| Some of church history's greatest pioneersSamuel Zwemer, Mother Teresa, William Careydid not wait to get permission before they started new mission structures. They began, attracted others to the task, and only subsequently were they honored by their church's government for their leadership. Samuel Zwemer and James Cantine, the first American missionaries to Arabia, were told by the Reformed Church of America that "lack of funds" prohibited their appointment. So they raised their support directly from congregations and formed the Arabia Mission and sailed to what is Bahrain today. Four years later their denomination adopted them as missionaries. Or consider John R. Mott. Mott was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946, fifty years after his pioneering work with the YMCA and the Student Volunteer Movement. As a young man Mott had envisioned new "task" structures to meet mission needs that denominational organizations could not meet. Today's new denominationsVineyard, People of Destiny Calvary Chapelas well as older, mainline churches should look for pioneers who are already working "without permission" to accomplish tasks that congregations have never done well. Denominational governments should monitor these upstart "task" structures, in the same way that county governments or state governments monitor private industry. These two in combinationdenominational government and private enterprise (mission agency)are the "two structures of God's redemptive mission" that Ralph Winter identified more than three decades ago. A task structure (mission agency) registers with and reports to the government structure (church denomination). Tension between the two is normative, but this is not to say that they work at cross-purposes. Mission agenciesHabitat for Humanity, the American Bible Society, Youth with a Missionturn out a "product", while a denominational governmentPresbyterian, Baptist, Calvary Chapelhas the task of monitoring the "quality control" of the mission agencies. (Of course, mission agencies are responsible to monitor themselves as well; hence their membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, their external audits, etc.) We should not fault the denominations for not doing the work of mission agencies. John Buchanan, moderator of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) 208th General Assembly (1996-1997), wished aloud for a mission order in the Presbyterian Church which would bring volunteer Christians to work and live in urban hot spots. Buchanan said, "What if Presbyterians made a three year commitment to a mission order, and lived out their Christian faith in poverty-wracked neighborhoods?" Someone else (World Impact) has been doing this for four decades. The Presbyterians need not, and probably cannot create a "top down" mission order to do what World Impact is already doing; so the Presbyterian government should write a Memo of Understanding with World Impact and take advantage of the structure that is already in place. Buchanan's wish will remain only a dream unless Presbyterians and other denominations take advantage of "task-oriented" mission societies. Protestant denominations, whether old or newly forming, exist to either increase the size of existing congregations or start daughter congregations within the same culture as the mother church. This is "growing the church where it already is". When the new denominations finally turn their attention to the unfinished task of church planting ("going to where the church is not") they will either have to permit their pioneering members to start a "task" structure within the church or write a memo of understanding with an existing mission structure. Flexibility is what the denominations need if they are going to keep the money and the missionaries under their own supervision. We can learn a lesson from the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholics, famously centralized, have proven flexible to permit its entrepreneurial members to begin structures and attract bands of men and women to do good words. Consider, for example, Mother Teresa's mission order. Mother Teresa's Great Contribution Mother Teresa did not win the Nobel Peace Price for helping poor people on the streets of Calcutta. (Did you suppose that the world noticed when she dedicated her life to the overlooked, underfed, indigent poor of India?) What was her most valuable contribution? Mother Teresa's greatness emerged when she multiplied her effective work by beginning, and sustaining, a missionary order. Called the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa attracted hundreds of women to follow her. She led them in following Christ, in feeding the hungry, and in comforting the dying. Multiply her work by a thousand pairs of hands, doing good in a hundred dark corners of the world, and the value of Mother Teresa's contribution comes to light. Her dedication to the poor made Mother Teresa good; her ability to organize and run a missionary order made her great. The Catholic Church, despite its famous centralization, has found a way to make come true the outside-the-lines ideas of its entrepreneurial members. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) heard God's call to a "new kind of knighthood," and founded what others called the Franciscans. Their simple vow: 'To follow the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to walk in His footsteps." The order numbered 5000 by the time of Francis' death. This new kind of knighthood became a significant alternative to the misguided Crusades. A missionary order begins as the vision of an entrepreneur who identifies a task, begins his or her work on the task, and then gets permission from a certified agency. Mother Teresa founded her order in 1948, and Pope Pius XII subsequently sanctioned it in 1950. In 1968 the Vatican summoned her to Rome to found a home for the poor there; she staffed it primarily with Indian nuns from Calcutta. Luther and the 250 Years of Silence When Luther dismantled of the church's monastic structures it brought about an unforeseen and deleterious effect. The Lutheran church had no means for mission to the non-Christian world. While Luther believed in the proclamation of the gospel for all the world, when he spoke of mission he meant to the "repaganized" (verheindischte) Christian Church. It is not necessary, to say with Gustav Warneck, that Luther was indifferent to missions. Luther said, "Nobody should hear the gospel for himself only, but everyone should tell those who do not know it." But the historian Stephen Neill says that Luther did "exceedingly little" to put such insight into practice. Calvin as well pressed for the end of monastic structures, and likewise ended up with no means to move his message beyond the Christianized world. It was not that Protestants did not traverse land and sea; they did, for profit. Catholics missionaries, meanwhile, for the sake of the Great Commission pushed the limits of knowledge and exploration until they reached India, China, Japan, Vietnam, Africa, the South Seas, and the Americas. A more practical proof of the need for mission structures could hardly be provided than the painful questions posed by the Jesuit historian, Johann Baegert. He says, in effect, "We know why the Protestants are heretics: because they have no missions." From 1751 to 1768 Baegert, a German, was a Jesuit missionary among the Indians of Lower California. In January 1771 Baegert published his Observations in Lower California, a translation of which was brought out in 1952 by the University of California Press at Berkeley. Baegert inserts "Some Questions Directed to the Protestants":
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