Introduction
What follows is neither a statement of faith nor a theology of mission, although aspects of both are present. It assumes a broadly Evangelical statement of faith as summed up in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. It also assumes the type of theology present in the Perspectives course. Rather, what follows is our attempt to situate ourselves as institutions in the broader discipline of “Missiology” by defining the component of missiology historically labeled “frontier”. Thus, this document does not pretend to be as broad as a statement of faith or theology of mission. Instead, it is a narrower discussion about the frontier segment within the discipline of missiology.
The Need for Change
In the year 2020, almost 50 years after the initial burst of unreached people group interest and insight, we find it necessary to propose a missiological reset. Missiology always reflects its context. Traditional frontier missiology not only alerted thousands to the reality of unreached peoples but pointed many to the investment of their lives for the good of others and the growth of God’s kingdom. It was also, in part, a reflection of its time and the strongly modernist context from which it came, including the tendency to classify and categorize. It only addressed some of the “baggage” of centuries of Christendom and the more recent weight of colonial associations. Today’s context is deeply and rightly sensitive to power equations related to such classifications and political alliances (1).
We now find ourselves in the fortunate position of benefiting from all that has been learned over the last 50 years by those serving among unreached peoples. Field experience has a deconstructing and transforming impact on all who will listen and learn. Frontier missiology is dynamic – not static. It shifts on the basis of cross-cultural encounter, fresh learning and dialogue. It calls practitioners to ever deeper humility in walking with God among the nations, and it invites missiologists to ever deeper humility in their attempts to understand what God is doing.
How do we understand frontier missiology in light of these changing contexts? What lessons have been learned? What parts of the missiology that our organizations helped to shape have the waves of history pounded into sand and what remains bedrock? We trust that what follows portrays a recognizable shift in perspective from a task focus to deeper participation, from a military band mindset to an ethos of loving community, from bounded set to centered set thinking, from essentialist views of “people groups” to acceptance of hybridity, from Western dominance to equal global representation, and from artificial categories like “religion” to sensitive contextual understanding of scriptures, beliefs, rituals, spirituality, culture, etc. At the same time, we struggle not only to speak to the mission movement of our times in a pastoral sense, but also to speak in tension with the spirit of our times in a prophetic sense. We speak as a religious order, a community on mission in a continuous cycle of orientation, disorientation and reorientation, walking with and yet still seeking Jesus and pursuing His Kingdom.
Definition:
Frontier missiology is the attempt to understand and encourage the initial incarnation of the gospel (2) into relational networks of people (including what we have elsewhere referred to as “Unimax Peoples”) (3), and the growth of the initial disciples within such initial efforts into biblical, indigenous, holistic and sustainable movements of Jesus followers. Whether a missiological idea is considered frontier missiology depends on whether or not it has a vital connection to the initial incarnation of the gospel, in all its fullness, and its growth in movements.
Description:
Frontier missiology is grounded in and yet is still grappling with: 1) what the gospel is, 2) how the gospel relates to human contexts, 3) among whom the gospel has not been incarnated, 4) why the gospel has not been incarnated there, and 5) through whom the gospel is best incarnated there.
What - discerning biblically what the gospel is and what it is not. Our God is mighty to save. We are first separated from God and in need of the gospel. Once reconciled by grace through faith in Christ, we become stewards of the gospel, participating with God in redeeming humanity, including our own, and restoring creation. The gospel is thus personal, social and universal. Our partnership with God forces us to face the reality of personal and structural evil, which must be resisted and opposed. We thus move from a fundamentalist dislocation of the spiritual gospel from other realities to an understanding of the whole gospel that confronts all types of powers (human, spiritual, societal), including such powers in our own contexts. Our evangelism, while remaining deeply centered in spiritual conversion, understands that conversion includes the transformation of economic, political and social realities (4).
How - understanding precisely how the gospel enters, relates to and is expressed within different human contexts. The Prime Mover of the gospel is the Holy Spirit, who works mysteriously in ways that are visible and invisible, comprehensible and incomprehensible, familiar and unfamiliar to human beings. How the gospel is communicated in word and deed will depend largely on context. Special focus is given to how the gospel celebrates, replaces or renews the existing worldview, practices and behaviors of a given group. New groups will develop appropriate expressions of their faith within their own social milieu and will love others and promulgate good news into new networks. Frontier missiology aims to facilitate movements to Christ within unreached peoples, with the hope and expectation that such movements will also themselves move beyond their own people group to others.
Among whom - identifying the unreached people groups and smaller segments within them where the gospel has not been incarnated. This involves critically engaging the current debate about the continued relevance of the people group paradigm, admitting to being befuddled by the complexity of human identity and interaction, embracing the complex hybridity of urban worlds, and yet remaining committed to taking the gospel to those without a witness. Frontier missiology, with the apostle Paul, aims to share Christ where He is unknown and least known, and thus, without ignoring the Muslim world, Frontier Ventures has a special concern for those diverse peoples that modern times have given the broad designation of “Hindu” and “Buddhist”, along with other especially resistant peoples like the Jews and the recently defined frontier people groups.
Why - identifying the barriers of understanding and acceptance that prevent the gospel from being incarnated as well as building the bridges needed to cross them. Steve Hawthorne captures the importance of these barriers as follows, “There are two parts to the missionary task. The first is to see that the gospel is understood in such a way that Christ and His salvation are revealed. The second is to see that the gospel is received in such a way that Christ is openly followed. We often consider communication to be the larger task because it seems like a formidable wall that looms before missionaries. Actually, the far more difficult task is to help people find a way to follow Christ that will welcome many more of their family and culture to follow Christ as well without losing their socio-cultural identity. . . It is not enough for someone to hear the gospel or to understand it. People must be able to see, for themselves and their people, the radical freshness, the heavenly power and the hope-filled relevance of the gospel. Such clarity of the gospel is usually only seen in the worship and life of a Christ-following fellowship that reflects the culture. The Word must be incarnated once again in that culture (5)."
Through whom - Insiders within the culture will almost invariably be the most effective agents. However, those insiders rarely operate in a vacuum. Therefore, it is important to recognize the essential role of the “outsider” (servant/facilitator/alongsider), who needs to be formed in the appropriate spiritual development, character, attitudes, skills and knowledge needed, in order to serve those inside well in the discernment and development of gospel incarnation. As life-long learners and humble servants, alongsiders will be able to live in deep relationship with insiders, forming partnerships that recognize that ultimate decisions about spiritual forms and practices are to be made by insiders. Such holistic training endeavors to build up the whole person – head, heart, hands, health, and household.
Footnotes
(1) While we do not consciously utilize modern or postmodern thinking as the basis of our missiology, we must be aware of our own social setting and its inherent biases, take seriously cultural and philosophical critiques, and engage mature practices to discern how to apply the Eternal Word (text) to changing worlds (context).
(2) There is only one Incarnation. We don’t take away here from that unique and "once for all and only" Incarnation, but we do want to say something more than contextualization. This really is a reality: as the good news spreads and is embraced more and more men and women are indwelt by Jesus and the Spirit and as such Jesus is living in and among them, ie, incarnation but not Incarnation. Ultimately, it is the gospel itself that is incarnated (made flesh) in a people group, not a person or persons.
(3) Unimax peoples: “the maximum sized group sufficiently unified to be the focus of a single people movement to Christ, where ‘unified’ refers to the fact that there are no significant barriers of either understanding or acceptance to stop the spread of the gospel.”
(4) This is not the social gospel of Rauschenbusch, nor liberation theology of Catholic Marxists, but a reflection of evangelical exegesis of what really Jesus was preaching - the dawn of a new epoch of justice and equality.
(5) The Wall and the Canyon, by Steven C. Hawthorne, Perspectives Reader, 140-141.