Missio Dei

There are two reasons why I am writing in English today: on one hand there is a growing minority among the followers of this blog who aren't able to understand German and on the other hand I'm going to deal with a word which is not popular in Germany but throughout the entire English speaking world, namely “crusade”.
I as a German have always been wondering why people chose this term as a synonym for evangelistic outreaches, although everybody knows that the original crusades during the 12th and 13th century have been a terrible mistake.
Well, while nowadays everybody agrees on that, I am asking myself WHY everybody agrees that the crusades have been a mistake. Is it because the Christian knights killed many people and sometimes even violated human rights or is it only because of the fact that they have not been successful?
The first would be an idealistic, the second a pragmatical reason. And sometimes I have got the feeling that pragmatism has been playing the more important role in this decision.
Now some might say that measuring the success is a legitimate method of evaluating or distinguishing between God's and man's deeds according to Acts 5:38+39 (Gamaliel's advice). And success is a feature of God's blessing indeed (cf. 1 Sam 18:14), but it can never be the only one as the destiny of many kingdoms and even companies of this world as well as the entire Wisdom literature (Job, Ps, Prov, Eccl, Song) show.
So we better be prepared and think ahead before we are starting a so called crusade! (Not to mention that we should find a different name for it.) Because after collecting some experiences on the mission field in Europe, Africa and Asia Minor I found that there is a lack of people who are thinking ahead. Thus, the missing thing is not evangelism, but proper follow-up.
It is very easy to thrill masses of people as an evangelist. I mean, it is not for nothing that the Gospel is called the Good News. And because it is the Good News loads of people get saved everyday, especially in Africa where they are having the presumably biggest crusades in the world (according to the number of participants). So, most of the European and American missionaries who want to go to Africa to tell the Good News are on the wrong way. But this article is not supposed to be a manifesto against evangelism. On the contrary: it is a manifesto for follow-up!
Because Africa has already much more Christians than for instance Europe. Let's take Zimbabwe as an example: more than 20% of the citizens there are calling themselves “born again”, whereas in Germany there are not even 3% of those people. But if one compares the social situation of both countries, it seems like politics and economy in Zimbabwe are not even touched by any Christian values, while Germany is still profiting from the social market economy which was developed after World War II and specifically assisted by Christians.
And this brings me to a well known German theologian: Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was not involved in the development of this new economic system (because the Nazis had killed him some days before the war was over), yet he already was one of the people who had tried to end Hitler's terror regime and thus the war. But even though he failed, he has been clear about what he was doing all the time. He wrote that it would be unaccountable to get rid of a dictator without replacing him with some proper kind of leadership because otherwise everything would end up in chaos and so the situation would be even worse than before.
And this is pretty much what Jesus himself has said too, namely about possessed people whose demons have been exorcised without replacing them: “Then the evil spirit goes [back to such a person] and takes with it seven other spirits more evil than itself. They go and live there. That man is worse off than before. That is how it will be with the evil people of today.” (Mt 12:45)
Now, you might think that this applies to possessed people only. But that is wrong. Because according to the New Testament there are simply two states in which you could possibly be: the Kingdom of God, or theologically called regnum Dei = the reign of God, and apart from it there is only the world, called regnum diaboli = the reign of chaos.
This is also what for instance 1 Tim 1:20 deals with, where Paul is talking about Hymenaeus and Alexander of which he says, “I have handed them over to Satan”. That does not mean that he curses them or anything like that, but patently that they don't belong to Church, and therefore to the Kingdom of God, anymore and thus are under the reign of chaos again.
And if we are doing missions, we should try everything to not let that happen. We have to make sure that the chaos in the people's lives is replaced by Jesus. That is the reason why I am saying that countries like for example Zimbabwe need people who do follow-up. They need counsellors, apologists and not least economists but not evangelists.
Why evangelising Africa whereas your own country might need it much more? Escpecially if you could stay only for a short while anyway. That doesn't make much of a change. Because people are people and not mission objects. So they need love, not only the Gospel. And love requires time. But many people have little time, little love, don't think ahead but still go.
That is why I think that there is quite some truth in what John Stott (if I'm not mistaken) has said: Not everyone who goes is sent.