Torch, Fall 1985

church. And I think that if we remain in our mindset that missions is a pro– fessional thing, we're not going to reach those 10 billion people in our generation for Christ. We need to activate every Christian. Let me tell you about our experi– ence as professional missionaries. We go to Germany. We want to be very spiritual missionaries . We say to everybody we're sent to reach the Germans. God has raised us up to do this. Somebody says to me, "Do you know that there are 75,000 Ameri– cans in Kaiserslautern?" Oh yes . I know that. But we're here to reach the Germans. We want to fit into their culture, be very German, speak like · the Germans, dress like Germans. We want to be totally German so we can really reach the Germans. We don't want to get sidetracked with an American ministry. And so we set aside all of those Americans that are there - 400-500,000 Americans up and down the Rhine river - we set them aside and we go about to reach the Germans. Now doesn't that sound very spiritual? But we have set aside our workforce - our 95% cate– gory and work with only a 2% chance of success . We go out faithfully, and we pass literature and witness door to door and we try and we work and strive - we've been doing that for years in Germany and we're not having a great deal of success. So pretty soon we go over and bang our heads against the wall - we throw our hands up in the air and we say, "God, if we were back in America, we could build a church in two years." We stay there for our term and we fight it out, beat it to death, and we come home utterly defeated and we say, "We're going to stay here in the States - look at these pastors having success." We think there must be something wrong with us. We search our hearts, we get very introspective, and we say, "What's wrong - why can't we do it?" One reason I've discovered is that we're not viewing missions as the Apostle Paul did . Paul was a very wise individual. He saw the scattering of God - the unbelieving Jews spread abroad who congregated in their synagogues , the Christians who carried the gospel to their own lands after Pentecost, and others who were forced to flee during the Great Persecution . And Paul correctly discerned that the purpose of these scatterings was preparation for missions. So Paul, the tentmaker, went to the synagogues to preach to the Jews with the help of scattered believers like Aquila and Priscilla. Today Americans are scattered around the world through business opportunities, the military, international programs of study, etc. And some of them are Christians. Many areas in Germany are international centers - commercial, financial, industrial , military, and educational . A lot of Americans are working there for big companies like I.B.M., Kodak , Xerox. We've got a pile of G.I.'s in Germany and big groups of U.S. civilians. At the universities we can minister to both German and international students, many of whom speak English. What we have come up with at E.B .M. is Missions Central, a plan to mobilize scattered American Christians into a workforce of tentmakers to labor alongside German nationals who are believers. Together they can, God willing, reach other scattered Americans and other German nationals for Christ. And we missionaries are going to be coordinators, overseers , and we're going to use the scattered Christians abroad to do the work of missions! Missions Central will: l . Utilize God's scattered church plan. 2. Open the possibility of non– professional m1ss10naries being used in missions. 3. Increase personnel on the field without increasing the financial burden on the churches. 4. Generate "on-the-field" finances which allow for even broader, bolder missions outreach. MISSIONS CENTRAL Professional Missionaries U.S. Civilians G.l.'s Germans Missions Central will be headed up by a team offull-time missionaries . These key person– nel are stable in number and need financial support . The second level ofpeople will be scattered believers - GI ' s and U.S. civilians working or studying abroad - and Germans. They are growing in number and many are transient. Since they are self– supporting, they need no financial supportfrom churches as do thefull-time workers. This workforce can minister to the third level: the world that needs to know Jesus Christ . They will first of all witness to their specific group of society, but also to other groups . 9