As my church has been considering anew how to do missions, one of the books on my to-read list has been Glocalization, by Bob Roberts.  Bob Roberts is the pastor of NorthWood Church in the Dallas area and the author of the blog, Glocal.net.

On the whole, I found this book to be quite helpful and thought provoking.  I don’t think this book provides a comprehensive pattern for mission in my church, but is does give us food for thought as we think about it differently.

The dominant themes to this book are as follows…

First, we live in a “Flat Earth,” where the world is engaged and connected with one another.  So when we think about who is our neighbor, we need to consider that our neighbor is just a key stroke or quick plane ride way.  The flat earth is networked, so our efforts are always collaborative.

Second, the era of the professional missionary is ending.  Moving forward, the members of our churches are to be involved in mission work directly.  If you are a church member in North America, you have an opportunity to impact the world with the skills you have.  These skills, in large part, are the skills of their vocation.

Third, Roberts does not believe in the idea of closed countries.  He believes that churches can get involved in any area provided they play by the rules that the host country provides.  Roberts shares examples of his church being involved in Afghanistan and Vietnam.  He thinks we ought not sneak around but instead be up front with local officials as to why we want to serve their nation.

Finally, and this is the part I found most thought provoking, Roberts suggests that our job in missions is not to create a church and sponsor church planting, but to create the Kingdom of God and have churches grow out of those efforts.  He writes on page 79,

“Churches are the result and proof of the kingdom being present, not the instigation of it.  The formula was (is) simple.  Go out and live it, serve others.  As you speak, lives are transformed and the church is established.”

By way of illustrating this point, he writes about the spiritual climate in Ghana vs. South Korea today.  Both countries had traditional mission engagement.  In South Korea the mission strategy changed from the traditional evangelistic approach to building hospitals and schools , helping with infrastructure and community transformation.  In Ghana it remained more on seeking conversions and decisions.  Today, South Korea may have more missionaries in the field than any other country, including the United States.  Ghana, still struggling spiritually.

If you are willing to throw everything out the window and start anew your thinking about world mission, I think you should add Glocalization to your must read list.  As I said, I do not think we are going to embrace everything he wrote, but it is some fresh thinking about how to impact the world.

Next up, The Year of Living Bibilically, by A. J. Jacobs.