Missionary
A Missionary is a propagator of religion (see History of Christian Missions), a representative of a religious community who works among those outside of that community. The English word "missionary" is derived from Latin, the equivalent of the Greek-derived word, "apostle".
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2 Christian Missions 3 Mormon missionaries 4 See also 5 External links |
In modern times, Jewish teachers repudiate proselytization. One basic argument is that all people have the law of God in their heart to a limited degree, and that to teach them more would be to make them responsible for more. That is, they would start as virtuous gentiles, protected by their ignorance, but after contact with a jewish mission they would be in danger from judgement by the Heavenly Court.
Since the Lausanne Congress of 1974, a widely-accepted definition of a christian mission has been "to form a viable indigenous church-planting movement." This definition is motivated by theological analyses of the acts required to enhance God's reputation (usually translated as "glory" or "honor"). The definition is claimed to summarize the acts of Jesus' ministry, which is taken as a model for all minstries. The motivation is said to be God's will, plainly stated throughout the Bible, including the Old Testament (see below).
The movement must "plant" (start) churches because the process of forming Godly disciples is necessarily social. "Church" should be understood in the widest sense, as an organization of believers. It is not a building. Many churches start by meeting in houses. Discipling is required to grow the number of believers to the largest extent, and maximize their quality and therefore the acceptability of their worship to God and non-christians.
"Viable" means that it is self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating. This is the famous "three-self" formula invented by Henry Venn of the London Church Missionary Society in the 19th century.
"Indigenous" means that fully native members of the culture have all the needed abilities and accept all the required duties. Only indigenes can fully adapt the Gospel to their culture, maximizing both natural, high-quality worship and the number of people that can be reached in that culture.
It must be a "movement," because special organization is required for the task of planting churches. This movement naturally forms cross-cultural missions, when persons who understand and accept church-planting duties go to people outside their culture, as Christ commanded in the Great Commission (Gospel of Matthew 28:18-20). Thus the cycle repeats.
According to the documents of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, the Biblical authority for missions begins quite early in Genesis, 12:1-3, in which Abraham is blessed so that through him and his descendants, all the "peoples" of the world would be blessed. Others point to God's wish, often expressed in the Bible, that all peoples of the earth would worship Him. Therefore, Christian missions go where worship is not, in order to bring worship to God.
In this view, the early historical Jewish mission is that of being a people placed on the world's major trade routes where they could proclaim the Creator God that blessed them. This view is confirmed in many OT scriptures, (cf. Exodus 19:4-6, Psalm 67) as well as the nature of the temple (its outer court was "the court of the gentiles").
Several teachers including John R. W. Stott, believe that a prominent prophecy in the old testament often unfolds continually and is certainly manifested in three situations, an immediate historical situation following the prophecy, a church-based intermediate situation, and an eschatological, end-of-time situation. Of course, Gen. 12:1-3 is such a prominent passage.
The first, and most famous missionary was St. Paul. He contextualized the Gospel for the Greek and Roman cultures, permitting it to leave its Hebrew and jewish context. This cultural fluidity was then, as it is now, a source of friction between he and some members of the sending church. In such contextualization, the object is to take the essential seed of the Gospel, and plant it in the soil of the foreign culture, so that every practice not essential to the gospel is indigenous. This permits the indigenous church to grow more rapidly by reducing cultural barriers to acceptance.
In the early christian era, most missions were by monks. Monasteries followed disciplines and supported missions, libraries and practical research, all of which were perceived as works to reduce human misery and suffering, thus enhancing the reputation of God. For example, Nestorian communities evangelized much of N. Africa before Mohammed. Cistercians evangelized much of Northern Europe, as well as developing most of European agriculture's classic techniques. Later, Jesuits were sent to China.
After the reformation, for nearly a hundred years, Protestant churches did not send missions. Ignoring the Great commission, they said, "God can save the heathen without our help."
Early on, there were notable exceptions. Some of these were so motivated by love that they could not be thought imperialistic missionaries. Those exceptions include Jonathan Edwards, the well known preacher of the Great Awakening, who was driven from his church in his later years. He became a missionary to the Housatonic Native Americans and a staunch advocate for them against cultural imperialism.
One solution was the creation of segregated "praying towns" of Christian natives. This pattern of grudging acceptance of converts was repeated in Hawaii later when missionaries from that same New England culture went there. In Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Catholic missionaries selected and learned among the languages of the Amerindians and devised writing systems for them. Then they preached to them in those languages (Quechua, Guarani, Nahuatl) instead of Spanish to keep Indians away from "sinful" whites. An extreme case were the Guarani Reductions, a theocratic semiindependent region established by the Jesuits.
Around 1780, an indigent Baptist cobbler named William Carey began reading about James Cook's polynesian journeys. His interest grew to a furious sort of "backwards homesickness," inspiring him to obtain Baptist orders, and eventually write his famous 1792 pamphlet, "An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of Heathen." Far from a dry book of theology, Carey's work used the best available geographic and ethnographic data to map and count the number of people who had never heard the gospel. It formed a movement that has grown with increasing speed from his day to ours.
Slightly after his pamphlet was published, the first missionary society was formed by his friends, and sent William Carey to India. In India, Carey is well-known, having translated and printed numerous books, scientific as well as religious. He translated not just from English to Bengali and Sanskrit, but also translated the Vedas to English, producing the first authoritative English versions. He started the first Bengali newpaper, formed horticultural societies and universities to teach farming and useful arts, and successfully fought the ancient evils of infant exposure and wife-burning (Suttee).
Carey's example was followed by a number of missions to sea-side and port cities. The China Overseas Missionaries and Moravian Church are two of the more famous.
The next great wave of missions, starting about 1850, was to inland areas, led by Hudson Taylor with his China Inland Mission. Taylor was a thorough-going nativist, shocking the missionaries of his era by wearing chinese clothing and speaking chinese at home. His mission was one of the few that actually began to persuade chinese to follow Christ. His books, speaking and examples led to the formation of numerous inland missions, and the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM), which from 1850 to about 1950 sent nearly 10,000 missionaries to inland areas, often at great personal sacrfice. Many early SVM missionaries to areas with endemic tropical diseases left with their belongings packed in a coffin, aware that 80% of them would die within two years.
The next wave of missions was started by two missionaries, Cameron Townsend and Donald McGavran, around 1935. These men realized that although earlier missionaries had reached geographic areas, there were numerous ethnographic groups that were isolated by language, or class from the groups that missionaries had reached. Cameron formed Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate the bible into native langauges. McGavran concentrated on finding bridges to cross the class and cultural barriers in places like India, which has upwards of 4,600 peoples, separated by a combination of language, culture and caste. Despite democratic reforms, caste and class differences are still fundamental in many cultures.
Some authorities teach that as soon as every distinct "nation" has been reached with the gospel, the work of missions will be complete. In this view, "nation" is taken to mean a distinct cultural group, not a political entity.
In the past Christian missionaries sometimes worked hand-in-hand with colonialism, for example during European colonization of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Sometimes, they have damaged those cultures and led natives to acculturation. On the other hand, missionaries have sometimes been the agents of saving cultures from destruction by economic and political forces.
Most modern missionaries and missionary societies have repudiated cultural imperialism, and elected to focus on spreading the gospel and translating the bible. Sometimes, missionaries have been vital in preserving and documenting the culture of the peoples among whom they live.
Often, missionaries provide welfare and health services from love, as a good deed or to make friends with the locals.
The word, "mission", was historically often applied to the building, the "mission station" in which the missionary lives or works. Most modern missionaries avoid creating mission stations, and live in a totally native milieu, with a native family if possible to speed language acquisition.
Christianity is declining in some parts of Europe. Therefore, missionaries from Korea, the U.S and Africa often evangelise the Europeans.
As a matter of strategy, evangelical Christians in Europe and North America now focus on what they call the "10/40 window," a band of countries between 10 and 40 degrees north latitude and reaching from western Africa through Asia. It's an area that includes 35% of the world's land mass, 90% of the world's poorest peoples and 95% of those who have yet to hear anything about Christianity.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is one of the most active modern practitioners of missionary work. The Church strongly encourages their young men to devote two years to missionary work, most of which is spent proselytizing. Young men are eligible to serve missions when at least 19 years of age but no older than 26 and not married.
Young women may also serve missions, but are not expected to do so. Young women must be at least 21 years old to serve missions and only serve for an 18 month period.
Newly called missionaries attend a short training period at one of the Church's Missionary Training Centers (MTC). The largest MTC is located in Provo, Utah adjacent to BYU (some of the housing for the MTC is, in fact, old BYU dorms). Missionaries serving English-speaking missions spend three weeks at the MTC and are trained in the use of proseletizing materials and taught expected conduct. Missionaries bound for foreign-language missions spend longer periods at the MTC—six weeks—in order to learn the language. During this period, they are encouraged not to speak in their native tongue, but rather immerse themselves in the new language. Other MTC compuses exist in other parts of the world for missionaries serving in their native countries outside the US. MTCs and their teaching methods have been studied by various organizations because of the rapid ability of the missionaries to learn a foreign language in the setting. Occasionally, missionaries are fluent in the language they study at the end of the six-week period.
In the past, the Church expected all young men to serve missions regardless of marrital status. Today, the church no longer expects young married adults to serve missions.
Older, retired couples are also encouraged to serve missions and may serve as long as they desire (typically from one to two years). Many older couples have been known to serve several consecutive missions.
Besides proselytizing missionaries, the Church also has a strong welfare missionary program. The missionaries who serve these types of missions serve in poor and third world countries and do not actively proselytize. Regular proselytizing missionaries may engage in welfare activities and community service from time to time.
The Missionary is a comedy movie written by and starring Michael Palin.Jewish Missions
Christian Missions
History of Christian Missions
Mormon missionaries
See also
Disambiguation:
External links