Swarms
A mission agency as a mission platform
There are a lot of mission agencies and missionaries in the world: more even than we commonly recognize. The Mission Handbook, for example, accounts for 825 agency listings in its latest edition—but misses out on a huge number of small agencies, church based agencies, and what I call “mom and pop” agencies. For example, the Mission Handbook doesn’t list the 501c3 agency some friends of mine have registered for themselves, and yet they were directly involved in mentoring workers in Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet who have played substantial roles in evangelism in those countries.
For a very long time, we have thought of a mission agency as a sending or support agency: someone that recruits, trains, deploys, cares for, and retires workers. But what I would like to think equally about is the mission agency as a “mission platform”: a network that specializes in linking, networking, training, caring for, etc. all sorts of missionaries who are already out there working but have insufficient help.
A number of agencies have goals to increase their membership markedly. YWAM wants to go from 20,000 to 200,000 workers. WEC has big recruitment goals. The International Mission Board wants to increase its membership. I submit that if we were to think of a mission agency as a platform, and use our resources and skills to identify and facilitate the work of people who aren’t with any agency, who are already on the field—we could bring an exponential increase to their resilience on the field as well as their effectiveness and efficiency, and we might be able to better hit the recruitment numbers desired.
What do you think? Jot a comment below!
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4 comments for “A mission agency as a mission platform”
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Justin, I think that where the rubber meets the road is that these things (support, care, training…etc..) invariably cost money. I hate to always think of the bottom line, but many people have chosen THEIR agency for its distinctives, or chosen NO agency for the sake of their INDEPENDENCE. Wanna see fireworks? Try to curtail any of that independence.
What is needed is a Biblical sense of Interdependence. That is the skeleton on which an agency can become part of the framework of agency-as-platform. As long as MY distinctives are more important than OUR interdependence we won't be building anything of great value together. Jesus prayed for that kind of interdependence when he said, "let them be part of us as you are in me, I am in you, we are in them, they are in us….." it became a jumbled up, impossible to diagram relationship. Interdependence.
I like your idea, but I think that the reason we have SO MANY AGENCIES (!) is because we desire our independence, our distinctives more than we desire unity and interdependence. …and there lies the rub.
I think you are right. There needs to be much more networking, connecting and partnership facilitating.
You're probably right on independence vs. interdependence. Perhaps different levels of aid could be offered from an agency-as-platform. I have talked with YWAMers in the past about creating a kind of "Associate YWAMer" position for people who had existing ministries and didn't necessarily want to go through DTS – perhaps people with long-term ministries – but who could benefit from interaction with the base. After all, in the YWAM context, DTS basically achieves two things: discipleship for a new believer (which is where many new YWAM staff come from) and enculturation into the YWAM organization. So if there were some kind of associate position, someone could access YWAM resources and provide resources to YWAMers without having to go through a bunch of red tape? Anyway I do like your thoughts on interdependence vs independence. This is clearly something that we need!