Should I Stay or Should I Go?

Should the Western church still send missionaries?

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

In her recently published book, A Just Mission, Mekdes Haddis, an Ethiopian Christian who came to the United States for university studies and has lived there ever since, discusses and critiques the Western mission enterprise through the lens of her personal and ministry experience in the States.^[1]

She argues in her book that Western mission has historically confused Gospel propagation with cultural paternalism and domination - what she terms 'white saviorism." For example, she gripes against US short-term mission ventures which she terms "slum tourism" and calls pandering to the emotional needs of the "go-er."^[2] She also highlights the blind-spot that many Western mission agencies and movements have towards the vastly different global context today with the rise of global Christianity. Haddis is one of an increasingly influential group of thinkers and practitioners that are challenging the 'business-as-usual' post-COVID return to normalcy in leadership, resourcing and agenda-setting for global mission by Western mission organisations.

On the whole, she makes a cogent case, though perhaps overly reactionary at times, for the urgent need to re-orientate towards a new paradigm of global missions that incorporates, adjusts to and partners with what God is doing in the majority non-Western church and world. She advocates for mutual and equal partnerships between churches, agencies and movements in both Western and non-Western spheres, and this certainly needs to be taken seriously by stake-holders in God's mission everywhere.

This raises questions I'd like to address and answer in this blog.

With the rise of migrant and diaspora peoples in the West (bringing the world's mission fields to their very doorsteps), as well as the contrasting growth of Christianity in many places of the Global South compared to the precipitous decline of Christianity in the Global North, should not churches and mission organisations in the US and the West be more concerned with turning the tide back and re-evangelising their own nations for Christ as well as the diaspora/migrant peoples flocking to their nations?

Should we leave mission in the majority world to the churches of the Global South? Should missionaries from the West therefore pack their bags and go home? Yes and No. Here’s why…..

1. A Resounding No! Or Why we still need missionaries from the West.

"Missionaries, go home!" was the gist of a call issued by Revd John Gatu, General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa as far back as 1971 at a Mission Festival in Milwaukee, USA. He argued that "the time has come for the withdrawal of foreign missionaries from many parts of the Third World; that the churches of the Third World must be allowed to find their own identity; and that the continuation of the present missionary movement is a hindrance to the self-hood of the church".^[3]

This call for a moratorium on missionary sending to the Majority (or Third) World was subsequently echoed in various other global ecumenical gatherings, notably at the 1973 Bangkok meeting of the World Council of Churches' Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. Granted, it was meant to be a temporary measure, aimed primarily at missionaries originating from the West, whose presence were deemed to be hampering and handicapping the independence and maturity of national churches in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

In my view, such a moratorium conceals a false dichotomy that seeks to separate the well-being and flourishing of local or national churches from the universal mission and responsibility of the Global (and international) Church everywhere it is found. God's mission belongs to God's people anywhere and everywhere.

In some quarters of the Western and Global Church today however, there remains an unease about missionaries from the West still going out in great numbers.^[4] The belief is that as soon as local or national churches, networks or denominations are established or growing, the need for cross-cultural missionaries to be sent there is greatly diminished or even extinguished.

While local mission is certainly the primary task of God's people in the places where they are live, we need to consider the relative strength, growth and maturity of the local church vis-a-vis their ability and willingness to reach the lost around them.

While I also grant Daniel Fleming’s insightful remark that the missionary must realise that his or her work is always “temporary, secondary and advisory", strong partnerships with foreign missionaries and organisations can help in an on-going way to catalyse, equip and support local churches to take on mission work in their own regions responsibly.^[5]

On the other hand, no indigenous church is an island to itself. We will always need and benefit from being able to both receive missionaries and establish mission partnerships with other parts of the global church, as well as be involved in sending missionaries to unreached places of the globe. As has been said, God's mission is from everywhere to everywhere.

Furthermore, as my own spiritual father taught me, there is nowhere in the world where there are enough Christians (or churches). ^[6] In one sense, there are unreached peoples everywhere - among all people-groups and nations. ^[7] God will, till Jesus returns, call people to up and leave their own to go and share the Gospel with a people not their own. Jesus emphasised that those who give up home, family and familiarity for the sake of the Gospel would by no means lose their rewards (Mark 10:29). Consequently, Gospel partnerships and cross-cultural pioneer mission to reach the lost has been the pattern since apostolic days (Philippians 1:5; Acts 13:2; Romans 10:14-17).

Nor can we close our eyes simply to the wide world beyond us. In Acts 1:8, Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would empower them to be witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the ends of the earth. We should note the preposition "and" that links each of the geo-cultural regions. It is not "or" - there is no choice!

Witnessing begins where we are and ends up with the ends of the earth. Therefore, we need to emphasise that mission to unreached peoples in far off lands is as critical as the witness we are to bring in our neighbourhood, town or city. All have equal validity in the Scripture.

So, while we will continue to face the unfinished task of making new disciples and multiplying churches into kingdom initiatives as part of God's great mission to fill the earth with the knowledge of the glory of God (Habakkuk 2:14), we will need cross-cultural missionaries from the West and otherwise, to go where God sends them.

2. A Qualified Yes - Or Why missionaries from the West need to re-consider their role and place.

I served on the mission field as a cross-cultural missionary in two stints on two different continents - in the UK (Europe) from 2000-2005 and in Thailand (Asia) from 2008-2021. Additionally, I was a global leader for 5 years in a mission organisation which had Gospel work in 5 continents. This has afforded me opportunity to observe, work and train mission leaders, pastors and missionaries in differing socio-cultural contexts and regions.

One of the fundamental challenges I have often seen in Western mission societies, including the mission I led, is that they tend to operate from a dominant Western worldview and approach. There continues to be a failure to adequately grasp the qualitative and quantitative impact and change brought about by the rise of Christianity in the Global South. This is already (and increasingly) causing friction and leading to growing calls for the levelling out of global mission leadership and influence from historically Western-centric models and narratives towards more poly-centric playing fields where responsibility, leadership and ownership are shared by all quarters of the Global Church, hopefully in unifying and uncontested ways under submission to God's leading through His Word and Spirit.  

To achieve this will require a sea-change of world-view, mind-sets, theories and practice. In mission's recent past, direction, leadership, resourcing and vision came from only one part of the world – the West.

In this new season we are already in, adaptive change demands that we create and provide space for leadership, vision and motivation to arise from partnerships coming from multiple global connections and contexts, whilst keeping and holding on to the core vision of seeing and understanding mission as fundamentally God's. Such a mission is expressed in the primacy and ultimacy of the making of disciples of all nations in the context of His kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven, under His direction and will.

Adaptive change then is the name of the game.

In their seminal work on adaptive leadership, Kehan and Lahey argue for the need for developing transformational models of adaptive learning. They define the traditional “transmission model” as simply transferring knowledge from one person (typically an expert) to another, as opposed to a “transformational model" which promotes all-round learning that necessarily meets adaptive challenges. They argue that the transmission model inhibits true adaptation.^[8]

What is needed then is not simply the old transmission models of the past (from West to the Rest) but a transformation model which allows for the contribution and confluence of a truly global Church engaged in God's great mission (from Everywhere to Everywhere), divinely orchestrated through synergy, equality and mutuality.  

Of course, ethnocentricity and cultural superiority is not simply a Western Christian problem - it is indeed a problem of sinful people everywhere. But historically, the modern mission movement originated from the Western church and lands, and therefore power, prestige and influence are still in their hands.

The qualified yes (i.e. that Western missionaries should go home) then applies primarily to missionaries and mission agencies that fail to see that the tables have been turned and that new adaptive thinking and practice is needed. They may otherwise do more harm than good in today’s settings.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the question is a moot one when we come to see that global mission belongs to and is initiated ultimately by God. And if by God, then we as His global people are called to participate in it by divine command (Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46-48; John 20:21 and Acts 1:8).  We must therefore keep the bond of peace, repent of our pride, arrogance and resentment, and seek to work together as one (as the Father and Son are one), whether we are from the West or East. In Christ, there is ultimately no Global North or Global South. Just one people gathered in One Church under the Reign of One Lord, seeking together under Him to extend His glory to the ends of the earth. So may it be.

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[1] Mekdes Haddis, A Just Mission (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2022).

[2] Ibid., page 91 and 97.

[3] "Missionary Go Home" - Article in The Church Herald, November 5th, 1971, p.4.

[4] According to the 2013 report of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the United States sent a total of 127,000 cross-cultural missionaries in 2010. Based on these figures, the US remains the number one missionary sending nation globally. From "Christianity in its Global Context 1970-2020, Society, Religion and Mission", page 76-77. Accessed from www.gordonconwell.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2019/04/2ChristianityinitsGlobalContext.pdf

[5] David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, (Orbis Books, 2011), page 466.

[6] By church, we mean the people of God gathered under the preaching of the Gospel, discipled to Christ, empowered by His Spirit, governed and accountable to biblically-sanctioned leadership, sustained by the sacraments of baptism and communion and serving the spread of God's kingdom in their locality and to the ends of the earth by making other disciples.

[7] I am not for a moment downplaying the urgent need to focus on the oft-neglected Unreached and Unengaged People Groups of the world, which still receive the least missionary support and presence today. See https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/statistics

[8] Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Immunity to Change, (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009), page 310-314. They elaborate on the shortfalls of the "transmission model": “The expectation is that the learner will “add” more to his mind rather than reconstructing it to achieve greater mental complexity: more files and applications for the operating system; no significant enhancements to the operating system itself.”