Missiological Committee

Defining Our Worldwide Mission

Introduction Our assignment was to define AGWM's mission using a historical lens for analytical perspective. As we began to probe into our history we found that our own personal biographies in mission continually routed us back to three fundamental questions:

1. How were missiological decisions made and disseminated over our history? 2. Do we have a collective calling and priority for ministry in AGWM? 3. If we do have a collective calling, how does the individual calling mesh with that of the organization?

These questions shaped the way that we looked at our history and provided the framework for our analysis. We begin with reflection on the formation of AGWM's missiology in light of both early official statements of purpose and subsequent practice. After a reflective analysis of that history, the final section develops two major implications of our historical review and ends with recommendations for future work.

Historical Review: Early Pentecostal Missiology Here in the opening decades of the 21st century World Missions (AGWM), the sending arm of the Assemblies of God USA, is one of the largest agencies in North America, and the World Assemblies of God Fellowship's over 65 million adherents makes it one of the most successful mission endeavors of the 20th century.

As we move into a second century of service, there is an increasing sense for many that now is an appropriate time to revisit our history and sense of calling as a movement and mission to seek the voice of the Spirit for direction to face the mission challenges of this era. As we look to the future, it is helpful to reflect on our past.

The question before us in this paper is to review the history of what has in recent years been called our 360º mission, with particular attention to some of the earliest conceptions of mission by the General Councils from 1914 into the early part of the 1920s. This section serves as an introduction to this historical exercise as we look at the formative sources of Pentecostal missiology and draw upon the notion of unresolved polar tension points as a rubric for thinking about the development of AGWM missions philosophy and strategy.

Pentecostal mission, of whom the Assemblies of God is the largest agency with the largest worldwide constituency, grew out of a particular worldview and set of assumptions. Gary McGee uses the term “radical evangelicals” to describe those who during the closing decades of the 19th century sought to complete the Great Commission (McGee, 2010:90). Part of what motivated their search for a solution to the challenge of world evangelization was their critique of the Great Century of missions’ civilizing assumptions and the slow and gradual progress it implied (2010:xiii). This led to an interest in pneumatology and restoration of the dynamics found in the early in order to see rapid results. McGee thus concluded that the key to understanding Pentecostal mission is that it was all about missiology in that it was the quest for power to fulfill mission (2010:xiii). He states that, “Early arose from the eschatological and missiological concerns raised by radical evangelicals in the nineteenth-century movement (2010:90). Many have noted that prior to the Azusa Street revival there were instances of tongues speech, but it was the genius of these radical evangelicals who experienced Spirit baptism to make the theological link between tongues and mission. In the initial flowering of Pentecostal movements around the nexus of power for mission other ideas were connected and part of the total package. Some of these were relatively short-lived and changed either doctrinally, as people interacted with Scripture in understanding this new experience, or in contact with on-the-ground realities. The restorationist view was also linked with a millennial view that brought urgency to the mission. The coming of the Spirit that brought the restoration of the church heralded the soon return of Christ, and this drove Pentecostal to the ends of the earth to bear witness expecting a great ingathering. Initially many believed in a missio-linguistic view of tongues that would make language study unnecessary, but this soon faded as people found they still had to learn through the traditional means of study and hard work. Eventually tongues became identified with accessing power to do mission. There was an emphasis on calling, often an extreme individualism and fear of organization, faith to trust God for provision of needs, the belief that Spirit baptism would produce a unified church, even bridging the racial divide, and the expectation of success on an unparalleled scale.

What McGee points out is that you find a series of unresolved internal tensions that form polarities between Pentecostal belief and pragmatic on-the-ground realities. The success of an organization like the Assemblies of God came in part because they were able to navigate these tensions and relate to both sides of the polarity successfully without exploring or attempting to reconcile them.

Some of these polarities include (McGee, 2010:140ff.):

1. They resisted organization, but organized under a national executive presbytery which also served as the missionary presbytery. 2. They felt they were a movement and not a denomination, yet to retain their evangelical identity they condemned the Oneness doctrine and adopted a Statement of Fundamental truths. 3. They believed passionately in the soon return of Christ, (in fact 1918 was widely seen as the year would return), yet in 1919 they formed a Foreign Mission department to handle communication and the 90,000 dollars that passed through to missionaries, and in 1920 joined the FMCA to help with missionaries traveling and living overseas. 4. They believed in miracles and the radical strategy of signs and wonders, yet their letters show great suffering and challenges. 5. They believed in the life of faith and provision from God, yet missionaries admitted that systematic support was better, and many explicitly made their needs known showing a belief in a corporate responsibility to get them to the field. 6. They believed in the specific guidance of the yet formed as a movement in part because of ineffective practices they observed. They then gave directives from a central committee to their missionary body. 7. The put a priority on preaching the Gospel yet became involved in many charitable pursuits justifying it as the leading of the Spirit.

McGee observes that many of these ideas are directly observable in the revivals from 1901 to 1908, but the Pentecostal movement “gradually developed in ways not originally envisioned by the earliest participants” (2010:90). Pentecostals organized, created mission agencies, experienced theological division, developed creedal statements and denominations, built church-related institutions, aligned themselves with conservative , saw the younger churches in the global movement develop a wider screen of issues than just tongues for understanding Pentecostal identity, and saw the rise of progressive Pentecostals (2010:90). He sees this inability to achieve a cohesive mission theology related to the North American cultural preference for activism over theorizing and part of the larger Protestant approach to mission (2010:110).

What is relevant to this study is the recognition that many of these polarities and unresolved tensions persist to this day in Pentecostal mission and show that AG missiology has both a Spirit- and a Word- driven side combined with a strong practical bent. It is precisely this combination of pragmatism and practicality with a strong emphasis upon and trust in the guidance of the Spirit that allowed Assemblies of God missions to avoid the pitfalls of a dead bureaucracy on the one hand, and on the other hand the flightiness of some who attributed their lack of long haul commitment to the leading of the Spirit.

This also shows us that our current practice has both continuity and discontinuity with the earliest mission efforts in our organization, and that continuous change while holding to central values, like the experience of Spirit baptism for power in mission, is how our missiology continually adjusts to its setting. Finally, it shows there is no single source for Assemblies of God missiology, but rather multiple sources and a dynamic interaction with current scenarios. Historical Reflection: The Shaping of Assemblies of God Missiology

1900-1921: Toward Coordination, Efficiency, and Responsibility Understanding the missiology of the Assemblies of God sending structure (now called Assemblies of God World Missions) requires a look at the founding of the organization itself. It relates directly to one of the key unresolved tensions of Pentecostals at the turn of the century: the relationship between the freedom to be led by the Spirit without organizational or institutional constraint and the need for organization. The advertisement announcing the call for the meeting that resulted in the founding of the AG USA in April 1914 reveals this tension.

While Pentecostals saw their experience of the Spirit as the power to bear witness, actual experience revealed a number of practical difficulties that organizing could address. The advertisement listed four needs: a) To know the needs of the various mission fields, b) to know how to give so that some missionaries do not suffer lack while others live in luxury, c) to discourage wasting money with those who are roving here and there and accomplishing nothing, and d) to concentrate support on missionaries who mean business (Brumback, 1961:157, also Blumhofer, 1989:287). Thus the initial conception was that the entire organization would serve as a mission sending agency and it was for that purpose called into being.

Blumhofer observes that at 1916 there were some 40 Pentecostal associations in the USA, but their mission goals were diffuse and unformulated (1989:287). It was only the Assemblies of God that had specific objectives, and this enabled them to develop a successful program of mission when compared to other groups that formed at similar times.

Initially, the foundational missiological concepts came from non-missionaries who were observing problems in the conduct of Pentecostal mission. The core concept of Pentecostal mission was that the baptism in the Spirit brought the power to do mission. This was accompanied by the view that this restoration of the church heralded the imminent return of Christ, which influenced the earliest workers' practice. Some of the observations include a lack of coordination, unequal support, lack of longevity, the sense that funds were being wasted, a failure to learn the local language (Perkin & Garlock, 1963:42), people going with a call who were not properly prepared and ended in disaster (McGee, 2010:92-95) , and a high rate of turnover.

Here is a summary of some of the earliest decisions that framed mission practice in the Assemblies of God.

1. A primary reason for the founding of the movement in April 1914 was to better coordinate missionary efforts and conserve fruit.

2. In November 1914 the early leaders of the Assemblies of God met in Chicago and made this declaration: “As a Council . . . we commit ourselves and the Movement to Him for the greatest that the world has ever seen.” (Assemblies of God Foreign Missions, 1999:11).

3. In the 1915 council they focused on evangelizism “according to methods” (McGee, 1986:95).

4. In 1917, a three-member committee was formed consisting of two missionaries and a tasked to suggest policy for the foreign mission work of the council. They laid down 13 principles, including requiring two years of language study, and tasking the Executive Presbytery with surveying to determine where mission centers should be established and where the need appeared greatest (Perkin & Garlock, 1963:41).

5. At the 1919 council a Foreign Mission Department was formed, and it was noted that schools should be established to train native workers. Also, disapproval was expressed of floating missionary efforts-- aimless traveling rather than learning language and settling down to do permanent missionary work (Perkin & Garlock, 1963:42).

6. In 1920, a pastor was sent on a tour of mission stations in Japan, China, India, Egypt and Palestine on behalf of the missionary department. He found duplication of effort--missionaries clumped in certain locations with vast areas needing evangelism, creating friction between local churches (McGee, 2010:152-53).

7. In 1921 the Pentecostal Evangel published a series of three articles by Alice Luce who had read Roland Allen’s book on St. Paul’s missionary methods. At the General Council in St. Louis in 1921, the Council delineated to the Foreign Missions Department the nature of the New Testament practices they were to follow in six key principles.1 One was the establishment of “self-supporting, self- propagating, and self-governing native churches” while another stated, “The Pauline example will be followed so far as possible, by seeking out neglected regions where the gospel has not yet been preached, lest we build upon another’s foundation (Romans 15:20).” (McGee, 1986:96)

What do we learn from these early years of Assemblies of God mission thinking and practice? Four things stand out to us as important themes that provide guidance to us today and that should link our current practice to our history.

First, the core historical continuity of what it means to be a Pentecostal Assemblies of God missionary is the experience of the Spirit that brings a powerful impulse to take the Good News to the world. Spirit baptism is viewed as empowerment to bear witness to the ends of the earth. This forms the core of AG missiology, and we want to suggest that it sets for our mission a unifying trajectory and ultimate goal. There have been other things that early Pentecostals believed and practiced that turned out to be peripheral and dropped off, but this remains the same.

Second, the founders of the Assemblies of God had a clear-eyed realism that candidly judged that not all practices and trends were good or of equal effectiveness. While committed to the guidance of the Spirit, they were equally committed to seeing biblical objectives achieved by those who professed to be led by the Spirit. This practical bent made them willing to commit to specific objectives and to weigh the subjective sense of calling evinced by missionaries. Early AG leaders developed structure and rationalized the system for missions even in the face of opposition and fear of organization because they felt that cooperation could produce more fruit. In one sense it was the Spirit leading to create structure, even though their rhetoric and general practice was that the Spirit could only lead “away” from human structures, and individuals would follow these leadings (and often build structures).

Third, there is also a deep commitment to ; it is the Scripture that sets the parameters and boundaries for evaluating the guidance of the Spirit. The biblical directives by the council to the missionaries show that they clearly did not practice an “anything goes in the name of the Spirit” attitude towards ministry.

Finally, while the strength of Pentecostal missions has been the freedom of the individual to pursue the leading of the Spirit, the genius of Assemblies of God missions has been the practice of Spirit- and Word-driven collective direction that guides but does not bind the individual missionary. Within the broad river banks of mission philosophy there is much space to follow the specific guiding of the Spirit in developing ministry and strategy. Thus the fruits of the “radical strategy” of signs and wonders through Spirit-empowered workers are persevered through indigenous church movements that continue to bear Kingdom fruit long after the missionaries are gone.

1921-1941: The Objective of Indigenous Movements McGee observes that at 1914 there were 40 missionaries affiliated with the new General Council and that between then and 1921 their rolls show a dramatic instability (2010:121). In the 1920 to 1924 period there were 221 missionaries serving mostly in the traditional mission fields of China, Japan, India, Africa, Egypt, Palestine, and Latin America (2010:140). It was not until the 1930s that indigenous self-governing church organizations at the nation-state level began to appear. El Salvador was the first, and then in 1934 indigenous principles were adopted in Burkina Faso (McGee, 1986:148). McGee notes that, "indigenous churches overseas were slowly coming to fruition. It was no easy endeavor, however, since many early Pentecostal missionaries had built their efforts on the old mission station, or mission compound approach, which paid national ministers" (1986:148). While some continued to work in the mission station approach, indigenous principles were accepted as a goal and an ideal to work toward, but American churches “proved to be resistant to the self-support concept” (McGee, 1986:149).

1 Ibid., 95.

This gives us a glimpse at another trajectory in the development and practice of AG missiology. Formal pronouncements. such as the 1921 General Council decision to pursue native indigenous churches, took a long period of time to be worked out on the ground, and what was a value inside the mission itself was not valued in the same way by the American church base.

This interplay between formal decisions, the work of missionaries on the ground, and the constituent base can also be seen in the disjuncture between pronouncement and practice as it concerns evangelism and charitable institutions. In 1920, J. R. Flower, the first mission secretary, wrote about the Pentecostal standard: preaching as priority, with no time for schools, hospitals, charitable institutions. He said that missionaries were easily distracted by educational and charitable pursuits (McGee, 2010:159). The reality however, as McGee points out, was that while for radical evangelicals the primacy of proclamation made sense, in actual on-the-ground labor evangelism and benevolence went hand in hand because it was necessary for human life (2010:160). In the face of formal pronouncements about the goals of mission, charitable work was justified because it was authorized by the Spirit, and it was popular with the stateside constituency (McGee, 2010:162). In other cases it was the only way to produce Christian leadership in places with fierce opposition to traditional evangelistic activity.

By the end of this period, the onset of World War II changed the dynamics of missions, cutting off some traditional fields and requiring personnel to be transferred to new areas. Mission leadership recognized the massive changes that would come from the war and its conclusion and began a new era of global level planning.

1942-1959: Global Strategizing and Emphasis on Bible Institutes The tensions of individual versus corporate guidance were highlighted as Noel Perkin called for planning to strategize for postwar ministry. McGee notes that the new objectives produced, the growing administrative structure and authority of the missions department, and the calls for more advanced training created tension and uneasiness in the General Council and the mission (1986:171- 72). The April 1943 Missionary Conference at Central Bible Institute produced 6 goals (McGee, 1986:166-68):

1. Develop the position of field secretaries. 2. Add 500 new recruits. 3. Develop an advisory committee of ministers and missionaries to give guidance on specific regions like Europe. 4. Provide better training. 5. Have regional missionary conventions with the goal of making every member a missionary enthusiast. 6. Raise 5 million dollars for missions.

In 1945 Perkin added more goals, another missionary conference was held in Springfield in 1948, and then in 1953 two additional goals were added: to focus more evangelistic efforts on large population centers and to aid the sick and hungry as resources permitted (McGee, 1986:168-69). McGee points out that even though this kind of planning created tension, “for many,…including leadership, there could be no return to the days when the program simply followed the inclinations of various individuals on the foreign fields” (1986:172). Wilson comments that while planning increased, the concern for the guidance of the Spirit remained the cornerstone. Lessons from the past taught the benefits of cooperative planning and better organization, and many believed that increased planning, training and efficiency could be energized by the Spirit (1997:74).

While the first indigenous self-governing church organizations at the nation-state level began to appear in the 1930s, it was nearly 20 years later before the concepts of indigeneity were formally laid out and published. Veteran missionary Melvin Hodges, who worked in Central America, was asked to put the practical steps of indigenous church development into book form.

In this period we see another shift in missions practice that was driven not so much by any single individual, but rather by the logical progression of following the missiological principles that were laid down in the early decades of the movement. There was a natural movement from the idea of the missionary planting the first individual churches and facilitating the development of an indigenous national church movement to partnering with that movement (Hodges, 1978:5; Williams, 1979; McGee 1986:198-99). There is a logical shift in role from the pioneering work that established the church to working with the young organization to strengthen it and pursue its agendas. This shift towards partnership and training is reflected in the fact that by 1959 our mission led all Protestant mission agencies in its number of Bible institutes (McGee 1986:199). Carl Malz, a missionary who studied our overseas institutes along with Melvin Hodges and Maynard Ketcham, “reported that the number of new schools opened in the 1930s more than doubled in the 1940s, and then doubled again in the following decade” (1986:199). The report estimated that at 1959 about half of the missionaries and half of the departmental budget were focused on Bible institute programs (McGee, 1986:199).2

We see these shifts of emphasis to partnership and to the missionary role in training local leadership to be further evidence of the interplay of Spirit-guided response to foundational mission principles. It becomes further evidence of the ability to shift emphases in Assemblies of God Mission practice in order to reach biblically rooted mission goals. While practices and emphases change, the ultimate goal of world evangelization through the planting of robust indigenous church movements has remained the same.

Linking the ideas of “indigenous national church” and “partnership” enabled a level of fruitfulness that in the early years could only have been dreamed of. The move towards training was a natural change of attention to what was happening as new movements blossomed. However, the unintended consequence of the partnership concept was the erosion of the pioneering dimension of Pentecostal mission that was so salient in the early days. This was something that was never planned, and is certainly not present in Hodges’ conception of missions. While he was clearly supportive of the missionary role in strengthening the church (see for instance Hodges, 1953:53-73; 1978:19, 76ff.), it is also equally clear that he had an apostolic view of the missionary role where pioneer church planting, missionary evangelism among those who do not know Christ, and a constant eye to the regions beyond were to be the heartbeat of the cross-cultural worker (1953:18, 47, 126-28, 136; 1978:2, 6, 21).

In retrospect, the diminishing of the pioneer role in our missions practice may have been aided by an assumption that the Pentecostal experience would always lend itself to urgency in proclamation, thus a shift to working among the church was not something that needed to be worried about. What the passage of time has now revealed is that it is quite possible to remain doctrinally and stylistically Pentecostal, yet lose one’s evangelistic fervor.

The end of this period saw J. Philip Hogan became the new executive director in 1959. No one could have foreseen the way that the Assemblies of God missionary labor of the previous 45 years was poised to explode into a time of exponential growth.

1959-1989: The Hogan Era Everett Wilson points out that when J. Philip Hogan took office in 1959, there were several pieces that were already in place that formed his inheritance missiologically (1997:55ff). There was the principle of the indigenous church, the fact that WWII had geared the mission to respond to crisis, and the practice of strategizing and goal setting that grew out of the response to the massive changes made by the war. Wilson sees Hogan by personal philosophy as being strategic: he believed in concentrating efforts on major critical targets (1997:55). When he launched Global Conquest in 1959, it was presented to AG constituents as strategic objectives.

Wilson also notes that this strategic planning and work was set against frequent “pressures to accommodate alternative approaches that Hogan believed to be less effective and less worthy of DFM support" (1997:55). Programs such as that promoted by evangelist T. L. Osborne in supporting native workers were rejected because they were not in harmony with indigenous principles. Hogan was not

2 The Malz report appears in two publications, Malz, Carl. Foreign Bible School Survey Report: A Report of the Bile School Program of the Foreign Missions Department of the Assemblies of God. Springfield, : The Assemblies of God, 1959; and a book edited by Malz and published by the Foreign Mission department in 1959 entitled This We Believe: Selected Educational Philosophies of our Assemblies of God Bible School Administrations on the Foreign Field. trend-driven and felt that much activity in the realm of missions was not producing long term fruit. His priority was the local church and the producing of a local church (1997:68). In his view ministry that did not lead to that end was seen as inadequate to the task.

By the same token, he also believed there was not sufficient information and prescience to determine where to best invest missionary resources and rather that it is the Spirit who blows where he wills (1997:66). In his view there was not a tension between strategy and planning, as the Spirit could energize these very processes.

Some 50 years later, it seems clear that many of Hogan’s thoughts about mission were powerfully shaped by the overseas growth that began to skyrocket in the 1960s. In that year fully one-half of all Assemblies of God Christians in the world were in the USA, but by 1970 it was only 25%, and after that the growth came exponentially till today the 2.8 million members of the U.S. Assemblies of God are just a small part of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship that numbers over 65 million.

Here is an excerpt from an address Hogan gave to the EFMA in 1970 that gives us insight into his conception of Pentecostal Assemblies of God mission:

I have long since ceased to be interested in meetings where mission leaders are called together to a room filled with charts, maps, graphs, and statistics. All one needs to do to find plenteous harvest is simply to follow the leading of the Spirit. When one engages in this truth and beings to live by this principle, there will be communities, whole cities, whole nations, whole culture and whole segments of pagan religions that will suddenly be thrust open to the gospel witness (Wilson, 1997:136).

Hogan was also a responder to the plenary address by Ralph Winter on cross-cultural evangelism as the highest priority in 1974 at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. In his remarks he drew heavily from his 1970 EFMA address and emphasized that he felt his primary contribution in the response was to appeal to them to remember the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit and the truth of Acts 5:32 (Hogan, 1975:243). He referenced, without providing specific details, that they were living in an era of a worldwide outpouring of the Spirit that saw no human design or planning but reflected the inscrutable ways of the Spirit (1975:243). He makes mention of the revival in Indonesia in the 1960s and pleads for a simple dependence on the Holy Spirit (1975:244) who is able to make receptive soil beyond human reasoning (1975:245).

He concluded his response with a comment that now both rings true and yet has remained in greater part unfulfilled, and it reveals his essential optimism in the work of the Spirit. Winter had unveiled his E-1 to E-3 rubric as a way of explaining the increasing complexity of the task as the bearers of the Good News take the message of Christ to those who are from a radically different cultural sphere than themselves. Hogan said, “When the wind of God truly blows, E-3 evangelism becomes as easy and successful as E-1 or E-2, and perhaps one of the major concerns of this conference should be that we discover where God walks and get into stride with him in his march through time and eternity” (1975:245).

Nearly 40 years later, when Christian demographers tell us that some 86% of the Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim world, comprising 40% of the globe, do not know a single Christian, it is a stark reminder that “the radical strategy” is a necessary but not sufficient element in breakthrough among the Great Tradition religions. It also is a reminder that historically the primary vehicle God has used before great visitations is the sacrificial service of his people among the unreached who give their lives in preparatory “hard work” labors. While we rejoice in sudden ingatherings of the Spirit and the joy of receptive peoples, our world realities drive us to the conclusion that God also works through Spirit- anointed laborers willing to lay down their lives among peoples who have least access to the Gospel.

The three decades of Philip Hogan’s leadership illustrate well some of the tensions that historians like McGee have noted and that we used to set the framework for this historical review. One of those sets of polarities is the Spirit-planning nexus. Hogan’s remarks to the EFMA and his response to Winter lean on the sovereign work of the Spirit. Yet Winter, in his comments back to his responders pointed out that:

In the headquarters of Dr. Hogan’s church in Springfield, Missouri, the Holy Spirit has superintended them in an immense amount of tough thinking and analysis, or they would not be operating the largest printing establishment in the state of Missouri nor would they be one of the very first of the mission agencies in the United States to make extensive use of computer facilities. Quite obviously, there is no conflict, rightly understood, between the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the need for careful, patient, analytical thinking (Winter, 1975:227).

Another tension has to do with the nature of the missionary task and the placement of laborers. Listen to Hogan’s response to the debate in the early 1960s about whether to split the terminology and call those going to work with already existing church movements “fraternal workers”, and reserving the term "missionary" for those going to plant the Gospel among the non-Christian peoples of the world:

Today, in some ecclesiastical circles, . . . The missionary that is needed now, they say, is really a worker in some technical or pedagogical skills; and, really a helper to the indigenous church. Instead of being call a “missionary,” he is called a “fraternal worker.” This emphasis would put the Great Commission in storage while the church adopts a kind of “buddy” system, and the real heroes of the Cross are not men who confront heathen religions with the message of Calvary, but specialists who teach contour farming. The Assemblies of God does not believe this! (Klaus & Petersen, 2006:100)

Yet the realities into the 1980s were different. McGee noted in this period that while Pentecostals were always interested in taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth, Assemblies of God missionaries trying to fulfill that objective ran into many hindrances. He says:

First, the lack of strategy among some missionaries led to their clustering in metropolitan areas and neglecting outreach to isolated peoples. Second, the founding and maintenance of charitable institutions abroad mitigated frontline evangelism on particular fields....Third, the implementation of indigenous church principles consumed the energies of missionaries, who increasingly taught in Bible institutes, directed ICI programs, worked in missionary administration, and served in other auxiliary capacities. These personnel occasionally found themselves far from direct involvement in evangelism. Fourth, missionaries and national churches have sometimes avoided certain sectors of population due to their hostility toward Christian witness (1989:226).

Speaking more broadly of Pentecostal missions in general McGee, writing in the first decade of the 21st century, concludes:

The current involvement of missionaries in educational and charitable endeavors has signaled that a century after the beginning of Pentecostal missions, the majority now function as fraternal workers with church bodies overseas, most of which have been self-governing for some time. Only a minority of denominational missionaries directly evangelize unreached people groups, denoting a radical departure from the pattern of early Pentecostal missionaries (2010:217).

Post-Lausanne in 1974 into the 1980s, the notion of unreached people groups began to get explicit attention inside of AGWM. McGee cites Ed Nelson talking about the spiritual injustice of the Gospel- rich while others have nothing, David Irwin founding of the Center for Ministry to Muslims (now Global Initiative: Reaching Muslim Peoples), and the January 1983 edition of Mountain Movers magazine being devoted to new frontier evangelism (1989:227). In that issue editor Beverly Graham challenged readers saying:

We thank God for the victories and successes He has given in our missions work around the world. But even as we number the growing Assemblies of God churches in 109 countries, we must also offer ourselves to be used by the Master in reaching the rest of the world that is lost. We dare not measure our success against anything but the unfinished task (quoted in McGee, 1989:227)

However, by the end of the decade the challenge of unreached peoples, which was picked up strongly in evangelical missions and became the central focus of the AD 2000 and Beyond Movement, was relatively muted inside of AGWM. Decade of Harvest goals were developed along nation-state lines and not in terms of people groups for the most part. One wonders if the Bakker and Swaggart debacles, noted both by McGee in his historical work, and Wilson in his biography of Hogan, played a part in drawing away needed emotional energy and focus during these years.

1990's to the Present: 360º missions The 1990’s reflect a period of tremendous growth for the Assemblies of God movement— predominantly in non-western countries. Promoted as the “Decade of Harvest,” the number of Assemblies of God members and adherents overseas grew from 16 million to nearly 30 million. The number of Bible schools increased 43 percent and total national ministers increased 48 percent.

During this period, the direction of AGWM policy and objectives were influenced by two executive leaders; namely, Loren Triplett (1989-1997) and John Bueno (1997-2011). Triplett held closely to a Pentecostal worldview that stressed the Spirit’s supernatural role in calling people to enter the last day’s harvest in expectation of Christ’s return. This eleventh-hour urgency was reinforced with the fall of the Soviet Union, which opened up nation-states to the gospel for the first time in a century. A sense of priority began to place new workers in these nations, and many viewed it as a direct response to the providential work of the Spirit in this region. Like in previous eras, AGWM did not think in terms of people groups but geographical regions.

However, in an executive letter to the missionary family in November of 1995, Triplett raised the question over a nagging concern: “What is missionary work all about?” Triplet worried that AGWM was not adequately engaged among peoples where the church did not exist, and was concerned about the possibility of having less than fully challenged missionaries, asking the question: “Do we have the courage to honestly assess our positions?”

Bueno’s appointment came in 1997. In the fourteen years that followed, emphasis on partnership continued with a focus on the “how” question of AGWM missions, which was captured in four words: reaching, planting, training and touching. These terms became known as the “pillars of our mission,” often described as the DNA of what we do (Hurst, 2010). In concise language, these represent four practices of evangelizing, establishing churches, training national church leaders, and demonstrating Christ’s compassion to the poor and suffering.

Clarifying the AGWM mission statement was welcomed by the missionary constituency and sending base. However, signs of fragmentation began to emerge among AGWM regions and at home. First, AGWM regions began asking penetrating questions as to the focus of our “purpose for being.” Second, the sending base felt emboldened to by-pass AGWM, or simply redefine their own understanding of purpose in their districts, which extended to local churches. It was apparent that a “vacuum” existed to some degree—despite the clarification of a mission statement. There was a need by AGWM missionaries and the sending base to once again sense a “Spirit-led prioritization” in light of our historic understanding of our movement’s identity and emerging missiological realities.

Another important parallel that emerged during the 1990's were ideas that sprang from frontier missiology that increasingly made their way from the halls of academia to the grassroots American church at large.3 The concepts were taken up by a variety of missions agencies, parachurch organizations, and American Christians in a post-Cold War environment that came to increasingly see "unreached people groups" as the challenge of the hour. Terms such as "10/40 Window" and "least reached" were now on the lips of church members as never before.

3 A few players worthy of note: The AD2000 and Beyond movement sought to use the approaching new millennium as an impetus for prayer for and outreach to UPG's with the rallying cry, "A Church for Every People and the Gospel for Every Person by AD 2000." Birthed within this movement, The Joshua Project envisioned a unified global database of the world's people groups and the "progress of the gospel" among them, encouraging churches to "adopt a people" for prayer and evangelism. Although these efforts and the frontier missions movement from which they sprang fully affirmed and embraced ministry across the full spectrum of "reachedness," this point was sometimes missed amid the push for closure. Alan Johnson notes that the promotional version of unreached people group thinking during that time unfortunately tended to give little attention to the need for ongoing work in "reached" contexts (personal conversation).

In observing how some of the these ideas were applied in the wider missions world, AGWM leadership grew concerned that the agency not be carried away by a data-driven, mechanical missiology at the expense of continuing to be led by the Spirit (Bueno, 2010). They also felt that "Almost anything exclusive when it comes to the gospel is wrong" (Bueno, 2012). This premise extended to terminology associated with frontier missions, such as “unreached people groups,” which experienced a brief moratorium itself because it was viewed that to officially adopt and make use of “certain nomenclature creates exclusivity” (Bueno, 2013). This philosophical underpinning rested on a biblical application that “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Go where the gospel hasn’t been preached, but go to all the world” (Bueno, 2013).

In large part, early experiences and observations during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s shaped perceptions about ideas that emerged from frontier missiology. For example, some mission agencies strategically realigned during this era, and in so doing, heavily redeployed mission forces out of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe to pioneer fields located in the “10/40 window” boundaries. As a result, it was felt that younger national churches experienced a sense of abandonment. In the eyes of AGWM leadership, this kind of reorientation reflected a non-biblical and premature act of cutting off historic ties with young national churches who needed relationship. In their view, the result would lead to weak, isolated, and disoriented churches in regards to local evangelization and their relationship to global mission.

Philosophically, there were two major positions that Bueno felt were core to our understanding that were in conflict with the perceived values of the frontier mission movement. First, he held tightly to the concept of partnership as the primary path for strategic engagement. The role of the AGWM mission was to assist national churches in the process of indigeneity, and as a result, help them join global mission efforts. When too much focus occurs on unreached peoples, a missions agency is in danger of drifting away from relating with existing church partners. Once a missions agency goes down the path of "prioritizing," then it will end with abandoning long-standing ministry investment with historic partners. Second, Bueno had a strong sense that an individual’s calling was primary in determining missionary placement.

In order to communicate AGWM's ongoing commitment to the whole world, in contrast to what Bueno viewed as “niche” missions by the frontier mission movement, the notion of 360º missions was developed. This emerged from a distillation of Bueno’s views and ideas by the director of AGWM communications department, Randy Hurst. It first appeared in writing to the US constituency in the Pentecostal Evangel mission’s edition, on June 4, 2006, entitled, “360° Missions: Strategy of the Spirit (Hurst, 2006). From this juncture the agency promoted AGWM’s view of mission as "We do it all, and we do it everywhere!" in contrast to other more narrowly- focused agencies.

While there were concerns in this era to avoid the limitations of niche missions, the Pentecostal flip- side that places emphasis on the call of the Spirit meant that increasing numbers of candidates came to the agency with a burden to plant the church among peoples with least-access to the Gospel. Thus by the time that brother Bueno retired from office, AGWM personnel were working as broadly as ever across a wide range of ministries involved in both the national church and social ministry, yet with an increasing number of people focusing on the unreached as they became exposed to this information through various channels, often outside of the Assemblies of God itself. The Spirit continues to call North American people in the Assemblies of God to pioneer church planting to those with least-access to the Gospel.

Summary and Analysis from the Historical Reflection In this section we seek to summarize some of the lessons we feel are most important from our historical reflection and offer further analysis. As with all of our historical work in the preceding material we are primarily indebted to Gary McGee’s two-volume work on Assemblies of God missions history (1986, 1989, and 2010). The material here is not exhaustive but reflects our interests in missiological development and decision-making, the broader of the agency and mission priorities.

1. There is a history of reassessment based in on-field realities (for instance, the initial formation of the Council over what was perceived as wasteful mission efforts, the failure of tongues as spoken languages to avoid language study, the planning for changes brought about by WWII and so on). This opens the door to change and new emphases, showing that we have continuity with but are not bound by our past. There is an ad hocness to the guiding of the Spirit and an openness to new ways. 2. There are always tensions. This opens the door for us to identify our tensions and get them out on the table. Our history shows that sometimes we can work in one kind of discourse but actually do other things. In the future it would be healthy to try to be more up front in dealing with the various tensions and polarities of our Pentecostal mission. 3. McGee notes how much Pentecostal mission shares with the evangelical world. While maintaining our distinctives on the work of the Spirit, our mission has drawn upon the accumulated mission wisdom as well as biblical insights from non-Pentecostals. This shows that the Pentecostal mission is not closed, and is responsive to changing contexts. 4. There have been times in our past when leadership resisted broader trends that they felt were not in line with our understanding of mission. In the Hogan era there was resistance to methods that were seen as less effective in helping us reach our goals of an indigenous church movement. From our earliest days there has been an evaluative element to our missions thinking, and not just "anything goes." 5. The history of Pentecostal mission shows that it is possible to get sidelined and distracted. Unless there is specific energy and focus placed on cross-cultural mission it does not just “emerge”. 6. There are multiple sources of Assemblies of God missiology and multiple flows. , boards, missionaries on the field, influence from reading other works like that of Roland Allen, the missions committee, executive directors, and even trends in the American church – some moving from top-down and others from bottom to top. There is no linear straight-line history of missiological development. Part of the dynamism of our Pentecostal mission is that both center and periphery shape missiology. 7. There are times when missiology has been defined in terms of a contrast as in “what we are not” versus a positive proclamation of what we do. 8. A reading of our history shows that we are human and fallible. 9. The American church has never fully bought into our mission principles, and there is always a tension between their interests and what AGWM holds as critical work for maximum effectiveness. 10. Our pragmatism has kept us from working on a fully integrated and coherent theology of mission. 11. Since WWII there is no fear of planning to grapple with world realities, and people like Noel Perkin and J. Philip Hogan did not see strategizing and developing goals as activities that were devoid of the guidance of the Spirit. 12. Administrators and people who never served as missionaries gave biblical direction to missionary practice. 13. The genius of Assemblies of God missions has been the ability to hold in dynamic tension the guidance of the Spirit to individuals and the need for collective guidance as well. 14. The core of our historical continuity with our past is the linking of the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the commitment o evangelize the world. The fusion of those two elements is the glue that hold Assemblies of God mission together and has made it so successful. When they are separated, both elements suffer and are marginalized. Maintaining our commitment to both into the future will insure that we as missions agency continue to stay on target in God’s global redemptive mission.

Significant Implications from Our History and a Recommendation As our writing team came to the end of our historical inquiry, we asked ourselves the “So what?” question. What is the significance of our rich mission history as we move into the future? We feel that as you step back and look at the whole sweep of nearly 100 years of mission activity, the message is loud and clear: it means something to be a Pentecostal Assemblies of God missionary. It is not inconsequential, it is not just a convenience of affiliation, nor is not simply an aggregation of individuals pursuing their own callings and ministry interests. What we see instead, from the very beginning, is a single-minded bold aim – "the greatest evangelism that the world has ever seen." This commitment was then bolstered by a small but powerful set of foundational principles that welded this enterprise into a tool that the Holy Spirit has used greatly.

One way of looking at this is to see two fundamental matrices that are released by our experience of the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the commitment to world evangelization. Inherent in each of them are healthy tensions that require continual monitoring and negotiation. On the one hand we have the primacy of the work of the Spirit in the individual, and yet the need for organization. On the other hand we have the commitment to the whole world and yet the great demographic challenge of the world that has least-access to the Gospel. In this final section we explore these two critical dimensions of what it means to be a Pentecostal Assemblies of God missionary along with their tensions as well as the promise they bring. We conclude with two final recommendations for further work that grow out of this assignment.

1. Pentecostal Assemblies of God Mission has as its core a commitment to the evangelization of the world through the power of the Holy Spirit. We want to argue that the dedication to evangelize the world by the power of the Holy Spirit and the 1921 mandates to follow the Pauline example of taking the Gospel to neglected regions and to accomplish this world-wide mission by establishing indigenous churches constituted for the fledgling Assemblies of God a distinct sense of shared mission. From the beginning their pursuit was more than simply the aggregation of the individual callings of the movement’s missionaries. These commitments constitute the mission, missiological commitments, vision, and values of our agency. We feel that the genius of Assemblies of God mission has been the willingness to live and operate within the tensions of individual call and the need for organization to insure that mission, vision, and values are being pursued. It is this clear sense of mission, missiological commitments, vision, and values that make up the collective or organizational calling of AGWM as a mission sending structure. To sign on as a Pentecostal Assemblies of God missionary means that there is an ultimate trajectory to one’s labor and a full integration of our core mission elements of reaching, planting, training and touching.

We feel like a reading of our early history shows that AGWM has never viewed itself as a “job placement” service, existing only to facilitate individual Pentecostals’ missionary calls. AGWM has always understood the Spirit has called us as an organization to one priority and sought to facilitate the placement of similarly-called individuals. Whether explicit or tacit, there have always been parameters on our missionary labors.

An agency-level commitment to world evangelization, however, raises tensions due to our belief in the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the individual. In our next point we will enlarge upon the idea of a collective agency-level call to world evangelization and argue that the manifestation of that call in our current day and age means a priority focus on those who have least-access to the Gospel. However, here we want to suggest that the diversity of individual callings and giftings should not be seen as being inhibited by a notion of collective call based in mission, vision and values. Rather, having a very clear organizational sense of calling energizes and focuses individual calling and gifting. Wherever the Spirit calls an individual in the world, he or she can work towards the collective AGWM call. Here are some illustrations of what we mean.

AGWM missionaries called to work among national churches that are mature can use their experience, language, cultural intuition, and relational capital to catalyze those national churches to reach unreached peoples. AGWM missionaries called to work in Bible Schools can motivate, envision, exhort, and model to their students the priority of church planting among unreached peoples. AGWM missionaries called to work among the poor, the trafficked, the orphaned, the sick, the thirsty, and the disadvantaged can dignify them by inviting them to join the inclusive plan of God to be glorified by all peoples. AGWM missionaries called to work with children can raise up the next generation of missionaries to unreached peoples. AGWM missionaries called to to youth can mobilize them to give their lives among unreached peoples. AGWM missionaries called to executive, administrative, or advocacy roles can stir up the Churches to give and pray that unreached peoples be evangelized. All ages, all races, from all locations can combine together in this great and glorious collective calling.

Even as Paul describes the church as having many members and not all members having the same office (Romans 12:4-5); so, missions organizations also have different callings. In the case where an individual’s call does not align with AGWM’s mission, vision and values, they can still be encouraged that if their individual call is valid, it will align with the collective call of another mission organization. We bless and encourage such individuals to pursue that avenue.

AGWM has always made room for individuals whom the Holy Spirit has called to share our overall vision. The call is too important to be unfocused. The only way we can together be obedient to the call God’s Spirit has on AGWM is if our individual callings unite in harmony with the mission, missiological commitments, vision, and values of our Pentecostal mission. Where we are called to is secondary (and changeable), what we are called to is supreme (and fixed). The same Spirit who is calling individuals to missionary work is the Spirit who called our spiritual forefathers to evangelize all the world, which in our day means a priority on planting indigenous churches among unreached peoples. We can all rejoice that the Holy Spirit (as the executive of mission) is able to reconcile the tension between any individual’s sense of calling and our organizational calling.

2. Pentecostal Assemblies of God Mission always maintains its world evangelization trajectory while shifting emphases based on current realities. Our legacy from our forefathers and mothers in mission is a single goal with a Spirit-led pragmatism and flexibility that allows us to respond both to crisis and changing mission realities. Our writing team believes that the Spirit-led emphasis for this juncture in our history is toward planting the church among people groups currently without a viable witness. Why? Looking at our history makes it simple: our final and ultimate trajectory is always evangelization of the world. Our 2013 is like the 1913 of our founders. Like them, we stand on the brink of a massive demographic imbalance between where the church exists and where it does not exist. They set the compass on taking the Good News to their world, and we can do no less in our time.

We want to suggest that if our AGWM mission, vision and values are historically focused on the evangelization of the world, our current missiological realities means that this entails a priority focus upon the unreached ethnolinguistic groups of our world. The one priority of AGWM has been made clear from the beginning of our movement: the priority of preaching the Gospel and planting the church among those beyond the reach of the existing church. The language has changed, but the simple priority has been constant. In 1914 we committed “to the greatest evangelism the world has ever seen”. In 1917 we determined to send missionaries where the need was the greatest (Perkin & Garlock, 1963:41). In 1920 the missions department conducted research and discovered we were not present in “vast areas needing evangelism”. In 1921 we re-committed ourselves to the Pauline example of seeking neglected regions to proclaim Christ. Whether the term was “the regions beyond”, “the neglected regions”, “where Christ has not been named”, the heathen, the lost, the perishing, the blind, the benighted, or the damned, as a mission organization we have always been called to evangelism and discipleship of those who have not had the opportunity to know Jesus as Savior and Lord.

Over the last 100 years AGWM has been faithful to this call, even in changing times. Different foci have been emphasized according to context and opportunity, but the goal of planting indigenous churches through the power of the Holy Spirit among those who have never heard about Jesus has never been amended. Again, we believe that our history shows a central trajectory to all our mission efforts, even as on-the-ground missionary practice changed. From 1921-1941 AGWM focused on planting indigenous churches, for we believed the best way ultimately to reach all peoples was through indigenous movements. Through the 1930s to the end of the 1950s Bible Institutes were founded till we had more than twice as many as any other mission. Why? Because we believed we needed trained missionaries and ministers if we were going to evangelize the whole world. From 1959-1989 AGWM focused on partnerships with emerging National Churches as we believed that we could only reach unreached peoples in collaboration with the global . After the Iron Curtain fell we rushed missionaries into post-Communist lands to proclaim Christ and plant the church. From 1990-2011 AGWM focused on extending our work into countries of restricted access as we realized they contained many of the people groups yet to be reached. From 2012 onwards AGWM has begun to focus on reaching Unreached People Groups through multi-national teams as we realize the growth of our partner churches, globalization, the advance of technology, the demonic grip on un-evangelized peoples, and the urgency of the hour all make our original and ongoing calling more necessary to attempt together than ever before.

Everything AGWM has focused on throughout its history has been towards the end of “the gospel of the kingdom being preached in all the world as a witness among every people that the end might come.” (Mathew 24:14) Though the focus through the years has varied, the purpose and calling of AGWM has never wavered. If the people who gathered in 1914 were standing with us today facing billions who are less than 1% Evangelical and who lack adequate witness to the Gospel, there is no doubt in our minds that they would commit themselves to the greatest evangelization by the power of the Holy Spirit among every ethno-linguistic people on earth where the church does not exist. We see this as our collective priority, in keeping with our history and our explicit statements on mission by our General Councils. It forms the trajectory that individual callings labor towards.

For some there is a feeling of tension between the needs of people everywhere, and peoples without access to the Gospel. In our thinking there need be no tension. If God loves the whole world, that certainly includes those who have the fewest Christians, witness, and churches. By the same token, his love for all the tribes and tongues of the earth, means that he loves those who are lost and broken everywhere. As we illustrated in the previous point, all missionary effort – wherever it is located – can have significant impact on those with least access to the Gospel.

3. The potential power of a laser-focused collective call to take the Gospel to the unreached Our final point looks to the future as we think about where we are heading as a mission sending agency and movement. We feel like there are some things that stand out from our history that speak to us, challenge us, give us direction, and that hold great promise for us.

Blumhofer and McGee both observe the distinction between Pentecostal missions that had diffuse goals or were distracted by peripheral concerns and the fledgling Assemblies of God that from the beginning had very specific objectives formulated from both experience and their understanding of Scripture. The pneumatological investigations of those in the radical evangelical stream were directly connected to their interest in evangelizing the world. The people who formed the Assemblies of God saw missions as their reason for being; domestic evangelism was simply assumed, because to have experienced the baptism in the Spirit was to receive power to witness.

This observation on the part of historians should make us ask ourselves, 100 years later, if we as an agency, and by extension the entire movement, have not become diffuse in our goals and distracted from central biblical perspectives?

Tim Southerland, one of our writing team members, suggests that now in 2013 we are at a similar moment to 1913; it is a time where our network of churches has an increasingly tenuous sense of connection to one another and very diverse goals relating to both domestic evangelism and cross- cultural mission. He raises the question of what will be the “call” that issues forth today, that as in 1914 united early Pentecostals into a focused movement?

Certainly this would not be the first time since the initial gathering in 1914 that this has happened. Everett Wilson in his biography of J. Philip Hogan talks about the 1950s as a time when the challenge for the Assemblies of God was to retain its fervor in the face of a social and cultural evolution "that tended to dampen its intensity and threaten its effectiveness" (1997:72).

Wilson’s comment about the role of the Division of Foreign Missions in that era is deeply moving and is worth quoting at length here:

While the denomination was going through this process of metamorphosis, socially, culturally, and institutionally, the feature that helped stave off self-serving interests and disruptive internal conflicts was the frequently reiterated commitment to global evangelization. While almost everything else was in flux, ... missions was an inspiring, unifying force that gave the movement a transcendent reason-for-being. Further, it may well have been that the denomination's overseas efforts—its sacrificial, collective vision for reaching out to a needy world—was its principal stimulant to inspire its youth and mobilize an increasingly passive or even alienated . In any event, the argument is compelling that its missionary focus has played an important role in keeping the denomination on course, resisting or forestalling drift and deterioration (1997:72-73).

We feel that the issue of collective call around taking the Gospel to those who have least-access to it can become the focal point that unites us in AGWM around God’s global redemptive purpose, and that this renewal can then flow back into our Assemblies of God stateside movement and become again that transcendent reason-for-being that will energize us for powerful evangelization at home as well as among the unreached peoples of the world.

There was a simple logic to the early Pentecostals' thinking about mission. The Spirit comes so we can have power to take the Gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth—to every tribe, tongue and nation. What would happen if we returned to that kind of simplicity and pared ourselves down to a central laser-focus on planting the indigenous church, with all the labor and multiple giftings that entails, among the unengaged, unreached and least-reached?

It would renew us.

Why?

Because it would break us, simply because we cannot do it—not with our dollars, manpower, technology, or techniques. We do not know how to do it, and we will die as we try to do it. It will drive us to repent of our idolatries of human and technological ability and fall on our faces before God and ask for his mercy, and power, and divine strategies from the Spirit.

We who are part of what are now labeled classical Pentecostals need now, 100 years later, to have a new Pentecost that will have both historical continuity and discontinuity with the first. The continuity is that our seeking of the Spirit’s power is directly connected to one thing—the proclamation of Jesus to the world. The discontinuity is that when the Spirit comes we will now know from the accumulated wisdom of 100 years of missionary effort that we need to reject the naïve triumphalism that so often characterizes the first effervescence of fresh outpourings of the Spirit. Our second Pentecost will come to us with the knowledge that the toughest, most daunting task remains and that the peoples and societies we engage have successfully resisted the mode of the Christian faith practiced by our Pentecostal ancestors.

How is it that renewal in us, as a mission, as a sending structure for mission in a denomination, where we are a tiny fraction of people within the movement, will be used by God to renew the whole? It is because of the infective and unifying power of a vision that is deeply rooted in the heart of God. A renewed, laser-focused AGWM, zealous to see Christ proclaimed where he is not known, can become the lightning rod the Spirit can use to break people’s hearts for God's purposes and his glory in the world. It will once again give the home base something bigger than themselves to grapple with and invest their lives in. When people become broken for the lost who are geographically and culturally far from them they will begin to see the lost who are across the street with different eyes. People who get on fire to reach unreached people groups will start to see their neighbor differently, while people who begin to engage their neighbor across the street will better understand the complexities of reaching lost people and understand better the critical priority of boots-on-the-ground workers among unreached people groups.

We have nearly 13,000 churches in the USA, nearly all meeting in some kind of rented or owned structure. What would happen if there was a work of the Spirit, not driven by pastors, not programmed out and pushed, but simply working in the hearts of people that would turn these 13,000 places into houses of prayer for their nation and the nations? What would happen if people confessed their sin, repented of their idolatries, and acknowledged their inabilities to bring Christ to their lost neighbors and diaspora peoples of their own nation and the unreached peoples around the world?

Two concluding recommendations First, after looking at these two matrices of Assemblies of God missions, our writing team feels that further work should be commissioned to outline a biblical foundation for the distinctive calling of AGWM as a body of believers. The historical record is clear, but our people have been busy out doing it, and taking time for reflection to articulate this will lay a foundation for new cohorts of missionaries who will join our ranks in years to come. This study would research biblical support for the idea of callings of God existing not only for individuals, but also for a specific community of faith as a whole. It would also examine the biblical and theological roots of the core mission that is apparent in AGWM's history.

Second, once AGWM's collective calling has been described in more detail and with biblical support, we would like to see fresh ways of conveying that calling be explored. One possibility would be to compose a short, potent phrase that can serve as a unifying watchword across AGWM and its constituency. This would be a tool that serves alongside our existing mission, vision and purpose statements. As we look toward the future, we pray that a renewed spotlight on the unreached will reinvigorate not only the AGWM missionary family but also the entire Assemblies of God constituency as the reality of this humanly impossible task draws us into utter dependence upon the Spirit and Word of God. Bibliography Assemblies of God Foreign Missions, Into All the World: The New Missionary Manual (Springfield, Missouri: Assemblies of God Foreign Missions, 1999), 11.

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