Article: New Missions Generation
Hello Troops. I came across this article in Christianity Today online about college students and missions. What I found interesting is the observation that young folks these days today like the aspect of social justice....but often leave out the Gospel.Unfortunately, many students today exhibit theological confusion. "Too many college students are not convinced about the exclusive claims of Christ and the eternal lostness of humanity," says Terry Erickson, InterVarsity's director of evangelism. "Students today are more grace-oriented than truth-oriented." Erickson notes that young people on missions trips today may not be articulating the gospel's promise of eternal salvation through Christ's death on the Cross as clearly as they are demonstrating their concern for social justice and compassion for the poor.Interesting.
posted by Martha at 8:39 AM
6 Comments:
I definitely see this view of evangelism becoming more prevalent in the student population. It's more acceptable to the rest of the world to be supportive of and participate in purely humanitarian work than purely evangelistic work. As seen by the comment of one student in the rest of the article, young people today are seeing the difficulties of living in other countries and experience a combination of guilt, pity, and compassion because of their own living conditions and opportunities for "success." I think that the real key is to find the balance between standing on a street corner pronouncing the Gospel to all who walk by, neglecting physical needs, and saving the orphans of the world by only meeting their physical needs neglecting the spiritual. It is crucial for the body of Christ to boldly proclaim the Gospel. But even the apostles appointed people to take care of the widows and the orphans while they continued to preach. In the current generation of students, I see a trend of individuals gravitating to service-oriented activities, which is not necessarily a bad thing... as long as the Gospel is being clearly presented to those who are being served.
The lack of courage to boldly and clearly proclaim the Gospel is concerning and I think that we need to continually point students back to Jesus to find motivation and courage to live their lives for Christ. When our lives are completely focused on Christ on the cross (something I am still working on myself), we will have a deep desire and overwhelming excitement to share Him with others, which would solve the problem of replacing the words of the Gospel with acts of service.
Great thoughts Rellis,
Taking care of the widowed and orphaned is commended by Scripture and part of our (the CHURCH's) job.
But here is where i think it matters for Crusade.
To me it seems that ministry to the poor is the ministry OF the local church. In the mid 1990's my mission board refocused its mission as basically said, "if your NOT working towards planting churches, you are NO LONGER our missionary". The reason why is because many of these missionaries were doing "ministry" like making wells, teaching people about deseases, building orphanges, but they were not evangelizing and planting churches among these unreached people.
This is very controversial, but agree with that focus. The orphans, and poor are the ministries of the local church. If no local church is established we must FIRST plant a church. Paul commanded the enrolling of widows to recieve relief, but he didn't start a widow ministries on his missionary journeys.
With Crusade, i think a focused MISSIONS mindset on campus and in summer projects is very important. we should always keep our mission first, and that involves evangelism and discipleship, not the local church ministry of relief.
Great points Becky and Rev. I love you guys.
Becky, It is true that this upcoming generation has compassion for the needy all over the world. We have to constantly remind them and ourselves that it cannot be disconnected to the Gospel.
But this is not always the fault of people going, the organizations themselves must keep themselves in check and constantly remind themselves and those they send to keep the right focus on the Gospel. It is really easy to get focused on "what God did to me" on a short-term missions trip. Or you can get overwhelmed with the temporal needs of the world (there are more than we can even take in...) and forget the spiritual side of things.
Rev, I agree with all your points. But it brings me back to the idea of spiritual movements, which looks fuzzier to me now as regards to end results. (I'm not saying it is all bad...but I have questions.)
I know in Central Asia this summer we tried to keep it focused on the Gospel and keep the movement on the campuses in connection with the local churches already established. Some students who had been involved in our group had already been involved in planting churches elsewhere in the area. It was a great thing. The spiritual movement there had been a source of church planting and giving of leadership to existing local bodies. I'd like to see this more fleshed out in terms of policies and goals within CCC....of how spiritual movements relate to existing church bodies and how they relate to planting new churches. Does a spiritual movement ever move behind that to become a local church body that embraces the responsiblities you talked about Rev....and what does that look like?
That would make another good post. But I feel inadequate myself.
Interesting. I could imagine that, especially when working in the field, it would be easy to get distracted by the need all around. How can people worry about the gospel when they don't have food? Sometimes, I think that perhaps we don't have enough faith in the gospel to truly let it work. Many of these nations are suffering due to the poor character of their people and governments...lying, cheating, bribing, etc. There is only one way to solve the real issue in many of these places and it isn't through digging a well here and there.
Just my opinion, but Sun Ok Lee's statement that it is nice to send rice to North Korea but mostly they need to hear about God affected me. We need to provide the essentials to whatever extent possible, but not lose focus on what is truly needed.
Thanks for the input Dana,
I would even push the issue further and say that that level at which many of us have seen this can seem almost RIDICULOUS.
From my short experience in Central Asia and in New Orleans after Katrina I never saw anyone REALLY starving for lack of food or friendship.
But its easy for people to see the material/emotional needs of people and miss their dyer SPIRITUAL needs.
My only thoughts at this point are
"optimistically"...
1) they are not aware of the ministry of their local church to the poor and needy
and "pessimistically"...
2) people are not gripped by the reality of the gospel and believe in Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and not Jesus' Hierarchy of Needs.
Hey guys, question: Do you think churches can be planted through mercy ministries (feeding the poor, educating, building houses, and whatever else)? Or, do overseas ministries need to be proclamation primarily in order to adequately plant a church? Just something I am mulling over.
Interesting quote (paraphrase) from John Piper: "You can feed people's bellies with food and if you don't tell them about Jesus they will go to hell with full stomachs." Woah.
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