Good, Bad, and Really Bad Missions Slogans

I was recently reading “Paradigms in Conflict, 2nd ed.: 15 Key Questions in Christian Missions Today” by David Hesselgrave. On page 259, a section was include on a list of missions slogans compiled by Todd Johnson of the World Evangelism Research Center. Here they are:

1900– “The evangelization of the world in this generation.”1910– “The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world.”1912– “Reaching every home.”1914– “Inauguration of the kingdom of God on earth.”1929– “Each one teach one.”1930– “Bringing Christ to the nations.”1934– “Evangelize to a finish to ‘bring back the King.'”1943– “Into all the world.”1946– “Complete Christ’s Commission.”1956– “The gospel to every creature.”1957– “Global conquest.”1959– “Two thousand tongues to go.”1967– “Crusade for world revival.”1974– “Let the earth hear his voice”1976– “Bold Missions Thrust.”1980– “A church for every people by the year 2000.”1984– “Strategy to every people.”1986– “One million native missionaries”1990– “Decade of Evangelization.”1995– “A Church for every people and the gospel for every person by A.D. 2000.”

You will not that I colored some of the slogans. These are ones I did not care for.

RED color are for slogans I don’t like because they are focused on finishing or completing the great commission. Jesus called us to be faithful to our task until He returns, NOT to carry out the work until it is complete. Unfortunately, an odd theology has developed that some hold to that the faster we do evangelism and missions, the sooner Christ returns. The basis for this is so poor I really don’t want to even address that argument (although I have elsewhere). This bad theology leads to fast and sloppy mission strategies— which can, paradoxically, slow things down. I don’t think that FAST missions is better than SLOW missions. I do admit that the 1980 and 1995 slogans are less egregious in this area since they don’t emphasize “finishing” but instead meeting a certain standard by a certain time. However, the year 2000 was so completely out of touch with reality that it is pretty inexcusable.

PURPLE color are for slogans that to me just seem to be “weird.” Some of these don’t seem to make much sense, such as the one for 1990. Others like for 1976 or 1959 just appear to be the result of completely running out of ideas.

I do think the worst was was 1957 “Global Conquest.” I would have thought that triumphalistic language would not have sounded okay by 1957 even if colonial or war-metaphor language was I guess still okay then. I just would have loved to be the proverbial “fly on the wall” of the meeting where that slogan was chosen.

Personally, I think the best of these was one of the early ones— 1910