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Partnership in Mission? Only If We Forget the Crumbs© copyright 2003, Antonio Carlos Barro, Ph.D. The modern Protestant missionary enterprise, as we know it, was a mission done by the Western church, Europe first and then the United States of America. There is no doubt that God used the Western church greatly, and the result was the spread of the gospel almost everywhere in the world. This cannot be overlooked and downplayed. However, the weakest side of this movement was that, most of the time, Christianity was equated with the religion of the white people. Prof. Gustavus Warneck, in the dawn of the Twentieth Century, in his note to the Ecumenical Conference on Foreign Missions in New York, 1900, had already detected this problem. He pointed out, "There is a great danger of confounding the spread of the Gospel with the spread of European and American culture, and as far as I can see this danger has by no means been avoided everywhere" (1900b:416). It is only unfortunate that his cautionary words did not receive much attention among those who could have changed that somber perspective. Mission progressed in the same manner and in full speed. The urgency to evangelize the world did not allow time for reflection (at least among those who were doing mission) and changes were not seen as necessary. Today, a price for not listening the "nationals" has to be paid by the Euro-American churches. They have to listen to the criticism (sometimes harsh) that comes from the Third World Christians regarding the inability of their missionaries to differentiate between gospel and their own culture. The problem of the association between Gospel and power cannot be credited only to the missionaries' shortcoming. We need to be fair with them and take into account the context in which they lived at home and the preparation they had for the missionary work, which was almost non-existent. This association also was inherited from a much larger structure. Since the conversion of the Emperor Constantine the church has been positioned with the dominant power and nations of the world. Historian Herbert Butterfield points out, By its alliance with power for fifteen hundred years, however, the Church committed itself to being on the whole the cement of society, the buttress of whatever was the existing order, and the defender of the status quo—at one time thinking that its interests were bound up with absolute monarchy, at another time clinging to a form of aristocracy, with all the fervor with which we might now expect it to cling to liberal democracy (1957:176). Accordingly, the problem that the missionaries faced was not only circumscribed to their whiteness, but that they represented the church which was identified with domination. First, domination by power (colonization) and later by technology (neo-colonialism). The former European and the latter North American. Christianity and control came almost at the same time, the cross and the sword became the instruments of people's domestication, being it political, economic or religious. Now the time has come for a new understanding of what is mission and who does it. Christians around the world reclaim participation in the missiological venture. They are not spiritual babies anymore. Hopefully they will not carry on the gospel in the same manner as the Western churches did and still do to a certain degree. This concern must be in their minds all the time, otherwise they will repeat history and they will be worse off at the end than their predecessors. Some cases are already being noted. The Brazilians in Portugal act as if they know everything in planting churches among the Portuguese people. The Koreans in Brazil hold in the back of their minds that they are better, culturally speaking, than the Brazilians. These are intolerable situations. Superiority of one culture over the other is out of the picture at this stage in human history. It is about time for all of us to graduate from the school of mistakes done in the missionary movement of the past and not to perpetuate them. One of the probable reasons why the Third World churches will not resemble the Western churches in their mission is that the "the evangelical churches continue to be, in general, the church of the poor and the church for the poor" (Padilla 1988:4). Padilla writes within the context of Latin America, but the same truth can be said about churches in Asia, Africa and among the minorities living in the First World. The church which is poor has nothing to be proud of, unless it is proud of its poverty, because it is glamorous nowadays to be counted as destitute. If this is the case, the best that can happen for the poor church is to stay at home and not to venture into any missiological action. We cannot afford seeing mission repeating its historical errors anymore. But as a rule, it will be the Third World church that will undertake one of the major responsibilities for the evangelization of the Third World. It is humanly impossible that the First World church will be capable to accomplish this task without the Third World's help. A careful analysis of David Barrett's annual statistical table (1989:20,21) shows us this reality. The Third World Christians make 62.5 percent of the global Christianity while the Western Christians make 37.5 percent. In relation to the world population, the Third World Christians make 19 percent, while the Western Christians make 11.5 percent. It has been estimated that around the year 2000, not long ago, the Third World churches will have grown to 68.8 percent of the global Christianity, while the Euro-American churches will have decreased to 31.2 percent of that Christian population. These numbers show that the American and European churches are in an urgent need of a revival for their own sake and for the sake of the global evangelization as well. The current tendency to write off the participation of the churches in the Western world in the task of evangelization, which is found among Third World theologians and many Westerners as well, lacks biblical support and misunderstands the Kingdom of God which has neither geographical nor cultural barriers. Johannes Verkuyl (1989:56) is right when he asserts, "Self-criticism of Western missions is necessary but it should not lead to defeat and paralysis. Rather, it should foster renewal and new initiatives in mission for our situation today." Over a century ago, Arthur T. Pierson issued a warning that we better should not take for granted, "A dead church can not send forth living missionaries. If heresy in doctrine and iniquity in practice obtain at home, they will be reproduced abroad, first in the workers sent out and then in the converts gathered" (1900:14,15). The truth of this statement is profound and again, it is unfortunate that in our voracity for a "new" missiology we forget to apply the "old" one, which in many cases is still better than some missiology around. Pierson's warning goes to every church and mission agencies preoccupied with world evangelization. The Western church is called to be sacrificial in its mission, because in being sacrificial in its mission, it will show solidarity with the Third World church and its effort to do mission out of its poverty (Galilea 1983). There is the trend in the "escalating preoccupation of Western Christianity with its own welfare" (Barrett: 1989:20). It may be said that the affluence of the Western church can be a curse or a blessing. It can be a curse if it keeps for itself what God has put in its hands and gives away only the "crumbs which are falling from its table." However, it can be a blessing and faithfulness to the Gospel if it takes "the form of a servant and become truly solidary with its suffering and persecuted sisters and brothers elsewhere" (Bosch 1987:15). The promise which we find in Philippians 4:19, "And my God will meet all your needs according to this glorious riches in Christ Jesus," is a promise given within a missionary context. The church in Philippi was the only church willing to share its resources with the Apostle Paul. But its giving was also a matter of receiving (4:15). Prof. Warneck understood it quite well when he pointed out, "By the work for the heathen God has blessed the home church, having thus taught how to labor, to pray, and to give, even for all domestic needs. Christendom, sending to the heathen, has received back more than she has spent sacrifices upon them" (1900a:259). This is what the Western church (and churches elsewhere) must be reminded of. Before one misunderstands the words above, an explanation is necessary. The concern about money should not be the influential factor in doing mission in partnership. The Euro-American churches and para-church agencies are wrong if they think that mission can be done with Western money and Third World personnel. The same needs to be said regarding churches and agencies in the Third World. Their idea of starting a mission program and run as soon as they can to the Western countries for financial support is a major disaster for the new born enthusiasm among the young Christians in the poor nations of the world. Mission is the work of the Holy Spirit, through the power of Christ to seek the glory of God. Under this understanding and motivation, mission is possible from the Third World.
The place of mission is another major issue that needs to be solved before any partnership. Reading the missiological literature in the Western world one still has the impression that mission is always from North to South or from the center to the periphery. The Western churches still think that they hold the solution for the whole world. One rarely see a genuine openness among the Western missiologists regarding the necessity of Europe and North America receiving missionaries from the Third World. This theme has been dealt by Orlando Costas for many years now, and not many people paid attention to his plea to see the United States as a mission field. It was necessary that a "big" name, such as Leslie Newbigin, to point out that necessity. His appeal was not only heard, but generated the formation of task groups in Europe and North America to study or give more detailed attention to what he was saying. This illustration points out that the most of the Western missiologists are still suspicious of their Third World colleagues. This ingrown missiology is not healthy. The time has come then for both Third World and Western churches to approach each other as level-headed equals, in order to work out a missiological agenda that benefits everyone. The age for partnership has arrived. What we need now is the praxis of this ideal Christian mission. A century of missionary foundations lies behind us; a century of building up and building out will follow. The nineteenth century has been the apprenticeship of evangelical missions, and we have made many mistakes; but we are now in possession of a missionary experience which will be our schoolmistress for the twentieth century (Warneck 1900a:261). Let these words of Prof. Warneck issued at the end of last century be ours at the dawn of a new century for the church and its mission. Bibliography 1. Barrett, David B., 1989, "Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 1989." International Bulletin of Missionary Research Vol. 13 No. 1. 2. Bosch, David J., 1987, "Vision for Mission." International Review of Mission. Vol. LXXVI No. 301.<.p> 3. Butterfield, Herbert, 1957, Christianity and History. London: Collins. 4. Galilea, Segundo, 1984, Responsabilidade Missionária da América Latina. São Paulo: Edições Paulinas. 5. Padilla, C. René, 1988, "Politica y missión politica." Missión Vol. 7 No. 4. 6. Pierson, Arthur T., 1900, "The Missions of the Nineteenth Century." in The Missionary Review of the World Vol. XIII No. 1. 7. Verkuyl, Johannes, 1989, "Mission in the 1990s." International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Vol.13 No.2 8. Warneck, Gustavus, 1900a, "Protestant Foreign Missions at the Junction of Two Centuries: 1800-1900." The Missionary Review of the World Vol. XIII No. 4. 9. Warneck, Gustavus, 1900b, "Thoughts on the Missionary Century." The Missionary Review of the World Vol. XIII No. 6. Editor's note: Dr. Barro is a Brazilian Missiologist and Founder/President of the South American Theological Faculty in Londrina, Paraná State, in Brazil. |