A video series recently released by Dordt University highlights a switch in the global composition of Christians and how to think differently about funding and doing missions today.
Coproduced by Aaron Baart and Mark Volkers, and hosted by Baart, Missions Upside Down revisits stories of heroic missionaries of the past and looks at current trends where historic gospel-receiving countries are becoming sending countries.
The filmmakers are colleagues at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa, where Baart is chief of staff and dean of chapel and Volkers is an instructor of digital media production. This project was a gift to Dordt, Baart said, funded by a grant from John and Betty Addink.
About a decade ago, Baart said, “I started to think about leaving my position and going overseas. Once I started fundraising I realized how many indigenous leaders we could hire for the same cost. So I decided to get more involved in missions by not going and instead supporting national leaders. It’s become a passion ever since.”
A goal, as described in the project’s FAQ, is “that people give serious thought to how money in missions is used and what place there should be for supporting indigenous leaders and not merely sending western missionaries to foreign shores.” Baart said, “There was no desire to promote or advertise for any one particular mission agency. Rather, the hope is that donors and churches are thinking about this kind of giving within their missions-giving portfolio.”
Viewers watching the series will meet indigenous leaders in India, Liberia, and Mexico, and visit a Christian Reformed congregation in Vancouver, B.C., where the world’s diaspora is woven together in Tapestry, a three-campus church plant where Albert Chu serves as pastor. In episode five Baart tells the story of how Tapestry, a planting mission of Christian Reformed Home Missions (now part of Resonate Global Mission), took root in what had been Baart’s home church as a child, First CRC in Richmond, B.C.
Resonate has multiple indigenous leader partners throughout its network, including in South and Southeast Asia, East and Central Asia, East and Southern Africa, and Central America.
Baart is a former church planter with the CRCNA in British Columbia and Iowa and started a Liberia-based organization to equip church planting and community development efforts in 2007. Volkers served as a missionary in East Africa for seven years and then was communications director for Christian Reformed World Missions (now part of Resonate) for 10 years before moving to Dordt.