Ministry in a Multi-Cultural and Unchurched Society

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Indigenous Churches, continued

twentieth-century missiologists, most prominently DONALD McGAVRAN.

MELVIN HODGES (1909-86), a missionary and mission administrator with the Assemblies of God, wrote The Indigenous Church (1953). Widely used in missions courses, this book expressed the ideas of Venn, Anderson, Nevius, and Allen in an updated, popular format. Hodges acknowledged the difficulty missionaries experience in changing a field from a subsidy approach to an indigenous approach. He also emphasized training national workers and giving them responsibility for the care of the churches, freeing the missionaries to concentrate on starting new churches. In his book, Verdict Theology in Missionary Theory , ALAN TIPPETT (1911-88) updated the three-self formula of Henry Venn. Tippett served on the faculty of the School of World Mission at Fuller Seminary and was a member of Donald McGavran’s inner circle. The writings of Tippett, McGavran, and others show that the CHURCH GROWTH MOVEMENT accepted and built on the work of the earlier proponents of indigenous missions. In Verdict Theology Tippett proposed a sixfold description of an indigenous church: (1) Self-image . The church sees itself as being independent from the mission, serving as Christ’s church in its locality. (2) Self-functioning . The church is capable of carrying on all the normal functions of a church – worship, Christian education, and so on. (3) Self-determining . This means the church can and does make its own decisions. The local churches do not depend on the mission to make their decisions for them. Tippett echoes Venn in saving that the mission has to die for the church to be born. (4) Self supporting . The church carries its own financial burdens and finances its own service projects. (5) Self-propagation . The national church sees itself as responsible for carrying out the GREAT COMMISSION. The church gives itself wholeheartedly to evangelism and missions. (6) Self-giving . An indigenous church knows the social needs of its community and endeavors to minister to those needs. Tippett summarizes his understanding of the indigenous church with this definition: “When the indigenous people of a community think of the Lord as their own, not a foreign Christ; when they do