The Church of Jesus Christ is entering the mega-changes of the 21st Century.¹  Because of these  changes, several Christian leaders and thinkers are calling the Church to respond in a proactive way.

In the area of intellectual and cultural changes, Stanley Grenz points out the move from Modernity to Postmodernity and how Evangelicals should take the opportunities inherent in this shift.² Paul Hiebert calls us to reflect on global trends that church planting missionaries must understand, in order to communicate biblical content to the Unreached People Groups without falling into syncretism.³

In the field of training and equipping new global mission personnel, J. Allen Thompson challenges us to produce competent global church planters by changing our training models from the acquisition to the developmental view of learning.⁴  Harley, Lingenfelter and Maggay promote the need for more effective crosscultural training and preparation for global Christian workers.⁵  James Engel offers a penetrating analysis of the challenges confronting North American mission organizations regarding finances, the growing gap between North American missions strategy and global realities, and the changing demands on leadership and mobilizing boomers and busters.⁶  Donald Posterski even challenges us to reinvent our evangelistic approaches and strategies in a globalizing world.⁷

And Phil Butler invites the mission agency leaders to work together by seriously, prayerfully committing their particular mission agencies to a proactive role in helping form and sustain strategic evangelism partnerships.⁸

These challenges to respond are, in themselves, an overwhelming task for the people in the local churches.  It has been said that changes create chaos.  And yet, the Church definitely need to change in order to meet the challenges of the Third Millennium.  Perhaps this is what it means to be a local church on the cutting edge.

But how do we deal with change?  Are we clear about the things that must not be changed?  What are the things that need changing?  How much change can we afford?

Dealing With Changes  

I was in the fifth grade when I learned from my science teacher about the constants and the variables in science experiments.  Constants are those things that do not change or vary.  Variables are those things that change or vary.

Local church leaders and workers need a clear delineation between the constants of biblical principles and the variables of historical contexts in global mission.  Successful change-agents maintain that people are willing to change when they have a clear understanding of their bases of security and their areas of risk.⁹

A group of Evangelicals in the Philippines, for example, is seeking to transform the Filipino fiesta from its idolatrous practices to a celebration that would glorify God and edify the Filipino people.¹⁰  For centuries, the fiesta has been characterized by both the pro-biblical and the anti-biblical aspects of the Filipino culture.  This group is engaging in a spiritual battle to redeem the beauty of the fiesta such as community cooperation, preservation and celebration of Filipino cultural art forms, hospitality, and other aspects of Filipino culture that can be offered to the Lamb (Rev. 21:24-26).  On the other hand, this group struggles with the forces of darkness against idolatry, extravagance, and other aspects of Filipino culture associated with the fiesta that will not be accepted before the throne of the Lamb (Rev. 21:27).

Identifying the constants from the variables always demand spiritual discernment. In the actual ministry of personal and social transformation, spiritual battle, in varying degrees and forms, is always involved.

Change and the Need for a Point of Reference

A point of reference is needed to have an effective and orderly change. Change need not be chaotic.

My father taught me how to use the compass - that instrument used for drawing circles. He told me that I must pin down the needle-leg in order for the pencil-leg to make a circle. As long as the needle-leg stays firmly on a point, I can move the pencil leg as far as I can to make the largest and most accurate circle as possible.

Change-agents must identify the point of reference in the hearts and minds of the people they're leading. Effective change-agents point to the Lord Jesus Christ as their ultimate point of reference.

Change and Vision 

While talking about leadership and organizational change, a person who believes he has been called to be a catalyst shared with me how easy it was for him to turn things around.

   "Turn things around? Into what?" I asked.

    Puzzled at my reaction, he replied: "What do you mean, 'Into what?'" 

    "Well," I responded, "Change, to be relevant, must have a direction. Change is justifiable only when there is a clear and better vision of the future."

Effective change-agents are good at designing a repeatable vision statement. I like the term design because the word vision is a picture-word. The architect doesn't write a building; he designs a building from his creative mind. The architect's abstract vision is first repeated and then translated into the engineers' and builders' imaginations and technical plans. Then, his design is transformed by the engineers and the builders into a real, concrete building.

In global mission, vision starts and grows out of humble prayer of obedience. We must first grow in our prayer life. Our vision expands only when we understand God's passion to redeem the people of the 21st century. We see through the eyes of God through prayer. As Dr. Eastman¹¹ affirms:

"Prayer is the divine communion with our Heavenly Father.  Prayer is the vision of the believer. It gives eyes to our faith. In prayer we see beyond ourselves and focus our spiritual eyes on God's infinite power. Prayer is the human's ultimate indication of trust in his Heavenly Father. Only in prayer do we surrender our problems completely to God and ask for divine intervention... Oh that Christians would see prayer in its proper perspective! " 

God must be our initial vision before anything else. There must be that genuine desire to see the Lord's reality in our hearts and minds before we can victoriously design a vision statement.

I have a vision to start a global church planting movement among the unreached people groups in the major urban centers of the world, starting in Canada and the Pacific Rim. It is a result of an intimate, mountain-top experience with God during a hiking/prayer day at Grouse Mountain in British Columbia. During that time, BGC Canada was also praying for a new vision from the Lord with regards to global mission.  God brought our visions together. BGC Canada invited me to start the BGC Global Ministries with a mission to plant and grow worshiping, caring churches, globally.

Local Churches on the Cutting Edge of Global Mission

My travel assignments gave me the privilege of meeting local church leaders who are in the cutting edge of global mission.  I began taking notes of the changes they made and how those changes created a positive impact on their missionary endeavors¹². I listed my observations using the GLOBAL acronym, and I used this as a vision design for my team:

1.  Go to the Unreached Peoples.  Unreached Peoples are people groups who have no viable evangelizing indigenous community of believers able to reach the rest of the group.¹³  Cutting edge churches will seek to assign new personnel and new mission dollars to the Unreached Peoples of the world.

2.  Launch new local churches across the nation and around the world.  Cutting edge churches are committed to make church planting as their ultimate goal in global mission. Because they are aware that the world is fast becoming a network of urban centers, they target the cities of the world as their priority areas for church planting. Many of their mission projects may not be directly categorized as church planting. But all their projects will be evaluated with biblically healthy, national led, indigenously supported, and contextually relevant churches as the finished product.

3.  Open opportunities for national leadership. Cutting edge churches would send missionaries who will intentionally recruit, train, and empower national leaders as soon as possible. Those missionaries are prepared to work in genuine fraternal relationship with national leaders. Those missionaries will be faithful to teach biblical principles of leadership while being sensitive to apply those principles within the cultural context of national leaders. Cutting edge churches are also aware that in a post-colonial era, non-Western missionaries are growing in quantity and in quality. More and more, Western and non-Western missionaries will have to learn to work together, side-by-side, as coequals.

4.  Broaden current ministries by touching all areas of life.  The postmodern churches are conscious that they are taking their command from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Shalom. Shalom means peace and harmony. Hence, these churches will seek harmony between God and human beings (evangelistic), between different people groups (social-cultural), and between human beings and the creation (ecological-economic)¹⁴. These churches will motivate their people, both young and old, to commit themselves for service, and to give financially, to wholistic ministries. 

5.  Apply creativity in penetrating Restricted Access Nations.  Cutting edge churches will continually develop Restricted Access Strategies (RAS) as they send more missionaries to the Restricted Access Nations (RAN)¹⁵. They will seek to learn from, and form strategic alliances with, other mission agencies who have developed RAS. Aware of the growing persecutions of Christians in many parts of the world,¹⁶  cutting edge churches will develop strategies of advocacy and support for their persecuted brothers and sisters.

6.  Lead Christians to prepare for the realities of 21st century global mission. Due to the rapid technological advances in communication and transportation, people groups are everywhere. The world is fast becoming a global village. Therefore, the dichotomy between home missions and foreign missions is obsolete.  Cutting edge churches are aware that unreached people groups, such as the Islamic people, can be reached in London, Paris, New York, Toronto, Manila as well as in the Arab nations and other Islamic countries of the world. In this sense, cutting edge churches are global thinkers. Rather than targeting a geographical location, these churches focus on people groups. Their new paradigm in mission results in God-directed cooperation between individuals, churches, denominations, and mission agencies. Global mission, therefore, is seeing a unified mission field - across the street, across the border, and around the world.

Jesus Christ is the Lord of history and of the cosmos (2 Cor. 5:17; Col. 1:15-20).  He is not surprised with the mega-changes we are facing.  Hence, His Body, the Church, can move forward into the 21st century with confidence that He who said, "surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age," (Matt. 28:20b) will keep His word.