will globalization make ministers redundant?
In a paper published by the Global Network for Economic Research (which I don’t read), quoted in the Wall Street Journal (which I don’t read), quoted in the Kruse Kronicle (which I do read), it is suggested that a fundamental cause for the global recession is the globalization of the labor supply:
“The large increase in the developed world’s labor supply, triggered by geo-political events and technological innovations, is the major underlying cause of the global macro economic imbalances that led to the great recession,” the paper said. “The inability of existing institutions in the U.S. and the rest of the world to cope with this shock set the stage for the great recession.”
IOW, cheap labor markets – now accessible via technology and treaties – are globally lowering the depth in the wage pool.
If you’re interested in that kind of stuff, then click the links above. But that’s not the point of this post. My question is this: is there a similar phenomenon going on the ministry circles? Is access to spiritual information reducing the need for formal ministry structures?
You and I can both be spiritually fed online. As I was running this morning, I listened to Timothy Keller lecturing seminary students on Christ-centered preaching via iTunes University. I can access spiritual, devotional, academic, and worship resources from my flat. And its probably better stuff than what I’d hear at most local churches.
Maybe that’s why we’re hearing more about fellowship, relationships, and organic ministry these days. They can’t be as easily replicated via web-based technology. They continue to give us a reason to gather together when gathering is no longer necessary for receiving spiritual information or worship. But if relationships are the primary reason for gathering, then its no wonder we continue to see the fragmentation of more conventional local churches. We can fellowship over the fire pit or at the local watering hole. Why keep doing this resource intensive Sunday morning stuff?
And its impacting global missions as well.
Missionaries can’t count how many times they’ve heard things like, ‘We can support 20 Indonesian pastors who plant 600 churches every 18 months for the same amount of money as it takes to send an American missionary family who doesn’t know the language and will probably come home after 4 years having not planted a single church or even having led one person to Christ.’
Or options for short-term missions or media based evangelism and discipleship are touted as the ‘missions of the future.’
Each of these is a valid ministry, but each has a dark underbelly as well. Last night my girlfriend and I were watching Ben Stein in the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed about the decrease in academic freedom in North America. One interviewee suggests that Charles Darwin took one observation and made it the answer to every question. I think we need to be careful of making a similar mistake in ministry. There’s not one mission or church growth strategy that trumps all the others, which becomes clear when faithfulness and obedience become the starting points rather than return on investment.
The world is changing and so is the way we function as the Body of Christ both locally and globally. Issues of trust and stewardship mean that we must be efficient and honest in our evaluation of ministries. At the same time, we must resist the temptation to become political in our support of one methodology or church growth theory. As I’ve observed over and over in ministry, it is possible to be entirely right strategically while simultaneously wrong relationally and spiritually.
In the economy of God’s kingdom, I believe He cares less about our strategies and more about our humility, generosity, faith, and love. Do you agree?
How does that work out, though, in deliberate and strategic ministry?
Several things: I think the real, live, in-person minister is important both for preaching and for the interpersonal aspects of ministry. The clergy at my church know what we’re going through, know the direction of the church’s ministry, and are listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit for this particular group of people. I know of many resources both online and inbook, but none of them can be as personalised. Furthermore, I like being able to talk with my preacher. If the only preaching I got were from clever people a million miles away, I would be missing something in my spiritual development.
I agree that sending out missionaries is not necessarily to produce higher numbers of existing churches. I think that cross-cultural mission produces challenges for both the missionary and the host culture — both Christians and unbelievers — that mission at home does not produce. To follow KP Yohanan and abandon the sending of Western missionaries is to lose part of the unique quality of mission. We are drawn to Christ in many ways, and different parts of our personalities are affected by Him differently.
Finally (so I guess it’s “three” not “several”), I always cringe when I hear people say, “Well, it is the apostolic way.” No single way of ministry is the apostolic way. The apostles used many ways to build the kingdom, many preaching styles, many sizes of gatherings, many types of communities. They sought to bring Christ to the people around them in whatever ways they could within the bounds of morality and the law (secular, not Jewish). So should we.
Thanks for your thoughts, Matthew. I agree that there’s plenty of reasons that we still need the local church and leaders. More than ever we need men and women who are able to give their time to prayer and study with the goal of edifying the saints for the work of service. Local church and local church leadership are about much more than entertaining the faithful on Sunday mornings.
According to Barna, there are 23 million people in the USA who claim to be born again but don’t participate (or even attend) a local church. I doubt that its because they feel fed via other means. Rather, I suspect that either they got burned out from difficult relationships in the church (learning how to handle relationships biblical is one purpose of a local church) or participation in a local church was nothing more than part of their ‘life package’ and now there are other priorities. Either way its sad.
There’s been a post hopping around in my head addressing the pros and cons of various cross-cultural strategies such as supporting nationals, tentmaking, short-term missions, media missions, and career missions.
One of these days I’ll get to it.
PS – Thanks for the articles you sent. They arrived this week.
Glad the articles arrived! I hope you like them and that they give thought to bless the ongoing work of disciple-making in Nicosia! (And Serbia, Austria, Cameroon, USA, etc!)
Matthew … in a conversation I just finished I was asked, ‘So what is missing in the Church today compared with the early Church?’ Having just finished the first article on evangelism, we talked about five of the things we don’t see much of today:
1. Every believer a witness.
2. Spiritual power.
3. Engaging real needs in society with counter-cultural, kingdom based responses.
4. Strong commitment to discipleship and application of God’s word (high standards).
5. Unity
Our conversation ended with prayer and a recommitment of ourselves to these things.
Actually, given the admonishments contained within the New Testament were given to real situations, I find that just as now, the early church was plagued with (1) indifferent quasi-believers, (2) powerlessness, (3) insularity and self-centeredness, (4) deliberate ignorance and lack of care for the Word of God, and (5) divisions of great and terrible consequence. In fact, we have it written that two of the earliest church were so evil that God killed them directly, in front of all.
Commitment to goodness is very good. But let us do it in the name of God, not in the name of a fictional church which never existed.
J.E.B.
Good point, Jonathan. We have a tendency to idealize the early church when all we need to do is read the New Testament to see that they had some pretty serious issues.
So probably we need to add a sixth reason for growth in the early church: the sovereignty of God.
Surely that trumps all the others.
I concur that the Church of the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic Age was messed up and is messed up today. However, at some level, all Christians believe that aspects of the Church in those incipient ages of belief and mission should be normative to our belief and mission over 1000 years later.
Therefore, what strengths did they possess in the midst of it all? What was the Grace of God doing through them to grow His Church? If we examine their strengths while acknowledging their weaknesses, we can learn from the example of the early Christians and grow more fully into the likeness of Christ.
This is one of the great uses of all Church History, especially that of the patristic age (up to c. AD 500).
“…all Christians believe that aspects of the Church in those incipient ages of belief and mission should be normative to our belief and mission over 1000 years later”? Do you call me unChristian? I certainly do not believe that aspects of the Church in those incipient ages of belief and mission should be normative to our belief and mission today. I believe in exactly one normativity: the things the Lord has Personally described as such. And He has Personally described both the churches then, and the churches now, with great accuracy.
J.E.B.
Let’s make that “most” then.
I guess you’re just … a rarity, not unChristian, Jonathan.
However, regardless of whether or not the Early Church is to be normative, my point still stands: We should, with prayer and discernment, seek to make their strengths our strengths. If there were things they got right, perhaps we should consider adapting those same ideas and actions to our current situation. This is the use of Church History, besides helping to keep us from becoming ungrounded and rootless, attempting to reinvent the Church every 10 to 100 years.
Just wrote a response, but it vanished. In summary, though, there’s value in studying both how the early Christians lived and how God was working. In fact, there’s value in studying these things during all periods of Christian history.
A few years ago I posted some thoughts on urban legends of the early church in response to my frustration with all the deconstruction going on in contemporary Christianity. The desire is to have a more pure ecclesiology, but the focus is often on imitating structure, rather than learning from the early church faithfulness, piety, and obedience. Here’s the link: http://honest2blog.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/urban-legends-of-church-history/
Good discussion, guys.
I agree that church history can be useful. It is certainly through Spirit-led recollections of church history, both recent and ancient, that I receive many repentances.
It is equally true, I think, that the current situation contains shocking changes from all others. I recently an article which is very apropos:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/23/AR2009102303674.html?hpid=sec-religion
From it, two question have arisen in my thoughts:
1. What can we introduce into churches, to make them more powerful than 60-inch television sets? I suggest that if we are honest in our contemplation, we will find a great many churches are far weaker. Indeed, it is a terrible thing to say; I suggest it is far more a terrible thing which those churches are, according to certain chapters of Holy Scripture.
2. What can we do, to encourage preachers to be willing to more easily risk their jobs, in order to serve the Gospel?
Question #2 has an obvious answer in church history, still being played out in a very few places, including the local church my wife and I work in. When issues of our pastor’s job come up, he always responds in one simple way: “I work for the bishop, not the church.” The church cannot fire him, and he will be given a job elsewhere if his people rebel sufficiently. In church history (and church present) there is much abuse of this, but perhaps we need to think about rebuilding this with an interdenominational, careful, and holy approach.
There are many answers to question #1. One of them is approaches to preaching. Anyone familiar with a certain Mr. Craddock? He has had much useful to say on the topic, and there is some video of his work in action on YouTube.
J.E.B.
I pray that the whole church throughout the world can rediscover these things. Specifically for my own home church and those of the people I know.
When my telephone rings, sometimes I don’t answer it. Sometimes I don’t even look to see who it is. My telephone is a tool that serves me. I never let myself become a slave to it. I think if we could develop the same attitude toward our strategies, they would become a lot more useful and functional.
And to your list about what’s missing I would replace spiritual power with the Holy Spirit. I think the majority of believers today (maybe myself included) have concept of the reality of the Holy Spirit and do not reach out for the help and power available through Him every day.
In seven years of undergraduate and graduate training for ministry, I can’t remember a single lecture on walking in the Spirit. But there were lots of classes in cultural exegesis, organizational dynamics, leadership theory, etc.
Hmmm….
What would you say, if you were given to give such a lecture series?
I do not think globalization will make real ministers, which means people who minister directly to the needs of the people of the Lord, redundant. I think globalization will strongly decrease the relevance of all ministers in name only.
A while back I was told that a truly devoted minister who is the pastor of a church, should spend all of his time each week working on the one Sunday morning sermon, and should do nothing else unless he/she had a family. There are also many so-called ministers who, “on principle,” remain strictly aloof from those who the Lord calls their sheep. I think the pressure of the Lord, in the form of the power and authority He is giving to the forces of globalization, will indeed render such roles increasingly redundant and irrelevant; and I call this a very good thing.
Here’s a post on the Holy Spirit from a while back. Obviously, I’d want to unpack this more: http://honest2blog.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/acts-191-7-somethings-missing/
But I wouldn’t call it “something’s missing”. I think that although mention of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in preaching is important, specific description (“how it looks”) cannot be dominant, because of the confusion and division caused by said description. After all, the Holy Spirit within, is God Himself within, and it is wrong for us to claim to know what God Himself always looks like.
J.E.B.
I think it makes quite a lot of sense, to suggest that the knowledge and the teaching of the Ubersovereignty of God, is possibly the most important missing element of a great many of today’s churches. It is amazing how many hours of preaching one can hear, on TV and on pulpit, in which His overarching and absolute sovereignty is dodged, corrupted, and denied. And this is the very issue which takes the Lord’s Peace out, and replaces it with the temporary murderous self-centered “peace” of today’s gun-loving techno-materialist.