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"I find that what God is doing today is moving people outside their cultural comfort zones to peoples and language groups different from their own, and that is happening from everywhere to everywhere," says Edwina Thomas, national director for the U.S. branch of SOMA, Sharing of Ministries Abroad, an Anglican mission facilitating group.

"From everywhere" includes missionaries from the Third World coming to the West. According to David Barrett, there are about 16,000 non-Americans working in the United States as missionaries.

Thomas, who helped organize Stephen Kasamba's ministry trip from Uganda last fall, says numerous American churches were blessed as a result. "It was an incredible success because our people are so very thirsty and hungry to see people who are unashamedly, unabashedly speaking out for Jesus," she says. "We in America need the fire and the passion for the gospel that some of our brothers and sisters in the Third World have."

According to many analysts, such shifting paradigms will force Western agencies to examine their roles in missions and evangelism. "We need to realize that the great actors of mission in the past were people sent from nations in Europe and North America," says Samuel Escobar, professor of missions at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, "but in the next century, the great actors of missions will not be them. They will be the partners of them."

Escobar and others say new global partnerships need to go beyond the old models. "We have to ask the question 'In what way can Western Christians add value to a world where most of the evangelicals are living in former mission fields?' " says MARC's Myers. He believes God expects Christians to share resources.

Possible resources the West may have to offer include technological expertise, information and research about various unevangelized people groups, and material resources. Stuart McAllister, director of the European Evangelical Alliance, says Western churches can also contribute "the experience [of] mistakes and lessons learned from two millennia of church and mission."

The greatest financial resources are still concentrated in the West, although many Third World churches are increasingly financing their own mission efforts. Even where Western money still plays a role, Escobar cautions that finances can no longer be allowed to drive missions. "Traditionally, we've thought that those who pay the player call the tune," he says, adding that the great challenge for Western churches will be learning how to enter creatively into truly equal partnerships with the Third World.

NEW ACCOMMODATIONS: Some organizations have been making changes to accommodate the new demographic realities. In 1986, WEF moved its international headquarters to Singapore "to provide the image that WEF in reality is a global movement," according to Vencer.

But for some Western Christians, the changing trends have led to an identity crisis. "When you've seen yourself as the locus of mission, the energy of mission, the leader … it's very hard to say, 'Well, now somebody else is sharing this with us, and we need to find a supporting role,' " Myers says. "We are really afraid of letting go of that sense that we are at the center."

Many international church leaders believe the global evangelical movement will be enriched for recognizing the gifts that non-Westerners bring.

"With the emergence of the Third World, the pool of leadership to run Christian organizations around the world has expanded," Vencer says.

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May 19 1997, Vol. 41, No. 6