Those methods, and the core values they represented, became forever intertwined. The core values were: 1) self-supporting churches, 2) missionaries actively preach, and 3) missionaries’ lifestyles to be as close to nationals as possible.

To provide a background missiological perspective on Crawford's core values, Eitel identifies Bosch’s six missiological paradigms: 1) apocalyptic (primitive Christianity), 2) Hellenistic (patristic), 3) medieval Roman Catholic Church, 4) Protestant Reformation, 5) modern enlightenment with a profound optimism for solving the world’s problems, and 6) emerging ecumenical (p. 66). In chapter three, Eitel gives a history of T.P. Crawford, how and why he broke away from the Foreign Mission Board, and his ongoing influence in the contextualization conversation of the twentieth century. Speaking about the influence of the enlightenment, Eitel says “such optimism about everything Western lent itself to a form of cultural arrogance that determined non-western cultures to be inferior” (p. 69). Using paradigm theory Eitel identifies three core values in the Gospel Missions Movement, namely indigeneity, incarnation, and responsible independence (subtly linking Crawford's, and by association the FMB's, core values with the enlightenment and emerging ecumenial paradigms. This is what Eitel believes became the core values of the FMB, thereby supporting his thesis that the Gospel Missions Movement morphed back into what later became the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. Perhaps Eitel is suggesting that there is yet another subtle attempt now by landmarkists to hijack today’s missions movement within the IMB.

In essence, the role of IMB missionaries became “ambassadors of one local church to another local church” (p. 71). Consequently, this became indigeneity via nonsubsidy and incarnation via fashion. Eitel cites the Cauthers as a typical proponent for this relationship as they dealt with the subsidy issue. “The Cauthers and Means team continued the paradoxical emphasis of encouraging indigeneity while undermining national initiatives with continued subsidy practises for both churches and institutions” (p. 93).

As a sort of precursor to short-term mission work, T.A. Patterson developed “partnership mission” wherein western laymen could go directly to the field (p. 95). And Keith Parks, in developing the CSI program, affirmed the core values of the Gospel Missions Movement. But does this mean that they really adopted those values or only came to the same conclusion? Is it possible to prove “influence”? Is this not an argument of a priori exist?

Bringing it up to Jerry Rankin, the the IMB president at that time, Eitel cites how Rankin adopted an apocalyptic missiological leadership stance, praised CSI success, but then dissolved CSI and created fourteen regions to make “CSI modus operandi normative throughout the world” (p. 106). He acknowledged CSI’s achievements in that it started “367 churches and baptized 6,548 new believers in some of the toughest places on earth” (p. 101). Also against subsidies, Avery Willis joined Rankin’s team to push what later came to be called “the Edge” mentality.

Toward the end of the book, Eitel notes several key moments as paradigm shifters. In 1845, the slavery issue led to the division of the Baptist Union in America into two separate conventions. The Southern Baptist Convention supported individual states’ rights as well as individual church’s rights to send whomever it wished, including slave-owners. According to Eitel, landmarkists began to push its agenda from 1910 and found its home within the Gospel Missions Movement, a movement that Eitel identifies as yet another division within the Baptists. Therefore, Eitel suggests that there may be yet another voice looming on the horizon today that is influencing yet another paradigm shift, the voice of ecumenism. The final question that Eitel seems to pose is whether the paradigm has really fully shifted toward an evangelical version of a post-modern model, or is this something that is yet to come.