Here is a quote from Gary Corwin, on “Mission Hype.”

“The presence of too many examples to cite of exaggeration and truth shading by leaders of mission organizations has troubled me for years. The hubris evident in the predictions and pronouncements concerning the year 2000, for example, was breathtaking. We should know better and do better.

‘Evangelistically speaking’ has been a euphemism for exaggeration of ministry results for as long as I can remember. So the problem is not new. But it is something of which we shold be ashamed, rather than something we laugh about. Our words and our claims should have a ring of truth all the time.

Abuse of the truth takes many forms, but two of the most common forms evident in mission circles consists, first, in what is not said (even though what is not said is often of vital importance) and second, in false impressions that the communicator intentionally seeks to leave with the reader or listener. Both forms can be used without actually stating anything false, just leaving the impression that something false is true.”

—Gary Corwin, “Seven Stealth Ethical Issues Flying Under the Radar of Many Mission Agencies,” in Serving Jesus with Integrity: Ethics and Accountability in Mission, eds. Dwight P. Baker and Douglas Hayward (William Carey Library, 2010), 188-189.

I am glad the author brought up the year 2000, primarily referencing the AD2000— a marketing “scheme” that was guilty of a lot more than simply being impossibly optimistic. However, it is not just the big players who do this. I would like to give a few examples from my past— when I served as the Training VP of a small organization in the Philippines known as “Dakilang Pag-ibig DIADEM Ministries.” Our primary activity was evangelistic medical-dental events.

We did a fair bit— doing around 1 medical mission event a month. In 5 years, we had treated around 30,000 patients. We had also had over 10,000 “pray to receive Christ.” Both of these are numbers to feel good about. And yet… there was some things that I felt were problematic— not big-time issues… but small issues that can become big if unacknowledged.

#1. This was a specific event. We did a medical mission in Iligan City. My wife joined this one, I did not. Normally, I track the registrations, the treatments given, and the spiritual responses. However, on this day, someone else did. When the numbers came in, approximately 500 patients were treated, while approximately 240 stated that they “prayed to receive Christ.” (I know you are wondering why I put the quotes around prayed to receive Christ. We will get to that.) At the end of the day, the statistics were related to the hosting church. There was shock and concern. Certainly 240 responses to the gospel can’t be right… it must be higher than that. And perhaps it was, if the counselor was a bit lazy in filling out the forms… some could be missed. Our team leader told the church, “Since it was members of your church that shared the gospel, you tell us what the correct number should be.” After a bit of discussion, the number they came up with was 95%— which works out to 475 responses.

95% was ludicrous— for a couple of reasons. First, we typically got a response rate of around 35-45% so their original number, a little under 50% was quite believable, but not 95%. <If you think that 35-45% sounds unreasonably high— well, we will get to that.> Second, far more than 5% of the patients were too young to make a real decision for Christ. And since many already would identify as “born-again Christians,” the numbers made no sense. It was like saying, that there was a 130% response rate of those eligible to respond.

So why would that church push for a 95% rate? I don’t know. I know that particular church had some odd qualities about it that would discourage me from ever working with them again. But I suppose that the church felt that 95% was more awesome and praise worthy than 48%. I would argue that truth is more praiseworthy than fake numbers.

In my mind, this one was simply a lie. Lies do happen, but as Gary Corwin noted above, a lot of deception happens while using the truth. The others I will use are “truthful.”

#2. The 10,000 “pray to receive Christ” is truthful, but the quotation marks around it are relevant. In the Philippines, there is something called “utang ng loob.” An English equivalent term might be ‘implied obligation.” If you do something nice for someone, they will feel an obligation to come up with an action to “pay back the favor.” In the case of a medical mission, we provide free medical, dental, and surgical services (and sometimes others as well) and free medicines. We present the pre-packaged gospel message, usually one-on-one with individuals between vital signs and seeing the doctor. Many of the patients realize that a very simple way of paying back for the free services is to pray along with the evangelizer. This gets them marked down as “pray to receive Christ” when in fact it is more likely that it should be marked down as “expressing thankfulness for the help.” Now of course I don’t know what the actual response rate is. Perhaps a more realistic number may be 500 in five years, rather than 10,000. Is 500 a wonderful thing? Absolutely, but it doesn’t sound as impressive as 10,000.

Realistic numbers are always hard to get. I had a friend who went to every evangelistic rally that came into town and would commonly walk forward in those events. In those, she was not ‘getting saved’ or even ‘getting saved again.’ Rather, she enjoyed the excitement of these rallies, and it gave her a bit of a “spiritual boost.” That is fine, but it does mess up the metrics. I knew a lady here in the Philippines who claimed that she led a minimum of 3 people to Christ each day. Of course, the Philippines is a country where close to 90% of the people would consider themselves Christian. Therefore, for her to get 3 per day, probably involved sharing with people that SHE DID NOT IDENTIFY AS CHRISTIAN. Somewhat related to this, one day she offered to “share the gospel” with me… for practice and to show me how it is done. She knew that I was a self-identified Christian, serving as a Christian missionary in a Christian ministry. I said that was fine. She shared the message and called for a prayer, and I went along with it all. Then she gave me a copy of the Gospel of St. John. It was only many hours later when it occurred to me that I was probably “one of her three” for the day. An added issue for me was the method she used. I would not even call it a presentation of the Gospel. I don’t think it is too strong to say that it was simply a method to trick Christians into saying the Sinnner’s prayer. I recall seeing a website of an Evangelist who claimed to have led something like 700 million to Christ (almost 10% of the world’s population). Is this true? Certainly not. Could the number be arrived at through some questionable metrics. Perhaps… but I doubt it. Perhaps he thinks numbers like that would be impressive to others and get them to support him. I suppose that is true, even though I would certainly not support someone who seemingly so little needs my support.

I felt that the 10,000 responses in our organization was so deceptive that I began tracking a different statistic. I asked the evangelizers to query people as to who would like to join a Bible Study, or even host a Bible Study. The numbers were quire a bit lower. However, most seemed do not to feel “utang” or obligation to respond positively on this question, so I felt it was a better gauge of response.

#3. I noted that we had treated 30,000 patients in 5 years. Not a bad number considering how small our group was and how low our funding was. But even this number has to be scrutinized. The 30,000 is quite accurate. However, one needs to look into the services we did. We would be in a location for only one day. Therefore, we really could not do real diagnostics. We could not deal with major problems. We needed to do things that could be evaluated in a day, and then give medicine, where follow-up was not necessarily required. Dental work was mostly extractions. Occasionally we could do fillings and cleanings. Surgery was mostly circumcisions (a cultural rather than medical imperative). Only rarely could we do other surgeries… and even then only ones that did not really need follow-up work.

Taking this into account, our tangible help to the population was rather minimal. Some of the medicines and vitamins were helpful. The wisdom provided by the doctors was, I hope, beneficial to them. However, very few people received physical care that would have long-term affect on their well-being.

For the most part, I believe that our time with DPDM was positive and felt good that we had a role in establishing it and maintaining it for several years. In fact, we were successful in helping churches or church planters start new Bible studies and churches. We were also successful, usually, in expressing God’s live in a way that the average person could recognize. I know people argue about how social and proclamation ministries should relate. Perhaps proclamation is more important… but social ministry is so critical to reach the people that I feel it is a mistake to even put the two on a scale to say which is more key.

However, I feel much better being with the group we are in now. Its numbers are much less impressive. However, the numbers probably undersell the work. We train pastoral counselors and chaplains. We train up a couple of dozen a year, rather than treat hundreds. The high investment of time in the trainees means that each number (trainee) potentially results in far more ROI (return on investment— an awkward concept for missions) for God’s Kingdom.

I have come to appreciate ministries that are unimpressive in terms of numbers. Bible translators often measure their progress in chapters, books, and languages. The numbers simply never look good because the process is slow. But the results can expand far beyond the immediate numbers. Mentoring programs are slow— their numbers just don’t impress. We need to look past numbers. Paul is often considered one of the greatest missionaries of all time. However, if we were looking at numbers… he does not impress. His decades of service resulted in a relatively few church plants. His direct disciples don’t appear to be great— at least based on those listed in his epistles. However, his investment in local leaders, and in the next generation of apostle/missionaries resulted in a a movement that grew and grew after his death.

We like to judge people by numbers or by hype. Pretty sure that God is not particularly impressed by either.