Those are good examples of outreach. Not the same as missions. Missions reach ethnes. Missions, as defined by "professional" mission folks, plant churches. They bring indigenous converts to eldership and to lead the Body locally. People who come to Christ as, say, Taramuhara and speak the native language continue to be Taramuhara speaking that language but as believers and ministers to each other and the lost.
I know of no mission that aims at groups which form around behavior. Now there is a reason I ask. Without getting too specific, American church leaders maintain that they are reaching "communities" of one or another sort. But these are not NT "ethne" as missionary effort has been defined. For example, there is no indigenous church planting movement among coin collectors or blues guitarists. That seems silly but I want to make the point without pulling controversial groups into the discussion just yet.
Mission has always been ethnolinguistic, not based on affinity or political power grouping. There is, for example again, no mission that aims to convert women who have abortions and plants a church among women who had abortions. Why? Well one reason is those women, no matter how cohesive and organized they may be, are not an ethne. They are not a people. They are really not in the truest sense a community. I equate community with ethne.
But that equation is very much criticized by contemporary American church leadership. Pastors and so called "missional" thinkers and speakers make their career hay by establishing and conducting different types of works with what they call communities. These so-called communities are nothing more than groups that share an affinity for certain behavior. These groups clamor for the use of the word "community" because it carries so much political and psychological power to be thought of in that way. And, if you are making career hay by reaching "communities", you certainly don't expect that you will make a name for yourself reaching out to someone who lacks power. So the church has invested in empowering groups as communities in order to promote itself and the importance of its own efforts.
It places it self beyond criticism for this by countering that the word community is just a word. That community simply means a group of people with a common interest. But that is manifestly untrue.
In the recent Oberegefell decision, the SCOTUS used the word community three different times to make clear that community is a moral force with moral power. Justice Kennedy even said that same-sex marriage is a building block of the national community.
The American church is bending over backwards to serve groups. The service to these groups manages to create an appearance of cultural engagement. Cultural engagement is the mantra of the contemporary church in this country. It substitutes for gospel preaching and gospel mission. Community is far more than a mere word.
The church suffers the loss of the importance of our many, many works if we are not serving actual communities. But, to the extent we are serving groups that form around conduct and behavior, we are not serving communities. We are not engaged in mission at that level. I submit to you that such is impossible to do. I submit to you that it requires a redefinition of what mission means. It requires redefinition of ethnes. There are other implications to this that I simply don't have time to go into now. And you're already bored. 😊
