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Canon Max Warren, former General Secretary of CMS, who analysed the history of CMS into distinct epochs.
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Four key stages in CMS history
1799 – 1851
Fly Casting
Lacking inherited models for cross-cultural mission, CMS threw in lines to test various approaches. There was a single objective, gospel proclamation. Earliest examples were Sierra Leone with ex-slaves; Malta as a bridgehead to the Islamic world; Australia and New Zealand to evangelise traditional peoples. Sometimes ‘fish’ came to the top: e.g. West Africa, east Africa, India, the Middle East, China and Japan. Sometimes not and the experiment ended: Turkey, Greece, Abyssina, Zululand, Madagascar, Guiana, Jamaica, Hudson Bay (Canada).
1851 – 1900
Scaffolding
There were two working theories on how to build the Church. One was to send in a bishop as leader in mission. The other was to build a grass-roots network of congregations and at the right stage superimpose structures. CMS took the latter view and CMS people were essentially catalytic with outreach and expansion of the Church was mostly the work of inspired local people. In some places the scaffolding included supplying leadership (in the form of bishops) plus trainers and educators to assist and shape the fledgling church. This was the most prolific period of expansion in areas where CMS worked, according to Warren.
1900 – 1955
Institutionalising
The aim in this period was to stabilise and make permanent the gains of the previous frenetic period. There were many benefits according to Warren but also obvious weaknesses as the need for viable structures gave way
- to multiplication of dioceses not capable of being truly viable mission units and
- to loss of dynamism as the challenge to run schools, colleges, hospitals and agricultural projects took away energy from mission vision. Likewise CMS administration became increasingly bureaucratic. In the latter stages, however, CMS (particularly Warren) played an important role working out what the church south of the equator and east of Suez would look like in a post-colonial world.
1956 – Now
Post-colonial, post-Christendom... Interchange
The
Suez Crisis (1956) symbolised the end of one era and the beginning of a
new one. CMS responded by liquidating its institutions or handing them
over and searched for metaphors for mission no longer driven by British
migration and colonial power. Several major trends form the context for
this period.
- Vast and rapid expansion of Christianity in the
‘economic south’ while Christianity in its old heartlands in recession.
- A growing economic gap between north and south with the reality that
today’s average Christian is poor, but where it is no longer people
from the ‘north’ who aspire to get into mission.
- Cold War, its end,
and new instability and uncertainty by reversal of old migration trends
and emergence of phenomena such as al Qaeda. Interchange is a metaphor
for a new approach to mission where Christ in all his richness is
proclaimed as people from a plethora of cultures come to know him in
all his fullness and tell the world.
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