MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA (ANS) -- He grew up as a missionary kid in Hong Kong, where he observed Christian work at his parents’ feet. But globalization and technology changes in the ensuing years have completely altered his perspective on missions and led him to embrace changes some might consider radical.

T.J. Addington

“I grew up in the black and white world,” says T.J. Addington, the pastor, author and leader of ReachGlobal, the international mission of the Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). “The world was big, travel was expensive, and there was one way of doing missions,” he notes.

Most of the missionaries he observed went to one destination and stayed there. As the world underwent dynamic shifts through globalization in the 1970s and the PC revolution of the ’80s and ’90s, he saw the need to modify his views to fit the times.

“I’m not critical of the way missions was done, but I knew the world had changed and often mission agencies and the church are decades behind the change,” he says. “Mission agencies are very aware they’re in the whitewater of change, but they don’t know what to do about it.”

As Addington accepted his position at EFCA nine years ago, he saw the need to “take the mission out of the black and white world and into the color world.”

The result of these changes have been striking. “Indigenous groups are knocking on our door today because of the shifts we have made where we are no longer a controlling entity,” he notes. “We develop equal partnerships.”

“We don’t own anything, control anything, or count anything as ours,” he says. “We’re there to lift up our national partners, to help them become everything they can be.”

While Christian work often found alignment around authority structures and strategy, Addington promotes something very different. “We have pressed down authority to the lowest level possible and eliminated as much bureaucracy as possible.

These are the nine critical shifts identified by Addington:

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