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Peter Wagner My Pilgrimage in Mission c. Peter Wagner he apostle Paul began his pilgrimage in mission on the Mission) was looking for an agricultural missionary who would Tvery day of his conversion to Christ. On his way to go to Bolivia. Since Doris and I both had backgrounds in agricul­ Damascus with the intention of doing as much damage to the ture, we signed up. In 1956 we climbed down from a truck in Christian community as he could, he was confronted directly by Santiago de Chiquitos, at the end of the road in eastern Bolivia, Jesus, who said, among other things, "I will deliver you from the to begin our careers as field missionaries. From that point, the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles [read nations], to next four decades took me through five significant pilgrimage whom I now send you" (Acts 26:17 NKJV). milestones. I identify with Paul. I was not brought up in a Christian home. When I left home as an adult, I had no background in the Missionary to Bolivia church, in Sunday school, in prayer, in the Bible, or in religion in general. I was a committed heathen, dedicated to fulfilling the Sixteenyears of cross-cultural ministryin Bolivia turned outto be desires of my flesh in as respectable a way as possible. But when essentially sixteen more years of training. Although our years of ImetDoris, the womanIimmediatelyknewIwasgoingto marry, service left some positive residue, it is embarrassing to look back things changed radically. I learned that her nonnegotiables for a and realize how little our investment of time, money, and energy spouse were that he be a born-again Christian and that he be a actually produced. Missionary education in those days was career missionary. I was willing for both, considering them a sparse and superficial. Today students at Fuller receive more small price to pay for gaining that woman. So as we knelt in her training in their first six weeks than I received in my three years family's farmhouse in upstate New York in 1950, she led me to in seminary. Christ, and Icommitted mylife to be a missionary the samenight! My first term in the arid jungles of eastern Bolivia turned out Thus began my pilgrimage in mission. to be generalmissionary work. The agricultural calling was short I also identify with another characteristic of the apostle Paul. lived, since, even before I had mastered Spanish, I was assigned As he was recounting to King Agrippa his conversion and his call to be the director of a new Bible institute for training pastors. No to mission, he added, "I was not disobedient to the heavenly one else on the field had graduated from a seminary, and I was vision" (Acts 26:19 NKJV). As I write this reflection, I am a few considered the most qualified. So I proceeded to translate the months away from completing fifty years since I first received Fuller curriculum into Spanish-and wondered why we had so little success in training effective pastors. The Bibleinstitutewasthenrelocatedto San JosedeChiquitos, Contributing to the and I did evangelistic work and planted a church there. It was a struggling congregation, and when we left, I wondered if it fulfillment of the Great would even survive. But it did, and now thirty-five years later, Commission has been the under Bolivian leadership and in a more receptive social envi­ ronment, it is doing well for a church in a rural community. I am driving passion of my life. an inveterate networker, so I pioneered the first association of Protestant churches in the region. I can only chuckle whenIrecall that, in orderto help the association function as I thought it really my heavenly vision, and I can truthfully say that I have not should, I translated Robert's Rules of Order into Spanish! deviated to one side or the other. Contributing to the fulfillment For my second term of service, I transferred from SAM to the of Jesus' Great Commission has been the driving passion of my Bolivian Indian Mission (later Andes Evangelical Mission, now life since day 1 of my new life in Christ. incorporated in SIM International) and moved to the city of Iknew Iwould need training for the career to whichGod had Cochabamba in the Andes mountains. I taught in a seminary called me. At the time, we lived in New Jersey, and word had there, again using what was essentially a North American cur­ come that a new school, Fuller Theological Seminary, had been riculum. Eventually I was asked to become the field director, so founded outon the West Coast. The Christian leaders Ilooked up I combined mission administration with seminary teaching. to at that time were fundamentalists and separatists. Among Continuing my networking role, I was instrumental in founding them Fuller Seminary was declared to be a dangerously liberal ANDEB, the interdenominational evangelical association of Bo­ institution, out of bounds for true believers. True to my tendency livia, and the Latin American Theological Fraternity, both of to take risks and color outside the lines, Doris and I decided to which continue active today. pack up our goods and drive across the country to Pasadena, California. I enrolled in Fuller, and she enrolled in Biola College, Donald McGavran and Church Growth then located in Los Angeles. By the time I graduated from Fuller, I had learned quite a bit I spent my furlough of 1967-68 doing a degree in missiology about missions, mission fields, and mission boards. It had come under Donald McGavran at Fuller's newly established School of to my attention that SAM (then the South American Indian World Mission. This was a life-changing experience. McGavran's paradigm of measuring the effectiveness of missionary work C. Peter Wagner recently retired as the Donald A. McGavran Professor of essentially in terms of multiplying Christian churches in number Church Growth,Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission.He is and in size made sense to a career missionary who had become now the president of the Wagner Leadership Institute in Colorado Springs, disenamored by cliches that faithfulness was somehow more Colorado. important than success on the mission field. I had few questions 164 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH T imothy Park Korean mal." es and , ~ ~ . ..l "" ":'; .... "'Asian Missio n" 0 ~.'=' : , " Wilbert Shenk M ission H istofft , Contemporary CUlture r < ~'\> Charles Van Engen " B:\,~; ~U~~A ~o"" ~Qpberry Theology OfMission : J. Islamic ~ tu d ' blo D.eiros sion H istory ~ nd in American Studies Paw Pierson Charles Kraft H istory of Mission and Anthropology and Wi Latin American Studie s Dean Gilliland . Intercultural Communication .., Contexrualized Theology and lAfrican Studies STUDY WITH FACULTY AND STUDENTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD FACULTY on the cutti ng edge, each experienced in global mission STUDENTS Call our Office ofAdmissions national leaders on campus from more than 1-800-AFULLER www.fuller.edu 60 countries and over 100 denominations CURRICULUM 135 N. Oakland Ave. Pasadena, CA 91182 strong core of theology of mission with 15 concentrations COMMITM ENT FULLER TH EOLOGICAL SE MI NARY strongly evangelical, committed to biblical SCHOOL O F WORLD MISSION authority PROGRAM S M.A., T h.M ., D .Min., D .Miss., Ph.D., continuing education, combining resident and extension studies about my faithfulness to God but many questions about why changing paradigmshift that caused us to be open to the contem­ what I was doing wasn't working very well. porary, immediate ministry of the Holy Spirit. McGavran's missiological pragmatism pointed the future Through the decade of the 1980s, I increasingly added spiri­ direction of my pilgrimage in mission. If God wants the lost tual dimensions such as healing the sick and casting out demons sheep found, let's do what it takes to find them and bring them to the technical aspects of church growth that I had been teach­ into the fold. Ifthis task involves stimulating people movements ing. As time went on, I felt better able to understand how church or using numbers or gauging resistance and receptivity or iden­ growth in the Book of Acts generally took place with supernatu­ tifying unreached people groups or dismissing unproductive ral manifestations (like healing) preparing the way for the word missionaries or incorporating anthropological insights or rede­ to be preached and accepted by nonbelievers. Healing the sick fining evangelism and mission or rejecting universalist theology and casting out demons in seminary classroom settings caused a or advocating the homogeneous unit principle or scorning bio­ bit of furor for a season within Fuller Seminary, especially the logical and transfer growth or drawing a line between discipling School of Theology, but today they are perceived to be accepted, and perfecting-so be it! Ifincreased numbers of lost souls were or at least tolerated, components of missiological education. saved and brought into life-giving churches, I was ready for all of the above and more. Prayer and Spiritual Warfare McGavraninvited me to stayin Pasadenain 1968to join him, Alan Tippett, and Ralph Winter on the new School of World In 1987 I began asking what role prayer might have in world Mission faculty. I did not feel the time was right for that, butafter evangelization. At the time, I was a charter member of the I had served as a visiting lecturer from time to time, Doris and I Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, and in just did make the move from Bolivia to California, and I joined the about every Lausanne gathering Vonette Bright would admon­ school in 1971. I spent most of the decade of the 1970s teaching ish us that if we were more intentional in our practice of prayer, whatInowcall technical church growthand also helpingto bring we could speed the completion of the Great Commission.
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