The Wrong Question

May I be perfectly frank? Sometimes I wonder what, precisely, we have accomplished in seventy-five years.

We have prayed many prayers, it is true. We have sent many hundreds of missionaries. We have received the donations of faithful sisters and brothers from here and there around the world – millions and millions of dollars, and countless hours of service and volunteer energy. But there have been so many detours, difficulties and disappointments, too. To what end have we served, precisely? Maybe on some days you wonder, as well.

When my mind wanders in this direction, I think of a fat, green-spine volume on the top shelf, just to the left, in our Mission Library here in Minneapolis. I think of this volume often, in fact. It leaps into view, believe it or not, nearly every time I enter the room, just down the hall from my office.

The book is titled, “The Church in Asia,” edited by Donald Hoke in 1975 – not so very long ago, actually, maybe within your lifetime.[1] You will recognize the country names and people groups described in this volume. But the descriptions belong to an entirely different world.

“Outer Mongolia,” the author reports, “is tragically distinguished as the only country in Asia – possibly the world – without a single Christian church, witness, or assembly of any kind.” “This country may thus be the only national… enclave in the world today where no Christian witness of any kind exists.”[2]

That was then, some 35 years ago. There are more than 50,000 Christians in Mongolia today.[3]

Our own Jonathan Lindell contributed the chapter on Nepal. “Christ’s church has been firmly planted,” Jonathan reported in 1975. “There may be some 450 Christians scattered in thirty small congregations throughout the nation,” he added glowingly. “In the capital city of Kathmandu there are three church buildings, with a possible total membership exceeding 150.” “The future,” we are told, “is modestly hopeful.”[4]

That was then. There are more than one million Christians in Nepal today.[5]

And then there is China. Art Glasser describes “a spiritual vacuum of enormous proportions” in the mid-1970s. “All vestiges of organized Christianity [were] destroyed during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-69.” The government had been “rigidly orthodox in [its] adherence to the Marxist mandate that religion must be destroyed.”[6]

People may still have been coming to faith, Glasser conjectured. There were “persistent reports” of an “informal, underground, cell-type Christian movement.” “Christians still doubtless exist in large numbers,” Glasser assured us, here and there around the country.[7]

But that was then. Today the church numbers 115 million sisters and brothers, approximately 8.6% of the population overall, and continues to grow dynamically.[8]

It has not always gone so well, of course: there remain many, many pressing needs in Asia and throughout the world. The percentage of Christians in Bangladesh has not changed much since 1975 – still approximately one-half of one percent.[9] The percentage of Christians in The Islands is even smaller – maybe 1500 sisters and brothers overall – less than three tenths of one percent. And in much of Asia persecution is greater than in the 1970s. Concerning The Islands, Hoke reported in 1975, “Anyone attempting… active religious work would face the certainty of immediate deportation.” This remains a certainty today.[10]

So what have we accomplished, precisely?

Donald Hoke’s green-spine volume should remind us that the question of precise accomplishment is precisely wrong. The subject is wrong; the verb is mistaken; the object is inappropriate. What is worse, when we get the question wrong in this way we will get the answer wrong, as well.

God is at work across the world, and in ways that we don’t always see and can’t easily anticipate. If anything is “accomplished,” it is God’s doing. God is the subject and God provides the verb; he designates the object, too. God orchestrates the affairs of his Kingdom; he alone holds the baton. We can only watch for his arm to move in our direction, then take up our place in the chorus.

Sometimes, of course, we can also look back – one year, ten years, or seventy-five. And if we look carefully, if we look in faith, we may surely find reason to celebrate. Not for what we have accomplished, if you please – but for what we have observed. Not for our many prayers, or our hundreds of missionaries, or our faithful volunteer efforts through the years. God has been at work! And from time to time and place to place – simply, graciously – he has invited us to join in.