by Keith Walker, SIM-UK Director
Over 4,000 delegates gathered from 200 countries for the recent Lausanne Conference on World Evangelisation. Many were leaders of missionary sending organisations, and many of these came from countries to which agencies like SIM sent missionaries over the past 100 years. The growth of the church of the Global South in terms of the sending of missionaries has to be one of the most significant changes in the past decade. What does it mean for the mobilising ministry of SIM-UK?
It does not mean that we should stop sending missionaries. In the words of Bishop Frank Houghton, we face a ‘task unfinished’ that should drive us to our knees, ‘a need that undiminished’ should rebuke any thought that UK churches can put cross-cultural mission on the back-burner and let others get on with the job. There are still significant numbers of unreached peoples. None of them are in places that are easy to work in. All the easy-to-reach peoples have been reached!
Moreover, simply handing on the baton to the Global South would not be the pattern portrayed in the book of Acts. As the earliest missionaries pressed out from Jerusalem into greater Palestine, Turkey and Greece, Paul and the others did not pass on the baton and return home. Rather we see the growth of multicultural teams of workers growing as new people are added.
So today’s missionaries need to be able to work as partners with colleagues from many different cultures. Under the leadership of Clive Barker from SIM-UK, the SIM team in Pakistan has become one of the most diverse in SIM, incorporating Europeans, Africans and Asians from a number of countries. Will Elphick, SIM-UK’s Associate Director for the last decade, has just become Director of the SIM team in Liberia which was decimated by civil wars between 1989 and 2003. He is intent on building a team from many countries and already has Africans on the way to join this revitalised work in one of the poorest countries of the world.
SIM’s ministry of mobilisation is broadening to embrace the mission sending capacities of the churches of Africa, South America and Asia. Helen Heron, from Scotland, leads the SIM International personnel team as they seek to support the growth of mission sending from everywhere to everywhere. SIM-UK is helping Tim Barrow, from England and based in Johannesburg, as he addresses the challenges of how to mobilise from Southern Africa. SIM-UK has been supporting a Nigerian mission agency as it explores sending missionaries to Europe.
So we need to keep sending: sending people of a humble spirit, ready to share with others in the work of the Gospel. The final day will see a vast multitude of worshippers from every people group across the globe. Even now the Lord is giving us a foretaste as He sends out labourers from many cultures to worship and work together in His harvest field.
