Posted by Anthony Adams.

Continuing a series of questions about world mission, posed to me by Stephen Murray, church planter in South Africa.

4. Do you think there is place for organizations which don’t place the local church at the center of mission?

Well – it can rarely be wrong for any Christian/group of Christians to go and tell someone about Jesus, or help someone out in their need. But I do think that where organizations sideline the local church, or merely look to it as the place to recruit people and money, that is a mistake. There are a number of groups who were formed because of some specialist issue, that local churches could struggle to do – bible translation is one obvious one. The aeroplane ministry of MAF would be another. Others could be things like student work, where access to campuses is limited to those who are not students. But I would hope that the local church would not be sidelined even in these organizations. One mission leader, some time ago, announced to a gathering of mission leaders that he had realized that he had been remiss in neglecting the local church as he had pursued his mission agenda over the years, but others continue on without reference to local churches and I think it’s very sad. I heard how over the Easter weekend in one city, a classic example of churchless mission work happened. My friend writes:

‘On Easter Sunday here there were about 5 or 7 kids in church. On the next day, a school holiday, an international children's ministry had 120 kids at a "rally". The rally does a great job with kids. There are not plans for following up parents. No plans to integrate the kids into a church, etc. What's going on? I don't get it. Many of the staff attend the church I was at on Easter, but that church has no Sunday children's work, and nobody is training them how to do kids work. Hello?????’

There is a lack of joined-up thinking there, and certainly a lack of biblical thinking.