Dreams, Hopes, Concerns, Fears: Working Together to Shape the New Millennium: IFMA

by John Orme

The following response is from John Orme of IFMA: Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association

Every three years for more than three decades an important mission gathering has taken place. The theme for the upcoming EFMA/IFMA Triennial Conference is "Working Together to Shape the New Millenium." As a preparation for this event, EMQ has invited the CEOs or their designees of the five currently cosponsoring bodies to share something of their dreams, hopes, fears and concerns regarding this great challenge.

The following response is from John Orme of IFMA: Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association

Those who predict the future usually erroneously assume, first of all, that people want change. Second, they assume that current trends can be extrapolated into the future. Perhaps this is why some say that only young people have dreams . . . for they have not yet learned the riskiness of these two assumptions. Yet focusing on our hopes, dreams, and anxieties about the future will focus our energies. Permit me to share with you some of my own dreams for the next millennium.

For the local church, I dream of expository preaching that emphasizes missions and the whole world so that world evangelism is right in its DNA. From this I expect that geographic regions will form financial support consortia, thus eliminating traditional deputation. These churches will magnify senders, encourage goers, be involved with international students, and feature men’s mission groups in the weekly church bulletin. Renewal will be a natural byproduct of such an emphasis. Parents and grandparents will mix their parting tears at the airport with words and prayers of thanksgiving that God has chosen their children to the highest calling this side of heaven’s doors.

Naturally, these children will have gone to school to prepare for their service. Members of the Christian College Coalition will, by this time, have integrated their curricula so that faith and learning speak to the North American postmodern world of doubt, pluralism, and diversity. Foreign languages will be required of all students, and not just French, Spanish, or German. Arabic and Mandarin will be majors, as well. There will also be courses in Farsi, Urdu, Russian, and Kiswahili.

Courses in cultural anthropology and world religions will be required in all majors because of the international focus of parents and churches. Additionally, the schools will promote satellite centers and partnerships with community colleges so that the current excessive costs of Christian higher education will be significantly reduced.

Since parents and church leaders will be world citizens, mission agencies and churches will communicate closely. Neither the church nor the mission will have to persuade the other of its agenda, for each will already be involved in mutual support. Church missions committees regularly will involve agency personnel in meetings and decisions. Agencies will have a large percentage of these local church decision makers on their boards and committees.

As a result, the agencies will return to the original ethos of reaching the lost, the hidden, the unreached, the frontier peoples. They may use different terms, but each will move beyond its marketing terms and programs, persuaded that conscious faith in the person and work of Christ is indispensable for salvation. Church and agency will be on the same page.

Concomitant with such good church/agency partnerships, whole fields will be reached. Succession will be planned for both senders and receivers. Values transfer will be studied, and international leadership will be common.

The agency, as well, will effectively deploy short-termers because, in part, we will have a better grasp of who short-termers are, and what they can best do. The group referred to in the 1990s as "finishers" will be utilized, its members’ skills sharpened by language acquisition and field visits and service. In some cases, children and parents will be working in the same fields. Agencies will, of course, reorganize their thinking to accommodate what the churches and schools encourage.

Agencies, in addition, will focus on mentoring and internships. Because internationalization will be common the world over, team formation skills will be a major part of the mentoring. The gap between expectations and reality in international ministries will be narrower, with attrition reduced.

Enhanced teamwork between churches, schools, and agencieswill accompany better integration of ministries among people groups and improved accountability. Each group not yet reached will be researched, targeted, prayed for, adopted, and reached.

I foresee better partnering, networking, and strategic alliances between the IFMA and EFMA agencies with Afro-American, Latino, and Asian ministries, perhaps because of unusual pressure from advancing non-Christian forces. Opposition and even persecution have a strange way of helping team players trust each other more and play better.

Evangelicals will see the whole world as needy-not as a collection of sociological niches marketed and targeted as specialities. Ministries to AIDS victims, those from broken backgrounds, and those needing relief and development will be vital and indispensable in reaching the whole world for Christ. The North American evangelical will no longer be isolationist; he will see genocide, famine, and warfare as opportunities for ministry.

In a few years, the evangelical fascination with technology will cease. Our normal routine will include innovative technologies, but these delivery systems will not overshadow relationships. Information will not be confused with wisdom or biblical insight. Evangelicals will recognize triumphalist rhetoric and publicity and their impact in the non-Christian world. We will efficiently use technology, but not love it; we will not use the computer to determine God’s will; we will depend on prayer and God’s Spirit. As the evangelical church matures, it will not be as immobilized in the deadly spider web of entertainment, Top 40 Christian music, and celebrity figures in pulpits and conferences. Christian broadcasters will be international and, therefore, more sensitive to world culture.

The evangelical world will have a strong forehead and a determined chin. Missionary statesmen, apostles, and prophets will be sought after by the church and the media to give a sure word for a world in division, uncertainty, and doubt. In a purposeless postmodern world, these missionary statesmen will be grounded in God’s Word, in biblical theology, and in missiological hope. They will be among the few able to articulate God’s Word in a world of urban decay, violence, war, disaster, and hopelessness.

This new evangelical profile will not say "success"-but "pilgrim." Evangelicals may be the only visible anchors for a society full of broken people whose dreams have been shattered. The ethos will not be finding the brightest and the best of our culture, but modeling servanthood, and seeing our institutions, and the church in particular, as hospitals and repair shops, where health and service are restored to sick and dysfunctional people.

These dreams are based on the all-powerful God of the Scriptures, with whom nothing is impossible. In that light, permit me to share just a few more. There will be revival in Western Europe; there will be a significant breakthrough in the wall of Islam; and the former CIS countries, and Asia will have generally stable economies.

Whatever happens, one day Christ will surely return-and perhaps very soon. May this cosmic reality of his imminent coming motivate us to serve him more faithfully. May we let our own hopes and dreams focus our energies.

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