He drew these insights from his study of revivals and awakenings, going back to the first Great Awakening of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield and the Wesleys; the Haystack Revival; the Welsh Revival; the Student Volunteer Movement; the work of men like D.L. Moody and Billy Graham; and modern movements ranging from Vineyard and Calvary Chapel to Sovereign Grace, Redeemer, and Acts 29. These insights also draw from a talk he heard Mark Driscoll give at an Acts29 Boot Camp in Raleigh in Feb 09.

I  thought these insights might be interesting and helpful as we consider what it might look like to see a missions movement among college students– not a missions movement where they go to the “mission field” after college, but a movement in which they do missions on and around their college campus right now.

Here they are: 

1. It’s an extraordinary outpouring of the Spirit of God upon a praying people. It is inherently something beyond the normal workings of God, and well beyond man’s ability to create.

2. It’s characterized by extraordinary events and transformations: the renewal of an apathetic, dry church; resulting in many conversions of people within and without the visible church.

3. It is unusual in its degree and scope. It breaks down human distinctions which are not biblical and which have impeded Kingdom expansion (ie, the convergence of charismatic theology with the Reformed world in recent years).  

4. It actively seeks to NOT become institutionalized. When it becomes institutionalized, it loses a great deal of momentum.

5. It is discerning about the essentials–those things which must be agreed on or maintained (closed hand), and which are non essentials—those things not necessary to agree on (open hand). There is unity in diversity.

6. It CAN work in concert with institutions, to renew and expand them.

7. It is a recovery of sound theology and practices—what are not new, but seem that way to those experiencing them.

8. It is messy around the edges—and sometimes at the middle. It attracts bad theology, bad practices, and unstable people.

9. A movement generates a lot of discussion, both within and without the movement. Some of it is healthy; much of it is gossip and speculation and criticism. But it cannot be ignored.

10. It takes hits on both sides. From secular leaning folks, and from the religious establishment. The bad apples are used by skeptics to discredit the entire movement.

11. It is frequently spearheaded by a particularly charismatic or larger-than-life leader who seems to be anointed for the task. These leaders are lavished with praise by their followers, but are frequently unfairly criticized and undergo great suffering and temptation.

12. It leaves lasting changes in those impacted by it: individuals, families, churches, communities, and even cultures are never the same.

Carl Medearis has written a post addressing this issue on his blog.  I found these principles helpful in thinking through how I speak of who I am and what I’m about.

“I can insist that when I say “I feel gay today” that I simply mean what the word ORIGINALLY meant. I’m happy. I can keep on doing that if I want to.  My guess is, it won’t really work.  I can keep calling myself a “Christian” and simply HOPE that people understand what I am, but I doubt it’s gonna be all that helpful.  I can call myself a Muslim in Muslim lands and think to myself I’m simply one who submits to God, but I know that’s not what my hearers are thinking I mean.

So what to do in this age of over-communication (that often doesn’t actually communicate)?  I suggest we think of these three things when we speak of anything potentially controversial or complicated:

1. Be sensitive to the hearers.  Place yourself in their shoes. Ask questions to fully understand where they’re coming from and how they might hear (feel) what you’re about to say.
2. Avoid one-word terms.  Or at least if you use them, define them. Words like “conservative” or “liberal” or “church” or “Christian” or “bible” or “evangelical” don’t really communicate that well these days. Be skeptical of your ability to really say what you mean by using a one word term.  I prefer to not use words like that at all, but rather explain what I mean in 2 or 3 sentences.
3. Ask the hearer if they caught what you said after you say it. Don’t assume.  You know what ass-u-me…ing does.”

To get an idea of what it could look like for college students to be on mission, check out David’s thoughtful document: Team Proposal.

If you are a visual person like me, or just like to want to get the idea of what we are talking about in a few less words, check out the “mind-map” I created as I thought about casting vision, structure, and goals for the students I am working with (Click on it to see it bigger):

Also if Mind-Mapping helps you, check out www.xmind.net (you can download the software for free)

To hear some good thoughts on how prayer relates to missions, check John Piper’s  2nd talk at a recent Acts29 Network  conference (Advance ’09): http://www.acts29network.org/sermon/let-the-nations-be-glad-part-2/

Piper covers other issues related to missions in the talk, but a large chunk of it is devoted to prayer. I found it interesting and challenging, and would be interested to hear what others think.

Why do we say that you should form a team?  What’s   wrong with going it alone?  Here are the main reasons why we believe teams are crucial for any church-planting endeavor among unreached people groups, whether overseas or in the States.

1. Teams are modeled for us in the examples of New Testament church-planting.  Think of Jesus sending out his disciples two by two.  Or Barnabus taking Paul under his wing, then Paul in turn taking Timothy, Silas, Titus, and many others with him as traveled from city to city.  There’s also the example of the husband and wife team of Aquila and Priscilla.  If Jesus, the apostles, and the first century Christians utilized teams, they’re probably onto something.

2. Teams are modeled for us in historic and current missiology

The modern missionary movement has been going on for over two hundred years now.  From growing up overseas and being involved in missions since then, I’ve never come across an organization that does not use the team model.  Again, if this is advocated by veteran missionaries and the world’s most brilliant missiologists, they’re probably onto something.

3. Teams function as microcosms of kingdom life

There is some disagreement over whether missionary teams are actually churches or something slightly other, sometimes called an “apostolic band.” Either way, as David Shenk puts it, “The team working together in repentance and harmony reveals to people the nature of the church which it desires to create.”  The team is a picture, albeit a small one, of what a community of the redeemed looks like, and is an especially ideal format for ever-crucial prayer and on-going training.

4. The team model is ideal for shared responsibility and accountability

A team has a great advantage over an individual in its ability to share responsibility and leadership, and to hold members accountable for their ministries.  Team members can lean on each other and help each other through difficulties.  When one member gets overloaded, they can pass off responsibilities or relationships to another who is more capable or available.  And at the end of the day, two heads are just plain better than one.

5. The team produces synergy

The concept of synergy is that the simultaneous action of parts working together has a greater total effect than the individual parts by themselves.  As Shenk points out, “One horse can normally pull about two tons, but two horses working together can sometimes pull as much as 23 tons… As persons work together, there is a strength and creativity which cannot be matched by the efforts of persons working alone.”

6. Teams are flexible

The team model is primarily relational, as opposed to organizational.  This means it is more fluid and flexible.  A team can form, change, relocate, or multiply much more easily than an organization.  This kind of freedom is essential for the spontaneous and unpredictable nature of following the Spirit’s lead in engaging unreached people groups.

By no means is this an exhaustive list.  What are some reasons you guys think teams are or are not the way to go?

We reject that!

We do not save people, God does! Therefore, the first step in mission is establishing an utter reliance on God, and asking him to show up. We do this through prayer.

Prayer is the first and foundational thing that needs to be done when considering an unreached people group. You do not need to be an expert. You don’t have to plan an event. You do not have to have a masters degree in apologetics. This is simple and concrete: Get a group together and begin praying for the people group God has laid on your heart.

If you look back at American history, this is exactly how the great revivals and modern missions movements started– with a small group of college students meeting for prayer!

Maybe you recognize the challenges posed by the glocal reality of our world and our universities.   Perhaps you feel burdened to be a part of reaching the unreached peoples of the world.  Maybe you’ve been called for a while to pioneer missions or church-planting and are wondering how that can happen while you’re still in school.  We would be coming up short if we just left you there, thinking about these things, and didn’t give you a concrete way to put these ideas into action.  So here it is:

We believe the best way to respond to these realities is by forming intentional, missional teams of college students that pray together, train together, and engage their chosen people group on or around their campus.

Now, we’ll need to spend a while unpacking that, but that is the direction we’ll be heading.  That is what we believe could happen on university campuses all across this country and the world.

Check out the ‘Team Proposal’ tab up top to see an in-depth explanation of this concept based on a team that focuses on reaching Muslims.

The past thirty years or so have seen a revolution in the way we think about missions.  The traditional missions approach was a geographic one.  Nation-states were seen to be mission fields, and whether or not the Great Commission was being fulfilled in that country was simply a matter of whether or not a certain number of churches had been established on that field.  Thus in the early 70’s the Church was feeling pretty good about how the evangelization of the world was going.  Then along came Ralph Winter.

In a landmark address at the ’74 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, Winter pointed out that Matthew 24:14 (“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”) was not actually referring to nation-states in its use of the word nations. In fact, nations (Greek: ethne) was talking about people groups.  The gospel is to be preached to all the people groups, and then the end will come.  According to Jesus, that is our task (Matt. 24:14, 28:18-20).  But what is a people group?

Patrick Johnstone is helpful here:

“A people group is a significantly large sociological (predominantly ethno-linguistic) grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have a common affinity with one another.  From the viewpoint of evangelization, this is the largest possible group within which the Gospel can spread without encountering significant barriers of understanding or acceptance.  It is the most helpful unit to use when considering church planting.”

Once the shift from mission-fields-thinking to people-groups thinking began, the entire status of the completion of the great commission needed to be re-examined.  It became apparent that nations that had previously been considered “reached” actually contained dozens of people groups without a single believer or indigenous church.   Much has been done since 1974, and I thank God for the advances that have been made, yet there is still so much more to do.  Surveying the global task of evangelization from this perspective, a sociological approach rather than a geographic one, this is the task before us today:

-There are approximately 11,500 people groups in the world

-6,455 of those people groups are unreached, meaning they are under 2% evangelical.  These unreached groups compose approximately 23% of the world’s population.

-5,000 of these unreached people groups have no active church planting currently taking place among them

-600 of these groups are considered priority unengaged, meaning they have populations of over 100,000 and not only is there no church-planting taking place, there is no work being done among them whatsoever.

If all of these unreached people groups were thousands of miles away, the comprehensive answer would be what we have been doing ever since William Carey launched the modern missionary movement: mobilizing believers to go oversees to reach these groups with the gospel in the communities where they live.  However, we no longer live in a neat and tidy world where all of the unreached are “over there.”  Our world is a glocal one.  Immigration is happening on a scale never before seen in the history of the world.  Refugees by the millions are fleeing their countries and resettling in the West.  Exchange students from all over the world fill universities that used to be totally homogenous.    Especially for those of us who live in the US, the nations, the ethne, have come to us.

By no means does this mean that there is no longer a need for traditional missions.  The need for missionaries that leave their country and go to pour out their lives in the hard places has never been greater.  But this understanding of unreached people groups and the reality of our glocal world certainly changes things.   First, they present us with an amazing opportunity to reach the nations when we are at a stage in our lives where we cannot go overseas.  I’m currently in college and may not be able to go live in the Middle East for another five years or so.  Yet I get to be building friendships with and engaging the thousands of Middle-Easterners who live in my city.  I am already taking part in pioneer missions when I share the gospel with my Muslim friends from an unreached people group who now live here in the Mid-West.   If they become believers they can then start to impact their families and friends back home.  Second, these realities place a heavy responsibility on our shoulders.  The nations are here on our doorstep.  If we do not reach them with the gospel I believe God will hold us accountable for our failure to do so.  Especially for those of us called to cross-cultural ministry, we no longer have any excuse for staying in our Christian bubbles.  There is much work to be done in figuring out how to engage these unreached groups that are on our campuses or in our neighborhoods.  Traditional methods will not work for certain groups like Hindus and Muslims.  Difficult as it will be, I believe that God will enable us to do what he has called us to, and that he is raising up an army that will live missionally, on our campuses, in our neighborhoods, and to the ends of the earth.   How can we have such confidence that the task will be completed, that the unreached people groups will indeed be reached?  Look at what John sees in Revelation 7:

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9,10)

The question is not whether or not this is going to happen.  This passage shows that the all the ethne, all the people groups, will be reached.  God has promised to accomplish this and we can bet our lives on it.  The question is whether or not we will join God in what he is doing.  Brothers and sisters in Christ, let’s get to work.

God wants to use you to reach the unreached on your campus or in your city! As a college student you are in a uniquely strategic position to live alongside the lost. You are in classes with them. You are in student organizations with them. You eat in their restaurants. You sit by them on the bus.

Many of you have had the opportunity to take short term missions trips. That is your idea of missions.

I wish I had that little wand they use in Men In Black, so I could erase your mind of the mentality that missions is something you do for 2 weeks somewhere far away!

Do you realize that you have the opportunity to be on a 4 year long missions trip? (well….a life long missions trip technically….but what I’m saying is you are focused on one place for four years)

Not only that, but their are people groups on your campus that nobody knows how to reach! You have the opportunity to figure something out that nobody knows how to do. Look around…who is reaching the Muslims, the Hindus, the homosexual community, the faculty, the dangerous neighborhood everyone tells you not to walk through? Not a whole lot of people. Do you know what you call someone who tries to take the gospel to a people group that no one has figured out how to reach before?

We call them a Pioneer Missionary. Normally we hear about them going to a remote village in the middle of the jungle or a hostile muslim country. But I am telling you that you have the opportunity to do that right where you are….on your campus. In your city.

The question is will you rise to the challenge?

Pastor and Missional thinker Ed Stetzer jumped on the glocalisation train in his 2006 book Breaking the Missional Code, pointing out how critical it is for churches and church planters to understand what he calls “the emerging glocal context.” As Dorothy says to her little dog Toto in The Wizard of Oz, “We are not in Kansas anymore.” Things have changed. The world has literally come to us. As Stetzer points out, “North America has become a ‘glocal community’ requiring new strategies for effective ministry.” If you are tuned in at all to any of the disussions on missional church or churchplanting, this is probably not new information. It is obvious that if the American church is going to be faithful to the Great Commission in the 21rst century, there is an urgent need for a shift in the way we think about and “do” church. Thankfully there are a lot of smart people having that discussion. We’d like to contribute to a discussion we haven’t heard as much about– The Glocal university.

It has come to our attention that there are several people groups on university campuses and in the communities and cities that often surround universities that have little to no Christian witness in their lives. Many international communities (on and off university campuses) have a large enough community of people from their own ethnicity that they often remain isolated from relationships with Americans. Most of the time these people groups are not against having relationships with Americans, but they simply don’t make the effort to make that happen. Many Americans on the other hand have not had much interaction with people of other cultures or faiths (even if they are surrounded by them!) and feel intimidated by internationals or just feel like they don’t know how to strike up a friendship with people that seem so different from them. There is a growing effort among campus ministries and churches to reach out to international students and international communities. Much of these efforts revolve around attractional approaches such as ESL (English as a Second Language courses), free dinners, trips, etc. This approach has been amazingly fruitful among East Asians (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.), and we should thank God for that, and continue doing those things!

There are other people groups however, that this attractional needs-based approach does not reach, either because there is not a need for what those ministries are offering (English, Social activities) and/or those ministries tend to involve explicitly Christian elements as part of the activity (e.g. using the Bible for the English lesson or providing a free dinner which will be followed by a Christian giving their testimony.) It is easy to figure out why a devout Muslim would not be comfortable in this kind of environment. From what I have observed, these outreaches also tend to miss Hindu-background students, who don’t have a need for English, and are not particularly interested in Christianity (many of the Hindu-background students I’ve met are cultural Hindus, but functional agnostics).  Again, this is not to say that we should  not be doing ESL or other types of attractional outreaches, but rather to call churches and Christian students to the challenge of thinking strategically about the people groups on campus or in our city that remain unreached, and largely untouched.

What will it take for the gospel to break into their lives?