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Bible & Mission

There is Always One

One of the problems with being a blogger is that no matter how hard you work to write a post, there is always the possibility that someone will come along and write a funnier, more erudite, or just simply better on the same subject. If like me you blog on the Bible and mission, it is likely that the person who writes a better post will be Mark Woodward or, in this case,  Simon Cozens.

I’ve been following, with a little bemusement, Eddie’s recent series of posts reflecting on Onesimus’ post about dependence and toxicity in mission. Bemusement for two reasons: first, because the mission community has had exactly this discussion, up to and including the calls for moratorium, many times before; (“Whither Mission?”, in Bosch chapter 13, lists a number of them.) it may be that we need these old discussions again because the problems have not been solved, but that leads my to my second reason for bemusement: because—and maybe I am particularly blessed here—I simply don’t recognise Onesimus’ concerns in my own experience of mission.

You should read the whole of Simon’s post, which does an excellent job of examining some of the issues surrounding some current approaches to Christian mission. In particular he takes a hard look at the notion of missionary as teacher…

You can teach English, you can teach Korean, you can teach cookery, culture, you can teach lots of things, none of which are even faintly related to what you’re here for which is presumably to teach the Bible, but hey, if that’s the only way you can think of to actually get to know new people then, well, whatever floats your boat.

He approaches the subject from the point of view of post-colonialism and post-modernism…

Postmodernism began, at least for Foucault, with an investigation into the nature of power; any message that someone gives is also a statement about who has power over whom. And while we love to talk about leadership in churches and in mission, we really don’t like to talk about power. Jesus’ whole life and death was a demonstration that the power of God is made perfect in weakness. The Devil tempted him to accomplish his mission through asserting power, and he resisted. And yet how often in mission do we succumb to the same temptation. So we teach, because it puts us in a position of control, where we can determine the curriculum and decide when we whip out the Bibles, because that way we can ask the questions and decide the correct answers and the students have no choice in the matter. Oh, we might do it very gently at the time, because power often doesn’t look like power. But if I’m the teacher and you’re the student, you bet that in many ways I’m the one with the power.

Would it kill us, just once in a while, to do mission from a position of weakness? You know, like Jesus did? To walk into a room and notbe the one in charge? Would that be OK? Could we give it a try?

In the next day or so, I’ll post another example of someone improving one of my posts.

3 replies on “There is Always One”

Interesting. I do know of a case of a western Christian deliberately going to an almost unevangelized country as a student, rather than as a teacher, to witness to his fellow students. Sadly that seems rather rare, except where the intention is simply to get the qualifications needed to stay in the country. Perhaps it should be more common.

PS Glad the blog is back. But you have a problem, general with Twenty Eleven, that your sidebar is visible only on your home page – and so not by anyone who comes here following a link. To fix this issue, I would recommend Add Sidebar Support in Posts for the Twenty Eleven Theme.

Thanks for this Peter – both the comment and the advice (which has duly been followed).

Bible translation is not the magic answer to the many unresolved issues of power (and money) in post-colonial times, but it can be an important catalyst. There may still be issues of ‘teacher’ and ‘student’, but when people have the Scriptures in their own language it can be empowering.

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