The Mission Phoenix

The following is a portion of a post by David Ernst in the "General Discussion", "Should we still be sending missionaries overseas?" David Ernst arrived in Venezuela as a volunteer missionary. He is now an ordained pastor of the Lutheran Church of Venezuela and lives and works in Venezuela. See his blog at: http://venezuelaview.blogspot.com

       "One of the reasons I volunteered to serve in Venezuela in the first place was because there was a large team of experienced career missionaries already in place. What a rude shock I received when nearly the whole team was recalled during my first year in this country! Not only that, but since 2003, the Board for Mission Services has steadily dismantled any remaining support system even for the shortest-term volunteers.

        The justification for this seems to be "We have done our job in Venezuela and it is now up to the national church (Lutheran Church of Venezuela) to train and send its own missionaries." This is shortsighted, because although LCMS missionaries set up a system of theological education by extension that is capable of providing a grounding in basic doctrine, political, economic and cultural conditions in Venezuela make it difficult for the LCV to find enough pastoral candidates to fill existing pulpits, much less train and send missionaries.

        And there still is very little in the way of cross-cultural training. Venezuela has quite a diverse population. For instance, there is a substantial population of ethnic Chinese who retain their own language, customs and the traditional religious mix of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

        There is also a growing Muslim presence in Venezuela. It started years ago with immigration due to Venezuela's involvement with OPEC, but recently the Muslims have won more and more converts among "average" Venezuelans. I know of at least two large mosques and one small neighborhood mosque in the eastern Venezuelan city of San Felix de Guayana. The central mosque in Caracas has a minaret that, by design, reaches higher the spire of the Caracas cathedral (the largest Christian church in Venezuela in terms of physical size).

        On the other side of the coin, there is a population of native Middle Eastern Christians who have emigrated to Venezuela in the face of Muslim persecution in their homelands. Plus, there is a significant Jewish community in Venezuela that recently has come under attack here as the tide of world opinion turns against Israel. Those are just some of the subcultures that I can think of offhand, but no one currently associated with the LCV has specific training in evangelizing these groups.

        The recently-deceased Dr. Ralph Winter in 2007 spoke before an Asian mission conference and said, among other things, that one mistake that mission agencies should avoid is basing their mission strategy on short-term volunteers, rather than career missionaries. According to Dr. Winter, nearly two million short-termers leave the United States each year compared to 35,000 long-term missionaries. I believe Dr. Winter would agree that short-term mission trips have some value in educating the folks back home about world missions. But that value hinges on one of two responses by the persons involved:

     1. Considering a change of career and entering the mission field full-time oneself:

     2. A renewed commitment to supporting career missionaries financially and with prayer once one returns home.

      Here is a link to an article about Dr. Winter's address:

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071105/top-12-mistakes-mission-agencies-should-avoid/page2.html

       It is simply a fact that churches in the United States still have an advantage over partner churches in other countries in training and sending missionaries, because of a stronger economy, more educational resources, and, above all, a higher degree of religious liberty."