The “E” Word – 20th Century Mission

Oh welcome everybody I think we’re gonna get going here as is as is our practice
we have more content that we have time so we’re gonna jump right into it
although today I wasn’t the preacher so I’m not gonna accept responsibility
alright if you remember today is our last day that we’re gonna focus on
history and then we’re gonna pivot for the following and the remaining three
weeks and we’re going to be talking about the practical sort of more
personal implementation of what it looks like and what we want to be thinking
about in terms of evangelism but today we’re gonna be finishing out what I’m
going to call the modern era of missions and I’m just gonna say as sort of a
little bit of a conditional statement at the front I’m aware that there’s both
pros and cons of engaging with something that’s actually in our life experience on
one hand I probably shouldn’t be talking about this because you’re all
experts in a sense of what modern mission looks like you’ve participated in
some way you may have given financial donation you may have actually
participate in going on a trip to a different place you may have known a
missionary who served lifelong in another location so you have personal
experience and then that brings with it the kind of richness and I want to
certainly keep that in mind in our conversation maybe the temptation of
knowing something is you might expect it to be something or it may be hard to see
some of the negatives of that thing when when you know so much about it so I’m
going to also share some things that have been reflected upon as some
possible weaknesses or downsides from the modern mission movement and I’ll try
to do that in a way that’s accessible we can have a conversation about it but I
don’t mean it to be a negative I just simply mean it to be looking ahead or
we’ll want to have some conversations in the in the church as to the best way to
be faithful in our mission on today to try to control the scope of our
conversation I wanted to use a particular example of Presbyterian
mission as sort of an example of a type of the whole the truth is the reality
is the Baptists have an unbelievable mission apparatus that they have been
utilizing effectively for over 200 years the truth is the Methodists have been
doing an amazing amount of international mission since the beginning of the 1900s
onward so Presbyterians don’t sit in kind of privileged location in terms of
mission that the Protestant Church has done an unbelievable amount of
missionary work around the world but I want to share with you a particular
example of the Presbyterian commitment to mission because I think it exemplifies
what many of those groups have done in the course of those years and I was
specifically want to look at the Presbyterian missionary work in Korea as
an example of this I don’t know did any of you know that Presbyterians have a
very storied history of mission work in Korea some do you might know or it might
be new and interesting information to you actually in the Presbyterian Church
USA the national sort of American Presbyterian Church really we do have
some African-American congregations and in fact we partnered with one of them
for several of our youth mission trips when we were in Jamaica Queens but the
greatest diverse group of American Presbyterianism is the Korean
Presbyterian Church in the United States in fact is large enough that they have
their own non geographic presbyteries or they have their own sort of enough
churches that they can have their own governing bodies and I went to seminary
with a number of students who were going into serve Korean Presbyterian churches
they’re incredibly vibrant and their life-filled and they’re an amazing
testament to a lot of the work done by Korean missionaries in Korea so it’s an
incredible historical story the shape version to give you sort of a pass at it
yes we have let me get to the right place in my notes here okay so you have
at essentially the beginning of the 1900s late 1800 Presbyterians deciding
that we wanted to be active in world mission so part of that conversation we
would send a person and we generally in the beginning didn’t call them a
missionary we generally sent a doctor or a teacher and we would send them to a
country so what happened was in Korea we less sent someone and more they went and
they went as a Presbyterian and they went and they began working in a local school there
and as they began teaching some of like Western history and
literature and those kinds of things and this time went on they actually began to
make an impact all the way up to at the time in Korea they had they still had a
royal court they still had a king and so that began to get noted and so
ultimately building relationship and trust over time this individual this
Presbyterian minister was allowed to start a hospital and began bringing in
other Presbyterian doctors from the United States where they began teaching
some of that medical practice right there in Korea well as that continued to
grow they brought in more and more missionaries and then they began a
school and that began as a secondary like a high school type program and then
as that went on it became the first and I actually learned this this week the
longest running Western College in the entire nation of Korea you can apply and
go to this college today that was started by Presbyterian ministers now
we can talk to actually is very interesting these two Presbyterian
ministers who went there and began missionaries they’re actually both
buried in Korea interestingly there’s only a few select foreigners who are
buried in Korea but there’s a special cemetery reserved for them land of them
was notable for having said that he would rather be buried in Korea than in
the halls of Notre Dame which I thought was a quite an interesting statement
for a missionary to make the reason I’m sharing this with you is quite simple
we’re gonna get to the end of this I’m gonna talk with you about the strategies
of modern mission the different ways that different missionaries sought to do
their work in the 21st century 20th century but the reality is the way that
Presbyterians have tended to focus on mission has begun with education and
that makes sense if you know our culture we’re people of the book if you’ve ever
been into a Presbyterian worship service you know that there are times that we
venture into higher intellectual kind of conversation that is because of a higher
historical value in which we believe a fair on uncompromising study of
scripture is the basis of discipleship that we need to understand as best as we
can who Jesus was and what he taught and what the scriptural authors meant and
all of these things and so Presbyterians we have begun in the United States by
starting schools right we were very forceful in terms of our own nation in
terms of public education in terms of teaching people so that they can read
scripture but that also held around the world and Korea is a great example of
this the idea was we need to have a presence in that nation so we could
teach others so that first we could translate the scriptures and then they
would be able to read them themselves and that led to what is I think another
very common form of Presbyterian evangelism in the 20th century was we
began hospitals the Presbyterian hospitals all throughout the United States
many of them remain Presbyterian in name and not in actual connection they’re now
their own bodies but in our mission effort we would often go places and
Presbyterians big people who valued education often had doctors who were
willing and able to go do that work and so they would go begin and sort of
share that that effort wherever they went um the the point that I share this
with you is is to say that we are in our Presbyterian form somewhat unique
because as the the 1900s or proceeded on nations like Africa Presbyterians
became very active in like water ministries or crop ministries or the
kind of food supply type ministries Presbyterians as the year went on and now
I believe we’re actually seeing a transformation in some of the
Presbyterian world mission emphasis the denomination is beginning to begin
shifting away from some of that into what they would call justice ministries
where they’re seeking to serve in other nations I’m speaking to either economic
injustice or racial injustice those kinds of things nationwide but sorry
internationally the point I want to make is we tended to fair this upon how we
could utilize either intellectual capability or physical capability to
help nations and peoples and then that creates an opportunity to be able to
have conversations about the faith in the 20th century especially world
mission also often included from different spiritual groups say a
Methodist or Baptist would be more likely to go into a place and to be
left fixate on a kind of idea of like a revival that give having a large tent
gathering gathering people in and having a revivalistic type movement maybe you
would do that through a tent or or like you would go community to community
there were some that would be more and perpetrators we did have some of this
where mission a national missionary organization would go into a place and
they would build a missionary compound they would build like a house and then
when they would use that as a center of sort of different social goods they
would bring in food or they would have classes and then they would bring people
in and the idea was that you would kind of create like a small little beach
front in that place with a Methodist so the Presbyterian voice would sort of be
heard one of the critiques of the 20th century mission that has sort of become
prominent the latter part is certainly the 21st century has been this question
raised by missing ologists is to what extent we were responsible for
proclaiming the gospel in another country and to what extent we were
participating in sort of spreading Western culture in other places and
that’s a tricky that there’s no easy way to divide a line between those two
things because turns out the people bringing the gospel were Westerners
right so you can’t separate yourself from that conversation and there is a
real temptation that that you go to another place and you say we invite you
to hear the truth of the gospel as told by the Presbyterian family oh and by
the way next Sunday we expect you to be wearing Presbyterian dress and and we
might laugh at that but that’s not just a thing that was suggested that was
demanded in fact there were times where if we would go have a missionary in
Africa there were times where the expectation early in the 20th century
was we’re going to bring in clothes so that you can dress properly for worship
now to be charitable the idea was this is in our culture an appropriate
way to dress for worship so a spirit of that if you’re going to be positive
might be trying to pass that idea along to others that a few years down the road
we might admit that expecting another culture to dress properly for worship
and not understand their own cultural dress code is missing the mark right and
and so the different groups of different time would make this case that we have
to sort of divide between the idea of Westernism and then the idea of what we
would call the Missy O’Day or the mission of God and on the way you have
the fact that Christianity is by its nature an evangelistic religion in fact
if you hear atheists and skeptics as generally the thing that roils them the
most is Christians can’t keep their mouths shut that’s built into who we are
if you’ve heard the good news of Jesus Christ the expectation is that you share
that I’m sure that you all realize there are some major modern religions in fact
the if you were to be a Jew today one of the core cultural values of Judaism is
you’re welcome to learn about it but we’re not going to talk to you about it
they’re not by definition or by value evangelistic people I’m not saying that
there’s not evangelistic Jews but not not in the way that Christianity is it
built into our faith and so at the fundamental level right the question is
are you participating in the mission of God in the world where are you spreading
a cultural preconceived idea of what that mission should look like and of
course there’s no simple answer to that and people write lots of books and and
that’s an important conversation to have when you’re thinking about modern
mission the reason I share that at the end of this conversation is because we
have a very troubled past in navigating there I don’t know if you know this it’s
a very disturbing conversation and I’m not necessarily encouraging you to look
it up but the episcopals which are a Protestant branch of the church they
just recently had to be dealing with there was a school set up in Canada that
was a mission school it was a mission outpost for Native Americans and
unfortunately the historical record seems to show that there are thousands
of Native American kids that were sent to this mission school and died and
were buried and never sent back home some of that due to the fact that those
kids didn’t convert and it’s a very troubling historical story I certainly
encourage you if I google search for Episcopal Church mission school we’ll
bring it up but I share this as a real-life example of the idea was we
need to help teach these kids how to read English we need to teach them how
to read the Bible we need to teach them how to be Christian and somewhere along
that journey it ended with those kids lives being ended that’s a disturbing
path right and unfortunately it’s happened numerous times throughout
history and so Christians have to confront this this difficult
conversation about we’re cleared to speak the good news of Jesus Christ and
we’re cleared to know when our own sinfulness is getting in the way with a
long historical track record of not getting that right and that’s different
when I’m out when we move in the next three weeks so we’re talking about hey
Christians do we even have a thing if so if your faith is called to account do
you have it do you have a faith to speak about could you have words to describe
that faith clearly the critique I’m offering here is not about that right
it’s not about your witness to the faith it is to say that what the Protestant
Church did for the last 200 years was historically unique I want to make this
clear the Catholic Church has been sending priests for literally 2,000
years around the world sometimes they’ve been doing that intentionally they’ve
been calling priests to go and that’s not always great because I think you all
know that Christopher Columbus brought priests with him and sometimes those
priests were actually part and parcel to some of the really negative things that
happened at the hand of the Spanish conquistadors so it’s not always a
positive in other cases like Benedict that he wasn’t sent by any organization
he went he felt the call to mission he went he started what was one of the
largest church renewals in the history of the entire Christian church he did
on to the name of mission and and Benedicti the Benedictine order which
still exists in the Catholic Church is one of the most prominent mission
organizations in the Catholic Church today so it was strange I like reverse
things good bad it’s either twine right and and ultimately I think the question
that the modern church is going to have to ask is how do we navigate our
theology of mission such that it honors the deepest truth of the faith while
also living in an increasingly globalized world and increasing read a
way out of cultural difference and the awareness of a one where a bird or is
it just the definition of the people right you talk about Africa I know if
you’ve kept with all the conversations about well here’s 14 people groups that
live in one nation how do you treat that the modern missiologists are trying to
take seriously how the gospel engages people not just nation states and some
of them of the modern mission project was this sort of this huge mechanism
that that poor the unbelievable never-before-seen amounts of money and
time and effort in doing this mission work and now we look back on it and see
well I don’t know if you know this the fastest growing press between church in
the world at church I mean that not as an individual church I mean that is like
a group of churches is in Africa in fact that the rate of growth in the
places where Protestants sent missionaries a reasonable numerical
account would have that they will outnumber the church that the churches
that sent missionaries to them within our life span and I just want to make
that clear it’s likely that we’re going to have African Presbyterian
missionaries sent to countries like the United States which I think by the
way is amazing thanks be to God right and they’ll have something to teach us
about the faith that we that we just want to see from our place so this is
the amazing good news of Jesus Christ is that that there’s millions of the
revelation than can be contained at any one time or place and so the problem
though with that and then I want to turn to some conversation before I turn
to some of the larger philosophy of mission is just are we humble enough to
accept our place in that story right are we humble enough as Christians to to
believe that we have something to learn because if we believe that modern
mission is something like if we make the mistake and I don’t think we often make
this mistake but at our worst if we make the mistake of thinking like when we
go into mission it’s like we’re Nike and we’re we’re exporting Nike shoes to the
web like the Nike brand let’s get every country that have Nike in it well then
we would think we’re the only ones with Nike we’re the only ones with the brand
but that’s not that’s not mission when we bring the living spirit of Jesus
Christ and we are witnesses to it in another place and then those people hear
the gospel it renews and transforms them and they bring the Christian faith
into their own life in context they can literally bring Jesus back to us and it
will be a new understanding for us and I hope that we’re humble enough to receive
that I hope that we’re humble enough to be open to that but the mainline church
will struggle with that I think because their growth may appear to be at our
expense because that’s a tough thing the process right the churches that we’re
sending missionaries are right now our national missionary organization
continues to decrease the number of missionaries that we send around the
world and that that’s a grief filled process where other places around the
world are building new seminaries so they can train people to go into the
ministry so some of that’s dealing with our own emotional response to that that’s
difficult the most dangerous prayer is Lord God what you ask of me the most
dangerous prayer is for revival because what if God asks you to be revived
what if God asked you to confront the reality of your brokenness and to give
account to the gospel of those surrounding you and and to sacrifice as
Jesus Christ sacrificed I think that’s I agree with you completely I think the
the beautiful reminder to me is that the church among our scriptures were
written in at a time in which the church was actively meeting in tombs to avoid
being found by the government that they met under and that was among the most
effective periods of church missionary work in the history of the world and I
just think there’s something about the awareness that that being cleared to be
revived often happens in an environment of difficulty and struggle and instead
of receiving moments of difficulty and struggle with resistance I think there’s
an opportunity in that to say thank you God for an incubator of the good news
that’s a hard prayer but I think it’s a I think it’s an important one personally
this is just completely my opinion I’m unbelievably excited about the next 50
years of mission in the United States I’m thrilled about it I think the
mainline church does not have a good statistical future ahead of it like in
terms of number of churches and in terms of names on signs and and those we’re
gonna have some very troubled ground to walk a certain yeah I mean the
Presbyterian Church USA not to be too blunt is unlikely to exist by that name
by my by my retirement should I make it to that time I mean that that that’s a
tough thing that’s a tough reality to process but at our current rate of
decline it’s unlikely that the systems and structures of the denomination are
are both financially and else and more importantly that a capital of time
energy ability we don’t have the people to do what we’ve always done so there
will be Presbyterians they may gather under a different name they may gather
with the Methodists in a new formation whatever it will look like I don’t I
don’t see that the point is though I don’t think there’s ever been a better
time for mainline thinking Christian who cared deeply about the faith and
cared deeply about the preservation of the truth and the gospel we live in a
culture that’s desperately yearning for something real real than just social
media clickbait we have that we have a deep hysterical tradition a deep
connection for this this in that relief that Jesus Christ to me to approve the
sermon today has revealed himself and that’s unbelievably exciting I think
there’s a whole little there’s a whole contingent and generation that will
continue to be imaginative and creative and skirt and power this as they seek to
live that out but that I think it will by definition transform our understanding
to keep this conversation to mission we will not have the apparatus to do
mission as we did from 1900 to 2000 we won’t have the money we won’t have the
people trained in the same way but that’s fine right just because it was
that way for some time doesn’t mean it was going to be that way forever we will
continue to do mission that’s what it means to be the people of God so I’m
it’s only I’m excited and I have to always start these conversations
admitting grief right I mean because for a lot of us that this is a very
painful way to get to the next faithful proclamation of the gospel is to see
some of these structures that we built to struggle under the weight of it this
is the modern Western problem is because everyone in a world of ideological
precision specificity but whether I have I have friends who couldn’t be in the
same room together because of their ideology right they couldn’t they
couldn’t figure out a way to translate not yet at least they can’t figure out
how the way to translate to each other they’ll both claim the mantra of
persecution because persecution is a in the modern in our in our world in which
quite frankly we are protected from a kind of persecution that still exists in
much of the world right where Christians like literally are found and killed
they’re brought outside their church and there they their life has ended because
we we don’t have that experience in our context I think we have people who
experience well if negative things happen I attribute that to persecution
for fill in the blank I have to go back his historically to help me here the
early church was persecuted because they claim that they were worshiping the Savior Jesus Christ
do you know what the Roman Emperor insisted that he be called
Savior Lord you want to address the Emperor as Lord which means that the
Emperor is the supreme divine being rhyme when Christians persecuted
because they threatened the lordship of the Caesar of the governing power of the
world and I would make a case Mike and we could have a robust conversation and
and we might even find disagreement on this I would argue that Christians have
always been a very unreliable partner to the powers of the world I think
we at our best we are always unreliable because the moment that the power of the
word says I am literally is the moment Christians say no you’re not right and
and with French people I think to our credit have really really leaned into
navigating that in a modern world we don’t have a Caesar who rules with that
might there it does seem that there are some countries in the world but that
might want to think that they do I mean not to be political but Putin certainly
seems to think and behave in a way that seems very much as if that authority is
invested in him so I don’t know that that’s entirely gone from our world but
but it does seem that the friend people have said we understand that the power
of the democratic society is that the people vote that we all share some kind
of power in that and that changes the Christian understanding of what it means
to be checks and balances in a system right but hey Lance again why would
Christians in America be persecuted is not in my view it’s an important
question but not a simple question to answer right because there are some
Christians who think they’re persecuted because they don’t buy Starbucks or
whatever that whole blow-up was over time like I would respectfully suggest
that anything involving Starbucks is not persecution right right like you know so
like wait that that to me seems like Christians trying to navigate an
economic space conversation and and that’s a difficult for me one that said
there’s likely a day in which Christians claim in the United States I
mean not to make predictions but there’s likely a day Christians claim in the
United States I believe that Jesus Christ died was resurrected and that his
spirit continues to live and embody my sense of service and self-giving and
sacrifice in the world and that may result in threat right whatever that
would appear to be whether whether that be that does not appear to me be honest
right now the protections from the pulpit and these kinds of things they
remain intact right that we that we don’t right now worry about what that is
but in the state of hundreds of years and thousands of years throughout
history every major nation has had this transformation you know like so fast to
think that that will be different year may be a little bit of historical if not
arrogant naivety right so like it when that day comes Christians will
experience what we see classically in Scripture as persecution where one’s
wife doesn’t know what mother means the land mother in Greek means witness but
the idea was when Stephen died at the hands of stoning
his life was his
witness so so to your point right like when we talk about persecution the thing
that seems slippery to me about that is when I look at Christian history and the
people who gave witness to the faith with literally their life I think we
have to we have to honor that line that
that’s not a line that thing that they
offer as witness is substantially different than anything in my 36 year old
I know I’m dating myself I’m a child my 36 year old life I have never
experienced anything of even remotely similar quality I’ve been uncomfortable
I felt I felt out of place I have felt like culture has been hostile but that I
cannot compare those two things I don’t because I think that you would be naive
to think that any Christian at any time or place living the faith does not have
to wrestle with that real reality
I think of a person who is haunting to me
is Dietrich Bonhoeffer I don’t know if you’ve read Dietrich Bonhoeffer life
together would be great work if you haven’t he’s not a perfect individual and
unfortunately some take up a banner of a person say hey look you know here’s no
he’s a human yeah turns out but Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor to the
Roman guards that shot him and we have hysterical accounts of him counseling
pastorally counseling the people who were called to take his life and I
sincerely hope that if I was in a nation in which the church was called to leave
behind the proclamation of the gospel today the proclamation of Nazism which
happened historically I’m not I’m not German sure yeah I’m sorry I’m sorry yes
that’s why I meant the German church yeah I won’t be very clear I’m talking
about the historical I’m not talking about there are people comfortable about
talking about that in America I’m not talking about that cuz I’m not
comfortable making those direct connections but but I think that the the
idea that that Bonhoeffer Bart and others in the confessing church said we
refused to allow the political order
the political military order to determine
what the church should and shouldn’t proclaim his gospel when that cost him
his life I sincerely hope that I would have the wisdom and courage to be able
to understand that number one and to be willing to pay that price number two and
to be honest with you that’s a troubling question for my character I sincerely
hope that that would be true well there’s a real part of me that if I’m
honest with you I’m afraid it wouldn’t be and I’m afraid I would be subject to
that force that says I just prefer leave me in my church I’m gonna go take
some country church in Northwest Iowa we’re all gonna hide out there and I’m
gonna do my thing and you just leave me alone like now I get to live out my life
and see my grandkids I like I’m trying to student eyes I mean I think in the
railroad rhetoric and ideology when we start talking about things like the
persecution of the church like it’s easy to get philosophically clear I think it’s
very different to be humanly clear like am
I willing to give my life as
witness to the state that I believe in the rat in the real belief that
resurrection is God’s ultimate word to humanity I sincerely pray that that if
that choice is put in front of me that I have the courage of spirit and the Holy
Spirit to do that so I’ll end because I Clint’s gonna make fun of me again but
I interestingly it’s a weird way to end this conversation I’m not gonna end it
with scripture but I’m gonna end it with Pixar so I’m sorry Pixar’s a animation
studio that makes movies that people think about as kids movies but that is
golden era and one of their one of their guiding minds is I think an expert
storyteller and I read a book by his and by him and he said a thing that’s
that stuck with me he said I never want to write a story that I tell other
people is good I want the story to be good enough that they tell each other
that it’s good and the compelling thing in that is because fundamentally as a
preacher I’m committed to the idea of telling the good news which is a human
an imperfect human telling of a perfect divided reality right I sincerely
hope that the gospel lived in my life is so compelling that others see it’s good
news without me needing to tell them that it is
and the way that this
connects to your story is
I think we are given the
resource of people’s skepticism to prove them wrong I think because of the assumption that
Christians are closed-minded judgmental and hopelessly prideful individuals
when we show up in that room with people every time now this is teasing you the
next three weeks I’m so I love that this transition exists here I want to
encourage us to consider every time we encounter someone who believes that
about us we we don’t we don’t need to talk them out of it we need to prove
them wrong and I hate to break it in the room but there are a lot of
Christians who prove that belief right and
and so we have to we have to wrestle
with that we have to wrestle with we’re not here to struggle against flesh and
blood we we’re not here to fight whatever this thing is in culture I don’t
think and what we’ll get to the conversation you could all disagree with
me and that’ll be really helpful as you’ll teach me I think what we will
have is this reality that when we proclaim Jesus Christ dead and
resurrected that means something for how we live and and that will transform us
such that they should see the good news in us and when they do that’s our way
alright I’m sorry I’d love to hear more conversation we’ll come back to it