Category Archives: Mission

Unmuzzled Oxen

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Over the years that I’ve worked in mission leadership, I’ve faced some difficult situations. Like any leader, I have to deal with tough decisions, conflict and criticism; they go with the job. Sometimes when faced with a difficult situation I’ll say; “this is what I get paid the big bucks for.”

Of course, the point of the comment is that I don’t get paid big bucks. I have a grandiose title, but Wycliffe don’t actually pay me a salary. (Read more about how we are funded here.)

So, if I don’t get paid a salary for doing my job, what do I get paid for? Well, another slightly cynical saying of mine is that I don’t get paid for doing a job, I get paid for writing letters (or emails and blog posts, to bring it up to date).

Let me unpack this a little.

Those who generously support us in or work very rarely get to see what we actually do. This is just as true here in England as it was when we lived in Africa. Our work is carried out at a distance from those who pray for us and who provide the finances to keep the mortgage paid. The only way that people know what we are doing and what we are accomplishing is by reading the letters, emails and blog posts that we produce.

This means that there is a huge temptation to put a positive spin on things in our communication. We want people to support us and we want them to be encouraged by what is being achieved through their support. It is very easy and very tempting to make things sound just a little more exciting or encouraging than they really are. I picked up on this in a little booklet about praying for missionaries which you can find here (share it with your friends). We try and make our letters as honest as we possibly can – but the temptation to spin is a hard one to avoid.

I was prompted to write this post by reading this from Jamie. It’s funnier, blunter and better written than mine, so you’ll probably want to read it! It will be all over Facebook in the next couple of days, anyway!

It’s kinda scary when you think about it, but Christian Missions is a billion (that’s BILLION, like, with a B!) dollar industry – with virtually no oversight, no standards of practice, and no hiring requirements. To top it off, it’s shrouded in a cloud of overly spiritualized language, easily manipulated to allow people to believe that more good is coming from their missions dollars than is necessarily true.

By the way, if you would like to test the accuracy of our newsletters, you can sign up to read them on the sidebar of this blog.

Oh, and if the title of the post makes no sense to you, then take a look here.

Cross Cultural Mission: Come On, If You Think You Are Hard Enough

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A few weeks ago I was chatting to a friend on skype when they mentioned that they could hear the sound of gunfire and looting in the street outside while they were typing.

When I was a student, one of my friends had a poster on her wall that said “every day with Jesus is a happy day!”. I sometimes wonder where me and my colleagues have gone wrong!

As I mentioned yesterday, at one time or another every member of our family suffered from malaria during our time in Ivory Coast. I defy anyone to feel happy when they have a malaria headache, a raging fever and a severe bout of d&v; it’s even worse, when you have to watch your kids suffer from the same thing.

Mind you, other friends and colleagues have had tougher times. I know people who have been (unfairly) dragged through the courts in a foreign country, mugged in the street, robbed with violence in their own homes and the list goes on. Some friends have lost children to tropical diseases and others have lost their own lives to disease, violence or accident. In all of these cases it was because people had put themselves in harm’s way because they were following Jesus.

Yes, Jesus has promised to be with us in all circumstances and he is; but it’s tough. We grow through experiencing hardship; but it’s tough. God blesses us as we are obedient to him; but it’s tough. God promises us peace and contentment; but it’s tough. We have to learn to rejoice in all circumstances – and we do; but it’s tough.

Every day a happy day? Not quite.

Of course, not all cross-cultural missionaries face disease, violence and death; some live relatively peaceful lives, often in idyllic situations. Even so, living far from home and having to operate in a different language and culture is far more stressful than most people at home realise.

If you are looking for excitement and variety; them cross-cultural mission work might be for you. If you love the idea of making amazing friends from around the world, then give it a thought. If you are excited about seeing God at work and joining him on his mission, then go for it.

But…

If you aren’t prepared to take the tough stuff: find another career.

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

What do We Mean by The Mission of God?

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A while ago, I wrote a post entitled Missiology is Meaningless which suggested that missiology was too broad a term to be used without qualification. Terms like missiological reflection and missiologically informed are tossed around, but they can mean very different things to different people, depending on their starting point. Lately, I’ve noticed the same thing with the term mission of God and its Latin version missio Dei. People talk about doing things in the light of the mission of God without ever really defining what they mean by the term, despite the fact that mission of God or missio Dei is open to a wide range of interpretations and definitions.

A nearly ubiquitous concept in mission theology today is the phrase missio Dei. The idea of a single mission rooted in God’s nature at the very least stands in heuristic tension with the manifold and often competing ventures launched by churches and other organizations dedicated to missionary outreach. It is customary now to talk about the wide variety of ends to which the term missio Die has been ut since it came into general circulation shortly after the 1952 Willingen conference of the International Missionary Council. As we will see, these different applications of the term draw on more than one set of scripture passages, as successive attempts have been made using this or related terms to establish a biblical foundation for the theology of Christian mission. John Flett has closely examined the origins of the term missio Dei. He concludes that the undoubted attractiveness of this formulation in the postcolonial era has obscured its basic incoherence, due to the illusory or nonsubstantial way mission theologians have related this concept to the doctrine of the Trinity.

From Comprehending Mission: The Questions, Methods, Themes, Problems, and prospects of Missiology (American Society of Missiology) by S. H. Skreslet pp. 31,32. Emphasis mine.

I’m not sure I agree entirely with this statement, but I have to admit that the more I see the phrase missio Dei being used without being unpacked, the more I feel that the phrase is losing any useful meaning.

Mission, Money and Power

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The New York Times has a fascinating and rather disturbing video linking US missionaries and funding to the persecution of gay men in Uganda. They won’t allow me to embed the video here, so you will have to go over to their page to watch it; it lasts about 8 minutes.

I realise that gay-rights is a controversial issue at the moment, and that’s not an issue I want to get drawn into, too much. It seems to me that whatever your view on the subject, the idea of homosexuality being punishable by the death penalty, or preacher asking who is willing and ready to kill gay men is abhorrent.

The reason why I’ve brought the issue up on this blog is that I believe it raises some important questions for Christian missionary and development agencies.

  • To what extent is it appropriate for Western Christians to use their money and influence to shape policy in Churches and governments in other parts of the world?
  • Do we really understand the impact of the way we work in other countries?
  • Why are their so many missionaries preaching to crowds in a country which claims a higher percentage of Christians than the USA?
  • Why is there so much focus on sexuality and so little focus on corruption and justice?

As you can see, I find a good deal to be concerned about in this video; not least because I’m worried that more responsible Christian agencies will be condemned by association.

Mission Out of Exile 2

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The Jews longed to go back home and whilst the false prophets made them think that everything was OK, Jeremiah came along and shattered this illusion, telling them that they were in for a lifetime of exile.

So the Jews sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept when they remembered Zion.

I have an impression that we have a similar reaction; we like hark back to a golden age, when Spurgeon was packing in the crowds at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Lloyd-Jones was expounding Romans in minute detail at Westminster Chapel, Hudson-Taylor was recruiting huge numbers of missionaries for China and everything in the garden was rosy. Of course, that time never existed, except through our rose tinted spectacles.

Yet, while we might look back to a mythical, wonderful past, we are less sure about the future.

The Danish physicist Neils Bohr said that it is difficult to make predictions, especially when it concerns the future. I think this can be applied to the situation of the church in the UK today.  There is one school of thought that says we are living through a paradigm shift which will see an almost terminal decline in the church in Europe and a reawakening at the periphery. Others believe that things have more or less stabilised as they are. Our Grandchildren will be able to tell us how it all worked out.

I don’t know what the future holds, but one thing I am sure of is that it won’t be the past! We can’t go back! Things are not like they used to be and they never will be again. Britain will never be the great missionary sending country that it was in the past – it may, in God’s mercy, be a different sort of great missionary sending country, but the social and political factors, not to mention the religious ones, which allowed for the great mission movements of the 19th and 20th centuries have ended. We need to look to a new sort of future and not try and revisit the past.

Mission Out of Exile 1

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This is the first of a series of posts inspired by Jeremiah Chapter 29.

4 This is what the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives he has exiled to Babylon from Jerusalem: 5 “Build homes, and plan to stay. Plant gardens, and eat the food they produce. 6 Marry and have children. Then find spouses for them so that you may have many grandchildren. Multiply! Do not dwindle away! 7 And work for the peace and prosperity of the city where I sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, for its welfare will determine your welfare.”

When the Jews went into exile, they lost all of the trappings of their religion and former power. The Temple, the sacrificial system and all of those props were lost. The only thing they had to hold on to was the fact that God called them ‘his people’.

I believe that a similar thing is happening to the Church in the UK. We are losing the power and influence that we once had. The tacit alliance between the Church and the state which once supported missionary activity has by and large been dismantled, but despite this, the Kingdom of God has not suffered in the slightest.

One of the most important advances in missionary thought and practice over the last few years has been the recapturing of the concept of the Mission of God. Mission is God’s work and he will ensure its success. We had convinced ourselves that mission was our responsibility, that God somehow could not reach the nations without our help. I don’t know how many missionary talks I’ve heard which ended in the guilt trip of ‘God needs you’. What sort of pathetic God needs a bloke like me.

Thankfully, as the things which propped up our self-reliance are being knocked away, we are regaining a sense that mission is God’s work and that he invites us to join him. He doesn’t sit helplessly on the sidelines waiting for us to get on with it. He will accomplish his mission whether we get involved or not.

Mission, Fellowship and Trinity

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The mission of the church, the fellowship of the church and the fellowship of the divine Trinity are all inextricably linked together in the most elegant and fruitful manner. Yet, both the source of human fellowship in the church and the source of the mission of the church are one and the same – the divine Trinity.

The Forgotten Jesus and the Trinity You Never Knew by Damon So p.232

Who Seeks Whom?

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Wise Men Still Seek Jesus

Like so many other sound-bites, this poster contains, or conceals, some rather deeper and different messages.

It’s true, that the wise men did seek Jesus. Their pilgrimage has been captured in song, poetry and on canvas down through the centuries; despite the fact that we know very few details about who they were, where they came from or even how many of them there were.

It is fair to speculate that they had a difficult trip; travel was far fromeasy in those days. But think about it for a moment; however far they had travelled, their journey was as nothing compared to that of the young child they came to visit. The magi came from the East, Christ descended from heaven and took on human form – a far tougher trip. The wise men followed the star and found the baby, but they could only do that because the Son of Man had come to seek and save that which was lost.

They could only seek Jesus, because Jesus first came to seek them.

This truth applies today, too. Sometimes churches use this poster, or something like it to try and encourage people to come to church. It’s great if people do that; if putting up a poster is enough to attract people into the building, but I’m not sure that this is what Jesus calls us to do. The one who was sent by his Father to seek us out, sends his disciples out in their turn to draw people to Christ. Yes, wise men will seek Jesus – but the only way that they will know anything about this Jesus is if we go to them and tell them about him.

The original magi relied on a star to guide them to Jesus; today, we are called to do the job of the star; guiding people to Him.

Where Angels Fear to Tread

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For the last ten days or so, the media in the UK have given a huge amount of attention to the decision of the Church of England not to legislate in favour of allowing women to become bishops and I thought that it was probably time for me to say a few words, too.

My interest isn’t to discuss the whys and wherefores of the Synod discussion, lots of people have done that already (google it if you are really interested) nor do I plan to justify my personal stance on the issue (I don’t really believe in bishops in the first place; but if you are going to have them, I don’t see why they can’t be women). What I’d like to do is to think about how this question relates to cross-cultural mission.

Don’t Just Copy Culture

As a cross-cultural missionary I have often argued that Christianity needs to be presented accurately and appropriately within every culture. However, this does not mean that Christians should change their core beliefs in order to fit in with a culture. The problem is that this is exactly what many apologists for women bishops have argued. We’ve been told that it is unacceptable in this day and age for women to be excluded from any role. Even David Cameron said that the Anglican Church had to “get with the programme”. I’m sorry, but this is completely faulty reasoning. It is not the job of the Church to fit in with whatever society, with its changing whims, finds acceptable. It is the Church’s job to witness to Christ. Tom Wright, in an article first published in the Times captures this:

What is more, the Church’s foundation documents (to say nothing of its Founder himself) were notoriously on the wrong side of history. The Gospel was foolishness to the Greeks, said St Paul, and a scandal to Jews. The early Christians got a reputation for believing in all sorts of ridiculous things such as humility, chastity and resurrection, standing up for the poor and giving slaves equal status with the free. And for valuing women more highly than anyone else had ever done. People thought them crazy, but they stuck to their counter-cultural Gospel. If the Church had allowed prime ministers to tell them what the “programme” was it would have sunk without trace in fifty years. If Jesus had allowed Caiaphas or Pontius Pilate to dictate their “programme” to him there wouldn’t have been a Church in the first place.

We Have to Listen to the Whole of Scripture

Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard numerous people justifying their support for women bishops by quoting Galatians 3:28

There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ

The problem is, that this verse has nothing to do with church government, it is talking about whether Jews and Gentiles can be Christians together. Jon Marlow captures the sense of this very well:

So we cannot use this phrase as a proof-text to justify the rejection of all gender distinctions, or any other distinctions for that matter. It is not the trump card that destroys all other arguments or silences all other voices. We need to engage with the whole council of scripture. (Emphasis mine.)

This is a hugely important point. We can’t simply pick and choose verses out of context to support our views or our practices. We have to engage with Scripture as a whole and in context. I’ve scratched the surface on this issue in a series of blog posts on ‘The Great Commission‘, if you want to read them offline, you can find links to my ebook on the subject at the right hand side of this page.

Tell the Whole Story

A good deal has been made about the fact that in the same week that the Church of England didn’t move ahead with women bishops, the Anglican Church in Swaziland actually appointed a woman as bishop. If Swaziland, why not England? The problem is that there are many provinces of the Anglican Church in Africa and elsewhere that don’t have female clergy, much less women bishops. You can’t make a universal story from one isolated example.

The reason I’ve raised these issues isn’t because I’m opposed to the idea of woman bishops, but to illustrate that as Christians we need to think through issues in detail; fervent belief or enthusiasm for a cause is not enough in and of itself.

There is a lesson here for cross-cultural mission. Missionaries are dedicated to their cause, enthusiastic and self-sacrificing; but in and of itself this is not enough. It is easy to slip into the trap of pragmatism; doing something because it seems to fit the situation or seems to work, rather than thinking through how the whole Bible applies to our context. Far too many mission strategists are expert at taking verses out of context and justifying activity on flimsy theological grounds. It’s also very easy to build upon one success story and assume that what happened in one place can be reproduced everywhere.

However, I believe that the most important conclusion that can be drawn from this whole story is that when Christians, or the church become the story, then the Gospel loses out. The saddest thing about the last few weeks is that the Anglican Church itself has been the centre of a huge amount of attention. Whatever the importance of the arguments for and against women bishops, the role of the Church (of whatever denomination) is to be a witness to Jesus in a dark world. When we argue amongst ourselves, people start to look at us and not to Jesus.

Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

This is our calling!

Not Needed… But Wanted

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One Saturday morning, several years ago, I decided to board out the floor of our loft and to get our two sons (then aged 11 and 14) to help me. We had a great time as I showed the lads how to use the jigsaw and the power drill, and the three of us set about measuring, sawing, and fastening the boards in place. Every now and then,  Sue would appear at the loft hatch bearing big mugs of tea and plates of digestive biscuits. It was a brilliant morning, me and my boys working together. I think I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

Now, if the truth be told, it would have been much quicker to do the job on my own, but it wouldn’t have been half as memorable. I didn’t need their help to lay the boards on the loft floor, but I wanted to work with them.

Have you ever wondered why God calls us to mission? Why on earth would he put the treasure of the gospel into clay pots? Cracked pots, at that! It isn’t as though he needs us. If all he wants is to see the gospel preached and the Bible translated, he could call on an army of angels who could do the job more quickly and impressively than you or I. God doesn’t need us to reach the world for Christ any more than I needed my boys to help me lay some floorboards, but he wants us to be involved. God loves us so much that he wants us to work alongside him in his amazing work of taking the good news of his Son out to the whole world.

A call to mission isn’t an order that we should feel guilty about; it’s a glorious invitation to join the living God in the most exciting adventure that the planet has to offer. There are many ways to be involved in mission: giving, praying, going or telling your friends about what God is doing. However we are involved, we come closer to the heart of God and he uses our experience to help us grow more like him. God doesn’t just use us to reach out to the world; he is at work in our lives, too; transforming us. God will reach out to the world; the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea, and people from every tongue, tribe and nation will worship the Lamb.

When God calls us to be involved in mission, he invites us to join him on the winning team. You’d have to be mad to turn this offer down!

This is my article for the latest edition of Words for Life, the magazine of Wycliffe Bible Translators in the UK. You can find the whole magazine here (pdf). 

Wrestling with Onesimus: Maturity

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This is my penulitmate post interacting with When Missions Becomes Toxic; or, Um, They Don’t Need Us Anymore from Onesimus.

Thirdly, it is long past time for local Christians to take responsibility for their own churches and training and programs.  This is happening in some places, like India for example, where for years missionaries were forbidden by the government from operating as ‘missionaries.’  Local Christians were forced to take responsibility for themselves.  And while not perfect, there is a maturity among many Indian Christians that is refreshing.  And if taking responsibility for one’s own Christian life and one’s own local church or ‘ministry’ means some churches and schools and programs fail, then it likely means that they were not viable to begin with, at least on the grandiose scales they were conceived when an open tap of resources from the West was assumed.  And if it means that Christianity evaporates from some areas, then that should tell us that whatever ‘Christian’ things were going on there before were not making real contact with the lives of real people.  There comes a point when local Christians must take responsibility for their own fellowship and mission.  If something cannot happen without Western funding and staffing, then should it be happening at all?

Once again, Onesimus has raised an important point, and once again he has pushed it too far. It is undeniable that “ local Christians to take responsibility for their own churches and training and programs”.  But by implying that this isn’t happening in Africa is simply not true. Yes, more could be done and the pace of change could be quicker. I have the privilege of knowing many African Christians who are leading churches, translation organisations and mission agencies in Africa. There are Western missionaries working for some of these organisations, but their programmes and activities are defined and managed by the African leadership under whom they serve.

Onesimus makes a good and important point; but it isn’t the whole story.

Wrestling With Onesimus 4: Missions

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This is the fourth in my series looking at a post from Onesimus:  When Missions Becomes Toxic; or, Um, They Don’t Need Us Anymore. In this one we are looking at the second of his reasons for suggesting that Western missionary work in Africa should draw to a halt.

Secondly, this sort of dynamic works the other way, too.  There are too many Western mission organizations and NGOs who, except for spiritualized lingo, have become little more than giant corporations, with layers of management, following every leadership and management trend, focused on the bottom line and becoming ever more efficient in connecting donors with the product as well as expanding the market for the product (i.e. the field/area in which we missionaries or NGO people can ‘serve’).  We’ve become increasingly a missions and aid industry, with our own versions of success and upward mobility, jetting all over the globe to this and that conference, looking always to expand our ability to raise ever more money to fund our salaries and lifestyles and ‘ministries’.  We’ve made ourselves indispensible by convincing ourselves and our donors (and our clients) that we really are not only necessary, but the best, most efficient, most biblical and most convenient way to get whatever done.  We’ve done a superb job of creating a market for what we have to offer.  Some ‘missions’ in the countries where I have lived have been there for 80, 90, 100 years and more.

Once again, there is a good deal of truth in what Onesimus says here. One of my friends reacted to this on Facebook by writing:

His comments about how mission organisations have become like multinational corporations rang a few bells… especially as I’ve been reading an early Wycliffe book about how the team heading to start work in a country had $90 in the account and said that was sufficient because God would provide what they needed. Oh to return to those faith-filled days.

That sort of idealism is almost impossible in these litigious days. Organisations like Wycliffe have to be able to demonstrate that they are taking appropriate care of their staff and not exposing them to unnecessary risks. When donors give money to support translation projects we have to be able to report back to both the donors and the government and prove that the money is being well spend. In this day and age, there is an amount of bureaucracy and red tape that can’t be avoided.

However, once again, I fear that Onesimus’ reaction is extreme. The answer to bad practice is to do things better (though that can be difficult).  I would suggest that there are a couple of things that need to be looked at:

  1. We need to be prepared to close down programmes or organisations when their purpose is fulfilled. It is far too easy for a Christian organisation to concentrate most of its energy on self-preservation; to lose focus on mission and the call of God. We need to be prepared to call a halt and not to simply carry on doing things because that is what we do.
  2. We need a thorough going theological review of our activities and our fund raising strategies. There is a huge temptation to place human activity at the centre of things, rather than God’s providence. We can fall into statements such as ‘your gift can change the future for people’, or ‘we are making a difference to the Church around the world’. Well it can’t and we aren’t. God may graciously choose to use your gift and he may work through our organisation  but he is the one who makes the difference. I’m not just being picky here. A great deal of modern management and fund-raising technique effectively squeezes God out of the equation. When we do this, our organisations take Centre stage in a way which is not helpful to our work or to the organisations themselves.