Stages of Completeness

« Flash animation of Middle East empires

The cure »

Closure

Posted by Justin Long ⋅ June 4, 2008 ⋅

Email This Post ⋅

Print This Post ⋅ View comments

If you live in my neck of the woods - Southeast Asia - for long enough, you
might find your favorite night market, and your favorite supplier of, say, char
kuay teow (a lovely dish consisting of noodles, seafood, Chinese sausage, and
veggies). So, let’s say you get to the night market late one night, and your
favorite supplier–gasp!–isn’t there. You ask where the individual is, and there
are two phrases you might here. They might say “all finished” or “no more.”

“All finished” is the okay phrase. That means, “silly orang putih got here too
late to get his favorite meal.” On the other hand, “No more” means “he’s not
coming back, he either has moved on to a more auspicious and financially
successful place or he’s made enough off selling noodles to you that he is
pleasantly retired.” (With apologies to my Asian friends, who know I write
this with the biggest of grins.)

In our last analysis we looked at stages of reachedness, and considered a model
of reachedness that incorporated four (really five) phases:

0) the initial pioneer cross-cultural phase
1) an indigenous Christian presence in every people—the initial beachhead.
2) a viable church movement in every people—the establishment of a church that can exist on its own
3) a viable church movement that saturates the group—the ability of the church to sufficiently engage the population
4) saturation that yields an adequate opportunity for every individual to hear the Gospel.

When stage four is reached, we could say that the initial task of
cross-culturally pioneering and contextualizing the Gospel is complete. The
Gospel has been brought to a people group, and has “reached” the ethnic
boundaries of a group that was previously “unreached.”

But just because the Gospel has “reached” this group, it doesn’t mean the task
is complete. Often, it seems that we confuse reachedness with
completeness. So let’s talk what it means to complete the
task.

The phrase “complete the task” is a missiological buzzphrase, a bit of
missionary lingo. Let’s begin by making sure our definitions are clear.
Completing the task refers to the Great Commission given in the Gospels
and Acts. David Barrett (World Christian Encyclopedia) analyzed the
Great Commission accounts and suggests they include seven imperatives:

Receive! prayer evangelism
Go! pre-evangelism (which includes incarnation in a cross-cultural setting)
Witness! Personal evangelism (which includes both personal announcement and healing work)
Proclaim! Proclamation evangelism (which includes all forms of public proclamation)
Disciple! Persuasion evangelism (which includes all multiplication of the Gospel)
Baptize! Pastoral evangelism (which includes all preservation and spreading of the Gospel in society)

The word “evangelize” comes from the original Greek word euangelion,
which refers to the Gospel or the Good News. To evangelize is to
present the euangelion. An evangelist is one who
evangelizes. Based on this understand, we can see that the Great
Commission encompasses more than simply missions. Our mission is to
evangelize the Gospel to the ends of the earth
(understanding that to “evangelize” includes the 7 aspects given above).

This suggests a broader sense of “completeness” which leads to a cyclical process:

We could say that there are seven aspects of completeness to the Great
Commission, based on these seven imperatives. Further, we could say that there
are four phases of completeness for each of the seven aspects.

I introduce the following as a potential model of the stages of completeness. I
fear that I am missing much in this model, and welcome feedback so that it can be
adjusted and made better.

	Awareness	Pioneer	Church Planting	CPM	Home Evangelism	Home Mission	Home Cross-cultural Mission
Receive!
Go!
Witness!
Proclaim!
Disciple!
Baptize!

At the end of the phases, when cross-cultural mission begins from the reached
culture into its surrounding cultures, the whole model splits into many new
initiatives where this model begins again. Essentially it is cyclical.

Further, there is a generational aspect to this. The Great Commission not only
goes “out” to surrounding nations but also “down” to the next generation. If
a new generation grows up “who does not know the Lord” - as happened so often
in Israel during the time of the judges - then some aspects of the Great
Commission will no longer be complete for the ethnic group and must be done
all over again.

The point of this model is that while one aspect of the Great Commission could
be considered “all finished” (e.g. the Awareness phase of the Receive! stage
might be considered complete for, say, the Bhojpuri of India), nevertheless the
final “phase” of the Great Commission cannot–probably never will be–considered “no more.” It is only
complete so long as it begins and sustains cross-cultural mission to
other nations around it (Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth).

We have a job to do that will take us the rest of our lives, and the rest of the
planet’s life. The job of the Great Commission is not just simple announcement
of the Good News. It is, rather, the task of announcement, discipleship, and
transformation both of individuals, cultures, and entire societies, and future
generations.

The task of “reaching the unreached”, then, is prioritized not because when the unreached
are reached the task is done, but rather because until we have mobilized sufficient
resources to reach the whole world - including the unreached - we simply are not doing
what we are told to do. Christ calls us to a higher commitment, which while individually
we may be responding to, as a global body we so far have failed to reach.