Our Vision and the Ecosphere
FUTURE VISION
By Paul E. McKaughan
Would you think and dream with me about the world we would like to see in our U.S. context of ministry?
Imagine the U.S. missions world, the Great Commission community, where the man and woman in the pew of the local congregation know what the real eternal issues are. Imagine that they are totally convinced that glorifying God through discipling the nations is a central focus of the Christian life. Jerusalem to the uttermost is the continuum on which the life of Christ is lived. Therefore, the local community of which they are a part is but the first of many progressive steps to peoples yet to be exposed to Christ's love and grace. In this local context, men and women are motivated by the knowledge of God's plan for humankind. The Kingdom image with its multicolored community of praise is fixed clearly as a living reference point in the forefront of his or her heart and mind. It is the spiritual destination to which all must aspire. In this set-apart-community all are cognizant of the values of eternity and not merely at the mercy of the reigning societal fad.
In our dream, the local man or woman in the pew has a realistic and faithful portrayal of the world around them, aware of its challenges, problems and opportunities. Furthermore, they are aware of the resources represented by the emerging worldwide Body of Christ. These people are informed by the whole council of God contained in the Scriptures and are impelled by the Holy Spirit's application of that declared word.
As we probe further in this contextual dream, we see that we are all integrated into a system that could inform and support the interdependent actions of the Body. One power block or another is not manipulating the community; it is being empowered by its divinely ordained connectionism. The Body is in fact a finely tuned ecosystem that supports and fosters coalitions and alliances as it co-evolves into that Revelation chapter six celebration of praise. It is a dynamic and ever-changing kaleidoscope of purposeful people and organisms seeking to fulfill Biblical mandates.
Make no mistake this is not some highly structured organizational system that we are envisioning. It is far too complex for that. It is a system that would look like chaos to us if we forget or were unaware of its Divine design. If we do not have a deep-seated belief that Christ is the head of the Church and he will coordinate His Body through the actions of His Spirit, it is impossible to even contemplate such a dream as a possible reality.
Let us envision a system where challenges are faced and the organism of the Body senses these challenges and as a divinely ordered reflex, structures itself to meet those challenges. Use your intuition, inspired and inflamed by the Holy Spirit, to think of a world where the nerves, structure and bloodstream of the Church are fully integrated under the headship of the Divine Creator.
In this organism, I see mission as the nervous system of the Body. Mission is vital contact with the broader human environment, the world that must be reclaimed from the results of the fall and the devastation of the evil one. Missions seem always close to the eternal heart of God. Out of the interaction of the people of God with the mission of God comes relevant contextual reflection from His Word. This reflection produces an empowered theology that can inform the broader Church community.
The local churches and their networks constitute the skeletal structure; without this underpinning we are but a blob of jelly. This structure also provides the essential linkage to the past. Structures always seem to be monuments to past effectiveness. The prophetic ministry represents the bloodstream of the Church. This is the ministry that proclaims and illumines God's Word in a fashion that galvanizes God's people to action. It seeks to assure the purity and health of the Body. The brain, the head, is the Christ of the Church who will not surrender that place of leadership to any person, structure or magisterium. It is Christ who commands and superintends the actions and reactions of His Body.
This whole panorama or our dream seems to me to be Biblical. To settle for anything less is to opt for less than the Scripture holds out to us. To settle for less than this is to lock ourselves into a rationalization of the status quo that is sub-optimum. To settle for less than the Scripture holds out as the model is to allow the fallen-ness of our natures to dictate what is an optimum operationally. If we don't use as our reference point, the square of God's Word, we are in trouble. If it the dream is Biblical, this picture should be the judge of our operations. If we don't use for navigation, the divinely designated directional star of vision but rather one, one which may be in the same general constellation we will never arrive at the right destination. Our guiding star is fixed where the Spirit of God has positioned it through the Scriptures. We have settled for a far too limited guide from tradition. When we use this human reference point we will never arrive at the God-intended destination.
In the past, there were characteristics of our mission that inform present perceptions inside and outside the community. In the past, our movement was defined by what we do. We were the people who went "over there" and took the Gospel to those who must have an opportunity to respond. In the past, "where we go" was the primary identifier of our calling. We were ministries who operated primarily outside the U.S. In the past, "what we are not" tended to be the defining characteristic to the other components of the evangelical community; we were not the Church, we were parachurch. In the past, our methodology gave us a primary component of our identity. We were the senders and supervisors of missionaries. We did this as the essential intermediary between the local people in churches and the impersonal, unknown and distant world. In the past, we were the primary carriers of information concerning distant and exotic places far from the reality of the local experience.
In the present, as we move into the future, these distinctions have become irrelevant or even counterproductive as descriptors of who we are and what we do as members of the Great Commission Community (GCC). This may be a good thing, as many of these descriptors did not emanate primarily from the Scriptures, but were historic and programmatic responses to very real need. They emerged from a past generation's sense of calling, the genuine desire of our fathers and grandfathers to be obedient to the Lord who had called them to be on a mission with Him. This was a quasi-military campaign to "win the world" and by faith they made great strides forward.
The fact is that we don't take God's good news like a commodity to some distant location; we all know that. God is at work in the world, and we are but a part of His action to prepare a people for Himself among all the peoples of planet earth. The geopolitical nations of our planet are inter-linked, as never before in history, to the point that in the recent financial debacle, the governments of the nation-states of Asia have recognized that they do not really control their own economies, their markets, or the flow of capital. Electronically, borders have broken down. Immigration and the movement of huge numbers of people have created a world of inter-related city-states. The mere thought of a racially homogeneous world-class city is unimaginable today. Here and there, the close and the distant, The Jerusalem and the uttermost of the Great Commission, meet in all the world's great cities.
We, the Great Commission Community, are a part of the Church, and we have always been. The Scripture teaches us, it is impossible to be born of the Spirit of God and not be a part of His Body. We may not be the equivalent of a local congregation, but just as that local congregation is a part of a larger reality, which is the Church, the Body of Christ, so we are a part of that same reality.
The world has come to the U.S. and through our ties with the international business, communications and commerce communities, we are inexorably intertwined. Hometown USA looks like a highly colored human salad bowl. The cacophony of exotic languages threatens to bring our urban public education system to its knees. Significant numbers of our people are constantly coming and going to the once-exotic places which were our domain as "foreign" mission boards. CNN and the mass media, not the mission community, have become the primary interpreters of global events and realities. They bring the world into the living rooms of our constituents on a daily basis, and world crises are played out on our television screens in real time. The felt need of the local church for intermediaries has diminished to the point of seeming insignificance.
When you couple the above facts with the increased international travel by competent and eloquent Christian leaders and statesmen from what were once mission fields, misunderstanding about our role can arise. As the man and woman in the pew listen to the stories of what God is doing in these "used-to-be" mission fields, inevitable comparisons are made. In contrast, often the perceived missionary methodology appears economically counterproductive and at other times comparatively ineffective. We find our missions primarily involved with churches that God raised up in a time when our generational fathers were faithful to their calling. Whereas we were once primarily functioning where the Body was not, we now find our agencies partnering with national movements and people of great capacity for ministry effectiveness and reciprocal relationships.
This newer collaborative action should only enhance the effectiveness of all of us as we continue to press on toward the discipling of the nations. This side of our ministry lives is, however, off the cognitive map of most of our people and under represented in our communication to them. This means that we have not been very good educators in the church. For us in the Great Commission Community of America, and specifically of the missions community, who we are and how we depict the reality represented by hundreds of sister organizations in the U.S., is a big issue. It may be the most important issue we encounter as we interface with that man or woman in the pew. Our resolution of this issue will have a profound impact on the realization of our opening dream.
Language is powerful; words are carriers of images many times from the past. These images and meanings often change with time. As words become more widely used, their specific meanings become watered down and even altered by popular usage. Words like: mission, mission field, missionary, church planting, indigenous church and a vast paragraph of other like words now have little meaning to our brothers and sisters. Sometimes the impact of these words is even negative or misleading. We need to develop in the Great Commission Community (GCC) images and words that are relevant for believers today and impel us toward the future. It is the future in which we all will live and work from this minute forward. These future images will, in all probability, be a mixture of what is and what was but they must have a forward "lean" just as a sail heads into the wind to generate its force to drive the boat. Our words and concepts must however be firmly rooted in the meanings of Scripture. Where many of our present mission words are extrapolations of Biblical data and
one must search hard to find the warrant that originally inspired their usage, we are in desperate need for new images which flow congruently from the Scriptures and encompass our own contemporary reality.
Yes, we in missions would do well to think of new ways to define who we are, what we do and with whom we do it. We need to do this first for ourselves and then for the whole community. Indeed it may be the other way around, perhaps we need to find the words used in the community of faith which speak to the task and make them ours. A strategic question remains, what is our contribution as mission agencies to the world, which the Master is bringing into being? How can we in the mission community work with Him to shape this world?
Perhaps the most shocking realization for me as of late is that, in the present equation, I can no longer determine the answers to these questions for my organization, my network, and my ministry. These are systemic issues that must be dealt with and answered in the context of the greater GCC community. The whole network must be the focus of my consideration. A long time ago somebody said, "A rising tide raises all ships." This is a true statement. The opposite is also true. It is almost impossible to survive and grow in an environment of traditional missions, which is in decline. To think only of my organization or my industry, whether it be a single mission or a network of missions like EFMA, may merely lead it toward irrelevance. The tide is running against the traditional mission structures, though their influence for years to come will be felt even while they are diminishing.
While I do not have the answers to all these dilemmas, I do want us to think of one fundamental step in the re-conceptualization of our task. What I am going to suggest goes beyond system thinking, in that the model is not made up of inanimate components as many systems are. Rather I would like to discuss as a metaphor a living organism, an ecosystem. There may be some well-known Biblical metaphors that will help answer this fundamental question of who we are in our mission structures.
The starting point may be the foundational truth that as followers of Christ, as we are individually born of God's Spirit, we become a part of that organic union which is the Church. This is not optional but rather is part of the conversion experience itself. All of the metaphors that refer to the Church have applicability to us as part of that Body. We need to put the emphasis on who we are instead of what we are not. We are part of a great Kingdom community. Defining ourselves in the negative tends to put us into a defensive posture, when instead, we must take aggressive action in the direction of God's ultimate purpose for the nations. While aggressively following our unique calling we must also be caring and responsible members of the redeemed community. We cannot by our actions ignore our lineage. To do so would be as great a mistake as denying that the same genes which form the local congregation gave life us.
Among these Biblical metaphors for the church are the vine and the branches, the growing mustard tree, the wheat and the tares growing together in a field and fields which must be plowed, cultivated, watered. There are others pictures but all of these metaphors used by Christ or His apostles describe the Kingdom community that is here but is yet to come. The gathered community of believers in Christ is the advance contingent of this great Kingdom community. The local Body of Christ is not the Kingdom community; it is the incomplete and at times an even childish representation of the whole community. She has the DNA of her Creator, and one day this Body will be united with all who confess Jesus as lord. There will be brothers and sisters from every tribe, tongue and nation who will form the beautiful bride of Christ, our Lord. This bride is the unique focus of His love.
The organizational systems that govern her functioning are not an expression of her essence but rather are a pale reflection of that essence wrapped in our humanness. It is interesting that the metaphors Christ used are predominately biological or organic in nature. They are not essentially organizational, though there are always organizational considerations as one looks at structure. Let's consider the following picture of the Kingdom of Christ.
Christ's Kingdom is like a small seed that is planted and grows and has fruit that matures. It is good seed that multiplies and spreads over the land. In this organic world of the Church, how is the role of leadership characterized? In the words of the Apostle Paul, we are the ones who have been given the privilege of planting, watering and harvesting but the increase is in the hands of the Lord. We then are the gardeners, the ones to whom the vineyard has been entrusted. We are the ones who have the unique and awesome privilege of working with the Lord of the Harvest to increase the range of the fruit bearing plants. These thoughts are instructive, and I would like to follow up on them by thinking further on some models and different metaphors for mission and our ministries together.
Recently I have come across three contemporary and secular authors who talk about leadership as the art of gardening or managing an ecosystem. They talk about the function of leadership as one that is engaged in the formation of complementary, synergistic biological systems, ecospheres or biospheres. James F. Moore authors the book, The Death of Competition, subtitled, Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems, published by Harper Collins. Another seminal article that has sparked my thinking uses the same metaphor. This is an article by Kevin Kelly in the September 1997 issue of Wired magazine entitled, "New Rules for the New Economy." Last is the article by William Ashley and James Morrison in the September-October 1997 issue of The Futurist, "Anticipatory Management Tools for Better Decision Making."
James Moore discusses at great length the responsibility of leadership to act as managers of a biosphere or ecosphere. Kelly states that in the new network order, allegiance is first owed to the ecosphere or network and then to the organization. We Christians talk about this concept. We even quote the appropriate Bible passages to one another, but when the choice must be made, we seldom practice what we preach. Both of these authors say that co-evolution is the main objective. These are people from the business world who say that the big goal is not the creation of an organization, but rather the development and the guided co-evolution of a whole ecosystem.
Moore defines a ecosphere as a "biological community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations or people (species)." He talks about these ecospheres as having different species that occupy every level of the food chain but in symbiotic relationship to the other inhabitants. He also talks about the stages of development of these biospheres. These stages may sound a familiar and realistic cord from your own experience.
First of all, there is the pioneering stage in which defining a new system offering and delivering superior value seems to be the central focus. Here the "vision thing" is essential, and it is focused on the customers and those species you need as part of the system. The vision must be compelling and people must be able to see in their mind's eye a vivid and powerful image of that value which is being created. He highlights that there are those species in biological systems that seem to be specialized in occupying new open spaces. Sometimes they are crowded out later as the biosphere becomes more complex. I am well acquainted with these pioneering species since I continually have to uproot them from my garden. Moore feels that the biggest challenge in this pioneering stage is to find a space to develop this new and embryonic biosphere. It tends to need a sheltered niche in which the vegetation can grow unchallenged.
Then there is the second stage, the stage of expansion. Here the thing that drives the ecosphere is the quest for a critical mass so that the boundaries of the biosphere can be increased. There is an increasing diversity of species that becomes very critical to the ecosphere's co-evolution and growth. It becomes an internal goal to occupy all of the available spaces so there are no unoccupied niches to be exploited by rivals from outside the biosphere.
The third stage is the stable stage. He calls it the authoritative stage. This stage may not last very long. The leadership challenge in this stage of the biosphere's development is to lead in the continued co-evolution. He states that you do this by the supplying of a compelling but inclusive vision for the ecosphere's participants, which drives the whole system toward continued improvement and enhancement.
The last stage is the stage of renewal, where survival is an issue of renewal or death. Death may be the supplanting of the biosphere by more vigorous species. It is a time where the biosphere also struggles within itself for species ascendancy. Who will be the leader and benefit the most from this co-evolution? In every biosphere some species are more productive than others are. In this phase, insiders and participants also begin to look for alternative ecosystems that will be more conducive to their own growth.
Moore states that ecospheres or biospheres are made up of various types of species. He talks about customers, suppliers, lead producers, competitors and market intermediaries. It is one system or ecosphere; these are just the different categories of species that usually populate it.
In the U.S. mission ecosphere, the suppliers would be the churches and local groups of believers. They are the men and women in the pew who are united by their mutual calling to follow Christ and their vision for the world. The producers would be those who have specialized and proven their competencies. They are specific niche players in the GCC ecosphere. They could be the training institutions, religious mass media, relief and development community, mission agencies of various types, the for-profit and not-for-profit consultants that work with all of this. The final species that I can think of in this category are the large donors and foundations. These are a very unique species in our ecosphere. The producing species all have a contribution to make to the accomplishment of the vision. * Market intermediaries* are those civil governments and regulatory agencies that can help or hinder our expansion and approach to the customers. They are many times the gatekeepers.
To use Moore's categories again, for us, the* customers* are those men and women, peoples and nations who have not had the opportunity to become a part of the church because culture or language has impeded the flow. Because of this they have not been able to understand enough of the message of grace to accept or reject it. The Holy Spirit may have been working in that segment of society to create an environment so that understanding can take place when appropriately exposed to the Good News of Christ and His work. A question remains to be answered and that is, "For us, are national churches suppliers or customers?" John Carver, the guru on governance and boards, states that a mission statement for an organization must include "what benefits will occur for whom and at what cost." We must answer the previous question before we can define the service or the acceptable cost of delivery. There is not question about their occupying a significant niche in our eccosphere. They are an important component of the GCC biosphere For me they are suppliers just as the church at home is. As such they must be included for their strategic contribution but more importantly we have a strategic role to play together because we are one in Christ.
The last division here is made up by the competitors. For me, this is a fascinating category. These are not our brothers or sisters in Christ. Competitors are not the suppliers, producers or market intermediaries. Competitors, for us, are systems of religion or ideology that do not exalt Christ, and in fact, which promote rebellion against God. It is interesting in many ecosystems that the competitors are the means by which continued advancement in the ecosystem is obtained. For example, the pollinator and the eater of pollen are often one in the same. Many times in an ecosphere the predator that eats the seed is the distributor of the seed. The wind that assaults the flower is also the same wind that spreads the pollen that will insure fruit. So, in our ecosphere, the militant religion or ideological system that buffets the Church and resists the flow of the Gospel can be the same force that creates an environment in which the hunger for Christ and His Gospel flourishes at a later date. God is in control of the whole system. To exert leadership, we need to know who are the various players in our ecosphere and seek to create a climate for mutual growth or co-evolution.
We live in a networked era. It is a time of interdependent ecospheres. This is an era that has broken down the ways we used to organize ourselves. We once lived in an age where companies and missions that were there had high organizational walls for protection and from which one could launch attacks on the enemy. These entities were readily defined. Industries defined themselves and formed alliances with other industries. Both the insiders and the outsiders could readily identify themselves. So it was once with us, the missions industry. Everyone else outside our industry also knew who we were. We also had a clear sense of identity. All this seems to be changing.
In the commercial world, you thought of the automobile industry as one identified with steel and rubber. Today, the dominant component of your car may be the silicone chip. Rather than allying itself as the automobile industry with old steel, Silicone Valley may be a more advantageous component of the biosphere populated by the automobile. We used to think about a unique retail industry. However, when the largest retailer in America, Wal-Mart, considers itself primarily an information company, one wonders at the wisdom of our antiquated industrial groupings.
The same thing has happened to missions and the missions industry. The lines between church and missions, between home missions and foreign have all been blurred. It was once easy to define who we were at one time. We were the guys that did "it" "over there" with missionaries. Yet now we all find ourselves engaged in many, many other things and with alliances that we could not even have envisioned 20 or 30 years ago.
It is the contention of James Moore that when we cut ourselves off from potentially useful species by defining ourselves as a traditional industry, we set ourselves apart from other species that could enrich our biosphere and help us to occupy the environment in which we've been planted. Perhaps we did well to consider ourselves at one time a missions-movement or industry, apart from the rest of the Church, but today the category doesn't work. There are too many new people and new players who just don't look or act like we do but have the same vision and are a part of the same Great Commission Community (GCC).
This is one of our greatest challenges, but it may also hold the greatest potential for populating our biosphere with the variety of the new strong species necessary to have a complete ecosystem. In this context "complete" always has the connotation of constant evolution and never a static destination. Ecospheres are dynamic and always changing.
Kevin Kelly, who is the executive editor of Wired magazine, talks about 12 rules of the new networked society. He also uses the metaphor of the ecosphere or biosphere. I have picked out several of his rules or laws that I think are most applicable to our situation in the Great Commission community. Remember that his model is biological and not mechanical; it's organic and not engineered.
It is Kelly's contention that the age of computing is past. We live now in the age of the network. The great gains of computing have been made, and we are just on the cusp of a revolution that is caused by the linking of systems together rather than the creation of bigger and better machines. Kelly talks about a world that will function somewhat like our brains, where the many nodes are connected together and as these very connections are made, meaning emerges.
His first rule for the new networked age is to embrace dumb power. Kelly talks about linking dumb nodes to create smart results. The fact is that little bits of knowledge are embedded in almost everything we use and produce. In the linking of these little bits of information which in and of themselves seem insignificant, great things can result.
The second law is the law of plenitude, which states that more gives more. The fact is that growth of an ecosphere is essential. He uses as an illustration the fact that the fax machine was around for 20 years, but it was only as more fax machines were linked together that the impact of the technology was felt.
His third law is the law of exponential value. Kelly states that success is non-linear. An example of this was the fact that Microsoft, for the first 10 or 15 years of existence, did little more than break even, and then, after it had achieved a certain critical mass, it took off in an exponential growth curve. This displays how more participants become much greater than the sum of their numbers.
To skip a few laws, Kelly's eighth law is the law of allegiance. His observation here is that you must feed the network first, and as the network grows, so your organization or organism will grow with it. Isn't this what we find in Philippians, Chapters One and Two? These passages talk about the ascendancy of the Body, of the system over the particular ministry or personal vision. Paul, the writer emphasizes that the considerations of the Body should outweigh the preferences, or to the outward productivity of the individual or the individual organization. The teachings here define many of the values of the community that should be like beacon lights guiding our efforts.
Kelly's ninth law is the law of devolution. In this rapidly changing environment where today's winner is tomorrow's loser, the person or organization that becomes most profitable will be the organization that learns to let go at the top. The alternative is to ride the roller coaster down the cycle where a new curve upward can laboriously begin. Kelly admits that the discipline of letting go is difficult to master. Another author I read had an idea that might make this process a bit easier. He said that we should treat all our programs as experiments. This would help to keep from incorporating them into the organizational culture as "our way of doing things."
The tenth law Kelly calls the law of displacement, where the new always wins. The insignificant new little bits of information will continue to displace the older mass. If this is true, why do we maintain our tenacious hold on the tried and true even when it is not that productive? In the biological relm, new fruit is always born on new growth never more than a year old.
Law number eleven is the law of the churn, where Kelly advocates seeking sustainable disequilibrium. He refers to the ecosphere where constant disruption occurs. This is when new species replace old in biospheres. We don't like that feeling and work hard to create stable environments rather than teaching our people to be secure and yet to live with constant change.
His twelfth law is not really a new law; it is called the law of inefficiency. Here Kelly quotes a rather old theoretician, Peter Drucker, where Drucker says, don't solve problems, seek opportunities. Kelly shows that in the new networked world the new always seems to emerge from the inefficient use of time or effort.
He feels that if we spend all our time tweaking the old programs and products to make them more efficient we will miss the opportunity to exploit the new opportunity. Drucker deals with this as he has long advocated building on your strength and not spending all your time trying to shore up your weakness.
I mention some of Kelly's twelve laws to illustrate one point, and that is that the network world into which we are being moved is essentially different from the age in which we have lived. The laws which will mediate success in this new world have to do with linkages, the creating of critical ecological mass. The growth, size and diversity of a network (ecosphere) and constant change or co-evolution, are all factors of today's life. The art of letting go may have to become a way of life if we are to survive and flourish.
The Biblical metaphors I cited earlier are congruent with the observations of these contemporary thinkers. I use the thoughts of these men as a compliment to Biblical truth not to proof text some fad from the secular world. All truth is God's truth. Our experience and categories tend to obscure them until we see reality and it?s truth through new lenses.
By now you've read through all of these pages and you've begun to say, "Paul, what are you really advocating?" Thank you for your patience. William Ashley and James Morrision write in the Futurist magazine, "Change has become the essence of management. So, to survive and prosper in the future, you and your organization will have to perfect outside in, thinking skills to relate information about the external world to what is going on internally . . . . The first step is to identify emerging issues before they strike, much like earthquake forecasters scan the fault lines for signs of abnormal activity because the significant issues may emerge from unexpected places. It is important to scan the macro environment for social, echnological, and economic or environmental and political developments." This is what I have been attempting to do.
I have been thinking about some of these things for weeks and have a mental reservoir full of thoughts I am mulling over. The problem is that these thoughts seem to be jumbled up impressions rather than finely honed proposals. First, I believe there is a word of affirmation. As I think on what will be, as I ruminate on the things we need to change in EFMA to operate within this world, I am comforted. The fact is that a radical departure from the course of action we have plotted for our fellowship would not be needed. By instinct and through the Holy Spirit's leading, we are already doing many of the things we need to do. For more than 3 years the board of directors has wrestled with these and other issues as they have attempted to shape the association and give it a forward "lean".
We as an association are actively involved in networking. We are building coalitions. We are proactively involved in seeking to broaden our species mix to include others in the Great Commission community. As I reflect on what EFMA must do to become a system nurturer rather than an organizational builder, the question that arises is, "How can we be better gardeners or habitat managers?" There are a few significant things that as I feel will increase our productivity.
There must be a collective recognition that the rules that govern our organizational culture have changed. We live in a new day with new social and cultural rules governing our collective behavior. The Biblical and spiritual principles which discipline our interaction and comportment have not been altered. However, the context in which these characteristics are lived out are as different today from what they were when I committed my life to missions 35 years ago as are the cultural norms which govern human interaction between a Brazilian Indian from the Amazon and a high-tech German. The environment is vastly different. The old eccological mix is suffering because some of the species can not adapt to the new climate. We must change our conscious frame of reference and begin to mentally catalogue those differences so we can apply the whole council of God in an appropriate manner.
It is important that we in EFMA are on the same page in terms of espousing that introductory picture with which I started this paper. That picture represents the direction toward which we are moving. It is our navigational star so to speak. This must be the image that propels us to take concrete actions that will move us in the described direction as an association. We must aspire to more than the mere completion of our "industry" task. In God's economy, the means and the end are one and the same. God is preparing for Himself a people of praise as He seeks to extend His domain over the nations of the planet. We must purposefully minister to and be ministered to by all the various species in our Great Commission ecosystem.
Many of the issues we face in our US missions program are systemic. They can not be resolved even by the collaborative action of the community of mission agencies. In the past, we, the agencies, could mobilize the resources to do our own "missions thing." This is no longer the case. Too much Great Commission activity is going on outside our traditional "industry." This is true "here" in the U.S. as well as "there" among the nations.
Our destiny is inexorably intertwined with other species in our Great Commission ecosphere. Some of these new species are occupying space in the ecosphere that once belonged to people like us. We must all recognize clearly that we, as a fellowship, do not exist for the traditional "missions industry," but we exist to cultivate, to grow, to influence a much broader Great Commission ecosphere or biosphere of which we are a part.
We must refuse to be labeled or act like something other than the Church. We must clearly identify ourselves in every way as part of the Church of Jesus Christ. We must revel in that relationship. It does not matter if we are connected to a specific denomination or not. That organizational connection is a result of our history one way or the other, but it does not affect our nature as those who have been born and baptized into the Body of Christ. As such, we must learn to act as responsible and collaborative members in this Church community. For too long we have seen ourselves as the designated "dreamers of the dreams" of world evangelization. We have looked at the Church primarily as those who were obligated or could be manipulated (stimulated and mobilized) to grant us the resources for the accomplishment of that closely held vision. This attitude will no longer fly.
The members of the EFMA Board of Directors for more than three years have discussed in depth, the issue of depth and breadth in association service. In that context, I created a diagram that I felt represented a structure to which we were moving. See Figure #1. Subsequent to that discussion, events have led me to believe that we are not exactly on target towards that model. In its place, I submit to you the following diagram as my best present representation of who we are and where we are going. See Figure #2.
Most of this paper has revolved around the breadth portion of the equation. In a garden or ecosphere you, as a gardener, have to also take care of the health of the individual species as well as make sure that these species do compliment one another. Using that analogy, this is the depth component the board of directors has been wrestling with. EFMA will have to work harder to meet the needs of our various component parts, our members. We will do this using the form of a functional matrix with the functional specialties on axis X and the various species of organism on axis Y. Refer to Figure #3.
With EFMA's limited staff, we will have to be more successful at promoting volunteerism from within our member agencies. This will have to be the means for delivering the depth portion to make the equation effective. Our annual meeting should be made up of two parts. The first part, a meeting of networks or species, and the later to foster the appreciation for the whole ecosphere. The technical specialties can meet at other times since there is not so much overlap in personnel. Some of this is already going on as many of the affinity groups in Figure #1 are meeting together apart from us.
EFMA must discover how we can enhance the effectiveness of these groups while at the same time stimulating the creation of new groupings which will minister to one another on the basis of common and specific needs and challenges. In all of these special interest groups, the recognition of our oneness in calling and commitment must be highlighted and the destination to which we aspire must be held high.
There is one last thing I would like to mention. In all this theorizing and strategy, the overwhelming belief I hold is that the work in which we are engaged is God's work. It is He who has stated His love for creation, and it is His desire that all that has breath should praise Him. This has been His intent from the beginning of time. It is God who has called us and allowed us to be participants with Him in this effort to disciple the nations. He is the one who has empowered us, the whole Church, for this ministry.
Grace is the only word that describes for me the dynamic of our relationship with each other and to the task, but most importantly in our relationship to God. In this spirit we are totally dependent upon God's action in our world. As the nations are discipled it will be a result of His divine intervention, not our intelligence, strategy or hard work. This means that in all these relations I have been talking about, we must make sure of our spiritual foundations and disciplines. The main thing that will insure a productive future will be our commitment to follow the leading of God's Spirit. We must do so in such a way as to align ourselves with what He is doing in our world and what He has promised in His word.
I believe that we can thank the Lord of the Harvest, as He has led us is in the direction that we have come. As we continue to move in this direction, with that whole wonderful and compelling vision before us, He will continue to be our guide. That evolving panorama displayed in Revelation the 5th chapter will inform us as to the breadth and depth of our fellowship and the type of people that we should draw into our ecosphere, so that the symbiotic co-evolution of our habitat can be maximized. Join with us as a part of this awesome Great Commission Community which is committed to the Church and the task of cultivating the wonderful diverse and ever changing eccosphere. These peoples will one day be transformed into the praising throng which will sing with a mighty voice "worthy is the Lamb". This is all for the Glory of God until that day when all the discipled nations will bow before the King of Kings in praise and adoration. (4/1/98 version)
Sources: Ashley, William & Morrison, James (1997). "Anticipatory Management Tools for Better Decision Making." Originally appeared in the Septmeber/October 1997 issue of THE FUTURIST. Used with permission from the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. 301/656-8274. http://www.wfs.org
Kelly, Kevin (1997). "New Rules for the New Economy." Originally appeared in the September 1997 issue of WIRED magazine. Used with permission.
Moore, James F. (1996). The Death of Competition: Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Business Ecosystems. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers.