On the second week of April, I attended a mission in Uganda in Kamuli District, and if you asked me, I have never seen such a successful mission in all the missions that I have attended. Of course—in case you did not know — we are talking about Christian missions which basically means dedicating a couple of days to evangelism and teaching the word of God in a particular area. Now, I am going to be a bit controversial and I hope that people who do missions in a rigid way will not be offended but will be driven to change.
So, the first day we arrived, a demon possessed girl ran all the way from her school to where we were being hosted. The demon was cast out and I think the mission started on a very high note on that regard. This actually encouraged us to do some witnessing to the neighboring town and people started getting born again. Don’t even get me started with the miracles and healing we saw during that week! God surely confirms His word!
Now, the mainstream kind of mission that I have experienced involves door-to-door evangelism in the morning, open-air meetings in the afternoon, and revival meetings in the evening. It’s rigid and has never been questioned; this is the model that has always been in place in the missions that I have attended and I have come to realize that it is not always effective. Hear me out. In this particular mission, we used to do 6 hours of intense door-to-door evangelism daily and there was no activity afterwards. This gave us enough time to rest and meditate for the next day. Now, I am not saying that the other model is bad, all I am saying is that, the primary focus for any mission should be souls!
Evangelism should also be done in a strategic way. Why would I do open air meeting for 6 days in the same location, preaching to the same people when that time could be spent reaching out personally to other individuals who may never visit the open-air meeting. Like I said, I have nothing against open air meetings and they have their place but shouldn’t our goal be to maximize the number of souls won for Christ? I think open air meeting should be geared at demonstrating the power of God, and obviously if people see the power of God, they may believe.
Back to the mission, a tree is known by its fruits , right? We saw 1123 people give their life to Christ. Glory to God! Normally during a mission (in the past), the missioners become exhausted in the middle of the week; this was not so in this mission. Having less activities and giving us enough time to rest made us even more productive. In some previous missions I would be considered nonspiritual and lacking zeal for God if I slept at 9pm during a mission and then woke up at 6am, (apparently in a mission ground we are in a battlefield and we shouldn’t let out guard down).
This is my opinion, in a mission ground we need to pray but not wear out the brethren making them ineffective in ministry. You can wear yourself out those other days but during a harvest season, the only thing that is important is harvesting! We are harvesting, and the harvest is in plenty. So what is your point Eric?
My point is, do not be rigid! Do not put burdens on people during missions! They need to be effective harvesters! Do not come with a premeditated formula of how you will do the reaching out, rather when you get there, decide what is the best strategy and approach as guided by the Spirit of God that will yield the largest harvest. It is God who saves but how will he save if the person to be reached doesn’t hear? And what is the best strategy? The one where everybody or almost everybody in the mission locale is reached.
