World Missions: The Asian Challenge
Asian Missions Congress '90
As I observed the development of Asian Missions Congress '90 unfold and consulted with participants and observers to the conference such as Dr. Emilio Antonio Nunez, Latin American Theologian, Ruben Ezemadu, Chairman of the Nigerian Evangelical Mission Association, Dr. Chun Chae OK from the Women's University in Seoul, Korea, Dr. Lois McKinney of Trinity Evangelical School the significance began to dawn on me gradually of what was taking place.
1. The Asian Church
This was a gathering of the Asian Church. Both the congress name Asia Missions Congress '90 and the theme World Missions - The Asian Challenge made that very clear.
Theodore Williams, the keynote speaker said it: "Asia is sometimes referred to as the sleeping giant. But it is the walking giant now. Tremendous things are happening in our continent of Asia. The Church is growing fast and is alive. The missionary awakening in Asia is a significant happening in the past two decades. Never has there been a gathering of all those who are involved in missions in Asia at a grass roots level." He further pointed out several important facts about Asia as follows: 1) Asia has nearly two thirds of the world population, 2) Asia is the place of origin for many religions, 3) Asia is where human history began and will be consummated and 4) the center of the world's events are shifting toward Asia.
The Congress organizers were Asians. Theodore Williams, the honorary Congress Chairman is from Bangalore, India. Jun Vencer, Chairman of the Coordinating/Executive Committee of AMC '90 is from the Philippines. Met Castillo, the General Congress Coordinator is also from the Philippines. Associate coordinators, Kim Myung Hyuk and Alfred Yeo are from South Korea and Singapore, respectively, Prabhudas Roberts, John Richard from India and Joshua Tsutada of Japan rounded out the coordinating Committee. While Dave Howard, Bill Taylor and I were named Congress Consultants there was no need for consulting. This was an event of the Asian Church by the Asian Church. Some 80% of the Congress funds were generated from Asia.
The participants to the Congress had come from throughout Asia. One thousand participants came from 40 countries outside of Korea and 250 more came from Korean. This was indeed an All Asian Conference. There were even two participants from Mongolia. One of them, Altanchimeg had been given a Russian Bible seven years earlier as she was studying at the Mongolian State University in Ulan Bator in her last year in Thermal Engineering. She had thought the Bible was a tale for children but then read several probing questions in the introduction such as: Where are you going? Who are you? and Why are you here in this world? She received Christ and was subsequently jailed and harassed over the next seven years. Like Altanchimeg so many Asians have found their faith in Christ in growing numbers in recent years. Altanchimeg had come to this conference to represent the other Christians in Mongolia and many others like her in Asia.
2. The Asian Church has come together
In his message early in the conference, Joshua Tsutada evangelist Honda of Japan sharing the platform set the tone of reconciliation by publicly asking forgiveness of the other Asian Christians particularly the Chinese and the Koreans for offenses committed by their nations armies in recent history.
In his introductory remarks Dr. Kim Myung Hyuk, General Secretary of the Korea Evangelical Fellowship and Senior Associate Coordinator of AMC said: "We have gathered here to affirm our oneness in Christ and confirm our common task of world missions. In the past we have not met together." This indeed was the first time that both church and mission agencies from Asia had met together to discuss the challenge of world missions.
3. The Asian church has come together to contemplate the challenge of World Missions
Joshua Tsutada, the Chairman of the Evangelical Fellowship of Asia reviewed the purpose of the Congress on the opening evening. "We have three things to do," he said, "First, we need to review the past of the missions work of the church in Asia, second, we must survey our present status, and third, we must wait on the Lord as to the future direction of the missions work throughout Asia."
As Kim Joon Gon, Chairman of the Korean Evangelical fellowship said the opening evening: "The next ten years is a time of spiritual emergency. It is a time of opportunity. The Lord Jesus has the keys to open what no one can shut. I believe the next ten years history's greatest revival will take place in our area.
Certainly South Korea and China are a testimony of the evidence to that possibility. But consider even a country like Mongolia. In an article published by Wycliffe news Sept-Nov, 1990 concerning John and Alta Gibbens the reality of this is set forth in the title of the article: I will set before you an open door. The article describes the opening door. "In 1921 Mongolia embraced atheism and became the first Socialist Republic outside the USSR; before that it was a Buddhist stronghold with strong undertones of shamanism. Today, as Marxist regimes all over the world are collapsing, the 1.8 million Mongolians, sandwiched between the Soviet Union and China, are sensing the changes in the air. With their profound Buddhist traditions - 60% if adult men were monks before 1921-they are calling for religious freedom. Economic pressures too are turning the government towards renewed relations with the West...Pressure is mounting for free elections."
During AMC '90 John Gibbens indicated that free elections took place in Mongolia in July. In addition, he shared how government bodies had given orders openly in Mongolian newspapers this past July 14th to introduce 1850 copies of the newly translated Mongolian New Testament and the Mongolian Ministry of Health gave the right to invite Christian relief agenicies through the ministry opened by John and Altaa Gibbens. What an open door to this country of 2.2 million people, six known Christians, with 98% of her people literate, 54% urbanized, 10% in prison, with one-third of the children TB carriers and in desperate need of medication. There is no penicillin in the capital city.. Now it was only a matter of inviting friends from Asia and around the world to come through that door with great care.
Similarly other Marxist states are gradually opening their doors to the outside world with commercial links to other countries including China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. It's into this new world that participants in this conference were focusing their challenge. However, they were also looking beyond to Africa and Latin America as well. In the workshop I gave on opportunities in Latin America, there was a Japanese ministering in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a Korean university professor teaching in Venezuela, a Filipino missionary to Bolivia, an Korean evangelist who was about to tour Latin America with his musical group. During the conference I met Pastor Chang from a missions-minded church I spoke at last year in Singapore who had just returned from s ministry in Nigeria. During my time in his church we had dedicated him for service in Nigeria. Now he had returned and shared that his wife had to have several visits to the hospital in Singapore due to suffering reverse culture shock. Indeed this was a conference dealing with the world missions challenge.
4. The Asian Church has come together to contemplate the challenge of World Missions with a special emphasis on reaching the unreached peoples.
We were reminded by Theodore Williams that the largest number of unreached peoples are in Asia and the greatest challenges to the Gospel are also in this continent because of various forces that have made several countries restricted access countries.
Howard Peskett of OMF, reported on the work done by the AMC '90 research track committee. He called on the participants to focus on the unreached. In presenting the statistical analysis of the Asian mission field he noted that there were 2,449 unreached peoples among the 27 countries of Asia which have almost 3 billion population. One interesting fact is that he recorded only 364 unreached peoples for India. Like so many Christians in India who do not wish to accept the caste system and acknowledge that there are some 3,000 separate people groups in India the research committee chose to limit itself to the 364 tribal groups of India. It was also interesting to observe that only 158 separate peoples were noted for China.
The country with by far the largest number of unreached people groups according to the research committee is Indonesia with 663. This presents the single greatest challenge to the Asian church. Chris Marantika from Indonesia spoke in two plenary sessions and underscored the strategy that has been working for the ministry he has been engaged in to reach Indonesia which he calls "One One One" which means a church for every village in Indonesia in this generation. There is one additional one that he has adopted that fits into the challenge posed by Peskett, which is a church-planting in every unreached people of Indonesia by the year 2000. Next June Chris will lead the S.A. Asia A.D. 2000 Conference in Indonesia and this challenge will certainly be taken up by Christians from S.A. Asia.
At the end of his excellent presentation Peskett presented his proposal which he titled: REACHING THE UNREACHED BY AD 2000 (A challenge to Asian Christians). He took his idea from the church leaders in Costa Rica, Central America, who last September held an AD 2000 Conference, called Alcance 2000, in which they came up with a table setting out how 17 nations of Latin America might share in the remaining task of world evangelization. They decided that they should aim to reach 3000 peoples between them and they calculated how the task might be realistically shared. He suggested that Asian evangelicals attempt a similar task and proceeded to list the number of evangelicals in each Asian country and suggested a share of the unreached people according to percentage evangelical of the total evangelicals of Asia. He assigned a responsibility factor on the basis of financial strength which he suggests in effect, multiplies their power to reach out in evangelization. On the basis of his analysis South Korea would have to carry almost one half of the share of unreached peoples followed by India, Indonesia, Philippines and then Taiwan.
Despite the rather complicated approach to apportion the unreached peoples by country, the proposal hit a chord in the participants. When James Taylor III clearly endorsed the proposal with a modification to assign responsibility to all Asian countries and not only the ones mentioned by Peskett this increasingly became a goal to be focused on over the next ten years while it is likely there will be more modifications and different interpretations.
5. The Asian Church has come together to contemplate the challenge of World Missions with a special emphasis on reaching the unreached peoples by the year 2000.
The year 2000 while not an open theme of AMC '90 was underscored repeatedly by Asian leaders and plenary speakers.
In his greetings Rev. Lee Jong-Yun pastor of the Choong Hyun Presbyterian Church of Seoul Korea that was co-hosting the event along with the Korean Evangelical Fellowship said: "With Asia containing the greatest number of restricted access nations and the largest sector of unevangelized people groups, the challenge before us is immense. But with the increase of evangelical momentum building from the Second International congress on World Evangelization in Manila in 1989 and the A.D. 2000 Movements which have sprung into action throughout the world, the advance of the Gospel throughout Asia is equally intense." Each morning he led the dawn prayer meetings at 5 am. All 7000 chairs were taken, mostly by his own church members. Each morning the subject was "Our challenge for AD 2000."
The first evening Kim Joon Gon, Chairman of the Korean Evangelical Fellowship underscored again and again the vital importance of the next ten years. "The next ten years will be the most strategic...The next ten years are a time of spiritual emergency, a time of opportunity...I believe the next ten years history's greatest revival will take place in the our area...Call to preach the message of hope in the next ten years....The Great Commission will be fulfilled in the next ten years."
Howard Peskett who brought a key plenary session on the unreached peoples challenged, after careful analysis emerging out of the research done by the AMC '90 research committee presented a specific challenge that: "All unreached peoples , by AD 200, have had and continue to have opportunity to hear and understand the gospel and to receive and follow Christ in the fellowship of culturally-relevant churches." In his plenary address the next day, James Hudson Taylor III, General Director of Overseas Missionary Fellowship openly endorsed the AD 2000 goal focus suggested by Howard Peskett.
6. The Asian church has come together to contemplate its role in sending forth missionaries to meet the challenge of World Missions with a special emphasis on reaching the unreached by the year 2000.
Along with the growing awareness of the need of the unreached people came the realization of the need of increasing the Asian missions force. Peskett presented a rather conservative number of Asian missionaries of 7,500 compared to the 17,299 in the report presented by Larry Pate of OC Ministries to the Lausanne II Congress last year in a book titled From Every People. The difference hinges on how you define "missionary". As Peskett points out, whichever total you take, the trend is the same. Bong Ro in his plenary noted that this was an annual growth rate of 15.4%.
The goal of training and sending qualified missionaries to work among the unreached was emphasized in workshops and throughout the congress.
7. The Asian church has come together to contemplate its role in sending forth spiritually-minded missionaries to meet the challenge of World Missions with a special emphasis on reaching the unreached by the year 2000.
Throughout the Congress there was a distinctive emphasis on spirituality. Beginning the first evening with the message of Theodore Williams who underscored the fact that money power and political power have nothing to do with missions. He appealed to the audience to guard against monoculturistic ethnic missions and warned against pragmatic management techniques as we look forward to this decade. He emphasized the need to pay the cost and be prepared to suffer for the sake of the gospel. He called on the church in Asia to shed its minority complex and poverty complex but also to avoid the superior attitude of a conqueror.
Petrus Octavianus, a long time mission leader from Indonesia with an annual mission budget of almost $ 1 million, spoke on the tears of Jesus which was a missions outcry to the hearts of the listeners 1) to awaken spiritually, as Lazarus was awakened physically, 2) to be revived out of lukewarmness, as Jesus cried over the spiritual indifference of Jerusalem, and 3) to become empassioned with lostness of the world without Christ, as Jesus cried in the garden of Gethsemane as he was praying not only for himself but also in what he was to do for the salvation of unreached peoples worldwide.
No doubt this was a significant meeting of God's people in Asia that will shape expectations and outcomes in years to come, particularly until the year 2000.
In the closing message of the Congress John Richard, who, following the Congress is to begin to work full time with the AD 2000 Movement, addressed concerns that are spiritual as a pre-requisite to outcomes that are global taking as his biblical basis Psalm 67. He called on the church in Asia to recognize their hopelessness and their emptiness and their helplessness and their lostness and their sickness to then expect outcomes such as the knowledge of God, the salvation of God, the praise of God, the kingdom of God. He concluded with a practical appeal for increased spirituality, to awake, pray, walk circumspectly, serve selflessly and suffer gladly.
In conclusion, there was a real sense of urgency present throughout the Congress perhaps best summarized by the words of Joshua Tsutada of Japan when he said: "...This may be the last page. Night is coming when no man can work."