Jonathan Brennemann shares
In one place, Western missionaries showed up and the church immediately stopped growing! Why?
It's easy to think as if the place we live is the center of the world, as if our culture's version of Christianity is the norm. But China, India, Iran, Indonesia, and Pakistan together hold over 3.3 billion people and 100 million Christians.
These countries are among the places where Christianity is spreading the fastest and reaching those who never heard the gospel. Many Christians have been beaten and persecuted for following Jesus. They operate so differently that many Christians in the United States and Brazil would criticize them. But they have results that our churches can't replicate.
Andy Rayner shares how they asked a missions agency to care for a growing movement with 18 churches. The agency brought in five missionary families, and the church growth stopped immediately. After four years of stagnation, the agency asked them to return and help diagnose the problem.
As they talked, the missionaries heavily criticized a certain uneducated, rural native farmer. Andy responded by asking how many churches they had planted there. "None."
He replied, "Well, that farmer you are criticizing has brought the gospel to nine villages. With no pay, no salary, no expense money, no bible college training, and he did it without your fancy training programs designed to teach him, and the others how it's done. (Same for every community. No western money was used for salaries, positions, constructing church buildings etc.) I share his story, and how this farmer has more gospel living and church forming experience in his pinky fingernail, right now, than all five Western families will ever have in a lifetime, combined. So why don't we get out of the people's way?"
The missionaries agreed to step back. A new church was planted in a month, and four new churches in three months.
I keep challenging the religious status quo. Some people may get offended or claim these are new ideas and whoever is sharing them is rebellious, unteachable, and unsubmitted. But the truth is, I've had the humility to learn from the church worldwide, especially from movements planting thousands of churches in contexts that were considered the most difficult in the world, among people groups considered unreachable by others.
Maybe those who can't learn from real apostles planting thousands of churches among the unreached, in the face of persecution, are the ones who are really stubborn and unteachable!
The religious may criticize me, but I ask, "What percentage of people in your church have seen someone healed or delivered from a demon as they prayed, or shared the gospel, in the last week?" I experience this every week, but many religious people think something's seriously wrong with how I think, but not with a paradigm that produces powerlessness
The church as we've known it has been quite ineffective at making disciples, producing Christian maturity, and fulfilling the Great Commission. So why don't we humble ourselves and learn from those who have been effective?
Let go of human traditions and control. You stick to your role and let Jesus be the head of the church and the Holy Spirit build it. He can do a much better job than you can! Do what Jesus said to do, and stop doing what Jesus didn't say to do! What is the gospel message the apostles preached which gets the results the apostles got, turning the world upside down?
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