It is good missionary strategy to develop what Donald McGavran calls “a theology of harvest.” McGavran is impatient with missionaries and evangelists who are satisfied with searching for the lost with little or no regard for how many are ultimately found. Too many Christian workers have seen such little fruit for their labors that, McGavran says, they “had to find a rationale for existence and continuance that did not depend on numbers or converts.” They would say, “Results should not be used to evaluate success or failure.”1
Fortunately, the disciples in the Upper Room knew nothing of such a “search theology.” They were praying for something much more positive. They knew that Jesus had come to save the lost, and they knew that God’s intent was, as McGavran so forcefully puts it, “to marshal, discipline, strengthen, and multiply His churches until all people on earth have had the chance to hear the gospel from their own kindred, who speak their own language and whose word is unobstructed by cultural barriers.”2 This is a theology of harvest that was as valid then as it is now.
1 Donald A. McGavran, Understanding Church Growth (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Third Edition, 1990), p. 26.
2 Ibid., p. 30.
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