This is the next instalment of the serialisation of my book – The Teeth of our Exertions – full details of which can be found here.
Yes… but still not me!
Others will cite the ‘indigenous worker’ argument. This line of reasoning rests on a principle that indigenous workers are the best equipped to reach their own people. Therefore, we should be predominantly seeking to raise up homegrown workers to reach their own communities. There is certainly a legitimate case to be made for that. In our own church, if we are genuinely reaching and training people in our communities, it is obvious enough that those same people should be raised up to leadership roles in the church or sent out to plant other churches.
It just also happens that this is a very useful argument for those in middle-class communities to side-step the call to reach harder areas they have absolutely no intention of ever going to. It is very easy to nobly reject the call to leave your comfortable middle-class enclave and reach a deprived area because, on principle, it would be inappropriate and must be left to indigenous workers.
Whatever the merits of the ‘indigenous worker’ argument, deprived communities still need somebody to go and take the gospel to local people before any one of them might be raised up to reach their own. Mez McConnell has noted, ‘in the schemes of Scotland, we have come to terms with the fact that we are going to have to rely on “cultural outsiders” to help us at first. There is not enough in place right now to develop any significant momentum toward indigenous leadership’.[1] Beyond the need for ‘cultural outsiders’ to come into deprived communities, it bears saying that using the ‘indigenous worker’ argument as a reason not to go lacks Biblical warrant. Had the disciples taken this approach, again, the gospel would never have left Jerusalem. Nor would it have extended beyond a few Galilean fishermen and a handful of local tax collectors. Paul was quite clear on his need to become ‘all things to all people, that by all means I might save some’ (cf. 1 Cor 9:9-13). He did not confine himself to reaching the Jewish intelligentsia from which he came.
Beyond the general call to evangelism, there are at least two Biblical arguments with which we must grapple. The first is the Biblical focus on the poor. The second is Jesus’ call for us to die to self.
Jesus’ heart for the poor
First, we must deal with the fact that scripture does not call us to focus on the wealthy and affluent but rather appears to expect fruit principally amongst the poor. Tim Chester notes, ‘in some parts of evangelicalism, there has been a deliberate strategy to target people of influence. Many churches choose to reach students, at the expense of indigenous people on their doorsteps’.[2] However, more recently, this view has been popularised through a narrow reading of Tim Keller.[3] Although Keller has stated that, ‘you do need to have Christians everywhere there’s people’,[4] many have understood his emphasis to mean that we should focus primarily on cities and those who are influential therein.
But the Biblical data would seem to push us away from such a focus. That is not to say we shouldn’t try to reach the influential nor is it to say that middle-class communities or students do not need the gospel. Of course, they do. It is simply to say that the Bible expects much, if not most, gospel fruit among the poor and deprived.
Jesus, for example, noted that ‘only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven… it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God’ (Matt 19:23f). Elsewhere, he declares the gospel to be ‘good news to the poor’ (Luke 4:18) and, in the beatitudes, comments ‘blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Luke 6:20). Likewise, the apostle James says, ‘has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?’ (James 2:5 cf. 5:1-6). Paul picks up a similar theme in 1 Corinthians 1:26-29:
For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
Whilst it is obviously true and desirable that the wealthy and influential may come to faith, Scripture seems clear that the gospel is much harder to bear for the rich.
[1] McConnell, M. & Mckinley, M., Church in Hard Place: How the Local Church Brings Life to the Poor and Needy, Crossway, (Wheaton, Illinois 2016), p.162
[2] Chester (2012), Op Cit., p.13
[3] Cf. Keller, T., ‘What is God’s Global Urban Mission?’, Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, (Cape Town, 2010), pre-conference paper, accessed at https://www.lausanne.org/content/what-is-gods-global-urban-mission
[4] Troglin, R., ‘Shame the Strong or Influence the Influencers?’, The Gospel Coalition, podcast, 19 July 2016, accessed at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast/shame-the-strong-or-influence-the-influencers