The founders of a well-known faith mission were reprimanded by a veteran missionary when they sought to push the coastal boundaries of ministry into the interior heart of West Africa:

“You’ll never see the Soudan. Your children will never see the Soudan.Your grandchildren may.”

A hundred years later, weather-stained tombstones bear mute witness to their pioneering sacrifice – 390 million Africans call themselves Christian today.

When the modern mission movement launched interdenominational agencies in the 1890s, planet Earth was unimaginably vast. Maps were a mosaic of unreached populations in unexplored regions, where daily life was unchanged for generations.

For young Western missionaries, there was no turning back. They packed their belongings in the very pine coffins they might be coming home in. In Hudson Taylor’s day, overseas evangelism was a lifelong commitment, and not just because of a life calling. Sending agencies had to devise complex support systems for maintaining a missionary on the frontier fringes – overcoming obstacles of transportation, communication, climate, disease, housing, language and ministry. The missionary was often the only literate person within 500 miles, so he naturally took on the roles of pastor, teacher and elder until the Bible was translated and the nationals educated.

Over time, these mission systems became an institutionalized method for establishing a church on far-flung mission outposts – a process measured in decades, not years. The lack of infrastructure and education in the developing world made it virtually impossible for the missionary to quickly share the Word, establish leadership and move on. The goal of actually planting a church in such environments was so daunting that missionary effectiveness was inextricably linked to cultural knowledge, language proficiency and longevity.

But the world has changed. The footpath and steamship are now cyberspace and jet planes. Communication is instantaneous. Country borders are fluid, and awash in refugees. Volatile political climates shift so quickly that we might only have a few years in a “creative access” country. Longevity in one place becomes irrelevant. It’s a smaller world, but many areas still need the gospel. Speed and agility must infuse today’s missions strategies.

Avant’s Short-Cycle Church Planting is geared for this ever-changing post-modern world – precisely because it recalls the historical model of the Apostle Paul. Right from the get-go, Short-Cycle teams employ a high trust in the Holy Spirit, each other and nationals. In places like Poland and Spain, our goal is to rapidly raise up mature, reproducing churches led by nationals – all while missionaries are absorbing the language, boldly witnessing to neighbors, and training new believers as leaders. These are nimble teams seeking any tactical advantage God reveals.

By the way: our teams expect to see multiple, mature, reproducing church plants within five years. Sound crazy? So we’ve been told. Critics say that, compared to heresy, dependency is the lesser of two evils. Move too fast or leave too soon, they say, and you’ll invite heresy into a fledgling church. But they fail to see dependency is just another form of heresy. By staying too long, we risk becoming church “perfecters” instead of church planters.

Rather than entrusting churches to bear fruit and fellowships unique to their own culture, we inadvertently encourage nationals to model a “Western” church. Paul’s written rebukes to churches show he was also worried about heresy. But it didn’t stop his ambition to pack up and “preach the gospel where Christ was not known” – always trusting that his emerging church leaders had received the same empowering of the Holy Spirit he did.

In the world it was designed for, the 20th century missionary enterprise surely made its mark: Christians in the southern hemisphere today outnumber northerners 2 to 1, for example. Just as our mission forefathers braved distance and disease, we too need to be resourceful pioneers in a world of terrorism and chaos.

Short-Cycle is already proving itself on the forgotten mission field of Western Europe, and more teams are being organized for France, Eastern Europe and Muslim-dominated Central Asia. Combining their spiritual gifts, these teams feature both new missionaries catching the Short-Cycle buzz and Avant veterans who are transporting their passion to new fields.

It’s a different world. We need a brave new ministry philosophy to reach it.