From the Missionary Blogosphere
Posted by C. Holland on Oct 19, 2009Some missionary blog posts worth reading:
Karl Dahlfred asks if Long-Term Missionaries are obsolete.
Mentanna reflects on the costs of obedience to God’s call to missions affecting those around you, especially children.
Kevin asks if the multi-site church concept is uniquely American.
Grady Bauer gives some good direction for those who would like to be foreign missionaries but cannot physically go.
Ernest Goodman discusses the pros and cons of supporting a national church planters.
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October 22nd, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I was kinda wondering, what is a national church planter? Is it local people who plants church in their own country or long term missionaries?
I really think we need to broaden the way we do missions though, I think any way of people doing missions is pleasing in the eye of God as long as they do it with the right heart. We need tent making missionaries, we need full time missionaries, and we need “national church planters” (whatever it might be). Problem I see with tent making missionaries (those who spend the bulk of their time working) is that it is very easy to lose focus and the whole experience ends up being about the career rather than the Kingdom. Full time missions has its pitfalls as well such as fear but I’d say don’t be limited to one or the other, it depends on what God calls you to do and which doors are open.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:48 am
@Tai: Yes, a national planter would be someone planting churches in their homeland; the opposite would be a foreign missionary coming to another country to plant. I see what you’re thinking about a tentmaker (we’re half tentmaker, half fundraised); however, some mission fields may require taking a secular job to enter the country instead of being upfront about coming as a missionary (I won’t mention which ones for security reasons). I’ve seen full-time fundraised missionaries lose focus, too, so it’s more a heart issue to me than fundraised or tentmaking.
You’re right about broadening the concept of how missions is done. I’m working on some thoughts about that and hope to have it posted soon.
November 11th, 2009 at 5:33 am
I was searching for missionary organizations and I came across a few that swears by “national church planters” because according to them, “we can support 10 local church planters for the cost of one foreign missionary”. I think the mindset seems a little one sided because both are useful and every country needs both. The downside to national church planters I can see is that in some countries, particularly third world or developing country is that people don’t always take locals seriously for some reason. There are churches in Africa from what I heard that doesn’t acknowledge anyone who isn’t foreign. This may be different in different countries but from what I can see foreigners always get noticed, whether it’s good or bad kind of attention.
But then the flip side is that foreign missionaries are harder to train, and the person must adapt to different cultures. However I don’t think only one or the other solution should be the only solution because of cost, that is just narrow minded.