Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending a day consultation hosted by the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission in Oxford. If you don’t know about AVM, you should; when you finish reading this blog post, take a visit to their site and download some of their resources.
The name Vulnerable Mission is, perhaps, unfortunate, because the term can be (and is) interpreted in many different ways. However, for the AVM, vulnerable mission has a fairly tight definition.
… that there should be some missionaries from the West whose ministries are conducted in the language of the people being reached, without use of outside financial subsidy.
At first sight, this seems unremarkable; isn’t all missionary work done in this sort of way? However, just a short reflection will show that many missionary projects and almost all short term mission is not conducted in the language of the people being reached and almost all mission work relies heavily on outside funding.
There are a couple of rationale’s for this position.
Biblically speaking, Jesus sent his disciples out as lambs among wolves (Luke 10:3), but these days, missionaries are often far richer and more powerful than the people they are reaching out to; we are “tanks among infantrymen”. Equally, Jesus made it clear that his power was not the political influence or economic strength of this world (Jn. 18:36).
On a pragmatic level, the use of outside languages and outside funding tends to lead to unhealthy dependency in any churches that are planted.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reading and reviewing a few books on Vulnerable Mission, so I won’t comment too much on the subject itself and I’ll simply highlight some of my thoughts from yesterday’s consultation.
Jean Johnson, the author of the excellent We are Not the Hero, gave a superb presentation on problems encountered with church planting work in Cambodia. Her thesis was that churches are actually quite simple; you need Christian love, teaching, prayer etc. The problem is, that church planters add onto the basics things like buildings, PA systems and all sorts of ancillary ministries. These are fine as long as there are missionaries around funding them; but when the missionaries have to leave, the whole edifice falls apart. If the church depended on local resources from the outset it would be simpler, but sustainable.
Perhaps the most striking point was that Cambodian Buddhists are quite happy to support monks and the work of the monasteries, but when they become Christians, they expect support for the church to come from missionaries, not from themselves.
This dependence on outside resources also means that churches do not support and help each other, their primary link is to the outside missionaries and not to other Christians in the country. This is not healthy.
Jim Harries, an extremely prolific author and the founder of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, didn’t so much give a presentation as to lead a discussion around themes that emerged during the consultation. He is very insistent that Vulnerable Mission is not for everyone and that it is inappropriate to judge the motives and actions of other missionaries. On the other hand, in his own words he tends to see Vulnerable Mission as the solution to all missionary problems; “when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”.
A few quotes from the consultation, which might make you think.
- Holistic ministry is really big now; word and works combined. But what happens when the works are not sustainable?
- With so many projects running, missionaries just don’t have the time to learn languages.
- People no longer believe in the power of the gospel to transform lives and societies.
- These days, every missionary I meet feels that they have to do some sort of development work.
For my own part, I’m not sure that Vulnerable Mission is the complete answer to the problems of mission that it’s proponents seem to suggest. I think there are shades of grey, not just blacks and whites. However, it is undeniable that there are some major problems in the mission world today (does anyone seriously think that it is a good idea that 80,000 Americans go on short term mission trips to Cambodia per annum?). I have called for a paradigm change in mission action and support and action for years. Jim Harries and the AVM have clearly articulated one new paradigm and we need to listen to them.
20 replies on “Vulnerable Mission”
RT @kouya: Vulnerable Mission: some thoughts from a day conference in Oxford… http://t.co/GkFkcuosSK
I was really saddened by this comment you made. Saddened because I think it is true, not because I disagree with you: ‘People no longer believe in the power of the gospel to transform lives and societies.’
Cathleen, Dale might want to read this.
Very perceptive. Your response – 50 shades of grey – also could be misread 🙂
RT @kouya: Vulnerable Mission: some thoughts from a day conference in Oxford… http://t.co/GkFkcuosSK
Sorry, I wanted to make an intelligent comment, but my train of thought was derailed by the number “80,000”…
Exactly my reaction. That is a truly staggering number,
“Holistic ministry is really big now; word and works combined. But what happens when the works are not sustainable?” http://t.co/3lHQ2tGIi6
Elaine Pannell liked this on Facebook.
I did start writing something a while back which argued that most current mission practice was well-meaning but totally misguided, but I depressed myself so much that I gave up. But it was pretty fierce about this kind of thing. As an example, my lot are committed to working in teams. That sounds like a brilliant idea until you realise that in order to succeed, you have to hand over to one local pastor a church that up to that point has been supported by the manpower and tithes of six full-time missionaries. And then we get all surprised when church plants are hard to pass on.
We were offered some money from our field’s church planting fund to kick off our work here, but we turned it down. I couldn’t understand why anyone would think it was a good idea to build in a lack of reproducibility from the start.
My feeling is that with more people talking about CPMs, discipleship movements and the like, the reproducibility issue is becoming more prominent and strategies are designed with local resources in mind. But that might be the particular echo chamber I inhabit.
“People no longer believe in the power of the gospel to transform lives and societies.“ http://t.co/3lHQ2tGIi6 Is this mission today?
Jesus sent us out as lambs among wolves. Has modern mission become “tanks among infantrymen”?
@kouya comments.
http://t.co/oDXhH2g1aj
I call that fair comment, very fair in fact!
Fascinating Blogpost by @kouya on #vulnerablemission Conf.
Wish I could have been there.
http://t.co/3g4XzaFKOE
#MThCostsTime
THANKS EDDIE!
A few comments. Eddie says there are shades of grey and not just blacks and whites. In a sense one only has to agree with him. In another sense … if someone tells you to put petrol into your tank, and to make sure the spark fires when the piston is up, and you ignore the advice, your car might not run very well. Or not at all.
Amongst the reasons churches do not support one another when dependent on outside resources that Eddie doesn’t explicitly mention, is that they are afraid that their provider of outside resources has a problem with other providers of outside resources.
Anyway, I am rejoicing that this discussion is ‘out there’.
RT @andreasnordli: Jesus sent us out as lambs among wolves. Has modern mission become “tanks among infantrymen”?
@kouya comments.
http://…
RT @andreasnordli: Jesus sent us out as lambs among wolves. Has modern mission become “tanks among infantrymen”?
@kouya comments.
http://…
“there should be some missionaries from the West […] without use of outside financial subsidy” – does that include their own support / salary? “I am sending you out as lambs among wolves” continues: “Don’t take any money with you…” (Lk.10:3,4) So perhaps “vulnerable” missionaries should be self-supporting too? But if we do in fact put outside finance in through a missionary salary, why deny them other tools to do their job? Whatever the obvious dangers of dependency, simple answers aren’t actually that simple…
And can we add “heart language”?
I’ll let Jim or someone else answer the dependancy question. Regarding whether to use the term “heart” language, I must admit that I would rather avoid it. Any attempt to capture the complexity of socio-linguistics and the preference that people have for using which language in which context is doomed to failure. Whichever term you use will be inadequate. However, heart-language which is much beloved by missionaries is, I believe, rather unhelpful as it implies that there is only one “heart-language” which may or may not be the case and that other languages are not “heart-languages” which again may not be true. In the complex linguistic situations that many people live in they can easily have more than one preferred language depending on the situation. The notion of a single “heart-langauge” which over-rides all of the others is a projection from the monolingual background of most missionaries. Jim’s term “own language” leaves the choice of language up to the person being reached (as it should), but does not imply prejudice against other languages.
Hi Neil, From my understanding, we are not yet in the place in Africa where a missionaries own support does not need to come from overseas. That is an objective for the longer term, I believe. It’s something of an ideal to be aimed at.
Re. denying missionaries ‘other tools’. Well, if the ‘job’ is done using ‘tools’, then that sounds fair enough. But should the job not be done through the heart commitment of the missionary by the Spirit of God?? Sure things aren’t simple … but it is theoretically possible for one’s identity as an outsider to be not outside money or outside languages.
I seem to be with Eddie on the ‘heart-language’ question. I tend to look at who a language belongs to rather than whether it is a ‘heart language’.