Source: www.freeimages.com
Recently a couple of influential bloggers have published their thoughts on Do we really need to send missionaries overseas? and No, we shouldn’t send missionaries…unless. Rather than go all panto dame and write “Oh yes we do” I thought I’d flip the question on its head.
It is clear that many churches in the UK see the size of the challenge in this country as so great that they are wondering whether we really need to be sending people to other countries when the need is so great here. This is a question that is worth asking, and if the overseas mission advocates cannot answer it convincingly there will inevitably be a significant decline in overseas ministry as home needs prevail.
What is also clear is that despite the increase in focus on mission at home, there is not yet significant, consistent growth across the church in the UK. Some individual churches are growing, and some denominations are growing rapidly. But many others are declining, and we have not reversed the trend.
Which is why we need help. By the same logic that we send people abroad to do things the local church cannot do there, we need Christians from Africa, Latin America, eastern Europe, the middle east and China to come to this country and help us do what we can’t.
Which isn’t simply reaching their own ethnicities because we can’t cross the cultural divide. It’s reaching ours too. Sometimes they are able and willing to go and live in places we can’t… or won’t. Sometimes they are able to forge new connections: to have someone from another culture telling you about Jesus suddenly seems interesting after you’ve heard the same old story from so many Brits.
In his blog, Eddie Arthur points out that:
If we are not prepared to receive missionaries from the Global South in our churches, then we shouldn’t be sending missionaries to theirs!
In the 1950s a lot of Christians from the Caribbean came to Britain and found little welcome in the churches, so they often started their own. Today these are some of the most vibrant and growing churches in the country. We don’t want to make the same mistake again so let’s welcome the people from abroad who God sends to us, and help them be effective in the ministry they are called to.
Syzygy is developing a stand-alone training day for small groups of foreign mission workers new to the UK which includes an introduction to British culture and history, an overview of the current state of the church, and helpful tips on how to engage missionally in a way which won’t alienate your neighbours. If you’d like to know more, contact us on info@syzygy.org.uk.
This is rapidly becoming a pagan country again, and if we need more resources to prevent that, why turn away helpers?
