Reaching and Teaching | Papers

Reaching and Teaching

This book teaches that missionaries cannot stop at reaching people but must also teach them to observe everything God has commanded. When an approach of doing things as fast as possible, with an ends justify the means for the greater good mentality, new churches and believers get left in the dust and syncretism and heresy creeps in. Trying to create “Church Planting Movements” and save souls as fast as possible, to reach every tribe and bring Christ’s return in our generation, produces unhealthy churches and tries to do work only God can do. Missionaries shouldn’t move on to other people groups until they have trained locals to train others. This can be slow work and a rushed timeline should not be placed on it. In this teaching, the right balance of critical contextualization should be used so God’s word can be communicated faithfully, otherwise a different Gospel can be taught due to a lack of cultural understanding.

Reaching is not enough. Locals must also be taught everything Jesus has commanded. “While evangelism and church planting are essential components of a missions program, deep discipleship, pastoral preparation, and leadership training must be priorities as well.” (Sills 11) When the goal stops at evangelism and church planting, the churches left behind are weak, prone to fall apart, and usually full of dangerous errors of syncretism and false doctrines. This helps me to see why missions work is still needed in areas organizations like The Joshua Project would call reached. The Great Commission says to make disciples, baptize them, “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you,” (Matt 28:19-20) This teaching, especially when in a cultural context different than your own and in a different language, takes time. We see in Ephesians 4:11-16 that the body of Christ is to be built up “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” This is not something that can be done by pioneer missionaries who share the Gospel and then move on to the next unreached people group.

“The greater good mentality saturates and drives much of the thinking in missions today. This mentality is one way to define the view that the ends justify the means.” (Sills 130) Missionaries sometimes feel the pressure to get huge results of people converted as fast as possible. With these goals they sometimes use deceit to gain access to countries. Then when the new believers they’ve helped reach find out they can feel as if Christians are deceitful which leads to a terrible witness for Christ. “Many Young believers feel betrayed and wonder what else the missionary has lied about.” (Sills 133) This does not come across as honorable to me as we see we should be in 2 Corinthians 8:21. I have always wondered about this aspect of being a missionary in places it is illegal to proselytize. I know these people need to hear the gospel but I wonder if there’s a better way than through deceit about why you’re in country. I’ve never known the answer but it was refreshing to see a reasoned argument against lying to a pagan government to gain access to a country in this book. A less cavalier approach that doesn’t make me feel like the ethics aren’t biblical. I also liked how the book argued against missionaries being sent who haven’t had the proper theological training just so they could get more missionaries on the field faster. These missionaries then aren’t able to properly teach locals and help them grow into the fullness of Christ.

I see now how limited my thinking was on contextualization before reading this book. I thought it was important and bad to force your culture onto someone else. I thought it was good to try and make church look like it would in the local culture and not import your own Western way of doing things like music. However, I never thought of the implications of a missionary communicating a different Gospel than the Bible teaches from a lack of understanding the culture. That’s a big deal! The way the book pointed this out with examples was very helpful and eye opening. I loved this clarifying definition in the book: “Some people mistakenly believe that contextualization means changing aspects of Christianity to make it look like the culture, but contextualization is simply the process of making the gospel understood.” (Sills 195) Contextualization to me now means understanding the culture so you can effectively share the Gospel with locals clearly. It means not importing your Western way of doing church, but looking to the Bible and the culture to carefully teach locals all God has commanded us, and to do it in a flexible way that takes into consideration the culture you are in. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 “I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them,” and “22 I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.”

I really appreciated the section on Missionary Roles on pages 42-45 of: pioneer, parent/nurturer, partner, participant. It expanded my view on what a Missionary is and what different roles there are in the various stages of ministry when reaching locals. It made a lot of sense and deepened my understanding of the process of reaching and teaching. This book gave me a desire to see locals raised up and to labor with them until they are preaching and teaching their own people as you have trained them too. What a great thing to spend your life doing! What an amazing honor that would be to see such fruit for God’s Kingdom. I still don’t know what God has for my family and I, or what ministry I will be involved in, but my desire is to help build up a church until the locals are leading it. This quote describing a missionary brought me to tears: “He will visit the old work from time to time and enjoy the preaching ministry of pastors who came to faith years ago under his own ministry.” (Sills 44) Amen! What a beautiful picture that is.

Scripture References

Matthew 28:19-20

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Ephesians 4:11-16

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

2 Corinthians 8:21

for we aim at what is honorable not only in the Lord's sight but also in the sight of man.

1 Corinthians 9:19-23

19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

Works Cited

Sills, M. David Reaching and Teaching. Chigaco, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010. Print.