International (MNN) — More than two-thirds of the world’s Christian population resides in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are now more missionaries being sent from countries in that two-thirds majority than from North America and Europe.
It’s an emerging trend in missions that SIM International is recognizing and embracing. SIM is an international mission already, with many of their leadership and an increasing number of missionaries from different parts of the world.
SIM’s Steve Strauss says partnering with indigenous missions is a strategic move for the future, “We’ve been doing lots of things out of our US office and partnering with indigenous Latin American missions, but in helping other mission agencies emerge from Africa, Asia and Latin America, we see ourselves in the future as even more a servant of these agencies so that we’re not absorbing them into SIM but rather we’re helping them grow strong and become even better and more effective in their role, and we want to be a wonderful ‘older brother’ you might say, to what God is doing in the emerging missions movement around the world.”
It’s an exciting time for missions, and Strauss says it’s a both/and approach, missionaries from everywhere to everywhere,” Well, we think it’s the future of what God has for missions. And God’s not done with the church in the West, and He’s certainly not done sending missionaries from the West. One of the things we want to discourage is what I sometimes call “checkbook evangelism” or “checkbook missions,” where a church thinks that all they need to do now is write the checks and send them over to missionaries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, and that we don’t need to send our own sons and daughters anymore.”
Strauss continues, “And whereas it’s very important for us to support the emerging missions movement financially, the last thing we need is to say that that relieves us from any responsibility and that will only deprive us of the great blessing of what God has in store for us as we are involved in missions around the world. So we want to do a both/and kind of approach and not an either/or approach.”
SIM is actively involved in developing partnerships with emerging missions across the globe. SIM is intentionally changing their structures and philosophy from “western only” to a truly “global mission.”
If you’d like to learn more about what SIM is doing, visit their website.
