| Seven Hundred Plans to Evangelize the World: The Rise of a Global Evangelization Movement, by David B. Barrett and James W. Reapsome (Birmingham: New Hope, 1988), is a book that deserves special attention. Its length is a mere 126 pages (8 1/2 x 11 inches), but it is loaded with data about the history of world evangelism. It is heavier still in its challenge to find "new wineskins" appropriate to today's world to complete the Great Commission. The authors are eminently qualified. David Barrett is an ordained missionary of the Church of England, served twenty-nine years in Africa, and today is a research consultant for the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, research secretary for the Charismatic Renewal in the Mainline Churches, and Vatican consultant on world evangelization. James Reapsome is the editor of Evangelical Missions Quarterly, and a former managing editor of Christianity Today. An ordained minister, Reapsome has served on numerous boards of evangelical mission agencies. Barrett and Reapsome are more than scholars and skilled writers: they share a passion for carrying out the Great Commission and challenging others with the urgency of the task. Many Plans and Tragic Failures The purpose of the book, first, is to survey twenty centuries of worldwide mission effort, analyze its strengths and deficiencies, and draw conclusions as to why the church still has not achieved the goal of reaching every man, woman and child with the gospel. Of the 788 global plans, proposals, and scenarios that Christians have drawn up" over the centuries, 401 have failed and 133 current plans are in danger of collapse (p. 10). The authors identify 340 reasons for these failures. One single cause can kill, they point out. Many of the failed plans died because of just one small cause among the 340 reasons (p. 13). Taste the authors' hard-hitting style: We Great Commission Christians are in a mess. -We have not obeyed the Commission in the past. -We are not obeying it in the present. -We are not, on present trends, likely to obey it in the future. -We are nowhere near target for fulfilling it by A.D. 2000. Yet we continue to produce grandiose global plans for A.D. 2000 at the rate of at least one new one per week. In other words, the leadership of the church has convinced itself that all its existing activity actually is fulfilling the commission. Worse, it is telling everybody else that it is succeeding in this way. Worst of all, the 1.3 billion unevangelized remain at roughly the same number week after week, year after year, decade after decade. What can be done about this extraordinary dilemma? (p. 65) Not content merely to describe the failures and accent the dilemmas, Barrett and Reapsome point mission leaders in new directions. New wineskins must replace the old. Great Commission Christians (spiritually renewed believers from all traditions who are bent on fulfilling the Lord's mission mandate) must move away from old, inflexible, and leaking wineskins such as monodenominational mission plans, monoconfessional plans, monoagency plans, and old ways of conducting mission work, to new, flexible, highly-networked, global plans from a unified center and with a unified focus. The Heart of the Dilemma The writers contend that the heart of the present dilemma for mission-hearted Christians has to do with the separatism and independentism that characterize worldwide mission endeavor. Among the organizations that have defined global strategies to reach the world for Christ, the majority operate on a go-it-alone basis, with little or no networking with other organizations. This, say Barrett and Reapsome, is the ultimate reason for failure to obey the Great Commission. Christians want to obey it only in standalone modes, in the company of their immediate circles of like-minded colleagues, but without the correctives supplied by being part of wider networks. They do not see the possible benefits of learning from other Great Commission Christians. They prefer the comfortable circle of their own kind to the stimulation, encouragement, and instruction of those engaged in the same task of world evangelization (p. 59). This analysis of the missionary dilemma comes at an opportune time. Two great missionary conferences have just been held, one in San Antonio and the other in Manila. The magnitude of these assemblies and other such gatherings held in the past few years, impresses us with the global face of Christianity and the commitment of millions of believers to reach the world for Christ. In this we rejoice and are encouraged. But these gatherings remind us also of our brokenness into hundreds and thousands of separate groupings big and small, of our independent organizations, each seeking to carry out the Great Commission in its own particular way, and all the separate churches and denominational labels by which we are known. Fresh calls were heard in San Antonio and Manila for greater cooperation between churches affiliated with the World Council and the mission organizations identified as "evangelical." Mission-hearted Christians were represented at both gatherings, and it seemed evident that fresh winds of the Spirit were blowing in both places. The size of the missionary task, the weaknesses and failures of our best efforts, and the need for new approaches were things that missionary conferees openly admitted. So a timely question is: Ought we to listen more closely to what Barrett and Reapsome are saying regarding the missionary dilemma, our brokenness, our independentism, and the narrow pride that prevents us from developing a global, coordinated effort for evangelizing the world? We have seen the 20th century nearly slip by without completing the missionary mandate. "The overriding problem," say the authors, has been "the reluctance of Christians of all confessions to collaborate meaningfully at the global level... So we ask: Is there any evidence that today's set of global plans... are any better coordinated than the grandiose plans of the 1880s, the 1920s or the 1950s, all of which fizzled out?" (p. 46). Pressing Toward the Year 2000 Echoed throughout the book is a burning concern to reach every inhabitant of the world by the year 2000. In order to reach every man, woman, and child with an intelligible presentation of the gospel, what needs to be done? To accomplish a task of this magnitude means that approximately 1.3 billion people must be reached within the next decade. Over 100 million will have to be evangelized each year. Megaplans have been drafted by various mission organizations, but what chance do they have of succeeding? The major obstacle, the authors maintain, is the "ignorance that all such plans have of each other, and their failure to work together, or to mesh in any degree, or to be globally coordinated" (p. 47). Can we allow the situation to continue unchecked? What is needed is a new and unprecedented kind of global missionary initiative that, while recognizing the autonomy of all existing plans and organizations, brings them into close touch with each other. Then, and only then, is there basis for believing that, by the year 2000, the whole world will have heard the gospel. The Challenge of Meganetworks Computers are the key to the new "wineskins" of missions. In the age of computers, undreamed-of opportunities await us in missions if we are willing to set outside our traditional independentism, distrust, and prejudices, and concentrate on designing and coordinating global plans to evangelize the world.
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