COALA started as a round-table conversation among Asian and Latin American mission representatives.

We were in Korea at the 9th NCOWE on 13–16 June 2023. As we listened and prayed with our Korean brethren from the Korean World Mission Association (KWMA), they shared about a collective desire among their missionaries to change the dynamics and methods of Korean missions globally. We all felt at the same time a desire to repent, pray with, discuss, and discern how missions in our regions (Asia and Latin America) can likewise adapt to the new season of polycentric missions that God had brought us into.

The conversations around that table were encouraging, sensitive, supportive, and consensus-building. As well as the Korean leaders, present were others representing mission agencies and mission associations from India, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Additionally, David Ro represented the East Asian Regional Directorship of the Lausanne Movement. Cristian Castro, Executive Director of COMIBAM International, represented the 25 national mission organisations and networks in the Ibero-American (Latin America) region. Dr. Bambang of Indonesia, the General Secretary of the Asia Evangelical Alliance, had the last word, and he encouraged us that this was to be the style of leadership common in Asia—where we sought to listen to each other, everyone having a voice around a common table. He, as the most senior (in terms of position and responsibility among us), was the last to speak and brought us together towards a consensus with insight and wisdom.

As a rsult, we decided that these important conversations should not end there. We felt that we needed to walk and work out together how to change and adapt missionary approaches and practices in the majority world to reflect a more Kingdom-of-God-centric, multi-dimensional, Spirit-dependent, polycentric, collaborative, and bottom-up way of doing missions.

On our final days in Seoul, we discussed forming an ongoing network for discussion, learning, and formation. I came up with the name KOALA—as we were in Korea, in a meeting of Asian and Latin American leaders. So KOALA: KOrea – Asia – Latin America.

This was later changed to the acronym COALA—because Christ is the head over all the regions of the majority world—Asia, Latin America, and Africa—as indeed He is over all other regions, places, and spaces in the universe (Matthew 28:18). Thus COALA stands for: Christ-Over-Asia-LatinAmerica-Africa.

We have since met a second time in Bangkok, Thailand on 1–3 May of 2024—with more leaders, church and mission leaders, and marketplace practitioners joining from both Asia and Latin America (we were not yet able to get our brethren from Africa there). Out of that, we had a final statement and a paper recommending some principles for doing mission in a new era of polycentric Christianity.

The Sun and The Wind

In this paper, I wish to raise some important principles to help guide us, in the light of the Lausanne 4 Congress, so that we can continue to discern together how majority churches can engage more faithfully and fruitfully in God’s mission in this new era.

I titled this paper, ‘Setting Sail for Open Sea’ because when one sets sail in open waters away from visible landmass and with only the oceans as our horizon and view, we can easily become disoriented in terms of direction and navigation. We can also be discouraged by the vastness of the sea and wonder whether we have enough resources to get to the other side.

In the day of pre-motorized engines, one was dependent on the sun by day (and the North Star at night) for direction, and on the wind (in sails) for movement. I believe this is an apt description of our need to be dependent on the Son of God for direction and guidance, and on the wind of the Spirit for taking us to where He wants us to go.

In moving towards a new era of polycentric Christianity, I want to propose a need on the one hand for a discontinuity with past unhelpful realities, and the need to keep some important continuities with the antecedent mission and history of God’s church on the other.

Discontinuities:

1. The end of Western-centrism in missions.

We are moving towards a new era away from Western-centric missions which dominated mission thinking, leadership, resourcing, and perspectives in the last 300 years. In its place, we are seeing an emergent world-Christian understanding and practice that is multi-lateral, multi-dimensional, poly-vocal, and polycentric, where all God’s people all over the world are called together to lead, support, and participate in God’s mission.

Christianity, even in very recent times, was cast in wholly Western forms. It was common to expect missionaries to be white-skinned, auburn-haired, and tall! However, Global Christianity today is much more dynamic, complex, and multi-faceted than many people, even Christians themselves, are able to grasp. In fact, it is also more culturally diverse than at any time in her history, as is her mission force.

While we rejoice and are thankful for the legacy of the Western church in missions in the last three centuries, yet we affirm the need for all regions and corners of the world to come of age and to be helped to contribute towards a global Christian movement in missions in our day. This includes the continual need for building and releasing self-leading, self-resourcing, self-replicating, and self-theologizing, indigenous Christian churches with viable mission movements in every region.

2. The end of control and domination by any one part or region of the church.

No one part of the world should have preferential say and sway over how mission is to be done or led. We need to find ways that allow for sensitivity to regional cultures and concerns while, at the same time, never losing sight of the universality of Christ’s Kingdom claim and rule and the power of the Gospel to defeat and redeem sinful people who are essentially the same the world over.

The bane of missions has been the dependency and patronization through the use of superior finance, technology, education, privilege, and power by regions and countries (not merely Western) with greater capacities and wealth. In this new day of polycentric missions, we need to work to ensure that each region is free from unhealthy systems, methods, and histories of domination and control.

Continuities:

1. UNITY – The church is one in the eyes of God, and so must her mission, as Jesus prayed in John 17:21.

The Nicene (-Constantinopolitan) Creed has been historically the most widely received confession of the worldwide church. One line in particular is of interest—the declaration that ‘We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’. This is the belief that the church of Christ is:

- unified and indivisible under the triune God

- sanctified by faith through the work of Christ by the Holy Spirit

- universal (i.e., catholic) as the only Church of God in the world for the sake of God’s mission

- apostolic as it is founded after the teachings of the Apostles and called to continue in their ongoing mission into the world.

2. SUBMISSION TO CHRIST – The Church and its Mission belong to God first and foremost.

The task of Mission is inseparable from the Task-Master of Mission. To build the Church, we must follow the plan of the Chief-builder and architect and owner, Jesus Christ, who is Himself foundation, superstructure, and pinnacle of the church (1 Corinthians 3:11; Ephesians 2:21, 22).

A Warning

Even in the need for some discontinuity with the broken and overbearing systems of the past, we must avoid going too far the other way. There are some who seek more radical, reactionary responses to their perceived failings and faults of the Western mission movement by urging for, or disavowing participation in, any regional or global movement or network they see as being too Western or Western-influenced. To do so betrays an arrogance and hubris, as though to suggest that we can now accomplish God’s mission by ourselves, forgetting that our Western brethren brought us the Gospel. We cannot say to one part of the global body, "We don’t need you anymore!" (See 1 Corinthians 12:15-26).

The new land awaits discovery!

God is on the move and there are increasingly new global centres for mission in many parts of the non-Western world. Christianity in truth has always had movable centres—whether Jerusalem, Rome, Constantinople, London, Geneva, or New York, or today’s diverse nexus like Seoul, Sao Paulo, Kolkata, Singapore, Cape Town, or Nairobi.

In particular, Christianity’s dynamic shift today “south of the equator” challenges us to reflect carefully on the way God works in historical shifts and new eras. Today, we can see African churches and growing mission movements largely led by African leadership. We see Latin Americans resourcing the exponential growth of their mission force to other countries, notably from Brazil. We can see Asian Christians in places like India, Philippines, and China needing little motivation to work among unreached peoples and communities in their own hinterlands and further afield.

If God Himself desires to include within the boundaries of His kingdom every nation, language, and people on earth (Matthew 8:11; Revelation 7:9), then the world church must reflect this ‘global’ bias. There is in this global family space and a voice for all kinds of people, languages, and church expressions; all made one in Christ in worship before a global God, and on mission with Him into a hostile and fragmented world.

And for that, we need more friendly conversations around the global table. All must be made welcome!