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Wherever there is Christian witness there are and always have been certain factors which have been involved, for the gospel must be communicated, whether in a home church or in a far distant land. Preaching since the earliest days of the church has been central to witnessing. In our own day we have added various means of extending the preaching: radio broadcasting and now TV broadcasting. But there has also been the problem of social and economic organization: tribalism, trade routes and barriers, have all their effects and have played an important part in the spread of the gospel and growth of the church.
From the earliest days of the church the method of spreading the good news of the gospel was for the missionaries to travel around a country, a province or a colony and seek for a place to proclaim their message. Sometimes this might be in a city, as in the case of the Apostle Paul, but it might also be a better policy to go out into the country, or to the villages where there would be more opportunity to meet with people and to hold small gathering to which they could speak. At the time of the Reformation this became quite common, and in Holland such missionaaries were known as “hedge preachers,” holding their services out in the fields. The cities were undoubtedly important and have always been for the church, but since most of the population (until our century) lived in the country, that was the principal area for the proclamation of the gospel, especially in lands as Africa and Asia. The cities have not always been the focus of mission work, and whenever they have the tendency has been to seek to reach the middle-class, rather than go into the slums and ghettos.
This situation, however, has changed very rapidly in the last fifty or sixty years, and is changing even more quickly today. It has recently been estimated that urban population is increasing at 3% a year, twice as fast as world population is growing. Some statisticians have come to the conclusion that by 2000 55% of the world’s population will be living in cities and that by 2050 that will increase to 80%. In 1900 there were 20 cities throughout the world with a population of one million or more, but by 2000 there will be 900. And these cities will not be just in the so-called developed countries, but across the world. Studies of population movement in Asia, for example, indication that in 1989 five cities; Tokyo-Yokahama, Shanghai, Seoul, Bombay, and Calcutta each has populations of over 10 million, and that by 2000 urban population will rise 300%, with forty-two cities in East Asia each having over one million residents and a total of 60% of Asia population urbanized. In Africa urbanization is taking place at even at a faster rate, although with tribal ties still strong, it is somewhat different from Asiatic movement.
Naturally one seeks to understand why these changes are taking place. To this question there are a number of answers. One is that the cities are where the money is. No longer can people in the rural areas simply live on the exchange of goods and services. They need cash. At the same time, with worldwide inflation, the need for money is becoming greater. The result is growing poverty in the country areas, as we can see even in our own country with declining grain prices. The solution for many is to move to the city. But in some lands, equally important is the current political situation with warfare and rebellion driving people to seek shelter in the urban ghettos in the hope of finding safety and a better way of life.
Socially, the result has been the development and expansion of slums in many cities. The urban poor live in the poorest possible accommodation and live on the most meagre sustenance. Anything like education or training for their families is unattainable, so the children grow up very often without any possibility of finding anything but the lowest form of employment. There are others who come into the cities with a little more financial resources. They settle in as squatters in vacant parts of the urban complex, but without much success in improving their situations. All this social change creates spiritual, temporal and social needs for these people. At the same time, for the Christian church it presents opportunities to reach out with the gospel and with economic and social help to meet the migrants’ needs.
All this, however, also faces those who are doing missionary work with special needs. Basically the greatest need is that those who are bringing the gospel to these people must understand them. This is, in most cases, difficult for a missionary who comes from the western world, usually from a white middle-class background, for he or she will find it a problem to really come to grips with the problems which face these people. Furthermore, with their usual lack of any education and a language which often does not resemble the native language in which the missionary has been trained, the missionary would probably find it almost impossible to present the gospel in an understandable way. What then is the answer to this problem?
The answer would seem to be found in the education and training of native missionaries. One advantage is that they have no need to have training in the native language for they will have grown up with it. Added to this, they will also have an understanding of native customs and attitudes. But what is perhaps most important is that they are natives, and so do not bring these people any feeling of inferiority or condescension which natives might have when listening to a Western missionary.
The result of this change in the geographic and social patterns in Asia and Africa is that the native churches are taking on the work of evangelizing their own people, particularly in the urban areas. A good example is a Presbyterian church in Seoul which has 10,000 members. It has recently built a church which will seat 7,000 with four or five services each Sunday and along with this a Christian education building and a missionary training centre which will train missionaries to take the gospel to places such as Indonesia and to the Koreans and others living in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Christians in Japan, China, and various African countries are following the same pattern.
What place is then left for the missionaries from western countries? Is there any? There certainly is. They can provide the support staff which many of the native churches need at the present time. Many are active in the role of teachers. I found it interesting in Japan, Korea and Taiwan to find the various theological seminaries being to a large extent staffed by academics from Canada, the United States, Britain, Holland and other western countries. Also the missionaries from these lands are acting as advisors to the native missionaries. And equally important are those who are medical doctors functioning, for instance in countries such as Nepal and Pakistan where the preaching of the gospel is either discouraged or banned. The June 1989 issue of the Presbyterian Record gave us a good picture of the numbers of our Canadian Presbyterians who are playing such parts in the spreading of the gospel.
The training of native missionaries is one of the most important aspects of the Christian missionary outreach today, and to this end native theological seminaries have been established in various countries. As mentioned before some of the faculties in such institutions have members from the western churches, but usually the majority are natives and the direction is in the hands of the natives. The older method of having the training of native missionaries take place in the western world has to a considerable extent disappeared, although they may go there for postgraduate work. Generally, however, the staffs in Kobe, Seoul, Kenya and similar theological colleges are primarily native in composition.
There are, however, other means of reaching people — particularly those in the urban areas — with the Gospel, and this is where we here in Canada come into the picture. At the present time we are seeing very considerable numbers of people migrating from the under-developed countries to Canada and other western countries. The recent events in China have stimulated quite a movement from Hong Kong, but they are also coming from Korea, Africa and South America. As a considerable number are Christians it would seem that we should make them welcome and encourage them to bear their witness to those whom they have left in their homeland. This would seem to be one of the important functions of our Chinese, Korean, Arabic and other ethnic Presbyterian congregations. They should be encouraged to keep in touch with those whom they have left behind in order to bring the good news of the gospel to them.
Another possible means of extending the missionary endeavours of the church is the students who come to the West for training, either undergraduate or postgraduate.These are not theological students, but those who are seeking further training in sciences of various kinds, and who are planning to return home once they have completed their studies. We saw recently considerable numbers of such students from China, who demonstrated against the massacre of students in Beijing. If the church can reach these students with the gospel they could certainly be messengers of the gospel when they go home. Organizations such as the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship are endeavouring to reach these students and individual congregations in university cities should be doing the same, that the gospel might be spread abroad by every means possible.
The need of the western churches is that they should reach out to every class of people, not only in their own lands, but across the world. Recent studies have shown that their tendency has been to reach to the middle and upper classes, but now they have the opportunity to support the native churches and individual native Christians in their efforts to bring the gospel to every level of society.
This means that they must seek ever more diligently to take the gospel to the urban element in the populations of the lands to which they are sending the message of God’s grace.
What then does this mean for the individual Christians and the church in our land? It means, first of all, that those churches which are seeking to do missionary work in foreign lands must lay increasing emphasis upon urban mission at all levels. It also means sending more workers who can give support to those who are native missionaries in their own lands. And finally it means not only financial support for the native churches and their institutions, but the prayers of all the Christians the world over that the gospel shall be spread abroad at all levels of society that God’s kingdom shall come and his will be done.