the end of the "missionary" as we know it

I have had some great conversations with my friend Chad the last few days. They were about what it means for an emergent-type missional church to go global.

The Traditional Model:
This model was created in the days of the "missionary." The idea was that the western church would gather their resources and form "societies" that sent missionaries around the world to spread the gospel. Many of these mission societies became "conventions" or denominational affiliations. It was enough for the local church in America to give a percentage to these huge organization. Those mission organizations would then collect all that money in order to train and equip missionaries to be sent around the world.

Problem: The local western church became disconnected with the global church.

The Mega-model:
This model takes a similar principle from the traditional model and makes it localized. The pulling of resources is the core value here. If a church can get enough people in one place, then all those resources can be enough do great things. One of those great things is to send one's own missionaries straight from the local church to distant parts of the globe to reach people for Christ.

It seems that as this model was being developed, the old dichotomy between "preaching the gospel" and "social justice" was being torn down. It no longer made sense to send western missionaries to preach a gospel that has been westernized. Missionaries began to address social concerns of the new culture in which they lived. They also began to allow the gospel to be manifested in a culturally relevant way. Rather than trying to be "Paul the apostle", these missionaries began to see the local people as the new "Paul's" and they tended to be more of a "Barnabas" or "Ananias."

Problem: This limits cooperation with other local churches and can only be done with a large, 1000+ person church. It also, like the traditional model, still views only the "sent ones" as the missionaries.

The emergent-model:
I am not sure there is one yet. If we are viewing ourselves as missionaries, then we are trying to reach our own culture through culturally relevant ways. This often includes planting churches. Church planting often involves the continual use of resources every few years to start a new church. It also involves keeping churches small so that community can be authentic and relational. So we have become the "missionaries." What then is our relationship to other "missionaries/church planters" around the globe? Also, with mass global communication and the development of the global economics, does it make sense to "send" anyone anywhere anymore?

Problems: Too numerous to count. The primary one being the need for a new paradigm to understanding global ministry from a western perspective.

Some proposals:
The relationship of the western church to the rest of the world should no longer be "sender/receiver" of what we used to call "missionaries." It seems that egalitarian partnerships should be forming instead. The thinking being, "We are planting churches here, you are planting churches there, how do we help each other do this?" Many of the house churches in Africa and Asia don't have many monetary resources. But maybe they are rich in community. Our people here in the west are isolated and individualistic yet they have money. What if "Fair Trade" applied to church partnerships and not just the import and export of goods. Maybe the global church can teach us about community while we help them dig wells and build schools. I don't know.

I know that it no longer makes sense for us to send people to Africa when we are sending them to the next town over to reach the lost there. It no longer makes sense to send a westernized Christian to a different culture when there are plenty in our own culture who don't know Christ. And if it makes sense to send people from America to go around the globe, then it should make sense for churches around the globe to send church planters here to America to reach people here. And I think some places, like Korea, already are.

I need some help thinking about the global church these days. The old paradigms don't fit the church that I am a part of. Maybe someone can dream with me about a new way for the western church to relate to the global church. All of the models currently have seem lacking.