In Defence of Strategy

Early last year I was invited to speak to the men of the Swansea ministers' fraternal. This was my brief: 

What mission strategy would an experienced missionary come up with for Wales?

I covered only half my material then so they invited me back in December to cover the rest. Since then a number of people have asked to read my paper. I am very conscious of its weaknesses but more might benefit in some way if I post it here. So I will start here with my introduction and, Lord willing, add more over the next few days.

The Collins Dictionary defines strategy as follows: 

1.     the art or science of the planning and conduct of a war;

2.     a particular long-term plan for success, esp. in politics, business, etc.

I suppose, in missions, strategy could imply either of those meanings (though a strategic approach to spiritual warfare has invariably resulted in bizarre and destructive activities). Strategic planning is not new in missions. It was assumed when the term ‘mission’ was first used, by the Jesuits led by Ignatius Loyola in the 16^thCentury. Like the word mission, strategy became a regular part of organised efforts to spread Christianity in subsequent centuries, becoming a particularly Protestant phenomenon with William Carey’s Enquiry in 1792.

As with the words and concepts of ‘mission’ and ‘missions’ in the 21^st Century, the idea of employing strategy in the pursuit of fulfilling the calling of the church, has rather dropped out of favour. It may be seen as a particularly modern idea, that owes more to the Enlightenment than to the Bible.

Since the 1960s, the modern missions movement, especially in its American form, has been marked by a strong emphasis on strategic planning. It has been a characteristic of the Church Growth Movement led by Donald McGavran and the US Center for World Mission of Ralph Winter (now called Frontier Ventures) and its spin offs. 

This approach, however, has come under some trenchant criticism. Samuel Escobar, for example, has criticised this ‘Californian’ approach as being guilty of making mission an exercise in management – ‘managerial missions’.

To a large degree I share the concerns of those who have voiced this criticism. But I am not wholly with the critics for two reasons:

1.     The criticism of McGavran – which you hear a lot in Reformed circles – is largely uninformed and crude. I have a hunch that very few have read him. It is true that he probably took some of his ideas too far. But his thinking, drawing on the work of Roland Allen, and heavily informed by his own many years of ministry in India, was very fruitful. There had been far too much waste of mission resources. Missionaries had been labouring in places for decades without any fruit. Many had been tied up in managing institutions. Among other things, he wanted missions to step back and ask serious questions about what they were doing.

2.     Planning is biblical. Paul did not wander around the Mediterranean Basin in a random manner. He and his companions “were kept by the HS from preaching the word in the province of Asia” (Acts 16:6). That would mean nothing if they hadn’t been prevented from carrying out a plan. In the next verse we read that they “tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to”. Clearly, they were seeking to evangelise according to a strategy.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans he tells them that he had “planned many times to come to you” (Rom 1:13). At the end of his letter, he outlines his modus operandi: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation” (Rom 15:20). Then he tells them of his ‘plan’ to visit them on his way to Spain (24). Likewise, Paul discusses his plans to visit the Corinthians (2 Cor 1:15-17).

However, we must always resist the temptation to reduce the ministry that the Lord has given us to a management exercise, and that again for two reasons:

1.     Firstly, the work of ministry is a spiritual ministry. By that I mean that it is ultimately the work of the Spirit, who empowers us to join him in his work (Acts 1:8). So, he maintains the right to move where he wills (John 3:8). Thus, we must always be ready to change our plans at a moment’s notice. It is striking how, in all those passages, without exception, in which Luke and Paul mention plans, they are recounting how their plans have changed. There was one thing more important than planning and that was responding to the Spirit’s leading (not always the same as responding to the requests of people as Mark 1:35-39 demonstrate).

2.     Secondly, the work of ministry must never be reduced to numbers. Graphs, spreadsheets, people groups, and colour-coded maps all look great. But they give the impression of a scientific rigour about the research that is unwarranted. It is a positivistic approach to social and spiritual phenomena that, in reality, is unsuited to the material.

So, with that preamble, I would like to take a chastened approach to strategy for Wales. But before I proceed, I want to apologise because I haven’t done the necessary reading to interact with others who have had a go at this before me. I have not, for example, read David Ollerton’s book, A New Mission to Wales. I also suspect that much of what I have to proposed has already been suggested by others, and there are probably a number of men and women unbeknownst to me beavering away in just such ways away from the limelight. Really, they are the ones who need to be listened to rather than me.

So, if you were hoping for a grand strategy, I am afraid you will be disappointed. Rather, in this presentation I want to look firstly at our context and then address four strategic issues that come to mind as I consider a gospel response to this context.