Rowan Kemp
In a world of gospel need, from Sydney to Slovenia, are we as Sydney evangelicals too Sydney-centric?
Already this week at CMS Summer School we’ve heard of explicit invitations to the Australian evangelical community from Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania (to cite butthree examples) to send gospel workers. Moreover, according to Lindsay Brown (former International Director of IFES), Sydney evangelicals are particularly placed to meet some of the pressing current gospel needs around the globe. We have open doors for ministry—but will we pray and work to send people through?
A particular opportunity for Sydney evangelicals
As part of his list of the top 10 challenges facing the global evangelical church (for the full list, see below) Lindsay Brown highlighted the great need for training and teaching in many parts of the world.
Setting the scene, Lindsay (pictured right) outlined the incredible growth in God’s global church in the last twenty years. The evangelical church in Nepal, as one example, grew from 30,000 in 1989 to 900,000 by 2009.
The challenge presented by this amazing growth is to disciple large numbers of new believers and establish them in the Christian faith. Such discipleship is essential if we are to fulfil the Lord Jesus’ commission in Matthew 28 to ‘teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you’. Only solid Biblical discipleship will avoid a Christian faith that fails to progress beyond the superficial or nominal.
Lindsay’s point was that this is where evangelicals in Sydney are particularly equipped to serve the wider global church. Having been blessed with high levels of Biblical teaching and training in our churches, we are beautifully placed to bless our brothers and sisters in less resourced places where God’s church is rapidly expanding.
Is this a door through which we are prepared to walk? Will we pray, as a community of resource-rich Sydney evangelicals, for the Lord to raise up significant numbers of workers to meet this substantial need? Will we actively seek to encourage and send appropriately humble, mature, servant-hearted people to serve in the globalharvest?
Too small a vision?
Sometimes I hear the objection that there is a lot of work to do here in Sydney and that we need to look after our own patch. This is undoubtedly true. But I wonder if we are too focused on our own needs, instead of also looking to the needs of our sisters and brothers overseas.
Of course we support global mission. But tithing our church budgets, or even our theological college graduates, towards the global church frankly seems a bit stingey. Especially given our relative richness in resources, and the fact that many in our churches preach that for the resource rich tithing hardly meets the NT standard of generosity.
The substantial need for teaching and training overseas is not merely a question for us as individuals. As churches and a community of richly blessed evangelicals in Sydney, are we owning the needs that exist outside of our own patch? In fact, maybe that question betrays part of the problem. The issues overseas (or outside our own suburb) are not ‘our’ problem. But the picture in the NT is of global inter-dependence amongst God’s people (2 Corinthians 8-9). Maybe when those who are closest to the global situation say that we in Sydney have a particular opportunity to serve the wider church, we need to prayerfully consider our generosity.
Hearing the explicit requests to send gospel workers reminded me of the apostle Paul’s vision of the man from Macedonia who begged him to “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” (Acts 16.9-10). Given the explicit invitations that have been extended to us, for what are we waiting? Are we waiting for our own individual ‘Macedonian’ vision? Might not these invitations be our ‘Macedonian’ moment?
Top Ten Challenges for the evangelical church today (Lindsay Brown, evangelist and former International Director of IFES)
1. Pluralism. “We must be clear, bold and fearless in proclaiming the uniqueness of Christ”.
2. Unreached people groups. There are 630 unreached people groups around the globe today. That’s 600 million people without an indigenous church.
3. Provision of Scriptures. There are 4000 languages in the world today without any translated portion of the Bible.
4. Aural learners & slow readers. Many cultures are not oriented around the written word—increasingly this is the case in Western cultures as well. How do we effectively communicate the gospel preserved for us in written Scriptures without compromising?
5. Contribution of the diaspora. The gospel of Jesus Christ transcends racial barriers. How do we express the trans-cultural nature of the Christian community in our multi-cultural society? More, how do we benefit from the strengths that come in a multi-ethnic Christian community?
6. Growth of mega-cities. In 1900 there were only 11 ‘mega-cities’; in 2000 there were more than 500. How are we proclaiming and living the gospel of Jesus in these places with their distinctive problems and challenges?
7. Training and teaching. Rapid growth in the Christian church in the last twenty yearsmeans that there is a desperate need for discipleship, teaching and training.
8. Concern for every aspect of society. Instead of retreating in the face of secularism, will we as evangelicals engage in the life and debates of the wider community to demonstrate and proclaim the life in Christ that really is life?
9. Use of technology. The emergence of new technologies is unlikely to abate. Are we committed to exploring the real gospel opportunities that new technologies present?
10. Partnership. There are needs all over the globe. As evangelicals we need to forge gospelpartnerships across boundaries in order to meet the needs of the kingdom for God’s glory.
Rowan Kemp is the leader of the Evangelical Union (EU) staff team at Sydney University and the CEO of the EU Graduates Fund.
