THE PRACTICE OF MISSIONS IN A GLOBALIZED POST MODERN

WORLD

SUBMITTED TO

REV. ABONYIN

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE

COURSE

CHURCH AND MISSIONS

COURSE CODE PGD 517

BY

OGUNYANDO STEPHEN ADEKUNLE

MATRIC NO: 03228

PROGRAMME

PGD THEOLOGY

JANUARY 2024

ECWA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IGBAJA KWARA STATE.

INTRODUCTION

THE MISSIONARY PURPOSE OF GOD AS REVEALED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

MODERN MISSION

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

PHYSICAL QUALIFICATIONS

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION

THE LOCAL CHURCH AND MISSIONS

CONCLUSION
INTRODUCTION
We would not know that we are supposed to take the gospel to the whole world unless God
had revealed it to us. He has show us his will in his word, the Bible and it we now turn to
find out what God actually has revealed to us about his plan for the whole world and our
part in it.
Anyone who wants to be a successful missionary should study mission in the past.
Learning about the sufferings and accomplishments of missionaries who have gone on the
work. We can study the mistakes they made so as to avoid making them ourselves. We also
study their successes to find out why they succeeded so that we can use the same principles
in our own work.
Since we are interested in actually finishing the work Jesus gave us to do of taking the
gospel to every creature studying the history of mission ill help us to know how far the
work has gone and what remains to be done.
The book of Acts is our main source of knowledge about missions during this
period. There we read how God forced the first believers who were all jews or proselytes
(Converts to Judaism) to reach out to Gentiles and beyond Palestine. Jesus had told them
still had the idea that Gentiles but most of them still had the idea that Gentile should first
join Judaism by being circumcised and keeping the law before they could become
believers. Even the Jews became believers they still refused to associate with Gentiles
(Acts 11:3). Good broke up the Jewish monopoly on preaching and salvation by instructing
peter in the vision of the sheet and sending o gentiles (Acts 10:28, 34-35, 11:12) by giving
Holy spirit to Gentiles Acts 10:44-48, 11:17-18 and by the scattering the believers through
persecution.
THE MISSIONARY PURPOSE OF GOD AS REVEALED IN THE OLD TESTAMENT
Why did God created man in his own image? It is to have fellowship with himself. God
whole interest now in man is to remove every barrier to that fellowship. God is a
missionary God. Creation and the fact that the Bible exists prove this, since God created us
and has communicated with people persistently through many means, missions must be
central to his interest.
We can see God’s missionary purpose to all nations right through the old testament.
It starts after the fall of man (Genesis 3) when the barrier between God and man was first
set up by sin.
1. The promise of Deliverance: God’s first reaction was to promise that the seed of the
woman would crush the head of the serpent, even though he would also suffer in
race, Adam. The defeat of satan will come for all Adam’s descendant all nations
through this promise.
2. The Covenant with Noah and his descendant s(Gen 9:1-17) was with all mankind.
God promised to maintain the regularity of nature and not seed another worldwide
flood, and he gave certain regulations. God has always been ruler of the whole
world.
3. The list of all the nation of the earth in Gen 10 and how they scattered in Gen 11
shows God interest in them all and serve as a background for what happen in
Genesis 12 onward.
4. The call of Abraham Gen 12 was not to give special privileges to a special nation but
to provide a means for God to save all nations. God needed someone to keep the
knowledge of the true God a live in the world. He knew that Abraham would teach
his children after him about God (Gen 18:18-19). God wanted to prepare some
people who would recognize the Redeemer whom he came, and could carry the
news of him to rest of the nations. He also needed a nation who would write down
the revelations of God and preserve them as a message to all nations (the Bible).
The method God decided to use for this was to choose a particular family as the preservers
of the truth. God’s word to Abraham was, in you all the families of the earth shall be
blessed. Gen 12:3, 18:18, 22;18). The same promise was presented to Isaac in Gen 26:4
and to Jacob in Gen 28:14. Later, Jacob blessed Judah saying, to him shall be the
obedience of the people” (Gen 49;10)
We can see then that the call of Abraham was purposely aimed at bringing salvation
to all nations. This can be seen also in the three things God promised Abraham at the time.
First, he promised him descendants. God said he would make Abraham into a great nation
but today they are scattered. The promises greater fulfillment comes in the fact that now all
who believe are Abraham’s seed (Rom 4:11-12) and this includes all Gentile believers
from all over the world (Gal 3:6-18) second, God promised him the land (Gen 13:14-15).
Israel conquered Canaan, but they have been unable to maintain it through history. All who
believe, however, receive the promised rest which the land represents (Hebrews 3-4), and
become inheritors of the whole world Rom 4;13.
Third, God promised Abraham that there would be blessing on him and through him. Israel
failed to bring the nation God, but the gospel message carried by believers has become a
blessing to all nations.
So these promises were not totally fulfilled in Abraham’s physical family. They were not,
in fact, intended just for them. They were to people of all nations, the redeemed of the
whole human race who would join Abraham in faith. In the age to come, the redeemed will
be an uncountable multitude (Rev 7;9) with the new Jerusalem (Rev 21:1-3) and eternal
blessedness in the new heaven and earth. All this God had in mind when he made those
promise to Abraham.
5. The Exodus: Here God continued his purpose of preserving the truth. He saved
Israel out of slavery as an illustration of salvation from sin. As a result of God’s saving act,
those who were saved belonged to God. Then he gave them the law in written form. The
law was to preserve God’s views on sin, keep Israel together as a community that
worshipped the one true God, and provide illustrated teaching on sin, holiness, forgiveness
and sacrifice. All this instruction was necessary so that people would someday be able to
understand the meaning of the death of Jesus.
6. The kingdom Era: The psalms of David and other are full of the truth that God over
all men and nations, not just Israel. Although other nations may say they worship their own
gods, that means nothing because God still has full right to be over them. In Solomon
prayer at the dedication of the temple he asked that God would hear and answer foreigners
who prayed in the temple so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear
you, as do your people Israel. We can see at this time Israel had not forgotten that they
were supposed to be missionary nation.
MODERN MISSION
This material in this section is so wide that we can not hope to go into details mentioning
all the societies formed, missionaries sent and people evangelized. Instead we will mention
some of the important factors contributing to mission work in this period.
1. THE NINETEETH CENTURY
This has been called the great century of missionary of missions. Missions exploded with
the starting of many societies and the sending of missionaries to every part of the world
four kinds of missions emerged.
2. Interdenominational missions: Various churches in a city banded together to send
missionaries, for example, the London missionary society sponsored by different churches
in London. The London missionary society sent out David living stone.
3. Faith Missions: These missions raise their support from anyone who is interested
since they are not sponsored by a denomination. An example was the the China Inland
mission started by Hudson Taylor. The sudan interior mission (now SIM) and the African
Inland mission are of this type.
4. Specialized Missions: These main at certain groups of people, for example jews or a
certain kind of work, such as the leprosy mission or the Wycliffe Bible Translators.
During this period in Africa and of Asia colonization was going on together with mission,
which made some people think that they were part of each other. But missions also went
where there part of each other. But missions also went where was no colonization.
Sometimes colonial officers cooperated with missions and sometimes they opposed them.
Many missionaries had very hard living conditions. In many places it took up to 20 years
of preaching to get the first converts. Missionaries also fought customs like human
sacrifice, slavery, child marriage, burning of widows and killing twins, in spite of all the
hardships, new churches were established all over the world.
II THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Missions from Europe and America continued to grow during the first part of the 20th
century. An organization called the student volunteer movement was formed among
student in higher institutions who were interested in missions over 20, 500 of these
students actually went out as missionaries when they finished their training. Also Bible
colleges were established all over America to train young people with only secondary
education for missionary service and other Christian work. Thousands of these students
also become missionaries.
Towards the middle of the century some missions started to go down in numbers.
This was partly because they had established churches in the places where they worked and
had handed the work over to the indigenes. As many countries gained independence,
indigenization was a popular philosophy. Missionaries felt that indigenes could evangelize
their own countries more effectively than foreigners could so they left.
Another factor in the decline was that many churches in western Europe and
America were losing their evangelistic zeal. They started to believe that all religions are
equally good. If a muslim is also going to heaven, why should we brother converting him?
Thus they were less interested in sending out soul-winning church planting missionaries.
After a few years, however, new information made Christians realize that the age of
missions was not yet over. Mission researchers like Ralph winter started publishing the
facts that thousand of people groups in fact, about one half of the world’s population still
had no real opportunity to accept the gospel. New and different strategies were needed to
finish the task some of these are described in chapter four of this book. As a result, many
new missionary societies were formed and many older societies adopted new methods and
started to expand again.
The most encouraging development in missions in the last half of the 20th century
was the formation of missionary societies in the non-western world. The churches in India,
Brazil, Nigeria, Korea, Kenya, Ghana and many other countries all over the world are now
sending out cross cultural missionaries. Now missions is no longer the work of the western
churches alone, but of the whole church in the whole world. This is reasonable when we
realize that the majority of evangelical believers today are in non western countries.
QUALIFICATIONS OF A MISSIONARY
1. Spiritual Qualifications: Missionary work is spiritual work and we should except
that the most important qualifications for doing it are spiritual.
1. Genuine Conversion: The missionary must be someone who, by repentance and faith
toward God, has received new life in Christ through the work of the Holy spirit in his or
her life. The person must be sure about it, having full confidence in Christ for salvation.
The evidence of conversion must be seen in a godly life of obedience to God’s word (Gal
5:22-23).
2. Spirit filled: The missionary must be filled with the Holy spirit so that the fruit of the
spirit is evident in his or her life, especially love. A missionary must be able to love and act
compassionately to people who are very different from her/himself in age, socially and
ethnically, even whom those people cannot benefit him/her in any way. The spirit filled
missionary will have a heart burdened for the lost.
3. Gifted for missionary work: The missionary should have spiritual gifts useful for
missionary work. Peter Wagner thinks that the lists of spiritual gifts in the new testament
are not meant to be complete other gifts mentioned also exist. That is probably why no two
of the lists are completely alike. In certain people, Wagner has observed what he calls the
missionary gift or cross cultural gift. This gift permist a Christian to us his/her other
spiritual gifts effectively in a culture other than his/her own people with this gift like to
learn new customs, and try new goods. They are able to learn languages, and the people of
the culture to whom they go eventually say, you seem to be like one of us. It is good to test
yourself for this gift by trying yourself out in cross-cultural situations, especially where
you are the only person present from your own culture. Go for some mission out reaches or
visit friends in other cultures in their homes. If you are stationed in your work or school to
an area that has a different culture than your own, make every effort to get to know the
local people and their ways.
Mission also need other gifts such as teaching, evangelism, andministration,
wisdom, miracles and healing which they use in the new culture to build up the body of
Christ there. A missionary should have some evidence that God has given him/her some of
these useful gifts and is blessing his/her use of them while he/she is still in the home
environment before going out as a missionary.
4. Strong prayer life: The missionary must know how to pray and get divine guidance
for his/her own plans and to secure God’s power to fight the spiritual warfare against the
forces of evil. Satan has blinded the minds of unbelievers and this must be destroyed
before they can believe. Even Jesus spent nights in prayer to secure the power to perform
his work how much more do we need to do it. A study of prayer life and teaching of Jesus
in the gospels, especially luke, will do a lot to encourage you in this regard.
Missionaries will meet many trials and obstacles. They need to be so personally
close to Christ that they understand Christ’s mind and can work and pray in cooperation
with Christ and not get discouraged.
5. A servant spirit: God can only really bless the work of men and women who are
realistic enough to be humble. They do not belong to themselves, but are slaves of God
Christ. They no right before him. They love him so much that they don’t even want to
assert their rights independently of him. For his sake they will gladly do anything he
commands without grumbling. They also make themselves servants to other people (1cor
9:19), always putting the needs of others especially their spiritual needs) before their own
comfort. They can afford to do this because they so trust their heavenly fathers love and
care. If you give God everything, he gives you everything in return. “I honour those who
honour me” (1 sam 2:30). This is the point of the promises of reward in the Bible.
II. PHYSICAL QUALIFICATIONS
The missionary should be in good health and strong enough to do the work and not cause
the mission a lot of expense with his/her medical bills. If he or she is always sick, the work
may not go forward very quickly. The mission usually decides to accept or reject a
candidate physically on the basis of a medical doctor’s report. But a medical report not
always predict a person’s future health and a mission should strongly pray and consider
each case individually.
Missionaries should also be able to feel that they can do the work required. If their
health is poor, they will need the promise of God’s special touch and grace if they are to do
missionary work.
III. EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION
The more education the missionary has the better, so long as all that education does not
dampen his/her zeal for the work. More important than formal education is an enquiring,
creative mind always ready to learn new things and think new ideas. Any professional
training will sooner or later become useful in missionary work. God does not waste
anything. Beside general education, all missionaries need a sound working knowledge of
the Bible. They need to know its contents, that is where to find what they need to know its
teaching and doctrine. They need to know how to study the mission field, they may have to
teach others to teach it, as they may eventually train up those who will train others (2Tim
2:2) All this must go together with a solid commitment to obey the word of God in
everything. Such Bible training can be partly gained and greatly helped by a course in a
Bible institution. How ever, the only way to become throughout familiar with the whole
Bible is daily personal quiet time, including reading and studying the Bible.
THE LOCAL CHURCH AND MISSIONS
The two structures of God’s redemptive mission (In perspectives on the world Christian
movement) points out that were two method of doing missionary outreach in the early
church. Sometimes a church recognized God’s call on individuals for the work and sent
out. Each team of travelling evangelists worked as a self-contained team. It did not depend
on the sending church for regular funds nor did the sending church direct its work. When
the team members came back to their home church, they reported all that God had done
through them as an encouragement to the believers, not necessarily for their action. Besides
these teams, local church carried out church planting in areas close to them.
As time went on and the church got bigger and more organized, mission work came under
the control of bishops. As bishop were often most interested in building up the existing
churches missionary work suffered. Later special societies within the church but under
their own leaders were stated to concentrate on cross-cultural outreach.
When the denominational leaders took over control of these societies to the extent they
were no longer a zealous elite but just a part of the total denomination, they could no
longer act so effectively. Then people like Hudson Taylor started mission societies not
linked to the authority structure of any church or denomination, to meet needs that the
denominations were not ready to a dress. From this we can see that the independent
mission team, whether linked to a denomination or not, is the most effective tool for
difficult pioneer missions.
Some people have argued that to go back to the New Testament way of doing missions
would be having only the local congregations send out, supervise and support missionaries.
A look at how the apostle Paul did missions should help us to see if this is really the New
Testament pattern for his work.
Paul worked much of the time to support himself. Perhaps the Antioch church contributed
to some of his initial travel expenses. He also accepted support from the church at Philippi
for his work in other places (Phil 4:15-16) he hoped the church in Rome would contribute
towards his expenses in going on to Spain (Rom 15:24) This he raised funds from many
sources.
We also see that Paul planned his own missionary work under the guidance of the Holy
spirit. He did not get his instructions from Antioch or even Jerusalem. When Jewish
Christians in some of the older established churches challenged his missionary principles
and methods admitting Gentiles without making them become Jewish.
First, he went to Jerusalem to defend his policies and very much wanted the agreement of
the Church leaders which he did get. So Paul worked in harmony with the Churches but no
directly under them.
CONCLUSION
No prospective missionary can be perfect in all these areas. But he or she should recognize
where there are problems and be working and praying to see an improvement. Many
missionaries have left the field in the past because they lacked some of these qualities.
BIOGRAPHY
Bruce, A.B. The training of the Twelve. Grand Rapids. Kregel, 1971

Coleman, Robert. The master plan of Evangelism westwood: Revell 1964

Dowsett, Dick. God, That’s not fair sevenoaks omf 1982

Fuller, L.K. The missionary and His work Jos. NEMI, 1995

Oslen, Bruce. Bruchko. Altamonte springs: Creation House 1978.

Richardson, Don. Eternity in their Hearts ventura: Regal Book 1984