The type of Structure of an organization dictates the policies, strategies and goals. It should be build up from the starting point. The church must therefore define the structure before any enterprise. We are fond of doing things as it comes. From the Bible it is clear to see two definite structures for God’s Mission.
The two structures that we see in the New Testament were the new Synagogue and Pauline Missionary Band which consisted of primarily visiting the Jewish Synagogues, scattered all over the Roman Empire. When more people accepted Christ, the Jewish Synagogues, for fear of being outnumbered tried all its power to stop it. They were persecuted and often refused themselves to associate with the new ones. Eventually, the believers in Christ formed a new type of Synagogue consisting of both Jews and Gentiles. This new Synagogue is what we know now as the Church.
Even before Christ, in the Old Testament we see that there were Jewish Evangelists as described by Jesus as “Traversing land and Sea to make a single proselyte” Matt.23:15. Peter also mentioned in Acts 15:21 about their work as “Moses is preached in every city: It is apparent from these that Paul must have followed the same procedure as that of the Jewish proslyters before Christ. The first structure that we see in the new synagogue is that it included the young and old, male and female. We do not exactly know the structure of Paul’s Missionary Band. We however know how he operated his team. They were sent out by Antioch Church. But once they were away from Antioch, they were on their own. His team was economically self sufficient. Whenever they came back to the sending church, they reported everything that they had done. But they were not governed by the local church. The local church simply regulated their activities but never administered. It was definitely more than the extended outreach of the Antioch church. It was not Antioch church operating at a distance from its home base. In the missiological term we called it Sodality. It is a company of committed, experienced worker who get themselves affiliated themselves, as a second decision beyond membership in the first structure. For our convenience, let us call the local church as modality structure which is different from the other structure of St. Paul’s.
We can therefore see that apart from the structure of the new Synagogue (the nascent church), they also had another quite different structure of Paul’s missionary band. The rivalry between the two structures can be easily seen from the Diaspora Jews persecuting the church which was a mixture of Jews and Gentiles. Paul was haunted by them wherever he went. (Acts 9:23;13:50;16:22; 17:13; 18:12). His disadvantage was that he had no official license of Roman Government like the Jewish synagogue.
Though there was no connection with Pauline Missionary band another structure appeared quite early in the Church history when Christianity became a national religion. Pachomius, a retired Roman soldier with three thousand followers established a structure borrowed from Roman military system of strict discipline. They were all people with additional specific commitment for their lives. This was the emergence of the formal Monastic Structure. In the Roman church the diocese and monastic structure was in existence from the fourth century. There was rivalry between the two, but in the medieval period a synthesis took place. The Modality regulated the Sodality but not administered. The priests of Sodality (Monastery) were called regular priests and the priests of the diocese and parishes were called secular priests. The most outstanding of the synthesis of Sodality and Modality during this period is the collaboration of Gregory the Great and Augustin. Gregory was the bishop of Rome and was the head of the modality but he had no structure to send missionaries to the Celtic in England. He had to call his friend, who was his contemporary in the Monastery of the Benedictine monastery and was sent with forty missionaries on a major mission to England.
At this period of time, the Roman Empire started to break down and so the diocese also started to break down. The structure of the diocese was modeled and organized according to Roman Civil pattern so it became inevitable. However, the Monastic tradition was not affected by the downfall of Roman Empire.
Martin Luther, the great Reformer, did not favour the Catholic order of the Modality structure discarded the Sodality structure as well. This is considered as the greatest weakness of the Protestant tradition. The Protestants had no mechanism for missions for nearly three hundred years until after William Carey’s book “the use of “means” for the conversion of the heathens appeared. His book opened the eyes of many believers and a fresh renaissance of Sodality broke through vigorously. Many others soon followed to the use of this kind of “Means” one after another. LaTourette called it “the great century”. Henry Venn, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) of England and Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioner for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) came out as the strategic mission thinkers championed the Semi-autonomic Mission Sodality.
After the II World War, many independent Mission structures started evolving. This was followed by some confusion because Protestant being Modality minded; their goal was to simply set up churches but not the Sodality. The result was that the new churches remained dependent on the mother churches and so they were interested only for their own survival and did not bother to become Indigenous, i.e. Self governing, self supporting and self propagating. Naga Christians are interested in planting churches but they are planting only potted plants. If we are to be successful we must sow the seed which will grow in their own soil. Potted plants will always need the foreign soil for it to grow.
No building can stand without the structure. Unless Mission structure is firmly established from the very beginning there is always the possibility of obstacles through human weaknesses and pride. William Carey was in the final years of his life faced this problem. The deficiencies of the structure of CMS became apparent only when human breakdown, bitterness surfaced. The tragic result was the final separation of the Serampore Trio (Ward, Marsham, Carey). The same thing happened with Hudson Taylor. He wanted different improved pattern but in so doing, he had to leave his parent agency and founded the “Faith Mission” of China Inland Mission. If we are wise we must learnt our lesson from the past history.
(An article which came out recently in the local papers, the author had advocated of strengthening the local churches before thinking of venturing out. What I wanted to show here is that the two structures should coexist, because the two structures can only benefit by symbiotic life. One cannot live without the other.)
Dr.L.M.Murry,
Chairman,
Okotsoe Mission Society
