MUSINGS WHILE TRAVELING IN 2001 FROM MINNEAPOLIS TO ALMATY
WITHOUT MUCH INFORMATION ABOUT THE SITUATION,
BUT WITH PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE IN OTHER AREAS,
I WROTE THE FOLLOWING NOTE . . .
1) Mission personnel and staff must be committed to the establishment of an indigenous church in Kazakhstan.
2) The mission head should appoint a five member transition team from those local church members who have been active at least five years. Head works with this team as they assume all functions of mission. After a two year period this team disbands and all functions pass to the elected representatives and officers of the church body.
3) The mission head should begin to reduce the monthly stipends paid to congregations.
4) Begin a church-wide program of education toward financial independence for the congregations, targeting both donor and recipient.
5) Establish an annual grant amount from mission to local churches and charge five member transition team to decide how fast and how much to reduce this grant each year.
6) Reduce expatriate mission staff to zero. Only support theological trainers whom the local church invites to teach in seminary.
7) Sending church and receiving church should establish "partnership" status similar to model in other areas.
Looking back we admit all this was rather naive. None of this happened, nor will it happen from what we can observe of the present situation. In 2001 neither mission nor local church was ready for such a transition. Today, less so. Is it too late to return to square one?
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
--William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (1599)
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