Missionary methods

Was he right or was he wrong? This is where thinking Christians need to step back for a moment and recognize that there is a distinction we have to make between motivation and method. That's not an accidental distinction. It's an important distinction.

But we also come to understand that Protestant missions during that period began to learn certain methodologies that became absolutely essential to the modern missionary movement. For one thing, even as we see the example of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, Christian missionary organizations began to send out missionaries, not one by one, but at least two by two. Understanding that some kind of team effort was important.

But I would also point to a distinction in methodology. Jim Elliot and the missionaries who were with him were part of a larger effort. They were part of a culture, of a church sending culture of missionaries. There were those who would continue the effort, who would learn from what happened to Jim Elliot and would continue to try to make contact with the tribe. There was an infrastructure, there was methodology, there was not a solitary effort because if that solitary effort had been the case in Ecuador, there would not have been the following of the team that was able eventually through persistent efforts to reach the tribe with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But we also have to understand that hard lessons have been learned throughout Christian history and in particular, in the course of modern Christian missions about how best to try to reach unreached people groups.

And to put the matter bluntly, this is not the way that most modern missions organizations would seek to reach this kind of group. That doesn't mean that they wouldn't demonstrate the same kind of courage, it doesn't mean that missionaries even today are not serving under the threat of martyrdom and often facing the reality of martyrdom. It doesn't mean that there should have been no effort to reach this unreached people group, not to mention the thousands of other unreached people groups still on planet earth.

But it's also true to understand that Christian missionaries and mission sending organizations have learned something about how, over the long term, to be even more effective in reaching these unreached people groups.

https://albertmohler.com/2018/11/26/briefing-11-26-18/

The gaping lacuna in Mohler's analysis is that he never gets around to presenting a practical alternative. What's a more effective method for reaching the tribe? Mohler repeatedly poses that question, then leaves it dangling in mid-air. He never answers the question he raised. He takes refuge in abstractions and generalities. 

Take his (at least) two-by-two rule. How would that change the outcome of the encounter with the hostile tribe? If a team showed up at the island, wouldn't the whole team be massacred? 

There's a problem when Christian spokesmen feel the need to comment on issues even though they have nothing constructive to say. Why does Mohler bother to critique Chau's methodology when Mohler has no solution to offer?