So in 1970, at a Board meeting lasting two full days, we made a change. We would separate the A.I.D. (Assisting Indigenous Developments) division of ISI from the foreign student ministry with the understanding that A.I.D. alone would continue to call for a reformation in foreign missionary practices. Then ISI could carry on as an autonomous work, saying nothing about the need for change. That’s how Christian Aid became a separate work from ISI, and has since become a much larger work in terms of assets and total ministry.

When Christian Aid was constituted as a distinctive ministry, we were careful to stipulate that one of our objectives was reformation in missionary methodology. Included in our bylaws was an article called Basic Missionary Principles which all officers, trustees and directors were required to affirm annually, as follows:

Section 1. To be a Christian involves faith that Christ died for my sins and rose from the dead; and a parallel experience whereby I die to sin and let Christ raise me to newness of life and thereafter live His life in and through me.

Section 2. Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the days of His flesh, was God on earth in a human body. Today He lives on earth in many bodies, each being a local assembly of those who are risen with Him. A Biblical church is the body of Christ in that locality. But all local groups of true Christians are also one body in Christ in a universal sense and every one members of one another.

Section 3. Every true Christian will allow Christ’s love to flow out through him to all other believers. Those who are entrusted with the management of material wealth will have compassion on the poor saints and send help to them wherever they are. Such help will never be used to buy control over our brothers in Christ.

Section 4. Risen Christians wish to see Christ born, growing and showing forth His love and power among every tribe and nation. Wherever He is born in an infant body of believers, wise men will lay gifts at His feet to help meet His needs as a child. As that body grows, other bodies all over the world will show care and concern. If ever Christ is hungry, we will feed Him. If He is naked, we will clothe Him. Those who discern His Body as revealed in Scripture will constantly be concerned about Christ wherever He may be in this world.

Section 5. Conversely, we will never try to divide His Body. We will not go to a community where He lives and try to raise up Christ in a competing body. Such activity is of the flesh rather than the Spirit.

Section 6. Applying these principles to Christian Aid Mission, we as a corporate body hereby agree that:

• We will encourage Christians in prosperous areas to send help to their brothers in areas of poverty, famine, persecution, and disaster.
• We will not send missionaries from one culture (defined by customs and language) to another. Rather, we will encourage and strengthen the hands of those in whom Christ lives who are already within a given culture, and help those believers who are away from home to return as Christ’s witnesses to their own people.
• To plant Christ among those peoples and in those places where no true believers yet exist, we will encourage our fellow Christians to reach people from such cultures while they are away from home so that they may go back and begin a body of believers. But we will discourage the invasion of any tribe or cultural group by outsiders who would be looked upon as strangers and foreigners.
• We will speak out boldly against all forms of carnality among Christians, including denominational or mission board expansionism and all forms of institutional colonialism through which Christians of any culture try to extend their organizations into other cultures. We will teach what the Bible says about our Lord’s Body and encourage all Christians to strengthen HIS church instead of building our own churches.