Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 09:4 (Winter 2005)
Article: The SBJT Forum: Being Missions-Minded
Author: Anonymous

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SBJT 9:4 (Winter 2005) p. 86

The SBJT Forum: Being Missions-Minded

Editor’s Note: Readers should be aware of the forum’s format. D. A. Carson, Christopher J. H. Wright, Michael A. G. Haykin, and Ted Cabel have been asked specific questions to which they have provided written responses. These writers are not responding to one another. The journal’s goal for the Forum is to provide significant thinkers’ views on topics of interest without requiring lengthy articles from these heavily-committed individuals. Their answers are presented in an order that hopefully makes the forum read as much like a unified presentation as possible.

SBJT: You travel to quite a few different countries each year. Would you care to mention some of the mission trends you yourself see on your travels?

D. A. Carson: You are asking a question that demands, at very least, several long essays, rather than a few paragraphs— partly because the trends themselves vary greatly from country to country. All I can do here is provide a rather subjective and impressionistic list of several things that instantly spring to mind.

(1) At one time, the overwhelming majority of missionaries came from the West (not least from English-speaking countries) and went everywhere else. No longer is this the case. More missionaries than ever before are being sent out from non-Western countries. Indeed, increasingly missionaries are from everywhere to everywhere. Korea (to mention but one prominent mission-sending country) sends out a formidable number of missionaries (at the moment, between 12,000 and 15,000). In addition, Korea sends “tent-makers” into other Asian countries that would otherwise be completely “closed.” Many African churches send missionaries cross-culturally to other tribes and to other African countries—and, increasingly, to Western countries, primarily to serve those who have emigrated from African countries to the West. Worldwide statistics are complicated and not always easy to come by, and one is not always sure how accurate they are—but in any case, this first development is not in dispute, and one must rejoice over it, even if some of the reasons for getting to this point (e.g., the decline of the West) are disappointing. Jesus has told us he will build his church; he has not told us that such building will necessarily take place in our hometown or school district. It helps to get things into perspective if we take time to read up on worldwide developments in order to gain a worldwide appreciation for what God is doing.

(2) No less important is the array of related changes on the horizon. We are on the cusp of massive transformations of perspective. We have expected the majority of world Christian leaders to be white and Western, to be (relative to most of the world) affluent and capa...

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