Definitely not. But there is no point in dwelling on the heroes of the past, except to learn what we need to know for today. Of course there were great accomplishments, just as there were great mistakes and hopeless failures. While respecting the past, and learning from it, our purpose must be to deal with the present and prepare for the future. If we are going to honor God and discern His will, we must be prepared for change. We must have a reformation that will cause us to replace the antiquated, unscriptural, counter-productive methods by which we seek to carry out the great commission of our Saviour, which is to plant His church in every nation.

A key to the problem may be found in the way we use the word, MISSION. Generally it denotes the expansionist objectives of our respective organizations and denominations, just as "crusade" did a thousand years ago. Like colonial era military conquerors, we are bent on ruthlessly expanding our territory to include foreign countries. We want maps on the wall and graphics in our yearbooks showing places all over the globe where we have affiliated branches. The tragedy today is that we so often accomplish our objective by running roughshod over our fellow believers who are already there. The whole situation is completely different from the way it was 200 years ago.

When William Carey went to India in 1792 he found no indigenous evangelical churches or missionary teams. So he did not appear on the scene as a competitive threat to fellow believers. But when I first went to India in 1948 (on my way to China) I found many thousands of churches from which tens of thousands of native missionaries were going forth to spread the gospel. Also on hand were representatives of dozens of American organizations and denominations eager to employ Indian citizens to establish branches of their respective empires. Is it any wonder, then, that God allowed the Hindus to put us out of the country? His kingdom was being labeled "cultural imperialism" and "institutional colonialism."

One of our great mistakes is our failure to recognize that our Sovereign Lord is the Head of His whole church. If He were truly leading us, He would cause us to respect the fellow members of His body (meaning all true believers) in every nation, and to strengthen their hands rather than competing with them and causing divisions among them. Instead, we go all over the world hiring away the workers of indigenous missions and devastating their ministries. We send comparatively rich "missionaries" to live in large houses and drive around in expensive cars among the poorest people of this world. Their presence brings discredit and suspicion upon local believers who are generally poor.

If we believe God wants us to do something for His kingdom in poorer countries, we should send financial help to our fellow believers who bear witness for Him in their respective locations. Sending a rich foreigner to live among them tends to misrepresent our Saviour. It also breeds covetousness among local Christians who may envy the foreigners’ wealth and thus be tempted to want some of it. And in many cases our presence identifies God's kingdom with foreign governments and destroys its credibility in the eyes of local citizens.