A Distant Thunder
By Bill Commons, International Vice-President for Strategic Initiative and Research
“The hostile nations can torture us, imprison us, and starve us, but they can do no more than we already experienced in our country for many decades. We are not afraid to bleed, for our bodies are merely temporary tents to be used in the Lord’s service. We are not only ready to die for the gospel, we are expecting it.” (1)
Several years ago researchers discovered that, for the first time in modern church history, the total number of career missionaries from North America was in decline. In stark contrast, the numbers from the developing world were increasing exponentially—far surpassing the total of Great Commission ambassadors from the West.
Beyond the shores of affluent, western democracies there has been a spiritual stirring, a spreading flame of fervor for world evangelism—the kind of missions passion that fueled the proliferation of missionary-sending churches in America during the twentieth century but is now fading.
In the two-thirds world (Asia, Latin America, and Africa), where persecution has often purified the churches, believers are moving out for God in unprecedented numbers to reach the world for Christ. The patient plodding of non-western feet, bringing the gospel from churches in the developing world, is growing from a muted shuffle to a distant thunder.
In fact, researcher and evangelical missions leader Larry Keyes states that “during the last three decades, two-thirds world missionary growth has increased almost five times faster than the missionary gain in the West.” He further expects that “the bulwark of mission leadership and resource in the years ahead will come from the two-thirds world.” (2)
This trend is reflected in our global ABWE ministries. Independent churches planted by ABWE missionaries over the past eighty years are sending and supporting their own indigenous church planters across national boundaries and often into hostile territory. Some ambassadors for Christ from small or poor churches, which cannot support them, are going to resistant cultures as bivocational missionaries, supporting themselves through various occupations. These pioneers from distant homelands are becoming leaders in twenty-first century gospel advancement.
A key strategic objective of ABWE is starting national church-planting movements on every field that launch national missions movements, which in turn send and support their own church planters. ABWE-spawned churches and ministries in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Brazil, Peru, and Chile (to name just a few) are leading the way, with other nations preparing to join this international missions revolution.
Taking the gospel to restricted access nations (RANs), which are closed to traditional missions work, looks different from missions in traditional access nations (TANs) that enjoy religious freedom. In RANs, church planting means reaching and discipling people and forming house churches that function out of public view.
We in ABWE learn much from other mission agencies, and especially from suffering churches in restricted countries, which send missionaries despite much hardship. We gain wisdom and courage from those whose faith has been tested in the fires of official opposition and by persecution at the hands of fanatical religious leaders in their countries.
Remarkable chapters in God’s modern history book of redemption are being “written” by courageous witnesses deployed by house churches in RANs. One example is an atheistic Asian country where, though pressured and persecuted by hostile authorities, the joy of salvation burns in the hearts of humble believers, compelling them to spread the gospel at any cost.
For decades those house churches in RANs have been sending out their men two by two, on foot or bicycle, from their village to unreached villages where there are no believers. Traveling light, these evangelists usually carry only a bag of rice over their shoulder for the journey. In each village they find a family prepared by God to provide housing and nourishment while they preach and disciple those who respond. After a nucleus of believers has formed, and leaders have been trained, these “home missionaries” move on to the next villages to repeat the process over and over again.
Eventually, those weary witnesses return to their home village, stopping back in the towns along the way to encourage the emerging house churches they started. Back home they report to their sending church, are refreshed and taught more from the Scriptures, then are sent out again. Thousands of house churches have thus begun, and millions have come to Christ in that vast land.
This is just one example from the two-thirds world where the first century explosion of biblical faith is being echoed in the twenty-first century, in regions where the gospel evidently never penetrated before. Despite the occurrence of charismatic error and confused doctrine in some movements, saving faith in Christ and the joy of His salvation is an unquenchable flame, an unstoppable force delivering millions from spiritual ignorance and propelling them to continue spreading the Good News.
In one East Asian RAN, gospel ambassadors already seasoned by persecution in their home country are crossing their national borders and bringing the message of Christ to surrounding nations that violently oppose Christian conversion. They accept risk and danger and are willing to lay down their lives to bring salvation to the regions where more than 90 percent of the world’s unreached peoples live—including more than 5,000 tribes and ethno linguistic groups with little or no gospel witness.
The weakness of many house-church movements in RANs is that due to lack of Bibles and theological training, doctrinal error is prevalent, and false teaching threatens to derail believers. “Millions of…Christians are just one unanswered prayer away from moving on to another religion,” warns an Asian missions executive. (1) Their greatest needs are Bible study tools and theological training for the new believers who are infants in the faith.
Perhaps God is speaking to readers of this article who will respond by partnering with us to help equip the emerging East Asian church leaders, so they can train the untaught believers in persecuted churches before the cults or other religions capture them and the fire dies down.
And for our USA churches where the passion for world evangelism has cooled, listen to the voices of suffering church missionaries:
“Evangelism is for the glory of God. It is the reason we exist on this earth; it is our main act of worship.”
“If we lose our first love and start to focus on our own needs, our spiritual life will shrivel up and die.”
“When you make missionary outreach to the nations that have never heard about Jesus the priority of your church, you will not fail to be blessed and revived.”
“If you haven’t discovered something you are willing to die for, then you haven’t yet found anything worth living for.”
“When offerings are received during house church meetings in (our officially atheistic country), evangelists sometimes find they have absolutely nothing to put in into the bag. So they step into the offering bag themselves and unconditionally offer their whole lives as a living sacrifice to the service of God.” (1)
From the two-thirds world churches we learn that it is possible for every local church, in every circumstance and in every place, to send ambassadors of the cross from the local congregation, on the same economic level as the average wage-earner in the church. No church is too small, too weak, or too oppressed. As in the first century, risk and danger are inevitable and expected. Fear is overcome by faith expressed in obedience.
Listen to the distant thunder. Will we hear it from our American churches again?
Note:
1. Source withheld for security reasons.
2. Larry Keyes, “A Global Harvest Force,” Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. ed. Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne, 745 (Pasadena:William Carey Library, 1999).
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