Mythbuster #9: The Myth of the Finished Task

March 11, 2009 – 3:30 pm

In this last installment of the MM Mythbusters series, we look at Kane’s point that the task of world evangelism is an unfinished task:

BUSTED - The Myth of the Finished Task

Missionary speakers have much to say these days about the indigenous churches on the mission field which are reported to be self-governing, self-propagating, and self-supporting. And the question is raised: If the national churches are able to stand on their own feet, pay their own way, and manage their own affairs, why are missionaries still needed? This is a good question.

We should blush with shame should e have to confess that after 280 years of missionary work¹ we had not yet produced any indigenous churches The indigenous churches are indeed a fact. Some are large and strong; some are small and weak.² We thank God for every one of them. When we remember the enormous difficulties of the pioneer days, we are amazed that so much was accomplished by so few. Every indigenous church is a monument to the grace of God and the power of the gospel.

But having said that, we must go on to state that the missionary mandate has not been fulfilled when we have established indigenous churches. The original mandate called for the evangelization of the world, which includes preaching the gospel to every creature and making disciples of all nations. And this performance must be repeated in every succeeding generation. That task is far from complete.

In some countries, such as India and Indonesia, the national churches are large and strong; but even there the Christians represent less than 10 percent of the population. These churches are certainly able to maintain their won existence, but can they be expected to win the other 90 percent of the population without outside help?³

And what about the other countries where the churches are small and weak and the Christians account for only 2 or 3 percent of the population? The churches in Japan are strong from some points of view, but weak from others; the Christians there represent less than 1 percent of the total population. The Japanese church lacks evangelistic vision and zeal. Even the evangelical churches insist that the missionaries make the best evangelists.

In Thailand the situation is even less hopeful. For every Christian there are 999 Buddhists, most of whom are still without a knowledge of Jesus Christ. The Baptist church in Burma is very strong, but it is composed entirely of tribespeople, converts from animism. The 37 million Burmese who are Buddhists are practically untouched after 170 years of Christian work. Not more than 10,000 of them are Christians.

The Scriptures have been translated into 1,808 languages and dialects, but the complete Bible is available in only 286 languages. This means that millions of church members in the Third World have only the New Testament, and many of them don’t even have that. Wycliffe Bible Translators estimates that there are 2,000 tribes, representing 200 million people, who are still without any portion of the Word of God. Indeed, their languages have not yet been reduced to writing.

According to the most reliable estimates world Christianity is not holding its own against the non-Christian religions. In 1960 the Christians represented about 34 percent of the world’s population. Today the figure is around 30 percent and it continues to drop slowly year by year. There are more non-Christians in the two countries of China and India than there are Christians in the entire world.

Obviously the task of world evangelism is not complete. The indigenous churches still need help. In spite of all we have accomplished in the last 280 years we have barely scratched the surface.⁴

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¹ 303 years to date, as Kane wrote the last edition of U.C.M. in 1986.

² “Some are small and strong; some are large and weak” would be just as accurate an assessment, in my opinion. High numbers does not necessarily imply spiritual maturity; a small band of believers does not necessarily imply “weakness.” Both scenarios are possible; numbers are not the most significant factor of spiritual stability.

³ Driving Convictions Behind Foreign Missions by John Piper and Tom Steller for Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN offers 14 convictions for their church’s commitment to foreign missions. #9 is most applicable to this discussion of the need for foreign missionaries: “The Need of the Hour Is for Thousands of New Paul-Type Missionaries, A Fact Which Is Sometimes Obscured by the Quantity of Timothy-Type Missionaries.” They argue that

what most Christians don’t know today is that there are probably ten times more Timothy-type missionaries in the world than there are Paul-type missionaries. And yet there are still thousands of people groups—especially Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and tribal peoples—who have no access to a gospel-preaching church in their own culture…

Therefore, our prayer for Bethlehem is that we put a very high priority on raising up and sending frontier missionaries—Paul-type missionaries. Not that we diminish the sacrifice and preciousness of the Timothy-type missionaries, but that we realize what the utterly critical, uniquely missionary need is in the world, namely, there are thousands of people groups with no access to the saving knowledge of Jesus.

Only Paul-type missionaries can reach them. That must be a huge priority for us. Without the gospel everything is in vain. A crucial role that the Timothy-type missionaries play is to raise up Paul-type missionaries among the peoples with whom they are working.

Piper and Steller help bolster Kane’s point by emphasizing the need for “Paul-type missionaries” alongside “Timothy-type missionaries.”

⁴ J. Herbert Kane, Understanding Christian Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), pp. 25-26.

J. Herbert Kane in his missions classic Understanding Christian Missions, attempts to debunk 9 popular missions myths. We will post each of these “mythbusters” in a series entitled “Missions ‘Mythbusters’” and offer critique of and elaboration upon the issues that Kane surfaces.

Key: Busted = a claim proven to be false; Plausible = a claim that possesses some validity, but is not entirely true; Confirmed = a claim proven to be valid.

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