Recently, I attended a meeting with some key leaders from a number of global Baptist missions agencies. It was an encouraging week of meetings where we heard reports from many of the agencies. They discussed their strategy, the various locations in the world where they have missionaries, and the progress of their work.
There was much to celebrate. I was encouraged by the spirit of cooperation in the room. Global Baptist leaders from conventions and networks around the world gathered together to cooperate across language and cultural barriers to get the gospel to the nations. It filled me with joy to see those leaders working together.
A large part of the meeting was dedicated to rethinking many of the categories we use to engage in gospel ministry globally. We discussed people group lists, various regions and boundaries for strategy, and how best to draw out areas of focus. These groups are committed to partnering together and to rethinking the way they’ve analyzed their work and drawn out the maps of ministry. This process was intense.
I left with some thoughts brewing in my head.
Over the course of the meeting, as each group presented their findings, a couple of themes emerged for me. At times, the data and maps created an immediate level of clarity in the work. Sometimes, a presenter would begin to explain an area of concentration and you could see how the data was informing a strategic need. However, more than once, a presenter noted another outcome. Sometimes, these maps and regions and lists had done more to obscure work or limit work than enable it. As different groups discussed their process of reassessing these areas of focus, they began to see how their thinking in previous years had been limited by the boundaries they had drawn. They developed a self-imposed cage.
It was interesting to see how the same process of trying to define areas of service, fields for ministry, could either bring clarity or confusion. Data can free us for ministry, or it can create artificial limits on what we believe to be possible. I am convinced this is not just a matter of accurate information. I imagine this is also a matter of the heart.
When engaging in this kind of research, I believe we must remind ourselves of the purpose for the data in the first place. This is as true for local churches seeking to better understand their community as it is for multi-national missions agencies working together to categorize all the peoples of the world for the global spread of the gospel.
So, let me remind us all of a couple of points we need to keep in mind when reviewing data on the harvest.
Put Data in Its Proper Place
Let me start here. Our maps help us discover opportunities, they do not determine outcomes. Viewed incorrectly, we serve our maps and our lists instead of our God. We must always put our data in its rightful place: a handmaiden to the mission.
There are a couple of tendencies we must avoid. First, it’s often possible for us to fall into the trap of making the collection of the data the end in itself. We feel we are done, and the task is fulfilled, once we have developed our data, our regions, our maps, our newfound understanding of the field.
Yet, this is not the real work of gospel ministry. It is an important aspect of the task. Jesus raises the question in the Scriptures, “For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it” (Luke 14:28)? The work is not finished at counting the cost.
Another, perhaps more subtle, tendency comes when we allow the map to set the horizon for what is possible. Once this happens, it does more than discovery, it begins to determine what we believe can be accomplished. We base our expectations on a tool designed to facilitate the work, and we “teach to the test.”
Use Data to Reveal, not Conceal
Illustrating data means making decisions. It requires limits. A road map would not be very useful to you if its designer chose to show you every possible datapoint. The road would quickly become obscured by all the unimportant data.
So it is with ministry maps, and people lists. Our community data can reveal or it can conceal.
We must ensure that our maps communicate the opportunities. A repeated refrain at our meeting came from those who realized that, over time, their ministry regions had actually inhibited their ability to see connections through which gospel spread could be facilitated. Lines were drawn and became boundaries that concealed what was possible.
We must revisit our maps regularly and ask some hard questions. How have things changed since the lines were established? What new connections may be present? We must be critical with our data, and we likely need to do it in the open. Share your maps with others and get a second opinion.
Local church leaders, invite your association, church network, state convention, other church leaders into the conversation. Learn to use a cooperative playbook with others. I can almost assure you that you will all benefit from it.
The Spread of the Gospel can Defy Your Borders
We do our best to reasonably understand how and where the gospel spreads. At their best, our maps and our lists show us something we did not see before, and we are able to move into new territory. Yet, let us not be so smug as to suggest the gospel can only go where we determine. When the gospel goes beyond where we predicted, sticking to our maps is shortsighted at best and sinful at worst.
The goal must be Spirit-led discernment. We create maps for discernment, for clarity, for eyes to see the field in front of us. This is good and right. We make plans, because it is right to make plans.
Maps do not limit the Spirit. Throughout the book of Acts, we experience the triumph of the gospel through the power of the Holy Spirit. Repeatedly, Luke pauses his narrative briefly to provide his readers with a status update, “… And the word of God continued to increase” (Acts 6:7). These summary statements track the growth the gospel across boundaries, regions, lands, and peoples. By the end, Luke confidently claims the gospel prevailed mightily (Acts 19:20).
Luke records for us Paul’s missionary journeys. Paul and his team of missionaries make plans, they devise strategy, and they likely have their maps. Paul’s own writings detail his plans. In his magnum opus, the missionary support letter to the Roman church, Paul outlines his plans to use Rome as a staging ground for missionary expansion even further west now that his work from Jerusalem to Illyricum is complete (Romans 15:20-29). We do not know, at least from the Scriptures, if these plans ever came to fruition.
In Luke’s writing, he clearly explains that the Spirit will defy the best laid plans of the missionary.
They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia; they had been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. When they came to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. Passing by Mysia they went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision in which a Macedonian man was standing and pleading with him, “Cross over to Macedonia and help us! ” After he had seen the vision, we immediately made efforts to set out for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them (Acts 16:6-10, CSB).
Paul and his team desired to go to Bithnyia, but the Spirit did not allow it. The Holy Spirit had other plans. The Holy Spirit opened a door into Macedonia that was closed on their map.
Without being overly prescriptive, Luke and Paul’s testimony in the Scripture demonstrate ministry leaders making plans, devising routes, laying out their maps of strategic need and opportunities for engagement. Plans are good. Data is a great help in ministry. Make your map.
Let’s allow the Lord of the Harvest the freedom to change those plans and redraw our boundaries of what is possible. After all, it is the Spirit who can open wide doors of effective ministry (1 Corinthians 16:8–9).