What is Real Missions? -by Dr. Tommy Ashcraft


I have many thoughts on this article, but would love to hear your thoughts first about the good and bad written in this article.

__________________
Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

Whoa ... Pergamum, warn us, dude.

Heads up to the rest of you. This site blasts music that may wake your sleeping spouse. Mute your laptop before you click.

__________________
Caroline
OPC
Schenectady, NY
Blog: The Unlikely Calvinist

Ha, sorry I didn't know (I had my speakers off).

It's ok ... just caught me off-guard there. LOL

About the article ...

Hmmmm ... well, the style is very off-putting. I have little patience with preachers who insult people. That was a common UPCI tactic ... tearing people down, calling them 'stupid' and so on. And frankly, I don't believe him when he says not to send him money. I dare someone here to send $50 to his 'Support' address and see if he actually sends it back and tells them to donate it to their local church instead. The interesting thing about a lot of people who follow guys like this is that they send more money to someone who says these things, because they say, "Well, this guy is really just in it for the ministry and doesn't want money." It's reverse psychology of a sort. It's like David Wilkerson selling millions of books to his avid fans who gobble up every word he says ... while claiming to be unpopular and preaching a hard message that no one wants to hear. For an unpopular prophet preaching a hard message, the guy makes a good living and gets a lot of speaking engagements.

These kind of guys know how to make themselves look good. They pull the plain-spoken 'humble guy' routine while calling other people names and building themselves up as the only ones with the really successful ministry. I'm quite bored with it. Seen it a million times.

As for the substance of what he says, I think he does have a few not-horrible ideas. I like the idea of building a church and working with churches. However, I have known denominations (which he seems to be against) to do that also. In fact, I know a former CRC missionary who started a church in Mexico that today (under the guidance of local pastors) has grown into a denomination that has multiple churches all over central and southern Mexico.

It is a good thing to have zeal for reaching the unsaved. But zeal without knowledge is a dangerous thing. For example, you can get lots and lots of people 'saved' in a Word of Faith church because you tell them God is a big ol' Santa Claus in the sky who will give them anything they want. And they don't know better because no one from the 'dusty institutes of higher learning' is there to point out all the unbiblical error. So numbers aren't always the proof that someone has a 'great ministry'.

In the Pentecostal church, we had total disdain for tradition and we were big fans of this kind of ministry that cast seminary and learning to the wind and said that the only important thing was 'winning souls for Jesus'. Ultimately, many of us became agnostic or atheist, and others such as myself found ourselves crawling to traditional churches begging to be taken in. It's a lesson that I won't ever forget. I'm deeply suspicious now of those who say denominational structure doesn't matter and study isn't important. I used to have that attitude, and the soul I didn't 'save' was nearly my own.

Yes, the article was very "off-putting" to me also. I also LOL'd when I saw the article, not due to the music, but due to the very acerbic nature of the thing.

The website that came from also likes to identify "heretics" like Matthew Henry, Paul Washer, and John MacArthur.

__________________
Jake; Hold to Original WCF, member of SBC; Greater Atlanta, Georgia Area

The cross does not give us a minor shift or two with regard to a few of our ethical and moral and religious values; the cross radically disrupts the very center and citadel of your life from self to Christ. —Albert N. Martin

So, wading through the drek, what are the good themes and the bad themes that he is stressing? Are his views common?

blow-hard. Okay, so that's a compound word...does that count as two?

I love it when people "name" their "ministries" after themselves....

__________________
Brian S. Cole
Deacon, Westminster Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Vancouver, WA
"Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives, and when he isn't around he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?" - Clarence the Angel in "It's a Wonderful Life"
Kirsten Pipes rule! www.kirstenpipe.com

He keeps stressing terms like "a church" and "the church". Correct me if I'm wrong, but if he wants to draw his example from Acts 13, the "a church" could be a local group of believers meeting in different homes, therefore being an association, but considered one. Doesn't this blow his argument out of the water?

"Now I want you to look at Acts 13...Now there were in the local organization of ministers and wonderful Christians - Noooo, now what does it say? "Now there were in the" -(Hey! don't mess with that.) - they were in the church. This was a local, independent, fundamental, Baptist, soul winning, red-hot, preaching, separated church. God's plan for world evangelism starts and ends in the church."

Do I detect some denominational bias here???

If I visited a congregation and a message that started out like this was coming from the pulpit, I wouldn't even have the respect to sit through the rest of the meeting.

__________________
Rich Koster
1689'er
Browns Mills NJ USA
Often Goofy Reformed Eccentric
Romans 7:14-25

Parts of it were fun to read, but he's clearly not reformed.

I can see why he'd be popular at certain missions conferences.

__________________
Edward
Deacon
PCA
Texas

WOW..I forgot about the music and revisted the site! Why is it that the more Fundy a site is the more cheesy the graphics and the more likely it is that annoying music will scare you out of your computer chair.


Some distrubing things about his article:

--He seems to dismiss learning about missiology, learning about anthropological principles that would allow him to even learn a local language.

--He says that mission societies are the reason that the work of the likes of William Carey and Judson is not going, but these two men (besides being calvinists) also worked with societies, Carey advocating the mission society (the voluntary association) in his great book The Enquiry. And after Carey several dozen mission societies popped up and gave legs to mission efforts.

Also, he seems dismissive of the idea of striving to turn over local congregations to local (i.e. indigenous) men.

In the name of "preaching the truth" he sounds pompous. I think this sort of thing is what is making young people flee the church in droves in our day. There is a certain mannerism among some Indy Fundy types that does seem full of themselves, sure of themselves and an expert in every subject on which they speak. Sort of like that cartoon character foghorn leghorn, maybe. I don't what why or what breeds it. Maybe Indy Fundy preachers imitate other Indy Fundy preachers until it becomes a self-replicating process.

His criteria of mission success seems to be attendance at his services and baptisms. These are good things, but many Indy Fundy churches I know of, his is it and it almost becomes like ponzi scheme, go sit in a church, bring more people to sit in a church, send money so missionaries build buildings for more people to sit in. COndemn people because they don't want to come and sit with us. Success seems to be how many people sit and not what they do the rest of the week.

And of course, I am also suspicious of people who name ministries after themselves, even while stating the importance of the local church.


p.s. his website is a real hoot. Check out the main page. It has the Pope and the Devil holding up the NIV and calling it "their" Bible and if you click on it you get linked to an article about the "NEw International PERversion" of the Bible. I LOL'd and almost ROFLMARM OFF