Counterfeit Jesus, Counterfeit Missions

The other day my wife and I were running (in the spirit of complete transparency we were doing more walking than running) around a beautiful bay located about a mile from our house here in San Diego.  Our route took us past an elderly couple, probably two years older than us, and I groaned inwardly as they were manning their post, handing out Jehovah’s Witnesses literature to any who would take it.  I purposed to stop and talk to the next folks I saw doing that, which I did. Knowing that the ‘Jesus’ they are preaching and teaching doesn’t represent the Jesus of scripture.  A simple straightforward reading of John 1, Colossians 1, or Hebrews 1 doesn’t allow for anything other than the fact that Jesus is fully God, Creator, who came in real human flesh. Getting Jesus ‘wrong’ has been happening since Paul wrote to the Colossians and John wrote his first epistle to those denying the incarnation of Christ.

Missions, too, has had its share of counterfeits. In centuries past, those religious workers who went to foreign lands to pacify the natives and, in the process, conquering countries surely fit that description.  What Roland Allen saw missionaries doing in China and Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries grieved him, causing him to write Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? in 1912. He wasn’t too popular in the missionary community for exposing how far away from Paul’s methods the workers in those days had strayed.

After receiving much criticism, Allen doubled down in his 1927 edition and stated in his introduction, “The cause which has created this prejudice against the study of the Pauline method is not far to seek. It is due to the fact that every unworthy, idle, and slip-shod method of missionary work has been fathered upon the Apostle.  Men have wandered over the world, ‘preaching the Word’, laying no solid foundations, establishing nothing permanent, leaving no really instructed society behind them, and have claimed St. Paul’s authority for their absurdities. Almost every intolerable abuse that has ever been known in the mission field has claimed some sentence or act of St. Paul as its original.”¹

It is no different today.  In our day Jesus sending his disciples out two by two in Matthew 10:5-15 and Luke 10:1-12 are cut and pasted together to form the basis of one very popular method known as ‘Disciple Making Movements’ or DMM. One of the cornerstones of DMM is the finding of the Person of Peace (Matt 10:12,13 Luke 10:6).  Some practitioners of DMM have even stated that if no PoP is found in a village the worker should move on. The fact that Jesus was giving specific instructions for a particular situation and not a prescriptive methodology that is to be modeled throughout time is simply ignored. We know this to be the case as we do not see Peter at Pentecost focusing on finding a key individual and Paul’s format of starting wherever he could (typically in a synagogue) rarely finds him focusing on a key individual. Paul started wherever he found an opening!

Even the words of the Great Commission, Matthew 28:18-20, are spun so that the historic term ‘evangelism’ is now replaced with ‘discipleship,’ thus leading gospel workers to train unregenerate individuals to obey God in their unsaved state is now common.  Yes, we absolutely want to see folks who have bowed their knee to the Lord Jesus and his message of salvation discipled in godly habits of obedience to him.  But these new counterfeit workers, all good motivations aside, are doing more harm than good.  Once an unsaved person feels he can do something to obey the God of scripture he will be most effectively inoculated from ever actually coming to serious repentance.

Similarly, the words of Jesus in John 16:12,13 and 1 John 27 are used to legitimize “facilitating a Bible study” but staying away from teaching, as it’s too “Western.” Think of the many times we are told of Peter, John, Philip, and Paul preaching, teaching, reasoning, proving with unsaved people.  All of that is swept aside by the new counterfeit method…facilitation.

In Luke 8, Jesus gave the parable of the 4 fields which he likened to the four types of heart reactions to the Word of God being taught.  But today it is being used to biblically support a new type of church planting method called “4 Fields” or “4 Chair Discipling.”

Such misuses of scripture are common in the missions world today. Oftentimes with the validation simply being “Well it’s working” or “The world of Islam and Hinduism is so vastly different than the world Paul navigated, we must get more creative.” To a degree, I agree with the latter sentiment, but our creativity must never stray into contradicting the Pauline method.

When Roland Allen’s book first was printed he faced similar objections. It was stated by some, “…the gulf between us and the people to whom we go is deeper and wider than that between St. Paul and those to whom he preached” to which Allen replied, “the greater the gulf the greater the value of the apostolic method.”² We believe, and at Radius we teach, that Allen was correct in that statement. Allen believed that methods matter. Ideas have consequences, words have meaning, and clear definitions are critically important.  We’ve heard too often, “Oh it really doesn’t matter.” But it does! Mushy thinking in missions is now far too normative.

As federal agents on the counterfeit task force learn to spot phonies by examining real bills, during this 2nd semester at Radius we are carefully walking through the book of Acts. Especially focusing on the consistent principles of gospel propagation, the discipling of believers towards maturity, the formation of churches, and the normative means that we see throughout.  We are aware that at times God used signs, miracles, and extraordinary means to exalt His message and, of course, He is free to do so even in this day and age…He is GOD! But we also must realize that most often in the book of Acts it was the clear proclamation of His Word that was the impetus for all that followed.

Unlike those who deliberately preach an unbiblical Christ, we believe most of the counterfeits in the missions world today DO know the Lord Jesus as Savior. But sadly, those who ‘come to faith’ under their ministry we would have much less confidence in their conversion. We must always remember…it’s very, very easy to get the gospel wrong!