What are the alternatives?

Ernest Goodman, blogger at Missions Misunderstood asks What are the alternatives?

[Those involved] in the system, especially those who are invested in it, tend to stick with it because they don’t see any alternatives. The current, broken system is better than nothing, right?

• Why do so many churches treat missions as just another program of the church?
• Why do we pile kids into a church van, drive to an Indian Reservation to do Backyard Bible Clubs and call it “missions?”
• Why are so few churches actively and directly engaged in planting the gospel among people who don’t know and believe it?
• Why do missionaries treat partner churches like volunteer labor or children to be babysat?
• Why do some only consider ministry among “unreached” people groups to me missions?
  

What are the alternatives? In each of these cases, churches and individuals act according to what they’ve been taught. They do what others are doing, they do what they think they can. They go where they think finances, prudence, and church leadership will allow. They spend what they think they can afford. They act when they think it will help them. They don’t always even know why they do what they do (and don’t do what they don’t do.)

We need alternatives. We need to know about churches the orient their entire existence around the mission. About the value of humanitarian trips to our obedience as believers. That the Great Commission is the church’s responsibility. How churches can do so much more than paint houses and prayerwalk. That the people groups of the world are not static, and that obedience is the best strategy. If we don’t know, it’s unlikely that we’ll do anything different.

What do you think? I agree with Ernest, if people don't know, it's unlikely anything different will be done than the way things are currently being done. So what should we do to begin helping others to see alternatives?