Wyatt
•
Recently, I was talking with a missions pastor (a self-proclaimed ‘missions-nerd’) who walked me through a framework he called “the history of modern missions.”
(Quick note: I’m not sure if this framework was originally his, but it was insightful nonetheless.)
The idea was pretty simple.
If you look at the modern missions movement over the last several hundred years, you can roughly see three major phases that have brought us to where we are today.
1. Coastlands (1790s-1860s)
This phase was really about just ‘getting there.’ That's why guys like William Carey and Adoniram Judson would spend months traveling by boat simply to arrive on the coast of another nation. Carey sailed for India. Judson sailed for Burma. The great challenge was crossing oceans, learning languages, and establishing a Gospel-presence. The coastlands were the front door.
2. Inland (1860s-1930s)
Eventually the question changed from ‘how do we get there?’ to ‘how do we go beyond the coast?’ Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission probably represent this shift better than anyone. Taylor wasn't satisfied with a missionary presence in China's coastal cities while huge portions of the country remained untouched. Young missionaries like the Cambridge Seven began pushing farther inland, and the focus increasingly became penetrating an entire nation.
3. Unreached People Groups (1970s-Present)
Then another realization emerged…just because the Gospel had entered a nation didn't mean everyone in that nation had access to it. Ralph Winter helped bring this to the forefront at Lausanne in 1974. The missions world began thinking beyond borders and toward specific people groups. David Platt and his ministry, Radical, have put fuel on this fire over the last 20 years and the question has been, ‘who still hasn't heard?’
So each movement has advanced the Great Commission forward and all three are still relevant today.
But the pastor didn’t stop there…
He told me he believes we may be stepping into a fourth era of modern missions – a new era he called “complex partnerships.”
When he said it, he didn’t define what he meant. But the phrase stuck with me….and I think he may be right.
Complex Partnerships (Present-?)
The first three eras were largely about overcoming barriers to the Gospel. How do we get there? How do we penetrate a nation? How do we identify and reach the people who are still being missed? But the barrier in front of us today feels a little different.
We can travel almost anywhere in the world in a matter of hours. We can communicate instantly across borders. We have tech, data, transportation, an abundance of faith-based capital waiting to be deployed, and more access than Carey or Taylor could have imagined.
And yet the task remains…complex. And relatively siloed.
In order to truly move the needle for the Kingdom of God, I think the next era will require a (re)uniting of church, parachurch ministries, faith-based NGOs, Christian entrepreneurs, tech leaders, and indigenous believers around clear Great Commission objectives. Which is complex.
We saw it happen during Billy Graham’s crusades.
Thousands of churches, volunteers, and businesses came together for catalytic events. What comes next may be more than just events…perhaps it’s about building catalytic Gospel ecosystems.
Building Gospel Ecosystems
An ecosystem that brings elite organizations around the table to solve complex problems that none of them could solve on their own.
An ecosystem that has:
Compelling vision big enough to require others
Actual accountability
Backend infrastructure to scale
A sense of urgency
And a disciplined heart of prayer
Vision. Accountability. Infrastructure. Urgency. Power of the Spirit.
One org that I think gives us a glimpse of this is illumiNations.
Their goal is to eradicate Bible poverty by 2033 by creating an alliance of translation and resource partners (American Bible Society, SIL, Wycliffe, Pioneer, etc.). Of the 7,000+ languages spoken around the world, 2,800+ have limited or no Scripture. Collectively they’re working to change that.
From an outsider's perspective, they seem to possess all five ingredients of a catalytic ecosystem. There is a compelling and measurable vision that demands the involvement of others. There is accountability toward that vision. There is serious infrastructure capable of supporting scale. There is urgency around the unfinished task. The global church and prayer remains central to the movement.
I think we are going to see more of this.
And frankly, it is shaping the way I think about BTEA. For more than 40 years, BTEA has been focused on sharing the Gospel. That mission isn't changing. If anything, I feel more urgency about it today. But I'm convinced that the future isn't simply about building a bigger BTEA.
It's about asking a bigger question: What would it actually take for every person in a target area to have a sustainable Gospel presence?
It will take complex partnerships.
For our part, we want to own our lane: building elite teams of local evangelists who systematically share the Gospel and connect those who respond to the local church.
But we’re just one piece of the ecosystem.
We need tech partners. We need people who understand data and systems. We need entrepreneurs who know how to scale. We need generous people willing to fund what works. And above everything else, we need the power of God.
Maybe that is the new era of missions…
The coastlands got us there. Going inland pushed us deeper. The UPG movement helped us see who was still missing. And perhaps complex partnerships will help us figure out how to bring it all together.
If so, I want BTEA to be right in the middle of it.
Wyatt
