Overseas Missions: What Lies Ahead?

As the 40-year veterans of America’s foreign missions force leave the field, a new generation of Americans and an emerging Third World missions corps are moving into place. At the same time, many missions leaders are retiring, and many more are expected to leave top missions posts in the next decade.

How can today’s leaders effect a smooth transition? And who will carry the missions enterprise into the next century? Some 425 missions executives, professors, and church leaders met last year in Orlando, Florida, to consider these and other questions at the Tenth Study Conference of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA) and the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA).

At least one-third of the mission agencies associated with IFMA have replaced chief executive officers in the last five years, said IFMA Executive Director Jack Frizen. Over the next few years, he said, mission agencies will continue to look for new leaders.

Added Wade Coggins, EFMA executive director: “We want to clarify what has brought us to this point, with the idea of passing the vision to the next generation of leaders.”

Modest Growth

The overall growth of the American Protestant career missions force has been modest. In the decade ending with 1985, the latest date for which statistics are available, the career missions force expanded by 26 percent, growing from 31,186 to 39,309, according to the thirteenth edition of the Mission Handbook published by the Missions Advanced Research and Communication Center. During the same period, the number of short-term missionaries exploded from 5,764 to 27,933.

“The major [mission] agencies have grown; the small ones have not,” said handbook coeditor Samuel Wilson. “The largest [U.S.] mission agency is the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, with 3,346 career missionaries overseas. On a global scale, Youth With A Mission (YWAM) is much larger.”

YWAM’S 1,741 career missionaries from North America represented only 34 percent of the organization’s global career missions force in 1985. Short-term workers from North America comprised 52 percent of the 18,167 who served worldwide.

YWAM’S missionary force is growing fastest in the Third World—particularly in Asia. “At the present rates of growth, we expect one day our Asian missionaries will outnumber missionaries from the West,” said Jane Huang, assistant to the director of international special projects.

This is not surprising. Missions enthusiasm has exploded in Asia, and the missions force is growing at a rate of at least 300 percent per decade, according to Larry Pate, coordinator of emerging missions for O.C. Ministries.

The largest Third World mission agency is Nigeria’s Evangelical Missionary Society, with some 665 missionaries. India sends more missionaries (5,055 through 100 agencies in 1985) than any other Third World country.

In Latin America, where missions impetus is gaining momentum, November’s COMIBAM 87 (CT, Jan. 15, 1987, p. 40), a continent-wide missions congress, attracted participants from 23 Latin American and Iberian countries. During the last two years, national missions conferences have been held in all 23 countries.

In roughly the same decade that the North American Protestant missions force grew by 26 percent, the number of non-Western missionaries quadrupled. Thus, along with younger American missionaries, non-Western missions leaders will carry the church’s missions effort into the twenty-first century. For this reason, the EFMA/IFMA conference examined the relationship of North American and Third World mission agencies.

“Our relationship with emerging missions must get some attention over the next ten years,” said EFMA executive director Wade Coggins. “We must look at how we can work together and help in appropriate ways. They have manpower, but are short of money. How can we give financial and other aid without either dominating them or creating dependency?”

Luis Bush, international president of Christian Nationals Evangelism Commission (CNEC), said Western and non-Western mission structures should develop interdependent relationships. He challenged Western and non-Western missions movements to set a goal of fielding 100,000 missionaries each by the year 2000.

Seeking Additional Workers

Setting realistic personnel goals has long been a serious problem for some North American mission agencies. Robert T. Coote wrote in the Mission Handbook: “In 1980, one key agency announced it needed a net increase of 300 missionaries by 1990. This new handbook reports a net gain for this agency of only two missionaries in five years.”

Another major agency announced that it plans a net increase of l,000 missionaries within a decade. “But between 1979 to 1985, the agency gained only four North American missionaries per year,” he wrote.

Coote said the problem is not placement opportunities. A 1960 survey of some 90 evangelical mission agencies (corresponding largely to today’s EFMA/IFMA community) revealed a need for 18,000 additional workers. “EFMA/IFMA missionaries then numbered about 11,000, so the desired total was 29,000,” Coote wrote. Twenty-five years later, “EFMA/IFMA agencies now number 15,000, a gain not of 18,000 but of 4,000.”

“IFMA mission agencies all need many more workers,” said Frizen. “There are not enough well-prepared people, with both spiritual training and experience at home. People don’t want to take the time to get the proper preparation.”

Although some American Christians believe they are the world’s most missions-minded people, Mission Handbook statistics do not bear this out. With one career missionary (Roman Catholic or Protestant) for every 4,780 Americans, the United States ranks sixteenth in the world. Canada ranks seventh, with one missionary for every 2,281 Canadians.

Yet, increasing numbers of American college students are indicating an interest in careers in global ministries (see p. p. 40). “These and other younger missionaries will carry the missions enterprise into the twenty-first century,” said Dallas Theological Seminary professor Kenneth Gangel. “Leaders today in global ministries must give a major amount of their time to finding and preparing successors.”

By Sharon Mumper, in Orlando.

Next Generation Faces Daunting Challenges

As a new generation of overseas workers replaces the old, several trends are emerging that will affect the missionary enterprise. Among the trends cited by missions leaders:

• Unreached peoples. Research efforts have begun to identify and target people groups without a functional indigenous Christian witness. As a result, several mission agencies have been formed in the last decade for the sole purpose of reaching unreached peoples, and many established agencies have initiated new ministries among unreached peoples.
• Urban ministry. A mass movement of people to urban centers has prompted a shift in missions focus from grass huts to concrete towers. In 1900, only 14 percent of the world’s population lived in urban areas. Today, some 44 percent are city dwellers, and by the year 2000, according to World Christian Encyclopaedia editor David Barrett, half of the world’s population will live in cities. Meanwhile, the percentage of Christians in the cities is declining. “We must approach missions through an urban focus,” said Mission Handbook coeditor Samuel Wilson.

• Muslim ministry. A rapidly multiplying Muslim population, estimated at nearly one billion, is attracting the interest of hundreds of missionary candidates. As a result, some new agencies have formed in the last decade, and established mission organizations have opened new Muslim fields.
• Tentmaking. Interest in Muslim ministry has helped spawn a tentmaking movement. Tentmakers are Christian professionals who witness to their Christian faith in secular environments overseas. Most tentmakers work among the estimated three billion people who live in countries where traditional resident missionaries are not welcome.
• Short-term missions. Since 1970, the short-term phenomenon has exploded on the missions scene. In 1973, short-term workers comprised 10 percent of missions personnel; 12 years later, they accounted for 42 percent. Despite this trend, a decreasing number of mission agencies are using short-term workers.

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