CHAPTER 121
Join the World Christian Movement
Ralph D. Winter
Ralph D. Winter was the general director of the Frontier Mission Fellowship (FMF) in Pasadena, CA. After serving ten years as a missionary among Mayan Indians in the highlands of Guatemala, he was called to be a professor of missions at the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. Ten years later, he and his late wife, Roberta, founded the mission society called the Frontier Mission Fellowship. This in turn birthed the U.S. Center for World Mission and the William Carey International University, both of which serve those working at the frontiers of mission.
When you decided to sign up for the Perspectives class, you may not have realized what you were getting into—that it is not so much a class as it is an introduction to a movement. Perhaps you didn’t catch the full significance of the word movement in the title of the course—Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. Now you know. Now you understand you are being seriously invited to join that movement—the World Christian Movement!
But what are the next steps beyond spectator status? It may not be clear to you just what God has in mind for you. But it is important to make a beginning. What do you need to learn next about this great global movement? What is your part in it?
Most people think of the cause of missions as a few outstanding missionaries out there somewhere who live lives worthy of biographies of amazing results and fame. Effectively we think of them like the movie star on screen in the latest blockbuster film. It’s a mistake, however, to think that the movie would exist with only the actor’s contribution. Like the film industry, which has the credits roll past you on the screen for ten minutes including every possible person who contributed to the making of that film, the “mission industry” is a vast effort of diverse people using the gifts God gave them with the collective purpose and focus on seeing Christ made known, loved, and followed among the nations.
To find your way into this incredibly influential enterprise, it is helpful to distinguish the roles of frontline teams who labor cross-culturally—let’s call them missionaries, which includes those who cross-culturally welcome—and those who marshal support for them—let’s call them mobilizers, which includes those who are senders. Whatever your role may be, as a missionary or as a mobilizer, you need a working relationship with others in the mission endeavor.
By connecting yourself with others in missions, you avail yourself of both partners on the journey and wisdom from those who have gone before. Many of the crucial matters of missiological wisdom have been explored. You can embrace the seasoned wisdom, the tempered courage, the proven ideas, and the heartfelt prayers of the generations before you.
Don’t allow yourself to do something so small that it could be accomplished entirely in your lifetime. God is giving you a part of something that began before you were born and will continue onward toward the fulfillment of all that God has purposed to accomplish. God has uniquely formed you to be part of this significant movement.
Get acquainted with the different parts of the mission efforts in your country. Each country has its own mission agencies, training opportunities, publications, societies, networks, and churches.
A mission mobilizer owes it to the church and the nations to acquire the skill and knowledge necessary to participate effectively in God’s global purpose. How would you like to have a heart transplant done by an untrained person? Unthinkable! Transplanting a heart is too important to leave to an untrained person. But the task of reaching the nations could be the most important task that God has assigned to His church. Therefore, it is important that mobilizers be welltrained and informed.
Find Your Part in God’s Global Purposes
Over the centuries the church has occasionally exhibited powerful passion for Christ’s global cause and then, within a few years, seemed to forget God’s invitation to serve in His mission. This is why World Christians are so crucial for the advancement of the Movement. They call the church again and again to the central mission that God has assigned to His church: the task of reaching the nations.
Mobilizers and missionaries have two very different kinds of jobs in reaching the nations. Both of these tasks are essential—equally essential—to the World Christian Movement. Many people unthinkingly equate “missions” with missionaries. But there would be few missionaries unless there were also many intensely committed and skilled mobilizers.
What task is God giving you? God obviously does not want everyone to serve in a foreign land. In the days of the massive Student Volunteer Movement, four out of five who volunteered to go to the ends of the earth ended up staying home. That’s right: twenty thousand out of one hundred thousand volunteers were able to make it to the field only because four out of five were willing to continue to believe and work for the cause of missions back home. Stirring up the church and keeping its eyes fixed on God’s global purpose is a huge and unrelenting endeavor.
God desires mobilizers to be as committed to biblical knowledge and praying as missionaries. Effective mobilizers need to be just as committed to the Lord as missionaries. Mobilization, either as a full or parttime task, requires intense prayer, vision, and commitment. Yet, by contrast, the missionary task is a relatively well-accepted “calling,” while mobilization is not.
Mobilizing Yourself
More basic than anything else: you cannot be a mobilizer if you are not yourself mobilized! But how do you become mobilized?
Keep learning. Get to conferences, subscribe to periodicals, buy key books, and study the issues for yourself, or you will never be all God wants you to be as a mobilizer. You yourself can be caught up in the drama of the global countdown of the kingdom of God.
Support missions yourself. “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also” (Matt 6:21).
Pray for the nations. Use resources like PrayerCast, Joshua Project, Operation World, or Prayer.Global and invite friends or family to join you. Pray for specific missionaries. Nothing that does not occur daily will ever dominate your life. Being a World Christian is of little value, really, unless you are a daily World Christian! Everything grows slowly. How can you keep growing without daily renewal of vision?
Communicate with missionaries. Be aware of their problems and needs. Find out how to send them electronic messages safely. Send them a gift. Host them in your home as they pass through your area. Develop friendships with parents and their children. Listen well as they tell their stories. Share with them what you are learning in your studies. Compare notes from one mission field to another.
Share the vision. Begin mobilizing in your local congregation. Invite them to pray with you.
How about You?
Are you thinking clearly about yourself? Pray carefully to know what God is giving you to fulfill His global purpose. Maybe the place God has for you is teaching a Sunday School class with a relentlessly international perspective. Maybe God wants you to become a globally minded pastor.
Some hesitate because they can’t see very far into the future. Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators, said: “If you can’t see very far ahead, go ahead as far as you can see.” Further, Trotman shared, “Don’t ever do something that others can do or will do if there are things to be done that others can’t do or won’t do.” Essentially, we must seek the Lord for wisdom and be willing to follow where He leads.
Untold marvels lie beyond each step of faith. You don’t really have to know what is beyond the next step, and you can’t find out what it is without taking the next step. We can, however, take comfort in another word of wisdom shared from a friend, “God reserves the best for those who leave the choice with Him.”
Wouldn’t His will inevitably focus on your doing “your utmost for His highest”? What does He ask? Nothing more than all that we are and possess. That’s all. He does not ask us to do what we cannot do, although He often enables us to do what we could not do without His special grace.
Sometimes we seem more geared to do our “utmost” than we are to seek out patiently, deliberately, and painstakingly that role which will make the maximum contribution to “His highest”—the coming of His kingdom and power and glory to all the peoples of the earth. It is not to please ourselves that we give our lives to Christ, yet we may find that His will involves greater joys and fulfillment than anything we ourselves could have chosen. 