Mission and Money

Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Led by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

In the session for finance, Dr. Jonathan Bonk, the president of OMSC gave us the special lecture on the relationship between mission and finance. The lecture was moved for my group because Dr. Bonk was very persuasive with several concrete stories. Especially, the story of Mizoram that was one of the poorest regions in Northern India and later became the second highest literacy village in India was amazing. Though they are poor, they are sending missionaries with supporting fund by 40% amount of their total budget because they see the task of proclaiming the gospel as their responsibility as a nation. With the stories, Dr. Bonk concluded that mission is not the byproduct of the money affair, but the precious fruit of the passion.

The responses of my group were varying from positive to the other side. Most of participants agreed with conclusion, “mission is the precious fruit of the passion.” Since the subject of mission is God and we are just agents for God’s mission, our obedience with passion to God’s mission is most important element in mission activities any other than circumstance, finance and cultural equipment. However, one of my group members pointed out in a succinct manner that money matters in all activities including mission. It could be used as a resource or asset and this is obvious when we are going to the ends of the earth. Another responded that the lecture has very familiar stories because he heard similar stories in Korea, that is, people would describe spiritual movements through people. Another member also stated that the lecture was little different from what he expected because he expected to hear the story related to how the financial problem can be solved in mission enterprises. Despite these responses, we agreed that we should have missionary zeal like Mizoram people who show us the miracle of God’s mission. Lastly, we finished our discussion by talking on the business mission stated by Dr. Johnson for a moment.

Gun Cheol Kim, discussion moderator