CT: So it’s about quality not quantity?
CW: Yes, that’s right.
CT: Some evangelical leaders feel the church in the West has lost its mission focus.
CW: I think the nature of the mission of the church in the West has changed. It traditionally saw itself as the missionary-sending part of the world. Everywhere else was a mission field except us. Thankfully we’ve grown out of that now and the mission field is everywhere. Mission is from everywhere to everywhere.
In some churches in Britain there is a very strong commitment to mission. It’s not so much channelled into sending British missionaries but in supporting indigenous mission movements in India or Africa, in channelling support to ministries which are often fairly holistic in the way in which they seek to address human needs, whether medical, literacy, engineering, which is, in my part, all part of what Christians are meant to do. That’s what I meant earlier by saying that we are called to live the gospel – becoming the whole of the answer that God has given to the whole of human need.
We can be involved in all kinds of ways in blessing the nations and blessing people around the world, including the sharing of the message of the gospel, also including doing good and being in places, being involved in issues of human rights and human welfare and human need. Those are areas that LP is not directly involved with as a programme but many of those whom we support are involved with such things. They are the ones to do it. They are the ones in their local context and far better at it than we could ever be.
CT: So the form of mission has changed?
CW: Yes, on the whole. But that’s not to say that there isn’t a proper place for cross-cultural church planting ministries or people who feel genuinely called by God to cross the boundaries, to go to other cultures, to be involved with first-level church planting and pioneering. That is always going to be the call of God on the church. If that had never happened in our history there wouldn’t be Christians in Britain today, so we always have to recognise that that’s there and that is important.
But in many parts of the majority world the church is already there, it has been there for generations, they are already involved in their own forms of cross-cultural evangelism. They are far better at it than we are so we don’t have to go and teach them how to preach the Gospel.
