Do the Word

David Fitch just did a post that has me thinking.

The post, entitled STOP FUNDING CHURCH PLANTS and Start Funding Missionaries: A Plea to Denominations, is fairly self-explanatory and certainly worth a read in its own right. But one particular paragraph captured my attention (and the attention of more than a few of the responders in the comments section of the post). Fitch writes:

Fund these leader/leader couples for two years instead of three. Fund them only with health insurance (in the States) and a reasonable stipend for housing. This gives them space to get a job on the ground floor of a company, at the bottom of the pay scale, learning a skill, proving themselves. They can do this because they have certain benefits and a place to live for two years.

The goal here is NOT (I REPEAT NOT) to have self-sustaining church organization in three years. It is to have three to four leader/leader couples working together with jobs each that can offer 15 hours of labor to work together to organize and form a gospel expression way in their context.  They will be self sustaining in that they all have jobs. They will be committed to this context/neighborhood for ten years.

These leaders will have time and space to then a.) get to know and listen to the neighborhood and the neighbors b.) establish rhythms of life together which include worship, prayer, community, discipleship and presence among the neighbors, c.) discern God working in and among the neighbors and neighborhood, d.)bring the gospel to these places wherever God is working. This includes reconciliation, peace, forgiveness, healing, righteousness, and new creation. D.) develop a way of bringing those coming into faith in Christ into a way of growth and discipleship.

I believe that you put three or more quality leaders together in one place for ten years you will have a new expression of the gospel i.e. a church in each context. Gospel as a way of life will take root. Many will brought into the Kingdom. Imagine what could happen if we funded 100’s of such teams.

If you scan down through the comments on the page in response to the post, you’ll see a respondent named Bob launched a vigorous discussion with the following comment:

I don’t understand this at all. The things you describe these funded missionaries doing is *exactly* what EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of the church congregation should already be doing.

The people who are sitting in the seats every Sunday are already living in the context of their jobs and neighborhoods.

I really don’t get this idea of people needing to be paid to “free up the time” to live as Christian salt and light. But I guess our tendency is to pay someone else for something we know how to do (as if we can’t learn) or don’t want to do (as if that is an option God extends).

Bob talks about each Christian seeing his or her present life setting as a mission field–fair comment. And yet as I was teaching Luke 10 to our North Korean Underground University students this past weekend, we couldn’t help but note together that Jesus called Christian missionaries to do something even more radical than Bob suggests. Before leaving for the field, Jesus coached his missionaries to do support emptying rather than support raising:

³Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. ⁴ Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road.

Lest this seem like a one-off oddity (modern readers are invariably quick to conclude that “times have changed and circumstances are different today”), it’s interesting to note that Jesus gives similar advice to a certain rich young ruler who was contemplating his own role and standing in the Kingdom of God:

“You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

Never one to dispense advice that he hasn’t already lived and embodied himself, Jesus’ own preparation for missionary service is worth considering:

⁵ Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, ⁶who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, ⁷ but emptied Himself…

David Fitch suggests that missionaries get a job but receive free housing and insurance. Commentator Bob counters that missionaries should pay for their own housing and insurance. But Lord and Savior Jesus suggests something even more extreme, which is that we prepare for missionary service by self-emptying: selling everything we have, but not to raise support for our missionary journey–the proceeds from the garage sale are to be given to the poor, he says–but rather to put ourselves in a position of absolute dependence upon those to whom he sends us.

“But surely there is a support baseline below which a missionary preparing to head to the field should not fall, and if the missionary fails to reach that threshold, he or she should not be released to the field.”

Jesus suggests a support baseline that a missionary should not rise above rather than fall below. And he seems to see real value in being placed in a position of dependence upon those to whom one ministers.

So imagine someone declaring for missionary service and entering a support emptying phase rather than a support raising one. Instead of traveling around to churches to raise support, the missionary travels around to churches divesting himself or herself of all earthly possessions. One is declared field ready when the bank account balance hits zero.

So my vote for the most radical and Jesus-like missionary post is not the one from David Fitch (though I liked the piece and the thought behind it), nor the comment on Fitch’s post from Commentator Bob. The one I like the best is a post from 1981 from Tom and Elizabeth Brewster challenging missionaries to hit the field without knowing a word of the language of the people to whom they’re being sent. Why?

In order to be completely dependent to learn the language from the people, of course.

The self-sufficient independence of North Americans is of little help for the one who would communicate positively, have an incarnational ministry, or learn the language. Far more is communicated by being in a state of dependency upon the people. A principle here (as pointed out by Dwight Gradin) is that people help people who are in need. As a Learner, then, one must be willing to demonstrate dependency. Jesus Himself (who, of course, could have been more independent than even the most well healed among us) modeled dependency for us. In childhood He was dependent on a poor family, and in adulthood He conducted His ministry as One who could say He had no place to call His own where He could lay His head (Luke 9:58).

The disciples, too, experienced dependency. Bonnie Miedema says it well:

When Jesus sent out the Twelve to preach and heal the sick, He instructed them, “Take nothing for the journey – no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra tunic” (Luke 9:3). I’m finally beginning to understand why Jesus said that. He wanted the disciples to experience the hospitality of the local people and to be dependent upon them. He knew that identifying with the people and staying in their homes would open doors for their ministry.

Unfortunately, we have a cultural perception that causes us to believe that dependence and vulnerability are weaknesses. On the contrary, the one who authenticates his life-message is the one whose strength lies in his willingness to be vulnerable. (Vulnerability is the willingness to put oneself in a position where one could be taken advantage of by others, or where one’s shortcomings and weaknesses may be exposed.)

In conclusion, it’s worth noting that at least one of the books of the Bible owes its existence to a certain apostle’s lack of health insurance:

¹³You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, ¹⁴and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. ¹⁵What then has become of the blessing you felt? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me.

When it comes to serving as a missionary, there’s no substitute for being genuinely–and acutely–in need of others. Such a one might even describe themselves quite accurately as a debtor to Greeks and Barbarians…