Ministry in a Multi-Cultural and Unchurched Society

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Appendix 80 Indigenous Churches John Mark Terry

The term “indigenous” comes from biology and indicates a plant or animal native to an area. Missiologists adopted the word and used it to refer to churches that reflect the cultural distinctive of their ethnolinguistic group. The missionary effort to establish indigenous churches is an effort to plant churches that fit naturally into their environment and to avoid planting churches that replicate Western patterns. Missionary efforts to establish indigenous churches are attempts to do missions as the apostle Paul did. A brief recital of Paul’s missionary methods demonstrates this fact. Paul served as an itinerant missionary, never staying more than three years in any city. Paul’s approach to evangelizing regions was to plant churches in cities from which the Gospel would permeate to surrounding areas. He never appealed to the churches in Antioch or Jerusalem for funds with which to support the new churches. Rather, he expected the churches to support themselves Paul appointed and trained elders to lead all the churches he planted. He gave the churches over to the care of the Holy Spirit, but he also visited them and wrote to them periodically. HENRY VENN (1796-1873) of the CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY and RUFUS ANDERSON (1796-1880) of the AMERICAN BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF FOREIGN MISSIONS first used the term “indigenous church” in the mid-nineteenth century. They both wrote about the necessity of planting “three-self churches – churches that would be self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating (Venn used the term ”self-extending"). They exhorted missionaries to establish churches that could support themselves, govern them selves, and carry out a program of evangelism and missions. They cautioned missionaries about becoming absorbed in pastoring and maintaining churches, insisting that the missionary’s primary task must be planting new churches that would be “self-reliant” and “purely native.” They instructed their missionaries to train national pastors and hand the care of the churches over to them at the earliest opportunity. Venn coupled the concept of indigenous churches with euthanasia in missions. By euthanasia he meant that missionaries should plant churches, train leaders, and then move on to new

This article is taken from Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions . A. Scott Moreau, Harold Netland & Charles Van Engen, eds. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2000. Pp. 483-85.

Italics of text added for emphasis