The "Sweet Spot" for What It Means to Be a Missionary

Here's a question from a friend who is a missionary. I received the email a few weeks ago. I just got around to responding today. I have taken out or altered information that would identify this person or where they serve even though I don't think there is anything critical or off-putting in the question or its asking.

​"I have some questions for you, just for my own information. I think it was you who said that the United States was now considered a mission field by the Church of the Nazarene. I have also heard of missionaries from [our part of the world] that are going to the U.S. to be missionaries. Why do we send missionaries from the US to other countries and vice a versa? Why don't we just keep those that are called in their own countries to do the work that a missionary from another country might do? I do not consider the [country I live in] a mission field as they have very large churches here in [the capital city] that are completely staffed and run by nationals. I understand [our] education and credentials have brought [us] here to fulfill a requirement by the [national] Government's [--] policies. [We are] filling a void as there are not many [local or regional workers] with the credentials needed. But other countries where we have nationals that could run the districts, regional offices, etc., why do we continue to send American Missionaries? Just some things I have been thinking about."

Great question, sorry it’s taken so long to get back to you.
 
The goal of missions for most of the 20th century has been focused on the “three-self” formula from early missiologist Henry Venn, the son and grandson of prominent evangelical leaders and philanthropists in 19th century England. (Henry's son, John, a logician created the Venn diagram.)
 
The "three self formula" considers the establishment of a local church or group of churches to be complete when it is self-governing, self-financing, and self-reproducing. Later on, missiologists added self-theologizing as an additional criterion. This way of evaluating church development in global missions was popularized by the Lausanne Conference of 1974.

In Nazarene terms, the three-self formula looks like this:

Portrait of Henry Venn (1796 - 1873). From Memoir of Henry Venn, B.D. by William Knight (1882). Public Domain.

​Self-governing: District Organization (advisory boards, assemblies, and auxiliaries (discipleship, youth, mission education)

​Self-financing: Raising funds for rolling out a vision for multiplying churches and makingdisciples, also assisting the poor through compassionate ministries,buying properties, constructing buildings, paying full-time ministers, and contributing to the World Evangelism Fund to help other parts of the world

Self-reproducing: catching a vision for making disciples and multiplying churches through seeing their context through God’s eyes and shining the light into spiritual darkness

Self-theologizing: educating pastors and lay people to understand Scripture and think through the difficult questions about God, the church, and the world. So, there is a strong system of discipleship at all levels as well as a well-regarded and well-funded system of theological education in place through centralized schools or decentralized training on the districts

​All this means is that outside missionaries are necessary until a church can do all three or four of these through local leadership and initiative. So, missionaries are the first to bring the message, and then fill gaps until local work is viable on its own. Missionaries should plan to always work themselves out of a job.
 
The problem is local churches, at home or abroad, do not become proficient at all four "selves" at the same time. There might be enough local leadership to be self-governing in church development but they are not yet able to finance all the necessary work to be self-financing. They might not have enough local initiative to be self-reproducing so they need a push or impetus from the outside even though they are doing well in connecting with a local system of education that self-theologizes by developing teachers of pastors.
 
So, in a nutshell, mission is the church moving outward. This means missionaries from the US going to the Philippines, Koreans going to Africa, Brazilians going to the US, etc. All this work (the missio Dei: God sending into the world) will last until the work is done and God’s Reign has finally come.

What is a missionary?

David Wesley, a Nazarene missiologist, asked local church leadership around the world to define mission from the field. Wesley shared this research to a gathering of north American church leaders on September 16, 2016 at Shepherd Community in Indianapolis. This is what he discovered from those sending and receiving missionaries: 

"What mission should be:
1) To establish church where it doesn’t exist
2)To change society (agents of transformation)
​3) To increase the number of believers"

​What it should NOT be: "To administrate the ongoing efforts of the church"

Missionary is found in the sweet spot of being sent by the church for a local purpose in unfamiliar territory.

And, so a missionary should be: "sent by the church . . . with a purpose . . . by walking into unfamiliar territory." Missionaries are the ones in the center--"the sweet spot"--of the Venn diagram above. 

Outside of the center, it gets fuzzy

Now, here is where it gets fuzzy, and sometimes difficult. Among Nazarenes, we have people on missionary contract or paid through WEF that are not by strictly “missionaries”: the first ones to a place unreached by the Good News or strategizing about how to expand into new places. They may very well be "sent" with "local intentionality" but very much at home, working in familiar cultures, language, and customs. They did not have to cross a border into "unfamiliar" territory. They are office workers, finance people, teachers, administrators. I think the leaders in the Global Mission Office and the regional offices would agree with me. I agree with them on this point: these positions might not be missionaries per se, but they are the “engine” behind the mission. 

​The apostolic missionaries entering "unfamiliar territory" cannot do their work without these other folks helping it along as support staff. They will be missionaries until the local church structure can "self-finance" this role for itself. In every case, the goal should be, and usually is, to transfer responsibility to local initiative (as quickly as possible) within the structure of the three/four-self formula. The missionary support structure should stay in place as long as it is needed, and no longer. An exception might be cross-cultural workers that are invited to a localized assignment as co-laborers and colleagues in the mission of God.

I know there are denominational discussions right now about how to define the work of a missionary. I don't really want to step into this discussion directly or interfere with its development. Things seem to be going well. I do, however, want to look at the various nuances of the Venn diagram above, though that are pertinent to this discussion

Figure A. Support Staff
The church worker lives and works in a place that is familiar, maybe even their home country. They are support staff for the missionaries, and part of the engine that propels the mission. The work they do is still valuable and necessary to the missio Dei. Local oversight is necessary, especially in hiring and managing local workers within the administrative structure of the church.

Figure A

Figure B

Figure B. Remote Commuter
Church workers without a local purpose may still be sent to live in unfamiliar territory. They have a home-base or office in a particular country that is accessible and affordable but work in several countries. Local oversight is not necessary as long as the worker does not have direct local responsibility and does not rely on local resources for their work. Cultural adaptation is still required,  so local resources and counsel cannot be ignored.

Figure C. Bivocational Ex-pat 
Christians live in a cross-cultural environment with a local purpose but not necessarily sent by the church. The church has little to no direct oversight. The primary role for this worker is locally defined and funded outside the church. Any work for the church is above and beyond expectations for this worker. Their contribution might be valuable but needs to be considered non-essential since the employer may move them even though the church work is not completed.

Figure C

I will let this go for now. I am still working on these definitions and their ramifications for the global church as well as the church locally.