The Cone of Uncertainty

John Stott or Billy Graham? Can't we have both?

The image above shows that hurricane Milton is possibly going to make a house call. The blue dot is my house. The thin red line is the current track. Yes, I know, the track will change, but the overall picture is not likely to change much. My house is smack dab in the middle of the “cone of uncertainty.”

Now, before I go on, you should know that I am presently in Pensacola, FL, literally on Gulf Shore National Seashore’s beach, watching the seagulls. My son David is heroically watching our house for us. We anticipate a little bit of damage, but nothing life threatening. Pray for those poor folks in the greater Tampa area (including a couple of my kids and grandkids).

I had an extremely busy 7 week stretch, which included a funding retreat in AZ, the annual Missions Leaders Conference in Louisville, and then Lausanne in Seoul, Korea. After 4 days of wandering the panhandle here in Florida, I am finally starting to feel a little mental margin. My wife just said, “It is interesting that when you are on vacation your mind is finally freed up enough to really think deeper about work.” A true paradox.

Pensacola is home to a US Naval Air Station. Pretty much all Navy pilots spend time here. The Blue Angels train here. This morning, the silence of the surreal beauty here has been broken by thunderous (and I do mean thunderous) jets training overhead. When you hear them, it is too late. They have already come and gone. You are left squinting in the distance. You might, if you are lucky, see them screaming away.

This is a good picture of how I am processing this past 7 weeks. The first weeklong meeting I had was with a roomful of missions field leaders. From the long serving white male Westerner (oh no!), to the youngest, an up and coming Central Asian leader, they were all focused singularly on church planting among the Islamic peoples of the world. These talks were pointed, strategically infused, opinionated, and practical. This was a group of leaders that had long ago committed to reaching the least reached and were out there doing it.

I would put the middle week, well, in the middle of the first and third events. The Missio Nexus conference focused on the priority of the unreached, yet we did so not so much as field leaders, but as missiologists who are aware that Jesus commanded us to disciple the nations. This was a kind of middle ground between the previous event and the next that I attended.

The last week, in Korea, was the opposite of the first. Lausanne was 5,200 people talking about the church (not so much missions) globally. There was little pointed discussion about strategy. There were identified “gaps” but these were more or less gaps in the church, and (with a few notable exceptions) not gaps in mission. This was more of a cornucopia of all church/missions issues and what makes up church/missions. This should be no surprise.

There were two founders of Lausanne, Billy Graham and John Stott. Since its inception, a missions-minded Billy Graham wanted to highlight the pointy tip of the spear - evangelism. John Stott pushed for holistic mission, in which all of what we do as Christians should be considered as a “redemptive” and therefore worthy of being labeled “missions.”

This is the ongoing tension that we face in the global church today. Are we seeing missions as the task given to us by Jesus to disciple the nations? Or, alternatively, do we understand it as all we do as Christians. Critics of the narrow definition call Graham’s approach reductionist, simplistic, and Westernized, too influenced by individualism and market driven approaches to missions. Critics of the Stott approach note that when everything is missions, nothing is missions. This watered-down version of missions means no missions.

The outcomes of these two approaches are all over the many observation and viewpoint articles that have already been written about Lausanne 2024. We live in the “cone of uncertainty” in how missions is being defined today. Lausanne 2024, whether it was on purpose or simply happened because they sought to platform so many different voices, was a John Stott conference. Billy Graham may have wondered where the theme of evangelism had gone. Will the “everything is missions” definition of global missions be the winner in the global church today? If it does, you can expect less emphasis on “discipling the nations” and much more on “being the church.”

Before you comment about how “both are needed,” let me say, “Of course both are needed.” This is a cone that includes a vast array of ministry approaches, many that are not traditionally seen as missions. Yet, that track should be certain. It must be laser sharp as it cuts through history, an obedience to Jesus’ commands (not just Matthew 28:19-20 - but others as well) which clearly emphasizes the particular nature and methods of fulfilling Jesus’ mandate. I am all for justice ministry, widow and orphan care, marketplace missions, and so on. Yet, they do not stand alone from evangelism, discipleship, and church planting. Holism must be subject to proclamation and vice versa. That creates a tension we should embrace.

Unless we embrace this cone of uncertainty, unity in the global church will be difficult.