Endnotes

Chapter 6
New Approaches

As our missionaries pioneer new fields around the world, they have added several creative methods and approaches to their missionary tool belts. These innovations are greatly enhancing our effectiveness in completing the unfinished task, assuring that we take advantage of every possible resource God has made available. These new approaches include using the strategic planning process, developing and implementing comprehensive strategies, working with Great Commission Christians and appointing Strategy Coordinators.

Before elaborating on the new, however, let's once again nail down what has not changed. Since our earliest missionary days, the incarnational missionary ideal has been at the heart of our Southern Baptist missionary identity. We define an incarnational missionary as an individual who follows Christ's incarnational example of leaving His home, adopting the language and culture of a foreign people and endeavoring to communicate to the them the love of God and His gift of salvation.

Have we abandoned this incarnational principle? By no means! It was God who chose to reveal His salvation through flesh and blood. Anything less than this, and we might ask whether or not it is truly the gospel of Jesus Christ. Increasingly, though, we are learning that incarnational missionaries work best when they don't work alone. Today, incarnational missionary efforts are being enhanced with an array of complementary ministries such as radio broadcasts, video-cassette ministries, literature distribution, prayer walking and scores of other ministries.

Remember the old Monty Hall game show Let's Make a Deal? Monty asks a contestant who is dressed like a stalk of celery, All right, contestant, which do you choose? Will you take what is behind door number one, what is behind the curtain on stage two or whatever is in this box in front of you? Immediately, audience members begin to shout their opinions, and the celery man is thrown into a quandary. Just once, I'd like to hear the celery guy say, Monty, I choose all of them!

Some missionaries find themselves in just this situation. They feel compelled to choose one missionary approach while rejecting all others. Which should I choose? they agonize. Bible translation? (My people group doesn't even have God's Word!) Prayer mobilization? (Perhaps if we pray for them, God will do a miracle!) Christian residence among them? (How can they hear unless someone lives the gospel among them?) Missionary strategists today are refusing to choose just one approach.

Instead, they are developing comprehensive strategies aimed at addressing the full spectrum of needs and opportunities presented by a lost people. These comprehensive strategies include prayer, Bible distribution, local witnesses, media ministries and more. The strategist relies on an abundant resource pool and then weaves these resources together with an end-vision of a church-planting movement.

While missionary strategists are adamant about the need to draw broadly from the full spectrum of evangelization resources, they also are very intentional about what they want to see accomplished. This intent is evidenced in concrete plans crafted around priority objectives, goals and dated action steps. Detailed written plans accomplish several things. First, they provide a clear road map aimed at a church-planting movement. Second, they ensure that resources aren't needlessly duplicated. Third, they invite other missionary colleagues to make suggestions to be certain that every possible ministry is pursued to reach the people group.

If God is the author of every church-planting movement, then why not just allow Him to choose His preferred methods and strategy? In a real sense, this is exactly what is happening. In the early stages, a missionary may mobilize and launch multiple ministries simultaneously, an approach called multi-tracking. Multi-tracking allows the missionary to explore several ministries at once and then monitor them to see what God chooses to bless, as well as what the people group chooses to respond to. Once the most effective strategies are identified, ineffective ministries can be abandoned and efforts can be consolidated around fruitful approaches. At the early stages, however, no viable approach is dismissed which might contribute to reaching a lost people group for Christ.

A key player in this new strategic planning process is the Strategy Coordinator. A Strategy Coordinator is a missionary charged with developing and implementing a comprehensive strategy aimed at stimulating a church-planting movement among a people group. The Strategy Coordinator may begin his/her work as a team of one, but over time the broad scope of the assignment will probably lead to the emergence of several teams. As the ministry unfolds, the Strategy Coordinator may work with all sorts of ministry partners, but he retains a special relationship with the front-line missionary teams who are interfacing daily with a lost people. While their roles and responsibilities differ, they share a common vision of reaching this people group for Christ. Let's clarify some of the unique contributions of each type of missionary by looking at some of their roles and responsibilities side by side.

Strategy Coordinator Roles
• Develop a comprehensive
strategy
• Facilitate radio program
broadcast
• Generate personnel requests
• Mobilize new personnel
• Mobilize prayer networks
• Facilitate Bible production
(translation, etc.)
• Facilitate Jesus-film
production (funding, etc.)

Local Missionary Team Roles
• Evangelize locally and disciple
believers
• Follow-up on local radio respondents
• Identify personnel ministry
opportunities
• Orient and train new personnel on field
• Plant churches
• Facilitate Bible use (distribution,
teaching, etc.)
• Facilitate Jesus-film use (showing,
follow-up, etc.)

You shouldn't read this chart as prescriptive and definitive. It is actually more of a description of what is commonly seen around the world today. Typically, the Strategy Coordinator is looking at the bigger-picture side of the strategic What's it gonna take? question. Local church-planting teams are wrestling with the same question but are asking it within the day-to-day demands of cross-cultural evangelism and church planting. However, the interaction of these two roles is fluid and varies from assignment to assignment. In every instance, what links the two roles is a common vision of a church-planting movement among the people group.

The strategic-planning process ensures that we have opened the full range of possibilities to any and all that Christ might want to do to reach the people to whom He's called us. In its basic outline, the strategic-planning process has three parts: a) researching the world of a given people group to identify needs, challenges and opportunities; b) exploring the world of God's ministry resources to ensure the maximum empowerment from God to address those identified needs, challenges and opportunities; and finally c) weaving these two worlds together into a focused plan aimed at a church-planting movement. Let's look at the three parts more closely.

People-group research is aimed at understanding the worldview of the people we're trying to reach. The gospel has a universal appeal, but understanding the worldview of a people helps us identify natural obstacles and inroads into the community. Insights gleaned from good research help us know how members of a people group view the world around them, their neighbors and their own place in the world. Knowing a people group's economic relationships can reveal inroads to its daily life. Understanding its social structure helps missionaries know how to properly relate to it. Good research can unveil scores of ministry and witness opportunities among a people.

Exploring the world of ministry resources is a humble admission that we are not self-sufficient and that we are actively looking to Christ to provide all that we need to reach a lost people. Investigating the broader reserves of God's family opens us to the possibility that God has other agents He'd like to employ to reach a needy people. Among the evangelical colleagues frequently called upon are radio broadcasters, video producers, relief workers, campus and student ministers, Bible translators and others.

Before these evangelical resources can be unleashed, how ever, a plan must be devised. The aim of the plan is nothing less than a church-planting movement that will take the gospel to every sector of a people group. Over the past decade, we've seen dozens of customized strategies formulated for people groups around the world. As we have studied these diverse plans, it has been interesting to see some consistent patterns emerge. Virtually every strategic plan includes the same basic components which have come to be known as the five pillars of a people-group strategy.

The first pillar in virtually every missionary's strategy is prayer. Prayer provides the foundation for all that we do to stimulate a church-planting movement among a people. The second pillar is Scripture, the Word of God. Providing the Bible in the heart language of a people is indispensable to a church-planting movement. The format of Scripture may be written, video, audio, story-telling or all of the above, but providing God's Word to a people is non-negotiable.

The third pillar is evangelism. No one has said it better than the Apostle Paul: If you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly, but if you sow abundantly, you will also reap abundantly (2 Cor. 9:6). The fourth pillar, church planting, builds naturally upon the third. Missionaries have learned that unless they plan for church planting from the beginning, it probably won't occur. The fifth pillar is mobilization of resources. This fifth pillar is a process of continually sending forth the challenge to other believers to come and contribute to the fulfillment of the Great Commission among this people.

With these five pillars as a framework, missionaries are customizing strategies that uniquely fit the needs and opportunities presented by their assigned people groups. Over the years, the strategy is continually revisited to ensure that every new opportunity is seized and every new resource is employed. More than a method, the strategic-planning process that follows is a dynamic unfolding relationship between a missionary, a people group and God.

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