MMRC: Failures, part 1: Economic

Failures, part 1: Economic
by Justin D. Long

Like a sudden thunderstorm crashing on the annual church picnic, failure drenches the record of global evangelization plans. Over the last 1,950 years, more than 400 plans have failed. More than 150 are even now on the verge of collapse. Why this abysmal record? What can we learn from this sad process?

Our chronology of all global plans gives many reasons. Let's take one example, a dramatic captivating plan of a century ago with striking parallels today. On 14 August 1885, evangelist D. L. Moody and six leaders of the Northfield, Massachusetts Convention produced "An appeal to disciples everywhere" which urged Christians to evangelize the world by 190 It said,

"If but 10 million out of 400 million nominal Christians would undertake such systematic labor as that each one of that number should, in the course of the next 15 years, reach 100 other souls with the gospel message, the whole present population of the globe would have the good tidings by the year 1900!"

This was a serious call and global plan, typical of hundreds of others. It was earnest, prayerful, determined. Yet within a decade of its being proposed it was dead, its sponsors admitting that it no longer stood any chance of being achieved.

This heroic challenge to world evangelization did not find the response it sought. The reasons were many, but perhaps the key one was that it was a movement conceived only by the Western church. It did not come from the universal church; nor did it sufficiently comprehend the obstacle of culture and political and language barriers. Nor did it work out exactly how each of the 10 million zealots were to locate his or her own group of 100 unevangelized souls.

We have in the past categorized reasons for failure in a 3-tier schema based on the 3 temptations that Satan gave to Jesus. This typology is simply for ease of remembrance; not all reasons can be fit into this mold. Many reasons and causes could in fact fit into more than Items in uppercase are reasons or causes external to the church and/or outside their control.

Herewith, then, are some of the reasons & causes for failure related to resources, needs, surveys, finances, personnel, planning, logistics and administration. Remember, every single one of these reasons has been a contributing factor ALREADY to the downfall of at least one of the 534 global plans that have failed. Use this list as a "checklist"; any single one of these problems can prove fatal to your plan, so you must work hard to avoid all of them. Most have simple cures. The suggestions we make are not the only ones, and are purposely broad in order to stimulate the imagination.

absence of followup--
Cause: failure to provide adequate local resources, often by a lack of proper advance planning and networking with local churches. Impact: Heavy evangelism negated by negligble long-term impact. Suggestion: identify all local churches while still in the initial planning stages, and ask them to be involved, contribute suggestions, and help with the running of the campaign.
absence of forethought--
Cause: Failing to take time to flesh a vision into a blueprint. Impact: Potential wandering from original vision; inability to make vision become a reality. Suggestion: List the goals or steps needed to achieve the agenda of your vision. Have someone list 3-10 obstacles per goal. Find ways to surmount those obstacles. Continue in this manner until a full plan is fleshed out.
absence of laborers--
Cause: Failing to mobilize; failing to sufficiently communicate the vision; failing to sufficiently globalize the workforce. Impact: Inability to carry out the vision due to lack of staff. Suggestion: identify barriers to mobilization and address these issues. Consider supporting existing workers in indigenous missions, or adding support to workers already on-field in other missions. Consider recruiting from other countries.
absence of strategy--
Cause: Lack of parameters for prioritization of objectives. Impact: Inability to achieve specific long-term goals. Suggestion: Develop a set of concrete, measureable goals (i.e. "To be ministering inside 5 World A megacities by 2005"). Prioritize any and all steps to reach those goals, and do not permit the mission to be sidetracked.
absence of tactics--
Cause: lack of available creative "tools" for evangelism. Impact: Few tools in one's "toolchest" means that your plans can be quickly overcome by just a few barriers. Suggestion: begin compiling a long list of tactical "tools" -- ministry options ("JESUS" film teams, radio broadcasting, Scripture distribution, outreach to arts or sports, coffee houses, etc), with the full details about their implementation and some of the things that can render them ineffective. Be sure to ask other ministries for their "tool-list." Many tools that are useful in one area will be useful in another. When considering ministry in a country, review your "tool-list" and see which ones might be effective.
avoidance of monitoring actual progress--
Cause: no set goals, no means for monitoring, failure to take action on monitoring reports. Impact: inability to see progress made, inability to take corrective action. Suggestion: develop an easy-to-use system of reporting for each of your field offices; it has to be easy enough to be used often. Compile the statistics and analyze them, particularly in the light of secular statistics and those of other agencies. Have another agency or research organization look the statistics over and give you their ideas. Use them as diagnostics, not as critiques; when one field is low in comparison to the others, see what you can do to support them with more finances, more training, more personnel and other systems.
BANK COLLAPSES These are beyond the control of agencies, but they are something each agency ought to have a contingency plan for. What would happen to your mission should the economy collapse? Even a brief sketch of a few ideas could prove useful should it happen. (This is particularly necessary in countries where the economies are somewhat shaky.)
beliving own unfounded progress reports--
Cause: basic desire to see the mission make progress. Impact: inability to see problems arising which must be dealt with. Suggestion: examine every report carefully and ask about the assumptions and methodology behind it.
big-business mentality -
Cause: desire to "grow" the mission into a large organizational structure represented in every country. Impact: mission tends to focus on profitable regions of the world, and to avoid risking "capital" in "unsafe investments" where immediate returns cannot be easily foreseen. Suggestion: Continually hammer home the fact that you have an overarching agenda to see the world evangelized. This implies you must go places where it is dangerous and where results will not immediately be had. "Invest" a specific amount of your resources each year in the unevangelized world. Labor to bring a balance between resources invested in evangelized and unevangelized areas.
1bottlenecks in the flow of resources--
Cause: logistical problems due to poor planning. Impact: resources (tracts, Bibles, etc) sit in a warehouse doing little good to evangelistic programs. Suggestion: Monitoring can identify bottlenecks that keep needed resources from flowing. Someone needs to insure that those bottlenecks are dealt with.
BURGEONING MATERIALISM -
This is another item that is beyond a mission's control. Already we have noted numerous times that materialism in the United States and Europe are sapping resources from the Christian church. Total Christian income is estimated at some $8.9 trillion per year, yet on average only $8.6 billion is given to foreign missions on a yearly basis. Revival and constant preaching on the stewardship responsibilities of Christians are perhaps the only cures for this obstacle.
collapses of funding -
Cause: plans are dependent on thin lines of funding with perhaps 2 or 3 "angel" donors. Impact: if a donor pulls out, the plan falls apart. Suggestion: go out of your way to establish multiple lines of funding, and continue to seek out additional funds that can supplement and replace any sources that dry up.
1constant redefinitions of the task -
Cause: Inability to reach a goal leads to redefinition of the goal. Impact: The agency falls into a pattern of thinking of goals as "general plans," "initiatives," or "visions" rather than firm objectives. The agency begins to think that goals are good ideas and not things to be stretched for. Suggestion: Rather than setting a vast goal, like "seeing the world evangelized," an agency might do well to set a shorter goal, like "seeing our agency's total contribution to World A rise from 5% to 10% by 2000."
corruption, ecclesiastical crime, embezzlements--
Cause: sin. Impact: saps away more from the Christian church's finances than the total foreign missions budget. Suggestion: adequate financial controls, membership in an accountability agency which can teach you how to detect and/or prevent corruption, and constant careful self-checks.
duplication and waste--
Cause: failure, lack of management, lack of monitoring. Impact: wasted resources which could have been better used elsewhere. Suggestion: Set up a system where staff members can make suggestions for eliminating waste. Take these suggestions seriously, investigating and implementing them. Reward people in some tangible way - if only with a paper certificate - for eliminating wasteful duplication.
excessive fundraising appeals--
Cause: need for money, possibly due to excessively expensive programs. Impact: donors become tired of constant requests and drift away. Suggestion: review the fundraising campaign to streamline.
failure to adequately research--
Cause: failure to commission essential research; failure to complete research goals. Impact: lack of needed information for strategic prioritization. Suggestion: invest a significant percentage of the budget in research & development (suggested 5-10%). Don't just appoint a staff member and give him or her a budget; commission research through qualified researchers who understand how to truly implement research programs.
failure to grasp true magnitude of world--
Cause: failure to understand the "hugeness"--the complexity--of the world about us. Example: population explosion makes it difficult to keep up with World A. Impact: plans which do not make a dent in closure because they are outstripped by demographic and secular forces. Suggestion: Self-education and growing numeracy; examining one's own plans in the context of global statistics.
failure to network--
Cause: failure to develop relationships, to leave one's own organization and examine what others are doing, failure to look for potential partnerships. Impact: programs which duplicate the work of other agencies, often in the exact same cities; competition for precious resources; repeating the failures of others because we didn't learn from their mistakes. Suggestion: meet with other agency leaders; develop personal relationships; invite other agencies to critique your work.
failure to visualize the finished plan--
Cause: failure to understand what the world will be like should your plan succeed. Impact: inability to bring the plan to life, inability to see flaws, inability to communicate vision. Suggestion: Take a weekend away and focus on describing how your plan will change the world, what specific items will come into being as a result of it, and what improvements your plan will contribute to life in general--not just to the salvation of souls. (Often in these gems you will find key ministry opportunities in restricted access countries--such as well-digging or literacy programs.)
failures of communication
Cause: personal lack of communication skills, too busy to communicate vision. Example: Moses was worried about his own ability to communicate. Solution: (1) clearly develop the vision and refine it until it can be simply and powerfully communicated ("Let my people go!" or "Present a Scripture portion to every literate non-Christian adult."); (2) hire people with good communication skills (God gave Aaron to Moses); (3) communicate clearly and often the vision (making certain everyone, from the receptionist at the frontdesk to the president at the top, can articulate the vision clearly and easily.) Example of solution: In this author's personal opinion, Frontiers is one of the best communicators of their vision. Their simple slogan, "Muslims! It's their turn!" is one that readily springs to mind. Further, their advertisements are always stimulating: readily admitting the difficulties and the obstacles while challenging the church to take up the cause.
false optimism
Cause: Some agencies have desired to think positively, glossing over known failures and ignoring core issues. Doing so gave them a voluntary blindness to impending disaster. Solution: Adopt frequent, honest self-appraisals. Invite frequent critiques from others. Honest optimism should not be blind optimism: it should rather be an optimism that states even though there are problems, solutions CAN be found.
falsified balance sheets
Cause: Not dealing with core issues will lead to disaster; but if you lie about them, be sure your sin will find you out. Solution: A no brainer--don't do it.
fear of implications of research
Cause: Fear of what researchers will discover (almost as if they consider uncovered obstacles the equivalent of a closeted skeleton). Thought: This particular fear isn't a disagreement over definitions (e.g. the Protestant-Catholic issue) but a more base fear of the implications of research that says, "Please... no surprises." This has always amazed us: don't people =WANT= to know facts that will keep them from achieving their goals? If your goal is to reach children, but you're working in an area where most are adults, don't you want to know it? Solution: Realize researchers are working out of love for the missions task, and are sincere in their attempts to uncover problems. We don't do this to embarass agencies -- we do it so that the problems can be solved. Critiques are not arrows, they are friendly hands offered in help. (It's true that we can be a bit scathing--but only after we've been ignored for 20 years...)
ignorance of logistical realities
Cause: Lofty goals (to use one hypothetical and fictional example, giving a copy of the Bible on CD-ROM to every one on Earth) which among other things ignore the logistical realities: 5.2 billion people means 5.2 billion copies. Putting aside questions of usability, literacy, age, etc., many agencies at heart fail to deal with even the basic questions of logistics -- printing 5.2 billion CD's. (There's a task not even Microsoft is up to!) Solution: Take on a series of limited, achieveable tasks within the scope of your logistical abilities--things that no one else is doing. When that task has been achieved, then take on another one. It's better to do something you =CAN= do than to try and do something that from the start it's obvious you CAN'T.
inadequate attention to detail Of course, we've covered this one repeatedly. Plans cannot be abstract visions if they want to see anything achieved. There's an old saying: "The devil's in the details." In this instance, it means that any one of a thousand little details can be a stone that trips you flat on your face. Paying attention to those stones can keep your plan on track.
inadequate giving
Cause: This isn't something that many agencies or denominations have control over, aside from how they plan and conduct their fundraising. There are two basic causes: (1) the fundraising model is no longer appropriate or, (2) the fundraising campaign is inappropriately conducted. Solution: (1) consistent vision constantly communicated; (2) investment in professions for planning fundraising activities; (3) support for research into new giving paradigms.
inadequate outlays of men and money
Cause: I've seen this one often: someone is charged with a task (e.g. see the hypothetical Uga-Booga tribe evangelized) but not given adequate manpower or material resources. That's the quickest way to burnout. Solution: Agency executives have got to get an honest apparisal of the resources necessary to achieve a goal, and then allocate those resources or else not tackle the task. Note: I know 12 million are dying yearly. I myself have wanted to launch some projects--but I knew they just couldn't be done. Knowing unevangelized people are dying is no excuse for wasting resources and people in our haste to see the Great Commission complete. Wasting money only means it will take just that much longer.
inadequate publicity
Cause: No budget for advertising, no desire for advertising, sensitivity issues, lack of communications. Impact: You can have the greatest plan in the world, but if it doesn't have public support you can count it a loss. Solution: adequate budget, appropriate publicity campaign. Note: Publicity doesn't have to be global--it only has to be adequate to the goals of the plan. If you are concentrating on mobilizing medical professionals, then you have to publicize yourself to the medical industry. If you want college kids, then publicize yourself to educational institutions. Further, you don't always have to go with the most public of mediums (e.g. newspapers or magazine ads). A well-directed word-of-mouth campaign can be one of the best publicity methods. Advertising doesn't HAVE to cost a lot--but it does need to be efficient, getting the most bang for the buck.
inadequate use of traditional media
Cause: Sometimes plans go for advanced technologies and forget about the simple, time-tested things. Taking a film team into a remote jungle isn't always feasible. Sometimes it's easier to send a literature team made up of indigenous evangelists. Solution: Asking the question, "what will get the job done"? Keeping a large "tool chest" of ministry options, any and all of which can be used.
inadequate use of visual media
Cause: At the same time, some of us shy away from advanced technologies, preferring the "tried-and-true." Limiting ourselves here can do just as much damage. There is a place for visual media like the "Jesus" film or other productions. These communicate the Gospel in a powerful way. Shown on television, through slides, or by mobile film teams, they can easily evangelize whole cities, provinces, countries, villages. Solution: Again, when planning a major evangelist thrust be sure to inquire about the feasibility of using video as one of your tactical tools.
incorrect computations
Cause: everything from bad definitions to exaggerated reports to simple miscalculation. Example: Umm... There's a number going around--100 million martyrs in the past century. Can I ask how that number was arrived at? I have this sneaking feeling someone multiplied our 160,000 per year figure and moved the decimal 3 places instead of I might be wrong--I have yet to find out the source of the report--but the point remains. Solution: Check and re-check numbers. (I've made this mistake many times; it's the one that trips me up most often. Even though I check & recheck Reality Checks on occasion stats slip through, as some readers quickly write to remind me--!)
lack of support from sister agencies
Cause: Lack of communication, political infighting, simply too busy to talk. Solution: take time to meet with sister agencies. Have one individual in each agency who is designated as a "global desk," part of whose job it is to network with sister organizations.
letting windows of opportunity snap shut
Cause: apathy, lack of resources, resources mismanaged. Example: Remember the story from an earlier Reality Check about the Roman Catholic priests sent in response to Khan's request for "100 men skilled in your religion... and so all my men will be baptized... and there will be more Christians in these parts than in yours"? That was one of the Christian world's greatest missed opportunities. Often windows of opportunity are presented to agencies and they let them slam shut - either because they have all their resources concentrated elsewhere or simply because they don't have time to see the opportunities. Solution: Fund research to uncover opportunities. Keep a small contingency fund set aside to take advantage of opportunities. Quickly flesh out and implement plans when "windows" open.
making things appear too easy
Cause: another one of those positive-thinking snags. We can paint a rosy picture, and when our workers get on the field they can quickly burn out due to the many complexities we didn't warn them about or train them for. Solution: an honest appraisal of the problem and adequate training for the task, plus consistent support from home. Example: Again I return to the example of Frontiers. They have successfully turned difficulty into a selling point in much of their publicity. Other organizations should follow that example. Generation X, remember, loves a challenge.
management fiascos / mismanagement
Cause: Scandal, complete replacement of the staff, abrupt resignations, confusion, mixed signals - all of these can paralyze an agency. Solution: Mission boards must work for a smooth-running operation, continually analyzing their management teams with an eye to streamlining and making things more efficient. (That doesn't mean eliminate people, it means make sure things happen on time in an orderly fashion). Continual review of operations by the agency itself and by management experts on the outside can prove invaluable to this task.
misinformation
Cause: Incorrect reports, disinformation. Solution: continually seek out and refine information, and question data which doesn't make sense in the context of the whole.
nonexistent or inadequate research
Cause: Lack of understanding of what research is, lacking of budgetary will. Impact: To research means to discover new things. If an agency has no investment in research then it will not discover new things; it will make do with information discovered by others (if they pass it on) and with outdated information. The passing on of information is getting better these days, thanks to the Internet - but the investment in research is still slim at best. Consider Microsoft, which pours billions into research. Solution: The Christian church should invest a healthy percentage of its own budget - at the very least 1% - into professional Christian research. Doing so could enable researchers to come up with solutions to numerous problems; avoiding it means researchers will be forced to look for other jobs (perhaps with Microsoft!).
objections to segmentization
Example: "Let's not select specific targets, let's just make sure all targets are reached." It's not realistic. No single agency can take on EVERYTHING; those that have tried have been miserable failures. Cause: a sincere, earnest desire to not see one single target receive all the attention when there is a world in need. Solution: If every agency took on ONE segment, then pretty soon EVERYTHING would be targeted. Examples: Frontiers targets the Muslim world. OMF typically targets the Asian world. Targeting has improved with the advent of people-group thinking, and yet many people still are opposed to the idea of prioritizing.
massive gaps in coverage
Cause: every cause listed here! Solution: This is a problem of the Christian church as a whole: the whole huge gap of World A. The solution is a simple balance: every agency devoting a portion of its resources to mapped out segments in each World (A, B and C). Networking between all agencies can insure every segment is covered. Failure to communicate means duplication and oversaturation of some segments, and only a smattering of evangelistic energies deployed in others.
opposition to master global planning
Cause: Here is another strange objection. Many people consider a master global plan to be an offense, perhaps even tantamount to the anti-Christ. Disorganized mission misses difficult spots. A master global plan does not need to be a militarized venture, or even something that orders people about. If agencies voluntarily agreed to cooperate with a single coordinating body much could be accomplished. Solution: large master coordinating initiatives which are voluntary on the part of participants. Example: The AD 2000 & Beyond Movement has masterfully demonstrated the value of a single coordinating body; despite all the obstacles confronting it (not the least of which was the Protestant-Catholic problem), AD2K has achieved a level of coordination and mobilization which few other initiatives have ever achieved. Consider the cooperation it has engendered: the Praying through the Window campaign, the JP2000 campaign, the Saturation Evangelism campaign. If this were replicated with all of the Protestant bodies worldwide, the same success could be multiplied many times over.
opposition to surveys, data and computers
Cause: Some agencies have protested surveys, complaining that vast numbers de-personalize the task. Impact: By refusing to use the results of surveys, they have deprived themselves of a tool which would help them to improve their own activities. Failure to use surveys will result in a failure to change emphasis with time. Eventually, what started out as a World A mission will become a World C mission as they work the same fields without ever growing to include other, unevangelized areas. Solution: examine surveys and look for ways in which they can be helpful to you. Consider how you can implement the conclusions. Remember that you as an agency can "personalize" the conclusions by using them to bring the Gospel to individual souls.
organizational isolation
Cause: too busy to network, no desire to network, desire to build empires. Note: We decry isolationism in every form. Failing to work with agencies that are similar to your own is a death knell. Working together can multiply evangelistic power many times over. If you're a newly commissioned broadcasting ministry, why should you develop a film department and send missionaries into the countries you are targeting with the Gospel? Get film productions from film agencies, refer listeners to missions working inside the country, plug evangelistic campaigns being conducted. Solution: There's no sense in doing everything; focus on doing one thing well and get connected withother organizations who can compliment your activities. Example: Billy Graham's organization is a good example of this local networking. Before going into a single area the organization sets up a network of churches to follow-up on conversions. This sort of activity doesn't have to compromise security if you choose your partners well.
poor administration This has been covered fairly exhaustively in earlier segments. No matter how brilliant the plan, if it is poorly executed then poor results will follow.
population explosion Demographic growth, of course, is beyond the control of any mission. However, it has been the undoing of many a mission's brilliant plan. Our goals and plans must take into account the 141.6 million new births annually, particularly the 94.1 million children born to non-Christian homes who will grow up unevangelized unless some outside agency presents the Gospel to them.
procrastination It's one thing to do what you can and leave for tomorrow what you can't. But putting things off until tomorrow just for the sake of today's laziness carries with it an eternal price tag. Every day some 34,000 people die who have never once been offered the Gospel. This is not to say that one person's procrastination results in 34,000 World A deaths - but it does contribute to the overall cause.
protracted delays Protracted delays can be a death-knell for any plan with a time window. Some times plans are poorly designed in the beginning because they have an unreasonably short period in which to operate; at other times our inability to surmount the delays leads to failure.
rash decision-making Seeking to avoid procrastination and delay, we can leap to the other extreme of making decisions too hastily. Making decisions before all the facts are known is a sure recipe for an expensive stumble--and the price may very well be far too high to be paid.
refusal to employ comity/networking "Comity" and "networking" simply means agreeing with other missions to divvy up the task remaining into manageable pieces. The Roman Catholic church has long employed comity agreements between its various societies and orders. Networking arrangements have been utilized by such global Protestant agencies as the Jesus Film Project and Every Home for Christ. The refusal to use such programs means that agencies end up clumped together in the same places, and can lean to the failure of the overall evangelization movement to finish the task.
regional mindset in lieu of global thinking When speaking of the task remaining and the energy presently directed, the sum of all the parts does not necessarily equal a completed whole. Considering matters in a regional light ignores the vast resources available when considering the global task. American can easily evangelize America; but can the Sudan evangelize Sudan? No--and few other countries around Sudan could easily do it. Resources brought from more-developed regions to less-developed regions can help to finish the task, but if we don't think globally--bringing Russian, Chinese, English, Korean, Dutch and American resources to Egypt, for example--then we will never see the opportunities.
reluctance to heed secular research We've touched this one before. Some of us in Christian mission are reluctant to listen to research from places like the Worldwatch Institute or the Population Reference Bureau. We may not agree with their suggestions or their conclusions, but we ought to examine their data and consider it in the light of our own agendas. Failing to do so deprives us of a tremendous resource.
reluctance to share lucrative resources Many agencies have much, more have little. Yet many agencies have tremendous resources. One agency I know that answers this challenge is Health Teams International. If you've got a medical or dental short-term team you are sending abroad, HTI can provide you with exhaustive medical kits and medicines which are pre-packaged for flight--and they can often do it for free. You don't have to go WITH an HTI team in order to utilize this tremendous resource. Other agencies would do well to examine their own operations and identify ways in which they can make their resources available to smaller agencies.
secularism Another factor beyond the control of a mission, the increasing secularization of our society makes it difficult to raise the resources necessary to conduct mission. This is touching every charitable field. I've heard of a recent cartoon of a tea party with several women sitting around, and one said to another: "You know, I try to care about the decimation of our ocean resources, but I just can't." Until we find new ways of touching people with the needs of the 10/40 Window, we will be tripped up by secularization.
secular urbanization The explosion of cities is an incredible trend we are only just coming to grips with. Cities are great crossroads of unevangelized peoples, strategic gateways that must be penetrated with the Gospel. Yet they are easily monitored by secret police and difficult to work in.
setting artificial deadlines Setting a deadline is not a sure-fire guarantee of failure, but a deadline can trip you up. If you don't meet the deadline, some of your support will erode. Set enough deadlines and fail to reach them, and people will begin to think less and less of your plans and goals. It is better in our view to envision people with the task and the concept of closure than to envision them with a specific date.
shortages of resources We've touched on this before particularly in the area of finance. It applies to many places, however. A shortfall of medical supplies combined with a natural disaster can spell a missed opportunity. A shortfall of Bibles coupled with the sudden brief opportunity to distribute Bibles can bring tears to a mission activist's eyes. Shortages of resources are unavoidable and often will not spell the death-knell for a global plan; but even though we may not lose the war, we will certainly lose a few battles.
shortfalls in personnel Without preachers, who can hear? One of the biggest problems we face today is that few people are interested in going as missionaries to the 10/40 Window. It's hot, it's dangerous, it's full of bugs that carry strange diseases. A major recruitment backed by a major media campaign is a virtual necessity.
sloganeering without logistics We can announce great visions but until we have the wherewithall to back them up they're little more than smoke and pipe-dreams. People come to us because they are attracted by the slogan, but go away disappointed. Remember: a disappointed person shares his or her disappointment with a few friends. Before you launch a campaign, put the logistics in place. When most major missions and charities plan to launch a campaign, they go first to their closest "major donors." The goal typically is to have half of the project's needed funds in the bank before they program is even formally launched.
solving transient dilemmas at expense of ultimate goal Some problems face us and clamor for our attention; unfortunately when we solve them, the solution blocks the path we are on toward our ultimate goal. Rash decision-making contributes to this. Better to take several hours, perhaps several days, and consider potential solutions in the light of present options and future requirements.
standalone use of computers and resources Computer networking is one of the bright spots in the past twenty years. It has continued to improve and will only get better. Missions need to continue to consider what they can do to improve their own networking. Providing more data, application forms, and the capacity to make donations from computer systems will place missions in the middle of the trend.
state prohibitions on personal mobility Another factor that missions cannot prevent. Afghanistan is a typical example--most missions are prevented from moving throughout the country. The result: evangelistic energy (what little there is) is concentrated in Kabul, the capital, and a few other largish cities. Rural peoples are virtually untouched.
swallowing own propaganda So many repeat their own visions, slogans, promises and ideas until they actually believe their own marketing campaign--even if it is completely unrealistic. That's dangerous. We have to maintain a level-headed rational appraisal of the situation at all times, and refuse to get caught up in our own hype. Daydreaming about the future is great, but not if it's done at the expense of daily action.
teaching a prosperity Gospel With hundreds of millions of Christians living in absolute poverty and most of those on the verge of starvation, a prosperity gospel doesn't make sense. Preaching it can present a materialistic Kingdom to the Third World -- which is exactly what they don't need. A telling quote about the Christian church under the Roman Empire: "Considering the paucity of their numbers and the meagerness of their resources, the primitive Christians did more for the amelioration of human suffering than any succeeding generation of believers... Peace brought prosperity and prosperity proved more harmful than persecution. While Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity." A prosperity Gospel focuses on what God can give to ME. A theology of sacrifice focuses on what I can give to the WORLD.
thefts of resources Insufficient safeguards to prevent the theft of resources can trip up a plan, especially one that is based on humanitarian relief in countries where medical goods command a great price on the black market.
ultrabroad definition of 'evangelization' What does it mean to "evangelize"? Many Christians, particularly those in America and Europe, don't know. They haven't considered the word in all its nuances and definitions. Unfortunately many have an ultrabroad definition. (Many also have an ultraconservative definition). As a result many are involved in what they call 'evangelization,' but they are doing little to "preach Christ, and Him crucified."
underestimating the complexity of the task "Look, all we have to do is just get out there and do it." It's true - but it's a lot more complicated than that. We may not like the complexity and it may set our head spinning from time to time, but in a world of 6 billion people, thousands of cultures, cities, and tens of thousands of sociopolitical niches, complexity is the name of the game. Underestimating it the complexity and failing to deal with it will cause us to miss whole chunks of peoples, cities and provinces as we "just do it."
undue economic involvement Provide too much in the way of economic support and a new church will become dependent. Others will want to get involved with you - simply because you're giving money away. Controls and thoughtful policies are a must. The goal of any economic involvement should be support which helps a church to strengthen its muscles until it can stand on its own.
unexpected deaths of key administrators The passing of a team leader or a vice-president can set a plan in disarray at a key moment. The only cure for this is well-trained subordinates and a thoughtfully documented plan. A proverb my own mother passed on: "Any time you think you're indispensable, stick your hand in a bucket of water, pull it out, and try to find the hole you left behind..." Trying to be indispensable is a sure recipe for tearing a gaping ragged hole in the agency you serve.
unrealistic expectations By sheer force of personality and resources you could launch a plan that is doomed to failure from the start. It's unrealistic for a 2 person mission with $50,000 per year to expect to evangelize the whole of a 100-million-population country within 10 years. A more realistic goal might be to launch a church planting movement in a particular city in concert with other larger agencies.
unwillingness to adopt new strategies I'm sure you've heard the cliche: "My father did it, and his before him." Some techniques are "tried-and-true" (Bible distribution, etc). However, the strategy for implementing the technique can change with time. Our enemy always thinks up new ways to block existing strategies, which is one reason we have to keep thinking up creative new strategies which slip around the blocks.
unwillingness to take unpopular decisions It's not popular to pull out of a country, but one mission consistently does it: Open Doors with Brother Andrew. If a country no longer falls into its definition of "closed" or "persecuted," then ODBA ceases operations there. That may not be a popular decision, but it's the right one. ODBA has a specific mission, and it seeks to remain true to that vision at all times. That's a lesson other agencies could well take to heart.