Crying in the Wilderness

How would you evaluate missionary effectiveness in light of Isaiah’s ministry?

The Jerusalem Temple
100 East Gate
Jerusalem

715 BC

Dear Isaiah:

Greetings in the name of our Messiah (whom we haven’t actually seen yet, but we take it by faith that He’s coming). On behalf of the missions committee here at the Jerusalem Temple it’s my honor to greet you – we only wish it were with a holy kiss.

Isaiah, it’s that time of year when we re-evaluate our priorities regarding the distribution of funds to various temple-supported prophets. As you know, our temple has a substantial commitment to the preaching of the Law. We have developed a five-point system of evaluation that includes the following: teaching the Pentateuch, apostasy return, royalty succession, Baal shaming, and war counseling.

We noticed on your recent evaluation form you indicated that the primary purpose of your ministry was “voice crying in the wilderness.” You need to know that this is not one of the priorities that we have set for the prophets that we support. While “crying in the wilderness” is certainly an important ministry, it is simply not one which we feel called to give toward.

We also have some questions about this particular assignment for you. We noticed that you have been “crying in the wilderness” for some time now, but there is little sign of fruit. This makes us wonder if this particular ministry is a match for your gifting. Furthermore, some of our members are concerned that your recent newsletter reported that you are, at times, running around bare-naked. Unfortunately, we suspect that your sending agency, Propheteers, is not adequately holding you accountable to a reasonable ministry plan.

We did write to them and they have indicated that they are unable to remove you from ministry because that is the role of field leadership. This is unacceptable to us, and we have, therefore, decided to suspend our support for your ministry.

We will continue to send you fatty parts from the sacrifices for another three months, a little less each month, at which time our support will end.

With Love,

The Missions Committee
The Jerusalem Temple

Evalution is a difficult topic. It must be done, but we don’t always get it right. One of the most frequent questions I get regards evaluation of missionaries and their effectiveness. That question is usually being asked as affirmation of a previously held belief that missionaries are mostly ineffective.

The common narrative goes like this. The person knows a handful of missionaries that have returned home due to problems they faced on the field. These missionaries struggle. Their kids have issues. They are not sure what to do next in life after missionary service, and so on. After a number of these experiences, the asker concludes that missionaries are mostly struggling, spending their time on internal problems. They wonder where their donations are going, and they seek verification from me, because I lead Missio Nexus, that most missionaries are ineffective.

This is classic confirmation bias. One does not typically see the faithful, healthy family that serves most of their time on the field in your community group Bible study week after week. They are on the field. They might come home for a few months and travel about, but they are not attending your local church and processing their life and family problems. But those that do feed this ongoing perception of missionary failure.

You could hold an entire conference on the topic of missionary evaluation. In fact, Missio Nexus did, about eleven years ago. I have listened to the event proceedings and the issues are pretty much the same ones you hear today. In defense of missionaries, I came across these arguments:

• The mission field is a difficult place to see progress. Far more so than what pastors and churches face in the West. We should expect higher rates of failure.

• What are we counting as success? Numbers? Deep discipleship? In both cases, the monocultural US church is losing ground (see the decline of Christianity in the West and evaluations like Willow Creek’s 2008 study, Reveal). At the same time, the global church is gaining ground and missionaries play at least some role in this.

• Cross-cultural difference make evaluation difficult. This is acutely true when evaluating ministry by national partners. After visiting many of these ministry sites, I observe that numeric reporting is particularly suspect. This is not just because of deception, which can happen. It is more due to differences in worldview. Most Western visitors are not able to discern the differences between these three areas. This is, to me, doubly true for major donors and foundations, who do not live in the area and speak local languages. These folks would do better to have trusted Western missionaries helping them understand the reality on the ground.

• Security issues are real and create problem in reporting on ministry success. The need for evaluation should not outpace the need to protect our brothers and sisters in Christ. I am aware that some funders are suspicious of security claims. I am not wise enough to weigh in on this, but security does make evaluation more difficult.

• Faithfulness, a key metric in my view, is not outcome based. Most evaluation systems are outcome based, setting up a theological showdown as to what might be considered success.

A good rule of thumb here is to apply the same metric monoculturally that you would apply cross-culturally. Western church benchmarks are sometimes qualitative (the “healthy church” movement) and there are quantitative measurements (typically, butts in seats, giving, and so on).

By either of these measures, I think it if fair to say that the US church lags behind the global Christian movement substantially. I can think of a few areas in which the US church excels over their global counterparts: generosity, theological education, and publishing. By most other measures the US church is not keeping up, including the “big three” - evangelism, discipleship, and planting churches.

Regarding the “healthy church” movement, I applaud the qualitative emphasis. Unfortunately, I find that pastors in particular fall prey to defining a healthy church along the lines of “church like we do it.” Most of the “healthy church” proponents are deploying a missiology in which the missionary operates like a Western pastor. They bring their metrics with them, which are primarily about teaching.

If we want healthy churches, my suggestion is to focus on discipleship as much as preaching and teaching. These are not mutually exclusive, of course, but I have been to many churches where the preaching is excellent, and the discipleship is pretty thin. Seldom is it the other way around.

Working with national leaders instead of those sent from your home culture is often seen as a panacea in contemporary missions, particularly with mega-churches, foundations and large donors. Cross-cultural evaluation of these national leaders is almost impossible. I have many years of experience in cross-cultural relationships. I have only grown in humility when it comes to the clear communication of metrics. When you see numbers from national partners, be skeptical. There are outrageous claims being made that are deceptive, I am sure. More likely, however, is that there is cross-cultural miscommunication about the metrics.

More thorough evaluation systems are better than simple, self-reported data (like, “How many people are in Bible studies?”). The IMB’s GAPP system is designed to track activity in cross-cultural ministry settings across a number of areas. Perfect? No. Better than most other systems? For sure. I do not have first-hand experience with GAPP in the field, but my sense is that most software solutions are made for Western mental frameworks. There is nothing wrong with Western mental frameworks. But the avenues of our mind are laid out differently than those of non-Western cultures. We are applying our tool in their world.

I often remind myself that fruitfulness in the New Testament is overwhelmingly related to character and spiritual growth. Not numbers. If you know of a numeric evaluation in the New Testament, post it in the comments, please. The closest you get is the 3,000 converts in Jerusalem.

This does not mean that we should toss out evaluation. It means that we need to be cautious about how much credence we give to it as a marker of how well we are doing as we obey Jesus’ command to disciple the nations.