Between Past and Future: Evangelical Mission Entering the Twenty-First Century
Jonathan J. Bonk, editor
Evangelical Missiological Society Series Number 10
William Carey Library, Pasadena, California (2003)
271 pages

Who makes the decisions about how the dollars allocated to missions are spent? Who decides how many missionaries are sent to Chicago and how many to Riyadh? How are such decisions made? What is the relationship between the planting church and the planted church in missions? What is the relationship between God's work, what we must understand to be ultimately God's mission, and the "dismayingly human instrumentality of Christian missions"?

Between Past and Future takes a look at this "dismayingly human instrumentality" in the history of evangelical missions, and looks ahead to see how we can implement policies and strategies that will better reflect the continuation of the New Testament missionary age. What lessons are we to learn from the past, especially the century that just ended?

The opening of the twentieth century saw Western Christianity drunk with the enlightenment expectation that history was marching onward and upward to a glorious future and that the church was invited to come along for the ride. The missionary zeal of the times was to be the kindly big brother to other societies as we "civilize and Christianize" the world. And the fulfillment of these twin goals seemed to be just around the corner.

Such understanding flows from a Christendom view of the church, one in which the affluent West is equated with Christianity and mission necessarily "flows from the West to the rest." As we consider how this confusion has guided thousands of missionaries, we could follow many others in decrying Christian missions as being a colonial tool, or we could ignore the ramifications of destroying cultures and societies as we march roughshod around the world. Between Past and Future takes the high road and both mourns the damage done and seeks to eliminate such damage, but also sees the wonder of all that God has done through such "dismayingly human instrumentality." For it is partly the astounding success that God granted to missionaries and evangelists who operated under such a mistaken model that has caused the gravitational center of Christianity to shift away from the West to the South and the East.

Written by the leaders of evangelical missions, those who train, motivate and equip missionaries and missions planners, it is interesting to notice that the ideal held up throughout the book is not the professional missionary. Rather it portrays God working both through and aside from our agendas and laments that "the overt stress continues to be, in sharp contrast to the Scriptures, on how and where and how much . . . on technique and results rather than on person and character. It is increasingly evident that where the Gospel moves forward, it does so via the humble channels of more incarnational catechists and evangelists rather than the salaried professionals that we have come to recognize as missionaries."

Far from a simple history, we are given an analysis of the theological motivators and results from the different logistic focuses prevalent at different times, and these can be complex. For example the fervent missionary passions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a new longing for the church as a whole to be able to present to the world a unified front, a longing sprung from the realization that our sectarianism was inhibiting the spread of the gospel. This is a right and Godly desire. To effect this unity, ecumenical societies and coalitions were built. But the result of the massive organism of the ecumenical society was a dilution of passion for missions and a loss of flexibility for the individual missionary. Many denominations disbanded their own mission agencies and missions became just "one program among many." Within less than one generation, that which had been formed to facilitate missions had begun choking the missionary movement.

In Between Past and Future every decision regarding missions is quickly seen to be a theological question. When ten mission societies are fighting for "market share" in one small mission field, the resolution must stem from our theology. And our theology is often formed by the structures in which we dwell as much as by the Bible. For instance, the existence of a missions team in a local congregation, of missionaries and mission societies, all tend to set the groundwork for our understanding of missions as a specialization to be engaged in by those who are called, sent and paid. Alternative models of the church and of its mission become difficult to conceptualize, and we begin to assume in our theology that which we see in our practice. Between Past and Future will be, for many of us, a peering into many questions the answers of which we had always assumed.