Risk Assessment: Trends Within Evangelical Missions, Part 1
This article is the first in a two-part series examining some of the recent concerning shifts in evangelical missions philosophy and practice. In this article (Part 1), we explore how liberal and Arminian influences have gradually eroded biblical foundations in missions and examine two alarming trends that have resulted from these changes. The following article (Part 2) will address two additional trends and provide practical guidance for pastors and churches seeking to protect biblical integrity in their missions programs.
The state of the missionary enterprise in the West has been threatened by a subtle, yet significant shift in philosophy over the last fifty years. While many pastors continue preaching the great doctrines of the faith, they often entrust oversight of their missions enterprise to well-intentioned but uninformed lay leaders. This in turn leaves their churches deaf to the leading voices that shape missions strategy today.
This shift now threatens to become mainstream in the leadership of conservative agencies and seminaries. The subtle transfer of allegiance from a biblical philosophy of missions to a culturally acceptable model creates an urgency for church leaders to lay hold of their role to “shepherd their missionary flock.” In this article we will examine widely-acknowledged factors behind these changes and the first two concerning trends that many mission-minded believers have identified as a result. Discerning readers will recognize these patterns from their own observations of the current missions landscape.
Factors behind the Trends
First, the discipline of missiology that is now entrenched in most seminaries and Christian universities was untethered from a core curriculum of theological studies. Missions training once required a robust set of courses in theology, hermeneutics, and biblical languages. But as disciplines such as sociology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, and diversity studies have come to dominate the missions curriculum, the former were crowded out. Moreover, without these foundational courses, students are left without a biblical grid through which to provide an assessment of influences originating from secular worldviews which have crept into their missiology coursework.
Secondly, two major theological strains have been shaping the shift: liberalism and Arminianism. Liberalism rejects a high view of Scripture, and it tends to elevate culture over Scripture as the ultimate authority in matters of knowledge, truth, and faith. This leads to an ecumenical tendency within missions, resulting in increasingly tolerant views toward other religious systems. In the worst case, this tolerance openly advocates for an integration of Christianity with false religions, a practice known as syncretism. In every case, the uniqueness of Christ and His gospel is corrupted by elements of superstitious folk religions, heretical state churches, or spiritually bankrupt mainline denominations. Where Scripture fails to reign as the authority, indigenous pastors find a diminished lamp to guide their ministries. Their churches in turn adopt forms and functions which rarely align with a New Testament model.
The other dominant strain, Arminianism, propagates the doctrinal flaw of its anthropology, granting man a greater role in initiating and realizing conversion. The observable outcome is often an exaggerated pragmatism which governs evangelistic, church-planting, and Bible translation endeavors. Belief in man’s power to persuade, attract, or manipulate unbelievers to respond to the gospel can lead to the neglect of New Testament teaching on matters such as the Lordship of Christ, a believer's separation from the world, the guarantee of persecution or the assurance of salvation. Christianity is presented in terms of man’s self-interest. Evangelistic programs promise benefits and blessings, keyed to the “felt needs” or fleshly desires of the lost. Borrowing from marketing and media strategies, such missionary programs cycle through an endless pursuit of finding the most efficient way to make disciples.
Today, a new generation of mission organization leaders have received their education under liberal and/or Arminian missiologists. While not all schools or professors have yielded to these influences, a majority of mission scholars have embraced and promoted elements of an integrationist, humanistic missiology. In many cases this will lead to the toleration of expanded mission priorities and lesser doctrinal precision in order to recruit new missionaries. In addition, an increasing number of new missionary candidates enter their training already bearing the marks of the weakening American evangelicalism inherited from their sending churches. All of these factors have contributed to the missions shift and to the following trends.
Trends to Beware
Four trends that have evolved over the last half-century threaten the integrity of evangelical missions today, the first two of which are presented in this article. Church leaders who examine and understand their implications will be able to better guide their churches in how to serve and invest in missions wisely.
Trend #1: The Liberalization of International Theological Education
Wherever biblical literacy is considered essential for pastors, theological education emerges as a priority. Many early missionaries, themselves having graduated from universities with a strong foundation in theological studies, believed it was necessary and loving to provide their disciples with a rigorous education. It is no wonder, then, that throughout Asia, Africa, and Europe, missionary efforts led to the establishment of seminaries and Bible colleges. Hundreds of such historic seminaries still exist around the world.
It can be generally observed that until the early 1980s, many of these institutes were still led and administrated by conservative Western missionaries. As the missions movement matured into recognizing that missionaries must replace themselves with indigenous leaders, the need was also recognized to provide those leaders with advanced degrees to prepare them for serving their institutions as faculty and administrators. The latter coincided with a growing vision among universities and seminaries in the West to achieve greater cultural diversity in their student bodies and in turn support theological development in the global church. Thus, recruiting efforts and scholarships targeting international students became a common practice, and a significant number of international church, seminary, and denominational leaders traveled to the United States, Britain, and Australia to complete graduate theological degrees. This influence has increased further with the use of online graduate programs by these schools today.
In this same period, secular humanism and pragmatism infiltrated the evangelical Church in the West, including its institutions of higher education. The seminaries and universities succumbing to these influences were some of the most financially well-endowed and therefore most generous in providing scholarships to international students. Faithful missionaries seeking to indigenize local ministries, took advantage of these scholarship offerings. The missionaries themselves, being far afield from their alma maters, were usually unaware of the theological erosion. Thus, the views on Scripture and on historic doctrines long held by the students’ disciplers were undermined by the students’ professors.
To the extent Western scholars undermined the faith of these leaders, multiple generations adopted biblical skepticism and cultural hermeneutics, accepting liberal interpretations on issues such as the authority of Scripture, Charismatic theology, and the role of women in the local church. When retiring missionaries passed the mantle of leadership to returning graduate students, the door for theological concession was unlocked. Today, one would find the majority of international seminaries, founded by conservative missions agencies, to be doctrinally unrecognizable to their founders. It is one of the greatest spiritual injustices advanced by the Western Church.
It is important to note, however, that many international students did study at sound schools, and now serve faithfully at home. In addition, a growing number of pastoral training ministries have arisen to provide biblically solid alternatives to these international seminaries. They pose one of the most exciting and essential opportunities in missions work today.
Trend #2: Hyper-Contextualization
Missionaries have the responsibility to carefully assess how biblical mandates should be adhered to within specific cultures. Over time, expanding theories of “contextualization,” taught in Western seminaries primarily from the 1980s onward, came to be advocated in the field as a means of evaluating how to bring the rich significance of Scripture to bear in new local contexts. However, contextualization theories often transcended matters of personal cultural adaptation and the articulation of biblical content to focus primarily on cultural accommodation strategies that would conform biblical doctrine to the assumptions and values of the local non-believing audience. These theories emerging from the West inverted the proper authority structure for determining how biblical truth should be practiced. With Scripture’s authority and inerrancy under assault, the quest became tolerance, relevance, and so-called humility. Culture came to be above Scripture, and the trajectory for what might be termed “hyper-contextualization” was set.
The Insider Movement methodology is one of the clearest examples of an unbiblical “hyper-contextualization.” Increasingly adopted in evangelism toward Muslims, Reverend Ayub Edward, a Presbyterian minister from Bangladesh, provides his observations:
Certain methodologies, which are very different from the historic mission methodologies, have started to be applied in Bangladesh. In fact, Bangladesh has become the “experiment field” of these types of methodologies. In the past it was known as the “C5” approach, and now it is more commonly known as the “Insider Movement.” When the Insider Movement started working in our country, its leaders said that a Muslim should not become Christian by identity, but if he believes Jesus as his Savior in his heart, that’s all that is necessary. He can continue to practice all Islamic rituals. So by heart he is a Christian or a follower of Jesus, a “messianic Muslim,” but externally, he is a Muslim: going to the mosque and praying with Muslims, fasting with the Muslims, sacrificing animals with the Muslims at their special feasts, and also practicing Islamic ethics.[1]
Edward’s allusion to the Insider Movement as the “C5 approach” refers to the scale of contextualization defined by John Travis, the pseudonym for a missionary who served in an Islamic context. Travis summarized his paradigm as follows,
The C1–C6 Spectrum compares and contrasts types of “Christ-centered communities” (groups of believers in Christ) found in the Muslim world.... The spectrum attempts to address the enormous diversity which exists throughout the Muslim world in terms of ethnicity, history, traditions, language, culture, and, in some cases, theology. This diversity means that myriad approaches are needed to successfully share the gospel and plant Christ-centered communities among the world’s one billion followers of Islam. The purpose of the spectrum is to assist church planters and Muslim background believers to ascertain which type of Christ-centered communities may draw the most people from the target group to Christ and best fit in a given context.[2]
This hyper-contextualization, freed from the recognition of Scripture’s authority––and, consequently, the expectation of full obedience in belief and practice––has matured into an aberrant missions practice which even Muslim-background believers reject. Most of them recognize it as inconsistent with authentic Christianity and as an accommodation usually based on the West’s proclivity to make safety a higher value than truth. For Muslim-background believers, who have counted the cost to follow Christ, the West’s advocating of such accommodations is offensive and seen for the error that it is.
The liberalization of theological education and the rise of hyper-contextualization reveal a troubling shift from biblical authority to cultural accommodation in modern missions. These trends compromise gospel integrity and threaten the spiritual health of churches worldwide.
The second article in our series on “Risk Assessment” will examine two additional concerns: rapid church-planting movements that sacrifice depth for speed, and post-colonial thinking that sometimes discards sound doctrine along with Western influence. We’ll also provide practical guidance for pastors and mission committees navigating these challenges, so that church leaders remain vigilant in guarding the missionary enterprise by standing firmly on Scripture’s authority.