The Western Missionary: Dead or Alive?
There is an undercurrent in the Western church which says that the place of the Western missionary is gone. It says that it’s a waste of time and effort for a Western missionary to go overseas. There are now enough indigenous believers to carry out the great commission; what they need is money. Westerners are great at making money, (goes the thesis) so stay home, make bunches of money, and pour it into indigenous missionaries.
Is This Where Our Missions Effort Ends?
In some ways this is a good point. However, as with most debatable issues, there has been an overcorrection. Just like in driving on an icy road, the overcorrection can be more dangerous than the original deviation.
There are many places in the world with a significant indigenous support and this theory of sending them money is actually very appropriate. An Indian can get by on just a few dollars a day, which to you is nothing. You could support 10 of these missionaries a day if you had the economic means to. The money that it would take to send you and your family over there and live with relative western comforts would support scores of indigenous missionaries.
This is true. Buy ay, here’s the rub:
Many missionaries in unreached parts of the world don’t even have a whole Bible, and their theology is as deep as a first reading of the New Testament allows. Do we want to pour money on missionaries with unbiblical theology? Lack of good theology is the breeding ground for heresy.
This brings up a can of worms with encouraging indigenous groups self theologize or not, but that’s a separate issue. We would all agree that education is a good thing. Teaching locals how to make better use of their Bibles, to avoid reading it through their own cultural lens, and to be aware of hermeneutics and exegesis is always a good thing. Who will help them if we’re only pouring our money on them?
In many parts of Africa people are converting from Pagan Animism to Christian Animism, following the most powerful miracle worker instead of the most powerful witch doctor. Personality cults are numerous. Theology is weak. Sending those kinds of missionaries support will only encourage heresy and cults.
We need to do our homework. Supporting 10 indigenous missionaries instead of one Westerner is definitely the better choice if those missionaries have solid God-exalting theology, but one biblical Westerner is better than a thousand heretical, personality-cult, animist missionaries.
The Western Missionary is not dead. In regions that have solid local leadership, they are merely needed in a different scope. They should be equipping in the most appropriate ways, whether through education or finances or ministry tools. In the areas without local evangelization, they still need to go to the front lines.
—–
This issue is not my specialty. What do you think? Please feel free to add to this discussion in the comments. Thanks for reading!
Read your article because it was retweeted by by Intervarsity. Interesting thoughts, good subject!
Education is a great way for us (Western, privilaged Christians) to be plugged into global evangelism, but I disagree where you claim it is good to teach avoidance of reading the Bible through “their own cultural lens.” To study the Bible honestly and well, one must know one’s own lens- we each have a lens, we cannot rid ourselves of the lens, and we should not avoid them (I view them as gifts!). Subltely teaching an entire culture to disregard the innate, created, value in themselves, (and their own insight) is one of the sins Western missionaries have fallen into throughout our history. We regard our own body of theology as neutral and without bias, but that’s not true! We teach White, Privelaged Theology. That’s not the whole story of the Cross: we need each others’ cultural lenses! You can see characteristics of God I wouldn’t know without you, and vice versa.
I highly recommend “When Helping Hurts” by Corbett & Fikkert as a wonderful primer on wholistic, loving missions.
Great point Abi – I was about to say the same thing! To me one of the huge blessings of being involved in cross-cultural mission is becoming more aware of your own cultural lens, and those of others, and seeing a bigger picture of God as a result. Mission in the 21st Century is from everywhere to everywhere, and we are privileged to gain a greater understanding of God as we read the Bible with people who have a very different cultural perspective to ourselves.
I think maybe that’s why, after 3 chapters emphasising Jews and Gentiles being part of the same church in Christ, Paul says:
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, **together with all the Lord’s holy people**, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:17-19)
God’s mission in the world will continue with or without the US or European church, but if they’re not involved in God’s mission these churches will become increasingly self-centred, irrelevant and detached from what God is doing.
Thanks for your comment Abi. I think you missed my point though. I agree we all have a cultural lens. We need to be aware of it in order to not let it affect our interpretation of the Bible. We can’t avoid our own cultural leanings if we’re not aware of them. Of course we all have a lens. That’s the danger though. What does a lens do? It filters according to it’s construction.
When we read the Bible through the good parts in our culture, through the parts you see as a gift, then surely we’re doing alright. However, when we read through the bad parts of our cultural lens, we have what’s called syncretism. This is what we need to be careful of. Any person from any culture in any time period would see that homosexual acts are wrong in the sight of God. However, only recently has this become so acceptable in our own culture that when filtered through that lens, we have entire churches twisting the scriptures and committing revisionist history with the New Testament, pretending to make it ok. We need to be aware of that culture too, and avoid it.
So you’re right in as far as our culture is good. But, reading the Bible through our own cultural lens is a death blow to solid theology. I do not regard my own theology as neutral. As a westerner I pay way too much attention to sexual sins and hardly any attention to pride and hypocrisy. However, I’m only able to avoid poor interpretation on these issues by being aware of my cultural weakness.
Remember, the Bible teaches that the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.
There is no good innate value that disagrees with scripture. Every culture has innate value, but the value of it is decided by the word of God.
This is also not my specialty, but I’ll add a few thoughts.
The majority of the indigenous missionaries that we would support as Westerners are people who are sponsored by some kind of organization (Voice of the Martyrs or Gospel for Asia, for instance). From what I understand, part of the support that those organizations offer is theological support and education. As far as that’s true, a Westerner will most likely be supporting someone with good or growing theology.
And as far as whether or not Western missionaries are not needed anymore, the statistics show that indigenous missionaries are far from making Western missionaries redundant. Different organizations have different numbers, but there’s something like 1 full-time Gospel worker for every 5000 people in the US. There’s something like 1 FT worker for every 5 million people in North Africa and the Middle East. I’m sure those numbers are far from exact, but I heard something similar recently.
Another interesting note is that my fiance recently talked to a Westerner who’s a full-time missionary in Central Asia, and her team is incredibly diverse. They have several Koreans, some Chinese, some Albanian, one Kazakh, and others. It’s cool to see how God is moving among other nationalities to send workers to His field too!
Ben,
You’re definitely right that there are missionaries from many nations around the world, as there have been for many hundreds of years, although modern communications and the growth of the church in the south and east is making this increasingly common.
My one concern is that we don’t make “good or growing theology” equal to “acceptance of western theology”. I really think that Christians from a wide range of cultural backgrounds need to read the Bible together, learning from each other, rather than one dominant group teaching their theology to the rest.
Mark I always appreciate your comments. I thought of you when I wrote that “This is not my specialty” part, since it’s yours. You’re definitely right that we have to draw a line between “good” theology and “Western” theology. We can learn so much about our own predispositions by reading with people from different backgrounds.
One benefit of Western theology is that what has survived as orthodoxy has already been refined through countless schisms and heresies, and since there’s nothing new under the sun, it can serve as a guide when the next round of people come along that say Christ is only human, or that we ought to pray to dead humans, or that we have multiple lives, or that we should communicate with the spirits. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we can go back to the early church, which wasn’t Western, and stop the argument before it starts with already decided issues.
The question becomes, to what level can we use the refined and good parts of Western theology without westernizing others? Do we stay totally out of it and let the schisms develop and the next round of Christ humanizers gain strength? Do we let them make all their own mistakes like our ancestors did at the price of not being Western?
It’s a tough one.
I was thinking a bit more about the Bible itself. When we translate the Bible into other languages, we’re translating the Bible that came out of the early church. After the schisms and Manichaeans and Gnostics and other heresies, they decided that they needed to make it official which books were inspired and in accordance with Christ’s message.
Nobody would consider it westernizing to share this Bible. Or should we encourage them to rehash all the early books and decide for themselves? There are certain things others can learn from the pain Westerners went through. There was a lot of learning by fire. I don’t encourage westernizing, but the modern discussion seems to have overcorrected due to the errors of the past. It seems many now wish to give the Bible and then stay completely out of it.
How can we help others by learning from our mistakes without being too present? We already give them the Bible that our ancestors and we believe to be inspired. I don’t believe that’s going too far. Are there other things we can offer that also wouldn’t be too far? Would a creed on the divinity of Christ be overstepping? It might save them 200 years of local turmoil, or it might be theological dominance.
Which is more honoring to Christ is the ultimate question.
I think these are really important questions in mission today, so it’s great that you’re raising them. I agree with you (as you probably know…!) that translating the Bible is an important part of helping people to do theology. The question is then what, if anything, should an outsider do in terms of teaching on top of giving the Bible?
I don’t think we should just give the Bible and then stay completely out of it. But I also think that a traditional model of teaching abstract theological truths can disempower people and almost inevitably transmits the cultural assumptions of the teacher. (This way of teaching does seem closer to what Paul and others in the NT did, but how much of that should we imitate and how much was due to his being an apostle and having personally met Jesus? I’m not sure…?)
So I would hope there is a middle way, where missionaries can “teach” through dialogue, suggesting how their culture and church generally interprets the Bible, but at the same time being open to new suggestions and insights from the new church and culture.
My boss Eddie Arthur (kouya.net) is actually speaking on “Reading the Bible with the worldwide church” in a couple of hours (8pm European time I think…) if you’re interested, either to participate in the lecture online or to listen to it afterwards – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/redcliffe-lecture-in-bible-and-mission-2011
Ben, thanks for your comment. You’re definitely right about those missionaries that carry the seal of a trusted organization. They’re definitely to be trusted if the trustworthy organization is willing to put their name on them.
As for the numbers, they’re even more shocking. I’d like to hunt this down, but I read that 1 in 215 people in the States makes their fulltime living on the Gospel, whether pastors, priests, campus ministry, etc. I’ll try to track that down.
Abi,
I think you make a really good point regarding our own cultural lens. And I agree that it is important to understand your own cultural lens. However the point of understanding ones own cultural lens is so that it does not impinge on the truth of the gospel. Once we are aware that our culture has an effect on how we view the scripture, we can look beyond it and see the truths of the scriptures. I think this is what Jordan was getting at. We all see the bible a bit differently based on the culture we were raised in, we need to look beyond that to understand the truth in the bible.
Aubrey, thanks for this. I think you hit it dead on.
I think this is a great discussion, and I’m probably talking too much…! Jordan, you say:
“In many parts of Africa people are converting from Pagan Animism to Christian Animism, following the most powerful miracle worker instead of the most powerful witch doctor. Personality cults are numerous. Theology is weak.”
I agree that in many places this is the case. However, I think we can also say:
“In many parts of America people are converting from Secular Materialism / Individualism to Christian Materialism / Individualism, following the most famous Christian celebrity instead of the most famous movie star. Personality cults are numerous. Theology is weak.”
Often it’s a lot easier to see where cultures that are very different to our own are going wrong… For me that is a huge reason why cross-cultural mission (from everywhere to everywhere) is vital, in order that together with Christians from all nations and cultures we can gain a more genuine understanding of what it means to follow Jesus and not just to follow our cultural biases.
Feel free to disagree… I think this is a great discussion to have!
Hey Mark, you’re right it’s easier to see other cultures’ failures. The only thing we have to make sure of is that we’re not supporting Western missionaries that will bring Christian Materialism, celebrity worshiping, and personality cult Christianity. I didn’t mean to say we don’t have problems, only that we ought not support missionaries who aren’t solid. I think the same applies at home. Missionaries to whom Christ is not first are poor examples.
Thanks again. This is some great discussion and I think will help us all to strike nearer to the heart of this issue.
Yep, I agree. And this is a huge challenge to me, wondering how faithful I am to authentically following Jesus. I may feel I am a solid missionary, teaching the gospel, but I think many Christians around the world would see me as being totally hypocritical promoting a message of a new Kingdom in Christ where the first will be last and the last first, when I live in a big house, drive a car and have money in my bank account. And the irony is I would have been completely unaware of these tensions had I not become a “missionary”!
I’m not really sure what I’m saying… I do agree with you in principle – there are definitely some ways that are much wiser than others in supporting missionaries. But I think I’m also realising that my way of thinking is so backwards in many ways and really goes against the teaching of the Bible. I need other Christians around the world to show me what it means to authentically follow Christ, as much as they need my theological “knowledge”.
Yeah, Augustine said that the world is a book and those who don’t travel are only reading one page. I think that can be adapted to Christians who don’t spend time with Christians from the other parts of the world too.
We need them to help us to see the big picture. Thanks Mark!