I’m going to take a risk. I admit I find it helpful to divide the world into two regions when it comes to Christian ministry: the established world and the pioneering world. Yes, this is more than an oversimplification on my part, but bear with me, because this has bigger implications than we might realise.
What I mean by the established world are the places where churches are both established and sufficiently mature. They are able to fulfill their God-given responsibilities to proclaim the gospel and make disciples among their own people. By contrast, the church in the pioneering world is not yet able to fulfil their gospel ambitions, humanly speaking.
And this has significant implications because being ‘pioneering’ or ‘established’ affects the types of ministries that Crosslinks engages with, and the partnerships we try to build in a particular country. We have a very high regard for the local church as God’s disciple-making agent. Even at home, we do not describe ourselves as a ‘mission agency’. The church is the mission agency; Crosslinks is a mission society that enables and supports the church as it fulfills its Great Commission responsibilities globally.
And so, where there is an established, mature and faithful church, we do not initiate new church-planting ministries. Instead, at their invitation, we enable partnerships that support and encourage the church, often through training and equipping.
And where the church isn’t established, we stand alongside our brothers and sisters and proclaim the gospel with a view to seeing new disciples of the Lord Jesus gathering as churches in time.
You may well ask – ‘how does a region fall into one category or the other? Isn’t there a risk of arrogance in making decisions like this?’ And these are good questions to keep asking me. I’m sure we don’t always get it exactly right, but mostly we work things out by asking local churches.
In each country, we seek to ask small and large churches, old and new ones – ‘how can your brothers and sisters in Christ from the UK best support and encourage you? How can we support your ministry rather than hinder or compete with it?’
Beginning this way determines how we then encourage the church here at home to send church-planters, evangelists, theological educators, week-long training teams, pastors, senior ministry staff, and provide training bursaries or other limited financial support.
And beginning this way also informs our discernment process when churches send potential mission partners to us. We seek to ensure that the right people are in the right places, in the right roles.
So yes, it is a risky oversimplification to divide the world into ‘established’ or ‘pioneering’. But I think the risk is worth it, if undertaken with humility and caution. The alternative is that engaging with the gospel needs of our varied world becomes so insurmountable that we disengage – and that is not a healthy or biblical place to be.
John McLernon, Mission Director