10 Theses on Mission Structures

Yes, modalities and sodalities are a thing

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

I often am asked about how mission work is organized and how the structures help or hinder missionary work. Since I am leading an association of missionary agencies in the US and Canada, people often assume that I am a part of the “old guard.” They assume I am protecting the status quo and interests of the missions industry. Let me assure you that I do not see my role as being one protecting or maintaining the status quo. Yet, structures are a part of how global mission is conducted. Here are some ideas that shape my thinking about mission agency structures.

1. On the modality / sodality model of missionary agencies

Ralph Winter and others have argued that there are historically two structures of mission. The modality structure is represented by the local church and about nurturing, growing, teaching, and discipling a static congregation in a specific location. The sodality structure represents the “go” structure which is focused on starting new congregations in new locations. In the New Testament, the local church is the modality and the missionary team documented in the book of Acts is the sodality. People seeking to lift up the role of the local church deny the existence of the sodality.

My observation is that there are builders of existing structures and there are entrepreneurs who initiate new things. These attributes are spread across a spectrum so that there are people who are highly focused on one end of that spectrum or another. Both are valid but they are distinctly different from one another. Entrepreneurs are not going to be contained in existing structures. It is against their nature. Even when placed inside of existing structure, they will seek to create independence for what they do. They often quit these larger structures, unsatisfied with the lack of creativity and freedom inherent in a larger structure. Builders will invest their time and energy into an existing structure and defend its mission. These are people who create communities that grow and become influential through great service, participation, and opportunities for growth to the people inside them.

Thus, the sodality/modality paradigm parallels what I believe we see in ministry leadership overall. There are those who build existing structures (the modality or church) and those who initiate new things (the sodality or missionary team). Since these things are on a spectrum, they are not mutually exclusive.

2. Ecclesiology has become very sloppy in missions discussions

I often hear phrases like “mission belongs to the church.” This can be in the context of theological reflection on missions, in more popular conversations about missions by church leaders, and in various missions networks and global gatherings.

I am on board with saying “mission belongs to the church” if the context is the church universal. But mission does not belong to the local church. What I see people do when they make church-centric arguments is to localize biblical references rather than use them in their broader, more Kingdom-focused intention. To combat this tendency, I try to mentally insert the word “local” in front of biblical references when the word “church” is in the mix. Doing so forces me to consider each usage in terms of this difference and it shades how I see the church on mission. Nobody would argue that the commission Jesus gave to the disciples is going to be accomplished by any single congregation. Yet, that is often the implication when claims of ownership about mission are made.

So, yes, mission belongs to the church. But it does not belong to the local church. This makes room for those entrepreneurs and “go structures” that are often impossible to contain inside of a single congregation. This further gives me reason to embrace the sodality/modality model of the church.

Something I hear in global church conversations is that the non-Western missionary movement will be church-driven. This is an example of this sloppy ecclesiology at work. There is a lot to say about this, but if the non-Western church creates “go structures” they will not be contained by local churches.

3. Missionary agencies are cultural manifestations of the New Testament missionary team

The first century sodality grew out of the “roaming rabbi” model prevalent in the first century. Jesus was a roaming rabbi and Paul subsequently adopted the same model. Both worked within the existing Jewish cultural situation. Both were also influenced by the Roman overlay of the first century. Paul explicitly leveraged his Roman citizenship to preach the gospel in Rome.

The modern missionary agency similarly grew out of its own cultural environment. Namely, the colonial-era English organization model of voluntary societies. This board concept of governance has become the de facto model of mission practiced by modern missionaries (it could be argued that local churches have also adopted this same model, as there is no such thing as an “elder board” in the New Testament but rather elder-led churches without formal, legal board structures). The missionary team of the first century had none of these additional legal structures.

The agency model has led to confusion about what constitutes a sodality. A missionary agency is more than a simple “go structure.” It is the office team, the photocopiers, the donor processing systems, and so forth. These are not anti-biblical, but they are extra-biblical. They are not invalid because they have grown out of cultural models. Yet, these structures surpass the simple nature of the missionary team seen in Acts and are therefore temporal. New cultural realities may replace them.

4. Apostolic gifting creates sodalities

Evangelicals struggle with the word apostolic because we want to tie its use only to the New Testament to protect the canon of Scripture. But apostolic gifting creates sodalities. There are those whose vision cannot be contained within the local church. Missionary agencies should be platforms for the exercise of apostolic gifting. Teams should be constructed around a mix of gifts but always favor the apostolic gifting. To put this in more contemporary language, entrepreneurs should be freed up to create new things. Startup teams are inherently different than management teams. Sodalities are the former, modalities are the latter.

This distinction plays out in many ways. For example, when missionaries settle into a place and pastor churches which never become indigenous, they are acting like modalities. This is the result of sending leaders who are not apostolically gifted. Because seminaries and similar traditional training institutions had, in the past, created modality-oriented leaders, we have filled the ranks of missionary agencies with modality-minded missionaries. These are people who have a builder’s mindset. They want to grow and establish the church. While this is a necessary and needed part of the long-term missionary task, the emphasis on building the church must be balanced against an emphasis on establishing the church.

5. We need many more organizations

Years ago, I asked a roomful of local church missions pastors, “How many more missionary organizations do we need?” they rolled their eyes and groaned. I then asked them, “How many apostolically-minded entrepreneurs do we want to empower?” and they practically cheered. Those who start new things almost always end up creating structures (organizations) so these two questions are actually the same.

Modern missionary agencies have failed to properly communicate their true essence as entrepreneurial go structures of the church. This is one reason I never use the word “parachurch” to describe ministry organizations. This is a false category of who they are. Missions agencies are also the church, just not the local church. They have subordinated the role of the missionary team to be no more than an arm of the local church. Fundraising has influenced this for the non-denominational organizations, and denominational mission agencies also have subordinated the sodality structure to modality leaders.

How many apostolically gifted, entrepreneurial leaders do we need to fulfill the commission of Jesus? My sense is that we need thousands of them. The commission is simply too big for any one local church or organization to consider.

6. Modalities have a role to play in how sodalities carry out their work

In the New Testament, subordination of the missionary team happened when theological orthodoxy was at stake. This is a proper and helpful tension that we need because it is the nature of apostolically gifted leaders to take liberties and press boundaries. In recent years we have seen this happen with extreme forms of contextualization. The modality has a proper role in enforcing theological orthodoxy. This role stops, though, when it comes to non-essentials and how ministry is conducted in the local culture.

Not only is there a temptation for local churches to control missions activity on the field, missionary agencies themselves can act like modalities, seeking to govern the apostolically gifted leaders who are out doing the work. This tension grows as an agency becomes larger and more bureaucratic over time.

7. The non-Western movement will create its own form of sodalities

The non-Western missionary movement will have apostolically gifted leaders who will not be contained by local church modalities . Some have already copied the model of Western missions and created their own missionary agency organizations, and others have had a more direct church-centric model of sending. This latter category will create sodality structures outside of local church control if they feel a lack of freedom in their context.

My sense is that this is not happening because poorer congregations simply do not possess the resources to exert control across culture and geography. In other words, local churches are not engaged in the oversight of their missionaries because they cannot afford to be. Is this a new model, different than the Western model? Yes, in some ways it is. Yet, the substance of the missionary team doing ministry in relative independence from local churches is the irony here, because it has been described as “church-centric.” It seems to me that the opposite is true. Additionally, many receive funding via direct bank deposit from individuals both from their home countries and from the West, furthering independence from local congregations.

8. Money issues will always be with us

The funding of missions has been a factor in determining what the structures look like today. More specifically in the West, the non-profit donation model has driven such things as having an independent board, forced rules and regulations to how money is being handled, and donor expectations. These items add organizational bureaucracy to what we mean by mission. They are necessary evils and leaders must make certain that they do not overtake mission objectives.

There are a few alternative models for funding mission. There is entrepreneurial business (creating businesses), being a student (often this means fundraising as well), and tentmaking (working in existing businesses). I trust that all three of these will be deployed with great gusto. Of these, entrepreneurial business would be most closely associated with apostolic gifting. Yet, the difficultly in creating a viable business (with no fundraising) while simultaneously doing significant ministry is rarely seen in monocultural environments, let along cross-culturally. These three models also remove one historic connection to local churches as financial supporters. While these models need to be worked, it is not likely that they will ever offset the donation models we currently have, either in Western or non-Western churches. Like the poor, money issues in mission will always be with us.

9. There are many ways to do global ministry

Missionary agencies, church-based teams, family-run missionary agencies, direct support to nationals, tentmakers, and on the list goes. There are many, many ways to do global ministry. Each has its own challenges. For example, small, family-run missionary efforts are very organic, frequently assisting orphanages, schools, or other local efforts. At the same time, they are mostly missiologically weak. They frequently support work that should be indigenized and rarely minister outside of the Western hemisphere. They don’t tend to work in hostile cultures. On the other hand, large agencies can be rife with rules and regulations, costly to join, and can have difficult-to-manage bureaucracies. Yet they are more missiologically astute, hold staff accountable, and work through a strategic plan.

Rather than condemning any one sector of global ministry, we are better off evaluating each in its own context.

10. Missions is complicated

Missiology is complicated. It incorporates spirituality, history, sociology, anthropology, communications, and many other fields. There are issues of ethnicity, race, colonialism, poverty, politics, and world religions. We must start and end with humility rather than self-assurance.

For example, diaspora outreach is currently being portrayed as the “silver bullet” of missions. The data suggests that we will never reach the unreached with a focus on diaspora ministry. This does not take away from the need to focus on immigrant populations, but how we understand its role in the larger global church must be more nuanced. This could be true about many other issues in global mission.