Fast to Slow Missions: Part 2
You can look at PART 1, if you haven’t read that yet.
I would like to give three formative stories on my thoughts on this one.
Story #1. This is the least story-ish. I was reading T4T: A Discipleship Re-Revolution. It is a so-called CPM strategy. CPM stands for “Church Planting Movement” and refers to efforts to create a culture where churches rapidly self-propagate in a homogeneous setting. T4T I am tempted say is about multiplying evangelistic bible studies, not churches, but I won’t dwell on that. But as I was reading the book, a question came up about doing social ministries or felt-need ministry while following the T4T strategy. The advice given was NO. The reason is because it slows the strategy down. I guess I am still American enough to struggle with that for a little while. I really think social ministry is important— in fact, God-ordained. But if it slows things down, doesn’t that really speak against its need, or even its “rightness”?
I then was struck by a thought that if I wasn’t brought up in the American culture, I would have thought of immediately— WHY IS FAST A GOOD THING? I used to be an Engineer and I still remember the Design Triad. When thinking of designing/creating something new, one had three characteristics to aim for (beyond such direct things as function, durability, and aesthetics). The three are: High Quality, Low Cost, and Fast Development. Of those three, you can choose any two. If you want to have a fast development, you need to sacrifice either quality or cost.
If we assume (and I think this assumption would ultimately prove true) this principle applies to Christian discipleship as well. If you want quick multiplication and quick discipleship, quality will suffer or cost (include money, time, energy) will. Mostly likely it will be quality.
Looking at the ministry work of Jesus, we could imagine he would respond almost the opposite to that book. When asked about why He did social ministry, perhaps He would have said, “I do social ministry— healing and feed— to slow things down. They don’t just hear about the Kingdom of God, they get a small taste of it. I am looking for true, mature, self-identified disciples— following my example. And that takes time.”
Story #2. Years ago I was in a mission organization, “Dakilang Pag-Ibig DIADEM Ministries”— DPDM. Our primary ministry was medical mission events. This is a Fast form of ministry. You take a team to a community in the morning. We did registration, blood pressure, evangelism, medical care (or dental or surgical or eye care) and then pharmacy. And then we would leave. We would work with local churches and give them the registration forms with giving them the call to do follow-up. Now some people have complained about this form of ministry, — and sometimes I am one of these. The medical care is generally of a very limited nature— and an evangelism presentation tied to medical care can sound an awful lot like a cynical manipulation. But let’s ignore this for a moment and look at some of the transitions we made.
Over around a 5 year period we did 70 medical missions, reaching around around 30,000 with over 10,000 “praying to receive Christ” (not getting into the question of authenticity of such prayers). Early on, we were quick to say yes to churches or churchplanters who would invite us. However, over time, we started to discover three things. First, we realized that medical mission events work better in certain communities, and not so well with others. Second, we realized that it was really really important that we visit a potential site for a medical mission beforehand, as well as talk to the local church, local school and so forth weeks before we go there for the mission. Third, and perhaps most importantly, we needed to have really good local churches to partner with.
Taking the third point— we would do a medical mission at a particular site and a few months later we would contact that host church and would ask them how things have gone since we met— has anything changed? Many would say that pretty much nothing has changed. Others on the other hand would give a very different report. Perhaps one would say, “We did follow-up on the names we were given. When we did so, we were able to establish three new Bible study groups. A few weeks ago we expanded the ministry to have a Saturday morning kids ministry. Hopefully, we will start gathering them into a separate Sunday morning group once a month in the not too distant future.”
We gradually learned that doing more is not necessarily doing more. In fact, we probably could have done more like 25 medical missions in those 5 years and got as much ministry done. Utlimately, we learned that we needed to slow down— focus more working on locations that make more sense in a manner more tailored to that location, and working with partners who are more committed to take a quick project and turn it into a long-term program. Fast projects need slow planning and slow partnerships.
Story #3. This story is not part of my story but of Evangelical missions back in the 1960s. I recall reading about the tension that existed in the Evangelical missions community. The WCC and IMC had moved further and further away from traditional (and rather conservative) missions, and the Evangelical community rebelled and established its own structures for missions. But the question came up what to do about social missions. Some like Donald McGavran, Billy Graham, and Peter Wagner looked on social ministry rather negatively. In some cases they were not actively opposed, but did not give priority (seeing social ministry as taking the lead on proclamation ministry) or weight (seeing social ministry as being part of the Great Commission). Billy Graham, for example, said that he believed that a lot of social problems solved themselves if enough people become saved. I think the data on that is truly lacking— especially if those who are saved had already been indoctrinated with the belief that social problems are not really their problem.
However, one other reason that social ministry was pushed down at that time by some Evangelicals is what I would call “Apocalypticism.” This perspective goes like this— “Jesus is returning ANY DAY, and so we must do methods and strategies that will lead to the most spiritual responses in the least amount of time. Social or Developmental ministries are slow and therefore don’t make sense in these ‘last days.'” Of course, there were three problems. The first is historical. Jesus did NOT return in the 1960s, or 1970s, or 1980s, or… . They made strategic decisions based on a guess that proved wrong. Second, I believe that the idea of trying to make strategic missiological decisions based on trying to time Christ’s return is inherently flawed. I have written on this before and so don’t want to repeat myself. Generally, Jesus said it is not for us to know the time of His returning and that we are to be faithful until the end. Bringing these two together leads to the conclusion that we are to do what is right and what is right is not dependent on how close it is to Christ’s return. If it is right today with Christ not returning for 500 years, it is right today if Christ was coming this afternoon. Third, I theorize at least that if in the 1960s investment was placed on developmental transformational ministries rather than on short-term quick-fix programs, I think there may have proven to be more long-term tangible results than what we have. This last point is hard to prove, but I would push back on this by pointing to my second story. Definitely in that setting, doing holistic ministry that properly tied projects to programs, social to spiritual, and sought to be slow and careful in selection of work proves more effective than doing a lot of fast projects without the long-term in consideration.
I think I will go on to a Third post on this topic. We shall see.
