The future is uncertain. We know it will be greatly different but are not sure in which ways it will be different. We seem to be in a time of parenthesis between what God has blessed in the past and what it has yet to be clear for the future - Paul McKaughen, EFMA
Few would deny that the Christian mission movement is changing. For one thing, it is an increasingly global phenomenon, with churches from many nations now involved in sending missionaries to other parts of the world. While predictions of the death of the Western mission agency have sometimes been greatly exaggerated, many such organisations are running up the down escalator, working very hard just to survive. A growing tend of direct involvement of many local churches in their own mission projects means that mission agencies could be in danger of looking like an increasingly irrelevant middleman. Yet mission agencies have been significant actors in the history of the modern mission movement. What role do they have to play in the 21st century?
Survive or thrive? Is there a future for the mission agency? was a conference in 2003 that looked at a variety of related issues around this theme. These included:
- Looking at the factors that are forcing change upon Western mission agencies
- Considering the scale of possible changes required
- Examining changes already implemented by some mission agencies
- Reflecting on the changing relationship between local churches and mission agencies
- Looking at ways in which mission agencies can be structured to thrive in a changing environment
A list of papers for downloads is available below.
