Healthy Indigenous Church: How Do We Get There?
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STATEMENT
These are the critical steps in establishing a healthy indigenous church:
Equip and send a biblically qualified missionary.
Establish a meaningful presence.
Practice biblically faithful, contextually adept evangelism and disciple-making.
Aim to constitute a biblically ordered church with biblically qualified leaders.
Aim for the church to have an outward as well as an inward orientation.
Missionaries should not wait until an indigenous church is established to be meaningfully joined with a church. The missionary’s work reaches a crucial stage but does not end when local leaders are raised, and the congregation takes responsibility to guard the gospel.
A missionary who seeks to plant and establish an indigenous church must be equipped to patiently establish a meaningful presence (ongoing language and culture acquisition), persevere through cultural and ministry difficulties (including isolation and other losses), and persist in sound teaching and practice in the face of temptation to pragmatism.
How do we establish healthy indigenous churches? It’s the aim of every missionary, but no one seems to agree on how to get there. Some recommend a hands-off approach: give them the Bible and get out of the way. Others get too involved and never let go. Methods and models abound. Some redefine conversion altogether: keep Jesus' followers in local religions so the gospel becomes indigenous to Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist communities. With approaches ranging from simplistic to unwise to confusing to heretical, it’s no wonder there are so few healthy indigenous churches to show for the billions of dollars spent on missions. So, how do we get there? And what are we even aiming for?
What is a Healthy Indigenous Church?
At its most basic, a local church is a gathering of baptized believers who commit to one another in love to regularly sing, read, pray, and preach the gospel and make the gospel visible in baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
A healthy church is further ordered by biblical principles of expositional preaching, gospel doctrine, conversion, evangelism, membership, church discipline, discipleship, leadership of elders, prayer, and missions.
Missionaries define “indigenous” with different shades of meaning, so let’s be precise and clarify what indigenous does not mean concerning the church. An indigenous church is one whose majority language, membership, and leadership are native to a place. For example, a Kurdish-speaking church in Kurdistan.
Indigenous, however, does not mean non-Western. A Farsi-speaking church in England may be helpful for immigrants and refugees from Farsi-speaking countries, but it is not an indigenous church. An English-speaking church in England is an indigenous church, as is a Farsi-speaking church in Iran, where Farsi speakers are naturally from.
Furthermore, indigenous does not mean homogenous. A Swahili-speaking church in Tanzania is an indigenous church, even if its members come from different tribes and tribal languages. People don’t need to divide into separate tribes to be indigenous; they can gather around a common language.
Finally, indigenous does not mean xenophobia. Indigenous churches are not indigenous forests needing protection from invasive species. Healthy churches welcome the stranger (Ephesians 2:11-22). An indigenous church in Japan that warmly welcomes Koreans and Nigerians into membership displays the power and wisdom of God (Ephesians 3:10).
To sum up, a healthy indigenous church is a biblically ordered congregation that is native to a place and welcomes the stranger. This is the aim of missions [1].
Now, how do we get there?
Five Critical Steps
So much goes into establishing a healthy indigenous church. We can’t cover everything that could be said, but the New Testament provides an outline. Here are five critical steps based on explicit instruction, biblical wisdom, and godly examples.
Step One: Equip and Send a Biblically Qualified Missionary
The church in Antioch sent their best (Acts 11:22-26). Paul and Barnabas weren’t random people passionate about missions—they were faithful members of a local church. They were commended by the church and accountable to the church (13:1-3; 14:26-27). They were qualified. If we get this step wrong, we set everything off course.
Send missionaries qualified in character. Use the fruit of the Spirit and elder and deacon qualifications to evaluate aspiring missionaries (Galatians 5:22-23; 1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9; 2:1-8). Cultivate godly character. Don’t send anyone you wouldn’t nominate or hire to serve in your church. Send model Christians.
Send missionaries qualified in confession. Missionaries are sent to proclaim the gospel and establish churches (Matthew 28:18-20). Ensure your missionaries believe the gospel and the biblical principles of a healthy church (1 Timothy 3:14-4:16; 6:20-21; Titus 1:5). Too many missionaries assume the gospel and neglect the church. The results are weak churches susceptible to false teaching and indigenous populations inoculated to the gospel.
Send missionaries qualified in conviction. In the uncertainties of ministry, missionaries are less likely to rise to the occasion than sink to their level of training. Train your missionaries to endure suffering and opposition (2 Timothy 2:3). Forge biblical conviction in the fire of local ministry before sending them to the field (1 Timothy 4:15). Equip them with confidence in God and his Word. Test them, see them approved (2 Timothy 2:15). The shores of missions are littered with missionaries who shipwrecked their faith when faced with opposition, suffering, or the siren call of quick results.
Send missionaries qualified in competency. Missionaries are not less than evangelists, but they must be more. Equip your missionaries in doctrine, teaching, and training others. Church-planting men should be able to teach and lead congregations (1 Timothy 2:12; 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9; 2:1-2, 6-8). Women who assist should be able to teach women and children (1 Timothy 3:8-13; Titus 2:3-5). Missionaries must acquire every skill necessary to establish a church.
Healthy indigenous churches begin with equipping and sending biblically qualified missionaries [2].
Step Two: Establish a Meaningful Presence
Qualifications are not enough. Missionaries must get to the field and work hard once they get there. In modern missions, missionaries must usually acquire a visa and may have to work a second job to gain access to a place. Once there, meaningful presence usually begins with learning language and culture. Many missionaries learn the “heart” language (or mother tongue), but trade languages may be just as effective where they are widely used. The Apostle Paul happily used Greek to plant indigenous churches in the ancient world [3].
The Apostle Paul was also intentional and flexible in establishing a meaningful presence. He usually started with synagogues but also pursued people for the sake of the gospel in houses, the marketplace, philosophy clubs, jails, courts, boats, and shipwrecks (Acts 13-14; 16:11-15; 17:16-18:5; 22:30-28:10). He was always sharing the gospel and preferred ministry in person (Romans 1:11-15; see also the Apostle John’s words in 2 John 12). He modeled as much as he spoke (1 Thessalonians 2:9-12).
Some missionaries misapply Paul’s priority of visiting synagogues first. They assume meaningful presence begins at the mosque, the temple, or whatever “synagogue” an indigenous people may have. Some go so far as to encourage believers to remain within their religious communities to make the gospel indigenous. Sadly, this “insider” approach is meaningless at best and heretical at worst: a different gospel that is not the gospel (Galatians 1:6-7).
Establishing a healthy indigenous church begins with doing whatever it takes to establish a meaningful presence in a local community—without gospel compromise.
Step Three: Practice Biblically-Faithful, Contextually-Adept Evangelism and Disciple-Making
There is no such thing as a church in a place until a Christian exists who covenants with other Christians to gather for worship under the Word (Matthew 18:20). An indigenous church begins to take shape when God calls sinners out of darkness and marks them off from the world by baptism and the Lord’s Supper. At this critical step, a desire for speed and results (coupled with the discouragements of language learning, slow growth, and persecution) tempts missionaries to compromise. Evangelism and disciple-making must remain biblically faithful and contextually adept if an indigenous church is to be healthy.
For a missionary, biblical faithfulness must begin with joining a local church or forming a church where there is no church (Hebrews 10:23-25; John 13:35; Ephesians 3:10; 4:11-16). Missionary teams should not delay joining or forming a church while they seek to establish an indigenous church. Why would missionaries imperil their souls as they seek to save the lost? Why would indigenous believers ever establish a local church if missionaries won’t join one? Why would missionaries disregard the very means God has given to display the gospel and grow disciples? Biblically faithful evangelism and discipleship begin with the local church.
Perhaps the main reason missionaries don’t join a local church or invite indigenous believers to join their own is fear of colonial missions. They want to establish local churches that are culturally indigenous and untainted by the West. This instinct is commendable but must be directed by biblical instruction and wisdom. Ironically, Western missionaries continue to have oversized influence with a tendency to over-contextualize and back off from biblical clarity [4].
The Apostle Paul was adept at contextualization. He didn’t dress up the gospel to make it more appealing; he clarified it to make it more easily understood. He became a servant to his hearers to win them to Christ (1 Corinthians 9:19-23; 2 Corinthians 4:1-12) and adept at shifting gears (not the gospel!) as he spoke to Jews in the synagogue and Greeks in the marketplace. He established congregations united in the gospel, not Jewish or Greek culture.
A missionary may become so focused on language and culture and establishing a culturally indigenous church that the tail starts to wag the proverbial dog. Culture becomes king. The Bible submits. On the other hand, a missionary might neglect the hard work of language and culture and discover down the road that the indigenous church never really understood the gospel or owned church order in a contextualized way.
Missionary qualifications and meaningful presence don’t establish healthy indigenous churches if evangelism and discipleship are not biblically faithful and contextually adept.
Step Four: Aim to Constitute a Biblically-Ordered Church with Biblically-Qualified Leaders
Perhaps the most critical statement in the Bible for our discussion is Paul’s warning and exhortation in 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. The apostolic teaching on the gospel of Jesus Christ is the foundation of a healthy indigenous church. And what we build upon that foundation must be God’s design, using God’s materials, done in God’s way, with God’s help.
Thankfully, we are not left to guess what these are. The New Testament gives clear instructions for building healthy churches. Paul was an exceptionally skilled master builder and wrote at length about church order. Missionaries should aim, like Paul, to constitute biblically ordered churches. This is how indigenous believers will grow in the gospel, display it, guard it for generations to come, and spread it to those who have never heard it.
Churches have tended to send missionaries zealous in evangelism and one-on-one discipleship, but who are largely ignorant of how a church ought to be ordered according to Scripture. Many can’t define what a church is, what a church does, or why church order matters. Some want movements that spread rather than structures that slow down. Others assume the Holy Spirit is sufficient to teach new believers without needing a human teacher. Some become so concerned with biblical order that they never advance trust to the indigenous congregation. Many bow to inter-denominational pressure and reduce biblical order to the lowest common denominator.
What is the result of weak ecclesiology? Culture clubs rather than churches, large numbers of nominal Christians inoculated to the gospel, syncretism, weak disciples vulnerable to false teaching, weak evangelism, questionable conversion, unchecked sin, abusive authority, disunity, worldliness, commitment to parachurch organizations rather than to the church, delayed growth, delayed self-sufficiency, delayed self-governance, no vision for global missions – the list goes on. In short, there is no healthy indigenous church—just more obstacles to establishing one.
Our best efforts will face many of these issues in a fallen world. Establishing a healthy indigenous church is messy, even with clear steps. Paul wrote most of his epistles to address serious problems in the churches he planted. His advice was always the same. Remember the gospel and put the church in order (See especially 1 Corinthians, 1 Timothy, and Titus). No matter how messy things may get, we must never second-guess God’s instructions or his design. Following his way is hard enough. All other roads are worse.
Key to gospel integrity and church order is raising up indigenous leaders and encouraging the congregation to take responsibility for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-16). Paul was eager to raise up leaders (2 Timothy 2:2). He was also careful (1 Timothy 5:22). Paul counseled churches, but he also encouraged congregations to exercise their authority (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 5). Establishing a healthy indigenous church requires biblical wisdom. We must be hands-off and hands-on in the right way, at the right time, with the right people.
Step Five: Aim for the Church to Have an Outward as well as an Inward Orientation
From the beginning, missionaries should model and work to instill a desire to make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything Jesus commanded (Matthews 28:18-20). A healthy indigenous church will recognize they are part of a history of churches and the universal church. They will love and pray for and partner with other churches. They will equip their own, train, and send. They will build themselves up and seek to build up other churches. They will become a net exporter rather than a net importer. They will grow deep roots in their native soil and establish healthy churches in foreign lands.
The latest fad in missions will come and go, but God’s master plan for building healthy indigenous churches hasn’t changed. The context of modern missions may differ from the ancient world of Paul’s day, but the critical steps remain the same. We must know what we’re aiming for, how to get there, and have the faith and courage to stay the course.
Footnotes:
[1] Yes, as John Piper says, “Missions exists because the worship of God doesn’t,” but the human aim of missions is a healthy indigenous church.
[2] See GCC articles, Are They Ready? Train and Test Your Missionaries Before They’re Sent and Who Makes a Good Prospective Missionary?
[3] See GCC article on Unreached People Groups and Unreached Language Groups?
[4] See GCC article How Should the Church Look in This Culture?
