A Better Way To Do Missions

Cell churches planted by the local church is absolutely the best way for unreached peoples to experience revival. Those other missions organizations which have been sending missionaries for decades have been doing it all wrong.

It's so easy.... What you do is plant a church with a few "experienced" leaders (probably 22-27 years old) that have done this at a very unreached Baylor University campus. (The only more unreached campus might be Liberty or Oral Roberts.) They have multiplied a lifegroup, raised up interns, and done an intensive year of biblical study at Elevate and 24:14 (formerly Master's Commission and Antioch Training School) and Staff Values Training. The curriculum is mainly inspirational teaching that if you pray, fast, and believe hard enough you will be the channel that the Holy Spirit uses to bring about the long-awaited revival for some forgotten war-torn country in the 10/40 window. You learn about the country by reading wikipedia, a few guidebooks, and the Operation World prayer guide. Since you know more about the country than the average ignorant-on-world-affairs American you must be ready to go!

The plan is to go hangout in the country and learn the language. You don't want to get a job in the country because that takes too much time away from planting churches. You don't want to learn the language before you go, because that will delay the urgent revival that is going to happen there. You spend a year "working" in the U.S. by support raising. You've been told that you are sacrificing the best years of your life to spread the gospel so you think you need a salary that is at least as good as people serving themselves by working 8-5 in the U.S. You have to include airfare to all the retreats, conferences, and furloughs. You also need money for trips out of the country every six months to renew your visa because you aren't in the country as missionaries or employees (you didn't take time to prepare for something like that). You are in the country technically as tourists.

You take your training guide from AMI and expect to spend the first year learning the language and hanging out with people; your second year building a core church; your third year continuing to build your church and establishing a training school, your fourth year raising up new leaders and by year five you are outta there! Now you are off you your next country to establish a world-wide movement of revival. You don't get bogged down by things that affect other missions organizations like relief work. You stay focused - purposeful.

I don't know where the timelines and missions philosophy came from, but I know that these goals - touted as the way that God works - often fail miserably. The number of churches that Antioch has planted is always used as proof that they are abiding in Jesus and that their process is better than all others.

What is never discussed is failure.

Numerous mission teams have fallen apart. They go live the life as expats in a foreign land, but unlike other normal people, they don't have jobs. They might live a life of wealth that many in that land could never hope to attain. They hang out at shops or the tennis club (seriously) and find ways to strike up conversations with people about Jesus. Well, they don't speak the language for a long time, so the first and often only people that they befriend are those that already speak English. Someone in Uzbekistan, Russia, Lebanon or Turkey who already speaks English and sees wealthy Americans who don't have jobs must be pretty interested. "Please tell me about this Jesus." He must be the secret to their success.

Many teams don't ever stay long enough to really learn the language. They are not committed for the long term because the AMI training guide told them that they should be sailing along after a few years. When this doesn't happen, they question themselves, they question God, and they quickly have a revelation that God is pointing them in a new direction! Home.

These decisions are never discussed from the front of the church at ACC on Sunday morning let alone analyzed to learn from failure. The missionaries might come back to AMI for a few months and find a new job supporting the troops in the field or they might silently shrink away. The processes don't change. The machine keeps rolling on.

There are 200 freshmen Baylor students at World Mandate who have yet to experience the real world. They are filled with dreams and ready to take the lead....

Relationship Fantasy

Cell groups are the answer. Your friendships are there. It is how you learn about Jesus in a community. It mimics the early church. It is how you reach non-believers in a non-threatening way. This is what the leadership at Highland Baptist Church and Antioch said so it must be true.

Cell churches was the way that the Kingdom would come on this earth when we finished the job! But I have been a part of several cell churches and have rarely seen a small group work the way it is intended. For starters the focus on growth, multiplication, raising up new leaders, etc. usually gets in the way or building friendships and community. The timelines to grow and multiply groups is ridiculous. When I was leading, the goal was to multiply a group every six months to a year. How can you possibly even get to really know a person in six months, let alone become friends with someone?

It created a culture in which friendship was only based on an outcome. If you were a leader, you were "friends" with your section leader or zone pastor to usually discuss accountability issues (because you can't experience revival if you are sinning) and to discuss how well your group is going. If you are a lifegrouper, you were sure to be meeting with your "friends" to discuss your sin issues and your plan to spiritually develop so you too could become an intern.

Every leader was on the lookout for their replacement so that they could multiply their group and move on to the next stage. Now, I know that consciously everyone was not thinking about growth on a weekly basis, but the push for growth made this the underlying current for relationships.

The culture was one of personal meeting after personal meeting. You weren't really friends with anyone because you didn't have time to be. You had to get your lunch with your mission trip team leader and your breakfast with your discipleship group and your afternoon coffee with your intern and your hour at the prayer room. You knew people's sin and what they confessed was holding them back from experiencing more of Jesus, but you didn't have time to really experience life with anyone.

It is telling that the leaders at Antioch don't have friends outside of the leadership at Antioch! They don't have time. The husbands meet in accountability groups. The wives do some of the same. They hear a lot what is going on, but they don't experience any of this together. Their life goes from one hour meeting to the next thinking it is relationship, but it is an illusion of friendship.

From my time at ACC, I am really friends with my former roommates and some people that shared similar interests. Very few of them were ever in my lifegroup.

I Hate Antioch Community Church and Antioch Ministries International in Waco

I don't really hate ACC and AMI, but I do often find myself thinking about my experiences there with frustration and at times would call my emotions anger. A former leader, training school trainee, and zealot I believe I knew the early days of "the movement" well. I don't know it at all any longer, and don't claim that I do. However, I still talk with lots of former leaders, lifegroupers, mission trip leaders, former Baylor Landing tenants, etc. who are weary, confused, and disillusioned with Antioch. It affects their life and faith.

But no one has a place to share or process their thoughts when they are thrown out of the machine of "a Passion for Jesus and His Purposes in the Earth." They shrink away. Some burn out fast and leave with a bang! Others fade slowly, taking time to choose a different way. Any who speak out about something being wrong are quickly discredited as having "sin issues" or something similar to make sure their voices do not scare the flock of young, Baylor students anticipating the next World Mandate.

When I visit Antioch on occasion, I still see the same thing rolling on with little regard to all the broken people "the movement" has left along the way. Jimmy Seibert is still teaching the same things. Lifegroups still go the same way. Churches are still being planted the same way. Jimmy always says that you can judge a ministry by its fruit. I think that is true!

I don't think that the church or leadership honestly looks at any of the rotten fruit that comes from the ministry. Everything good is because of their passion for Jesus. Everything bad is because of a leader's sin issue. They never stop to examine if there is theological beliefs or organizational process that cause these failures.

This blog is just a small attempt to examine some of these issues. It is a place for dissent because none is welcomed in the church. Please use the comments section to raise your own questions, give your own examples, share experiences or disagree with me.