First of all, I want to say thank you to the organizing committee for inviting me to COALA 3. I am reminded again what COALA stands for: “Christ over Asia, Latin America and Africa.” Christ is the initiator, sustainer, and the reason for the COALA movement. Recognizing that global missions are undergoing profound changes with two-thirds of the world’s Christian population residing in the Majority World, we continue to learn and explore how God is unfolding before us what mission looks like after Christendom. There is an urgent need for a new paradigm of mission movements, encompassing mission theology, strategies, and methods in the context of polycentrism.

Today, I have been asked to address the topic “Missiology: The Big Picture of the Global South in the Future (Continuity and Discontinuity).” However, I would like to change the title a little to broaden the scope; that is, by changing the phrase “Global South” to “Global Church.”

Thus, the title of this paper will be “Missiology: The Big Picture of the Global Church in the Future (Continuity and Discontinuity).”

I am writing this paper in special remembrance of a special brother and friend, the late Dr. Peter Rowan, who passed away a few months ago. He has given much thought to the subject of mission after Christendom. I owe much of my reflections to Peter’s original paper, first published in the OMF Mission Research Roundtable. Also, I want to qualify my comments by saying that when I use the term “we” in the paper, I am referring to both the church from the Western World and the Majority World.

1. First, we should ask the key question, “What should the global church continue doing?”

1.1 The Treasure of Unity in Diversity

Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, made a strong statement of what Christ has done on the cross: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph 2:14). Christ, on the cross, has already destroyed the barrier so that we could be one by forming a new society under God.

John Stott describes this new society this way: "For God’s new society is characterized by life in place of death, by unity and reconciliation in place of division and alienation, by the wholesome standards of righteousness in place of corruption of wickedness, by love and peace in place of hatred and strife, and by unremitting conflict with evil in place of a flabby compromise with it…. For the sake of the glory of God and the evangelization of the world, nothing is more important than that the church should be, and should be seen to be, God’s new society." Stott’s statement “by unity and reconciliation in place of division and alienation” has stirred me deeply.  

In another letter to the Romans, Paul, in the last chapter, mentioned at least 26 names. The Roman Christians were diverse in race, rank, and gender, including Jewish and Gentile members. Names like Hermes (14), Philologus, and Julia (15) were common names for slaves. On the other hand, some had links with persons of distinction. For example, Aristobulus (10) was the grandson of Herod the Great and a friend of Emperor Claudius. Narcissus (11) was the well-known, rich, and powerful Roman citizen who had a great influence on Emperor Claudius. Nine out of the twenty-six persons greeted are women. Paul particularly mentioned Aquila and Priscilla taking risks for him for the sake of the gospel (Rom 16:3). Four times, Paul described some of these names as his friends as being "in Christ" (3, 7, 9, 10) and five times "in the Lord" (8, 11, twice in 12, 13).

The church in Rome could be a microcosm of the global church today, a community including the powerful and the powerless, the marginalized and the influential, male and female, as well as diversity in ethnicity and backgrounds, etc. Thus, unity in diversity should be characteristic of Christ's church. As Christ's multicultural, global community, we are called to participate with others in a faithful witness to that radical, transformative, life-giving kingdom.

A divided Church has no message for a divided world. Our failure to live in reconciled unity is a major obstacle to authenticity and effectiveness in mission. While we recognize that our deepest unity is spiritual, we long for greater recognition of the missional power of visible, practical, earthly unity in the pursuit of God’s mission. Partnership in mission is not only about efficiency. It is the strategic and practical outworking of our shared submission to Jesus Christ as Lord.

The Cape Town Commitment from the Third Lausanne Congress has a sober reminder:

We rejoice in the growth and strength of emerging mission movements in the majority world and the ending of the old pattern of ‘from the West to the Rest’. But we do not accept the idea that the baton of mission responsibility has passed from one part of the world church to another. There is no sense in rejecting the past triumphalism of the West, only to relocate the same ungodly spirit in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. No one ethnic group, nation, or continent can claim the exclusive privilege of being the ones to complete the Great Commission. Only God is sovereign.  

We stand together as church and mission leaders in all parts of the world, called to recognize and accept one another, with equality of opportunities to contribute together to world mission. Let us, in submission to Christ, lay aside suspicion, competition and pride and be willing to learn from those whom God is using, even when they are not from our continent, nor of our particular theology, nor of our organization, nor of our circle of friends.  

1.2 Facing the new frontier together—the challenge of pluralization

Before the Sanhedrin and the leaders, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, made a categorical statement about Christ: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Peter and John were told not to preach at all in the name of Jesus anymore. But Peter and John replied, “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges! As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20). After they were released, they went back to the church and they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” They specifically asked God for two things. First, they asked God for boldness to proclaim the gospel (29). Then they asked God for mercy to bring healing (30). God’s truth and God’s healing are both needed for a broken world.

As the early church faced persecution and opposition, they did not relinquish their missional responsibility. They proclaimed the uniqueness of Christ fearlessly and courageously. They were united in prayer. Dixon E. Hoste, one of the Cambridge Seven who became the successor to Hudson Taylor, the founder of the China Inland Mission, once said, “Unless we are constantly and faithfully wrestling in the heavenlies against the power of darkness, there is a real danger of us becoming involved in wrestling with our colleagues.”

The early church faced the challenge of persecution. While this might also be true for the 21st-century church—that we should proclaim Christ boldly and fearlessly—yet we may face a deeper and more subtle challenge that the global church needs to face together: namely, the new frontier of pluralization, with the plurality of worldviews that are in the world today. How can we reimagine missional faithfulness in a post-colonial world?

According to David Smith, “we are moving from a Christendom shaped by the culture of the Western world to a world Christianity which will develop new spiritual and theological insights as the biblical revelation is allowed to interact with the many cultures in which Christ is confessed as Lord and Saviour. To ignore this development, withdrawing into a dreamworld in which we imagine that the Christendom model can somehow be revived, is to deny the true significance of mission within God’s purpose.”  

According to the missionary-anthropologist Paul Hiebert, the new shape of the Christian movement in the twenty-first century will require that Christians in Europe and North America be open to a major epistemological shift. Theological definitions can no longer be drafted in Rome, Geneva, London or Chicago as though they had some universal and binding validity; rather the world church must become “an international hermeneutical community” in which Christians from around the globe seek to understand the word of God, dealing with the problems they face in their particular contexts and seeking to develop together a global theology increasingly freed from the influence of specific human contexts.

While developing a global theology is important, we need to go one step further in the context of current mission movements. In a world after Christendom, we are witnessing an historically unprecedented movement of peoples around the globe; religious diversity has become an almost universal fact of life. To refuse to recognize the persistence and strength of other faiths is to be at odds with existence. How can we retell the story of the Gospel in such a way as to recognize the validity of many of the concerns of our postmodern contemporaries, while bearing faithful witness to Christ?

David Smith argues that one of the most urgent requirements of the global church at the new frontier of mission constituted by contemporary pluralization is the creation of a biblical theology of religions which is both faithful to the Scriptures and credible. Similarly, Hwa Yung from Malaysia commented on the failure of the Majority World church in articulating alternative narratives of their faith that are both firmly rooted in Scriptures as well as culturally sensitive and contextually relevant.

We need a theology of religions that is both relevant and faithful. We need an openness to the total witness of the Bible and to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in giving new light to our understanding of other religions. The global church needs to face this new frontier together. One major need is to have Christian scholars from the Majority World who will give attention to the study of major world religions to enable us to proclaim the gospel faithfully and relevantly.

1.3 Cultivating a spirit of generosity – Multidirectional sharing

Whether we refer to Koinonia as “partnership”, “sharing”, “fellowship”, “participation”, or “communion”; the problem is that we do not find practicing Koinonia easy or natural in the global church and in the mission context with our cultural prejudices and historical baggage. The early church in Jerusalem faced that problem when leaders rebuked Peter when he went to the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them (Acts 11:2).  

Surprisingly, it was the new emerging church in Antioch, the seemingly peripheral group, who collected an offering and contributed towards the needs of the Jerusalem church when they heard about the famine (Acts 11:28-29). It requires humility, respect and acceptance—accepting the “weaker” partner as equals as well as accepting one’s own inadequacy.  

In Romans 15, Paul exhorted those who are strong to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. With the significant growth of the Global South Church and the decline of the Church in the West, what should be our attitude towards the Church of the Global North?  

The Antioch Church shared its resources with the Jerusalem Church. But God’s resources are not only about money and certainly not about the exercise of power which money often brings. In the Antioch Church model, it was the “powerless” who brought resources to the “powerful.” In our global family, some will bring quite different gifts. Some will model faithfulness in the face of suffering and persecution. Some will bring years of experience of commending the Lord Jesus Christ in the context of another world faith. Some will show how to live with shining trust in God despite poverty or injustice. Others will bring deep traditions of believing prayers. The Body of Christ needs all of these; and in true partnership we shall each bring what we have, not what we don’t have, to bless the world church in its mission. And we will respect and rejoice in diversity, rather than impose one way of doing mission on others.  

In light of the vast diversity of expressions of missions, the intrinsic value of flexibility is essential. A partnership-friendly agency is almost always one that is focused on the essentials and flexible with secondary issues. Every mission agency is different, but when membership is tied to structures, policies, and systems, it will be more difficult to truly partner with the Majority World and treat their missionaries as equal.  

Perhaps the most significant contribution of the Church of the West to world evangelization today would be discipling followers of Christ, wherever they come from and will be returning to. Churches from Asia, Africa, and Latin America can strengthen the hands of brothers and sisters in Europe by sending workers in step with the Spirit’s leading. Indeed, this mission movement phenomenon will not only be from the West to the Rest in the past, or from the Rest to the West today, but more importantly from “everywhere to everywhere” with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

2. We now need to ask the second question, “What should the global church discontinue?”

2.1 The Western church will cease to become the key agent in global mission.

Western missionaries have been catalysts in planting the seed of the gospel among peoples globally. However, local, indigenous Christians have been the most successful evangelists and are crucial for the continuation of gospel work and the development of the theology, discipleship, worship, and mission appropriate for that local context.

According to the historian David Killingray, the spread of the Christian Gospel across the world has largely been due to the work of countless unnamed Christians who gossiped the good news in their own language. They are in the records of God, rarely noted in the register of man.

We each have a role to play in this broken world; but when God calls us to serve, God isn’t asking us to become outsider heroes in the middle of an insider’s story. God is already the hero, and God is inviting us to walk alongside local insiders as sidekicks rather than superheroes. Our role is to amplify the voices of local leaders, to strengthen their hands, and to place them at the front and center.  

More than a hundred and fifty years ago, Dixon Hoste, who succeeded Hudson Taylor, reflected on lessons learned from the Boxer Incident. He highlighted that change was a must and necessary. Hoste saw that “the future was pregnant with change” and native Christian leaders will rise to the challenge and serve shoulder to shoulder with Western missionaries. We are certainly seeing this vision realized today with the rise of Christians from the Majority World.

2.2 The Western Church needs to learn to relinquish power

In one of John Stott’s books, Calling Christian Leaders: Rediscovering Radical Servant Ministry, he highlights that contemporary models of Christian leadership are often shaped more by culture than by Christ. Stott urges that the theme of “power through weakness” is central in the Bible.

The notion of “using power in the service of others” sounds innocuous. However, we need to reflect deeper about power and privilege from the perspective of the Bible’s teachings. Jesus did not use His power at the cross. It is precisely in Christ's refusal to use His privilege to overcome the Jews or Romans (Matt 26:53) that God defeated death by raising Jesus from the dead. Likewise, Paul speaks of God’s power in human weakness.  

Christians should not be afraid of losing power. Indeed, it is in our refusal to use power (e.g., when we are in positions of social or economic power) that we bear witness to God who has triumphed over sin and death. The language of “empowering” others, although commonly used in Christian mission circles, is problematic. The problem is this: only those with power can empower others—and if I can empower, I can also take power away.  

Andrew Walls insightfully highlighted the concept of polycentrism in global mission, and then defines it as the riches of a hundred places learning from each other. He argues, “One necessitates the other.” While the numeric center of gravity in terms of Christian growth has shifted to the Global South, the fiscal center of gravity remains in the Global North. The power appears to remain in the North. The concept and the practice of the “powerful” bringing the good news to the “powerless” is rightly being challenged.

It may sound strange, but being willing to withdraw offering help is one way to relinquish power. I want to refer to the story of a special friendship between Dixon Hoste and a local Chinese Christian leader, Hsi Sheng Mo. During a time of famine, Hoste had money he could spare, but he felt the inner conviction that giving Hsi the money would not be right as it would only create dependency. Hoste kept that silver up his sleeve. When the famine was over, Hsi expressed his appreciation, saying a gift from the missionary would have been a hindrance to his work. This special experience shaped the way Hoste thought about the development of the indigenous Chinese Church.

The colonial enterprise put us in charge of God’s sending rather than allowing us to be carried by the sending God. While we acknowledge that Christian mission in the past often coincided with, and was often facilitated by, the colonial expansion of European powers, we need to be aware that Christians today may similarly often operate from a position of power and privilege.

2.3 We need to stop “transplanting” our theological framework, church models and structures into other cultures as normative

We need to acknowledge that understanding the gospel, expressions of faith, and the emergence of Christlike communities will take a different shape in different parts of the world. By reading the Bible with the other, we will ourselves be transformed.

The priority given to certain topics in theological research often reflects the social location of the editors. For Majority World Christian readers, what the Bible says about poverty might be far more urgent than what it says about archaeological pottery. Jay Matenga, a missiologist from a Maori background, has called for a "centering of the local," so that local believers have the space to read Scripture in ways that allow the emergence of a localized faith.

While the theory of Polycentric Mission is attractive, I am much more drawn to the proposal of using the word “pluricentric” rather than “polycentric.” The term “Polycentric Mission” is often an “overbaked term used in an underbaked way.” I prefer we talk in terms of mutuality in missions—the sharing of unique expressions of God’s grace deposited in our diverse cultural backgrounds, from everyone to everywhere. The new thing God is doing isn’t polycentrism; it is the exact thing the Spirit has been doing since Pentecost—incarnating and propagating the gospel in tribe after tribe.

Polycentric Mission still implies the distribution of power and control. However, Pluricentric Mission focuses on one authority: the authority of Jesus, to whom we all belong. Mutuality, sharing, and reciprocity take priority.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have attempted to address two fundamental questions: what should we continue doing and what should we discontinue?

First, the essence of the global church is that God has formed a new society with the beauty of unity in diversity. We need to live out this conviction. A divided church has no message for a divided world. Second, the global church is facing the new frontier of pluralization. We need a biblical theology of religions which is both faithful to the Scriptures and credible. Third, we need to cultivate a spirit of generosity with multi-directional sharing, taking humility to accept our own inadequacy.

Regarding what to discontinue: First, the Western church will cease to be the key agent of mission. God is inviting us to walk alongside local insiders rather than as superheroes. Second, we need to learn to relinquish power. The mission of God’s people is always from a position of weakness as demonstrated by the cross. Finally, we should refrain from transplanting our theological frameworks onto other cultures as “normative”. We should rejoice in the manifold expressions of faith.

God’s global mission continues to move forward with new paradigms. Let us walk in step with His Spirit with humility and sensitivity