The Chicken or the Egg

Which came first? The chicken or the egg? This age-old question came to mind today while I was having a deep discussion with a few other missionaries and the Potomac District secretary/treasurer, Ken Burtram.

The question was posed: why are so many missionaries struggling to raise their budgets? We mentioned that it seemed unlikely that churches are out of money, since other church ministries continue to run smoothly. We determined that the idea of world missions is perhaps not as much of a priority as it once was. After all, ours was a fellowship that declared it would "send forth the greatest missionary force that the world has ever known" when it formed in 1914. The whole point of this fledging fellowship was to reach the uttermost parts of the earth. Somewhere, somehow that zeal seems to have cooled. Unfortunately, many churches don't even give 10% of their budget to missions; some don't even spend 10% for evangelism of any kind!*

But as we discussed this lack of missions fervor, someone pointed out that, while the objective of the Assemblies of God was to evangelize the world, their distinctive was their Pentecostal experience. According to Acts 1:8, the primary reason and consequent result of the baptism in the Holy Spirit was to witness, from the local area to the entire world. Perhaps the lack of missions interest follows the lack of Pentecostal teaching or Pentecostal experience in many of our churches. One missionary pointed out that he repeatedly hears this: we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit "to live our lives day to day" in closer fellowship with God. Instead of a selfless (and biblical) focus on evangelism, an experience with the Holy Spirit is being billed as a solution to Christian doldrums. My brothers, this should not be! With more and more of our churches losing Pentecost completely, we cannot afford to ignore that it is meant to empower us to reach the lost!

Discuss amongst yourselves--I'll give you a topic: which is the cause and which is the effect? Have we stopped preaching Pentecost because we're not interested in missions or have we stopped supporting missions because we've lost Pentecost?

*I believe that most churches give to good charities and obvious needs, but sometimes without a specific intention or effort to reach the lost.