The greatest failure in leaving indigenous churches on the field is not investing so many funds. It is not the missionary's lack of language ability. It is the misunderstanding of the goal of our ministry.

Missionaries go as soul winners, and they can win many souls to Christ. But winning people to Christ and getting professions of faith does not necessarily mean they will congregate in the local church. Others would say, "It is my job to plant a church." They will get a piece of land, build a building, gather a crowd, and even train them in how to "have church." But they get caught up in the mechanics and the day-to-day activities, and in the end they cannot find a national pastor to take over the work.

Many well-meaning Christians go to the mission field on short-term trips. They boast of great numbers of professions of faith. They boast of how many churches they have started. But the great lack is men of God capable of leading the church. So the question must be asked: What is the missing ingredient in leaving indigenous churches?

It is often stated that the problem is the amount of money from America that creates such great dependence. But the truth is deeper than dollars. There is a vacuum of leadership. Most missionaries start with a pastor mentality instead of a missionary mentality. Although every missionary will have to pastor the church for a season, true missionary pastors do so only as a means to an end. He pastors as he prepares leaders.

The Difference Between a Pastor Mentality and a Missionary Mentality

A pastor mentality asks, "How do I care for this flock?" That is a good, biblical question—but it is the wrong first question for a missionary. A missionary mentality asks, "Who will care for this flock when I am gone?"

The pastor mentality builds a ministry around itself. It preaches every sermon, makes every decision, visits every hospital bed, and answers every question. It is loving, sacrificial, and exhausting, and it produces a congregation that is dependent on one man. When that man leaves, furloughs, or dies, the church stalls.

The missionary mentality builds a ministry that reproduces itself. It preaches, yes, but it also takes men aside and teaches them to preach. It visits the sick, but it takes a national believer along and teaches him to visit the sick. It makes decisions, but it slowly hands the weight of those decisions to men who will still be there in twenty years. The missionary mentality measures success not by how much he does, but by how much he no longer needs to do.

Why This Failure Is So Common

This failure is common because it is easier. It is easier to do the work yourself than to train someone else to do it. It is easier to preach a great sermon than to sit with a man for two years and watch him preach a mediocre one, correcting him gently each week until it becomes a good one. It is easier to make a quick decision than to bring a national leader into the room, explain your reasoning, and let him wrestle with the decision himself.

Training leaders is slow. It is unglamorous. It rarely shows up in a newsletter. A missionary can report "200 professions of faith" or "3 churches planted" far more easily than he can report "I spent four hours this week discipling one man in how to study his Bible and shepherd his people." But the second report is the one that determines whether the first two are still standing in a generation.

What It Looks Like to Train a Leader

1. See leaders, don't just see converts. From the earliest days of a work, the missionary should be watching not for the loudest or most talented convert, but for the faithful one. Paul told Timothy to commit the truth "to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). Faithfulness, not flash, is the first mark of a future leader.
2. Do it together before he does it alone. The pattern is: I do, you watch. I do, you help. You do, I help. You do, I watch. This applies to preaching, visitation, counseling, leading a business meeting, and handling conflict. A leader is not trained by lecture alone; he is trained by supervised practice.
3. Give real responsibility, not symbolic responsibility. Giving a man a title without real authority and real accountability does not train him—it only decorates him. Real training means he actually preaches the sermon, leads the meeting, makes the visit, and answers for the outcome.
4. Let him fail while you are still there. A leader who has never failed under supervision will fail without supervision, and it will cost the church far more. Correction is a gift the missionary can give that a mistake made after he has left cannot.
5. Pastor as a means to an end. The missionary must shepherd the flock in the early years; there is no way around this. But he should constantly ask, "Who am I raising up to do this instead of me?" Every sermon he preaches should be, in part, a lesson in how to preach. Every hospital visit should be, in part, a lesson in how to visit. He is always training, even when he is doing.

The Goal Restated

Money is not the deepest problem on the mission field, and language, while important, is not the deepest problem either. The deepest problem is a missionary who never shifted from a pastor mentality to a missionary mentality who never asked himself whether his ministry was designed to be needed forever or designed to be replaced.

The goal of our ministry is not simply to win souls, though we must. It is not simply to plant churches, though we must. The goal is to leave behind churches led by national men of God who are capable, faithful, and equipped to raise up the next generation of leaders themselves. That is the missing ingredient. That is how an indigenous church is truly left indigenous, not merely started, but shepherded by its own sons, for its own sake, to the glory of God.

Alignment Ministries