8 | The Biblic al Definition of a Missionary

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More than once, I confess, I have seriously contemplated eliminating the word missionary from my vocabulary. After all, the words missions and missionary are not found in the English Bible. Moreover, their meanings have become so muddled in everyday usage that they almost always need to be coupled with an adjective to make clear what is really meant. But because most Christians still use missions whenever they describe outreach to a lost world and because there is no other equally generic term, it’s probably best to retain the word and try to revive its original meaning.
Although the Bible does not actually use the word, the concept of missions is on every page from Genesis to Revelation. The Bible itself is a missionary anthology, a record of messages from the “sending God” of Isaiah 61. He is a loving God who reaches out to a race of lost and rebellious sinners. Defining the concept of missions in this biblical context gives it a richer meaning and will help recover the original meaning, at least among active Christians who still use the word to describe the outreach work of the Church.1
The Old Testament repeatedly tells us of “missionaries” (those who were sent by God), from Abel and Noah to Elijah, Jonah, and the rest of the prophets. The New Testament provides a clearer picture of missionary calling and work, as we understand it today, describing missionaries and their tasks in elaborate detail. As we read the New Testament, we get the full picture of how the Lord intends His body on earth to carry out the missionary mandate. And the best examples of real missionaries are the first apostles. (The word apostle comes from the Greek apostoles, which means “sent one” and is the closest New Testament word to our word missionary, defined as “one who is sent on a mission.”) Both apostle and missionary share the same primary definition of “one sent with a religious message.”
The Lord Jesus as Master Missionary The apostles learned “Missionary Principles and Practices 101” at the feet of Jesus, the master missionary. There is no better place, therefore, to begin forming a New Testament missionary definition than by studying the life of our Lord Jesus Himself. The Lord, who founded the Church and gave us our missionary marching orders, was, in fact, the first missionary in the New Testament sense. “As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you,” He said in John 20:21. He best models for us the work and message of a New Testament missionary. In this verse Jesus calls Himself a “sent one,” or missionary, in the same way the term is most commonly used today. He is clearly saying here that additional “sent ones” are to be included in His missionary band and that these missionaries are to go and do the work of the Gospel as He did. How vital it is, then, for us to do our missionary work as Jesus did!
There is no doubt, when studying this passage and many others, that Jesus consciously modeled the missionary life of a “sent one” for those who would follow in His steps. So let us look briefly at some of the elements of His missionary life and ministry.

 

Excerpt from Come, Let’s Reach The World. © 1991, 2004 by K.P. Yohannan
Click here to download this free book.

7.8 | Should We Call Indigenous Missionaries by Another Title?

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What I am saying does not always make me popular in some mission circles. I often travel to Wheaton, Illinois, speaking and calling on friends there whom I love and respect. Wheaton is an affluent college town, upper middle class by American standards, with many outstanding Christian organizations.
One warmhearted Wheaton College student, trying to be helpful to me after I had finished my calls in the area, asked if he could drive me back to O’Hare Field to catch my next flight. I thanked him for his servant spirit, and we enjoyed a good time of sharing about world evangelism on the drive to the airport.
As we talked, I could sense he was living every day under a powerful challenge to go overseas as a traditional missionary. I knew firsthand the strong appeal many Western missions are making to young Americans today.
He had read my book Revolution in World Missions and had given it some thought. As we rode along, he turned to me and said sincerely, “K.P., your problems would be over in Wheaton if you just stopped calling your native staff ‘missionaries.’ Can’t you call them something else?”
What perceptive advice! I realized immediately that this young man understood the problem exactly, even though he was offering me the wrong solution. His advice crystallized the problem in my mind as never before.
“No!” I exclaimed. “I will not surrender the word missionary and allow only North Americans to use it!” I became so engrossed in explaining why that I almost missed my plane! “By New Testament standards,” I told him, “indigenous missionaries are just as qualified as Americans or Europeans to be sent to reach the lost. And they’re often more effective. As long as the word missionary remains the term Western churches use to describe pioneer evangelists, I will insist that it apply equally to indigenous missionaries.”

 

Excerpt from Come, Let’s Reach The World. © 1991, 2004 by K.P. Yohannan

Click here to download this free book.

7.6 | The Popular Definition of Today’s Missionary

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Using the popular criteria now in use, a reasonable definition of a missionary today could be stated something like this:
A young, healthy, degreed, mentally stable, well-financed, middle-class North American from a conservative, evangelical Protestant tradition who is willing to travel abroad to offer technological skills to existing Two- Thirds World indigenous churches.
With this kind of definition in vogue, it is no surprise that many in the sending churches do not see or understand the importance of the fast-rising indigenous missionary movement. Indigenous missionaries, although they are currently doing the New Testament work of missions more effectively than their Western counterparts, are not considered qualified by the most important Western standards.
Western missionary qualifications tend to perpetuate the culture, education, health, science and technology of the West. They make second- class citizens out of God’s servants from other countries. The use of these false standards guarantees that this mind-set will continue to control the missionary enterprise. Otherwise qualified, effective indigenous missionaries are made to appear untrained and unacceptable to Western donors. (Perhaps this is why indigenous missionary activity is so underreported in the Western press. It also reflects why the number of indigenous missionaries appears much smaller than it really is in so many field surveys.)
What can be done to change this mind-set? There are thousands of Western missionaries who love, respect and want to help indigenous missions, but they face a tremendous challenge. They must go back to their mission boards and home churches and work for changes in the system—changes that will find new and creative ways to free up prayer and financial support for indigenous missionaries.
There is really only one practical way to show our love and respect for the ministries of indigenous missionaries: We must start using our mission support structures to send them to the unreached people.

“But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother hath need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” (1 John 3:17).

Excerpt from Come, Let’s Reach The World. © 1991, 2004 by K.P. Yohannan
Click here to download this free book.

7.5 | Being a good fund-raiser

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Because the average North American missionary must raise about $60,000 a year to go abroad, mission boards must choose candidates who possess excellent public relations and fundraising skills. Even so called faith missionaries who cannot directly appeal for funds must spend a large amount of their time speaking and traveling in order to assist in the fundraising process. The same applies to denominational missionaries who are salaried and don’t directly raise support.

These six man-made standards for missionary qualification have gained such widespread use that they obscure some of the most impor- tant determining factors that are truly biblical and should be paramount. These factors include, but are not limited to, soul-winning abilities, church-planting skills, past witnessing experiences, spiritual gifts and calling, and an established life of faith and sacrifice. (We will discuss these biblical criteria in the next chapter.)

The selection process for essential qualities such as these is surprisingly informal in many mission boards. It is not unusual to find missionaries overseas who have demonstrated few spiritual gifts or who have not proven themselves to be effective in local-church ministry in the homeland.

If a missionary candidate is not already a soul winner and disciple maker at home, how will going overseas change him or her? If someone has not already established a congregation from scratch in the homeland, why would we think that person will be a church planter overseas in an alien culture and with a foreign language?

 

 
Excerpt from Come, Let’s Reach The World. © 1991, 2004 by K.P. Yohannan
Click here to download this free book.

7.4 | Being an expatriate

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Some missiologists have gone so far as to make expatriation a part of the definition of a missionary. Unless a person actually leaves his or her homeland, they claim, he or she is not qualified to be called a missionary! Others vary this theme, insisting that one is not a missionary unless he or she is doing cross-cultural ministry.
Roberta Winter and Richard Cotten address this issue:
A missionary is someone who is sent to witness of his faith cross-culturally. Can he be a native? Not technically speaking. If he is a native of the culture where he works, then he is not witnessing cross-culturally. Therefore the term indigenous missionary is self-contradictory.2
I am saddened by this continued insistence to split hairs on terminology. Why is the focus on where indigenous missionaries can and cannot go, instead of helping them reach the unreached wherever they are? What about the Lord’s constant emphasis on taking the Gospel to the Jews first? This was missionary work within His own culture, and it was where the Father instructed Him to place the accent in His outreach. For Jesus, cross-cultural witness was the exception, not the rule.
In fact, nowhere in the Scriptures were the apostles required to cross cultures to qualify for missionary service. A few of the early apostles seem to have served most of their missionary lives in Jerusalem and Judea.
Given the reality of the mission field today, it would be foolish for us to require all missionaries to leave their home cultures. The best current examples are in China, India and the former Soviet Union. There, millions still have not received the Gospel in villages that are within the cultural reach of existing congregations. Indigenous missionaries can be sent to them without crossing cultural barriers. They also can go to closeby cultures where the barriers are relatively weak compared to what they would be for Western missionaries.
Few of the unreached people groups in our modern world are reachable by cross-cultural missionaries from the West. Even though reaching them requires some cross-cultural work, this is best done by those from nearby cultures.
After graduating from a foremost Christian liberal arts college, Vicky (not her real name) sensed God’s call on her life for missions. She left soon afterward for the Philippines under the auspices of a leading denominational missions agency. While she was there, she met a Filipino believer whom I’ll call “Matt,” who was involved in missions work in his country. It was only a matter of time before they knew the Lord was joining their lives together.
Matt and Vicky traveled to the United States for their wedding and now plan to return to the Philippines as soon as they raise their support. However, they will not be returning under the same agency that sent Vicky. In a letter she wrote to one of our staff, she explained the startling reason: When she and her husband approached her missions board with a request to send them both to the Philippines, Vicky was told that the mission has “a policy that they do not send nationals as missionaries to their home countries. . . . [Matt] is a Filipino citizen, and therefore he cannot be sent.” If Matt were to become a U.S. citizen, however, then they would be approved to work under this missions agency.
Out of nearly 170 mission agencies operating in the Philippines at that time, this denomination was one of the top 10 in terms of number of personnel, and their missions budget exceeded $15 million.3 Looking at the level of involvement in this mission field, it appears that the agency had invested a considerable amount in winning the Philippines for Christ, both in terms of people and finances.
My question is this: If there is a simpler, more efficient, and more logical approach to reach the Filipinos with the Gospel, why is this agency resisting it? Tragically, all that stands between its ability to multiply its outreach is a man-made policy.

Excerpt from Come, Let’s Reach The World. © 1991, 2004 by K.P. Yohannan
Click here to download this free book.