Mission-Church Relationship Part II -- By: Greg Peters

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 125:500 (Oct 1968)
Article: Mission-Church Relationship Part II
Author: Greg Peters


Mission-Church Relationship
Part II

George W. Peters

The pattern of partnership of equality and mutuality. Experience may be costly, but it seems to be necessary and valuable to show us ways into more effective paths of ministries and more perfect relationships to accomplish the purpose of God, to satisfy the justifiable demands of an autonomous national church, and to do justice to the spiritual and legitimate charge of the sending churches, the mission boards, and missionary calling.

It is evident that in the past there has been too much mission-based programming and unilateral action by mission boards and/or missionaries. To this we humbly confess. Such one-sided procedures may be justifiable at the very outset of a missionary project, but must not continue once a church is organized. Failure to recognize the important Scriptural principle that a church is a church as soon as it is born, no matter what its educational level, financial strength, or cultural milieu may be, has not only created uninvolved, semiparalyzed, impotent churches, but has brought about an unwholesome reaction from these churches. The dangerous trend of unilateral action on the part of these churches now threatens not only the relationship of the mission and missionary to the churches, but it may also impair the missionary thrust and outreach in evangelism and church planting.

Due to this tension, there have come about several principal changes in areas of missions: (1) There has come in some missions an almost wholesale shifting of missionaries from the regular or general church planting missionary to the project missionary, engaging in supplementary and wholesome

ministries, but not in the most central ministry of actual evangelism and church planting, the real business of the mission and the missionary. (2) To pacify the reaction, either complete separation of mission and church has taken place or a strong and one-sided church-centered program has been yielded to which satisfied neither the missionary design of the sending churches nor the missionary calling of the missionary.

This has led to serious questions: What partnership or relationship will not frustrate the missionary freedom and initiative of each body? What are the rights, privileges, and responsibilities—for missions—of each partner? What arrangement will not undermine the integrity and selfhood of the receiving church and not hinder the missionary concern and thrust of the sending church, nor interfere with the missionary calling of the mssionary to perform the task of aggressive evangelism and church planting in unevangelized areas in nearby or distant communities of the land of the national churches?

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