“Who Selects the New Missionary?”
by Michael
C. Griffiths
Ministers and congregations have the
chief responsibility for the selecting and sending of new missionaries.
MISSIONARY SOCIETIES have been forced,
in recent years, to a biblical reevaluation of the importance of the receiving
church on the field. The
traditionally independent and individualistic approach of the so-called faith
mission is changing. There is,
correspondingly, a fresh realization of the biblical relationship between the sending
church and missions. The so-called
faith policy, with its valued stress upon "dependence on God alone,"
may have been, to some extent, responsible for a neglect of the proper intimacy
between sending congregations and missions. Kerry Lovering writes, "The
scriptural role of the local church as the sending authority and financial base
for world evangelism needs to be brought back into clearer focus."[1]
So often, the missionary societies have
gone to the Bible colleges to recruit missionaries, and while this is perfectly
understandable, it would be more appropriate if we came to you in the local
churches. Generally all of these young
people contacted and challenged are related to local churches, and in the final
analysis it will be the local church which must be spiritually and financially
involved.[2]
One of the most intriguing aspects of the Acts passages is the total absence of any appeals for volunteers. I was extremely embarrassed when asked at a large convention recently to give an appeal for young people to come forward as volunteers for missions. My text, as it happened, was Acts 11:22, "They sent Barnabas." The passage indicates that it was the congregation in Jerusalem which selected and sent one of its own most gifted members to Antioch. The Holy Spirit, the Author of Scripture, chooses to say nothing about appeals for volunteers or Barnabas's subjective sense of call, but focuses attention upon the Jerusalem congregation's corporate responsibility for the objective selecting and sending of an individual. It is significant that in all the subsequent "sendings" of missionaries in Acts, the emphasis made by Scripture is never upon an individual volunteering or upon his own subjective sense of call, but always upon the initiative of others. Saul goes to Antioch because Barnabas takes him there (Acts 11: 25-26). It is the whole group of prophets and teachers in Antioch to whom the Holy Spirit says, "Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:1-4). Later, when Barnabas and Paul parted company, we are told that Barnabas "took Mark" (Acts 15:39) and Paul “chose Silas" (Acts 15:40) "and departed, being committed by the brethren to the grace of the Lord." Subsequently, Paul wanted Timothy "to go with him" (Acts 16:3), though we are pointedly reminded that "he was well spoken of by the brethren who were in Lystra and Iconium," so that the congregations then were consulted and involved in his going out.
Whereas we seem to have emphasized
exclusively the individual's subjective sense of a highly personal call of God,
and often reinforced this by emotional appeals for individuals to volunteer,
the New Testament by contrast stresses either the corporate initiative of
congregations or the informed initiative of missionaries in selecting suitable
people.
The volunteer system is thus suspect on
biblical grounds. It cannot be justified from the New Testament, and the
best one can scrape up from the Old Testament is the call of Isaiah (Is.
6:8). The call of an Old Testament
prophet should not be regarded as normative for a New Testament
missionary. The prophet was sent to the
people of God, while the missionary is sent by the people of God. It also needs to be established that the
"appeal" which Isaiah heard was, in fact, directed indiscriminately
to a whole group. Certainly, Old
Testament calls depended more upon the subjective certainty of God's calling
than upon any call from God's people themselves. More than this, they show considerable
variety and do not conform to a pattern.
Nehemiah took considerable initiative in seeking information, in
praying, and in going himself (Neh. 1:2, 4, 11). Ezekiel was already in the place of appointment when he was
called (Eze. 1:3). Moses’ call was not
for him to volunteer, but in the form of an inescapable "draft" from
which he tried in vain to escape (Ex. 3 and 4). It seems gratuitous to make the call of Isaiah typical of all Old
Testament calls, let alone to make it a stereotype for the call of New
Testament missionaries. The subjective
element, however, in the assurance of God's calling to the individual is common
to both Old Testament and New Testament calls, but the call in the New
Testament has this much larger objective element.
The volunteer system is also suspect on
practical grounds:
1.
When seeking
persons for vital positions, one selects the best available. A government does
not select ambassadors by calling for volunteers at random. Why should one be any less selective in
seeking ambassadors for the King of kings?
2.
If you make an
emotional appeal at the end of an emotional meeting, the more emotional people
are likely to stand up, while more phlegmatic or self-deprecating people who
might make better missionaries are unmoved by the emotional appeal and remain
sitting down.
3.
The disadvantages
of the system have then to be overcome by candidates' committees, to weed out
all the unsuitable people who have volunteered. This sometimes gives young people problems over guidance: "I
feel called, but now the missionary society has turned me down." In practice, we recognize that the
subjective conviction of a call is not in itself sufficient.
4.
The volunteer
system does not produce results. Nearly
all missionary societies in all parts of the world claim that they require more
recruits. The volunteer system is not
producing them.
5.
The volunteer
system does not produce the kind of missionaries that are required in the
proportion in which they are required.
There may be a surplus of people volunteering as accountants,
secretaries, or nurses, but a serious shortage of doctors, theologians, and
most of all, men who are personal soul-winners and church-planters (gifted in
starting new congregations).
Both the Bible and common sense,
therefore, suggest that the best method is not to call for volunteers but to
set up a draft! The most that an
individual can do is express his willingness. Others must determine his worthiness. The individual may be free to go,
but only his church knows if he is really fitted to go.
In fact, the same thing is true within our congregations, for any position of responsibility, even that of being a Sunday school teacher. We all feel so much happier in our own mind when there is a person who is obviously gifted and well qualified for the task, and when those responsible in the church can approach the individual and ask him to consider seriously and prayerfully becoming a Sunday school teacher or superintendent or youth leader or whatever it may be. We always recognize that the ideal is to be able to approach somebody that we already know who is qualified for the task. It is only when the situation becomes desperate that we have to fall back on the less desirable alternative of making a public appeal for volunteers. It is not the best way to do it, but may be the only option left to us. The same is true, I think, of looking for much needed missionaries. We have called for volunteers because the need is desperate. Ideally, though, we would much prefer that people who are already known to be gifted and experienced should be specifically approached in order that they may prayerfully consider the call of the church.
When the church in Jerusalem heard of
the need in Antioch, together as a congregation they expressed their sense of
responsibility and "They sent Barnabas." He was particularly fitted for the task,
because it so happened that he was of the same background as those Cypriots who
had been involved with the Cyrenians in initiating the work in Antioch; his
very nickname of Barnabas reminds us of his particular gift as an encourager of
others (see especially Acts 11:23; 14:22); and he was, we are told in that
context, "a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith"
(Acts 11:24). They chose the best man
they had available for the job.
The inference is plain that we also
should select our "good
men" and, as responsible congregations,
take the responsibility for selecting and sending them. Instead of the initiative all being left to
the individual to approach a missionary society or to approach his own
congregation, ministers and congregations together, corporately, should, after
prayer, deliberately approach their best, most gifted, and promising Christian
workers about the possibility of sending them to places of greater need.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, emphasizing the responsibility of ministers and congregations to take the initiative does not mean any lessening of individual responsibility or an overruling of personal guidance. The individual is still responsible to respond positively or negatively to the congregation's approach. There may be private, personal factors of which the congregation is unaware. Nonetheless, the fact that the individual's subjective sense of call is confirmed by the objective call of the congregation, recognizing his gifts and contribution, reinforces his assurance of the Holy Spirit's guidance. It is certainly true that the Holy Spirit draws the attention of the congregation to individuals, like Saul and Barnabas, whom He has already chosen: "Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (Acts 13:2). Both individuals and the congregation are instructed by the Spirit. There is a dovetailing of the individual's call, the congregation's call to him, and the mission's need.
Under the current system, an individual
approaches a missionary society, and frequently the congregation and its elders
are not consulted until the individual is already an accepted candidate and an
approach is made by the individual or the society in order to gain financial
support.
This would seem to be the wrong way
around. Where, on the other hand, the minister and elders have already been
involved in making an approach to the individual, the acceptance of
responsibility to back up the individual by prayer and giving is immediately
implied. It is not now a question of whether the congregation will support the
mission's candidate, but whether the mission will accept the church's
candidate. The congregation will naturally accept responsibility for one whom
they themselves have selected to send out.
It is less compelling to pray for the work of the ABC mission organization in some little known corner of the earth, than it is to pray for our friends William and Mary, well known as enthusiastic members of our congregation, through whom we have been personally blessed and who will be sorely missed as the most gifted leaders of the congregation's work among young people. Of course we will pray for them!
Similarly, we feel no compelling
responsibility for missionaries of the ABC mission organization if they are
short of money, even those who may have visited our church on their last
furlough. On the other hand, we immediately
feel a personal responsibility for William and Mary, and are certainly not
going to allow them and their children to starve or to be inadequately clothed,
because we are directly responsible for sending them out there. They would not be there if we had not sent
them, and so we must ensure that they are properly cared for.
Far more, however, than the mere
mechanics of all this, because the congregation has been involved in the
selection and sending of missionaries, the whole congregation feels far more
involved in the particular work which William and Mary are doing. In a very
real sense, this is our work for which we feel responsible, as an
extension overseas of our own local evangelistic ministry. Thus, while we need to think corporately
rather than individualistically, things ought to result in a much greater
personal involvement with people we know, rather than the more distant and
depersonalized relationship with a missionary organization.
Dr. Arthur Glasser, speaking of the
difficulty of getting Christians to be concerned for missions, said,
If you
want to get them to focus on the mission, and then to focus on the church
beyond, that takes a great deal of spiritual imagination. This is part of the
weakness of the American church in its theological understanding of the missionary
enterprise. They have got a poor
Doctrine of the Church. Its Doctrine is
all on the importance of the individual.[3]
This may be becoming far less true
today with the encouraging new emphasis on the body of Christ to be found in
many parts of the United States, and yet it is the personal link with William
and Mary which personalizes the body of Christ to us, and links us with the
church overseas with which they work.
As has already been suggested in the
introduction, what we are aiming at is a more vital and dynamic relationship
between congregations and missions. We
shall need the assistance of the missionary societies in knowing where are the
greatest needs and what type and kind of missionary they most urgently
require. In the Acts evidence reviewed
above, it was plain that not only did the churches take initiative, but so also
did those already involved in missionary work in seeking new fellow workers. Barnabas finds Saul. Paul chooses Silas and Timothy.
The missionary societies, from
considerable experience, are aware of the various physical and psychological
strains and stresses in their particular areas of work, which might exclude
someone who might otherwise appear promising.
However, the whole emphasis of this suggestion is that, rather than the
society making its own selection and presenting the minister and congregation
with a fait accompli, the minister and elders at least should be vitally
involved from the very beginning. The
minister may approach a missionary society representing his congregation on
behalf of some potential candidates. (He may need to correspond with a
missionary society at an earlier stage to determine the kind of missionary
required.) On the other hand, if the
furlough missionary thinks that he has found a likely Timothy, he will proceed
no further without involving the minister and congregation in his selection.
It is those who have known the
candidate for a number of years in his own local church situation who are best
qualified to judge whether he has a contribution to make or not (Acts
16:1-2). It is difficult for a
missionary executive to tell from the candidate's own completed papers and a
short personal interview whether the individual has a contribution to
make. Will he really be used to save
souls and catalyze new congregations? The fact that he may have been trained in
Bible college or seminary indicates only that he has been trained; it says
little about aptitudes or gifts. A far
greater involvement of the congregation in selection would serve to eliminate
some of those unhappy cases where young people go overseas as missionaries and
are subsequently found to be fruitless misfits. There is however one possible snag here.
It is not always easy for a small congregation
to be sufficiently objective: they may be starry-eyed about their own
protégé. All their eager geese are
alleged to be effective swans! The
missionary society is able to compare the caliber of candidates from other
churches and other countries, and provides an objective check upon
overoptimistic evaluations of some congregation's local blue-eyed boy.
Let us just pause at this point and
consider who are the best qualified people in our own congregation by virtue of
their gift, training, and experience to serve as overseas missionaries. Do we have "a good man" — a
Barnabas, a Saul, a Mark, or a Timothy?
Should not the minister and congregation together seek the guidance of
the Holy Spirit in determining who are those whom He would have us set apart
for the work to which He has called them? g
Taken from Who Really
Sends The Missionary, by Michael C. Griffiths, Moody Press, Chicago, IL.,
1974. Michael Griffiths was the former
director of Overseas Missions Fellowship (OMF), formerly China Inland Mission. Used with permission from the author. Further reproduction prohibited without
written permission from the publisher.