Missionary work is full of risk. Persecution, sickness, extreme conditions and climates, loneliness, lack of resources, and cross-cultural misunderstandings all pose potential dangers for the missionary. But no danger is more pressing than the risk of compromise. The urgency of the task and barrage of stressors create a constant pressure to compromise. Ethical and doctrinal convictions weaken under the toxic influence of pragmatic expediency in missions. Like Abraham with Hagar, missionaries are tempted to take matters into their own hands to produce fruit.
The impossibility of finishing the task at the human level leads to the temptation to redefine the nature of that task and “re-think missions.”[1] It is no surprise to a missionary that much of the denominational controversy in Machen’s life swirled around doctrinal faithfulness in missions. Missions became the test tube where the lack of conviction was revealed. Machen’s clarity of vision on the mission of the church led to practical recommendations and actions for denominations, mission organizations, and missionaries to withstand the lure of liberalism. These doctrinal convictions and the practical implications for missionary activity presented in Christianity and Liberalism are as needed today as they were 100 years ago.
1. In 1932, during Machen’s ministry, a report was published called, Re-Thinking Missions. Hart explains, “Re-Thinking Missions, a selection for the Religious Book of the Month, was a bombshell. It rejected the old rationale for missions—evangelism and church planting—and affirmed a new purpose of social, educational, scientific, economic, and political progress.” D.G. Hart, “The Rise and Fall of J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism,” Christ Over All, June 5, 2023.
The Problem: Mission Drift
In 1920, at a PCUSA denominational meeting, Machen listened to the “The Plan for the Organic Union.” This ecumenical report set forth a plan to unite American Protestant denominations for the sake of a progressive social gospel.[2] However, these types of ecumenical plans, which are geared toward maximizing collaboration, inevitably undermine doctrinal convictions.
2. D.G. Hart, “The Rise and Fall of J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism,” Christ Over All, June 5, 2023.
Machen’s response to these liberal movements in Christianity and Liberalism indicated that he saw similar problems in missionary endeavors. Machen argued that it is the joy and duty of Christians to spread the gospel. The best way to spread this gospel to the nations is through contributing to mission agencies. But Machen lamented, “At this point the perplexity arises. The Christian man discovers to his consternation that the agencies of the Church are propagating not only the gospel as found in the Bible and in the historic creeds, but also a type of religious teaching which is at every conceivable point the diametrical opposite of the gospel.”[3] This observation eventually led Machen to work with other conservatives to establish the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions that would send out “true missionaries of the Cross.” He could no longer encourage donations to the denomination’s mission fund, even if the gifts were designated to faithful missionaries. He claimed that the centralization of power in the denomination and liberal direction made designated gifts an “illusory” solution.
3. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 144.
What Machen noted with consternation a century ago continues today. A mission agency may have some faithful missionaries, but at the same time support and promote missionaries who are using “cutting edge” methods, which are also doctrinally bankrupt. There are many reasons that liberalism creeps into missions, but Machen recognized that devaluing and supplanting orthodox doctrine was the crux of the problem.
Devaluing Doctrine for the Sake of Mission
Broadly speaking, there are three approaches to the task of missions. On one side, there is the approach of the “missionaries of the cross” who maintain there is a priority or primacy of gospel proclamation, evangelism, church-planting, and discipleship. On the other side is the approach of the “missionary of liberalism”[4] who addresses mere humanitarian and social concerns. “Holism,” espoused by many evangelical missiologists today, is a third approach to the task of missions, which puts gospel proclamation and social and humanitarian effort on equal footing.[5] It should be noted, that these three broad approaches are mutually exclusive of each other. Thus, endeavors in mission collaboration between them often come to a methodological stalemate. To move past this methodological stalemate, the rough edges of competing convictions must be sanded down.
4. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 131.
5. Christopher Little, “The Case for Prioritism,” Great Commission Research Journal 7 (2016): 139–162. See also: Denny Spitters and Matthew Ellison, When Everything is Missions, (Orlando, FL: Pioneers-USA & Sixteen:Fifteen, 2017).
Machen observed that when it comes to collaboration in missions, organizations often take the lowest common denominator approach to doctrine. The lowest common denominator that nearly everyone agrees on is a concern for the poor and desire for a social justice. In Machen’s day, this was celebrated as missions driven by the Golden Rule.
Machen’s response to the liberal mission methodologies of his day was that biblical mission methods are categorically different than the liberal approach. Collaboration between these approaches is, by nature, impossible. The claim that there should at least be collaboration around a methodology of the Golden Rule falls short. Machen contends, “The error consists in supposing that the Golden Rule, with the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, is addressed to the whole world … The whole discourse is expressly addressed to Jesus’ disciples; and from them the great world outside is distinguished in the plainest possible way.”[6] What the nations ultimately need is not new humanitarian institutions or a behavioral ethic. The deepest need is transformation brought about by the gospel.
6. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 32.
Liberal Impulses in Evangelical Missions
The two forces pushing to theological compromise that Machen witnessed in liberalism, devaluing doctrine and prioritizing social concern, are present in evangelical missions today. While evangelicals generally do not tolerate direct assaults on orthodox doctrine, a more subtle form of liberalism sneaks in. This is not explicit theological liberalism per se, but a liberal impulse or movement in a progressive direction in practice. In this regard, we need to hear the warning, “we are fighting against a very resourceful enemy, who does not reveal the position of his guns by desultory artillery action when he plans a great attack…the quiet sectors are usually the most dangerous.”[7] Faulty missionary methods, not grounded in clear biblical doctrine, can become the trojan horse that creeps into denominations and churches carrying a pragmatic liberal impulse. Compromise on the mission field may lead to compromise at home.
7. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 57.
Machen recognized that one of the methods of liberalism was to maintain an appearance of orthodoxy, while at the same time advocating an entirely new religion. The liberal teachers often did not fully reveal their stance on doctrinal issues openly in order not to offend. Likewise, some leaders in evangelical mission organizations have become experts in equivocation. When a culture of doctrinal ambiguity pervades a mission organization, the momentum towards compromise picks up speed. Missionaries who have doctrinal convictions in those organizations find themselves moving against the momentum in a direction that the organization discourages.
As a missionary, I have experienced the fog of doctrinal ambiguity in some evangelical mission institutions. Once, when I was seeking a field of service with a denomination’s mission agency, I shared that I could not in good conscience serve on a team that engaged in insider movement methodology[8] or was egalitarian in their church planting. For me, when it comes to theological triage, these issues touch on important first- and second-tier doctrines respectively. The agency’s leaders responded that the denomination intentionally did not have a dogmatic stance on these issues. In fact, they discouraged firm convictions because this does not allow for broad collaboration among missionaries.
8. The Insider Movement is a methodology that allows people to retain their religious identity while at the same time becoming followers of Jesus. It is most common in Muslim contexts. The insider movement, in its various forms, is syncretistic and does not recognize that the truth claims of the Bible and Islam are necessarily mutually exclusive.
The equivocation approach extends to Scripture through a hermeneutic of ambiguity. For example, at a gathering for missionaries, we were encouraged to support the ordination of women as pastors because “even Peter said Paul is sometimes hard to understand in one of his epistles.”[9] These kinds of arguments undermine the perspicuity and authority of Scripture. However, because the arguments are made in an evangelical context, those making these arguments insist that they still affirm the inspiration and authority of Scripture.
9. See Daniel Silliman, “Christian and Missionary Alliance Considers Calling Women ‘Pastors’,” Christianity Today, May 5, 2021, accessed June 15, 2023.
Forgetting the priority for missions that is set out in the Bible also leads to mission drift for evangelicals. Elements of Machen’s criticism against liberal social projects may also be applied to holism mission methodology. Holism places equal priority on gospel proclamation and social transformation, which does not necessarily make the same doctrinal errors as liberalism. However, it often leads to a pragmatic compromise and is susceptible to progressive theology. It tends toward a pragmatic prioritization of humanitarian relief and development at the expense of evangelism, the local church, and discipleship. Relief, development, and business projects are held out as equally valid to church planting, evangelism, and discipleship in mission. But, on the ground in the mission field, it is much easier and initially rewarding to run a relief or development project than to do the humanly impossible work of evangelism and church planting. The humanitarian project gets the focus and energy, and the work of planting healthy churches is neglected. While there is not a dichotomy between gospel proclamation and concern for the poor or development, Biblical missions prioritizes the former. We must hear Machen’s reminder that gospel work should not be confused or equated with social efforts. “Christian service,” he says, “consists primarily in the propagation of a message.”[10]
10. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 44.
Machen’s Solution: Gospel and Doctrine Indicative for Mission Imperative
Missionary work is obedience to the Great Commission imperative. But the imperative is founded on a clear indicative. The indicative of the gospel and orthodox doctrine defines the nature and task of the imperative. Without the foundation of the gospel and guardrails of doctrinal clarity, mission activity slides into liberalism. Machen was clear, “Here is found the most fundamental difference between liberalism and Christianity–liberalism is altogether in the imperative mood. While Christianity begins with a triumphant indicative; liberalism appeals to man’s will, while Christianity announces, first, a gracious act of God.”[11] Evangelical mission agencies and missionaries must bind themselves to the ancient mast of the gospel and orthodox doctrine as they obey the command to go into all the world. The movement of missionary activity flows from rest in the gospel.
11. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 39.
The missionary of the cross is “primarily a witness” to the facts of the action of God in history in the gospel of Jesus Christ.[12] Those involved in missions would do well to take up and read the clarion call to doctrinal clarity presented in Christianity and Liberalism. The truths in this book have the power to bring reform and blow away the fog of doctrinal ambiguity in any evangelical mission agency. These truths refresh the missionary who is tempted by the lure of pragmatism and expediency.
12. J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 44.
Machen reminds us that the imperative of missions will not be fulfilled by our cunning, methodology, or striving. The imperative can only be achieved by God’s grace. We respond in faith in the promise of the gospel and become witnesses to what he was done. Clarity on the gospel and doctrine will save us from the dangers of mission drift.
