Mission Agencies Highlight 'Whole Person' Outreach
Mission groups are stressing the need to minister to the whole person rather than focusing on only the spiritual or physical needs.
Urbana ’06, the Global Summit on AIDS and the Church, and the Global Missions Health Conference are only some of the recent events attended by thousands calling for Christians to address all the needs of a person.
“We need to proclaim the coming kingdom in our evangelistic message, but we also need to live out those values,” said Steve Strauss, SIM (Serving in Mission) International USA president, according to Mission Network News on Monday. “We need to do the two naturally as part of who we are and what we’re about as believers in Jesus Christ…”
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Strauss said SIM not only uses traditional evangelism and church planting to spread the Gospel, but also business, medical, agriculture, and education as mission opportunities.
Similarly, Wycliffe Associates believes in helping its Bible translators by using Christian volunteers with professional skills to work alongside the missionaries to meet both the spiritual and physical needs of the communities they work in.
“It is really not possible to impact people with the idea of the Gospel unless you are meeting their needs on a physical and social level,” said Bruce Smith, Wycliffe Associates president and CEO, in an interview in December. “They are not even able to consider the impact of spiritual things when they are trying to survive physically.”
Recently there has been an increasing trend for partnerships between the church and mission groups with humanitarian organizations.
Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life, is among the prominent Christian leaders spearheading the effort for the church, non-government organization, and the government sectors to work together on social issues such as HIV/AIDS.
“More evangelical ministries and churches are recognizing the importance of holistic ministries,” said Dr. Ted Yamamori, an advisor to the Global Missions Health Conference and former international director for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, according to Lausanne World Pulse’s January edition.
Yamamori noted however that the holistic approach is neither new nor emerging, pointing to the 1974 Lausanne covenant and to Christ’s ministry as examples. Yet Yamamori said what is new is the reversal of the old model of preaching and then serving to a holistic model of serving then preaching.
“The strategy for missions has shifted,” said Dr. Florence Muindi, speaker at GMHC and founder of Life in Abundance, International, a Christian health organization operating in Africa, according to Lausanne World Pulse.
The Global Missions Health Conference (GMHC) – attended by more than 2,000 heath professionals, mission workers, organization representative and students – focused on holistic mission during its three-day event in November.
