If you can, imagine you are visiting a country for the first time. While there, your nascent curiosity is challenged by a disturbing revelation about the social dynamics, the disparities in the quality of life, the need for advocacy, and the ripeness of the time for a word of hope. This feeling is the result of concrete observations. As you pry open the veneer of the surrounding landscape, you discover that:

● Every two and a half minutes someone is sexually assaulted.

● Every 16 minutes a person dies by suicide.

● 12.8 million children are living in poverty.

● Millions of working persons are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the "haves" and "have-nots" is widening recklessly.

● The number of severely poor persons is growing by 26 percent.

● 60 million persons are living on less than $7 per day.

● The richest 1 per cent is garnering about 16 per cent of national income.1

This unsettling awareness is abruptly short-lived by the fact this imaginary country is not situated thousands of miles from where you reside—this country is the United States of America. What lingers with you is distaste for ignoring the conditions, accompanied with an inner sense that God can use the church to be an agent of confrontation, restoration, missional enterprise, opportunity, evangelism, and presence.

Missiologists, bible scholars, church leaders, and evangelists have been sounding the clarion call that the U.S. and Canada has become a mission field while the church slept. Almost without notice, there has been a shift in demographics, religious worldview, church and denominational loyalty, church attendance, and answers to life’s perplexing questions. While we slept, in the proverbial adage, someone moved our cheese.

In the life of congregations, the cheese has moved, and one agonizingly wonders whether we can exist without cheese, search frantically for new cheese, create our own cheese, or more frightening, change our diet and find substitutes. Congregations that once ministered to a particular group because of historical and family allegiances now discover that the surrounding community is no longer what it used to be. The cheese has moved. The church, if it is to remain relevant and transformational, must change!

The environment around the physical edifices where we do church has changed, and it has created a combustible mixture of uncertainty about the future of some congregations. Communities that were once a homogeny have witnessed an influx of new immigrants searching for the American dream of a better life. We are surely in the throes of something new, something strange, and something amazingly filled with possibilities for evangelism and revival in our congregations in the U.S. and Canada.

If the truth were told, there is much good news that emerges from our changing demographic landscape. The results of these dramatic changes have made it possible to liberate God and the church from any dominant cultural chauvinism. Congregations can now engage in evangelism methodologies in a manner that was never imagined before. The challenges of cultural pluralism, however, must not be sacrificed on the altars of comfort and ease in Zion.

Any congregation that yearns to be on the cutting edge of evangelism should seriously consider the challenges posed by changing neighborhoods. The past thrust for homogeneity in our congregations or for the preservation of cultural comfort zones may very well be an indictment against what we claim to be. H. Kortright Davis, professor of theology at Howard University School of Divinity, was prophetic when he wrote, “In our increasingly pluralistic society, it is incumbent on the people of God to check and recheck all their prejudices at the doors of their churches, so that the strange census of the first Pentecost experience … does not become for our modernday Christianity a source of social contradiction, rather than a bastion of religious conviction.”²

Immigration trends relate a state of affairs that present amazing opportunities for mission. Consider these facts:

● We are the largest Scandinavian nation; far more Scandinavians reside here than in four Scandinavian countries.

● We are now the third largest Spanish-speaking nation. There are 25 Spanish speaking nations, but only Mexico and Spain have more Spanish language people than the United States. We passed Argentina and Columbia.

● We’re the fourth largest black nation in the world. Of 53 countries in Africa, only three of them have larger black populations than the United States. ● We are the largest Irish nation in the world, far more Irish live in America than in Ireland.

● We are the largest Jewish nation in the world, far more Jews live in New York than the state of Israel. And more Jews live in Miami than in Tel Aviv.

● There are more Arabs than Jews in Chicago: 300,000 Jews, 400,000 Arabs, which means the mosque has replaced the synagogue as the option to the church in many communities.

The Church of the Nazarene has joined with countless missionary movements that have come to recognize that America is a repository of manifold cultures and religions. With changing immigration patterns, new religious movements from Africa, Asia, and Latin America have become vigorous competitors for the souls of the faithful.

In addition to these immigrant pressures, our consumer culture and the self-centered habits it breeds have created widespread implications for evangelization and the culture as a whole. Our appetite for instant gratification and our quest for happiness without regard for higher pursuits of life and liberty may very well have contributed to a selfish culture of greed. The mission field of the U.S. and Canada has changed, requiring an overhaul of traditional and historic methods of evangelism and church growth. Our message and core values cannot, and must not, change, but the methods of delivery must be radically different. We stand in need of an urgent and relevant missiological paradigm shift.

Perhaps, the time has come for self-examination. Maybe, we should be asking questions of ourselves, before others begin to ask them. If the U.S. and Canada represents God’s new mission field. . .

● Why is Sunday morning attendance dwindling?

● Why are fewer people turning to the church as their refuge in times of sorrow and pain?

● Why are our neighbors increasingly cynical about our allegiance to religious faith?

● Why is the closure of churches becoming an everyday occurrence?

● Why is Sunday School no longer the didactic option within communities?

● Why are claims of large baptismal celebrations and signs of the Kingdom seldom reported?

● Why are neither congregations capable of impacting their changing neighborhoods, nor reflective of the diversity within communities?

Most crucially, why has the church become content on boasting of accomplishments in Judea and Samaria while there has been silence in Jerusalem?

In his signature work, The Unchurched Next Door, Thom Rainer reflected, “I am becoming more and more convinced that the answer to most of these questions can be found in the mirror. Nearly 130 million people in the United States alone would come to church if they were invited. And if they came, many would hear about the Savior who offers the only way of salvation.^”3

In this new age of over-exposure, where privacy is lost to the computer, and our life is an open book to the entire world by the simple click of a mouse, our churches cannot escape the criticism of the serious observer of missions. In God’s new mission field, the church is called to re-establish communication with its communities to share joys and sorrows, successes and failures, hopes and dreams. In God’s new mission field, the bottom line would no longer be denominational loyalties and obligations (as important as these are), but churches would be judged by their effectiveness in the transformation of the communities in which God has placed them.

How are we to change our course of action in such a way as to positively impact every aspect of our interaction with our communities? We cannot accede to the fallacious claim that the Western world has been so saturated with the gospel message that all have had a chance to hear and make a personal choice. Otherwise, other religions will seek to reduce our followers by sharing their views with the more susceptible members of our Christian community.

Rapid changes in the structure of our society have caused the church to develop a fresh perspective for the presentation of the gospel message. Radio, television, movies, and other media present an evolving culture that is turning its focus from God to self. In an effort to reach the lost of this culture, the church has undergone some rapid changes to adapt to this new outcrop of unbelievers. However, it has proven to be deficient. We are losing the battle for the souls of lost America!

How to most effectively aggregate our resources to minister in the new mission field will hopefully be the substantive topic of discussion in seminary classrooms, mission forums, workshops, and places where decisions are made.

God is doing something new in the U.S. and Canada, and new wineskins are necessary to minister effectively in the marketplace of evangelism and discipleship. The contours in which ministry in the U.S. and Canada is being done today is not the same as yesterday.

A centennial video, U.S./Canada: God’s NEW Mission Field, will be available on DVD in February, 2008. It is to be a didactic and informational tool to encourage and equip Nazarenes to explore the implications of the recognition of the U.S. and Canada as the new mission field, and to suggest new initiatives that might be more functional in reaching the pre-churched populations who have impacted the demographic landscape.

The DVD is accompanied with a leader’s guide that could be implemented in four 90-minute sessions at your church or local assembly. It covers the fundamental search for methods, approaches, and models of relevant ministry to God’s new mission field. Questions are answered, such as:

● How do we organize for ministry in the new mission field?

● How do we prepare the congregation for this task?

● How do we avoid problems and pitfalls in new outreach initiatives?

● How can we train our people for cross-cultural ministry?

What are the results we seek through the publication and use of this video? We seek a departure from the missiology of hallowed custom. First of all, there must be the recognition of this new locus for ministry, and a subsequent embrace of the need for new approaches. Our marriage to the fixed axis mundi of missions must be annulled at the court of this new revelation. The video suggests the doors of opportunity are swung wide open by God’s guidance and that in this era of post-western Christianity and the post-Christian West, missions must find new wineskins. We cannot ignore the fact that to shift gears on the journey of evangelism presents formidable obstacles. It will not be easy. But, by God’s grace, it is doable!

It is hoped your congregation would embark on a journey to discover any emerging mission opportunity (EMO) the new mission field has created. A commitment to grapple with new EMOs surrounding your church could be the catalyst to energize your congregation. It is also hoped districts could be challenged to discover EMOs in religiously underserved areas where the holiness message would transform the stereotypical images of blight and hopelessness.

What are some of the EMOs to be addressed for new ministries? Here are a few ideas:

An EMO is a people group that has recently become a part of the community surrounding your church, ethnically different from the makeup of your present congregation.

An EMO is a people group in your community who is unemployed, unemployable, living below the poverty level, and is economically strapped by the escalating cost of living.

An EMO is a people group of immigrants in your community who is seeking the opportunity to access the American dream as millions have done before them.

An EMO is a people group of children in your community, or an adjoining community, who come from single parent households, struggle in substandard city schools, lack access to medical care, or are caught in the web of juvenile delinquency.

An EMO is a people group of individuals who have become victims of insensitive and selfish landlords who have left them incapable of acquiring adequate housing and the promise of home ownership.

An EMO is a people group who long to be connected to a hope of spiritual, emotional, and mental renewal.

An EMO is a people group within your community who lack the necessary resources to improve the quality of their life. They lack the ability, capacity, and willingness to change their present condition.

An EMO is a culture of “millennials” (those born between 1980 and 2000) whose cultural compass reflects a daring contrast and collision with the prevailing norms, but are making a difference in our world. They’re sociable, optimistic, talented, well-educated, collaborative, openminded, influential, and achievement-oriented.

The imminent challenge facing the church in this new mission field is to respond to the EMOs surrounding their environment. An EMO represents a door that was not there five or ten years ago, but is open today. Sadly, history has taught us that doors of opportunity are never open infinitum. What we seek most today is the capacity, ability, and willingness to respond to God’s EMOs in our ever-changing world.

by Oliver R. Phillips
Mission Strategy
USA/Canada Director

Endnotes
1 “Seasonal cheers for new philanthropists,” Financial Times of London, December 27, 2006. In addition, several Internet sources were used in compiling the facts and statistics mentioned in this article.
2 Kortright Davis, Serving with Power (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 16.
3 Thom Rainer, The Unchurched Next Door (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2003).