How to Prioritize Your Church's Mission Funding

I received an email from a pastor today: 

Reason for emailing: our church recently agreed to focus our missions support by reducing down from 13 organisations and individuals down to 6 (2 individuals and 4 organisations). We have for a long time given 10% of our income which is something we're intending to keep going.

My question is what principles you use to decide how you divide that 10% up, particularly with the individuals we're supporting? Have you got any advice you'd be able to offer?

This was my answer: 

I think that your prioritizing should be along the following lines:

1. Biblical theological factors: your priorities should reflect the centrality of gospel ministry that is in line with the Great Commission – pioneer evangelistic ministry especially among peoples who otherwise would have little or no witness plus those who support that and ministries that complete that (‘teaching them to obey’).
2. Historical factors: you will have relationships with people perhaps going back a long time. These should be honoured, though if people you have been supporting are simply giving out teddy bears in children’s homes I think you should look for ways to redeploy them in more suitable ministry rather than feel under compulsion to continue their support simply on the basis of relationship. Relationships are very important. But they are not absolute.
3. Global realities: mission is now from everywhere to everywhere. Are there folk from other places, including from previously ‘receiving’ countries, who are not connected with you, share your vision and priorities but don’t have sufficient support?
4. Missions mobilization: some money should go into growing the mission vision and wisdom of the church. That may include sending people for short trips to visit situations for that purpose.
5. Training: God willing, the result of missions mobilization will be people coming forward to be assessed for their personal long-term involvement. That should include training, which can be costly.

I trust you will be seeking to grow the vision and commitment of the church so that you can increase your giving in the future. At least one church in Wales I know gives 50% to mission. 

Trouble at Gospel for Asia

This week news broke that the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability has terminated the membership of Gospel for Asia. The EFCA is a very important body in the USA that scrutinises the finances of member organizations to ensure they meet their strict code of practice, It is rare that an organization loses its membership. Gospel for Asia is an organization that raises very substantial amounts of funds, in the States especially, to support 'native missionaries' in Asia. The organization was founded by K. P. Yohannan from India and that is where most of the finances seem to be channelled. I have previously commented on Yohannan's philosophy here and here. Read more on the story here. I want to add a few more comments on the organization and its approach.

GFA is not all bad. There are organizations that are quite simply rotten to the core. Their leaders are charlatans, they lie through their teeth and cheat many generous donors out of their hard-earned cash. One such is K. A. Paul, also of India, who visited Nepal when I was there. He styled himself as Dr. K. A. Paul (USA) - he was based in America and clearly thought that was somehow relevant to his 'ministry' in the subcontinent; I have yet to discover from where he received his doctorate. I will spare you the details but it is a public fact that he made a wretched nuisance of himself in Kathmandu. Privately, members of the organizing committee confided some truly jaw-dropping allegations against him after he was literally chased out of the country by self-respecting Nepalis who wanted his blood.

GFA is not like that. But there is nevertheless an integrity issue. Some questions might help to focus the issue: 

1. How is it that it 'only takes $30 a month to help enable a national missionary to serve full-time to reach an unreached village' when they work in different countries, under different regimes, in different economies, and have variously sized families and needs? Do they each get $30 or is it adjusted? If so, why is this not stated on the web site? Perhaps it does take £30 a month but it would be good to see how this figure is arrived at.
2. Why is there nothing about 'Believers' Church' on the web site? I was told by the UK director six years back that all the churches that are planted constitute this denomination and that the metropolitan (archbishop if you like) is K. P. Yohannan. Should this not be public - something like 'your donations go to building up the Believers' Church denomination'? I think a lot of donors would like to know that.
3. How independent are those churches allowed to be? I was told that if the church wanted to dismiss its pastor they would not be free to do that but that it could only happen on the order of the bishop. I am not saying an episcopalian form of church government is wrong (though I don't favour it myself) but rather that donors might like to know about that.
4. Since the metropolitan lives in Dallas isn't this denomination under foreign control - something that the indigenous church movement (especially in India of all places) fought so hard against in colonial times?
5. Doesn't this event worsen the scandal of the evangelical dollar in Asia? It is hardly surprising, is it, that several states in India have enacted anti-conversion laws if money is coming from the US with the intention, it is thought, of 'converting people to a foreign religion'? Now this is a nuanced debate and sadly most people involved in it don't realize that. But there was a time when most Indian mission organizations eschewed foreign funds for this reason. It is a fact that many Asian people would rather die than give up what they consider their heritage. They regard the use of outside funds to pursue what they see as wholesale cultural and religious transmogrification in the image of the donor as reprehensible. And that means that for every person presented with the gospel a dozen may be inoculated against it. It is not the scandal of the cross.

My prayer for GFA, like other similar organizations, is that they put their house in order, come clean about their shortcomings and pursue the ministry of the gospel in Asia in ways that will not put any stumbling block in anyone's path except that of the crucified lord of history.

Reformed Cross-Cultural Naïveté

I have recently been thinking about a serious problem in the reformed movement and conservative evangelicalism more broadly. It is actually not a new problem but an old one. The novelty factor, it seems to me, is that it is affecting some reformed ministries quite spectacularly. It is not just an American problem. We in Britain can be just as guilty. The problem is this: we have become negligent of our duty to be cross-culturally aware. We think we can do cross-cultural ministry without a single hour of training in intercultural communication. We send our pastors off to Ouagadougou to do pastor training without giving them any lessons in contextualization. We fund the translation of our finest books into Telugu without first seeking to understand how the Telugu mind works. And we set up seminaries in Burma without the slightest crumb of knowledge of how Karen or Kachin tribes people best learn. Shame on us.

How did we get this way? Here are six possible reasons:

1.      We think it is enough to emphasize human universals: we are all made in God’s image; we are all sinners; Jesus is the only hope for all people. Those are all true. But it is not enough. The commission of the Lord Jesus was to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:19). Put that way, he meant that discreet nations rather than the general mass of humanity, have significance. It does an injustice to the Lord to neglect that by only emphasizing the universals and ignoring the particulars.

2.      We have not mined the riches of our theological heritage. So we have an undeveloped theology of human creativity. The biblical doctrine of creation tells us that humans were given a mandate to fill the earth and subdue it (Gen 1:27-28), creating culture from the stuff of creation. That includes language and customs, art, music, architecture. So the rich diversity of the manifold peoples of the earth is something God designed. Reformed people should know this. It has been a significant element in a robust Reformed theology since Calvin. We should recognize that diversity. But we don’t. Or won’t. I am not sure which.

3.      We assume that, because truth is one there is only one biblically permissible worldview. This is false because worldview is, in fact, formed out of an interplay between one’s heart commitments and the environment in which one works out one’s salvation (Phil 2:12). So the world’s peoples look at the world differently from each other. They perceive time differently. They perceive space differently. They are more or less field-dependent, more or less collective, communicate in more or less indirect ways. Which means that the straightforward declaration of the truth is not as straightforward as we may like to imagine.

4.      We assume that to teach the Bible all you need is to study the Bible. This is false because the communication of a message involves both a source and a receptor. In order for communication to be effective there has to be attention to the receptor as well as the message and the source. So we mustn’t take a sermon that we preached in Birmingham and preach it the same way in Bangalore. But you say there is only one Bible. Indeed, but when you take that Bible and you create a message you enculturate that message in your culture. That means it is no longer just the Bible. It is the Bible in your cultural idiom.

5.      Personal confidence is confused for godly conviction. It is good to have strong doctrinal convictions. The problem is, though, we often confuse a strong doctrinal commitment for godly conviction rather that what it really is, ungodly self-confidence. We are naïve about ourselves. Whereas those we disagree with must be foolish and self-deceived we are not. We are triumphalistic, not humble. We assume we must be right on all our finer points of doctrine because we are right about the basics. Or because so and so celebrity pastor says it is. Where is the godly self doubt that should lead us to question ourselves? We have fallen into the Corinthian pit of self-deception (1 Cor 3:18).

6.      We forget we are in a spiritual battle and that the enemy of our souls has a vested interest in the failure of our ministry. That failure can be accomplished in many ways. One way is by fooling us that we don’t need to pay attention to local matters, that what is good for Manchester is also good for Maputo. Another way is by lulling us into a false sense of our own effectiveness leading us to think we can do this with professional ease. So we don’t pray like we should.

So how should be fix this problem? We need to remind ourselves that we might not be right about everything after all. We need to get down on our knees and examine our hearts and repent of the pride that leads us to such hubris. We need to get a biblical view of the particular, take the trouble to give heed to it, and be more modest about the expectations we have of anything we do cross-culturally, especially if we don’t make the in-depth, long-term investment in language and cultural acquisition that is every bit as serious as our biblical and theological learning. I fear the reformed triumphalism of recent years is every bit as ugly as the charismatic triumphalism of a generation ago. May God have mercy on us.

Should Raj Accept Kija Puja?

“Brother John, what should I do? All my life I have received Kija Puja (‘brother offering’) from my sisters on this special day. If I stop now I will offend my sisters and may even be ostracized by my whole family.” Raj had come to John for advice and was in quite an agitated state. Today was Kija Puja, one of the great feast days of the year for the people of Nepal. It was the high point of the festival of Swanti (called Tihar or Diwali among other communities of South Asia). On previous days, successive animals and deities had been worshipped in the homes and courtyards across the Valley: the crow, the dog, the cow, and then one’s own self. Now it was the day for sisters to give an offering to their brothers. Involvement in the rituals of the previous days was to some extent optional, but on this day everyone was expected to be involved.

In common with many communities across South Asia, all married Newar daughters visit the home they grew up in, and where their parents and brothers still live, for this important ritual. Three mandala designs are drawn on the floor in a prepared space in the room, symbolic of the gods Ganesh (the elephant headed god of good luck), Janmaraj (the god of birth), and Yamaraj (the god of death) and a short puja (ritual offering) is given to the deities. The brothers sit on mats along the wall of the room and the sisters draw another mandala in front of each of them, symbolic of the brother himself. The sisters then offer the brothers flowers and fruits as well as bright red vermilion paste (sinha) applied to the forehead as a way of bringing the blessing of the gods to them. The ritual is an elaborate plea to the god Yamaraja to prolong the lives of their brothers. The brothers then give gifts to their sisters in return, usually in the form of new saris and money. When the ritual is complete the whole family sits down and enjoys a feast. The festival is overwhelmingly a family event. In the days that follow Kija Puja the family calls its married-out daughters and nieces and their children to another more elaborate feast.

Raj and his wife Sharmila had been meeting with John for nearly two years and a few months earlier had declared that they were now devotees of Jesus. John had been careful to introduce them to Jesus in the Bible without imposing on them foreign expectations of what discipleship to Christ might look like. As much as possible he wanted Raj and Sharmila to remain in their community so that they would be able to witness to Christ among them.

John was puzzled, however, by this apparent conundrum: to what extent may believers in Christ, living within their community participate in the festivals? Involvement in a festival can take place in different ways. Often a person will participate in the rituals in a merely perfunctory way because he is not religiously minded. Others, however, may take the ritual more seriously. Whatever their motivations and attitudes the important thing was to do the rituals.

John knew that other Christ-followers in the Valley separated themselves from their family during festival times so as not to compromise their new faith. The men never returned to their parents’ home during Kija Puja to honour their sisters. To the sisters it felt as if they did not have a brother anymore, and it caused much grief to the family. Consequently, apart from the many church members who had migrated into the Valley from the countryside, the churches were made up of individual local believers who had broken their family ties.

“Raj, you know the first commandment, not to have any other gods before the Lord,” said John. “Yes, Johnji,” replied Raj (using the suffix ‘ji’ to show honour to his teacher), “but I also want to obey the fifth commandment, to honour my father and mother. Surely I would dishonour my parents and my sisters if I do not participate in the festival!” As they discussed Raj’s options they went over the various rituals that were involved. The puja ritual was not required of the brother but of the sister so he would not have to worship idols, but if he accepted the offering from his sisters was he not condoning their false worship and thereby leading them further into sin? John also knew that other followers of Christ would doubt Raj’s credentials as a disciple if he went along. He might even be disciplined by his church. But the church was made up largely of outsiders who had migrated to the Valley and had no idea about the local festivals and the sort of struggles that believers like Raj went through. Was there anything actually wrong in just participating fully in the whole ritual? It was the heart that was important wasn’t it?

“What if I departed from tradition,” asked Raj, “and rather than receive sinha that had first been offered to the deities, request that a separate sinha paste be made and offered to me as a token of love rather than as an offering of worship? After all, people offer sinha to others on many special occasions, not just at times of worship.”  “But wouldn’t your sisters just think you’ve taken leave of your senses?” replied John. “The Bible says that we must keep ourselves from idols,” he added, quoting from 1 John 5:21. “I won’t be worshipping idols, Johnji,” responded Raj. Then John had another thought. “What about the risk of being afflicted by demons, brother,” he said. “Paul tells us that ‘the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons,’” he added, quoting 1 Corinthians 10:20. “Yes, but he also said that ‘an idol is nothing’” (1 Cor 8:4), Raj replied. “Oh, what should I do, Johnji? It is giving me such a headache.”

John thought very carefully, and then gave his suggestion...

God-centred, Integrative and Expansive: Book Review of Tim Chester's Mission Matters: Love Says Go

Tim Chester's new book is an excellent introduction to mission. Tim has the gift of writing theology that is both thoroughly biblical and winsomely engaging.

God-centred

Mission Matters is God-centred because it is biblical and theological. Tim draws his missiology from the Bible by expounding the Bible's grand storyline and showing how mission is first and foremost God's project. "The starting point is this," he writes: "God the Father loves his Son" (p. 17). Mission, then, is at the heart of who God is, in the relationships of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is not first of all what we are to do but what God already does. And because the Son sends us (John 20:21) we share in his mission. Few mission books are as carefully theological but this one is so without being obtuse in its language. It is a great example of writing that is thoroughly Bible-centred and readable.

Integrative

Tim has written before on the important topic of the relationship of evangelism and social action (Good News for the Poor). He follows the same track here arguing for a broad definition of mission while giving gospel proclamation a central position in that paradigm. Tim's later work (e.g. Total Church) comes through too with an emphasis on the role of the gospel community in mission: "Sustainable Christian evangelism or discipleship or development or social action all require sustainable Christian communities. Without a local church, whatever you do will end when you go" (p. 90). Amen to that.

Expansive 

There is a major problem with a lot of mission writing these days. With the collapse of Christendom there has been a much-needed rethinking about mission resulting in a renewed appreciation that the West is also a mission-field. So mission is from everywhere to everywhere. Churches in the West, then, need to be mission-minded in their posture to the ambient society. In short, they need to be 'missional'. All well and good. But some writers have been so taken with this new paradigm that they have all but abandoned the needs of vast numbers of people who inhabit far less spiritually salubrious locations than, say, the UK. After all, we have neighbours who need the gospel. Indeed, but that is only part of the ongoing story. Tim doesn't fall into this pitfall and argues that mission must be 'Everywhere with the unreached as the priority' (chapter 8). I would have liked to see a bit more on what this means on the ground but the task is clearly stated nonetheless.

Two small criticisms:

1. it is odd that the publishers chose to use a title that was already used recently by Kieran Beville (see my review here);
2. the frequent references to stories of missionaries who have been associated with the Keswick Convention got a bit tiresome to me, but then the book was written as part of a series for the Keswick movement so what would one expect?

Yoga Body: Guest Book Review by H. L. Richard

Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice

by Mark Singleton Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 262 + x reviewed by H. L. Richard This book defines the current academic understanding of the origins of modern yoga. It has not (yet?) made much impact on popular understanding, which continues to reflect propagandistic appeals from various quarters (particularly romantic pro-Hindus and knee-jerk anti-Hindus), but even this review is an attempt in the direction of changing that. The thesis of the book is simply stated; modern postural yoga does not have ancient roots in India; it is a modern creation and the postures are borrowed from nineteenth century European exercises. This rather incredible thesis is meticulously documented, yet the documentation tells a fascinating story that does not get lost in the academic paraphernalia. In Singelton’s words, it is best to consider the term yoga as it refers to modern postural practice as a homonym, and not a synonym, of the “yoga” associated with the philosophical system of Patanjali, or the “yoga” that forms an integral component of the Saiva Tantras, or the “yoga” of the Bhagavad Gita, and so on. In other words, although the word “yoga” as it is used popularly today is identical in spelling and pronunciation in each of these instances, it has quite different meanings and origins. It is, in short, a homonym, and it should therefore not be assumed that it refers to the same body of beliefs and practices as these other, homonymous terms. If this is admitted as the basis for further discussion, we are free to consider postural modern yoga on its own terms instead of in negative comparison to other traditions called “yoga.” (15) This history of both the study of yoga and of yoga itself show that yoga was esoteric and eccentric, never a mainstream practice in Hindu traditions. Swami Vivekananda, one of the great modernizers of Hindu traditions, taught on yoga with a positive slant but was not interested in yoga postures. Yet Vivekananda was influential in the concern to develop physical strength, and it was this interest in physical culture that led to the development of modern postural yoga. Singleton analyzes the key figures in the development of the modern yoga movement and provides details on various of the famous yoga postures. Among the many interesting tangents in Singleton’s study is the development of photography and the significant role this played in the borrowing of postures from Europe and their adaptation into modern yoga. The postal service played a key role also: As well as Yogananda and Gherwal, many of the other yoga writers and gurus considered here (like Sivananda, Iyer, Sundaram, Yogendra, and Ramacharaka) reached their public via the postal service. This marks a fascinating intermediate phase in transnational Anglophone yoga’s shift away from an exclusive guru-śiṣya model and toward the self-help model that dominates today. (137) This study outlines a fascinating chapter in the interaction of “East” and “West.” It should put to death any lingering fears that modern yoga postures are in some way aligned to Hindu philosophy and gods. (Some yoga teachers are so aligned, but certainly not the postures.) This is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in yoga and should be held by libraries where interreligious studies are a concern.

Welsh Weather: Guest Post by Elizabeth Pickett

Beth, who turns 11 today, was unwell the other day and missed the school St David's Day poetry competition. I thought her poem was brilliant (of course) and deserves to be read by others.

Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, down goes the rain,

As it streaks across the glass window pane.

There are sheep to be fed;

There are words to be said.

There are seeds to be sown;

There are crops to be grown.

But still the rain falls on.

The snow white swan glides swiftly by,

Way up high in the sapphire sky.

Now there are sheets of rain,

On the smooth window pane.

The sea waves are so high,

Nearly reaching to the sky.

But still the swan soars on.

The Welsh cakes sizzle away in the pan,

Trying to get a golden brown tan.

But now there’s thunder outside,

And that sleek white swan is trying to hide.

The lightning slices though the sky so grey,

And onto a hill where a pine tree lay.

Yet the Welsh cakes still sizzle on.

Elizabeth Pickett