21st Century Mission- A Paradigm Shift.

There is a great move of God in this nation and we cannot deny that. God has used many in this nation to reach not just our Judea and Jerusalem, but also our Samaria. Nigerians are all over the world declaring the gospel of Christ and causing unprecedented revivals in many places. I know we are still a long way to go where perfecting holiness is concerned, but Nigeria is heaven when we beam light on many other places in Africa, and the world. This no doubt place a great responsibility on the entire church in this country.

One must really commend the efforts by many mission oriented churches and organizations in this regard. This write up is to draw our attention to the need for a re-appraisal of our methods and approach to end-time mission.

At the moment most of our mission efforts are concentrated to evangelical mission; with little emphasis on other aspects of mission, particularly teaching missionary. It is not uncommon nowadays to find the evangelical gospel preached where the gospel has already being grounded, contrary to Apostle Paul’s style of preaching Christ(evangelical preaching) where He had not been previously preached. As a result there is much scrambling, and seeming competition in our missionary approach.

There is a serious need to reappraise the effectiveness of our approach; which is the comparison of the output result and the resources input. How effective are our mission outreaches? Are there no scientific ways, by which we can measure our effectiveness, so as to be on the cutting edge and prepare the way for Christ’s second coming?

Critically, many of our mission work can be rightly called ‘church branching’ with the aim of extending our churches’ reach. It is not uncommon to see churches established outside the country by Nigerians as another Nigeria community in the mission fields. By this I mean we tactically 'Nigerianize' the people on the field to do things the way we do it in our churches or organizations back home without due recourse to their culture and peculiar circumstances. Most Nigerian churches outside are overseen by the Nigeria pastoral import without any serious attempt at training and developing indigenous pastors that could effectively reach out to their people. We spend much of our resources sending pastors and missionaries, out without equipping the people on the field to become missionaries in their own land.

Missionaries are sent out with the singular aim of getting people saved. This is highly laudable, and may many more be inspired to get into the field that is already white for harvest. But there is need to look critically at our methods of achieving this. 21st century mission need a serious reappraisal. I strongly believe that many of us believers are not current (up to date); we still live in the 19th or 20th century.
After salvation we are counseled to cut off from the world so as to grow and not be polluted from the things of the world. Unfortunately, we were not told that we would still have to deal with the world.
Most of us believers spend 99% of our lives and time with fellow believers or in church. Our lives revolve around church activities. Many that are even engaged in what is called secular world have no interaction with the people of that world besides inviting them for meetings and trying to force on them our new found faith. Thus we are practically cut off from the real events and happenings out there in the world we are commanded to reach. This readily explains how ineffective our outreaches had been. We do not understand the pain and the language of the world, how then can we communicate effectively or provide the solution to the problems? We often forget that Jesus Christ did not come to get people born again by just preaching the need for their salvation; He got people saved by being practically involved in their world and lives.

Think about it; He never preached to Zachaeus about salvation, only went to his house to rest and dine, yet Zachaeus gave his life. He never asked the woman found in adultery to get born again, but simply rescued her from those that were to kill her by stoning, and told her that He could not condemn her either. Our mission work is daily losing touch with reality, and there is a need for a re-examination and re-strategizing.

Many of our outreaches are losing touch with the 21st century challenges because we lack the basic understanding of the 21st century people. We must of a matter of urgency reorganize and start a re-training scheme that will make us relevant, otherwise the church will soon have a situation where 2 people get born again only to lose 5, that had been previously saved to the modern day challenges. If we are not careful we might be faced in Africa with the same fate that befell Europe. Who would have thought that there would be need to re-evangelize today’s Europe considering the fact that Christianity was supposed to have come from there? Most of the early missionary adventures of the Bible days covered what we today refer to as Europe.

Having this in the background, I clamor for a more scientific approach to mission work. There is a strong need for a review of our ‘missiology.’ I call for a re-vitalization of Mission Researches. This of course is not a new concept but one that need to receive new life. I believe it is time there is a major paradigm shift from the conventional-‘go get people born again and start a church’ approach to a more scientific Christian outreaches. There is a need to integrate and fully embrace mission researches into our mission adventures for greater relevance.

The challenges of this century is quite different from those passed. There has been major intellectual development world over, and at the moment the gospel is reaching across like never before via modern days tools-internet, media etc. The problem however is that most of us seem to be preaching to our own world, not the environment we live in. I believe every environment requires different and unique gospel that is relevant to the challenges in such environment. These challenges can only be identified only if we embark on intensive researches.

There are basic challenges facing the Africa states, and effective mission would try to identify those challenges and seek to address them practically; not just preach about them. The Bible talks of what Jesus began to do and teach. We teach prosperity but not do prosperity, we teach healing but not do healing, we teach the kingdom of God but cannot bring the kingdom into the practical day to day living of the people. There must be a turn around. There is a need for 21st century friendly delivery which can only come on the platform of researches.