The Two Tasks

Ralph Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

Malik, Charles. 2000. The Two Tasks. Wheaton: EMIS. 

This address is by a Lebanese statesman and scholar, a devout believer from the Orthodox church, who served as president of the UN Security Council and General Assembly. It was delivered during dedication ceremonies for the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in September 1980. 

"What could be more wonderful than for a Center named after the greatest Evangelist of our age to aim at achieving, under God and according to God's own pace, the twofold miracle of evangelizing the great universities and intellectualizing the great Evangelical movement? These two things are absolutely impossible, and because they are at the same time absolutely needed, God can make them absolutely possible.

"Every self-defeating attitude stems originally from the  devil, because he is the adversary, the arch0nihilist par excellence. It cannot be willed by the Holy Ghost. Anti-intellectualism is an absolutely self-defeating attitude. Wake up, my friends, wake up: the great universities control the mind of the world. Therefore how can evangelism consider its task accomplished it if leaves the university unevangelized? And how can evangelism evangelize the university if it cannot speak to the university? And how can it speak to the university if it is not itself already intellectualized?"

Ralph Winter's Parallel Thoughts

This address sheds light on Ralph Winter's concerns, expressed in an address to his staff in 1999, called, "The Future of the University." Some excerpts from that talk:

I feel I need to speak very bluntly in terms of what Evangelicals in general must learn in order for their schools (and specificially our university) to become all they need to be. The intended implication is that we ourselves cannot go much further than Evangelicals in general can follow.

Because we are dealing with “studied mediocrity” in many areas of Evangelical life, we’re up against immense cultural resistance. Evangelicals do not understand the nature or the existence of the university tradition. They founded 157 Bible schools, which have only recently become universities. They did not realize the power of culture and the strategy of contextualization within it.

As a result Evangelicals, of course, have not gotten into politics nor into university structures until very recently. How can you go as a professor from a Bible school to a university? You can’t. All the doors have been locked for a hundred years to the other divergent pattern. That was a mission strategy that went wrong, that refused to contextualize.

Evangelicals have until this day (and will perhaps for a long time to come) grossly underestimated the significance of the university pattern. This is a missionary subject….

College as we know it does not allow young people to be integrated into society.

We need to be able to rethink every single facet of our society, including the university, else otherwise we simply have Satan constantly deceiving us, teaching us all kinds of things that aren’t true. Half truths are dangerous! They are harmful!  We have one of the sickest societies in the world in many respects.

From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task, Part II

Ralph Winter’s list of “Twelve Frontiers of Perspective” shows the major shifts in his thinking since 1976 that “profoundly modified and molded” his “perception of the mission task." 

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

Today I found another book on this theme with contributions by Ralph Winter. Other authors include: David Bryant, Elisabeth Elliot, Gordon MacDonald, Robert Munger, Peter Stam, and J. Christy Wilson.

Kyle, John E., ed. 1984. The Unfinished Task. Ventura, CA: Regal Books.

From the back cover: "In August 1806, five Williams College students, caught in a thunderstorm, took refuge under a haystack. There they prayed for an awakening of student interest in foreign missions. Although none of them knew it, this was the launching of the modern missionary movement. On the 175th anniversary of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, a key group of leaders met to examine ways to finish the task of reaching the world for Jesus Christ. Their comments are found in The Unfinished Task, a book which presents new perspectives for missionaries and those considering a missions vocation."

     In Winter's chapter, "Missions Today--A Look at the Future," he discusses the three eras that he is known for coining. In a section titled, "The New Era: The Nature of the New Frontiers,"  he wrote, "We've mentioned that the first era represented the impacting of missionaries on the coastlands and the second era their moving into the interior. What then is the nature of the new third era of missions? It is what is left--the residue--what you might call the 'bypassed' peoples. … In the third era today, where the frontiers? They're everywhere.…" (pages 71, 72).

     Winter also contributed the final chapter of the book, "A Prayer for the Nations" (p. 277 ff.).

Exceprts from his prayer:

* "Many of us are wayward people, rebellious children; we have not obeyed with a beautiful, filial love. Heavenly Father, will you forgive us for the coldness of our hears, for the busyness of our lives as we have bustled about even attempting to do your work, without being with you in that work!"

* "We pray that we might be more useful than we've been, as we seek to serve and to do your will. We're glad, Lord, that we're not going backwards; we're glad that there are more people in the world now but fewer nations to be penetrated. We're glad, Lord, that the rate of population growth is not exceeding the rate of growth of the Christian movement."

* "Father, we really await your voice. Our prayers, Lord, must be listening prayers. So much has been given to us. It seems as though we have many, many people but are not organized as teams. Thousands of people are mired and ensnared by many trivial and secondary concerns, available only theoretically for your highest. Oh, God, we thank you for the challenge to give our utmost for your highest.

* "We pray for these nations, nations which have never been closer to us or better understood by us of more accessible to us."

* "And Father, I pray most of all that as we go from this place we might have a firmer grasp on your task of world evangelization and its role in our lives. Give us collaborative energy…. "

* "Oh, Father, give us renewed courage, not for our own benefit, not for our careers' sake, not for our program's sake, but only for your glory. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

Ralph Winter’s list of “Twelve Frontiers of Perspective” shows the major shifts in his thinking since 1976 that “profoundly modified and molded” his “perception of the mission task." 

(1) Unreached Peoples

(2) The Great Commission and Abraham

(3) From the Unfinished Task to the Finishable Task

(4) Failure with the Large Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”

(5) Reverse Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition

(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom

(7) Beyond Christianity

(8) A Different Type of Recruitment

(9) A Trojan Horse

(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training

(11) The Religion of Science

(12) The Challenge of the Evil One

Last week I found three books in Ralph Winter’s library with the phrase, “Unfinished Task,” in the title. I assume these authors, among others, influenced Winter’s thinking. Typically, he went beyond what others were saying; from talking about the “unfinished task,” to considering what it would mean to describe a “finishable task.”

1.

Neill, Stephen. 1957. The Unfinished Task. London: Edinburgh House Press.

This is a book of essays on missionary strategy delivered as the 1958 Duff Lectures in Scotland. Chapters include:

The Unfinished Church

Frontier Situations and Flexible Ministries

The Church and Changing Society

The Problem of a Christian Culture

The Unifinished Task in the Younger Churches

The Dynamic Minority

2.

Percy, J. O., ed. 1960. Facing the Unfinished Task. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

            This book is a series of messages delivered at the Congress on World Missions Sponsored by the Interdenominational Foreign Missions Association of North America (the IFMA, now merged with the former EFMA/Mission Exchange to be one organization, Missio Nexus). One chapter by G. Christian Weiss is entitled, “An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians,” a deliberate play on William Carey’s famous pamphlet. As president of a small university named after William Carey, I resonate with Weiss’ statement on page 262: “One of our great obligations in many of these countries today as evangelical missionaries is to establish Christian schools on a college level for the training of native leadership in these lands.… That we need preachers and pastors is of course obvious; but we must also train native leaders for these countries who will be able to give direction to the course of their governments.”

3.

Barton, James L. 1908. The Unfinished Task of the Christian Church. New York: Laymen’s Missionary Movement.

            This book starts with a chapter titled, “The Obligation to Undertake the Task,” and ends with, ”Shall We Finish the Task?” In this last chapter he concludes with a list of “disqualifications” (including debt), and with “What Then, Constitutes a Call?”

If you’re interested in seeing one or more of these books, let me know (beth.snodderly@wciu.edu). We can work out an arrangement for you to read them in the Graduate Studies section of Latourette Library.

Ralph Winter’s Finishable Task Thinking:

            In his article, “Twelve Frontiers of Perspective,” Winter wrote, “We promote the idea that, relatively speaking, it is a finishable job to make at least a ‘missiological breakthrough’ into every people group on the planet. … This intermediate goal of initial penetration is relatively concrete and measurable, and it is a task that is relatively small, not hopelessly large! And in all mission strategy the breakthrough is the most difficult and crucial task.”

            Winter also commented in his article, “Analysis of a Movement,” “The really crazy thing is that we have all the information we need for the new outreaches for which we are prepared right now. The more we penetrate the pioneer peoples, the more we will know. We don’t really need to know more than we can digest right now.”

            These articles are from Winter’s compilation of his own writings, Frontiers in Mission, available from William Carey Library: http://missionbooks.org/williamcareylibrary/product.php?productid=546&cat=0&page=1.