VULNERABLE MISSION

February 2013
VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1
VULNERABLE MISSION
Editorial Preface 6
“Mission in Weakness and Vulnerability”
in Selected Writings
Paul Yonggap Jeong
Economy of Grace: An Early Christian Take on
Vulnerable Mission
P. Kent Smith
Unveiling Empire: Ecclesial Resistance to
Global Capitalism
David Pritchett
The Need for Indigenous Languages and
Resources in Mission to Africa
Jim Harries
Vulnerable Mission vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission
and Missiology
Stan Nussbaum
What Is That In Your Hand?: Mobilizing Local
Resources
Jean Johnson
The King’s English in a Tamil Tongue: Missions,
Paternalism, and Hybridity in South India
Dyron Daughrity
Vulnerable Mission: Questions from a Latin
American Context
Greg McKinzie
Vulnerable Mission in Angola: An Intra-African
Conversation with Jim Harries
Danny Reese
A Journal of Missional
Theology and Praxis ISSN: 1947–2781
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MISSIO DEI
A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis

The cover of this issue is adapted from a picture of beans
growing up a corn stalk in a Tres Hermanas (Three Sisters)
garden, a companion planting technique used by
Native Americans for millenia that is growing in popularity
today among organic gardeners.
THE PARABLE OF THE THREE SISTERS
To what can we compare vulnerable mission, or what
parable shall we use to describe it?
It is like the foreigner who learns to sow corn, beans,
and squash, which, when they are sown together,
need no outside resources.
The beans need no artificial pole to climb, for they
scale the corn stalk. In turn, the stalk stands stronger
against the gusting wind.
The corn needs no man-made nitrogen supplement,
for the beans fix nitrogen in the soil around their roots.
The squash’s broad leaves shade the earth, keeping
down weeds and keeping in moisture, and its prickly
stems ward off hungry foragers.
The sower sows them together in the wisdom of ancient
local lore, which calls them sisters. Together they
sustain and are sustainable.

MISSIO DEI
A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis
VULNERABLE MISSION (Vol. 4, No. 1)
“Mission in Weakness and Vulnerability” in Selected Writings :
From Lesslie Newbigin’s and David Bosch’s Missiological Books
Paul YonggaP Jeong
Economy of Grace: An Early Christian Take on Vulnerable Mission
Kent Smith
Unveiling Empire: Ecclesial Resistance to Global Capitalism
DaviD Pritchett
The Need for Indigenous Languages and Resources in Mission to Africa in Light of
the Presence of Monism/Witchcraft
Jim harrieS
Vulnerable Mission vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology
Stan nuSSbaum
What Is That In Your Hand?: Mobilizing Local Resources
Jean JohnSon
The King’s English in a Tamil Tongue:
Missions, Paternalism, and Hybridity in South India
DYron DaughritY
Vulnerable Mission: Questions from a Latin American Context
greg mcKinzie
Vulnerable Mission in Angola: An Intra-African Conversation with Jim Harries
DannY reeSe
A Missional Church Is . . . : Artistic Expressions of a Fuzzy Concept
aaron SParKS
Review of Jean Johnson, We Are Not the Hero: A Missionary’s Guide for Sharing Christ, Not a
Culture of Dependency
bY Daniel mcgraw
Review of W. Ross Blackburn, The God Who Makes Himself Known: The Missionary Heart
of the Book of Exodus
bY nathan billS
Review of A. Scott Moreau, Contextualization in World Missions: Mapping and Assessing
Evangelical Models
bY greg mcKinzie
Review of J. D. Payne, Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration and Mission
bY garrett matthew eaSt
Review of Bryan P. Stone and Claire E. Wolfteich, Sabbath in the City: Sustaining Urban
Pastoral Excellence
bY Kate Sullivan watKinS
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FEBRUARY 2013 EDITORIAL BOARD
Executive Editor
Book Review Editor
Greg McKinzie (Missionary, Arequipa, Peru) Bob Turner (Librarian, Harding School of Theology)
Content Editors
Copy Editors
Nathan Bills (ThD candidate, Duke University) Danny Reese (Missionary, Huambo, Angola)
Andrea Burk (Photojournalist, Arlington, TX) Nick Faris (MDiv, Memphis, TN)
Mark Clancy (Missionary, Lima, Peru) Secretary/Treasurer
Kendi Howells Douglas (Professor, Great Lakes
Christian College)
Jason Whaley (Missionary, Wollongong, Australia)
Diane Adams (Tullahoma, TN)
CONSULTING EDITORS
John Barton (Rochester College)
Rochelle Cathcart (Lincoln Christian)
Shawn Daggett (Harding University)
Chris Flanders (Abilene Christian University)
Stan Granberg (Kairos Church Planting)
Gary Green (Abilene Christian University)
Sonny Guild (Abilene Christian University)
Dale Hawley (University of Wisconsin–Stout)
Mark Hooper (Missions Resource Network)
Evertt Huffard (Harding School of Theology)
Gary Jackson (Harding University)
Michael Landon (Minister, Groton, CT)
Ben Langford (Oklahoma Christian University)
Earl Lavender (Lipscomb University)
Doug Priest (Christian Missionary Fellowship)
Bill Richardson (Harding University)
Kent Smith (Abilene Christian University)
Michael Sweeney (Emmanuel Christian Seminary)
Richard Trull Jr. (Faulkner University)
Gailyn Van Rheenen (Mission Alive)
Bob Waldron (Missions Consulting International)
PURPOSE
Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis (MD) exists to provide a medium for exploring the
rich tradition and ongoing practice of participation in the mission of God among the churches of the
Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement.
PUBLICATION
MD is published semiannually by the Missio Dei Foundation, a non-profit enterprise founded in 2009 to
further reflection on the theology and practice of missions among the churches of the Stone-Campbell
Restoration Movement and to promote an inclusive missiological discourse.
ISSN: 1947–2781
SUBMISSIONS
MD features four sections: Missional Theology, Missional Praxis, Reflections, and Book Reviews.
Details for submissions can be found on the website (http://missiodeijournal.com/submissions).
The editors are responsible for the selection of material, but opinions expressed in articles are the sole
responsibility of the authors.
Please direct all submissions, suggestions, or inquiries to the editors at
missiodeijournal@gmail.com.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright by the Missio Dei Foundation. MD publishes the intellectual property of its authors by permission
in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. This work is licensed under
the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171
Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, CA, 94105, USA.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
The graphic design for MD is based on a template by Apt Design (http://aptdesignonline.com).
COVER ART
The image is an adaptation of an original photo from http://ialsoliveonafarm.wordpress.
com/2011/09/08/sing-now-the-lusty-song-of-fruit-and-flowers, used by permission.

EDITORIAL PREFACE TO THE ISSUE: VULNERABLE MISSION
by Christopher L. Flanders
Dr. Flanders is the Director of the Halbert Institute for Missions and an Assistant Professor in Missions
in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. He spent eleven years doing mission
work in Thailand, seven of those working as a church planter in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.
He is a consulting editor for Missio Dei as well as a member of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission
executive board.
A non-Western church leader recently remarked, “When I hear the word partnership, I
run the other way!” Why? Because despite their rhetoric and intent, Western missionaries
often end up creating the very thing they seek to avoid, viz., dependent churches.
Though we must be thankful that most missionaries today do hold (in theory!) incarnational,
contextual, and empowering as appropriate modes of mission, we all know that
quite often our practice falls short. The indigenous, empowering, partnering type of mission
that is the “canonical” version of modern missions theory is frequently unrealized in
our mission efforts. In the end, dependent churches are often the result.
This is not true in every case. Some examples exist of Western missionaries establishing
local churches that thrive, become able to carry out the work of God utilizing local
capacities and resources, and exhibit full ownership of their lives under God. As a whole,
however, such is less frequently realized than we all desire. What noted mission historian
Wilbert Shenk has claimed remains the case, that since 1850 the “indigenous church”
has been central to Protestant mission theory but infrequently practiced.
This is a problem. It is a dependency problem. And dependency is about resources—
control of, use of, and access to resources.
While we often focus on the use of money (and money does represent a huge challenge),
think of the multiple resources missionaries often represent or control directly. These
include language (non-local languages, often English, either to evangelize or for use in
training and worship), leadership (non-locals making significant or primary decisions for
local believers), theology (note the dominance of translated Western works but the paucity
of local writing and the imposition of Western theological conclusions), competence
(many local believers look to missionaries as more authentically “Christian” or equipped
to do ministry and make the important church decisions), worship style (Vineyard, Hillsong,
and contemporary English praise and worship songs dominate across the globe as
do modern Western liturgical patterns), and access (Western missionaries can provide
networking to potential donors and funding sources). Additionally, recent scholarly studies
demonstrate that thinking styles (not just communication styles), identity construction,
and the configuration of the human self are significantly different across cultures. 1 Many
missionary-planted churches default into Western preferences in these areas, thus creating
all sorts of subtle but ultimately destructive dependencies.
1 Richard E. Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently—and Why (New York:
Free Press, 2003).
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 6–8

PREFACE TO THE ISSUE
Dependency, whether financial, theological, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technological,
or personal, remains among the greatest challenges for mission in the twenty-first
century.
A recent incarnation of the age-old dependency/resources conversation is that of “Vulnerable
Mission” (VM). Taking its cue from biblical (e.g., Luke 10) and contemporary
(modern studies on western aid and development activities) resources, the VM conversation
takes as central the call to address these important issues with vigor. VM advocates
that some missionaries take seriously a model of mission that steers away from using the
power of non-local resources for mission. Instead, VM advocates capacity-building missionaries
that rely upon local resources.
As Stan Nussbaum reminds us in his article, VM as an approach is something with which
most of us are already quite familiar. Three modern mission stories of note (the independent
and African-initiated churches in Africa, the modern Chinese house-church
movement, and certain Pentecostal movements in Latin America) all rely upon what VM
advocates suggest as the best ways to achieve the goals of mission.
The papers in this issue of Missio Dei represent some of the current and best thinking on
VM. On the Campus of Abilene Christian University in March of 2012, the Halbert
Institute for Mission (ACU), the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, and TransWorld Radio
jointly hosted the first global conference on VM. It was simultaneously livecast on the
internet with participants from every continent.
Whether one adheres fully to the principles advocated by Vulnerable Mission proponents,
the questions they raise demand serious consideration from a church that often
takes easy, conventional wisdom. In particular, VM forces us to grapple with both priority
in mission and our mode. What is the goal of mission? What is of most importance?
What way(s) are most consistent for participating in God’s reconciling reach toward the
world? VM advocates contend that often our goals and our mode do not properly match.
Is VM something new? In one sense, it is not. VM represents the age-old questions
of missions, use of resources, and dependency. Yet, the new context in which we find
ourselves presents different challenges and calls us to evaluate our mission practice anew.
This new context involves the massive surge in short-term mission, the growing vibrancy
of the non-Western church, the continued financial dominance of the Western world,
and the ambivalence created by post-colonial global commitments.
This is what constitutes the conversation we call Vulnerable Mission. It is a renewed
probing of the hard questions that we must ask in order to see our ultimate goal fulfilled—churches
fully reflecting the glory of God in their local contexts.
What does this conversation mean, then, for missions in Churches of Christ and Christian
Churches? Particularly in these two branches of Stone-Campbell churches, mission
has operated primarily without the denominational structures of a mission agency. One
consequence of this is that anyone, anywhere, can send or do missions, regardless of
their qualifications, preparation, or approach. With the current swell of short-term mission
efforts, the number of “missionaries” has vastly increased. Yet, many of these “missionaries”
unwittingly create and perpetuate structures of dependency.
7

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 6–8
Additionally, our commitment to Scripture as the foundation of mission practice requires
us to be deeply concerned about the examples of Jesus and the earliest Christians.
Vulnerable Mission advocates suggest that Jesus, the disciples, and the early church all
operated with a very vulnerable approach to mission.
These papers represent not a final destination or some fully articulated theory of mission,
but a conversation. In my opinion, it is worth pursuing precisely because of the
high stakes. After reading and considering them carefully, we hope you will join us in this
important conversation!
8

MISSIONAL
THEOLOGY

“Mission in Weakness and Vulnerability”
in Selected Writings:
From Lesslie Newbigin’s and David
Bosch’s Missiological Books 1
Paul YonggaP Jeong
Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch were two of the last century’s outstanding missiologists. This essay
demonstrates how both of them consistently and convincingly rooted their theology of mission in the
weakness and vulnerability of the cross. Their faithful voices are an important reminder that the call is to
mission in Jesus’ way.
Not long ago, I was in a Bible study group. The group was studying the sixth chapter
of the Gospel of Mark:
Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath
came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
“Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been
given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and
the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they
took offense at him. Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and
in his own house is a prophet without honor.” He could not do any miracles there, except
lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of
faith. (Mark 6:1–6a) 2
As the people who were present wrestled to understand whether there was a deeper
meaning in the reason why the people in Jesus’ hometown were so hostile to him, it
dawned on me that an incarnational approach would require vulnerability from the
messenger of God. When we are vulnerable enough to approach people face to face, the
message that the messenger carries then becomes genuine. The message and the messenger
are not separable; rather, the messenger’s heart and attitude are already melted
together in his communication so that the messenger becomes intrinsic to the message.
Therefore, without true vulnerability from the messenger, the love of God cannot flow
with his or her spoken words into the hearts of the recipients of the message. Therefore,
when Jesus himself came as a person into the world and tried to give life to the townspeople,
he had to risk hostility and rejection.
Needless to say, we must go back to the Bible if we want to be grounded on solid rock
before we articulate any form of mission from the perspective of mission theology. In
this article, however, I want to deal with the theme of “mission in weakness and vulnerability”
that appears in missiological writings, specifically from the writings of Lesslie
Newbigin and David Bosch. In my opinion, how missiologists see the theme of mission
1 This essay is an adaptation of a lecture presented at the Abilene Christian University “Global Conference
on Vulnerable Mission,” March 7–10, 2012.
2 All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 10–20

“MISSION IN WEAKNESS AND VULNERABILITY” IN SELECTED WRITINGS
in weakness and vulnerability is crucial in understanding and formulating mission theology
for missionary movements. The writings on the theme of mission from a position
of weakness and vulnerability from missiologists such as Newbigin and Bosch will illuminate
us as to how missionaries and mission theologians have tried to understand mission
in Christ’s way.
LESSLIE NEWBIGIN
Lesslie Newbigin acutely indicated that modern missiology remarkably lacks the understanding
of weakness and vulnerability that should essentially accompany the messenger
if the message that the messenger carries is to be authenticated. 3 In his book, Mission in
Christ’s Way, Newbigin unfolds what it means to do mission in the way of Christ.
First of all, in order to do mission as Christ did, according to Newbigin, we need to realize
that gospel is revealed, yet hidden, in Jesus Christ; people are naturally asking how a
man crucified as a sinner can be the embodiment of the wisdom and power of God. It is
like a parable. It is hidden, yet revealed in the eyes of believers. It is there on Calvary that
the kingly rule, the kingdom of God, won the victory over all the powers of darkness.
The cross is not a defeat overturned by the resurrection, but the cross is itself the victory
proved by the resurrection. The disciples who saw the resurrected Jesus began to understand
that it was when the Lord of Life was crucified that he exposed and disarmed the
power of the darkness and overcame death itself. 4
Therefore, the kingdom of God, Newbigin went on to say, now has a human face and a
human name. Without Jesus, we cannot comprehend the kingdom of God, and without
the kingdom of God, we cannot think of Jesus. Jesus Christ himself is the very embodiment
of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God has been given to us (not that we
establish, expand, or extend it by ourselves) in the form of the Suffering Servant of
Yahweh. In this milieu, the cross embodies the weakness and vulnerability of God that
turned out to be the power of God. It is in this vulnerable love out of which overflowed
the saving and healing power of God for humanity. 5
Thus, to Newbigin, mission is not a success story. The world yearns for success, but the
gospel is, by no means, a success story. Mission does not have to do with a pragmatic or
effective effort, or an accomplishment that can be much more easily achieved with readymade
tools or highly developed scientific statistics. In both Newbigin’s time and ours, the
most vital mission has not taken place in more developed countries but rather in areas
where Christianity is persecuted, believers suffer, and where Jesus’ followers do not have
much means to offer—a position many would define as vulnerable or weak. However,
the effectiveness of our mission is not in our own hands. It is the work of the Holy Spirit,
the Paraclete, who himself arises, is with and comforts the weak and vulnerable community
of the believers, and manifests the power of God through this earthen vessel. 6
3 Lesslie Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way: Bible Studies, WCC Mission Series (Geneva: World Council of
Churches, 1987), 23.
4 Ibid., 5–6.
5 Ibid., 6–12.
6 Ibid., 13–14; Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1995), 62.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 10–20
John 20:19–21 clearly shows how mission is to be carried out in Christ’s way, says Newbigin:
12
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the
doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be
with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed
when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent
me, I am sending you.” (John 20:19–21)
The words written in John show that Jesus had sent the disciples (and us) exactly as the
Father has sent the Son into the world. In the same manner that the Father sent his
Son, the Son now also sends us. For the disciples to understand more fully the manner
in which they were to be sent, Jesus showed them his hands and side. Here lies the ultimate
foundation for vulnerable mission. The church, which is the body of Christ, as the
bearer of mission, will have the same scars as she goes out to the world and preaches the
gospel of the kingdom. These scars will authenticate the mission that is undertaken and
the very gospel that they preach.
The cross—the scars—that the disciples bear is not a suffering that the church has to passively
endure. Nor is it a defeat that the church should receive. It is not an act of oppression
that the church should tolerate submissively. The scars are “the marks of Jesus” that
the Apostle Paul talks about (Gal 6:17). It is the weakness, vulnerability, and suffering that
accompanied Paul when he preached the gospel. We see these characteristics constantly
demonstrated in the life and ministry of Paul (e.g., 1 Cor 4:8–13; 2 Cor 4–5; 12:1–10). 7
To heal the sick and cast out demons is “an active and uncompromising challenge to all
the powers of evil, yet . . . a totally vulnerable challenge so that (and here is the profound
mystery) the final victory is God’s and not ours.” 8 In weakness and vulnerability, seemingly
a defeat, the victory of God is assured.
The concept of mission from a position of weakness and vulnerability is also addressed
in another of Newbigin’s books, The Open Secret. Although The Open Secret deals primarily
with the broad area of theology of mission within the framework of trinitarian view,
Newbigin always focuses the reader’s attention to the fact that the cross is the way of
Christ for mission and that we are to follow him in his example. As a missionary from the
West, Newbigin was very sensitive to how people in other parts of the world might feel
about Western colonialism, and he recognized the incongruity of the tie that Christian
mission had with expanding Western power. 9 Newbigin insisted that those involved in
present-day mission should learn from New Testament examples “what it means to bear
witness to the gospel from a position not of strength but of weakness.” 10 Newbigin went
on, saying that “this picture of the mission is as remote as possible from the picture of the
Church as a powerful body putting forth its strength and wisdom to master the strength
7 Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way, 23–24.
8 Ibid., 25–26; emphasis added.
9 Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985). Throughout this
book, Newbigin humbly and honestly expresses his guilty feelings as well as gratitude while looking back on
the entire years of his ministry. See specifically Newbigin’s first impression on the relationship between the
missionaries and the people upon his arrival in India (41) and his retrospect (“Looking Back and Forward”) in
the last part of the book (251–55).
10 Newbigin, Open Secret, 5.

“MISSION IN WEAKNESS AND VULNERABILITY” IN SELECTED WRITINGS
and wisdom of the world.” 11 The opposite is true in this case. The church is weak and
vulnerable. However, it is in the church’s state of weakness and vulnerability that the
Spirit of God himself manifests his power through her. A true mission cannot be done
by using military strategy, mastering the strength and wisdom of the world, and neither
can it be done by a successful sales campaign. The victory is not ours. The victory is and
always has been won by the One who is greater than we are. Newbigin’s description of
mission in weakness and vulnerability is well presented in this way:
The real triumphs of the gospel have not been won when the church is strong in a worldly
sense; they have been won when the church is faithful in the midst of weakness, contempt,
and rejection. And I would simply add my testimony, which could be illustrated by many
examples, that it has been in situations where faithfulness to the gospel placed the church
in a position of total weakness and rejection that the advocate has himself risen up and,
often through the words and deeds of very “insignificant” people, spoken the word that
confronted and shamed the wisdom and power of the world. 12
What constantly appears in Newbigin’s theology of mission is that significant advances
of the church do not happen when we depend on human power, decision, or the ability
of “mobilizing and allocating of ‘resources.’ ” 13 Rather, significant advances of the
church happen without advance knowledge and without human power.
Earlier, I mentioned that The Open Secret was written within the framework of the trinitarian
view. What is intriguing in Newbigin’s emphasis on the trinitarian approach is that
the element of weakness and vulnerability found within christology is always combined
with the fresh, surprising action and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Influenced by
Roland Allen, 14 Newbigin dared not omit the essential place of the Holy Spirit in mission.
The evidence of Newbigin’s emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit is clear in his
ecclesiology as well. 15
Newbigin’s emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit is also apparent in his understanding
of the Gospel of John. With the dominant theme of “sending” apparent throughout
the Fourth Gospel, Newbigin confirms that the writer of the Gospel is truly concerned
with mission. 16 The earlier quotation, having established mission in Jesus’ way, continues:
“And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive
anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven’ ”
(John 20:22–23).
Various roles of the Holy Spirit are previously mentioned in the Gospel of John, especially
in chapters 14–16. This emphasis on the role of the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel is
culminated in verse 22, preceded by Jesus’s remark as to the way in which the disciples will
11 Ibid., 62.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 64.
14 Roland Allen, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1962), iii–iv.
15 Lesslie Newbigin, One Body, One Gospel, One World: The Christian Mission Today (London: International Missionary
Council, 1958), 18–19; Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church (Eugene,
OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008), 95–122.; Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda, 136–37, 192.
16 Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way, 22–31.
13

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 10–20
themselves be sent—with scars (v. 20). What I am trying to point out is that the great
commission in the Gospel of John (20:19–23) combines an emphasis on the power of
the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) with the weakness and vulnerability (christology) of the
messenger—so much so, that there is no room for any kind of triumphalism even as we
are used mightily by God Almighty in the communication of the message. As much as
“the Church on earth is by its nature missionary,” 17 mission as having been sent is by its
nature vulnerable.
In another of his books, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Newbigin deals with the meaning
of the cross. 18 In an attempt to shed light on the relationship between the meaning of
history and Christ, Newbigin recognizes the centrality of the cross in the kingdom of
God. What is the meaning of history and what does history move toward? Referring
to Hendrikus Berkhof, 19 Newbigin elaborates the prominent placement of the weakness
and vulnerability of the cross, both in the kingdom of God and throughout history.
To Newbigin, history has to do with the gap “between the coming of the kingdom
veiled in the vulnerable and powerless Jesus and the coming of the kingdom in manifest
power.” 20 Thus, patience and watchfulness are greatly required because we live between
the times. What is critical here is that the character of this time in which we are waiting is
determined by the character of the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. The church, while
journeying through history, is destined to participate in the suffering of Christ. 21
In our present period, the meaning of the cross has both been revealed and yet still remains
hidden. Though the event of the crucifixion of Jesus was seen as a real historical
moment by believers and unbelievers alike, the resurrection of the Lord, on the other
hand, was seen only by those who had faith in him. This hiddenness of the kingdom
of God has been throughout history. However, to Newbigin, it is this hiddenness that
“makes possible the conversion of the nations.” Because of this hiddenness of the kingdom,
nations may continue to freely turn to the Lord. Without the hiddenness of the
kingdom of God, nations would be forced to turn to the Lord because of the terrible
majesty of Jesus revealed in glory with no room for a free will of their own. Here is the
significance of the weakness and vulnerability of the cross, both in the kingdom of God
and as evidenced in history:
14
When the Church tries to embody the rule of God in the forms of earthly power it may
achieve that power, but it is no longer a sign of the kingdom. But when it goes the way the
Master went, unmasking and challenging the powers of darkness and bearing in its own
life the cost of their onslaught, then there are given to the Church signs of the kingdom,
powers of healing and blessing which, to eyes of faith, are recognizable as true signs that
Jesus reigns. 22
17 Austin Flannery, Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
Resources, 1975), 814; ch. 1 of Ad Gentes.
18 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), ch. 9.
19 Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ the Meaning of History (Richmond: John Knox, 1966), 101–121, under “The
Crucified Christ in History.”
20 Newbigin, Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 106.
21 Ibid., 107.
22 Ibid., 108.

“MISSION IN WEAKNESS AND VULNERABILITY” IN SELECTED WRITINGS
Acceptance of vulnerability and weakness in mission is, to Newbigin, not only appropriate
but also indispensable for the authentication of the gospel of the kingdom that the
messenger preaches.
DAVID J. BOSCH
Though David Bosch, a South African missiologist, wrote several important books such
as Witness to the World, Transforming Mission, and Believing in the Future, 23 I will primarily
address only two books in this article: A Spirituality of the Road and The Vulnerability of
Mission. 24 A Spirituality of the Road was written earliest among his books, and The Vulnerability
of Mission was written just before he died in a car accident, and yet both of them
are very relevant to the theme of “mission in weakness and vulnerability.” It shows that
the theme of mission in weakness and vulnerability had been on his mind constantly
throughout his lifetime. It should also be added that his book, Transforming Mission, which
many missiologists regard as a magnum opus, also deals with this issue in much broader
context, which is beyond the scope of this article. 25
As a white man who had stood against apartheid in South Africa and had kept his integrity
about racial issues until death, Bosch knew better than most that missionaries and
missiologists should live and carry out their ministries with vulnerability. Bosch solidly
developed the theological foundation for the primary thesis of A Spirituality of the Road
from 2 Corinthians. In the last chapter, Bosch commends that we as believers above all
need to have the courage to be weak. 26
What Bosch noted in the Apostle Paul’s life is that “true mission is the weakest and
least impressive human activity imaginable, the very antithesis of a theology of glory.” This
Apostle followed his Master. To Paul, weakness and vulnerability was “a necessary precondition
for any authentic mission,” said Bosch. 27
The same precondition of weakness and vulnerability is true within authentic community.
The community of Christ is not the assembly of spiritual giants. It is the gathering
of the broken people and led by people like Peter who experienced brokenness. Mission
involves not just the vulnerability of the people whom we want to convert, but also
requires the vulnerability of the missionaries themselves; because Jesus himself revealed
our own sins by his vulnerability. Our sin would have remained hidden if Jesus had not
been willing to be vulnerable. 28
23 David Jacobus Bosch, Witness to the World: The Christian Mission in Theological Perspective, New Foundations
Theological Library (Atlanta: John Knox, 1980); Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission,
American Society of Missiology Series 16 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991); Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology
of Western Culture, Christian Mission and Modern Culture (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995).
24 David Jacobus Bosch, A Spirituality of the Road, Missionary Studies 6 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979);
The Vulnerability of Mission, Occasional Paper (Selly Oak Colleges) 10 (Birmingham, England: Selly Oak Colleges,
1991).
25 For more on the theme of “mission in weakness and vulnerability” in Transforming Mission, see ch. 5 of
my book, Mission from a Position of Weakness, American University Studies 269 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
26 Bosch, Spirituality of the Road, 75.
27 Ibid., 76; emphasis added.
28 Ibid., 77.
15

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 10–20
Even my own experiences are evidence that our failures and mistakes can become assets.
When we become vulnerable, yet courageous enough to share our failures and mistakes
with others, these failures become rich assets, and transform the hearers. As we begin to
take the road to weakness and vulnerability, we see people changed.
Bosch seemed to understand how powerful it is to be in a position of vulnerability. He
stated that Jesus had never been so close to the world as when he was on the cross. In
vulnerability, Jesus was able to embrace the world so closely and in this same vulnerability
he was able to relate himself to the world. Though Bosch also believed that it was on
the cross that Jesus stood against the world more than any other occasion, it was Jesus’s
involvement with the world that Bosch wanted to highlight. 29
Bosch’s perception of the relationship between the vulnerable mission and the world
was broad. To Bosch, mission in vulnerability and weakness does not only pertain to socalled
“spiritual matters,” but that mission in vulnerability and weakness also applies to
ministry that has social dimensions. To Bosch, the distinction between “spiritual and social”
ministries was caused by dichotomistic thought that originated from Greek spiritual
ancestors. Vulnerable mission legitimately encompasses social issues as well as personal
and spiritual ones in a traditional sense. 30
As a final comment on A Spirituality of the Road, I also want to note that Bosch views missiology
as “the study of the Church as surprise.” 31 Reciting Ivan Illich, 32 Bosch asserts
that theology, especially missiology, is always in process. Because missionaries constantly
bring their own experiences into their own areas of reflection as they continue to engage
in mission, their way of thinking or frame of reference also constantly changes. 33
This discerning attentiveness with the thorough grasp of the meaning of mission in
weakness and vulnerability should assure that militant vocabularies like “soldiers, forces,
advance, army, crusade, marching orders, strategy, planning, and many more” should
be used discreetly in describing mission. 34 For after all, it is the Spirit of God who works
through the messenger who is obedient in a position of vulnerability and weakness.
Through this position, we might come to realize that we are not there as messengers to
give correct answers or to resolve problems with superior technology or tools, but that
we were sent by God to show scars in vulnerability, and relate ourselves with the people
to which the message is being given, because we too are weak and vulnerable. By doing
mission in our Master’s way, taking the road to weakness, instead of strength and power,
we will move “from surprise to surprise.” 35
As I address another of Bosch’s books, The Vulnerability of Mission, I will not discuss issues
related to the book, Silence, written by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, which Bosch
16
29 Ibid., 15–16.
30 Ibid., 16.
31 Ibid., 59.
32 Ivan Illich, Mission and Midwifery: Essays on Missionary Formation, Mambo Occasional Papers: Missio-Pastoral
Series 4 (Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1974), 7.
33 No wonder that his final great book, Transforming Mission, is about paradigm shifts in theology of mission.
34 Bosch, Spirituality of the Road, 30–31.
35 Ibid., 59.

“MISSION IN WEAKNESS AND VULNERABILITY” IN SELECTED WRITINGS
referred to in the beginning of his own book. I want to specifically avoid talking about
apostasy in Silence, since Bosch also describes Endō’s book as a disturbing novel. However,
the main point Bosch tried to draw from Endō’s book was that the cross is not about
the power of God, but the weakness of God. 36
In The Vulnerability of Mission, Bosch states that the cross is not a beauty or a power
contest, 37 nor is mission to be carried out by crusading minds but by crucified minds. 38
What Bosch eventually tried to discuss was the problem of the colonialism that Westerners
have imposed on the rest of the world. For it was natural in the Christendom
model that where the power of Western countries went, their religion (Christianity) was
expected to go as well.
Although Bosch addresses the flaws of colonialism and Western mission, Bosch’s statement
also sounds a note of warning against the missionary forces from the Majority
World, since we tend to think that generally speaking, we (the missionary forces from
the Majority World) are currently replacing Western missionary forces. We may not be
performing our ministry under the banner of colonialism; however it is often done with
substitute colonialism such as the power of money, technology, popular business brand,
and the like.
Whether it is from Western countries or the rest of the world, if mission is to be authenticated
according to the way of our Master, mission should have the marks of Christ.
Here, I would like to make sure, along with Newbigin, that Jesus is not portrayed as a
victim, nor do we accept our suffering passively, but that Christ and we are submitting to
God actively. 39 Nevertheless, mission is not a success story either. 40 Desmond Tutu once
declared that the church of Christ should be a “failing community rather than a successdriven
one” in the face of a South African government that was outlawing nineteen
ministry organizations, arresting many of the church leaders, and operating banning
orders. 41 We have no choice but to follow the footsteps of our Master. In the words of
Jonathan Bonk, there is nothing “strategically efficient . . . about taking up a cross.” 42
The analysis of Bosch and his understanding of mission in weakness and vulnerability
may be stated here in a rather brief manner. However, his mission praxis, personal life,
and his difficult journey in the context of South Africa continue to serve as the clearest
example of a position of mission from weakness and vulnerability. From the beginning
of his ministry period (1957–1967) as a missionary among the Xhosa in Transkei until
the time of his death in April 1992 he was constantly in a situation in which he had to
be vulnerable; in the context of apartheid, as a white man, Bosch found himself caught
between the blacks and Afrikaners (whites). The situation of apartheid continued to be-
36 Bosch, Vulnerability of Mission, 1–5.
37 Ibid., 5.
38 Ibid., 13.
39 Newbigin, Mission in Christ’s Way, 25.
40 Ibid., 13.
41 Bosch, Vulnerability of Mission, 15.
42 Jonathan J. Bonk, Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem, American Society of Missiology
Series 15 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991), 118.
17

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 10–20
come more pressingly difficult for him as he continued to stand for and with those who
were black. 43 Bosch understood that to be an instrument of reconciliation, he could not
avoid being “crushed in between.” 44 As Bosch began to identify himself more with the
suffering blacks, his family, including his young children, had to go through the same difficulties.
45 Here, I do not feel that I am dealing with this issue of mission in vulnerability
and weakness somberly enough to accurately convey to the reader how crucial it was to
Bosch. For Bosch, his writings were reflections of his lifetime struggles for mission in vulnerability,
weakness, and integrity. With utmost integrity and seriousness, he embraced
this vulnerability into his life, into his heart and mind, and in his flesh and blood, and
sacrificed greatly for it. He understood that it was an essential part of his mission.
In this short article, I have examined the writings of Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch.
However, throughout history this theme of mission from a position of vulnerability and
weakness was not ignored by conscientious men and women of God. The reason we
must now re-emphasize it is because somewhere along the way we lost touch. As Protestants,
we tend to launch our missionary movement with triumphalism and ambition,
and choose to settle for mere effectiveness in activities. We have forgotten how our Master
did his mission. We have not paused to think about the true meaning of the cross
and its implications for our mission. We have tended to go ahead of the Lord carelessly
whistling, as Kōsuke Koyama has described. 46 We have hastily embraced the theology
of glory before we have tasted the suffering. We must want to know Jesus more with the
willingness to have the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings (Phil 3:10).
Mission in weakness and vulnerability does matter. As we comprehend the true meaning
of the gospel of the kingdom of God, we must put the cross, the scar, and the weakness
and vulnerability at the center of the kingdom of God. And we shall humbly follow our
Master. That is authentic mission.
A graduate of the Korea Military Academy, Paul Yonggap Jeong was voluntarily discharged from the army to pursue his
calling as a minister. After graduating with an MDiv from the Korean Baptist Theological Seminary, Jeong became the
senior pastor of Hanter Baptist Church in Seoul, which he also jointly established. He earned his ThM at Southeastern
Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina and his PhD in intercultural studies at Fuller Theological Seminary.
He was the interim pastor of Winston-Salem Korean Baptist Church and the senior pastor of Carrboro Korean Baptist
Church. Currently, he teaches at the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and serves as the
International Director of Vision for the Kingdom, which is a cooperative mission for world evangelization.
43 J. N. J. Kritzinger and W. A. Saayman, David J. Bosch: Prophetic Integrity, Cruciform Praxis (Pietermaritzburg,
South Africa: Cluster Publications, 2011), 106–8.
18
44 Ibid., 178.
45 Ibid., 135.
46 Kōsuke Koyama, No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis,
1977), 2; Bosch, Vulnerability of Mission, 6.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
“MISSION IN WEAKNESS AND VULNERABILITY” IN SELECTED WRITINGS
Allen, Roland. The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962.
Berkhof, Hendrikus. Christ the Meaning of History. Richmond: John Knox, 1966.
Bonk, Jonathan J. Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem. American
Society of Missiology Series 15. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.
Bosch, David Jacobus. Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture.
Christian Mission and Modern Culture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International,
1995.
________. A Spirituality of the Road. Missionary Studies 6. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press,
1979.
________. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of
Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.
________. The Vulnerability of Mission. Occasional Paper (Selly Oak Colleges) 10. Birmingham,
England: Selly Oak Colleges, 1991.
________. Witness to the World: The Christian Mission in Theological Perspective. New Foundations
Theological Library. Atlanta: John Knox, 1980.
Flannery, Austin. Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Wilmington,
DE: Scholarly Resources, 1975.
Illich, Ivan. Mission and Midwifery: Essays on Missionary Formation. Mambo Occasional
Papers: Missio-Pastoral Series 4. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1974.
Jeong, Paul Yonggap. Mission from a Position of Weakness. American University Studies
269. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.
Koyama, Kōsuke. No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind. Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 1977.
Kritzinger, J. N. J., and W. A. Saayman. David J. Bosch: Prophetic Integrity, Cruciform
Praxis. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Cluster Publications, 2011.
Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
________. The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church. Eugene, OR: Wipf and
Stock, 2008.
________. Mission in Christ’s Way: Bible Studies. WCC Mission Series. Geneva: World
Council of Churches, 1987.
________. One Body, One Gospel, One World: The Christian Mission Today. London: International
Missionary Council, 1958.
19

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 10–20
________. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1995.
________. Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.
20

Economy of Grace: An Early Christian
Take on Vulnerable Mission 1
P. Kent Smith
Contextualizing principles like those identified by Vulnerable Mission may be used to avoid creating unhealthy
dependency. They may also be used to other ends, such as persuading a donor or gaining information
to subdue an enemy. This highlights the importance of underlying narrative, the frame of meaning at
work that largely determines the impact such principles have in a given situation. Beginning with Jesus, the
early Christian movement penetrated the vast cultural mosaic of the Roman empire over several centuries
without, on the whole, creating unhealthy dependencies. This essay explores a narrative at work that may
help to explain this remarkable achievement and suggests an understanding of the role vulnerable principles
played in that achievement.
INTRODUCTION
Vulnerable Mission offers two specific proposals to avoid creating unhealthy dependencies
and ultimately harming those who receive the attention of Christian workers:
1. Working in indigenous languages—or more broadly, a firm commitment to understand
people deeply, on their own terms, in their own context.
2. A commitment to depend on local resources, avoiding outside resourcing in the
conduct of local work. 2
Cultural competence as demonstrated by language mastery and dependence on local
resources can be potent tools in the service of God’s mission. At the same time, it cannot
be the case that these qualities by themselves constitute the essence of Vulnerable Mission.
It is possible, for example, that one could learn a language and culture in order to
be more effective in exploiting that culture. 3 Alternatively, people might enter a culture
bearing no outside resources simply because they are poor or escaping oppressive circumstances.
In this essay I want to follow one stream of early Christian thought to describe how the
commitments identified by Vulnerable Mission found expression among the early followers
of Jesus. To be more specific, I will trace a certain continuity between the notion of
an “economy of grace” as developed in the letter to the Ephesians and the actual missionary
practice of the early Christian movement, beginning with Jesus and continuing
through the early Christian centuries.
1 This essay is an adaptation of a lecture presented at the Abilene Christian University “Global Conference
on Vulnerable Mission,” March 7–10, 2012.
2 See, e.g., “The use of local languages in ministry combined with ‘missionary poverty’ (the two key principles
of AVM) enforces humility and operation on a ‘level playing field’ with local people,” on http://www.
vulnerablemission.org.
3 Students of rhetoric, marketing, or warfare will find no difficulty illustrating this.
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32
To begin I will examine several key but sometimes neglected themes in Ephesians. We
will need to consider some familiar terms in somewhat unfamiliar ways as we enter the
thought world of Ephesians. 4 In the following section I will survey some implications of
these themes as they played out in the mission of Jesus and in the early missionary movement,
and conclude by suggesting how these insights might inform our understanding
of Vulnerable Mission. As the study proceeds a useful question to explore will be, “If
linguistic/cultural competence and dependence on local resources are important for the
transmission of the gospel into new settings, then how do we find these principles embodied
in the earliest Christian mission?
AN ANCIENT ECCLESIOLOGY: CHURCH AS ECONOMY OF
GRACE
To begin I will explore two key themes and their relationship as developed in Ephesians:
grace and economy.
Grace
The idea of grace in the Western, Protestant churches has been dominated by the Reformation
emphasis on the unmerited gift we have received in Christ—the grace by which
we are saved. A classic text underlying this focus states: “For it is by grace (charis) that you
are saved through trust, and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God—not by works, so
that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8–9). 5
While this take on grace was an important corrective and pillar of the Reformation, it
represents only one dimension of the meaning Paul and the early church invested in the
word charis. 6 Most notably for our study, it is only a subset of how charis is used in Ephesians.
7 In the widest sense a grace (charis) is a gift, “that which pleases or brings delight
(chara).” 8 However, in the New Testament and Paul’s work in particular, more specialized
understandings of the term come to bear in significant ways.
Charis is broadly understood in Paul’s writing to embrace all of God’s gracious, selfdisclosing
work in Christ. This widely encompassing notion of grace, especially emphasized
in the Eastern church tradition, can be summarized, “Grace is God dispensed
into us.” 9 God’s greatest gift is the gift of God’s own self. Important in this broader
4 As Klyne Snodgrass puts it, these ideas “may well call for wholesale reconstruction from our end.” Ephesians,
The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 165.
22
5 Biblical translations are the author’s unless noted otherwise.
6 The Pauline corpus alone includes 101 uses of charis. Stephen Duffy, The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in
Theological Anthropology, New Theology Studies 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993), 30.
7 I take it that Paul authored Ephesians, but do not consider this essential to my argument—in any event the
Pauline thought in Ephesians has shaped subsequent understanding of the subject.
8 Stephen Westerholm, “Grace,” in New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld
(Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 2:656.
9 See, e.g., Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church: A Clear, Detailed Introduction to the Orthodox Church Written for the
Non-Orthodox as Well as for Orthodox Chrisitans Who Wish to Know More about Their Own Tradition, rev. ed. (New York:
Penguin, 1997), 68. C.f., Philip Kenneson, “Visible Grace: The Church as God’s Embodied Presence,” in Grace
Upon Grace: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Langford, ed. Robert K. Johnston, L. Gregory Jones, and Jonathan R.
Wilson (Nashville: Abingdon, 1999), 170.

ECONOMY OF GRACE
understanding is that, while it includes God’s incarnational “dispensing” in Jesus Christ,
this view of grace also helps us make sense of a major, often overlooked, dimension of
that work, namely God’s self-investment into each of his people as individuals and in the
community called the “body of Christ.”
Simply put, this is the grace for which we are saved—to become the embodiment and
revelation of God. A classic description of this dimension of grace follows closely on the
text quoted above: “For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works
which God prepared in advance for us to walk in” (Eph 2:10). 10
This statement beginning with “for” seems jarring in light of what follows until we see
the broader sense of grace in view. Works per se are not the antithesis of grace. Rather,
it is human works—works of human initiative and strength in which we could boast—that
have no place in the salvation of God. The works God has predesigned for us to do
are precisely an expression of that grace—a theme that will continue to be developed
through Ephesians.
This dimension of grace, the grace for which we are saved, is given specific shape in the
next chapter where the unique calling of Paul is described as his grace: “Though I am
less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given to me: to proclaim to the
Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the economy of
this mystery” (Eph 3:8–9).
This is Paul’s standard way of describing the work to which he has been uniquely called
by God: “to me this grace has been given.” 11 Paul routinely uses “grace” as a synonym
for God’s calling on his life, his divinely appointed vocation. But in Paul’s thought such
a grace belongs to every believer. As Ephesians continues, this dimension of grace as
vocation moves to the center of the argument. “And yet, to each one of us a grace has
been given according to the distributed gifting of Christ” (4:7).
The “and yet” that begins this statement marks the shift in chapter four between the
unity that characterizes our calling—“one Lord, one Faith, one baptism”—and the diversity
of that calling—“to each one a grace.” To “walk worthy of the calling to which you
have been called” (4:1) entails an embrace of both the unity we share in Christ (the grace
by which we have been saved) and the diversity of our respective gifting and assignments
in the household of God (the grace for which we are saved). 12
In this sense of vocation, then, grace is the measured dispensing of God’s purpose and
power into every unique person of God’s family household. Although this understanding
of grace has been somewhat muted in the Western church, it is clearly seen elsewhere
in Paul, in Peter’s writing, and in the commentary of the church since the first century. 13
And as we will see, it is developed more fully in the verses that follow.
10 This theme of the works in which we should “walk,” runs through the letter and is developed as it pertains
to our vocation (4:1) and conduct in God’s household, e.g., 2:3; 4:17; 5:2, 15.
11 Cf. Gal 1:15; 2:9; Rom 1:5;12:2; 15:15–16; 1 Cor 3:10; 15:10.
12 On this point it is helpful to notice the distinction Paul appears to draw between grace (charis) as vocation
and gifts (charisma) as supporting or corollary equipment to a grace: “And we have different gifts (charisma) according
to the grace (charis) given to us.” Rom 12:6; cf. 1 Cor 1:4–7.
13 Cf. Rom 12:3–8, 1 Pet 4:10. So, for example, Augustine: “Therefore in Him who is our head let there
appear to be the very fountain of grace, whence, according to the measure of every man, He diffuses Himself
23

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32
Economy
Our second theme, economy, is based on the term oikonomia, which occurs three times in
Ephesians. 14 The term conveys a range of meanings: household rule, stewardship, order,
plan. 15 It is often used regarding the management of large estates in the ancient world.
At times it conveys the notion of underlying structure. In more contemporary thought a
useful translation might often be, “operating system.”
Especially prominent in Ephesians is the theme of the economy of God, his pre-ordained
system for the summing up of all things into himself by way of Christ through
the church. This theme is introduced in Eph 1:9–10: “making known to us the mystery
of his will, in accordance with his good pleasure that he purposed in himself, leading to
the economy of the fullness of times, to head up all things in Christ—the things in heaven
and the things on the earth—in him.”
This economy is the object of God’s self-purposed pleasure, something revealed in the
fullness of times, which has been a mystery but has now been made known. These ideas
are taken up and developed more in 3:8–11:
24
To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given: to announce to the Gentiles the
boundless riches of Christ and to enlighten all that they may see what the economy of the
mystery is, which throughout the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things, so
that now, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies the multifaceted wisdom of God
might be made known through the church, according to the eternal purpose which God
made in Christ Jesus our Lord. 16
Here this finally-disclosed economy is revealed as no less than the church, God’s means
of displaying his multifaceted wisdom to the heavenly powers. 17 In chapter four, what
this means for the church is stated even more explicitly in an extended description of
the church as the body of Christ. The case is summarized thus: “From Christ the whole
body is joined and held together . . . by means of the distributed divine energy of every
single growing part of the body working to build up his body in love” (4:16).
God’s divine energy is distributed to each growing part of his body according to the
distinct grace each one bears. As each one exercises that grace under the headship of
Christ, the body of Christ, the church, is built up, and God’s multifaceted wisdom is fully
revealed in that completed person, the bride of Christ. 18
through all His members.” A Treatise on the Predestination of the Saints, 31. In a similar vein, Duffy, 153, on Aquinas:
“In elevating us, grace also heals us, for it corresponds to our nature’s deepest aspiration. God in giving us
participation in the divine inner life gives us to ourselves and releases within us the authentic powers that make
us who we are as humans. One is finally free to become one’s genuine self.”
14 Eph 1:10; 3:2, 9.
15 Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon
of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., s. v. “oi˙konomi÷a.”
16 This understanding of the economy of God, so prominent in the argument of Ephesians, may well be
present in New Testament and post-Apostolic writing more often than is commonly observed. Cf., e.g., 1 Cor
9:17; Col 1:25; 1 Tim 1:4.
17 “Multifaceted” translates polupoikilos, the “many, multiform” wisdom of God. Though this has sometimes
been understood as the inclusion of two forms, Jew and Gentile, into the church, this does not seem to be the
most natural reading of the text.
18 Descriptions of the church in chs. 1–4 are dominated by the cognates of oikos: God’s house, temple, and

Economy of Grace in Ephesians
ECONOMY OF GRACE
Having discussed grace and economy we can summarize the Ephesians presentation of
church as an economy of grace. Six observations provide an overview:
1. Ephesians claims to disclose a great mystery. This mystery has been hidden in
God in the past but now, in the fullness of time, has been made known to us (1:9;
3:9–10).
2. Furthermore, this mystery is revealed in an economy (oikonomia), that is to say, a
household rule, or operating system that has its origin and its ultimate fulfillment in
God through Jesus Christ by way of the church (1:23; 3:9).
3. This economy, or household rule, is a divinely designed system for the dispensing
of God’s multifaceted wisdom and for the display of that wisdom to powers and
principalities in the heavenly realms (3:10). Simply put, this self-disclosure of God
is the church.
4. God’s multifaceted wisdom is revealed, in fact, as an economy of grace (3:2). 19
What makes this economy a display of the many, many forms of God’s wisdom is
that God’s power (energeia) is distributed (metron) uniquely as a grace (charis) to each
part of the household body (4:7, 16). 20
5. The body is built up (oikodomeo) to its mature, healthy expression when every single
part is doing its particular, divinely graced and empowered work (4:14–16).
6. The church, as the operating system for the grace of God, therefore, functions to
fulfill God’s delight in reconciling all things to himself through Christ (1:9–11).
household, as well as his body. See, e.g., 2:19–22. In ch. 5 the mystery is further disclosed: this body is his bride
(5:23–32).
19 Commentators differ in their understanding of how oikonomia tēs charitos is being used in 3:2. A case can
be made that Paul’s own grace—to bring the gospel to the Gentiles—is in view. In this case the sense would be
“you will have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace given to me for you.” On the other hand, if the broader
use of oikonomia found in 1:10 and later in the chapter at 3:9 (“the economy of the mystery that has been kept
hidden”) is in view, then the sense would be more, “of course, you have heard about the revelation I received
for you about the economy of God’s grace, namely that by revelation the divine mystery was made known to
me, as I mentioned earlier” (1:10). In support of this reading are the six times cognates of oikos are used in the
preceeding four verses to describe the nature of the inclusion Gentiles now enjoy in the household of God:
Therefore no longer are you strangers and aliens (paroikoi) but you are fellow citizens of the saints and
members of the household (oikeioi) of God, being built up together (epoikodomathentes) upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself the chief cornerstone. In him the whole
house is joined together (oikodome) and rises into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being
built up together (sunoikodomeisthe) to become the dwelling (katoiketerion) of God by his Spirit (2:19–22).
While this latter understanding of the “economy of the grace of God” is consistent with the way the phrase is
used in this essay, the conclusion drawn about the particular use in 3:2 is somewhat immaterial to the overall
point. The whole constellation of thought in Ephesians points to the “economy of grace” under discussion.
20 Peter makes the connection explicit as well, though his allusion to the economy is indirect. See 1 Pet 4:10
and below.
25

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32
ECONOMY OF GRACE IN THE MISSION OF JESUS AND THE
EARLY CHURCH
The letter to the Ephesians, by identifying the church as God’s economy of grace affirms
and clarifies core themes of the Hebrew/Christian narrative that underpinned the early
Christian movement. In broad strokes, those themes included:
26
1. From the beginning men and women were designed to display—in their collective
diversity—the image of God. 21
2. Although people have been broken and estranged from God by sin, God nevertheless
has chosen through Abraham to bless all the families of the earth.
3. Through Jesus Christ, Abraham’s descendant, the power of sin has been broken
and by the Spirit of Christ, God’s design in people is again being revealed.
4. People from all the families of earth are now being gathered in a divine family that
displays God’s multifaceted wisdom—an economy of grace.
This framing narrative came to deeply shape the thought and action of the early followers
of Jesus.
In view of this vision of church as God’s economy of grace, I want to reflect briefly on
three themes illustrated by the earliest Christian mission that I believe bear directly on
the nature and practice of vulnerable mission. These include the locus of initiative, the
nature of leadership, and the context of mission.
The Locus of Initiative in the Economy of Grace
The initiator in the economy of grace can be none other than the economy designer and
grace-dispenser, God. If God has chosen to display God’s multifaceted wisdom in this
economy, then those who would follow the Master’s lead must learn to pay attention to
God’s gracious initiatives in general, and to those initiatives in people.
Just this kind of deep attentiveness to God’s initiative characterizes the life and mission
of Jesus. 22 And as Jesus trains his disciples this theme features prominently. Jesus sends his
disciples off in pairs to the surrounding villages with these instructions: 23
Go! I am sending you out like lambs surrounded by wolves. Do not carry a money bag,
a traveler’s bag, or sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whenever you enter a house,
first say, “May peace be on this house!” And if a person of peace is there, your peace will
remain on him, but if not, it will return to you. Stay in that same house, eating and drinking
what they give you, for the worker deserves his pay. Do not move around from house
to house. Whenever you enter a town and the people welcome you, eat what is set before
you. Heal the sick in that town and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come upon
you.” (Luke 10:4–7) 24
21 See, e.g., Gen 1:26–27.
22 See, e.g., John 5:19: “I do nothing of my own initiative.”
23 Roger Gehring, House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity (Peabody,
MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 42–61. Gehring considers this passage pivotal for understanding the subsequent
expansion of Christianity.
24 The economy of grace is already on display as evidence of the arriving kingdom when a church of two or

ECONOMY OF GRACE
This instruction by Jesus is grounded in the conviction that those with whom God intends
the disciples to work—the household of peace—will be ready to receive these
vulnerable disciples, so the disciples are not to waste their time casting about for other
options. Attentiveness to the Master’s prevenient work in people, here invoked by the image,
“the Lord of the harvest,” becomes the means by which the disciples appropriately
concentrate their work out of one household that will become a beachhead for the coming
kingdom in that place.
This instruction to his disciples simply mirrors the approach they repeatedly witnessed
Jesus himself taking. He is steadily on the watch for those ready to receive him and, on
discovering such people, goes into their homes. This careful attention to God’s initiative
does not end with the life and missionary training of Jesus. It continued naturally in the
early apostolic teams and among those who formed the household-based churches of the
first centuries, as we will see in what follows. 25
The Nature of Leadership in the Economy of Grace
What does it mean to be a leader in a household economy—if you are not the owner/
master? Throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, to have such a role meant to
be a steward, a household manager, an oikonomos. Those given responsibility within an
oikonomia, the household economy, were servants of the household under the master/
father’s leadership.
The dominance of the household theme in the New Testament, and God’s role within
that household as Master/Father helps to explain, not only Jesus’ prohibition of calling
people “father,” but also explains the curious shortage of the word “leader” as applied
to believers in the New Testament. Where the notion of leadership is in view, it is usually
Jewish leaders opposing the coming kingdom, or Gentile leaders whose “lording”
approach is explicitly prohibited. 26 By contrast, positions of influence and responsibility
in the church are routinely described in the language of servanthood and stewardship. 27
The focus of that stewardship within an economy of grace can be given sharper definition
by reclaiming the old English word, eduction, which means “the drawing forth of
what is latent or potential in another.”
In Ephesians 4, this idea offers a most helpful and comprehensive way to understand the
function of Christian stewardship. In God’s economy of grace, certain gifts are given to
more arrive as a missionary team acting in the power of Jesus.
25 The saying of Jesus uniquely recorded in Luke 22:35–38 has sometimes been seen to represent a fundamental
shift in the missionary approach the disciples are to take thereafter as they bring the gospel to the
Gentiles. This position seems difficult to reconcile with the unambiguous teaching of Jesus elsewhere, the
continuing narrative in Luke-Acts, and the subsequent experience of the earliest church. See Christopher
Hutson, “Enough for What? Playacting Isaiah 53 in Luke 22:35–38,” Restoration Quarterly 55, no.1 (January
2013): 35–51.
26 “You are all brothers, and call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven”
(Matt 23:8–9). Joachim Jeremias points out that, among all images for the community of salvation, Jesus
prefers the eschatological family of God. “In the eschatological family, God is the father (Matt 23:9), Jesus is
the master of the house, his followers the other occupants (Matt 10:25).” New Testament Theology (New York:
Scribners, 1971), 169.
27 Even in the rare cases where leadership language is used of Christians, it is clearly in the context of service
to the community, e.g., Heb 13:7 ff.; Rom 12:8.
27

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32
call forth the gifting of the whole: “It was [Christ] who gave some as apostles, some as
prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers to equip the saints for works
of service to build up (oikodomēn) the body of Christ” (4:11–12).
“To equip” in this context conveys more than simply teaching, modeling, directing, or exhorting.
God’s intended purpose for the equipping/leadership gifts is to call forth the full
expression of all the body parts according to God’s design. In a word, this is the work of
eduction. If divine self-dispensing is grace, then eduction, the calling forth of the divine
in others through self-dispensing attention is a means for grace multiplied.
To thus prioritize eduction entails a profound shift from common assumptions about the
nature of Christian leadership: from leader as the source and sustainer of God’s work to
leader as the attentive supporter and co-learner of God’s work as it is being revealed in
the world, in people, and in the myriad ways God has of disclosing his purposes. Leaders
function as stewards, not simply in name, but in practice under the conviction that the
household wherein they work is not theirs, and the vision they are to enact is most reliably
discovered together under the Master. To say it differently, the work of these leaders is a
stewarding of stewards, each of whom may hear from the Master to the benefit of the
family and its mission. 28
So in an economy of grace, while various kinds of oversight are affirmed, it must be
emphasized that eductive stewardship is not limited to any sub-group. Rather it is a core
value that permeates the lifestyle and belongs to every member. As John Howard Yoder
puts it:
28
[Paul] . . . proclaims that in the midst of a fallen world the grace of God has apportioned
to every one, without merit, a renewed potential for dignity in complementarity. This is
not an anti-structural stance; it is the affirmation of a structure analogous to the human
organism. God has done this not by making everyone the same, but by empowering each
member differently although equally. 29
The work of building up the body is owned by every family member on behalf of every
other family member—in keeping with the development, capacity, and calling of each.
Peter makes this explicit: “Each one should use whatever gift (charisma) he or she has
received to serve others, as good stewards (oikonomoi) of the multiform grace (charis) of
God” (1 Pet 4:10).
A steward, by definition, operates in the context of an economy. This thought is a natural
extension of the household/kingdom teaching of Jesus and his call to faithful stewardship
for each of his followers.
What, then is the primary function of good stewardship? To cultivate a household that
in every respect is aligning with the Master’s intention. Paradoxically, the household itself,
comprised as it is of the multifaceted graces of God, is both a primary means of
28 Paul’s own practice aligned with this vision for leadership: “Paul made the ‘common work’ (ergon) the ‘core
which guaranteed unity,’ not his own person. Paul himself was ‘coworker’ in this endeavor (1 Cor 3:9), and he
treated other coworkers as mature and autonomous partners, not as his assistants.” Gerhard Lohfink, Jesus and
Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith, trans. John P. Galvin (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 119. “We
are not lords over your faith, but coworkers on your joy” (2 Cor 1:24).
29 John Howard Yoder, Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World (Nashville:
Discipleship Resources, 1992), 55.

ECONOMY OF GRACE
discovery and the key to embody the Master’s intention in each case. 30 The wisdom and
dispensed power to do God’s will are already present in the church, however latent.
Economy of Grace as the Context of Mission
The earliest Christian mission deeply embraced a vision for life in God’s household economy
of grace. This is well confirmed by the shape that the mission’s communities took
over the following centuries. Joseph Hellerman concludes his substantial study of The
Ancient Church as Family with this observation:
From first century Palestine to third century Carthage, the social matrix most central to
early Christian conceptions of community was the surrogate kinship group of siblings who
understood themselves to be the sons and daughters of God. For the early Christians, the
church was family. 31
The family Hellerman is describing, the “surrogate kinship group,” was an extended
family typically based in the home of a nuclear family, but developing a more diverse
membership over time. 32 As Jesus anticipated, these groups were not merely a metaphorical
family of brothers and sisters. Rather, they became the functional family replacement
for those who had “lost father and mother, homes and lands” for the sake of Christ.
That is to say, they saw themselves as a real family with God as their common Father, and
they treated each other as real siblings. 33 Unlike natural families, however, these groups
were often remarkably non-homogeneous—a living demonstration of the multifaceted
wisdom of God. 34
Karl Sandnes, in A New Family, writes extensively of the vital role these families played in
making it possible for people in the ancient world to consider a new life as Christians and,
having become converts to Christian faith, to survive and thrive in that new life. He concludes:
“The family vocabulary was not only a matter of language; it was put into practice.
The Christians considered themselves brothers and sisters, and lived accordingly.” 35
30 The call for mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21 ff.) can be read in very similar ways as the working out of
church as economy of grace. In each case—wives and husbands, slaves and masters, children and parents—
the reader is called to the way of profound love and respect for the other in light of a shared reality: both parties
belong to the same Master’s household and bear the imprint of the Master’s grace.
31 Joseph Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 225.
32 “The conversion of the head of the household established a new social unit, basically identical with the
family. It is perhaps more correct to say, not the creation of a new social unit, but the transforming of a family
into a congregation—a household community.” Karl Sandnes, A New Family: Conversion and Ecclesiology in the
Early Church with Cross-Cultural Comparisons, Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 91 (Bern:
Peter Lang, 1994), 182.
33 A vivid description of such a graced family appears at the outset of the post-Easter mission: “And great
grace was on them all, for there was no one needy among them, because the owners of land and houses were
selling them . . . and the proceeds were distributed to each as anyone had need” (Acts 4:33–35). This text illustrates
the multidimensional and concrete way the early community understood grace to encompass all they
had received from God—as concrete as lands and houses and money.
34 “The house church provides one very important explanation for how it was possible for Christianity to succeed
in integrating individuals from such different social backgrounds into one cohesive unit.” Gehring, 293.
35 Sandnes, 181. This, of course, merely reflects the steady teaching of the early church, e.g., “Be devoted
to one another with mutual affection (family love—philostorgia), outdoing each other in showing honor” (Rom
12:10).
29

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32
The degree to which these surrogate families functioned as powerful witnesses to the
“multifaceted wisdom of God” and the in-breaking of God’s kingdom is often attested to
in antiquity by the off-handed observations of their detractors. For example, in AD 360
the last pagan Roman emperor, Julian, laments to a pagan high-priest:
30
Why do we not observe that it is their [the Christians] benevolence to strangers, their care
for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done the most
to increase atheism? . . . When . . . the impious Galileans support not only their own poor,
but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us. 36
Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the witnessing power of these household communities
is the relentless pace at which Christianity permeated the Roman empire, despite
an array of opposition. 37 As Sandnes noted: “An individual who sought for and
really needed a family-like fellowship had good reason to expect that he/she would find
a sheltering home here. . . . This might furnish a partial explanation for why Christianity
grew so rapidly in its earliest history.” 38
The concrete expression of the household economy of grace was a day-by-day family
experience of sharing in every significant dimension of life. Such tangible philadelphia,
“brotherly love,” in the early church produced a durable and inviting affirmation of its
divine source. As J. H. Elliott observes, “Households thus constituted the focus, locus and
nucleus of the ministry and mission of the Christian movement.” 39
CONCLUSION
In this study we have explored the idea developed in Ephesians of the church as God’s
economy of grace, designed, in the fullness of time, to disclose God’s multifaceted wisdom.
By thus establishing God’s household rule among people, the divine desire is being
fulfilled to bring all things together in Jesus Christ.
This idea, taken seriously, has profound worldview implications that frame our understanding
of the missionary enterprise. In concluding I want to reflect briefly on those
implications as they intersect with Vulnerable Mission.
First, if we take seriously that God is the one forming the family of God, at both the universal
and local level, then we would expect to find certain capacities in people who have
the specific stewardship of bringing the news of the kingdom to new pockets of people.
These stewards are the “sent ones,” designated in English as apostles and missionaries,
depending on our preference for the Greek or Latin root.
At this point especially the commitments of Vulnerable Mission play a vital role. These
cross-cultural workers must have the capacity to discern those “people of peace” in the
local culture who are ready to receive their message. Having discovered such people, the
36 Julian, Letter to Arsacius.
37 Relentless, but not especially quick. Rodney Stark, with others, places the growth rate of the early Christian
movement between 2.5 and 3.4 percent annually from AD 40 to 350. Cities of God: The Real Story of How
Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006), 67–69.
38 Sandnes, 183.
39 J. H. Elliott, A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy (Philadelphia,
Fortress, 1981), 188.

ECONOMY OF GRACE
missionaries must be prepared to receive the hospitality of those people, entering their
context with the vulnerable gifts of dependency and some degree of linguistic/cultural
competence.
Secondly, as the persons of peace understand and receive the gospel, they have, as a
matter of course, the stewardship of sharing the good news and calling forth the graces
of those within their own extended circle of influence. A new family of Jesus forms. In
this phase, concerns for linguistic and cultural competence are diminished, since this
competence within the household may normally be safely assumed. Similarly, questions
of economic disparity are mitigated by first-hand knowledge of the parties involved and
the growing philadelphia of the forming family.
Thirdly, as this nascent economy of grace begins to demonstrate the fruit of divine life
within their household, the news naturally spreads among their extended relational networks.
Here again, because the economy of grace has formed within the local culture
with local servant leadership, the message is inherently well contextualized.
While this outline is clearly an idealized description, it nevertheless recapitulates a message
and process that can be traced from the mission of Jesus through the pre-Easter
mission of the apostles and on through the expanding mission of the church in its early
centuries.
Against this backdrop, Vulnerable Mission clearly has an important, even vital role in the
ongoing task of bringing the gospel to unreached peoples. At the same time that role
must be seen as one dimension of the broader mission enterprise, which for the earliest
Christians was the outworking of the multifaceted wisdom of God in and through the
church. Apart from a clear self-understanding by the missionaries of their role as stewards
in the story of divine initiative, the graces of Vulnerable Mission may well lose their
value in service of the kingdom. Missionaries come in vulnerability and in strength; in
human weakness and divine power. In other words, the practices of Vulnerable Mission
find their great usefulness in the service of God’s in-breaking economy of grace, in the
formation of vibrant families of Jesus that display the multifaceted wisdom of God.
When that economy of grace is released in a new pocket of people through the faithful
stewardship of missionaries, we draw closer to God’s ultimate purpose in Jesus Christ.
That process, the early Christians believed, will see the consummation of God’s delight
when those of “every kinship, tongue, tribe, and people” gather for celebration with the
eternal family.
Dr. Kent Smith has taught in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University since 1991. His teaching
and research focus has been in the area of spiritual nurture systems, especially as they relate to new expressions of
church. He directs ACU’s graduate internship in missional leadership and the Missionary Residency for North America
(MRNA) and has been a trainer for international mission teams over 20 years with ACU’s Halbert Institute for Missons.
Kent can be contacted at smithpk@acu.edu.
31

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 21–32
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bauer, Walter, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich,
eds. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature.
3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Duffy, Stephen. The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology. New Theology
Studies 3. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993.
Elliott, J. H. A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy.
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1981.
Gehring, Roger. House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early
Christianity. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004.
Hellerman, Joseph H. The Ancient Church as Family. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2001.
Hutson, Christopher. “Enough for What? Playacting Isaiah 53 in Luke 22:35–38.”
Restoration Quarterly 55, no.1 (January 2013): 35–51.
Jeremias, Joachim. New Testament Theology. New York: Scribners, 1971.
Kenneson, Philip. “Visible Grace: The Church as God’s Embodied Presence.” In
Grace Upon Grace: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Langford, ed. Robert K. Johnston, L.
Gregory Jones, and Jonathan R. Wilson, 169–79. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999.
Lohfink, Gerhard. Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith. Translated
by John P. Galvin Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.
Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob, ed. New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. 5 vols. Nash-
ville: Abingdon, 2006–2009.
Sandnes, Karl Olav. A New Family: Conversion and Ecclesiology in the Early Church with
Cross-Cultural Comparisons. Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums
91. Bern: Peter Lang, 1994.
Snodgrass, Klyne. Ephesians. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1996.
Stark, Rodney. Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement
and Conquered Rome. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006.
Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church: A Clear, Detailed Introduction to the Orthodox Church
Written for the Non-Orthodox as Well as for Orthodox Chrisitans Who Wish to Know More about
Their Own Tradition. New York: Penguin, 1993.
Yoder, John Howard. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching
World. Nashville: Discipleship Resource, 1992.
32

Unveiling Empire: Ecclesial Resistance to
Global Capitalism
DaviD Pritchett
This essay argues that globalism retains the same qualities that defined ancient and modern empires. The
all-pervading boundarylessness of capitalist enterprise is analogous to the Rome of Paul’s day, and in his
first letter to the Thessalonian church Christians can find and appropriate his advice for living in the midst
of empire. The virtues required of disciples today to live faithfully in empire are a reimagination of the
vows taken by St. Francis: obedience, poverty, and chastity. By taking on these disciplines, followers can
begin to root out the ways empire makes claims on their lives and resubmit themselves to the way of Jesus.
Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” is a familiar tale
to most Westerners. The story goes that a monarch with a penchant for finery
searches for the most luxuriant, expensive clothing he can find. In the midst of his shopping
about for tailors who can fulfill this aristocratic need, he is approached by two such
craftsmen promising to sew the most lavish linens possible. The plot of the story turns
upon the clever assertion of the tailors, that the clothing remains invisible to those either
unworthy of their office, on the one hand, or those, on the other, who are mere fools.
Thus, as the swindling tailors daily pretend they are busy at work sewing a fine suit, the
king and his court dare not question the invisible clothing, for such would be a confession
of foolishness and unworthiness. Finally, the tailors announce that the suit is ready
and mime the dressing of the king, who then parades about the streets in the nude. The
matrix of pride and self-deception work their magic not only in the emperor’s court, but
also in the streets, and the crowds of people proclaim their amazement at the finery of
the monarch’s attire. However, the spell is finally broken by a child, who, unburdened by
the need for social standing, shouts that the emperor is indeed naked. Once the elephant
in the room has been spoken, the crowd’s whispers turn into a roar as they all guffaw in
amazement at the emperor’s narcissistic nakedness.
Our world is in a state of undress much more insipid and tyrannical than the blunderings
of the monarch in Andersen’s story. Indeed, the fabric of globo-capital enterprise stands
as the new empire, having neither boundary nor regulation. However, the ideology of
this new empire stays true to the old story; globo-capitalist culture retains the character
ascribed to ancient Rome by the historian Tacitus:
Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle
the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion;
neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet
with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying
name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace. 1
In our day, global capitalism displays similar disregard for both peoples and land. For
instance, in 1995, pharmaceutical company Pfizer tested their drug Trovan on children
in Kano State, Nigeria. Half of the patients in the study were treated with ceftriaxone,
1 Tacitus, Agricola, 30.
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
the gold standard treatment for meningitis, and the other half were given the experimental
drug Trovan. After eleven children died in the trial (and the ethics of such drug
trials on children notwithstanding), parents claimed they were not informed that their
children were being treated with an experimental drug. 2 Pfizer, claiming their practices
were ethical, fought the suit in court, and, according to a Wikileaks cable, investigated
the prosecuting attorney in order to pressure him to stop the legal action against the drug
company. 3
An even more disturbing example of corporate misdeed is that of the technology firm,
Foxconn Electronics, which builds parts for Apple iPads as well as Hewlett-Packard
printers. Reports reveal the firm hung netting around the dormitories where company
employees sleep, in order to discourage suicide attempts. 4 While no one can say for certain
why fourteen workers jumped to their death in 2011, 5 it may have to do with hours
worked by employees, some of whom worked over 100 hours of overtime in one month.
In light of this, Foxconn’s tripartite business philosophy, consisting of “efficient ‘Total
Cost Advantages,’” “revolutionizing the conventional inefficient electronics outsourcing
model,” and “devotion to greater social harmony” 6 seems rather weighted against the
latter. The “revolutionizing model,” it seems, is a suicide machine.
In the first part of this essay, I further articulate how global capitalism functions as empire,
engaging secular philosophers, political theorists, and theologians. In the second
section of the essay, I suggest that in the writings of Paul we have resources to engage
empire. Finally, I will suggest a theo-political response to our current situation of empire
for disciples, including some suggestions for a post-imperial missiology.
NAKED EMPIRE
A sculpted relief at Aphrodisias in Asia Minor symbolically shows the power and terror
of the Pax Romana. The relief features a male figure framing the top of the sculpture,
nude, with the exception of a helmet on his head and a cape billowing behind him. On
the ground below him lies a woman, right breast bared, hips on the ground, and torso
raised. The male is grabbing her head with his left hand, and appears to be violently
holding it up; his right arm is raised, and, though the relief is broken, appears to have
been wielding a sword. The figures are identified as the Emperor Claudius and the
woman as the nation of Britannia, Rome’s most significant exploit during his reign.
34
2 Sarah Coleman, “Pfizer Scandal,” World Press Review 48, no. 4 (April 2001): http://www.worldpress.
org/Africa/1190.cfm.
3 Sarah Boseley, “WikiLeaks Cables: Pfizer ‘Used Dirty Tricks to Avoid Clinical Trial Payout,’ ” The Guardian,
December 9, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-cables-pfizernigeria.
4 Joel Johnson, “Exclusive Look: Where the Workers Who Made Your iPhone Sleep at Night,” Gizmodo,
November 2, 2010, http://gizmodo.com/5678732/exclusive-look-where-the-workers-who-madeyour-iphone-sleep-at-night.
5 Agence France-Presse, “Another Foxconn Worker Falls to Death in China,” November 5, 2010,
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gVpxURLNdLO4j2Cw6pfmQBl-
_66g?docId=CNG.ac8be947f825bdf62b039d0d552a4bc4.b1.
6 Foxconn, “Business Philosophy,” About Foxconn, http://www.foxconn.com/ManageConcept.html.

UNVEILING EMPIRE
Of course, in this setting, the emperor’s nudity shows not his incompetence, but rather
his heroic strength. 7 The relief makes clear through its hierarchical imagery the power of
Rome, embodied in the emperor himself. Thus, above is to below as man is to woman as
Rome is to the nations as conqueror is to conquered. 8 Further, the partial nudity of both
figures, man and woman, suggests undertones of sexual violence. In this instance, the
rape of Britannia is both figurative and literal; as Tacitus tells us, one of the grievances
the woman warrior Boudicca names against the Romans is that “nowadays Roman rapacity
does not even spare our bodies. Old people are killed, virgins are raped.” 9 As I
intend to show in the following section, the rape of Britannia described above reveals the
lust for domination lying at the heart of empire.
While empire is a term frequently employed in political and philosophical discussions, it
avoids easy definition. Political scientist Herfried Münkler describes a few characteristics
of empires, analyzing empires from ancient Rome to modern nation-states:
First, “Imperial boundaries . . . involve gradations of power and influence”: that is, there is a structural
difference between imperial and nonimperial space.
Second, “Imperiality . . . dissolves . . . equality and reduces subordinates to the status of client states or
satellites”: that is, international relations are not between equals, but between a “center”
and a “periphery.”
Third, “Most empires have owed their existence to a mixture of chance and contingency”: that is, there
need not be a “will to empire” (i.e., “imperialism”) or a “grand strategy,” but rather, a series
of circumstances that lead to increased power and control of people and/or territory.
Fourth, “The capacity for reform and regeneration . . . makes an empire independent of the charismatic
qualities of its founder (or founding generation)”: that is, there is temporal continuity that transcends
the original situation that generated the empire.
Fifth, “An empire cannot remain neutral in relation to the powers in its sphere of influence”: that is, it
cannot allow either independence or nonparticipation without retaliation. 10
These five aspects provide a good frame for descriptive purposes; however, they fail insofar
as they do not account for nonpolitical entities which still exert massive control
over economics and the daily lives of individuals. 11 For instance, a corporate entity such
7 Christopher Hallett, The Roman Nude: Heroic Portrait Statuary 200 B.C. to A.D. 300, Oxford Studies in Ancient
Culture and Representation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
8 Davina Lopez, Apostle to the Conquered: Reimagining Paul’s Mission, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2008), 42–48.
9 Tacitus, Annals, trans. Michael Grant (New York: Dorset Press, 1984), cited in Neil Elliott, The Arrogance of
Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 184.
10 Herfried Münkler, Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, trans. Patrick
Camiller (Maldon, MA: Polity Press, 2007), 4–14. I use the quotes and summaries provided by Wes Howard-
Brook, retaining his emphasis, in “Come Out, My People!”: God’s Call out of Empire in the Bible and Beyond (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 2010), 8.
11 To be sure, traditional nation-states still wield immense power. The nations of the Global North, in particular,
use military strength across the globe in order to pursue their interests. I assume that readers of this essay
are familiar with imperial tendencies of modern nation-states. For critiques of the nation-state, especially in
regard to war-making, see Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the
State Back In, ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985), 169–87, and William Cavanaugh, “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State Is
35

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
as Google might compete for power in its technological sphere, similar to characteristic
number five above, but it would require semantic bending to assert that Google has
“client states.” Because of this, philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri assert
that empire of today is unlike Rome in that it has no centralized government or military
power; this is why the United States, despite its military strength, cannot control the
Middle East or other parts of the globe. 12
Political and corporate lines increasingly blur in today’s world. This was manifestly
clear when, on the evening after the attacks on the World Trade Center, then President
George W. Bush declared to the world, “the American economy will be open for business.”
The subtext of such a statement is that “you can’t hurt us as long as people keep
buying,” which reveals that true power lies in corporate stocks. In poorer countries,
corporations have more direct influence. Naomi Klein notes that the economic power
which companies yield give them the ability to dictate public policy, particularly in the
factory-dependent countries of Asia. 13 The mercenary corporation Blackwater took the
power over life usually reserved for the state in its proceedings in Iraq, while the networking
capability of Twitter has been celebrated as crucial to the recent popular uprisings
across the Middle East and Africa. 14 For this reason, I follow Hardt and Negri in their
proposal:
36
Along with the global market and global circuits of production has emerged a global order,
a new logic and structure of rule—in short, a new form of sovereignty. Empire is the
political subject that effectively regulates these global exchanges, the sovereign power that
governs the world. 15
Hardt and Negri note that empire, as they view it, is founded ultimately upon boundarylessness.
This boundarylessness has four qualities. First, they emphasize that this global
empire has no spatial limits. As we have seen, corporate power moves fluidly throughout the
earth with little resistance from traditional nation-state sovereignties. The Coca Cola
company is one example of such borderlessness. I myself can attest that its products can
be found from the epicenters of New York and Rome to the equatorial jungles of Kenya
and the deserts of Mexico and Mali. Recent Coca Cola advertisements in the United
States even show polar bears drinking Coca Cola in the Arctic. Second, Hardt and Negri
explain, empire presents itself with no “temporal boundaries” as the end of history. Francis
Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man, a celebration of Western liberal
democracy, effectively displays this arrogance. 16 Third, Hardt and Negri assert that empire
is the “paradigmatic form of biopower,” seeking to rule life in its entirety. They later explain
that biopower “is a form of power that regulates social life from its interior, following it,
not the Keeper of the Common Good,” Modern Theology 20, no. 2 (April 2004): 243–74.
12 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, “Afterword,” Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political
Status Quo, ed. Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008), 309.
13 Naomi Klein, No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (New York: Picador, 1999), 227.
14 Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books,
2007). On Twitter’s role in Tunisia, see “The First Twitter Revolution?” in Foreign Policy, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/14/the_first_twitter_revolution,
accessed 3/15/2012.
15 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), xi.
16 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992).

UNVEILING EMPIRE
interpreting it, absorbing it, and articulating it.” 17 While missiologists might find biopower
strikingly similar to “worldview,” biopower connotes an element of createdness.
Worldview or culture are generally considered passive concepts—no one entity makes
worldview, rather all participate in it—while biopower has an active component. It assumes
both an active party and recipients. When a company advertises for its product,
seeking to create demand in consumers, or when a government dictates certain behaviors
or modes of thinking, these are instances of biopower. A good example of biopower
is in Orwell’s classic, 1984. In this dystopian novel, the main character, Winston Smith,
tries to rebel against an authoritarian state led by a larger-than-life persona, Big Brother,
who decries individuality and reason as thought crimes. Smith is eventually captured
and tortured psychologically. Finally, the novel ends with a brain-washed Smith realizing,
“it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory
over himself. He loved Big Brother.” 18 Biopower strives toward this telos—a political
subject who, shaped by the forces of empire around her, desires that which the empire
wants. The final quality, Hardt and Negri note, is that “although the practice of Empire
is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace—a perpetual
and universal peace outside of history.” 19 This dedication to peace gives empire its mission.
As Münkler notes, mission serves as a self-sacralizing virtue for empire, expanding
its necessity beyond the interests of any private actors, as well as providing a theory of
ends to justify any means needed to accomplish such a task. 20 This mantra of “peace and
security” will be discussed further below.
Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat suggest four characteristics as definitive for empires. 21
First, empires are built on systemic centralization of power. This is related to both the first and
second characteristics that Münkler describes, in dissolving equality and in gradating
power. While Hardt and Negri contend that empire today is marked by decentralization,
this does not necessarily contradict Walsh and Keesmaat, for indeed there are multiple
centers of power that both compete and work together. Second, they are secured by
structures of socioeconomic and military control. This characteristic relates to Münkler’s first,
second, and fifth characteristics, and in fact, it is the control secured by military and
economic forces that give empire, in Münkler’s definition, the ability to retain power.
Third, they are religiously legitimated by powerful myths. For instance, one common American
myth is that of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps”—in other words, if you are
poor, it is your own fault for not working hard enough—everyone can be successful if
they want to. This myth undermines the notion that economically successful individuals
or companies may have become so by disadvantaging others, as well as bolstering the
idea of the lazy poor. Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand” of the market which
self-regulates wealth represents another common myth supporting the increasingly unregulated
capital of the elite. Fourth, empires are sustained by imperial images that capture the
imagination of the population. In ancient times, these images were distributed via sculpture,
17 Ibid., 23–24.
18 George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Plume, 2003), 308.
19 Hardt and Negri, Empire, xiv–xv.
20 Münkler, 85.
21 Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity
Press, 2004), 58.
37

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
architecture, and coinage. 22 In the Roman Empire, the dying Gaul was the image of
the archetypal barbarian, while now Hollywood takes up the mantle by creating villains
to match the political climate. 23 Today, the ubiquity of advertisement is easy enough to
see: from television to billboards to user-specific internet advertisement, empire takes
captive the imaginations of the populace to serve its own economic interests. These last
two characteristics—myths and imagery—are missing from Münkler’s defining features,
while they relate to Hardt and Negri’s concept of biopower. In fact, imagination may
be a better term than biopower, for in the “capture of imagination,” subjects can be
manipulated toward certain ends by their own will rather than external force. This is the
very heart of biopower.
The language of empire, as we have seen, is at times ambiguous and fraught with abstraction.
Many institutions, from political states to corporations, can display qualities of
empire. This aspect of empire as a qualitative term relates to theologian Walter Wink’s
discussion of the language of the powers in the New Testament. He argues that the various
words for powers in Scripture refer at the same time to both spiritual and material
realities, and that these realities are not different, but rather, “simultaneously the outer
and inner aspects of one and the same indivisible concretion of power.” 24
To conclude, I suggest that empire is an inner aspect of many external realities which
function together in a global network of power relations. Various institutions (governments
and supra-governmental organizations, like the IMF or NATO) work with
the help of ideologies (e.g., capitalism, progress, democracy, and security) to create a
boundaryless empire. There is no one epicenter to this empire, rather, it has many foci,
from the economic centers of London, New York, and Tokyo to the military nexi of
the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the Israel Defense Force in Tel Aviv. Internetbased
Facebook, Twitter, and Google further function as gathering points through social
technology. These epicenters of power are bolstered by a combination of military and
socioeconomic structures, as well as biopower in the form of foundational myths with imagery
supporting these myths.
RHETORICAL INTIFADA
In the global economy, it is not the emperors who are stripped of their decency. In a version
of the story “Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils,” Alphonse Allais shows this
with striking imagery. As Salome the dancer removes her veils one by one, king Herod,
overcome with desire, keeps crying out, “go on, go on,” until Salome, already naked,
begins to rip the flesh from her body. “Listen,” cries the prophet Micah, “you . . . who
38
22 Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Jerome Lectures 16 (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1988).
23 For description of the Gaul as the archenemy of Rome in visual art and literature, see Brigitte Kahl,
Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished, Paul in Critical Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2010). For Hollywood’s treatment of contemporary villains, see, for instance, Helena Vanhala, The Depiction
of Terrorists in Blockbuster Hollywood Films, 1980–2001: An Analytical Study (Jefferson, NC: McFarland Press, 2011),
and Jack Shaheen’s Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (Brooklyn: Olive Branch Press, 2001).
24 Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1984), 107.

UNVEILING EMPIRE
tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones” (3:1–2; niv). Emperors, and
the empires they serve, have a consuming appetite.
Understanding the prophets of ancient Israel as critical of the elites of their day has
been easy enough throughout Christian history. More recently there has been a wave of
scholarship reading New Testament Scripture through eyes focused on issues of empire.
I will use this empire-critical lens to read what scholars consider Paul’s earliest letter, 1
Thessalonians, as a text with clear rhetoric against the empire of his day—Rome.
We learn about Paul’s missionary activity in Thessalonica via a short passage from Acts.
After Paul and company made some converts in the synagogue, Jewish leaders became
jealous and stirred up a crowd. Unable to find Paul and Silas, the crowd captured some
new believers and took them before the politarchs (city officials), with the accusation that
they were stirring up trouble as well as defying the dogmas of Caesar (Acts 17:1–9).
Thessalonica had a long history of loyalty to Rome. Its support of Octavian and Antony
paid off when Thessalonica was given status as a free Roman city in 42 BC. 25 This freedom
gave Thessalonica ability to rule itself free of military occupation, and even could
mint its own coins. Because of this, Thessalonica, by all evidence, worked with intention
to keep strong ties to Rome. Coinage from 29 to 28 BC shows Thessalonians honoring
Julius Caesar as a god; later, Augustus was inducted to this rank as well, considered “divi
filius,” the son of a deity. 26 A statue of Augustus, as well as a temple to him , were installed
in the city, and are dated to the time of Paul. 27 The installation of a priesthood for the
goddess Roma both acknowledged the divine status of Rome’s power, as well as intimately
linked the inhabitants of the city to that power. 28 As Charles Wanamaker notes,
“politically, the establishment of the imperial cult made good sense because it cemented
Thessalonica’s relations with Rome and the emerging imperial order.” 29
Further, E. A. Judge has shown that the politarchs of the city—to whom the angered
crowd took Paul’s converts—were responsible for ensuring loyalty to Caesar and his decrees.
An example of such an oath taken from Paphlagonia reads as follows:
I swear . . . that I will support Caesar Augustus, his children and descendants, throughout
my life, in word, deed and thought…that in whatsoever concerns them I will spare neither
body nor soul nor life nor children…that whenever I see or hear of anything being said,
planned or done against them I will report it . . . and whomsoever they regard as enemies
I will attack and pursue with arms and the sword by land and sea. 30
Another oath of allegiance, this one to Tiberius, pledged reverence and obedience to
the new Caesar. 31 Finally, Judge cites an inscription suggesting that the local authorities
25 Ben Witherington, 1 and 2 Thessalonians: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 3.
26 Charles Wanamaker, The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, The New International
Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 5.
27 Witherington, 5.
28 Karl Paul Donfried, Paul, Thessalonica, and Early Christianity (New York: T&T Clark, 2002), 36.
29 Wanamaker, 5.
30 Edwin A. Judge, “The Decrees of Caesar at Thessalonica,” Reformed Theological Review 30 (1971): 6.
31 Ibid., 7.
39

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
had the responsibility to manage violations of the loyalty oaths. 32 This evidence suggests
that there was in Thessalonica an ideology of the Roman empire which Paul’s message
threatened.
In fact, the Acts account tells us what that message was: there is a new emperor, one
called Jesus (Acts 17:7). A quick survey of 1 Thessalonians tells us more about this “ideological
intifada” 33 which Paul and Silas were proclaiming. First, we note that Paul remembers
the opposition to the gospel he preached (1 Thess 2:2). This antagonism was
to the subversive nature of his counter-imperial gospel. As Dieter Georgi reminds us,
the strongest correlation to Paul’s use of euangelion is the Priene inscription. Relevant text
from this inscription reads as follows:
40
Providence . . . has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus . . . sending him as a
savior (sotēr), both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all
things . . . and since the birthday of the god Augustus was the good tidings (euangelion) for
the world. 34
If this text represents a normative association of good tidings with the birthday of Augustus,
called a god, then we can understand why indeed there was hostility to another
gospel, one proclaiming Jesus as savior and Lord (kyrios). The Greeks had a long history
of naming their current ruler as savior, 35 while Deissmann notes that kyrios was used to
denote a Roman emperor at least from the time of Nero, though probably from Augustus
onward. 36 Further, God has called the Thessalonian believers into his own kingdom
(1 Thess 2:12). Again, such statements about another kingdom threaten the imperial
rule of Rome, who throughout history were known to crush opposition. 37 Moving to
chapter four of the letter, we have the political terms parousia and apantēsis, the former
denoting the visit of a royal official, and the latter word describing the entourage of dignified
citizens who would greet such an official. 38 This specific political terminology highlights
that Jesus is the new royalty. Finally, we come to Paul’s mockery of Rome’s “peace
and security” (1 Thess 5:3; nrSv), which Donfried calls a “frontal attack” on the early
Principate. 39 The peace and security mantra of Rome epitomizes imperial propaganda
in the face of its “permanent crisis of legitimation.” 40 According to historiographer Ernst
Bammel, “Everywhere that Rome makes an appearance, the provision of peace and se-
32 Ibid., 7.
33 Original to Mark Chmiel, this phrase is cited in Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics
of the Apostle (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 189.
83.
34 Dieter Georgi, Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology, trans. David Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991),
35 Kahl, 68, notes that this term was taken by Attalus, the Pergamene ruler, as early as 240 BC, and the title
was used of his successors in Asia Minor as well.
36 Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the
Graeco-Roman World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 351–58.
37 Kahl, 53.
38 Donfried, 34. Georgi, 27, notes that this welcoming has already happened in one sense, in the Thessalonian
believers’ welcoming of God’s ambassador, Paul.
39 Donfried, 34.
40 Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1992), cited in Elliott, Liberating Paul, 185.

UNVEILING EMPIRE
curity is made to justify the loss of autonomy and more than compensate for all the initial
terrors.” 41 Thus, Rome’s peace was secured through military victory and the threat of
violence, which explains why Augustus built his forum around the temple to Mars, god
of war. 42 For Paul, this peace and security is an imperial illusion. Peace comes from God
(1 Thess 5:23), not an imperial benefactor.
The new believers are to be an assembly gathered in the name of God and his son Jesus
Christ rather than Julius Caesar and his divine son Augustus. 43 While the politarchs are
obliged to act on their loyalties—ones the Thessalonian disciples may have once had!—
the new converts now have different allegiances. Because of this, Paul urges his new
believers to live in certain ways. They turned from idols (1 Thess 1:9); both idolatrous
images of the Roma and her divine Caesars, as well as the mystic cults of the city. 44 However,
they are experiencing persecutions (1:6), no doubt similar to the very reason Paul
and Silas fled the city as political subversives. Paul offers strong apocalyptic language as
an antidote to this persecution; because of the ultimate lordship of Christ, he encourages
believers to resist the pursuit of power through association with Rome. Instead, they
should continue to practice faith and love (3:6). Faith was an imperial virtue, binding
subject to conqueror. For instance, Augustus claims in his Res Gestae that, through him,
the nations experienced the “good faith of the Roman people.” 45 Paul understands that
true faith is shown by sacrifice, not violence or fear. Further, the church should practice
an economics which goes against the local grain. Wanamaker suggests that economic
elites in Thessalonica encouraged cultic allegiance to Rome in order to benefit from
such close ties. 46 In the midst of this atmosphere of seeking power through benefaction,
Paul tells the disciples to practice economic independence and lead a quiet life (4:11–12).
Such anarchic practice enables the converts to speak more freely, as they do not need
the largesse of the ruling elite, who depend on their associations with Rome for their
economic and political success. 47 The disciples themselves should model peace (5:13), but
not that of Rome that comes with military might. Rather they should not repay wrong
for wrong, but work for the common good (5:15). Finally, they should be of critical mind,
discerning good from evil (5:21–22). This practice helps the disciples navigate the ways
empire seeks to co-opt their imaginations through ritual and imagery.
SKETCHES TOWARD A MISSIOLOGY OF RESISTANCE
In the Spanish fable on which Andersen based his story, the tailors declare that the clothing
cannot be seen by someone of illegitimate parentage, making their ploy dependent
41 Ernst Bammel, “Romans 13,” in Jesus and the Politics of his Day, ed. Ernst Bammel and C. F. D. Moule,
365–84 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), cited in Elliott, Liberating Paul, 186.
42 Kahl, 129.
43 Donfried, 143.
44 Donfried, 22–37.
45 Cited in Elliott, Arrogance, 29.
46 See his discussion on pages 5, 11–13.
47 Elliott, Arrogance, 32, cites G. E. M. de Ste. Croix observing that local elite welcomed Roman rule which
kept down popular resistance movements.
41

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
upon social class and lineage. 48 In this version, it is a black man who already has no social
position and so has nothing to lose who breaks the spell of the tailors and utters, “to me it
matters not whose son I am, therefore I tell you that you are riding without any clothes,”
informing the king of his true state. Whether the child in Andersen’s story, with little
notion of the social mechanisms of honor and shame, or the black man of the Spanish
version, who is at the bottom of a race- and class-based economy, it is those at the margins
of the socio-political empire who can see clearly.
Anthropologist James C. Scott notes that societies tend to have what he calls a “public
transcript” between those in power and the dominated subordinates. This becomes
heavily ritualized with greater disparity between the elite and the oppressed, and masks
the intentions of both sides—that is, the public transcript functions as a display of power
and control for the ruling class, and disguises the true feelings of the lower class in performance
of deference. 49 However, at times this transcript is broken. According to Scott,
“the moment when the dissent of the hidden transcript crosses the threshold to open
resistance is always a politically charged occasion.” 50 When the oppressed can endure
no more, when the severity of life under the public transcript becomes as difficult as
the punishment for piercing the veil of subordination, or when like the black man in
the Spanish tale, the dominated simply have nothing to lose, the subjugated breech the
unspeakable and show their true beliefs. These moments change the ones who openly
resist the public transcript, and in fact, function as a conversion of sorts, insofar as they
give new life to the oppressed. For instance, Frederick Douglass writes after he stood up
to his master, “I was nothing before; I was a man now. . . . After resisting him, I felt as I
had never before. It was a resurrection.” 51
My conviction is that one of the central tasks of Christians today is to break the spell of
the public transcript—that is, to see empire for what it is, and to live and to speak against
it. For those of us from the global North who benefit from empire, this will be difficult.
Philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s distinction between the subjective and objective is helpful on
this point. He notes that Stalin’s daughter Svetlana wrote memoirs describing her father
as caring and warm, and propelled to mass murder mostly by his associate, Lavrenty
Beria. Some time later, Beria’s son Sergo similarly declared that his father was a compassionate
family man, who merely followed the orders of his terrible superior, Stalin. We
too, lie in this tension, as we benefit from the military-industrial complex that oppresses
others. Subjective experience perceives the technology of communication as benign, yet
the iPhones we communicate with were made by workers in suicidal conditions. Medicines
which heal us often are the products of unethical drug trials. Our Wal-Mart goods
are cheap because someone else works for extremely low wages. The point is, “the experience
that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in
order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie—the truth lies outside, in
what we do.” 52 Not only this, but we also think that we cannot live without what we now
42
48 Juan Manuel, Count Lucanor; or the Fifty Pleasant Stories of Patronio, trans. James York (London: Gibbings and
Co., 1899), ch. 7.
49 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1990), 2–3.
50 Ibid., 207.
51 Ibid., 208.
52 Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, Big Ideas/Small Books (New York: Picador, 2008), 47.

UNVEILING EMPIRE
have. As Wendell Berry declares, “the great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we
cannot change because we are dependent upon what is wrong. But that is the addict’s
excuse, and we know that it will not do.” 53
Undoing the roots of empire within and without requires the formation of communities
of disciples analogous to those Paul worked to establish. These communities, like the
ecclesia in Thessalonica, must live peaceably, practice a new economics, and work for the
common good of each other. Lenin allegedly said the following words on his deathbed:
I made a mistake. Without doubt the oppressed multitude had to be liberated. But our
method only provoked further oppression—and atrocious massacres. It is too late now to
alter the past—but what was needed to save Russia were ten Francis of Assisi’s. 54
This suggests that the quintessential Marxist revolutionary realized that material transformation
depends on inner conversion. Similarly, Ched Myers suggests that discipleship
communities should once again take up the spiritual disciplines of obedience, poverty,
and chastity used by Francis and his followers. 55
First, contends Myers, obedience should mark our mission. Obedience has to do with
the sphere of social relations. The evangelical question of the first-century ecclesia was,
“who is kyrios—Jesus, or Caesar?” What we learn from Paul is that submission to Jesus
as kyrios entails a concurrent resistance to Caesar, which is why, as tradition tells it, Paul
was executed by empire. The missiology of the church must recover submission to God
as a central theme of the gospel. This has importance on a communal plane as well.
That is, just as Christian anarchists understand the confession that “Jesus is Lord” means
that no one else can be, 56 so peaceableness between each other is predicated upon the
dissolution of social hierarchies within community. All are on an equal plane in relationship
to Christ. In this vein, discipleship communities have much to learn from Quaker
meetings which have experience in testing the common good by means of consensus
decision making.
Poverty relates to the sphere of economics. The discipline of poverty is helpful in many
ways. First, as Paul counseled the Thessalonians, economic self-sufficiency enables
Christians to free themselves from the yoke of empire. How can we practice this economic
independence? Kirkpatrick Sale offers some characteristics of sustainable local
economies.
Control over investment, production, sales, and development would promote economic
stability and provide insulation from the boom-and-bust cycles of distant market forces;
It would break dependence upon remote bureaucracies, transnational corporations, and
the “vortex of world-wide trade;”
53 Quoted in Ched Myers, Who Will Roll Away the Stone?: Discipleship Queries for First World Christians (Maryknoll:
Orbis Press, 1994), 161.
54 In Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel (Charlottesville,
VA: Imprint Academic, 2011), 171. The story itself seems to be a bit apocryphal, as there is no certain source
for this quote.
55 Myers, 181.
56 See, for instance, Mark Van Steenwyk, That Holy Anarchist: Reflections on Christianity and Anarchism (Minneapolis:
Missio Dei, 2012).
43

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
44
The trade balance would tend to be favorable because the economy would be geared to
local “import-replacements” rather than more expensive imports.
Locally controlled currency would provide quicker economic feedback and reinvestment
and could discourage accumulation and capital flight;
Local production would enhance overall health of residents because of reduced consumption
of toxic or nonnutritious industrially fabricated products. 57
This “economy of scale” (Myers’s term) is already practiced by many Christian communities,
like Catholic worker farms and Bruderhoffs, as well as secular ones. To carry out
this sort of economics, disciples need community. It is difficult to be self-sufficient alone.
Farmers, artisans, traders, and builders are all needed. A life of independence from the
infrastructure of empire will be challenging.
Paul encourages the Thessalonian church to promote hard work, and such is good
counsel for us as well. In the United States, the discipline of poverty relates also to the
war-making of our nation. One of the ways some Christian communities choose to be
prophetic is by refusing to pay federal taxes which fund the wars of the state. A common
method to do this is by simply living below the taxable income level. In this case,
the discipline of poverty keeps disciples free from imperial consumerism as well as the
blood-soaked peace of empire.
Finally, the discipline of chastity is that apocalyptic practice of critical analysis in the midst
of empire. Chastity has to do with boundary maintenance. As the boundarylessness of
empire pervades all parts of life, Paul’s warning to discern good from evil remains appropriate—and
perhaps even more difficult—for us today. Just as Jesus told his disciples on
the Mount of Olives to stay awake and keep watch, so too must we practice “insomniac
theology.” 58 Chastity helps us to remain watchful and critical of the myths which undergird
the power of empire. There is a Lacanian joke about a doctor whose friend asks
for medical advice. The doctor—unwilling to give advice without a fee—examines his
friend and tells him solemnly, “you need medical advice.” 59 Chastity gives us the ability
to resist corporate answers, and instead search for root causes of the symptoms of empire
in our lives. Though the myths prevail in the rhetoric of political pundits, corporate
ads, and pop writers like Thomas Friedman, disciples are called to discern the times and
critically discriminate between that which promotes the common good and that which
destroys it. We must use discretion in order that we do not proclaim the good tidings
of Jesus while our lives betray the lordship of corporations in our lives. An apocalyptic
theology, declares Ched Myers, must practice seeing what could be in the midst of what is. 60
The following are some concrete suggestions for practicing obedience, poverty, and chastity:
1. If obedience marks the relationships both of disciples to God and of disciples to
each other, then missionaries must dissolve the often hierarchical nature of mis-
57 Cited by Myers, 354.
58 Myers, 388.
59 Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes (London: Verso, 2008), 331.
60 Myers, 389–404.

UNVEILING EMPIRE
sions. Paul quite clearly describes living among the Thessalonian disciples and
working hard to do so. In contrast, many missionaries even today live in luxury
in comparison to their target population—walled compounds, expensive vehicles,
and imported foods are indicators of loyalty to empire rather than signs of solidarity
with fellow disciples. From the beginning, include converts and local disciples
in decision-making.
2. Practice downward mobilization in the pursuit of an economics of poverty. Plant
a garden, and eat from it. In doing so, one rejoins the agricultural cycle of the
energy that sustains us, and slashes the umbilical cord of empire that nourishes us
with its mass-produced food. This undercuts the empire’s myth of timelessness
that feeds us with tomatoes that are available year-round. As the global migration
to cities continues, it will be more and more difficult for urban communities to
practice self-sustainability, as land is the base for such an economy. Therefore, as
missionaries help those in cities to learn urban gardening, they must also attempt
to persuade those still in the countryside not to give up the “gift of good land,” 61 a
phrase coined by Wendell Berry. Use public transportation. This is inconvenient,
but puts the missionary in closer contact with the population she is allegedly serving.
Use the internet café to communicate with home. This alerts one to the real
costs of technology, and at least diminishes one’s participation in it.
3. The practice of chastity is a matter of boundary-keeping. Make it a practice to examine
the rhetoric of advertisements; find out the ways in which the corporations
are trying to capture the consumer’s imagination. Similarly, examine the myths
undergirding national holidays and events. These cultural rituals, often thought
of as benign, propagate subtle messages about empire. In the United States, the
patriotic holidays such as Independence Day and Veterans Day portray the nationstate
and its subjects as the prime benefactor, vying for disciples’ loyalty over their
commitments to Christ. Chastity means looking askance at the propaganda inherent
in the midst of such holidays.
I conclude this essay with a joke. There is an old psychoanalysis joke about a man who
thinks he is a seed of corn. After visiting his therapist for many sessions, the therapist tells
him he is cured, and can now go about his life free of this delusion. A week later, to the
therapist’s surprise, the man returns to the office. “What happened?” asks the therapist.
“I thought you had finally concluded you were not a seed!” “Yes, yes,” the man replies,
“the therapy worked for me. My problem is that I still don’t know how to convince the
chickens!” Like the psychological ailments of the man in this joke, the roots of empire
run deep, and resist easy conversion. My reading of 1 Thessalonians suggests that the
gospel call is not to convince the proverbial chickens, but rather to create communities
who model submission not to the empire of the day but to the cosmic lordship of Christ.
David Pritchett lives in North Manchester, Indiana, and works as a Physician Assistant. He spends free time reading
and growing vegetables.
61 Wendell Berry, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays, Cultural and Agricultural (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press,
1981), 267.
45

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 33–48
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Berry, Wendell. The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays, Cultural and Agricultural. Berkeley:
Counterpoint Press, 1981.
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Cavanaugh, William. “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State
Is not the Keeper of the Common Good.” Modern Theology 20, no. 2 (April 2004):
243–74.
Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre. Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel.
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Deissmann, Adolf. Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently
Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978.
Donfried, Karl. Paul, Thessalonica, and Early Christianity. New York: T&T Clarke, 2002.
Elliott, Neil. The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire. Paul in
Critical Contexts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010.
________. Liberating Paul: the Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 2006.
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Georgi, Dieter. Theocracy in Paul’s Praxis and Theology. Translated by David Green. Minneapolis:
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________. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001.
46

UNVEILING EMPIRE
Howard-Brook, Wes. “Come Out, My People!”: God’s Call out of Empire in the Bible and
Beyond. Maryknoll: Orbis Press, 2010.
Johnson, Joel. “Exclusive Look: Where the Workers Who Made Your iPhone Sleep at
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York. London: Gibbings and Co., 1899.
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States. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Maldon, MA: Polity Press, 2007.
Myers, Ched. Who Will Roll Away the Stone?: Discipleship Queries for First World Christians.
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Walsh, Brian, and Sylvia Keesmaat. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. Downers
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48

MISSIONAL
PRAXIS

The Need for Indigenous Languages
and Resources in Mission to Africa
in Light of the Presence of
Monism/Witchcraft 1
Jim harrieS
Globally speaking, we seem to be in an endless cycle. The West has grasped the means of being materially
productive that has resulted in its amassing wealth. Africa in the meantime engages monism, which
perpetuates poverty but demands equality. The interaction of the West that seeks to alleviate the poverty
of Africa, in ignoring its root causes, perpetuates it. The fact that the same interaction empowers Western
languages gives African people distorted economic signals. It is in the economic interest of many African
people to rote-learn foreign wisdom that makes little sense while neglecting locally rooted intelligence and
disregarding efforts at countering African monism.
“The missionaries’ aim was to develop Christian communities
that were self-supporting.” 2
INTRODUCTION
The above quote by Grace Wamue demonstrates that attempts by Western missionaries
to ensure that their projects in Africa are self-supporting are not new. Yet, dependency
continues to plague the African church. This article attempts to ask and answer
the question as to why this is the case. It goes on to suggest remedies to this situation.
The traditional approach to development projects is for Westerners to set up a system
that should be economically viable, on the assumption that it will continue to be managed
in the way that they advocate. Yet it has proved difficult for Africans to continue
doing things in the way that missionaries did. This can be explained, at least in part, by
considering African people’s proclivity to monistic as against dualistic thinking and philosophy.
Because for many African people, the physical and the spiritual are not distinct
and easily distinguishable categories, they are inclined to run entities set up on the basis
of a material rationality according to more familiar (to them) spiritual-physical lines of
reasoning. The West’s response to this practice has been to ignore it, assuming, as John
Locke taught, that Africans are a blank slate onto which new things are being written.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) previous understandings have continued to “interfere”
with new inputs.
1 This essay is an adaptation of a lecture presented at the Abilene Christian University “Global Conference
on Vulnerable Mission,” March 7–10, 2012.
2 Grace Nyatugah Wamue, “The Use of European Traditions in the Study of Religion in Africa: East African
Perspectives,” in European Traditions in the Study of Religion in Africa, ed. Frieder Ludwig and Afe Adogame,
Series of the African Association for the Study of Religions (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2004), 366,
of Western missionaries to East Africa in the period beginning in 1890.
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
This article equates monism with witchcraft. Monism, the presupposition that all physical/material
causation is also spiritual (and all spiritual causation is also material), is
found to be very widespread in sub-Saharan Africa. Because at least in some parts of Africa
“gods” are anthropocentric, 3 it follows that misfortune always arises from or through
a human agent. The human agent may be someone who is already dead, or an adverse
orientation of the heart of another living person. Because the spirits of dead people work
through the hearts of living people, the spirits of the dead empower witchcraft fears. 4 I
take witchcraft as being fear of the power of untoward feelings in the hearts of others,
especially feelings of envy. 5
The above relationships in African thinking are often concealed through the widespread
and widely acclaimed practice in Africa whereby formal communication is in European
languages. With the increase in globalized communication, African people are under
increasing pressure to use these European languages in the same way that Europeans use
them, regardless of their own understanding of what is going on around them. Thus,
while the traditional worldview is propagated through widespread but informal uses of
African languages, the same is concealed from formal contexts, which are the ones that
are mostly in view to Westerners. Vulnerable mission, the use of local languages in ministry,
is therefore advocated as necessary for a Western missionary to be truly “informed.”
Vulnerable mission as here defined also includes the use of local resources in ministry.
Such use of local resources frees African people from the need always to please their
missionary as a donating foreign patron. Vulnerable mission is not optional. Local ministry
really must be done using locally available languages and resources. The question is
whether a foreign Western missionary can or is prepared to build on the local.
FOLLOWING THE SCRIPTURES
The search for equality that currently dominates international relations, even in so far
as it is rooted in biblical principles of equality, is not the whole picture presented in the
Bible. A case can be made for charitable, material giving to those less well off, but a biblical
case can also be made for the communication of a spiritual message that need not
be underpinned by material resource provision. This is a message that is fundamental to
the Scriptures, to the biblical worldview, and to God’s purpose for mankind. The call to
Christian service in the Scriptures is not to persevere in service to God for as long as this
proves to be materially rewarding. It is not one that puts material prosperity on par with
one’s spiritual standing with God. It is not one in which God’s prophet pays people to
do God’s will, or of obliging people to be followers of Jesus in furtherance of their own
economic interests. Neither is it one of forcing people to proclaim “correct” theology
in a particular language, while their innate and heartfelt understanding remains a vast
distance away from such orthodoxy.
52
3 Joseph G. Healey, A Fifth Gospel: The Experience of Black Christian Values (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981), 146.
4 Jim Harries, “Pragmatic Theory Applied to Christian Mission in Africa: With Special Reference to Luo
Responses to ‘Bad’ in Gem, Kenya” (PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, 2007), 210, http://etheses.
bham.ac.uk/15.
5 Jim Harries, “Witchcraft, Envy, Development, and Christian Mission in Africa,” Missiology: An International
Review 40, no. 2 (April 2012): 129–39.

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
When Christ sent out his missionaries, he sent them as lambs amongst wolves, and he
gave them specific instructions not to take a “purse or bag or sandals” (Luke 10:3–4). 6
The instructions are repeated elsewhere (Luke 9:3; Matt 10:9; Mark 6:8–9). The reason
Jesus gave these instructions has not in recent times been clearly understood. Many
missiologists have passed over them, ignoring them or considering them to have been
superseded (cf. Luke 22:35–36). The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission (AVM) is seeking
to revive these forgotten original principles of Christian missionary service. 7 They are not
exclusive—there may be a place for carrying a bag, but there may be a place equally for
leaving it at home.
The principle of the use of local languages also has biblical support in the Pentecost
event (Acts 2:6–12) and in Luke’s testimony of Paul (Acts 22:1–2). Again, I am not attempting
to be absolutist. It would have been obvious to people in biblical times that it
was advantageous to use a language in ministry that their listeners understood; something
that Paul and Barnabas failed to do at their cost as recorded in Acts 14:8–20.
LANGUAGES
The statement, “the missionaries’ aim was to develop Christian communities that were
economically self-supporting” struck me as incongruous and shocking, because it came
from 1890. 8 Having served in East Africa since 1988, 9 I was amazed to find that concern
to have been extant so long ago. I had mistakenly thought perhaps it became a concern
to a more recent generation of missionaries. It is easy to blame prior generations for their
bungles and to assume that we are more enlightened today. But I had to think, are we
merely repeating past mistakes?
The approaches to helping people become self-supporting on the part of Western missionaries
have doubtless had certain things in common in these last 120 years. One of
those things is optimism—an implicit faith that the goal is possible. That faith has at times
ebbed. I have witnessed a number of missionaries’ optimism being gradually worn away
as years of field service have mounted. Indeed, it seems that the longer an observant and
astute missionary serves, the lower his or her optimism regarding the chances of achieving
project sustainability becomes. One problem with such a decline in optimism is that
people at both ends, African and Western, do not like it. Those who lack optimism seem
to share in the sin of the spies sent to report on the promised land, who discouraged the
Israelites from taking the land that they could, with God’s help, have taken (Num 13). 10
A love of optimists seems to be a deeply ingrained human trait. Hence people consistently
love the politician whose forecast when running up to the election is highly posi-
6 All Scripture quotations, unless specified otherwise, are from the New International Version.
7 See http://vulnerablemission.org.
8 Wamue, 366.
9 Jim Harries, “Meeting the Indigenous Church: A Personal Account of an African Missionary Journey”
(unpublished manuscript, 2009), http://www.jim-mission.org.uk/harries-bio.pdf.
10 I have pointed elsewhere to the dependence on providence often found in endeavours by Westerners in the
Majority World that does not apply to their activities when “at home.” See Jim Harries, “Providence and Power
Structures in Mission and Development Initiatives from the West to the Rest: A Critique of Current Practice,”
Evangelical Review of Theology 32, no. 2 (April 2008): 156–65.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
tive. People often prefer an optimistic half-truth to a discouraging full-truth! Optimistic
half-truths can indeed spur people into action, but what if (as in the case of mission
and development in Africa) optimistic half-truths tend to favour foreigners and “fat cats”
while leaving the masses struggling? Could it be helpful to consider this situation more
carefully? For example, should we be more optimistic about African people’s ability to
pass off witchcraft beliefs as irrelevant in “this day and age”? Concern for the plight of
child witches 11 seems in recent years to have helped to spark a renewed unease regarding
problematic issues in African culture. 12 “Religious” aspects of the culture of Nigerian
peoples have recently been identified as evil, rather than as merely opium of the people. 13
“Witchcraft” is the English term that continues to be widely used to encapsulate a set of
apparently very contrary beliefs that are widespread on the African continent. 14
I have pointed elsewhere to the problems that can arise in the course of translation into
English. 15 Labeling African phenomena with English terms invariably gives them baggage
that is not necessarily rooted in the phenomena themselves. This is the case when
it comes to witchcraft. The term is in contemporary times rarely used by people in the
native English-speaking world to describe themselves. It is a term that implicitly raises
the question of whether Africa is behind the times and should just stop “believing in” 16
something that the native English-speaking world left behind long ago.
Without going into the linguistic debate in much more detail here, I do want to search for
an escape from the somewhat arbitrary constraints in understanding imposed by Western
ideas about the witchcraft that African people, supposedly erroneously, “believe in.”
My “escape” is that instead of witchcraft, I want to talk of monism, and sometimes of
envy. Monism I take as being an alternative to the dualism (in which the physical/material
is taken as being different from the spiritual) which is widespread in Western nations.
The increasingly popular Western explanatory system is dualistic; Westerners ever more
frequently understand events in physical or material terms. This notion of what is real
dismisses causative agents such as gods, spirits, curses, and omens. Monistic explanatory
systems instead perceive a variety of causes that invariably include spiritual ones. 17
54
11 See Stepping Stones Nigeria, “Child ‘Witches,’ ” The Issues, http://www.steppingstonesnigeria.org/
witchcraft.html.
12 Such consideration of the problems of Africa as being unique has been variously oppressed in the course
of history, as also explained by Bethwell A. Ogot, Reintroducing Man into the African World: Selected Essays 1961–1980
(Kisumu, Kenya: Anyange Press, 1999). Okot p’Bitek, Religion of the Central Luo (Nairobi, Kenya: East African
Literature Bureau, 1971), 10–58, attempted to undermine reports of Europeans about African communities.
13 As suggested by Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Right,” trans. Annette Jolin and Joseph O’Malley,
Cambridge Studies in the History and Theory of Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 131.
I include place quotation marks around the term “religious” because I consider use of this category with reference
to African ways of life usually to be a false imposition.
14 Gerrie ter Haar, Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa, Religion in Contemporary
Africa (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007).
15 E.g., see Jim Harries, Vulnerable Mission: Insights into Christian Mission to Africa From a Position of Vulnerability
(Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2011), 239–55.
16 I take a term such as “believing in” as coming from recent relatively cerebral Western Christianity. For the
African witchcraft is likely to be simply a part of the way things are, rather than something to be “believed in”
or “not believed in.”
17 Such a category as “spiritual causes” is of course rooted in dualism and so does not make sense for monists.

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
In substituting the term monism (and at times, envy) for that of witchcraft, I hope we will
find a little more room for maneuver in our consideration of “the problems of Africa”
than has often been the case. Instead of means of overcoming witchcraft—which suggests
rather gruesome practices like drowning, poisoning, or burning people, the obstacle
to “development” is rather more philosophical in nature: monism. I also intend my use
of monism to critique a tendency in some recent scholarship to value monism. I refer
here to advocates of holistic mission, Tearfund’s use of the term umoja (“oneness” from
Swahili) to describe their strategies for promoting self-sustaining development in the Majority
World, and so on. 18 (Some confusion seems to have arisen through the widespread
use of English in which the words holy, holistic, and whole sound much the same.) I am
not denying that there may be value in holistic approaches to situations, communities,
or problems, but I would suggest that there is a dualism inherent both in the gospel and
in Western society, and that this dualism is in both cases essential. The root of the essential
dualism in the gospel is the distinction between God and the world. The essential
dualism that I refer to in Western society is between the spiritual and the physical/material.
The fact that these two are related reflects the Christian roots of Western dualism,
though dualism arises also as a result of philosophical realism. 19
If we assume that monistic thinking is contrary in various ways to human wellbeing,
and for Christian believers that it incorporates theological error, the question arises as
to how it can best be changed so that dualism comes to the fore. The preferred option
in Western thinking seems to be to follow the teaching of John Locke, in so far as Locke
considered the human mind to resemble a tabula rasa onto which information is drawn.
According to him, the whole of understanding arises from physical stimuli made to the
human senses. 20 Such is the model of education that has been applied from the West to
the majority world. It assumes that if educational inputs to the people of Africa are the
same as those given to Western people, then African people will have as a result the same
capabilities as Western people. There are two important, closely related assumptions that
underlie this thinking:
1. That whatever Western people (children) already have as they enter the school
system that enables them to benefit from the education they are given, African
people also have the same.
2. That African people do not have anything in their understanding that can interfere
with their ability to appropriate Western education in the way that Westerners appropriate
it.
Unfortunately, we seem to hit a problem here quite quickly in terms of language of use.
Education in Africa is largely carried out using Western languages. When languages
are understood as needing to be integrally linked to particular Western cultures so as
to function effectively, then this is something that African people do not have. African
18 Tearfund International Learning Zone, “Umoja,” Churches, http://tilz.tearfund.org/Churches/
Umoja.
19 The realist believes “that the objects of our senses are real or exist in their own right quite independent
of their being known to, perceived by, or related to mind.” Harold H. Titus, Marilyn S. Smith, and Richard T.
Nolan, Living Issues in Philsophy, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 283. Such belief clearly sets up
a dualism of things that are real as against those that are “not real.”
20 Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s. v. “John Locke (1632–1704),” accessed August 13, 2011, http://www.
iep.utm.edu/locke.
55

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
languages/cultures meanwhile are something that Western people do not have but African
people do have. The presence of these languages/cultures “interfere” with African
people’s engagement with Western education, for example through the way in which
they affect how Western languages are understood.
It is very difficult to justify the assumption that a child entering school is a blank slate, 21 not
least because the home life of children prior to entering school, which surely is strongly
formative of their character, differs between cultures, nations, tribes, and linguistic communities.
Linguistically one can consider the implicit and explicit translations that must
be going on as a child learns in English at school while using another language at home.
In much of Africa a foundational monistic outlook on life is already in place before a
child begins to acquire formal schooling. It is difficult for a child, or an adult for that matter,
to break out of the kinds of strictures placed upon them by the monistic community
within which they live and relate to others, even as they engage in Western education.
The dominant wisdom demonstrated in educational policy practice seems to be that the
best way to provide an escape from the strictures of monistic thinking is to ignore them
and to trust that they will go away. Hence educational systems (including theological education
systems) being designed for and taken up by African people are no different from
those in the West. This applies increasingly as advances in communication technology
that enable globalization take hold. Globalisation enables the spread of provincialisms by
people who think that their provincialisms are universal. 22
That people are ignoring vast differences between themselves and others for the sake of
some kind of superficial global uniformity ought to strike us as incredible. It would be
helpful to adopt a thoughtful approach instead of ignoring contextual complexity. Popular
educational wisdom states that learning should begin where someone is and then take
them to where they are not. Contemporary educational systems in much of Africa, in assuming
people to be “at the same place as the West” ignore cultural differences between
Africa and the West.
If the educational system in Africa is so ineffective, then why is it so popular and so
widespread? The answer in short is subsidy. The educational system in much of Africa
is not homegrown, nor is its adoption motivated by what it can achieve or help people
to achieve within the society receiving it. Were the latter the case, then Africans would
educate their children using familiar languages. On the contrary, the perceived value
of Western education in parts of Africa is in the links it provides to the wider world of
European language-speaking peoples. The reason these links are so prominent and so
critical to African communities is because English (perhaps more than other European
languages) is the dominant language through which numerous varieties of charity and
aid are distributed. Those with good English get this aid and get to control it, whereas
those without good English are subject to the whim of those who get it. The power in
English is not in the way it assists a community to help itself but the way it makes communities
dependent on outside charity.
21 “Tabula rasa,” see discussion on Locke above. This thinking would need to assume that the upbringing and
home-life of African children is identical to, or at least functionally the equivalent to, that of Western native
English-speaking children.
22 Samuel M. Tshehla, “ ‘Can Anything Good Come Out of Africa?’: Reflections of a South African Mosotho
Reader of the Bible,” Journal of African Christian Thought 5, no. 1 (2002): 23.
56

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
Such an educational system can severely restrict the development of a community: it
forces students into great expense in terms of both time and finance to acquire the language
of education, before being able to acquire the education in that language. It results
in education being not from known to unknown, but from unknown to unknown. As a
result the use of an African language is essential for education in Africa to be truly effective.
There is a strong case to be made in favour of every people’s total education to be in
their mother tongue. 23 Even failing this, I believe there is still a compelling case that any
African language used in education in Africa should be seen as a better prospect than the
European languages that are widely used at present.
Some scholars may consider that the great advantage of the use of English in Africa is
that it enables access to written resources and provides a lingua franca for the continent.
Kwesi Prah powerfully critiques this view. 24 Few scholars seem to ask themselves why
it appears that every African language has failed to be the medium of enlightened advanced
education. A question that should follow is, what are the implications of the fact
that an African language apparently cannot be the medium of “modern” education?
Could it be that there are qualities of African languages that render them incompatible
with modern education? If such qualities exist, then how can learning a European
language in itself enable a people to overcome such qualities? Presumably the content
of African languages arises from the content of African lives. Does learning of another
language “magically” result in a change in way of life? Or is the widespread use of English
making people dependent on what they do not understand because it is not a part
of who they are? If we had examples of non-European languages “succeeding,” then
perhaps we could say that the choice of a European language for an African student is a
free or arbitrary choice. As it is, if it is a choice at all, then it is a choice that largely precludes
taking the African person’s own context seriously. This default option for African
students handicaps them for the rest of their lives. 25
For example, consider the contrast between monism and dualism. English is “at home”
in dualistic communities. When used by dualistic people, it can be extremely productive,
because the way it is used fits the contours of life of the people concerned. But if used
by a monistic people, it loses its moorings. Its implicit categories are no longer the right
ones. It serves a monistic people very poorly. This is the case unless they adapt English so
as to use it in their way. Such “adaptation” of English defeats the original intention—that
English be a means of easing communication with the wealthy and powerful international
community and a means of achieving development and prosperity on Western
lines.
23 Kwesi Kwaa Prah, “The Burden of English in Africa: From Colonialism to Neo-Colonialism,” (keynote
address presented to the Department of English: 5th International Conference on the theme: Mapping Africa
in the English-Speaking World, University of Botswana, Francistown, Botswana, June 2–4, 2009), http://
www.casas.co.za/FileAssets/NewsCast/misc/file/The%20Burden%20of%20English%20in%20
Africa%20University%20of%20Botswana%20June09%20Version2.pdf.
24 Ibid., 5.
25 Stating that an African language ought to be the medium of instruction is of course not to say that European
languages should not be taught as subjects. To teach European and other African languages as subjects
is highly recommended. Research suggests that African students become more competent in English if it is
taught as a subject, rather than when it is the language of instruction.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
In the globalizing world it is becoming more and more difficult for different peoples
to use English as they like. There are too many people who are trying to align English
with international standards for adaptation to happen easily. The main hope of many
monistic people around the world is, in fact, to use English in the way that it “should be,”
even when such use clashes with their way of life and makes little sense to them. English
use has to be an imitation and cannot arise from understanding. That is, English has to
be rote-learned, as is a large proportion of the African educational curriculum. Still, accusations
of corruption in economic and other practices abound. As a result, the use of
subsidy to promote English and other non-African languages in Africa may be crippling
the continent.
ECONOMICS, GOD, AND AFRICAN LEADERSHIP
Dambisa Moyo has probably become the most internationally renowned economist
from Zambia. Her book Dead Aid speaks loudly and boldly against “charitable” practices
that are “the silent killer of growth.” 26
To her the dependence of Africa on foreign aid is clear, gross, and wrong. 27 Her statements
regarding this dependence have intrigued me: “foreign aid . . . continues . . . to
be the predominant source of financial resources for much of the continent.” 28 Just how
dependent is the continent on foreign aid? The answer must of course depend on the
definition one will take of terms such as “aid” and “dependence.” What exactly qualifies
as aid? What criterion is used for aid to be considered foreign?
A broad definition of aid is necessary in order to understand dependence comprehensively.
Foreign control of the economy contributes to the aid-related dependence that
Moyo discusses. Remittances sent by relatives from overseas into local communities,
which official statistics do not take into account, should also be included in a comprehensive
definition of aid. Moreover, we must account for the way that the impact of
aid multiplies within the local economy. The gross receipts of aid are tremendous by
themselves, yet this number alone does not reflect the depth of dependency that such
income creates. 29
26 Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2009), 48.
58
27 Ibid., 36.
28 Ibid., 25.
29 For example, a certain amount of foreign money subsidizes the primary school sector of a country. Some
of that money will go to pay teachers. The teachers will buy food from a shop. This will enable shopkeepers to
acquire produce from farmers, who will in turn purchase other products from the shops, so that the shopkeepers
as well as the teachers will become owners of bicycles. The use of bicycles will enable certain young men
to enter into the bicycle repair business, which will mean that their wives will have the money with which to
purchase artificial hair and to pay someone to apply it and so on. At which point is money-flow no longer considered
to be due to foreign aid? Another example: the presence of numerous outside agencies providing all
kinds of aid, all requiring efficient communication systems, results in large profits for mobile phone companies
that are in turn taxed by African governments for their own spending. That government income, which seems
to be internally produced, arises only slightly indirectly from foreign aid. Just how dependent then are African
economies on foreign aid?

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
What impact does aid money have? Some try to minimise its apparent impact by emphasising
how small it is in relation to GDP figures. Subjectively speaking—as a member
of a rural African village community (admittedly a village targeted by the Millennium
Villages Project, but the same could really be said even before MVP came)—it seems that
foreign donor funds are constantly in view. It would seem that locally available resources
quickly get used up in immediate home needs, whereas it is donor money that is used
to fund whatever takes people beyond the level of basic self-sufficiency and household
survival. If Moyo is right, then the degree of dependency of many African communities
is very large indeed. The withdrawal of aid could certainly result in a severe catastrophe,
yet the current system seems to be increasing this kind of dependency.
My reason for delving into this area of economics is not to belittle or to put down African
people who would like to believe that they are doing better than I am indicating. It is to
point to a massive concern that is crying out for attention. This concern links in to our
discussion of dualism and monism. Could it be that deeply implicit and widely spread
monism is preventing African people from grasping what is necessary in order to develop
their economies along the same lines as others in the rest of the world? If this is the case,
then we are face to face with an enormous and critical question: how to help people to
grasp principles of dualism without which the onslaught of poverty intertwined with
dependency will persist.
The perception that what Africa needs is science and technology is not new in the West.
Unfortunately, attempts at transmission of scientific/technological principles have been
rooted in the presupposition of dualism, onto which to latch scientific insights. The question
of how to “convert” a people from being monistic in their worldview to the adoption
of a partially 30 dualistic worldview looms large. What strikes me as perhaps the most
interesting with respect to this worldview question is how we are challenging the secular
agenda with what has traditionally been mission/Christian territory. By discussing monism
instead of just material poverty, and then conversion as a description of “needed
change,” religious faith has become the central issue for socio-economic development. 31
Religious faith after all, in its engagement with heart and affection, contributes presuppositional
foundations on which other things, including secularism, come to build. 32
The shift from monism to dualism has a lot to do with monotheism or a “high view of
God.” If some Africans do not have a traditional understanding of a high God, 33 then
that absence can help to explain why it has been so difficult for them to acquire a dualistic
worldview. Fennella Cannell makes a clear case for Christianity as source of dualism. 34
30 I do not think it is possible, and certainly it is not “healthy,” to be entirely dualistic.
31 This paragraph raises many questions, which I cannot address in this short article. I refer my readers to
some of my other writings, such as those found at http://www.jim-mission.org.uk/articles/index.html.
32 James K. A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 2010), 5, 59.
33 As says Okot, 41–58; contra John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 2nd ed., African Writers (London:
Heinemann, 1991), 45–59, and Kwame Bediako, “Biblical Exegesis in the African Context—The Factor and
Impact of Translated Scriptures,” Journal of African Christian Thought 6, no. 1 (June 2003): 21.
34 Fennella Cannell, “The Christianity of Anthropology,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11, no. 2
(June 2005): 338, 350–51; Fennella Cannell, “The Anthropology of Christianity,” in The Anthropology of Christianity,
ed. Fennella Cannell (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 14.
59

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
The key, then, to Africa’s social/economic development, lies in the appropriation of the
gospel of Jesus Christ. 35 That gospel must not be merely the prosperity gospel or the
gospel that concentrates on driving out demons which seems to be the variant encouraged
by today’s “aid culture,” but which can leave the monistic worldview intact. I refer
here especially to Pentecostalism, that (including charismatics) claims one quarter of the
world’s Christians, 36 but as James K. A. Smith concedes, easily becomes compromised
to primal worldviews. 37
Before looking at the missionary strategy that reflects the nature of God as high God, I
want to make a few further comments regarding how historically a transition from monism
to dualism has been enabled. This was a transition occurring during the fourteenth-
to sixteenth-century Italian renaissance. In the course of this Renaissance monotheistic
Christian belief was almost universally presupposed. 38 In the seventeenth Century,
according to Anthony Balcomb, “the main objection that arose against the belief [in
magic] was [not science but] . . . that it threatened the idea of a transcendent omnipotent
creator who could impose his will by divine fiat in the created order”. 39 It is possible
that the Greek discovery of dualism was connected to links between Greek culture and
knowledge of the true God derived from Moses. 40 Did Max Weber not also hint that
economic advances in Europe were as much to do with “extreme faith” in Protestantism
as with technological innovativeness? 41 In fact movements of faith have often motivated
masses of people in ways unequalled by either political revolution or “merely” social
innovation. 42
These observations challenge us to reconsider a lot of contemporary missions’ strategy.
Why have missions produced dependent churches addicted to the prosperity gospel? In
short, Western missions’ strategies have frequently presupposed the existence of dualism
in the populations they have reached. For example, they have assumed that African people
will understand that the resources provided by the Western mission body to support
35 I do not here go into the area of comparative religions, and whether “the key” may rather be in Buddhism,
Islam, etc., for reasons that go beyond the scope of this article. I point my reader to Cannell, “Anthropology of
Christianity,” 1, 2, 16, 21, and Talal Asad, “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category,” in
A Reader in the Anthropology of Religion, ed. Michael Lambeck, Wiley-Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural
Anthropology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 122. Both of these authors give singular credit to Christianity
for the emergence of categories associated with modern dualism.
36 See The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “Global Christianity,” Christian, Religious Affiliation,
Topics, http://www.pewforum.org/christian/global-christianity-exec.aspx.
60
37 Smith, 41.
38 Bambang Sugiharto, “Radical Consequences of the Primacy of Experience in the Hermeneutics of Culture,”
in Communication across Cultures: The Hermeneutics of Cultures and Religions in a Global Age, ed. Chibueze C.
Udeani et al., Seminars: Culture and Values, vol. 26 (Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values
and Philosophy, 2008), 94.
39 Anthony Balcomb, “The Great Comeback of God(s): Theological Challenges and Opportunities in a
Post-Secular World,” Missionalia: Southern African Journal of Mission Studies 38, no. 3 (November 2010): 418.
40 John R. Salverda, “Moses, Hermes and Io,” Ancient/Classical History, About.com, http://forums.
about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=display&webtag=ab-ancienthist&tid=5159.
41 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner, 1958).
42 The reader can note that the English I use here is implicitly dualistic in that I make a distinction between
the religious and the non-religious (e.g., the “merely social”) that is an invention of Western society. This is not
an argument that arises from the widespread African worldview, in which these are not distinct.

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
the spreading of the gospel are not the gospel. It has been very difficult, if not impossible,
for many African people to grasp this. The challenge for the next generation of believers
is how to spread the gospel without making the African church dependent on a dualism
that it does not have, outside resources that it cannot control, and outside languages that
it cannot own?
The West has been attempting to have African church leaders play a key part in the
leadership of Western (-resourced and -language) mission efforts. Yet, we need to ask
ourselves, How can African church leaders be expected to guide strategies to reach their
own people that are rooted in misguided foreign assumptions? Instead of attempting to
incorporate Africans into mission by educating them in Western languages and presupposing
that they have a dualistic understanding that they do not, the challenge is now for
Westerners to adjust their mission strategies to align with African realities. The lead, after
God, must come from Africa. This requires the use of African languages as they are used
by African people in Africa. 43
African people leading Western mission efforts are invariably responding to an intricate
and complex context of their own about which Westerners know relatively little. That
context, including pressures from extended family and monistic presuppositions has almost
invariably compelled the African to maximise the use of Western languages and
to maximise foreign income in mission—to perpetuate dependence and the prosperity
gospel. New mission efforts guided by the vulnerable mission principles of reliance on
local resources and local languages must go beyond drawing on these “native informers.”
Informers need to be allowed to speak more freely than is often the case. Listening
to them in their own languages and ensuring that the economic equation not be loaded
strongly in favour of their compliance enables such freedom. Such is what we are calling
vulnerable mission.
VULNERABLE MISSION
We can define vulnerable mission as mission (or development intervention) by Westerners
in the majority world that is carried out using local resources and languages. Instead
of relying on “educated” foreign nationals to guide Western missionaries, Western
missionaries and development workers must themselves become experts at intercultural
communication. This requires that they become immersed in the languages and traditions
of the people they are reaching. A vulnerable missionary will become dependent
on locals and not on Western donors for the success of their endeavours. They will not
so much devise “strategy” as they will respond in a Christ-centred way to the “strategies”
of local African or other Majority World believers. Such can enable vulnerable mission
to achieve a truly indigenous theology; something which money-laden strategists using
Western languages have failed to accomplish for decades.
The carrying out of vulnerable mission depends on achieving the cooperation of nationals.
Nationals have become increasingly accustomed to responding to proffered finance
and other benefits. How Western missionaries will be welcomed if they do not have such
43 There would be less point in using an African language in a Western way. The point of the argument
presented here is that mission policy for Africa must emerge as a result of the impact of God’s Word on the
African milieu.
61

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
to offer remains to be seen. The obligation is now, in the absence of the option of buying
access, on the Westerner to adjust to the non-Western context. Will they be able to meet
this challenge?
The new mission that emerges from vulnerable strategies on the part of Westerners
opens numerous arenas full of challenge. Allow me to outline these by way of answering
some of the critics of vulnerable mission strategies.
Some say that vulnerable mission is a way of denying African people access to Western
languages or to funds. Yet, is a church pastor in the USA who is inviting young people
to talk about God denying them access to education in mathematics? That pastor has
not gone to the school to burn the mathematics textbooks; he has simply chosen to offer
people something other than mathematics; so also for vulnerable missionaries with
respect to English and donor funds.
My own prediction is that a VM will get the kind of stark view of “life” in African (Majority
World) communities that has often been missed by contemporary missionaries. As
the view becomes stark and clear, so will previously barely perceived challenges. Typically
in Africa the major challenge is how to deal with the monism we are considering,
which has in the West become known as witchcraft; something largely ignored by the
current Western missionary force. The critics have long said that witchcraft does not
“exist.” Recently, its impact has become more visible. Vulnerable mission provides an
alternative to the perhaps much more common secular critique of monism. 44
The rise in the visibility of African witchcraft in recent years has been notable. Stepping
Stones Nigeria in particular has invested heavily in making the problem of child witches
better known. 45 Unfortunately, their work suffers the weakness of treating witchcraft as
if it is an appendage to life in Africa that they can excise, rather than recognising it for
what it is—an expression of the African worldview. Nevertheless the actions of Stepping
Stones and others 46 in drawing our attention to this issue can be considered progress. It
is an improvement on those who perceive Africa’s problems to be only in the material
realm—the position of many big players in the field of development, such as the Millennium
Development Project, who are forced to be secular in orientation.
It is time for Westerners intervening in Africa to concede that beliefs related to monism
are not there “objectively” waiting to be analysed using English as if they are in a laboratory.
Treating beliefs in this way is like studying the habits of fish through first laying
them out in the sun on a concrete surface. Monistic/witchcraft beliefs affect Africans’
communication about themselves and their communities. When talking with African
people about witchcraft, even if the conversation is in English, one is not only discussing
witchcraft, but one is also using witchcraft categories, and in that sense engaging in
witchcraft, whether one knows it or not. In the course of discussion an African speaker
may well be wary of the way what he says could implicate him in witchcraft attacks, and
so on. Such topics are effectively tackled using African languages.
envy.
62
44 Note that in this article we are considering witchcraft to be largely synonymous with the terms monism and
45 See fn. 11.
46 See also Tony Kail, Cry from the Bush: A Christian Response to Africa’s Epidemic of Witch Hunts, Child Witches and
Deadly Exorcisms (Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011).

THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
Envy is not given a great deal of prominence in many secular discussions today, despite
the prominence of envy in Africa. The Western approach, rooted in objectivity, excludes
such human sentiments as envy from view. Seen from the African side, the history of the
interaction between Western and African people is intricately connected to issues concerning
envy. This could be very evident to those who take a broader look at relationships
between the West and Africa. Envy is the powerhouse of a lot of the evil associated with
witchcraft (i.e., monistic beliefs).
Whether African communities can escape the clutches of envy/jealousy is a very important
question. I take envy as a synonym for witchcraft. If they can do so, then in
a sense they have already overcome one of the terrors of witchcraft. Such beliefs (i.e.,
fear of witchcraft) are very difficult to overcome, but if African communities cannot
overcome their orientation to envy, then it will be hard to make progress on other fronts.
Envy constantly curtails alternative options of mutual cooperation between community
members. If each one has set out from the beginning to make sure that others not get
ahead, 47 regress is easier than progress. Envy easily disregards victims—if my focus is on
how to close the gap between myself and others I consider to be better off than I, then I
may have little energy left to consider someone else who is worse off. 48 Africa cannot “be
developed” by others without its own people’s active participation, yet envy undermines
the possibility of that participation.
David Maranz articulates one outcome of envy: in many African communities, those
who are better off have an innate and unquestioned obligation to give. 49 (They are required
to “give” so as to avoid the consequences of the envy (i.e., witchcraft) of others
should they not do so.) What the receiver gives in return is a kind of servitude and verbal
public praise. In terms of relationships between the wealthy West and Africa, this means
that according to many Africans the West is required to keep giving and giving to Africa
until material equality is reached. Such an equation includes relatively little consideration
for the need to impart material productivity to Africa, because in the African view of the
world much overlap between spiritual and “material productivity” looks different than
it does in the West.
The flip side of Africa’s demands is of course the West’s willingness to give. The evidence
demonstrates that the African approach to imbalances in wealth is proving enormously
successful—to the tune of $1 trillion given to the continent in foreign aid over the last 50
years. 50 Africa’s pleas for help would have accomplished nothing if no one was listening,
but those who are listening are also responding generously. The sum total of reasons as to
why the so-called international community responds as generously as it does to appeals
for help from Africa is too large a topic for us here.
47 See for example Kwesi Kwaa Prah, The African Nation: The State of the Nation, CASAS Book Series 44 (Cape
Town: Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society, 2006), 153.
48 The various implications for communication of a society rooted in envy are too wide for me to explore
more fully here. See Harries, “Witchcraft.”
49 Maranz, 150.
50 Moyo, xviii.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 51–67
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
While the Bible may advocate equality, it does not insist that spiritual messages be accompanied
by material charity. The Bible points us towards the advantages of the use
of mother tongues.
Western missionaries have long recognised the need for African churches and communities
to be self-supporting. African monism has hindered the achievement of that goal.
Western experts have ignored monism, but contrary to their hopes, its persistence has
revealed the shallowness of their aspirations for how Africa should develop. A necessary
component to the overcoming of the ignorance of Westerners in Africa is a considered
response to and not an ignoring of what is there, including monism and its products.
Because monism will not simply go away, Western missionaries must carefully address
it, which requires the use of African language(s) in church, leadership, and education.
Africa’s dependency on outside aid is massive. Empowering the continent’s people requires
an appreciation of dualism, which has historically often come to a more monistic
people by means of religious conversion—a kind of conversion which, contrary to
popular opinion, has barely occurred in Africa. Because leading people from monism
to dualism is different from the West’s education and leadership practices that operate
within the boundaries of dualism, the best approach to African leaders ought to include
an attempt to gain understanding from their perspective. The responsibility is on the
West to communicate and interact interculturally.
To share the gospel and not Western culture remains an acute challenge to Western
Christian missionaries. The rising visibility of witchcraft in Africa even in secular circles
demonstrates an awareness of aspects of monism until recently deemed irrelevant by
strict dualists. The way forward must be in a vulnerable approach to mission, that intends
to overcome the intensity of envy associated with monism to foster belief in God as high
God and to move away from the current widespread African Christian faith that hopes
intently in this-worldly success.
Jim Harries (PhD) served for three years amongst the Kaonde people in Zambia. Since 1993 he has lived in a Luo village
in western Kenya. In that time he has been teaching Theological Education by Extension at Yala Theological Centre
and Siaya Theological Centre in western Kenya. He lectures part time at Kima International School of Theology. He has
learned the languages of the Kaonde, Luo, and Swahili people. Harries is the chairman of the Alliance for Vulnerable
Mission and serves as adjunct faculty at William Carey International University and Global University, both in the USA.
He can be contacted at jimoharries@gmail.com.
64

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Washington, DC: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2008.
Tearfund International Learning Zone. “Umoja.” Churches. http://tilz.tearfund.org/Churches/Umoja.
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THE NEED FOR INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES AND RESOURCES IN MISSION TO AFRICA
Ter Haar, Gerrie. Imagining Evil: Witchcraft Beliefs and Accusations in Contemporary Africa.
Religion in Contemporary Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2007.
Titus, Harold H., Marilyn S. Smith, and Richard T. Nolan. Living Issues in Philsophy,
9th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Tshehla, Samuel M. “ ‘Can Anything Good Come Out of Africa?’: Reflections of a
South African Mosotho Reader of the Bible.” Journal of African Christian Thought 5,
no. 1 (2002): 15–24.
Vulnerable Mission. http://vulnerablemission.org.
Wamue, Grace Nyatugah. “The Use of European Traditions in the Study of Religion
in Africa: East African Perspectives.” In European Traditions in the Study of Religion
in Africa, edited by Frieder Ludwig and Afe Adogame, 365–73. Series of the African
Association for the Study of Religions. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2004.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons.
New York: Scribner, 1958.
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Vulnerable Mission vis-à-vis Mainstream
Mission and Missiology 1
Stan nuSSbaum
The goals of mainstream mission and missiology have gone widely unmet. The Alliance for Vulnerable
Mission (AVM) proposes better methods for reaching those goals. The AVM has advocated the methods
of local languages and local resources. This article expands the vulnerable mission methodology to include
local thinking style. In particular, Western missionaries need to use oral thinking styles rather than the
analytical thinking style that creates dependency in oral societies. Missionaries must decide whether to
supplement local methods with foreign “strength” or to accept the vulnerability of using only local methods.
As a missiologist who has observed a lot of missions and churches in a lot of countries
for a lot of years, I want to try to position “vulnerable mission” against the broader
backdrop of trends in missiology and mission practice today. 2 My hope is to help the rest
of the mission world connect more easily with what we are talking about in this conversation,
so that fruitfulness and glory to God may connect more commonly in mission
practice just as they connect in John 15:8.
Underlying the paper is my personal conviction that we in the Alliance for Vulnerable
Mission have a theme that ought to resonate with a lot more mission scholars and practitioners
than our current circle. What could or should we be saying that we are not saying
clearly enough to find more people who are already doing or desiring something akin
to VM, no matter what label they put on it? 3 In this paper I will try to answer my own
question, and I invite you to answer it even better.
I will compare and contrast the theory and practice of mission in three areas: the goal of
mission, the methods of mission, and the big question that Western missions face today. Along the way
I will relate VM to the three trends or camps of mission with which we overlap most—
partnership, self-sufficiency (overcoming dependence), and orality (storying). This brief
exercise will require some sweeping generalizations that readers may wish to challenge. 4
1 This essay is an adaptation of a lecture presented at the Abilene Christian University “Global Conference
on Vulnerable Mission,” March 7–10, 2012.
2 See http://vulnerablemission.org. Vulnerable mission (VM) as defined by the Alliance for Vulnerable
Mission has two trademark emphases: the use of local languages and local resources in mission and development.
Its primary focus is on mission strategy and mission practice, especially the gap between these and mission
theory. The VM concept has been developed primarily by Alliance chairman Dr. Jim Harries, a British
missionary in Western Kenya. It is of most relevance in similar contexts where (1) mission (or development) is
being done in a poorer country than the country or countries where the foreigners are based and (2) missionaries
are not already “vulnerable” in the sense of being open to legal and/or physical attack once their purpose
is known. Wider implications will be discussed later in this article.
3 Do not read too much pessimism into the question. We are finding some very important connections represented
by all of you, and Jim Harries’s new books certainly give people much new information to chew on and
debate, but we are still asking ourselves what we could do better.
4 Some of these are dealt with in a later version of this paper, revised for presentation to graduate and postgraduate
students at a seminary. See Stan Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies,” Global Missiology 10,
no. 2 (2013): http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/1135/2630. The current
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 68–80

THE GOAL OF MISSION
VULNERABLE MISSION VIS-À-VIS MAINSTREAM MISSION AND MISSIOLOGY
If we look at the Edinburgh 1910 missions conference and its coordinated planning to
turn this into a Christian planet by planting churches everywhere, the methods appear
to have worked even beyond the planners’ dreams a century ago. Churches have been
planted across huge stretches of previously unevangelized territory. 5
But if we look at Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods book from 1912, we have to ask,
“What kind of churches?” The goal in Allen’s terms was self-governing, self-supporting,
self-propagating churches. 6 For our purposes, and to save us getting bogged down in the
long debate about the adequacy of that famous Three-Self Formula, let me use three
more recent and roughly parallel terms: contextualized, sustainable, and missional. These are
very prominent in missiological writing in the last 40, 20, and 10 years respectively, and
it seems almost everybody writing about mission now takes them for granted as three
marks to look for in a healthy church.
But what is the state of the church globally? The harvest does not match the three-part
goal very well. For the vast majority of the world, believers and unbelievers alike, Christianity
appears to be more culturally foreign, money-driven, and confusing than contextualized,
sustainable, and missional.
Allen’s goal Current buzz words about goal Frequent results
Self-governing Contextualized Foreign
Self-supporting Sustainable Money-driven
Self-propagating Missional Confusing
I am not saying that twentieth-century mission was a waste or a failure or that the global
church is a basket case, needing rescue by us as if we are the enlightened part of the
world. But I am saying that we have not yet arrived at well-contextualized, sustainable,
missional churches (even in the West), because if we had, the missiologists would have
quit talking about these things. They would be losing their jobs for being behind the
times, writing another book about contextualization. They keep their teaching positions
because they are focusing the next generation on the things churches do not yet have but that
missiologists think churches should try to get.
In case you need any reminders that the church has not yet arrived at sound mission
practice, here are three very painful ones I have recently encountered, all indicating that
the bull-in-the-china-shop approach to missions is alive and kicking:
y Steven Ybarrola concludes a 2008 article by sadly noting, “It was twenty-six years
ago that I was first exposed to this application [of anthropology to mission work,
version was designed more for undergraduates and mission practitioners.
5 This is beautifully documented in Patrick Johnstone’s new work, The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends
and Possibilities (Colorado Springs: Biblica, 2011).
6 Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (London: R. Scott, 1912).
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70
that is, of contextualization] at the U.S. Center for World Mission. However, in my
experience . . . I still find this perspective to be largely lacking.” 7
y Two weeks ago I was requested to answer a few survey questions for a researcher,
one of which was, “The multi-language translating software can be used to translate
foreign languages. The use of SMS, multimedia, internet, and satellite services
can enable followers of Jesus Christ to communicate the gospel with non-believers,
whose language is different, more efficiently and effectively than a missionary physically
going to a nation in which the native language is different.” I’ll admit that I
checked “strongly disagree,” but only because there was no option that said, “violently
disagree.” 8
y Three weeks ago a missions pastor friend of mine returned from a trip where he
heard a veteran missionary say, “Satan has taken full advantage of the short-term
missions movement in [his Asian country]. We would be so far ahead of where we are if
no teams had ever come.” 9
To sum up, VM does not propose different goals than mainstream mission and missiology. 10 We are
arguing that the mainstream methods of reaching those goals are not achieving them
very well. The contextualized, sustainable, missional church is not here yet.
BETTER METHODS OF REACHING THE AGREED GOAL,
INCLUDING ORAL THINKING STYLE
As someone has said, “Stupid is not doing stupid things. It is doing the same things and
expecting a different result.” Let’s apply that to mission.
The biggest shift in mission from Western countries in the last twenty years is a massive
increase in short-term trips and short-term workers (a year or less). In a sense, this is a
new “method,” but in a deeper sense, it is the same old method of the colonial era, putting
monocultural, ethnocentric people into cross-cultural settings.
In a way it is worse, because now that quick trips are possible and affordable, the trippers
have no time to grow out of their ethnocentrism and no clue about why they should.
They stick to the methods that ethnocentric people can use, even though these fly in the
face of the goals of mainstream missiology. They rely on English or a personal transla-
7 Steven J. Ybarrola, “Avoiding the Ugly Missionary: Anthropology and Short-Term Missions,” in Effective
Engagement in Short-Term Missions: Doing it Right!, ed. Robert Priest, Evangelical Missiological Society Series 16
(Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2008), 101–119.
8 My experience with translation software is that really ordinary conversations are difficult enough, let alone
communicating the gospel into a culture I have no feel for. I recall one message where the software translated
a Russian speaker’s greeting as, “Hello, expensive brother!” After pondering what kind of an insult my friend
intended by this greeting, I eventually figured out that “expensive” was the software’s way of translating “dear.”
But it didn’t give me much confidence in the rest of the message.
9 This is not to deny that short-term trips can be mutually beneficial if they follow strict “Standards of Excellence
in Short Term Mission” guidelines referred to in fn. 11. The anecdote above only illustrates that as of this
writing, the problems are still dire in spite of efforts to mitigate them.
10 We are with the missiologists at this point, battling against the popular temptation to define “better world”
as “more like the wealthy part of the world.”

VULNERABLE MISSION VIS-À-VIS MAINSTREAM MISSION AND MISSIOLOGY
tor, they operate as “haves” among “have nots,” and they cannot begin to imagine doing
mission with an oral approach to life rather than an analytical approach.
Missiologists and most advocates of partnership in mission know this kind of mission
activity will not reach the goals of mission, so they make some major improvements to
the ethnocentric model, such as advocating that Westerners do things with people instead
of for people. They promote these better methods even among short-termers whenever
possible. 11
Goal Partnership methods Short-term mission methods
Contextualized English or local language English only
Sustainable
Prime the pump, or top up
local resources
Missional Simplify the message
Provide from outside
Operate analytically without
realizing it at all
VM takes the whole thing one step further, though none of us are claiming that VM
methods are the silver bullet that will solve everything with one shot.
Goal VM methods Partnership methods
Contextualized Local language English or local
Sustainable Local resources
Prime the pump, or top up
local resources
Missional Local thinking style Simplify the message
VM has been very explicit about the first two methods (local language and resources)
and has not yet said much about the third, that is, local thinking style. We have assumed
that oral thinking style is naturally built into local languages and resources, but I believe
it might be helpful to raise it to the status of a third defining mark of VM.
What is a “local thinking style”? In the broadest strokes, there are basically two styles—
oral thinking and analytical thinking. Various labels have been used for these two styles. 12
11 For “Standards of Excellence in Short Term Missions,” see http://www.soe.org/explore/the-7-standards.
For excellent summaries on partnership principles, see Mary T. Lederleitner, Cross-Cultural Partnerships:
Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010); The Lausanne Movement, “The
Lausanne Standards: Affirmations and Agreements for Giving and Receiving Money in Mission,” Documents,
http://www.lausanne.org/docs/standards/lausanne-standards.pdf; Phill Butler, Well Connected: Releasing
Power, Restoring Hope through Kingdom Partnerships (Colorado Springs: Authentic Publishing, 2005); and Daniel
Rickett, Making Your Partnership Work: A Guide for Ministry Leaders (Enumclaw, WA: WinePress, 2002).
12 For example, Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers, Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational
Model for Personal Relationships, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 51–64, describe “holistic/dichotomistic
thinking;” Duane Elmer, Cross-Cultural Connections: Stepping Out and Fitting In around the World (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP, 2002), 142–49, sketches “categorical/holistic thinking”; and Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming
Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), ch. 2, deals with
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I am indebted to John Walsh for the following explanation which greatly helped me on
this point: “When people routinely assume that the opposite of orality is literacy, they
are making only a superficial contrast. The real contrast is not oral vs. literate. It is oral
vs. analytical.” 13 In other words, an oral style is a story or narrative or holistic style of
thinking as opposed to a conceptual style that breaks everything down into pieces and
then connects the pieces. Oral thinkers apprehend whole ideas; analytical thinkers comprehend
them one piece at a time.
Again in very broad strokes, the preferred local thinking style is analytical in the West
and oral in the Global South, though oral thinking is growing quickly among younger
Westerners and analytical thinking is widespread among people with a lot of Western
education, regardless of their home culture. The aspect of this relevant to our discussion
is that the vast majority of mission today is undertaken by analytical thinkers working in
contexts where oral thinking is the preferred local style.
Let’s return then to the earlier comment about doing mission with “an oral approach
to life.” This hit me like a bombshell while I was giving some guest lectures in a Central
Asian seminary a few years ago. I was talking about Bosch’s overview of paradigms of
mission throughout church history 14 and the question was asked, “What is a paradigm?”
My on-the-spot attempts to answer did not shed any light for the questioner. In later reflection
I realized that a paradigm is a tool that an analytical thinker uses to compare two
or more systems. Non-analytical (oral) thinkers do not use that tool because they never
undertake that task. They simply do not look at their worlds that way.
Further, I realized that every lecture by a foreigner and every book in that seminary
library (except the biographies) was structured for analytical thinkers and was basically
lost on the oral ones. I understood why a Scottish faculty member at the school had said,
“We try to get them to answer the questions on an exam but often all they do is give
testimonies.” The entire seminary system was set up to turn oral thinkers into analytical
thinkers rather than to capitalize on their natural strengths as oral thinkers.
Whether that illustration was helpful or not, here is the abstract description of the problem.
Outside money is often used for mission methods such as building a seminary or
paying a salary for a church planting pastor, which are seen as the best or only means
to the desired goal, such as a strong church or a successful outreach plan. There may be
several Xs in a chain; for example, Bible schools (X 1 ) are seen as the means to theological
orthodoxy (X 2 ) and spiritual maturity of pastors (X 3 ), good study habits using good study
tools (X 4 ), and quality sermons (X 5 )—in order to reach the goal of mature believers and
a mature church.
But the vision of the “mature” church may have been flawed in the beginning because it
assumed that genuine disciples are analytical thinkers and their leaders must use analytical
methods to help them grow. Look at the financial implications of this ethnocentric assumption.
different kinds of logic. (My thanks to Missio Dei editor, Greg McKinzie, for these helpful references after the
conference.) Jim Harries speaks of the issue most often as “monistic/dualistic thinking.”
13 John Walsh, an astute practitioner of orality (http://christianstorytelling.com), explained this to me
in a memorable personal conversation in October 2011.
14 David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, American Society of Missiology
Series 16 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991).
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VULNERABLE MISSION VIS-À-VIS MAINSTREAM MISSION AND MISSIOLOGY
Biases that go with assuming a mature church must be an analytical
church
1. Professionalization—the leaders are the best analysts; laity tag along.
2. That kind of leader needs special schooling for analyzing the Bible.
3. A congregation must be big enough to support a professional pastor.
4. That size of congregation will need a building.
5. The building, the schooling, and the pastor all require major funding.
Alternative model if a mature church can be an oral-thinking church
1. The laity can be involved in developing the theology of the group.
2. Special schooling not required for leaders; they can be apprenticed.
3. Congregations can thrive and sub-divide though too small to support a pastor.
4. Buildings are optional.
5. Little or no funding required.
It boggles the mind to think how much Western mission effort and funding have gone
into things the alternative model does not need at all. It also makes one wonder how
many of today’s Western missionaries are missing golden opportunities for fruitful witness
that they could seize if they could adapt to an oral thinking style. Here are a few
examples, which have a few advocates but in my experience are usually regarded as
quirky interests of a tiny minority.
y Ethnomusicology. Music shapes the faith and life of emerging churches more than
anything else. How can it be a sidelight of mission? A network of Christian ethnomusicologists
is encouraging wider use of the kind of Christian music development
that happened spontaneously in the VM churches. 15 Let this become a mainstream
pursuit. Cultural outsiders cannot do the composing and choreography but they
may legitimize it for the local composers, give a little guidance for it, and act as
cheerleaders while the new music emerges.
y Proverbs. Proverbs are distilled oral thinking, masterful carriers of profound truth.
How can these be incidental to preaching and witness? Why not routinely build
them into mission work. For example, here is an ethnographic project for a one- or
two-month short-term experience for a college student: “Write a paper of five pages
or less that answers this question: What are ten local proverbs that every missionary
who comes to this place should learn on arrival, and what would they know about
the local people if they really grasped these proverbs?” 16
15 The International Council of Ethnodoxologists, http://worldofworship.org, states: “We facilitate online
networking and provide resources for the development of culturally appropriate Christian worship, utilizing
insights from ethnomusicology, missiology, worship studies and the arts.” See also James R. Krabill, ed.,
Worship and Mission for the Global Church: An Ethnodoxology Handbook (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2013).
16 An entire cultural profile can be sketched using proverbs as points for a “connect the dots” approach. This
is what I have done on American culture in the book American Cultural Baggage: How to Recognize and Deal with It
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005).
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74
y Festivals. How can festivals be so neglected? They are communal events celebrating
the great acts of God in the biblical story, intriguingly and graciously open to outside
observers, involving music and drama, processions, symbols, colors, and many
layers of meaning. 17 Westerners are festival-deaf and festival-blind, but the rest of
the world is fluent in festival. I would love to see us change the dominant paradigm
for mission from a war to a festival, so that we automatically think of ourselves more
as carriers of joy than agents of force. Might the festival be so effective that it would
have an even greater impact on both evangelism and discipleship than sermons do?
A shift to an oral thinking style would also go a long way toward helping us understand
and utilize the shift that N. T. Wright, Dallas Willard, and Scot McKnight are calling
for—the recovery of the biblical “gospel of the kingdom” as opposed to an exclusive
focus on the “gospel of salvation.” I cannot summarize that here. I only want to note that
the “gospel of salvation” (our standard way of preaching and teaching the gospel in the
West) is an analytical gospel, that is, it breaks the gospel into concepts and pieces, while
the gospel of the kingdom is a narrative and is much more intelligible to oral thinkers. 18
Emphasis on local thinking style would reinforce the other two marks, relate VM to the
familiar Three-Self Formula, and point us toward another emerging mission network
(the International Orality Network) as a naturally ally of VM. 19 It would also align VM
squarely with the healthy trend in missiology to attend to thinking style as an aspect of
worldview. This is greatly needed because the message has not got through to many
mission practitioners and even mission agency leaders yet.They do not comprehend the
orality issue and do not assume it as a core aspect of mission strategy in nearly the same
way they assume contextualization and sustainability.
Perhaps most importantly of all, emphasis on local thinking style would make our vulnerability
more obvious to us than the other two marks. As Mary Lederleitner said in her paper,
“It is always hard for people with a lot of money and education to learn from those with
less.” 20 But our money will not help us become oral thinkers, and our education, since it
is so analytical, will actually hurt us.
The instant we try to shift from analytical to oral thinking, we know we are off our turf
and out of our depth. Local oral thinkers are the experts, and we are in kindergarten,
so we have to let them lead and learn from them as they do. When we ask them how
to write a song, quote a proverb, hold a festival, or explain the gospel in an oral way, we
know we don’t know!
17 I am currently making a personal attempt on this one, which you can see in my book Waking Up to the Messiah
(Morton, IL: Enculturation Books, 2011). The book sketches an annual cycle of festivals that together tell
the whole story of Scripture. A two-page diagram of the cycle is downloadable at http://gmi.org/services/
research/stans-lab/the-messianic-year1/messianic-year-brochure.
18 They are not “two gospels” but two ways of presenting and explaining the gospel. McKnight clearly shows
that the gospel of the kingdom is summarized in the same biblical passage that the gospel of salvation advocates
claim as theirs, 1 Cor 15:1–3. See Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 40–43.
19 See http://oralbible.com.
20 Mary Lederleitner, unpublished paper presented at the Abilene Christian University “Global Conference
on Vulnerable Mission,” March 7–10, 2012.

VULNERABLE MISSION VIS-À-VIS MAINSTREAM MISSION AND MISSIOLOGY
This is a huge challenge, almost incomprehensibly different than our analytical ways.
I ran into it as I worked with oral thinkers in Lesotho a generation ago, and I tried to
explain it to my American supporters this way: “Teaching the Bible in Lesotho means
teaching parts of the Bible we don’t often read (like Hebrews) to teach truths we don’t
understand (like purification) to meet needs we don’t feel (like body-soul cleansing) by
using methods we don’t like (like memorization).”
Once I taught a two-day course on worldview at a YWAM training base in England
and included some of this material on thinking styles. At the end a Swedish student
commented, “Now I see not only why I felt lost for most of the six months I served in
Tanzania. I can see for the first time just how lost I really was!”
If missionaries among oral peoples tried from the beginning to shift to oral thinking, they
would find out much sooner “just how lost they really are.” Then they would slow down,
invest much less money and energy in poor (i.e., analytically based) mission strategies and
programs, and do much less damage before they started doing some good.
THE HUGE METHODOLOGICAL CHOICE FOR WESTERN
MISSIONS TODAY
If VM methods—local language, local resources, local thinking style—are so much better
than others, where are they working? It is a fair question. If Jim Harries has come
up with such a valuable theory, why has his own VM approach to theological training
not yet caught fire in Western Kenya, spread across Kenya and even to other countries?
Where’s the beef in the VM theory?
The answer is hiding in plain sight, and it is a lot bigger than Jim or any of the rest of us.
Arguably the three most fruitful mission movements in the entire twentieth century were
three that operated almost entirely on VM principles. (I realize these do not fit with Jim’s
definition of VM as an issue of Westerners working in the Majority World, but bear with
me.) The three movements are African indigenous churches, Chinese house churches,
and (to a lesser extent) the charismatic movement in Latin America. Mainstream mission
thinkers and leaders are fully aware of all three and generally admire them, yet they
seem not to have grasped the implications of their fruitfulness. Consider this:
The AICs [African Instituted Churches] have shown how much mission can be done for
free. It takes no money to retell the story of the calling of the founder or to tell people
about one’s own walk with God. It takes no money to pray for someone to be healed. It
takes no money to sing and dance or to write a new song that praises God. It takes no
money to receive dreams or prophetic revelations from God. It takes no money for each
member of a congregation to stand up and speak in a service. It takes no money to be freed
from alcoholism, wife-beating, jealousy and witchcraft. It takes no money to become an
honest, hard-working employee. 21
The massive success of VM is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon. In our new
century in India, Mongolia, the Philippines, and across the Muslim World, things are
beginning to happen that look very similar to Africa 100 years ago and China 50 years
21 Thomas Oduro, et al., Mission in an African Way: A Practical Introduction to African Instituted Churches and Their
Sense of Mission, Marturia series (Wellington, South Africa: BybelMedia, 2008), 159–60.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 68–80
ago. And the movements are typically working on VM principles because they have no other
options.
If it is true that in the twentiety century God spread his kingdom most widely by VM
methods, and if it is true that he seems poised to do the same thing in the remaining
“neglected corners” of the earth in the twenty-first century, then we in Western missions
need to ask ourselves one huge question, perhaps the biggest question facing Western
churches, the Western mission establishment, and the next generation of Western missionaries:
Complement or copy? To what extent does God want us to use our strengths (methods and
resources) to complement the groups and churches who are using VM by necessity, and to what extent does
he want us to copy their VM methods ourselves by choice, leaving our “strengths” on the sideline?
Complementing seems to be the obvious choice if we are thinking of the global church
as a body where different members have different functions. For example, groups like
Gospel for Asia promote mission by combining the money of the West with the manpower
of the East. There are many more nuanced variations on this model, which is the
premise for all forms of partnership. But in light of Paul Yonggap Jeong’s paper in the
present issue, we have to recognize that every attempt to complement is an attempt to do mission
from a position of strength. We want our strength to complement their effort in some area
where they are weak.
VM is pointing out that the body is not working like it should when one member acts like
Saul trying to help another “weaker” member, David, by offering some armor. That is
interference not body life. It comes from the kind of well-intentioned thinking that says,
“We are stronger than you, you need what we can provide, we are willing to help you, so
accept it as God’s provision for you through us.”
Sometimes this thinking is true; God is providing by this route, but perhaps not nearly
as often as we think. I believe a great deal of what is interfering with the carrying out of
the Great Commission today—the foreignness, the money-centeredness, the fuzziness of
the message—is largely the result of many Davids accepting Saul’s armor and trying to
fight while they wear it.
We in the wealthy countries have to become much more self-critical. Are our strengths
really strengths? Is David’s weakness really weakness? It all depends on what the Lord
of the mission wants to do and how he wants to do it. If we assume that our money
and technology, which look like strengths from a human perspective, are what God is
most likely to use to get his mission done and to bring glory to himself, won’t we forget
to check with Jesus, the general director of the mission, whether he actually wants to use
our money and technology in each particular case?
Are we not overlooking 1 Corinthians 1 as the default setting for mission—God using the weak to confound
the strong? Are we not relegating that “weak” and vulnerable method of mission to those
who are too poor to be able to afford to do mission the way we do it? 22 Are we not assum-
22 We may note that 1 Cor 1 does not entirely exclude the strong from mission. Not many strong are called
(1:26), but a few are. I don’t think that means that the church really needs to thank God for those few strong
ones and build its whole approach to mission around them and their strengths. I think it means rather that
God’s preferred way and most common way of getting his mission done is the surprising way, through apparently
weak people and groups. He does weave a few “strong” people into the tapestry but they are not the ones
holding everything together.
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ing that people do mission from a position of strength if they can and from a position of
weakness if they must?
THREE REQUESTS FOR READERS
While we consider the mega-issues of oral thinking style and “complement or copy,”
there are three very down-to-earth activities I would love to see readers engage in. I am
doing them already and benefiting, but I am only one person. We need to multiply this.
1. Getting more perspectives on VM from Majority World people whose contact
with the West has not persuaded them to approach mission like Westerners (we’ve
been confining the dialogue mostly to Westerners). For me this happens mainly
through ongoing communication with a house church pastor in Central Asia.
2. Discovering where and how VM overlaps with other movements and trends in
the mission world, particularly “partnership” and “orality” (we’ve been describing
ourselves mostly in isolation or in contrast to others). For me this means staying in
touch with the COSIM and ION networks. 23
3. Finding and sharing more success stories about VM in practice (we’ve been refining
the VM theory, and I’m still mostly doing that in this paper). For me this means
promoting Thomas Oduro’s book Mission in an African Way.
CONCLUSION
There is broad consensus among the overseas churches I am familiar with, missionaries,
and mission scholars that the Western missionary movement has not produced the desired
amount of the desired fruit, and that the shift to emphasis on short-term mission is
not helping much if at all. There is widespread work on method improvement, especially
among advocates of partnership.
VM takes things a step further, advocating much greater reliance on local language and
resources than we currently see. I am proposing that we also advocate a much greater
reliance on oral thinking as opposed to analytical thinking.
There is a very difficult choice for the next generation of Western Christians. Should
they complement the “weak” VM of the Majority World church with their strength,
or should they forego their strength and copy the VM that the Majority World uses by
necessity?
If God is in this, then we need to widen the VM circle and connect with others among
whom he is also stirring. It is his mission, and it ought to be done in his way(s), which we
can find in consultation with others he guides.
23 COSIM is the Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Ministries (http://cosim.info). In spite of its
name, it is not about funding of indigenous ministries but partnering with them in a variety of ways. ION is
the International Orality Network (http://oralbible.com).
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And here is the heart of the matter for VM. If missionaries and mission agencies are so
interested in bringing more glory to God, 24 why would we not cut back on the mission
methods that are failing to bring much glory to him? Why not replace them with a more
vulnerable strategy, one that for its inspiration harks back to the cross, the resurrection,
and Pentecost instead of the conquest of the Promised Land? Why not pay the prices of
vulnerable mission and bring to God the glory that vulnerable mission in his name brings?
Dr. Stan Nussbaum is Staff Missiologist of GMI Research Services and Adjunct Professor at Wheaton College. He has
also taught the Breakthrough course at the Overseas Ministries Study Center in Connecticut, at the World Link Graduate
Center in Portland, and (including earlier versions) in England, Korea, Malaysia, India, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi,
Congo (Dem. Rep.), and Nigeria.
24 Thanks to the influence of writers like John Piper and programs like the Perspectives course, there is
increased attention to the connection of mission and the glory of God. Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne,
eds., Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader, 4th ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2009); see
especially Hawthorne’s article on pp. 49–63 and Piper’s on pp. 64–69.
78

BIBLIOGRAPHY
VULNERABLE MISSION VIS-À-VIS MAINSTREAM MISSION AND MISSIOLOGY
Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American
Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.
Butler, Phill. Well Connected: Releasing Power, Restoring Hope through Kingdom Partnerships.
Colorado Springs: Authentic Publishing, 2005.
Christian Storytelling Network. http://christianstorytelling.com.
Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Ministries. http://cosim.info.
Elmer, Duane. Cross-Cultural Connections: Stepping Out and Fitting In around the World.
Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002.
Hiebert, Paul G. Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People
Change. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008.
The International Council of Ethnodoxologists. http://worldofworship.org.
International Orality Network. http://oralbible.com.
Johnstone, Patrick. The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities. Colorado
Springs: Biblica, 2011.
Krabill, James R., ed. Worship and Mission for the Global Church: An Ethnodoxology Handbook.
Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2013.
The Lausanne Movement. “The Lausanne Standards: Affirmations and Agreements
for Giving and Receiving Money in Mission.” Documents. http://www.
lausanne.org/docs/standards/lausanne-standards.pdf.
Lederleitner, Mary T. Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and
Mission. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010.
Lingenfelter, Sherwood G., and Marvin K. Mayers. Ministering Cross-Culturally:
An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic,
2003.
McKnight, Scot. The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2011.
Nussbaum, Stan. American Cultural Baggage: How to Recognize and Deal with It. Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 2005.
________. “Vulnerable Mission Strategies.” Global Missiology 10, no. 2 (2013): http://ojs.
globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/1135/2630.
________. Waking Up to the Messiah. Morton, IL: Enculturation Books, 2011.
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Oduro, Thomas, Hennie Pretorius, Stan Nussbaum, and Bryan Born. Mission
in an African Way: A Practical Introduction to African Instituted Churches and Their Sense of
Mission. Marturia series. Wellington, South Africa: BybelMedia, 2008.
Rickett, Daniel. Making Your Partnership Work: A Guide for Ministry Leaders. Enumclaw,
WA: WinePress, 2002.
Standards of Excellence in Short Term Missions. “The 7 Standards.” http://
www.soe.org/explore/the-7-standards.
Vulnerable Mission. http://vulnerablemission.org.
Winter, Ralph, and Steven Hawthorne, eds. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement:
A Reader. 4th ed. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2009.
Ybarrola, Steven J. “Avoiding the Ugly Missionary: Anthropology and Short-Term
Missions.” In Effective Engagement in Short-Term Missions: Doing it Right!, edited by Robert
Priest, 101–119. Evangelical Missiological Society Series 16. Pasadena: William
Carey Library, 2008.
80

What Is That In Your Hand? Mobilizing
Local Resources 1
Jean JohnSon
In this manuscript, I share key experiences from my sixteen years of cross-cultural ministry in Cambodia in
regard to mobilization of local resources. Additionally, I speak of Jesus’ incredible ingenuity for affirming
and mobilizing local resources. Through personal experiences, biblical examples, and insights from others,
I challenge cross-cultural Christian workers to avoid imposing outside resources, but rather facilitate local
people to mobilize their local resources.
God had informed Moses that he was to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of
their mental and physical prison into a land groomed and cultivated by God. Moses
asked God with a great amount of pleading in his voice, “What if they do not believe me
or listen to me?” God responded to Moses, “Throw that old rickety stick aside and let
me give you something worthwhile for the task!” Surely, God did not respond in such a
manner. Rather, God asked, “What is that in your hand?” (Exod 4:2). 2
God did not give Moses additional resources but rather affirmed and used what was
already in Moses’ hand. All missionaries should adopt the same question, both as a working
question on the field and as a driving principle for their mission paradigm. A question
that asks the local people, “What is that in your hand that God can use?” In the book
Walk Out Walk On, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze share about communities
that have learned to work with what they have to create what they need. 3 If we were to
turn this into a Moses-type question, we would ask: “What can you and God do with
what you have to create what you need?”
In this article, I will share “aha moments” that I have experienced during my sixteen
years of cross-cultural ministry in Cambodia in regard to mobilization of local resources.
In addition, I will speak of Jesus’ incredible ingenuity for affirming and mobilizing local
resources.
I was riding with a group of Cambodians in a truck to a village. In a ministry setting,
most of these Cambodians were very timid and unsure of themselves as communicators
of Jesus Christ. But, there in the truck they communicated with animation, passion,
and confidence. What was the difference? They were interacting with stories, proverbs,
riddles, and songs versus logical explanations and debates. In that very moment the truth
dawned on me—I had imported and forced my teaching styles on the Cambodians. I
cleverly taught the Cambodian believers how to study and present the Word of God
through systematic theology, definitions, outlines, reasoning, apologetics, and interpreted
1 This essay is an adaptation of a lecture presented at the Abilene Christian University “Global Conference
on Vulnerable Mission,” March 7–10, 2012.
2 All Scripture quotations are from the New International Version, unless noted otherwise.
3 Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live
the Future Now, BK Currents (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2011), 3.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 81–88
narratives. While some of those who learned from me sorted out how to communicate
like a Westerner, their Cambodian audience looked at them with blank stares.
I had made a huge mistake. I imported my resources and modes of teaching and communication.
It was time for me to be the vulnerable one—not them.
I gathered up all my Western-oriented materials that I had written in the local language,
tossed them in a cabinet, locked the door, and threw away the key. Then I started asking
the Cambodians the Moses-type question: “What do you have in your hand?” The
Cambodians revealed, “We have stories, drama, symbols, rituals, parables, riddles, ditties,
poetry, music, songs, and dance.” Indeed, these were the resources of communication
that the Cambodians could use for all aspects of ministry: planting the gospel,
discipleship, training, teaching, counseling, and so forth. My duty as a missionary was to
recognize, affirm, and learn how to use their local resources. I liken the missionary’s role
to that of a cheerleader. We do not have to tell others how to play the game or play it for
them, rather we cheer them on saying, “You can do it!”
I entered the Cambodian church and looked for a place to sit down. My favorite time
of the week was when I could praise and worship God with Cambodians in the local
language. While I was worshiping, I noticed a Cambodian man worshiping in a
way different from all the others. I curiously leaned over to take a closer look. At that
moment, I realized that the man was blind. Unlike the others, his posture represented
pronounced reverence. He worshipped God the exact way a Cambodian would behave
in the presence of a king or someone important: bowed lowly, no eye contact, and both
hands tightly pushed together, pressed against the chest. The others worshipped standing
straight up, seemingly making eye contact with God, and hands lifted upward with
armpits showing. This experience would not be so bad, if I were not the one who planted
the church.
I had made another a huge mistake. I imported my form of Western worship. Why? I
knew better, but I wanted to plant a church before I could grasp the indigenous music of
Cambodia. Since a real church needed formal worship—so I thought—I took a shortcut
and introduced some Western songs translated into the Cambodian language and modeled
modes of worship from my experience in North America.
Again, I should have asked the Cambodians, “What is in your hand?” They would have
answered, “A roneat, a pia, a chapey, a tro, a skor. We use pinpeat, chreing chapey narrative
singing, ayai repartee singing, shadow plays, melodies that tell stories, lullabies, mohori ensembles,
plengkar, ramvong, and so forth.” I should have continued to ask, “What is the
most culturally relevant form of worship for you?”
It was time for me to be the vulnerable one—learn, adapt, and facilitate the Cambodians
to produce their own indigenous hymnody: “a body of hymns and spiritual songs which
are composed by members of an ethnic group and thought of as being their own.” 4
A local Cambodian pastor requested that I work alongside of him to train a church
planting team. I remember the first training session well. I made the following request:
“Please, each one of you share your story of how you came to know and walk with
4 Brian Schrag and Paul Neeley, All the World Will Worship: Helps for Developing Indigenous Hymns, 3rd ed. (Duncanville,
TX: EthnoDoxology Publications, 2005), 3.
82

WHAT IS THAT IN YOUR HAND?
Christ.” Their stories were similar: “I received free eyeglasses. . . .” “The Christian organization
gave us rice. . . .” “I was given a job with an NGO. . . .”
I knew we were in trouble in regard to planting healthy indigenous churches. In a matter
of months, the church planters requested eyeglasses, rice, and connections to job opportunities
to share among the people with whom they were planting churches. Additionally,
they expected material goods and financial compensation for their effort in church
planting. I had matured enough to know that the moment I gave subsidies to the church
planters and material goods for them to use as handouts, I would have created unhealthy
dependency on me. Subsequently, the local pastor and I encouraged the church planters
to remain bi-vocational and find ways to share compassion with their local resources—
visit a patient in the hospital, work side by side on a project, teach a child to read, and any
other compassionate acts that start with what is in hand.
Imported teaching styles, worship forms, and welfare evangelism were all detrimental to
the process of mobilizing local resources for the sake of healthy indigenous churches that
make a difference in their Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria (Acts 1:8).
Almost on a daily basis, I receive emails from Africa, India, and Asia. The emails are
always requests. “Please come and do crusades. Please conduct seminars for our leaders.
Send materials, books, and DVDs. Will you partner with us?” Most emails state a little
something that informs me that the invitation involves money. All the emails are from
seemingly well-established leaders. What does this reveal to me? It reveals to me that
something went wrong in the birthing and early development stages of those churches
and organizations. The planter or those giving birth instilled a mindset that resources
from the inside are inferior.
Capable leaders are driven to look constantly outside themselves to the West for their human
and material resources. Instead of mobilizing people and resources around them,
they make pleas to those completely removed from the context. These churches and
ministries are sometimes kilometers apart from one another. Instead of reaching out
and collaborating with one another, they bypass capable disciples of Christ in their own
villages, districts, states, regions, countries, and continents to ask for help from the point
farthest from them. In my perspective, it is time for the West to ask, “What can you and
God do with what you have to create what you need?”
Yesterday, I received an email from India. The sender of the email has completed master
of divinity and master of mheology degrees. This minister is now pursuing a PhD in missions.
The purpose of the email was to make a request for books, DVDs, and magazines
to do research on the house church movement. The composer of the email expressed
that he wanted the resources for free because he could not afford to buy materials for his
research.
One reason local Christians in places such as India feel the need to look to the West
for resources is because Western missionaries and churches have conveyed the message
that the educated and the affluent have some sort of edge in fulfilling the Great Commission.
We have introduced structures and paradigms that are complicated, expensive,
and definitely not mandated by Jesus for the purpose of making disciples in all nations.
It is slightly ironic that the Indian gentleman came full circle. In other words, he has
spent a significant amount of human and material resources to eventually research the
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house church movement, which has a secondary name: the simple church movement—a
method that intentionally promotes simplicity, low maintenance, usage of local resources,
and reproducibility. I have two books on this subject sitting on my desk entitled The
Church in the House: A Return to Simplicity and Simply Church. 5
Keep in mind that simple does not mean inferior. On the contrary, simple has an element
of purity, authenticity, depth, and of course reproducibility. “It is not that the content is
simplistic or shallow—it is often very profound—but the pattern for doing it is simple
and therefore easily reproduced.” 6
Being seminary trained or well funded certainly were not key ingredients to fulfilling the
Great Commission for the disciples or Paul. Ben Chikazaza, a church leader in Zimbabwe,
answered his own question:
84
I wonder what the apostles Paul and Peter would say if they came down and saw the state
of the church today? They would be shocked at the amount of money needed to convert
one soul today! God help the African pastor to remain simple and obedient. The apostle
Paul preached a simple gospel and could not demand what was rightfully his for fear that
he would be disqualified. David refused to fight Goliath using King Saul’s armour and we
cannot fight our battles using the world’s armour. Many of God’s servants are so heavily
loaded with materialism that they cannot lift a hand against the enemy. 7
Jesus was born right in the midst of local resources—a manger in the town of Bethlehem.
As you follow Jesus’ journey through the Gospels, you see that the only resources
he introduced from outside the community were himself, the disciples, and signs and
wonders. When Jesus entered a community, he utilized resources that already existed in
that context to fulfill his ministry. He preached in existing synagogues (Mark 1:39). He
preached and had dinner with tax collectors and so-called sinners in homes (Mark 2:2,
15). Large crowds caused Jesus to teach parables from boats along lakeshores and the
beatitudes from mountainsides (Mark 4:1; 5:1). When a Samaritan woman came to draw
water from the community well, Jesus led her into a saving relationship through himself,
the living water (John 4:7). Jesus rebuked demons out of a man and sent them captive
into a herd of pigs, which committed suicide by frantically running off a steep bank into
a lake (Luke 8:33). He taught the people many things in parables using everyday objects
and experiences (Mark 4:2–3). A withering fig tree along the road became a prophetic
object lesson (Matt 21:19). The disciples brought a donkey to Jesus, threw their cloaks
on the colt and had Jesus sit on it (Luke 19:35). Jesus took bread during a holiday meal,
broke it, and gave it to the disciples saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in
remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Jesus poured water into a basin and washed the
disciples’ foul-smelling feet, then dried those feet with a towel that was wrapped around
him (John 13:5). Jesus died hanging on a cross made of local wood and was laid in a local
tomb, located in the garden near the place where Jesus was crucified (John 19:17, 41–42).
You never read about Jesus opening a duffle bag or a crate to unleash resources on the
people. He never requested that Judas give funds to the people to enable them to build
5 Robert Fitts, The Church in the House: A Return to Simplicity (Salem, OR: Preparing the Way Publishers, 2001);
Tony Dale and Felicity Dale, Simply Church (Austin, TX: Karis Publishing, 2002).
6 Dale and Dale, 70.
7 Ben Chikazaza, “Self-Reliance and the Church,” The Network for Strategic Missions (October 1997):
http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&view=v&id=9912&fto=1378&.

WHAT IS THAT IN YOUR HAND?
a church. He did not send out the disciples with ample supplies and donor funds to set
up humanitarian projects. Even when Jesus miraculously fed five thousand people, he
accused those recipients who received a free meal of being interested in merely filling
their bellies.
Jesus expected the same from his disciples. He trained his disciples on-the-job with local
resources and sent them out without even sandals.
There’s a great harvest waiting for you in the fields, but there aren’t many good workers
to harvest it. Pray that the Harvest Master will send good workers to the fields. It’s time
for you 70 to go. I am sending you out armed with vulnerability, like lambs into a pack
of wolves. Don’t bring a wallet. Don’t carry a backpack. I don’t want you to even wear
sandals. Walk along barefoot, quietly, without stopping for small talk. When you enter a
house seeking lodging, say, “Peace on this house!” If a child of peace—one who welcomes
God’s message of peace—is there, your peace will rest on him. If not, don’t worry; nothing
is wasted. Stay where you are welcomed. Become a part of the family, eating and drinking
whatever they give you. You’re My workers, and you deserve to be cared for. Again, don’t
go from house to house, but settle down in a town and eat whatever they serve you. Heal
the sick and say to the townspeople, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (Luke
10:2–7; The Voice)
Jesus had church; he didn’t make church. Jesus had church at a water well, in homes,
on the mountainside, and in a boat. He made disciples using fig trees, parables, demons
in pigs, donkey rides, meals, and washing feet. Jesus was the first to instruct people to
share and be generous among the needy; but He did this very thing through loving relationships
and creativity, utilizing that which was locally available. Local resources served
as the color for Jesus’ artwork of discipleship making. He saw what was near him and
turned it into a parable. He used everyday articles to make a life-giving point. Homes
and seashores served as his mobile pulpit.
On the contrary, we are so quick to introduce our resources from the outside. We race
to set up buildings and impose foreign organizational structures. Missionaries and sponsors
serve as conduits of money. While Jesus modeled church in an everyday context, we
model church in ways that can only be sustainable through our funding. Both Gailyn
Van Rheenen and Jonathan Bonk echo this reality:
“Western temptation is to conceptualize and organize the missionary task on an economic
level that can only be sustained by Western support and oversight.” This has resulted in the
development of mission strategies which are “money intensive,” signifying that one must
have a lot of capital to do Christianity Western-style. 8
Josphat Charagu, a pastor in Kenya, expressed to me that the missionaries organized
their mission work according to a Western context with complete disregard for the African
context and thought. David Phillips, founder of the Nomadic Peoples Network, has
revealed that the Western, imported model of church caused nomads to count Christianity
as a faith for the rich who can afford to erect and maintain buildings—not a faith
for communities who intentionally move from one place to another. A camel herder’s
8 Christopher Little, “Partnerships in Pauline Perspective: The Economics of Partnership,” International Journal
of Frontier Missiology 27, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 64, quoting Gailyn Van Rheenen, “MR #2: Money and
Mi$$ion$,” Missiology.org, http://www.missiology.org/?p=278, and Jonathan J. Bonk, Missions and Money:
Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem, American Society of Missiology Series 15 (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991),
40, respectively.
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statement says it all: “When you can put your Church on the back of my camel then I
will think that Christianity is meant for us Somalis.” 9
Pastor Charagu told me how one day he arrived at his church and saw a pile of rocks
dumped right in the front of the entrance. He became upset and exclaimed, “I have had
enough with our neighbor; he continues to make things difficult for us!” Pastor Charagu
called the head of his men’s department to complain. The department leader responded,
“Pastor, slow down! The neighbor did not unload those stones in front of the church.
One of the cell groups brought those today as part of their contribution to build our
permanent church.” Pastor Charagu was utterly encouraged to see the church members
give sacrificially and without provocation.
This community of believers plans to build their church using a method called “divide
and rule,” which is used by local politicians. Unfortunately, politicians abuse this method,
but they plan to implement this approach in a righteous way. In this “divide and rule”
manner, different people will be responsible for different facets of building the church,
such as the drawing plans, stones, roofing, pillars, windows, and so forth.
The ingenuity, sacrificial commitment, and resolve of Pastor Charagu and his church
are an example of the beauty of mobilizing local people and local resources. It is what
happens among the people who use local resources through dependence on God and on
one another that make the difference: prayer, sacrifice, faith, companionship, gift sharing,
creativity, teamwork, capacity building, and perseverance. I guarantee that when you see
an elaborate structure built with outside funds, you will NOT see the make-a-difference
characteristics that you would observe among a community that has built its own church
or creatively found ways to do church within existing structures (homes, community centers,
urban garages, businesses, backyards, under trees, etc.) The beauty is in the process,
not the finished product. Better the small that reveals a group’s effort toward responsible
self-help than the big that reveals donations from outside. Our big and better methods in
someone else’s country do not fool God according to Leonard Sweet:
86
The ancient Hebrews compared God’s workings to the monstrous cedars of Lebanon and
wings of eagles. Jesus loves looking at mustard seeds, grains of wheat, leftover crumbs, and
barnyard hens. He invites us to look around at our fields, our gardens, our orchards, our
vineyards, our backyards. Jesus is not against large but invites us to start small and do little
large. “Little is much if God is in it.” 10
We need to cease making people of other nations believe that money and what money
can accomplish are the key to making disciples. If we despise the small beginnings of
other nations by shoving our supposedly efficient, bigger and better structures and methods
down their throats, we are guilty of crushing the dignity and initiatives of men and
women. We can learn from the interchange between the angel and the prophet Zechariah
on behalf of Zerubbabel who was responsible for rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem:
I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?” He answered, “Do you
not know what these are?” “No, my lord,” I replied. So he said to me, “This is the word of
the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD
9 David J. Phillips, Peoples on the Move: Introducing the Nomads of the World (Grand Rapids: IVP, 2001), xiii.
10 Leonard Sweet, Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There (Colorado Springs, CO: David
C. Cook, 2010), 37.

WHAT IS THAT IN YOUR HAND?
Almighty. . . . Then the word of the LORD came to me: “The hands of Zerubbabel have
laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that
the LORD Almighty has sent me to you. Who despises the day of small things? Men will
rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.” (Zech 4:4–10a)
The interaction between the angel of God and Zechariah reveals to us the key ingredients
to godly success, which are God’s Spirit and small beginnings. Let us Western missionaries
not swallow up these key ingredients by imposing our resources onto others in
cross-cultural contexts.
All of us are quick to say that the Bible is our principal and God-given manual for our
mission practices. Dr. Christopher Little challenges the distortion of that claim:
Most if not all people involved in fulfilling the Great Commission today would affirm that
the sole basis for Christian faith and practice is the Bible. Yet for whatever reason there has
been a preoccupation with the former to the neglect of the latter. That is, the church has
concentrated on “orthodoxy,” right or correct doctrine and thinking, to the exclusion of
“orthopraxy,” right or correct practice and action. This predicament is most discernible
in the area of finance since, according to Herbert Kane, “no other one thing has done so
much harm to the Christian cause” (1976:91). As such, it is imperative that the Western
church recovers biblical models regarding the proper use of money in mission. 11
The apostle Paul was the most successful missionary of all time. We would be foolish to
count his orthodoxy as passé. Paul purposely set aside regular support for himself, expected
the churches he birthed to be self-supporting from the beginning, and encouraged
poor churches to contribute to those who were facing famine, all for the greater purpose
of planting healthy churches. Jesus and the disciples gave of themselves endlessly, yet that
giving never included an unloading of material resources on a people. If we appreciate
the success of Jesus, the disciples, and Paul, we may want to take their practices more
seriously.
God asked Moses what was in his hand. Jesus asked the same question indirectly throughout
his ministry on earth (John 21:6). Philip emphasized what the Ethiopian eunuch was
holding in his hand—the Scriptures (Acts 8:30). Paul exhorted Timothy to fan into flame
his resource—the gift of God that was given to him through the laying on of hands (2
Tim 1:6).
Instead of being providers of resources, let us affirm and facilitate local people’s identification
and mobilization of their local resources to create what they need. May the
question, “What is in your hand?” be forever on our lips as we participate in the Great
Commission. In this way, God will receive the glory, not us.
Jean Johnson, a cross-cultural communicator, spent 23 years living and serving among Cambodians in the USA and
in Cambodia specializing in worldview strategic church planting, orality, and reproducible training. Presently, Jean
is a co-director of World Mission Associates and an international coach in parts of Asia, Africa, and North America.
She coaches and teaches pastors, churches, missionaries, organizations, and teams on how to intentionally inspire
indigenous people to mobilize their local capabilities, resources, and cultural creativity. Her publications include We
Are Not the Hero: A Missionary’s Guide for Sharing Christ, Not a Culture of Dependency (Sisters, Oregon: Deep River Books,
2012), reviewed in the present issue.
11 Little, 65.
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BIBLOGRAPHY
Bonk, Jonathan J. Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem. American
Society of Missiology Series 15. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.
Chikazaza, Ben. “Self-Reliance and the Church.” The Network for Strategic Missions
(October 1997): http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb
&view=v&id=9912&fto=1378&.
Dale, Tony, and Felicity Dale. Simply Church. Austin, TX: Karis Publishing, 2002.
Fitts, Robert. The Church in the House: A Return to Simplicity. Salem, OR: Preparing the
Way Publishers, 2001.
Little, Christopher. “Partnerships in Pauline Perspective: The Economics of Partnership.”
International Journal of Frontier Missiology 27, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 61–68.
Phillips, David J. Peoples on the Move: Introducing the Nomads of the World. Grand Rapids:
IVP, 2001.
Schrag, Brian, and Paul Neeley. All the World Will Worship: Helps for Developing Indigenous
Hymns. 3rd ed. Duncanville, TX: EthnoDoxology Publications, 2005.
Sweet, Leonard. Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There. Colorado
Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.
Van Rheenen, Gailyn. “MR #2: Money and Mi$$ion$.” Missiology.org. http://
www.missiology.org/?p=278.
Wheatley, Margaret, and Deborah Frieze. Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey
into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. BK Currents. San Francisco: Berrett-
Koehler, 2011.
88

The King’s English in a Tamil Tongue:
Missions, Paternalism, and Hybridity in
South India 1
DYron DaughritY
This paper looks at problems that have occurred in Church of Christ missions by focusing on a case study
in India called the Arise Shine Church of Christ Mission. The paper argues that paternalism in a cappella
church missions has led to a “time capsule effect” wherein churches in India have become stultified.
Indian Church of Christ members have developed a hybrid identity. They try to be faithful to the sending
churches—in this case Canada’s valiant missionary J. C. Bailey—but they have to balance it with
faithfulness to their own culture. Several issues are brought forth such as Bible translations (especially the
use of the King James Version), contextualization and indigenization, and the unfortunate dependency that
often arises in Church of Christ missions efforts.
To begin, I will share a quotation from the person described by Christianity Today
as “the most important person you don’t know.” 2 Andrew Walls is the dean of the
relatively new discipline that I work in, known as world Christianity, or global Christianity.
Walls is a Scottish, Oxbridge educated scholar who went to Sierra Leone in 1957
to serve as a church history professor in a colonial college. What he witnessed in Africa
changed his understanding of Christianity and gave birth to a new academic discipline.
While “happily pontificating” on early Christianity, Walls came to realize he “was actually
living in a second-century church.” 3 Africans were rapidly turning to Christ, and he
was a front-row observer. He began to see that the Christianity his British compatriots
had established was becoming translated and assimilated to the local context in creative,
unpredictable ways. Africa was becoming the Christian heartland of the world, but it
was complex, uncontrolled, vibrantly new, and unsettled.
Walls has made a career out of analyzing how Christianity gets translated and indigenized
in new cultures. In his view, this is the genius of Christianity; its “translatability.”
Walls’s ideas overhauled the field of church history to the point that most classic models
are now obsolete. His work has impacted the discipline to the point that no longer can
the history of Christians be told in an exclusively Western framework: Acts to Augustine
to Aquinas to Luther to Wesley to Barth. Now, church history should be told in all its
manifold greatness and extreme diversity. At Pepperdine I advertise my World Christianity
course as a study of Christianity that moves from South Korea to South America,
from South Africa to South Carolina.
1 This article began as a paper presentation for Baylor University’s 2011 conference “The King James Bible
and the World it Made, 1611–2011.” A second, expanded draft of the paper was presented at Pepperdine
University’s National Endowment of the Humanities-funded conference “Manifold Greatness: The Creation
and Afterlife of the King James Bible” in September 2012.
2 Tim Stafford, “Historian Ahead of His Time,” Christianity Today (February 2007): http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/34.87.html.
See also William Burrows, Mark Gornik, and Janice McLean,
eds., Understanding World Christianity: The Vision and Work of Andrew F. Walls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011).
3 Stafford, 2.
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2012): 89–109

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 89–109
Andrew Walls has globalized the discipline of church history by making us think globally,
even when dealing with our own personal, local faith traditions. In his watershed essay,
“Eusebius Tries Again: Reconceiving the Study of Christian History” he writes:
90
The church that is the subject of church history is implicitly defined as the church we
ourselves know—our tradition as it has developed. In principle, there is no harm in this
focus, provided we know what we are doing, and provided also we do more than this. It
is natural and right to seek to understand one’s own tradition; it means to know who one’s
ancestors are.
But there are lurking dangers, both historical and theological. One is that we think by the
study of our own tradition we are doing church history. We are not—we are doing our
church history. If this is the only lens through which we study Christian history, we have
bypassed the story of the whole people of God in favor of clan history. Such an approach
reduces the area in which we look for the works of God, whereas the promises of God are
to all who trust them. The Lord of Hosts is not to be treated as a territorial Baal. 4
Walls’s recommendation is a “Reconception of the Syllabus.” I am only one of many in
a new generation who have taken Walls’s advice seriously, and most of the “history” that
I write, I like to believe, respects the “whole history of the people of God.”
As a result, this article is a hybrid of local and global. It is “local” in the sense that it is
indeed “clan history.” It is global in the sense that it is looking at how my form of Christianity
managed to make its way to the other side of the planet. While not explicit, it has
a practical dimension to it as well. It analyzes a small moment in time in the Churches
of Christ missionary experience.
I am sensitive to the fact that these events took place within my clan, among my people.
Telling stories such as these are important, but must be done carefully. I certainly hope
that by looking at the mistakes and triumphs of our forebears, we learn to improve. It is
my goal to be sensitive to whatever tradition I study, be it a different form of Christianity
or a different religion altogether. We must treat other traditions with respect and dignity
when telling their story. However, the same should apply when telling our own story. In
this article, I try to handle my Restoration history with great care since it is the tradition
that nourished me, and it is the tradition wherein I encounter the Risen Christ as Savior
and Lord.
INTRODUCTION
Due partly to paternalism in the church, the non-instrumental—or a cappella— Churches
of Christ in India have become a time capsule wherein members show great loyalty to
the form of Christianity brought to them decades earlier by deeply convicted missionaries.
A hybrid identity develops, and it is fraught with ambivalence, resulting in social
dislocation. Members become increasingly isolated on two fronts: (1) their own culture
views them as insular and sectarian, while (2) their supporting congregations in the Western
world see them as out of touch with newer developments in the faith, sometimes
legalistically holding on to teachings long considered obsolete in the home church, or,
the sending church. This article examines issues in cross-cultural missions, focusing on
4 Andrew Walls, “Eusebius Tries Again: Reconceiving the Study of Christian History,” International Bulletin of
Missionary Research 24, no. 3 (July 2000): 107.

THE KING’S ENGLISH IN A TAMIL TONGUE
paternalism and the continued use of the King James Version of the Bible in a Church
of Christ network in South India. I use the KJV as a touchstone for investigating complex
issues that arise when Christianity is planted from one culture into another, very
different one.
In 2003 I traveled to India for the first time to do my doctoral research. I needed to access
archives and conduct interviews in several places, but it was crucial that I travel to
the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu. In preparation for my trip I did a Google search
for “India Church of Christ” and the first hit was http://indiachurchofchrist.com.
I had a good feeling about the website, particularly since it had many hallmarks of the
Church of Christ tradition, notably the ubiquitous use of the King James Version of the
Bible. At the top of the homepage it read “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever
believeth on me should not abide in darkness (John 12:46).” When combining this
website’s “C of C” jargon, its strong emphasis on immersion for the forgiveness of sins,
and the use of the KJV, it was a dead giveaway: I was dealing with old school, died-inthe-wool,
bona fide Church of Christ folk.
I immediately sent an email to that church, which happened to be based in Chennai. I
had never been to India, I had no idea who these people were, and I knew not one person
in the entire nation of India. The next day I had a reply in my inbox. They claimed
to be faithful Church of Christ members, they were happy to pick me up at the airport,
they offered to feed and house me during my stay, and they promised to provide any kind
of support that I might need for as long as I needed it. Such is the nature of membership
in the Church of Christ; there is immediate trust and rapport, even amongst strangers.
THE CHURCH OF CHRIST
The Church of Christ is a loosely organized fellowship of over three million members
worldwide. 5 They refuse to call themselves a denomination since they have no hierarchy,
creed, or central organization. Rooted in the Scottish independence church movements
of the eighteenth century, they matured under the leadership of Thomas (1763–1854)
and Alexander Campbell (1788–1866) and Barton W. Stone (1772–1844) in the nineteenth
century. All three of these men began their careers as Presbyterian ministers.
The Campbells were immigrants from Scotland while Stone was born near Port Tobacco,
Maryland. Their early careers coincided with a very fractious time in the Presbyterian
Church on both sides of the Atlantic. Discouraged, all three of them broke
away from their Presbyterian affiliations in order to pursue a more ecumenical approach
that emphasized the reasonableness of the Bible in determining right Christian doctrine
and practice. With great confidence, they proclaimed their system and approach as a
true “Restoration,” meaning they believed the ancient practices of the early church as
portrayed in the New Testament were finally being restored.
The movement was attractive, and it mushroomed. It was a major player in the ecclesial
context of early America, especially in the Second Great Awakening of the nineteenth
century. This “Stone-Campbell” tradition grew and fragmented several times. It is
5 See Thomas H. Olbricht, “Churches of Christ,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. Douglas
Foster, et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 212.
91

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 89–109
estimated today that there are approximately 14 million people in 180 countries who associate
themselves with the larger Restoration Movement. 6 To be clear, the specific wing
of the tradition that I am associated with—and the tradition dealt with in this article—is
the non-instrumental Church of Christ. Without unpacking the nuances and distinctions
between the various streams of the Restoration movement, it will suffice to point
out that the most distinctive feature of the “Church of Christ” is the lack of instruments
in worship. Thus this specific movement is generally referred to as the a cappella wing
of the Stone-Campbell tradition, or the “non-instrumental Churches of Christ.” As
the Restoration tradition splintered in the late-nineteenth and first half of the twentieth
century, the a cappella group made its mark as the most theologically conservative strand
of the movement, and it still carries that reputation. 7
THE CHURCH OF CHRIST IN INDIA AND THE KJV
The United States has the largest national Church of Christ population with around 1.6
million members. India also has a significant Church of Christ presence with estimates
ranging from 600,000 to over a million. 8 The story of how the Church of Christ tradition
developed in India reflects fascinating cross-cultural dynamics and brings up numerous
issues in missions and the indigenization of faith. The persistent use of the KJV in
India is one of those issues, and is timely considering the 400-year anniversary of the
translation. It is also an area rather unexplored.
It is important to point out that the Church of Christ was never beholden to the King
James Version. Indeed Alexander Campbell edited a translation of the New Testament
called The Living Oracles in 1826. 9 While “extremely popular” in Restoration circles, it was
“severely criticized by other church bodies” during its day. 10 Nevertheless, due largely
to Campbell’s influence, his movement had a very strong “back to the Bible” emphasis.
Restoration scholars were at the vanguard of Bible translation throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, pressing for the most precise translations using the oldest and
6 For these statistics see Lyndsay Jacobs, “The Stone-Campbell Movement—A Global View,” Leaven: A Journal
of Christian Ministry 17, no. 3 (Third Quarter 2009): 141, http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/
viewcontent.cgi?article=1080&context=leaven.
7 It is generally held in the Restoration churches that the 1906 census is when the split into two movements
occurred: the conservative Church of Christ and the more liberal Disciples of Christ. In 1968 the Disciples
of Christ formally split into two movements: the conservative Independent Christian Churches and the more
liberal Disciples of Christ. The 1968 split, however, was the result of a long process that began in the 1920s.
8 For Church of Christ statistics, see Bobby Ross, Jr., “Church in America Marked by Decline,” The Christian
Chronicle 66, no. 2 (February 2009): http://www.christianchronicle.org/article2158685~Church_in_
America_marked_by_decline. See also Olbricht, “Who Are the Churches of Christ?,” http://www.
mun.ca/rels/restmov/who.html. See the country profiles at World Convention, located at http://www.
worldconvention.org/newsite/resources/profiles. A good source for Church of Christ statistics in the
United States is Carl H. Royster, Churches of Christ in the United States: Inclusive of Her Commonwealth and Territories
(Nashville, TN: 21st Century Christian, 2009). For global statistics, see Mac Lynn, Churches of Christ around the
World: Exclusive of the United States and Her Territories (Nashville, TN: 21st Century Christian, 2009).
92
9 See Jack P. Lewis, “Bible, Versions and Translations of the,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Move-
ment, 87–88.
10 Lewis, “Bible,” 88.

THE KING’S ENGLISH IN A TAMIL TONGUE
most respected manuscripts available. 11 And the King James Version was insufficient
on two fronts: (1) the Elizabethan dialect no longer reflected the spoken English of the
day, and (2) the manuscripts used in 1611 had been surpassed by superior, more ancient
ones. 12
It might come as a surprise, then, to learn that until the mid-twentieth century, the KJV’s
dominant status in the Church of Christ was never in question. The Scopes Trial in
1925 had the effect of drawing a line in the sand between liberals and conservatives in
the United States, and certain individuals in the Church of Christ began “championing
the sole use of the KJV.” 13 With the publication of the Revised Standard Version
in 1946, more conservative elements in the Church of Christ reacted. 14 Led by Foy E.
Wallace (1896–1979), a polarizing preacher and influential editor of Church of Christ
journals, the KJV enjoyed renewed privilege. During the last decade of Wallace’s life, he
“continued to speak about errors he saw in ‘the new versions’ in almost every sermon.” 15
That was in the late 1960s and early 1970s—the very years that the Church of Christ
presence was beginning to grow in India.
In general, the Church of Christ missionaries to India planted a faith strikingly similar
to the one they knew back home. There was little regard for the unique cultural context
of South Asia. Cultural intricacies were scarcely taken into account as the gospel was
disseminated along the eastern coast from Shillong in the tribal northeast to Madras in
the south. And the gospel as understood by those pioneering preachers was plain and
11 Ibid., 88. Lewis mentions many biblical scholars from the Restoration tradition that were active in Bible
translation. From the nineteenth century: H. T. Anderson, Benjamin Wilson, J. B. Rotherham, Cortes Jackson,
and B. W. Johnson. From the twentieth century: D. Austen Sommer, E. E. Stringfellow, R. C. Foster, W. W.
Otey, S. A. Weston, Stephen England, W. C. Morro, H. B. Robison, Lewis Foster, Batsell Barrett Baxter, Robert
Hendren, J. J. M. Roberts, Chester Estes, Stanley Morris, Hugo McCord, George Estes, Harold Littrell, and
W. E. Paul.
12 See Jack P. Lewis, The English Bible from KJV to NIV: A History and Evaluation, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1991). See especially chapter three, “Doctrinal Problems in the King James Version,” and chapter four, “The
American Standard Version.” For a discussion of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts available to the KJV
translators, see pp. 41ff.
13 Lewis, “Bible,” 88.
14 The RSV New Testament was published in 1946, the RSV Old Testament in 1952, and the RSV Apocrypha
in 1956. It is important to note that the 1901 American Standard Version, produced in conjunction
with the British “Revised Version” (also known as the English Revised Version [ERV], published 1881–1885),
was heralded by many Restoration leaders. However, the ASV did not cause the level of controversy that the
RSV did since its producers managed to weave it into the larger KJV tradition as an official, authorized revision
of the KJV. There were detractors from the ERV and ASV but in the Restoration tradition there was
actually a good number of preachers and Bible college professors who preferred them. In fact, the ASV and
KJV were often used interchangeably in the Churches of Christ in the twentieth century. The 1946 RSV
New Testament, however, caused major problems. Lewis, The English Bible, 109, writes, “The appearance of
the RSV was for many people the first major challenge to the KJV/ASV domination of the English Bible
field.” The reason for the KJV’s continued dominance was largely because the stilted English of the ASV was
widely critiqued as being far less fluid than the eloquence of the KJV. Charles Haddon Spurgeon famously
critiqued the English Revised Version as “strong in Greek, but weak in English.” Lewis, The English Bible, 76.
This long debate was not at all unique to the Churches of Christ. See Peter Johannes Thuesen, In Discordance
with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible, Religion in America series (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1999).
15 See Terry J. Gardner, “Wallace, Foy Esco,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 767–68. See
also Foy E. Wallace, A Review of the New Versions (Fort Worth: Foy E. Wallace Jr. Publications, 1973).
93

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 89–109
simple. As Jesus announced in Matthew 7:14, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (KJv).
Indeed, North American a cappella Churches of Christ in the mid-twentieth century had
an exclusivist soteriology that was transported overseas through mission work. 16 This is
clearly evinced in an annual Church of Christ missions report entitled The Harvest Field.
In 1947, in the chapter on India, the author Bill Phillips deplored the status of religion
in that country. He wrote, “The Hindu religion is one of the most iniquitous systems
ever devised by man. Surely Satan must have had a direct hand in riveting the shackles
of such bondage upon a helpless people.” For the year 1947, that perspective was not
unique to Churches of Christ. What is surprising, however, is the blatant censure of
other Christians conducting mission work there. Phillips continues:
94
And what shall we say of those who in their search for Christ have turned to the denominations?
They have not the truth, for the denominations have not the truth, and only the
truth can save them. 17
Phillips laments that, to his knowledge, there is not a single Church of Christ missionary
in all of India. He then provides very curious advice for the prospective Church of
Christ missionary who might venture into the Indian mission field: “I am inclined to
recommend ‘invading’ the territory of the Christian Church . . . but others might not
consider this the best policy.” 18
This was a very strange perspective because, theologically, the Christian Church is the
closest relative to the Church of Christ. The major difference is that the Christian
Church chose to use instruments in worship whereas the Church of Christ did not.
Phillips reasoned that the most logical targets for evangelism were actually those closest
to the Church of Christ because they could be won with the least resistance. Hindus
could not be effectively evangelized unless one was to go through the rigors of learning
local Indian dialects. 19 “Mohammedans”—or, Muslims—were considered too tenacious
in their beliefs and were therefore not a good place to start. 20 Other Christians, however,
were fair game, especially those who shared the Restoration heritage. I shall return to
this point later.
ARISE SHINE MISSION HISTORY
The case study for this article is a Church of Christ network based in Chennai, south India.
They go by the name Arise Shine Church of Christ Mission, or, ASCOCM. They
are a registered charity in India and do all kinds of relief and benevolent work ranging
16 Olbricht refers to the “radical exclusivism” in the movement: “Thought shapers in Churches of Christ did
not, however, follow Stone, Campbell, and [Walter] Scott in seeking unity with other groups and in opening
toward denominational cooperation or some semblance of inclusivism.” Olbricht, “Churches of Christ,” 214.
17 See Bill L. Phillips, “India as a Prospective Mission Field,” in The Harvest Field, ed. Howard Schug and Jesse
Sewell (Athens, AL: Bible School Bookstore, 1947), 289–90. The year 1947 is significant as it is the year India
obtained its independence from Britain.
18 Ibid., 294.
19 Ibid., 291–92.
20 Ibid., 290.

THE KING’S ENGLISH IN A TAMIL TONGUE
from orphan homes to disaster relief. They have around 60 village churches involved
with “the mission” as they call it, and they employ preachers in most of these. Their
work is concentrated in the states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and is overseen
by a group of elders. The real authority, however, is the director of the charity, a young
preacher named Jasuran Roy Knight. 21 I know Roy Knight personally and have spent
considerable time with him in India and in the US. He was born in 1979 to Indian
Church of Christ parents. In 1995 he was baptized at the age of 16. After considering
various occupations, he chose to become a preacher.
Roy’s personal faith testimony revolves around two important biblical passages: the
Great Commission of Matthew 28, and Isaiah 60:1, “Arise, shine; for thy light is come,
and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.” Disgusted by what he deems the “idol
worship” of his birth country, he vowed to rise up and bring Christ to his countrymen.
He claims to have experienced severe resistance in his ministry. People have spit at him,
used witchcraft against him, thrown poisonous snakes at him, and even attacked him—
in one case with a knife that left gruesome scars on his arms. He even claims that one of
his coworkers was murdered in 2008 for preaching the gospel in a hostile village. Over
the last decade, Roy has assembled a ragtag team of evangelists who preach the gospel
against the odds. They are poorly paid and rely on Roy’s fundraising to make ends meet.
These men take charge of one or two village churches and Roy makes his rounds to each
of them, usually over the course of a month. One of the first preachers he recruited to
the work was an untouchable Hindu man with leprosy who accepted the gospel in 1999
and began ministering almost immediately. 22
While the Arise Shine Church of Christ Mission is only about a decade old, its antecedents
go back to the 1920s when Roy’s great grandfather, a Hindu man, converted to
Christianity after being persuaded by North American missionaries. These missionaries
were not from the Church of Christ, however. While there were a few scattered Church
of Christ elements in India by that time, this family was evangelized by J. C. Bailey, a
Canadian missionary who, in their words, “trained many 1000s of preachers and workers
and faithful Christians.” 23 A humble training school was soon developed and Roy’s
maternal grandfather, G. D. Yesudin, took a leading role in the indigenization of the
faith, planting churches and conducting an impressive ministry in rural villages.
Yesudin died in 1977 and his daughter and son-in-law—Roy’s parents—began taking
the reins of leadership in the church. Roy’s father, Dayalan, is a gentle and quiet man.
He spent his working life employed by the Swiss elevator and escalator company KONE,
earning a good salary. He started a house congregation in 1978 and remained committed
to the Church of Christ even when they moved to new towns because of his employment.
Roy’s parents were doggedly committed to raising their children in the Church
of Christ, in spite of the cultural baggage it entailed. They conducted church services in
their home and from time to time gathered with like-minded Church of Christ people
21 Roy’s short autobiography and his historical account of the mission is available on the web at http://
indiachurchofchrist.com/missionary.html. I have known Roy since 2003 and much of my information
is based on personal interaction with him.
22 See http://www.indiachurchofchrist.com/missionary.html. Daniel passed away in May 2011.
Roy Knight, e-mail message to author, September 1, 2011.
23 See http://www.indiachurchofchrist.com/missionary.html. The work of J. C. Bailey is discussed
later in the article.
95

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 89–109
from other towns. Occasionally, North American missionaries would come, although
these visits became less frequent through the years. While Roy’s father Dayalan remained
loyal to the Church of Christ tradition, his docile personality prevented him
from being an effective evangelist. His role was to keep the Church of Christ beliefs and
traditions alive, which he did.
Roy Knight is Dayalan’s oldest son. He has a personality completely different from his
father. He is charismatic and outgoing. He has worked for over a decade to expand his
family’s church and mission. A highly entrepreneurial minister, Roy organized their
ministry into a government-registered charity. He has had great success raising funds
in several countries including Singapore, Britain, Germany, Canada, and the US. The
daily workload he carries is exhausting, consisting of regular travels to remote villages
on dilapidated roads, preaching in several languages, arranging marriages for young
couples, sorting out church conflicts, running an orphanage, and managing church finances.
24 He claims to have baptized around two thousand people.
ARISE SHINE AND THE KJV
The vast majority of Arise Shine’s 60-odd churches function in the vernacular, which is
usually Tamil or Telugu, the languages of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Most of
the members are poor, uneducated village folk and do not speak English. However, a few
of their city churches are English-speaking. In my interactions with Roy, I began noticing
that when preaching in English or studying an English-language Bible, he and his
cohorts use the KJV. 25 I thought this was odd because the merits of using a more updated
version of the Bible are obvious; the KJV’s English is difficult enough for Americans,
hence its dwindling popularity. 26 Furthermore, Indians who speak English normally do
so as a second or third language after their vernacular and Hindi, and the antiquated
KJV would seem even less comprehensible for them. 27 However, when citing the KJV, I
noticed Roy evincing a bizarre fluency.
24 In February 2003, the Christian Chronicle ran a story based partially on some of my experiences with the
Arise Shine mission. On this occasion, 19 people packed into an SUV to conduct several baptisms in the
countryside. See Erik Triggestad, “How many church members in India? Counting isn’t easy,” The Christian
Chronicle (February 2003): http://www.christianchronicle.org/article1521118~How_many_church_
members_in_India%3F_Counting_isn’t_easy.
96
25 Roy is proficient in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and English.
26 See Bobby Ross, Jr., “Thou shalt read . . . NIV?” The Christian Chronicle 68, no. 4 (April 2011): 3, 15, http://
www.christianchronicle.org/pdf_archive/2011-04.pdf. The Christian Chronicle is the flagship newspaper
for the Church of Christ. In celebration of the 400 year anniversary of the KJV they conducted a survey of
1,100 randomly selected Church of Christ members. The KJV, which was dominant throughout Church of
Christ history until the mid-twentieth century, has now slipped to fifth place behind the NIV (42%), NASV
(17%), NKJV (10%), and ESV (10%). Only 6% of Church of Christ members now claim the KJV as their
preferred version. The article states, however, that “Most black congregations still prefer the KJV.”
27 It should be pointed out that in Tamil Nadu there is widespread resistance to Hindi. Tamils often claim
their language is Dravidian and has little connection to Hindi. Thus, the enforcement of the Hindi language is
widely seen as a superimposition. As a result, English is often the second language of choice in that particular
state. See the work of Eugene Irschick, especially Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement
and Tamil Separatism 1916–1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).

THE KING’S ENGLISH IN A TAMIL TONGUE
After repeated conversations I came to realize that the language of the KJV was not
the primary issue here; it was much more complex than that. Loyalty to the KJV is
directly linked to loyalty to the tradition that had been taught to them in years past by
highly committed missionaries. These American missionaries are heroic in the collective
memory of this Church of Christ community. They propagated their faith with great
confidence. Their version of Christian truth is still canonical in this network. And visiting
Roy’s group of churches is like witnessing the opening of a time capsule, like stepping
back in time to the Church of Christ of my grandparents. Their teachings and practices
have not evolved or indigenized like I had expected. Within 24 hours of my first arrival
to Chennai I found myself entangled in long discussions about why instruments in the
worship setting could jeopardize a person’s soul, why non-Church of Christ Christians
are theologically suspect, why drinking alcohol is a sin, and why women must take no
leadership role whatsoever in public worship. Furthermore, I had heard the same arguments
laid out in the same ways in the United States. I recognized these teachings as a
part of the conservative strands of the Church of Christ heritage, but to witness them
being propagated boldly in twenty-first century India hinted at two things: (1) this network
probably received support from the most conservative Churches of Christ in North
America; and (2) loyalty to the old ways of the missionaries took precedence over cultural
relevance in this ministry.
When I arrived to India, I was given a hero’s welcome due to a strange twist of irony.
While Indians are famously hospitable, and the Church of Christ connection certainly
deepened the immediate level of trust between this community and me, there was something
else going on. At the Chennai airport, an SUV full of Church of Christ preachers
received me like a long-lost relative, with enthusiastic cheers. I found out later, after
lengthy discussions, that they thought I was associated with the missionaries who had
brought the gospel to them decades before. I, however, was clueless to all that.
CANADIAN MISSIONARY J. C. BAILEY
When I first traveled to India in 2003 I was actually working on my PhD at the University
of Calgary, Canada. This was significant because upon arrival to India, I was
surprised to find that this work was actually founded by a legendary Church of Christ
missionary from Canada. His name was J. C. Bailey (1903–2001). 28 In 1963, at the age
of 59, Bailey moved to India as a missionary after many years working in ministry, education,
and publishing. 29 His towering stature in the Canadian Church of Christ scene is
well known and is the subject of at least one master’s thesis. 30 I never met J. C. Bailey but
28 Bailey’s life is chronicled in his two autobiographies: Forty Years a Canadian Preacher, 1921–61 (Abilene, TX:
Mathews Printing, 1961); and My Appointment with Destiny (Fort Worth, TX: Star, 1975). The second one deals
with Bailey’s mission work in India. Another source for Bailey’s life is a chapter entitled “J. C. Bailey” by J.
B. Trotter in volume two of Ira Rice’s autobiography Pressing toward the Mark: An Autobiography (Memphis, TN:
privately printed, 1998), 371–79.
29 The biographical information of J. C. Bailey comes from two sources: his obituary in “Obituaries,” The
Christian Chronicle (July 2001): http://www.christianchronicle.org/article693198~Obituaries; and The
Gospel Herald 66, no. 8 (August 2001). The Gospel Herald is a Canadian Church of Christ publication. The entire
August 2001 issue is devoted to J. C. Bailey.
30 The thesis is by Shelley Jacobs, who plans to publish the thesis eventually. Shelley Jacobs, e-mail message
to author, March 24, 2011. See also Bobby Ross, Jr., “Little Church on the Prairie: God’s work in Gravel-
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I did talk with his brother Cecil by phone once; he called me in 1999 to warmly welcome
me to Calgary right before I moved there from Texas. Cecil explained that he would not
greet me personally since he was soon to retire to Saskatchewan—at the age of 95. Like
his brother J. C., Cecil was a missionary to India for many years.
When these Tamil Christians in Chennai found out I was coming from Canada, they
figured I was associated with J. C. Bailey—a very logical assumption—and were very
excited to receive me. I burst their bubble by telling them I did not know Bailey and
knew almost nothing about his missionary work in India. In their minds, I had been sent
to India to “check-up” on the status of the mission and rekindle the connection to the
Canadian churches—a connection that had faded through the years. They were disappointed
to learn that I merely wanted a place to stay while I did my research. And my
dissertation had nothing to do with the Church of Christ movement. I was happy to
meet their preachers, visit the orphanage, and even speak in some churches, but my focus
was on research. I was clear: I intended to spend my time not out on the front lines of
evangelism but in dusty archives at theologically questionable institutions. I was scarcely
a shadow of my predecessor, the valorous J. C. Bailey.
In India as well as in Canada, J. C. Bailey is as much myth as man. In his obituary from
2001, one realizes the venerable status reserved only for the most elite “soldiers of the
cross”:
98
Bailey’s influence on people was powerful. . . . He preached his first sermon when he was
17. . . . Bailey was always pushing into new frontiers in an unrelenting quest to seek and
save the lost. Whether preaching in a schoolhouse in south Saskatchewan or in the scorching
heat of an Indian marketplace, he was ever moving and ever pressing the battle for
truth in the kingdom of God. . . . Nothing else seemed to be important except preaching
the word and persuading men and women to obey the Lord. . . . As Gandhi stirred the
heart of India’s people politically, so brother Bailey stirred their hearts in spiritual things.
. . . His love for God encouraged people to change their lives. . . . If there ever was a man
whose physical appearance, manner, and movement was that of a great Army General, it
was J. C. Bailey. But this tall, straight man with long strides and brisk walk . . . was truly
a STALWART SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST. Most of us who knew him thought he
accomplished more in his fight for the right than any man we had ever known. . . . Like
Stonewall Jackson, he had a tremendous ability to inspire his fellow soldiers to fight faithfully
and stand valiantly! 31
On April 25, 1963, J. C. Bailey and his crew arrived to northeast India to evangelize the
people of what is now Meghalaya and Assam. However, within a few short months of
arrival, in September, he moved south to Madras. Eventually he set up his mission base
at Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, where he found “South India was a riper field than North
India.” 32 His co-missionaries in the north of India were devastated. David Hallett, one
of the members of the team, recounted that moment in his memoirs:
bourg,” The Christian Chronicle 66, no. 8 (August 2009): 19–21, http://www.christianchronicle.org/pdf_archive/2009-08.pdf.
31 “Obituaries,” The Christian Chronicle.
32 Bailey, My Appointment with Destiny, 27. See also David Hallett, The Serpentine Road (independently published
by David William Hallett in Canada and by Jim E. Waldron in the United States, 2008), 14. For the “riper
field” quotation see J. C. Bailey, “Evangelism in India: After 25 Years, What Then?,” The Old Paths Archive,
http://www.oldpaths.com/Archive/Bailey/John/Carlos/1903/Articles/after25y.html. For the precise
chronology of Bailey’s ministry in India, I corresponded with Ray McMillan by phone and email. Ray Mc-

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Then in September of 1963, such a short time after arrival in Shillong, J. C. decided that
he and his family would go to Southern India. Of course he offered such to us, but we all
knew he was the one going. Ray and I had been promised support of two hundred dollars
per month, each, by J. C. We came on one-way tickets. Then the bomb dropped: J. C.
would go south and take all the money with him. His promises to the Perrys, Ray and me
failed. We were without money support. Talk about being left “high and dry!” We were
half way around the world and now what? J. C. had the money. . . . All other monies also
went with him. J. C. took little interest in the Northeast and the three small congregations
and us. He was what I call a trail blazer, always being lured on by a greener pasture in the
venture for souls. During this time, if I had a return ticket I would have left. 33
Although various Church of Christ missionaries preceded him, Bailey is described as
“lighting a spark for the evangelization of India.” 34 What was meant by this, however,
was that Bailey lit the spark for a distinctly Church of Christ evangelization in India.
When Bailey arrived in 1963, he actually found three a cappella congregations totaling
approximately 80 members. 35
Bailey worked as a missionary to India for twenty-five years, from 1963 to 1988. During
the first nine years he took residence in India. In 1972 he moved back to Canada. 36
Between 1972 and 1988 he made twenty more evangelistic trips. It is estimated that over
100,000 faithful Church of Christ members resulted from his ministry there. 37 However,
statistics in India are rarely taken at face value. For example, Bailey’s first convert in the
state of Andhra Pradesh, Joshua Gootam, claims, “There are now estimated to be more
than 2 million members of the church [meaning Church of Christ] in this state alone.” 38
Millan is a Church of Christ missionary who currently lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, but he travels to India
twice per year for extended mission trips. Ray was one of two missionaries who brought J. C. Bailey’s wife,
three adopted children, and cargo to India in 1963, three months after Bailey had arrived. J. C. flew from
Canada to India. However, Ray flew from Winnipeg to London and met fellow missionary David Hallett and
J. C. Bailey’s family there (they had traveled by ship from Montreal to London). McMillan, Hallett, and J. C.
’s family then traveled by ship from London to Bombay via the Suez Canal. McMillan is still very connected
to the churches established by Bailey and is one of the few people living who are acquainted with Bailey’s early
years in India.
33 Hallett, 14–15.
34 Lynn, 106.
35 For this statistic, see Roy Davison, “Biographical Information: John Carlos Bailey,” The Old Paths Archive,
http://www.oldpaths.com/archive/bailey/john/carlos/1903/bio.html. See also Lynn, 107. Lynn discusses
the pre-Bailey Church of Christ group in northeast India. A Presbyterian minister in Mawlai (near
Shillong in the Indian state of Meghalaya) discovered a church bulletin from the Hillcrest Church of Christ in
Abilene, Texas, and wrote to the church. The Abilene church sent a missionary who was in Japan at the time,
E. W. McMillan (no relation to Ray McMillan). Ray McMillan, e-mail message to author, March 30, 2011.
The Independent Christian Church (instrumental) learned about these events and did follow up work and had
some success. Bailey would later rail against the Christian Church and their use of instruments. The Church
of Christ–Christian Church rivalry in India was discussed earlier in the article when Bill Phillips in The Harvest
Field argued that the best approach to missions in India was to “invade” the Christian Churches and convert
them to the Church of Christ.
36 Telephone interview with Ray McMillan, March 25, 2011.
37 “Obituaries,” The Christian Chronicle. The estimate comes from Bailey’s co-worker Charles F. Scott.
38 Joshua Gootam, e-mail message to author, March 24, 2011. Gootam claims to be Bailey’s first convert in
Andhra Pradesh and several other sources either confirm or allude to that claim. J. C. Bailey’s son John has
been a very helpful resource in my research. John Bailey, e-mail message to author, March 22, 2011: “Joshua
Gootam was the first convert my dad made in South India. He has been a radio preacher for over 30 years
and has more knowledge of my dad’s work in India than anyone living.”
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Nevertheless, the point should not be missed: prior to J. C. Bailey’s arrival in 1963, there
were scant traces of the a cappella Church of Christ in India. By the end of his ministry in
that nation, there were hundreds of thousands of members—and many of them could
trace their origins to Bailey’s work.
PATERNALISM
Bailey’s great successes and conviction have not been forgotten. This was the great heyday
of the non-instrumental Church of Christ in India, and Bailey’s impressive work fostered
extreme loyalty to him. Faithfulness and loyalty to this strong leader has resulted in
what I am calling a “time capsule effect.” The continued use of the KJV is one aspect of
a much larger issue that has historically been identified as “paternalism” in the church.
Paternalism is a concept that has been denounced by missionaries and church historians
for decades, but Christian leaders even still continue to battle it.
Ideally, missionaries plant churches that evolve and indigenize, and one day become
independent. However, the opposite often happens: churches become stunted in their
development, becoming ever more dependent on the supporting churches in the West.
This loyalty to the parent church is reinforced in various ways: (1) through the memory
of the heroic missionaries and preservation of their theology, (2) through continued financial
support, and (3) through an unspoken division of authority wherein the missionary
remains a father figure, even long after his death.
The phenomenon of missionary paternalism has received considerable scholarly attention
in recent years. Boston University historian Dana Robert writes of the many and
serious problems it can cause. 39 It prevents the sending and receiving churches from developing
authentic friendships. It thwarts collegiality by perpetuating unbalanced relationships
between foreigners and indigenous. The sending church holds the power. It is
able to superimpose everything from the leadership of the church to the formulation of
its doctrines, no matter how out of synch they may be with the local culture. Robert defines
paternalism as a “father-like relationship between the missionary and the people.”
This dependency is very difficult to overcome. She argues that “unreflective paternalism”
can prove dangerous since it has often “lacked the equality assumed by modern
ideals of friendship.” 40
Another historian, University of Edinburgh’s Brian Stanley, writes that while, theoretically,
Indian and Western Christians should work shoulder to shoulder as equals, there
are often fault lines—racial and otherwise—that prevent “real, intimate, brotherly and
39 Dana L. Robert, “Cross-Cultural Friendship in the Creation of Twentieth-Century World Christianity,”
International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35, no. 2 (April 2011): 100, http://www.internationalbulletin.org/
system/files/2011-02-100-robert.pdf. See also Susan Billington Harper, In the Shadow of the Mahatma: Bishop
V. S. Azariah and the Travails of Christianity in British India, Studies in the History of Christian Missions (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). Azariah was consecrated as India’s first Anglican bishop. He began his bishopric in
1912 in the diocese of Dornakal. He considered himself part of “a new generation of Christians who do not
wish to be treated like children.” He saw “interracial cooperation in the cause of Christ” as the only solution
to the problem of systemic paternalism. Harper, 148.
40 Robert, 103, 106–7.
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sisterly fellowship.” This imbalance of power is “the most fundamental of all missionary
failures,” which is why it touches a “raw nerve in the western Christian conscience.” 41
Paternalism in the church is not at all unique to Restoration churches. It has long been
an Achilles heel for Christian missionaries of other denominations as well, notably the
Church of England, which firmly established itself on the Indian subcontinent during
the age of empire. Anglican Michael Hollis, Bishop of Madras from 1942 to 1954, bemoaned
this situation in his 1962 book entitled Paternalism and the Church. 42 Hollis argued
that a strong paternalism developed in the nineteenth century as the template for doing
mission work in South India. Decrying the “general subordination of Indian Christians
to the missionary,” he advocated strongly for indigenization, claiming, “It is not the
business of the foreigner to tell Indians what God wants them to do.” 43 In Hollis’s view,
paternalism in the Indian context proved disastrous. Christianity’s natural development
in the subcontinent was stunted because of this dependence on the West. He writes:
Broadly speaking, the mission pattern has been too much concerned to ensure that Indian
Christians accepted the right formulations of belief, as developed in the West, and followed
the right patterns of behavior, again largely in the Western expressions, of what was
believed to be the law of God. 44
Hollis urged Christians in both East and West to wake up to the vast cultural differences
between them, and to allow a “more truly Indian and more truly Christian Church” to
develop. 45 There is blame on both sides for this continued “white man’s burden” mentality.
Indian reliance on Western funds, for example, is unhealthy. It stifles indigenization
and prevents the mission church from reaching out in local ways. There is a sense everything
has to be approved by a governing body in the West. The Indian Church becomes
a misshapen attempt to replicate the pristine gospel as first transplanted by admirable
but imperfect missionaries. As the churches in the West evolve theologically and culturally,
the missionary church stultifies, becoming less and less relevant to the culture in which
it was planted.
The time capsule effect I witnessed in the Indian Church of Christ is not unusual in the
larger history of Christian missions. The New Testament itself shows Paul holding sway
over the churches he established and the ministers he shaped. On one level, paternalism
in the church manifests just how deeply missionaries are loved by the people they convert.
Quite understandably, that admiration can last for generations.
However, when I arrived to India and realized they were dealing with the hot-button issues
of my grandparents’ generation, I became curious why they had not evolved along
a similar trajectory as in the United States. In North America, Churches of Christ
currently discuss matters such as whether to have women preachers, what to do about
41 Brian Stanley, The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910, Studies in the History of Christian Missions
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 130. These quotations occur within Stanley’s analysis of Bishop Azariah’s
critiques of Western missions.
42 Michael Hollis, Paternalism and the Church: A Study of South Indian Church History (London: Oxford University
Press, 1962).
43 Ibid., ix.
44 Ibid., 15, 36.
45 Ibid., 36.
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the instrumental music question, and how many millions of dollars can justifiably be
spent on a church building. These issues are not even on the radar in India. They talk
about why instruments are flatly wrong, why salvation belongs exclusively to the a cappella
Church of Christ, and, crucially for this article, why the king’s English is best for the
Tamil tongue.
In preparing this piece, I communicated with Roy Knight, the leader of the Arise Shine
Church of Christ network, and inquired specifically about his use of the KJV. His reply
came almost immediately, “Brother J. C. Bailey used the King James Version.” 46 However,
unbeknownst to Roy, J. C. Bailey actually preferred the American Standard Version
(ASV), but he used the KJV interchangeably with it. 47 This was not uncommon in North
America. Many Church of Christ people actually preferred the literalness of the 1901
ASV because of their “back to the Bible” convictions. In the first half of the twentieth
century there was no major controversy over whether the Church of Christ should use
the KJV or the ASV. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that this
issue escalated. It was the fiery sermons of Foy E. Wallace that made this issue explosive
in North America. These debates played out in the Indian Church of Christ context as
well, just more subtly.
I contacted Ray McMillan—one of the missionaries who joined Bailey in 1963—to understand
how the KJV came to be normative in many of the English-speaking Churches
of Christ in India. 48 Ray outlined a complex story that illustrates the fact that while the
KJV and ASV were both accepted, it was the RSV, published around 1950, that was
considered by some to be pernicious. Both J. C. Bailey and Ray McMillan arrived to
India with the 1901 American Standard Version. However, the third missionary in their
group, a former sailor and recent convert named David Hallett, was a KJV-only man. 49
46 Roy Knight, e-mail message to author, March 30, 2011.
47 J. C. Bailey’s son John, as well as his co-missionary in 1963 Ray McMillan, confirmed that J. C. actually
preferred the ASV to the KJV. John wrote, “My dad was a critic of the KJV-only faction. He thought the 16th
century Elizabethan English led to misunderstandings of several things. He was a believer in the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit and the KJV translation of “Ghost” was a hindrance to people understanding this. He was
not a fan of Foy E. Wallace. Another key “mistranslation” was translating agape as “charity.” He especially
thought 1 Cor 13 was flawed in the KJV. He also disliked the word Easter being used for resurrection. My
Dad was part of the fan club that believed the ASV was the most literal translation.” John Bailey, e-mail
message to author, March 24, 2011. However, in perusing Bailey’s Old Paths journal articles throughout the
1980s and 1990s it is clear that J. C. Bailey used the KJV and ASV interchangeably. In fact, in some of his
Old Paths articles he used the KJV exclusively. See for example the 1990 article “The War is On,” where he
uses the KJV only: http://www.oldpaths.com/Archive/Bailey/John/Carlos/1903/Articles/warison.
html. The Indian Church of Christ members are still convinced that J. C. Bailey was a KJV-only man. But
in fact, it was David Hallett who was the KJV-only man in the group. This illustrates the fact the real problem
was not whether to use the KJV or ASV; the danger was using anything other than these two, particularly the
controversial RSV.
48 Ray McMillan, e-mail message to author, March 30, 2011.
49 Hallett converted to the Church of Christ while in the Canadian Navy. See Hallett, 1–6. See also Bailey,
My Appointment with Destiny, 20. David Hallett lived from 1935 to 2011. In 2012, Hallett’s personal letters and
reports were donated to the Harding School of Theology library. See his obituary: “In Memory of David William
Hallett: October 11, 1935–December 16, 2011,” Dignity Memorial, http://obits.dignitymemorial.
com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=David-Hallett&lc=3174&pid=155109848&mid=492433
4&locale=en_CA.
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Ray McMillan was only 21 years old when he began working with J. C. Bailey in 1963.
In his ministry, he soon began to realize that the 1901 ASV—like the KJV—was difficult
for English-speaking Indians to understand. So shortly before leaving on his first
furlough to America, Ray put the controversial—but far more readable—RSV (Revised
Standard Version) into the church pews, unaware of the sensitivity of the matter. His
colleague, David Hallett, found out about this and took action. When Ray returned to
India, he discovered that the RSVs were gone and KJV Bibles had been installed in the
pews. He did not cause a fuss about it since he was quite a bit younger than Hallett. 50
The residual effect is that some English-speaking Church of Christ groups in India still
insist on using the KJV. What translation is used generally has to do with the missionary
held in the highest regard. For example, in northeast India, the churches under
the influence of Ray McMillan are actually using the New International Version now,
probably due to his theological influence. After all, he has been involved in their work
continuously since 1963. They trust the translation he uses. Other Church of Christ
networks, like Arise Shine, have tried to remain loyal to J. C. Bailey and the earlier, more
conservative missionaries. The English-speaking churches associated with David Hallett’s
ministry—both in India and America—still use the KJV. 51
HYBRIDITY
A final issue that comes to the fore has to do with hybridity, or, the blended identity that
many Indian Christians deal with today. 52 Tamil fealty to the king’s English is part of
a much broader phenomenon of living in India with a faith that is perceived as being
Western. There is a considerable body of scholarship dealing with religious and cultural
hybridity in the context of Indian Christianity. 53 Historian Robert Frykenberg’s work is
perhaps the most important. With an unparalleled breadth of understanding, including
his own missionary upbringing in India, he speaks of the suffering that many Indians
have endured because of this “dual identity.” 54 This hybridity plays out in various
50 Ray McMillan, e-mail message to author, March 30, 2011.
51 Ray McMillan communicated to me that a missionary named Jim Waldron is now in Shillong, Meghalaya,
supervising the churches formerly associated with David Hallett. Ray McMillan, e-mail message to author,
April 1, 2011. On Jim Waldron’s website, the KJV and occasionally the NKJV are used. See Waldron’s
“Bulletin Briefs” at http://www.waldronmissions.org/bulletin_briefs.htm.
52 Hybridity has been defined as “The constant and organic fusion, intermixture, and translation of cultural
practices.” John Hinnells, ed., The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2010),
586.
53 See Corinne Dempsey, Kerala Christian Sainthood: Collisions of Culture and Worldview in South India (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001); Chad Bauman, Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947, Studies
in the History of Christian Missions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); Selva Raj and Corinne Dempsey, eds.,
Popular Christianity in India: Riting between the Lines, SUNY Series in Hindu Studies (New York: State University of
New York Press, 2002); Rowena Robinson and Joseph Marianus Kujur, eds., Margins of Faith: Dalit and Tribal
Christianity in India (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2010); and Eliza Kent, Converting Women: Gender and Protestant
Christianity in Colonial South India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
54 Robert Eric Frykenberg, “Christian Missions and the Raj,” in Missions and Empire, ed. Norman Etherington,
Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),
128. Frykenberg’s own hybrid identity and hybrid style are discussed in Richard Fox Young, “The Frykenberg
Vamsavali: A South Asia Historian’s Geneaology, Personal and Academic, with a Bibliography of His Works,”
in India and the Indianness of Christianity: Essays on Understanding—Historical, Theological, and Bibliographical—in Honor
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ways. For instance, in the nineteenth century there was a “Hindu Christian” movement
that became a precursor to Indian independence movements. 55 Describing themselves
as “ ‘Hindu’ in culture, Christian in faith,” they upheld Hindu traditions that were objectionable
to Europeans. 56 For example, some Hindu Christians directly opposed missionary
efforts to dispose of caste-ism in the church. He writes, “Among converts to
Christianity . . . what was notable was the tenacity with which they preserved traditional
culture and avoided, or even spurned, ways of the West.” Another example was the
famous Indian Christian convert Sadhu Sundar Singh who declared “Indians need the
Water of Life, but not the European cup.” 57
In spite of indigenization movements, there were—and are—problems stemming from
the hybrid identity of being an Indian and a Christian, especially when caste is involved. 58
A change in religion does not translate to a change in caste. Buddhism, Janism, Sikhism,
and Christianity have all—at one point or another—served as vehicles of hope for lowcaste
people trying to escape the albatross of social stigmatization. And in more cases
than not, those attempts have failed. In most cases, caste is more fundamental to Indian
identity than is religion. It is much easier for one to change his or her religion than it is
to change caste.
In the Indian Churches of Christ, there is definitely a sense of having a foot in two
worlds, of living a hybrid existence. Their religion came from North America. However,
the majority of them know little of North America outside of media influences, stories,
and the occasional missionary visit. For most of the Church of Christ members however,
particularly in the village, North America is that Christian land from whence their
heroes in the faith came.
Living as a Church of Christ Christian in a sea of non-Church of Christ people requires
a certain duality that allows the Christian to function as a member of Indian society
without compromising the Christian ideals that have become sacred to the community.
There are many tensions in living this way, however. Church of Christ identity in modern
India is a rather insular affiliation, perhaps best exemplified in an old, self-deprecating
Church of Christ joke: A man dies and goes to heaven. The apostle Peter welcomes
him and gives him a tour of heaven. As they walk they notice Christians of all stripes—
Methodists, Baptists, and Catholics. But then the man asks Peter, “Who are those people
in that room by themselves?” Peter responds, “Shhhh . . . those are members of the
Church of Christ; they think they’re the only ones here.” 59 Here again we encounter
of Robert Eric Frykenberg, ed. Richard Fox Young, 1–25, Studies in the History of Christian Missions (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009).
55 Frykenberg, 115, provides the notable example of Bishop V. S. Azariah as “a nationalist eager for the end
of empire.”
56 Ibid., 122.
57 Ibid., 128. He cites Pandita Ramabi’s insistence that she was a “Hindu Christian.”
58 Ibid., 128, writes, “All Indian Christians knew that their religious identity could never supersede other
identities that were grounded in history and culture.”
59 This joke is widely available on the web and perhaps oddly the Church of Christ community is well
aware of it. Some of the websites perpetuating the joke actually defend the notion that the a capella movement
does indeed have a monopoly on salvation. See, for example, one website’s attempt to vilify Max Lucado—a
famous Church of Christ writer—for actually making light of the joke. See http://www.rowlettcoc.org/
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another one of those issues that was central a few generations ago in the Church of
Christ, but today is considered rather backward and outdated. Today, very few American
Church of Christ members under the age of 40 argue theirs is the only group with
a heavenly passport. But in India, this teaching is still common, even assumed. I know
from personal experience because I questioned it once . . . and should not have.
CONCLUSION
To return to Andrew Walls, and his experiences in Sierra Leone, he described the amazing
situation he was observing as “a symbiosis, very carefully fused.” He recognized
the indigenous forms of faith as being Christian, of course, but with a profoundly African
bent. He discusses how when he first arrived to Africa, he was depressed by what
he saw. 60 Christianity there was uncontrolled, unrestrained, and in many ways foreign
to his conservatively tamed Methodist background. However, after ruminating on the
implications of a truly African revival taking place, Walls experienced a “very definite
movement from depression to hope.” 61 During Walls’s ministry in Sierra Leone, the days
of European control over African politics were grinding to a halt—Sierra Leone itself
gained independence from Britain in 1961. The Christian faith that the missionaries
had brought, however, would remain. It was almost as if Britain handed the baton of
faith to Africa. Britain is largely secular now while Africa is home to 500 million Christians
and growing. Christianity is now the largest religion on the continent of Africa—a
statistic unimaginable a century ago.
The Church of Christ in India, however, has not turned into the fused symbiosis that
Walls witnessed in Africa. Rather, the time capsule would be a more fitting analogy.
And major challenges loom because of this theological and cultural stagnation. Members
remain deeply loyal to the form of Christianity brought to them decades earlier by
stalwart missionaries. This hybrid identity is fraught with ambivalence, resulting in a
form of social dislocation. Members become increasingly isolated—they appear insular
and sectarian in their own culture, yet remain somehow different and distant from the
Churches of Christ in the West. To borrow a concept from prominent sociologist Peter
Berger, these Christians become “homeless minds”—unable to call either culture home,
yet marginally affiliated with both.
It appears to me that the Indian Churches of Christ with which I am associated have
made a decision. They have chosen the faith of the zealous evangelists who first came to
them half a century ago. And it appears that faithfulness to the traditions of those missionaries
has become necessary for ecclesial survival. Challenging the faith of the missionaries
could prove disruptive on a number of levels. For instance, it could destabilize
conviction in a setting where religious commitments must be sheltered from the religious
cacophony in the surrounding culture. The case of the KJV illustrates why loyalty to the
old paths must be maintained. If confidence in the Bible can be eroded, then the solid
faith that was built on a “back to the Bible” worldview could become crippled. More-
weir0112.pdf. The article, entitled “Max Lucado’s Storytelling,” emphasizes in disgust that Lucado “believes
that there really are Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics in those other rooms.” It should be pointed out that
this joke has been applied to many religious groups with exclusivist understandings of salvation.
60 Stafford, 2.
61 Ibid.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 89–109
over, if one aspect of the missionaries can be critiqued, then where does the scrutinizing
end? Thus, it has become taboo to question the founding fathers.
So far, the Arise Shine Church of Christ members have made the collective decision to
resist the larger culture and live a rather insular existence. Forsaking all others they hold
on tightly to their image of J. C. Bailey. Conversion has always come with benefits as well
as challenges. The risks of being persecuted, marginalized, or cast out must be weighed
against spiritual liberation, social mobility, or other opportunities that might otherwise
not exist. The benefits can be palpable, but there is a gamble. Indians are faced with
a balancing act between how to be Church of Christ without abandoning their Indian
identity. The stakes are high, the situation complex.
I conclude with a story relayed to me by Ray McMillan, one of the two missionaries
who went to India with Bailey’s family. Ray told me that on his first Sunday in India, J.
C. Bailey took him to a community near Shillong, Meghalaya, to preach publicly using a
microphone and a portable amplifier. Bailey preached about the evils of instruments in
the church. He scorned the concept of missionary societies, arguing they were unbiblical.
He took issue with church names, arguing that “Church of Christ” was the only
acceptable name for a church. He unpacked the subtleties of why the Church of Christ
is distinct from the independent Christian Church. 62 Ray thought the sermon to be awkward
and irrelevant to these people who had no knowledge of these esoteric debates that
went on in the North American context.
The two missionaries split shortly after that, due mainly to Bailey’s move to south India.
Nevertheless, Bailey remained convinced that Ray was far too liberal to work as a missionary
in the foreign field. In his memoirs, Bailey wrote that Ray McMillan had proven
himself to be “unfaithful” to the gospel. 63 Fifty years later, however, Ray continues his
missionary work in India. When Ray told me that story, he tried to chuckle and gloss it
over. I sensed, however, that those words still hurt him deep down.
Dyron Daughrity is Associate Professor of Religion at Pepperdine University. He is the author of numerous academic
publications, including his most recent book Church History: Five Approaches to a Global Discipline (New York: Peter
Lang, 2012). He can be reached at: dyron.daughrity@pepperdine.edu.
62 For the Church of Christ–Christian Church tensions in India see Bailey, My Appointment with Destiny, 21,
25, 29, 31.
63 Ibid., 23.
106

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Archive/Bailey/John/Carlos/1903/Articles/warison.html.
Bauman, Chad. Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India, 1868–1947. Studies in
the History of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Burrows, William, Mark Gornik, and Janice McLean, eds. Understanding World
Christianity: The Vision and Work of Andrew F. Walls. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011.
Davison, Roy. “Biographical Information: John Carlos Bailey.” The Old Paths Archive
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Dempsey, Corinne. Kerala Christian Sainthood: Collisions of Culture and Worldview in South
India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Frykenberg, Robert Eric. “Christian Missions and the Raj.” In Missions and Empire,
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Gardner, Terry J. “Wallace, Foy Esco.” In The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement,
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Travails of Christianity in British India. Studies in the History of Christian Missions.
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Hinnells, John, ed. The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion. 2nd ed. London:
Routledge, 2010.
Hollis, Michael. Paternalism and the Church: A Study of South Indian Church History. London:
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Irschick, Eugene. Politics and Social Conflict in South India: The Non-Brahman Movement and
Tamil Separatism 1916–1929. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.
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of Christian Ministry 17, no. 3 (Third Quarter 2009): 141–42, http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1080&context=le
aven.
Kent, Eliza. Converting Women: Gender and Protestant Christianity in Colonial South India. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004.
Knight, R. D. J. Roy. “Missionary.” Church of Christ. http://www.indiachurchofchrist.com/missionary.html.
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Campbell Movement, edited by Douglas Foster, Paul Blowers, Anthony Dunnavant,
and D. Newell Williams, 87–88. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
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Lynn, Mac. Churches of Christ around the World: Exclusive of the United States and Her Territories.
Nashville, TN: 21st Century Christian, 2009.
“Obituaries.” The Christian Chronicle (July 2001): http://www.christianchronicle.
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Movement, ed. Douglas Foster, Paul Blowers, Anthony Dunnavant, and D. Newell
Williams, 212–20. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
________. “Who Are the Churches of Christ?” http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/
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Phillips, Bill L.“India as a Prospective Mission Field.” In The Harvest Field, edited by
Howard Schug and Jesse Sewell, 286–98. Athens, AL: Bible School Bookstore,
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the Lines. SUNY Series in Hindu Studies. New York: State University of New York
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Chronicle 66, no. 8 (August 2009): 19–21.
________. “Thou Shalt Read . . . NIV?” The Christian Chronicle 68, no. 4 (April 2011): 3,
15, http://www.christianchronicle.org/pdf_archive/2011-04.pdf.
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Territories. Nashville, TN: 21st Century Christian, 2009.
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http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/february/34.87.html.
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Translating the Bible. Religion in America series. New York: Oxford University Press,
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Wallace, Foy E. A Review of the New Versions. Fort Worth: Foy E. Wallace Jr. Publications,
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Vulnerable Mission: Questions from a
Latin American Context
greg mcKinzie
Vulnerable Mission, as the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission articulates it, comprises important missiological
concepts. These concepts are not new to missiology, though they have often been under-practiced.
Vulnerable Mission is thus a welcome call to more conscientious and thorough application of sound missiological
principles. Yet, at least in the Latin American context, some questions remain as to the universality
and absoluteness with which missionaries should apply Vulnerable Mission methods.
CLARIFYING THE CONTRAST BETWEEN VULNERABLE MIS-
SION AND MAINSTREAM MISSIOLOGY
The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission (AVM) is promoting a conversation that Christian
missionaries can ill afford to ignore. I am grateful that Abilene Christian University,
through the initiative of Dr. Chris Flanders, has brought the conversation into
the realm of missiological reflection among Churches of Christ. I wish to respond to
the proposals of Vulnerable Mission (VM) from my particular location. 1 The reader
might triangulate my location with a few key coordinates: I write as an Anglo-American,
trained missiologically in an a cappella Church of Christ university, serving as a missionary
in urban Peru. From this vantage point, the basic impulse of VM looks beneficial.
The AVM homepage states:
“Vulnerable mission” may be seen as part of the movement toward contextualization of
the Gospel of Jesus, which we regard as the theory of many and the practice of few. We
would like to see more people take the risks of contextualization and vulnerability in order
to reap the rewards that only come to those who value local resources and invest in local
languages. 2
The notion that there is a disconnect between mission theory and practice is plainly
true. The bifurcation exists on a variety of levels: academy versus ministry, missiology
versus missions, ideals versus realities, goals versus potentialities, and the list goes on. The
fundamental issue is how to overcome the divide, and VM is attempting to provide a
solution: “VM does not propose different goals than mainstream mission and missiology.
We are arguing that the mainstream methods of reaching those goals are not achieving
them very well.” 3 To be clear, though, the problem is not that mainstream missiology (just
“missiology” hereafter) has failed to provide methodological direction. 4 While there are
1 I restrict my comments to the conference material published in the present issue of Missio Dei, with primary
reference to Stan Nussbaum’s article (and his related article “Vulnerable Mission Strategies” in the latest issue
of Global Missiology) and secondary reference to other conference papers.
2 Vulnerable Mission, “Alliance for Vulnerable Mission,” http://vulnerablemission.org.
3 Stan Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” Missio Dei:
A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 4, no. 1 (February 2013): 70.
4 I do not attempt to delimit mainstream missiology here but assume with VM advocates that common
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
still cross-cultural workers who are not cognizant of missiology, I believe this conversation,
directed at an audience that attends missiological conferences and reads missiological
journals, must really be about the best practices that many missionaries know about
but find difficult to implement.
“Contextualization and sustainability are widely preached; imperialism and dependence
are widely practiced,” states Stan Nussbaum with salutary directness. 5 The criterion by
which we can evaluate VM, then, is its effectiveness in bringing about contextualization
and sustainability where missiology has failed. VM’s intention, in other words, is to provide
a practical handle for actually propagating the “three selves” that have been missiology’s
Sisyphean task for over a century. In Nussbaum’s taxonomy, that practical handle
consists of three methods: local language, local resources, and local thinking style. 6
Nussbaum grants that there are “major improvements to the ethnocentric model” found
in “partnership methods.” 7 He lumps “most advocates of partnership,” represented
especially by Mary Lederleitner at the ACU conference, with “missiologists.” Lederleitner’s
book Cross-Cultural Partnerships is a popular-level example of the way missiology
brings anthropological study to bear on cross-cultural interactions. 8 Thus, it is not fair to
missiology that Nussbaum represents the alternatives to VM as either (1) the “ethnocentric
model” or (2) a partnership model that would use English as much as local languages
and would opt for a simplified message instead of considering local modes of thought: 9
Goal VM methods Partnership methods
Contextualized Local language English or local
Sustainable Local resources
Prime the pump, or top up
local resources
Missional Local thinking style Simplify the message
theory and practice, as reflected in peer reviewed and edited publications and in Christian missions all over the
world in the last century, have recognizable tendencies. It is important to note, however, that VM’s argument
assumes there is a great divide between what we say (missiology) and what we do (practice), and then it attributes
the failure back to missiology. The problem with this procedure is twofold. One, it relegates missiology
to theory. In fact, missiology is among the practical theological disciplines and is in large part about methods.
Two, it falsely attributes to missiology the failure of implementation as a failure of methodology. Yet, VM
advocates would not want the same standard applied to themselves: the failure to put VM methods into practice
would not necessarily signify a failure of VM methods. By “missiology,” therefore, I mean typical mission
methodology, both before and after it is put into practice.
5 Stan Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies,” Global Missiology 10, no. 2 (2013):
http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/1135/2630.
6 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 71.
7 Ibid.
8 Mary T. Lederleitner, Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission (Downers
Grove, IL: IVP, 2010).
9 Nussbaum’s taxonomy undoubtedly has heuristic value, and my point is not to criticize the exigencies of
table formatting.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
If the contribution of VM hinges on its ability to achieve what missiology has not, it is
absolutely necessary first to grant missiology its full qualifications, in order to see what
VM’s practical difference really is. And historically, missiology has taken local languages,
resources, and thinking styles as the key to the self-realization, if I may use that term, of
the indigenous church.
To tease out what is really at stake, we must think about the nature of the goals that missiology
and VM admittedly share. Self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation
cannot mean partial self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. “Self ” does
not mean some outside resources or some foreign modes of thought and speech. Rather,
whereas VM is apparently advocating the method of permitting no foreign resources,
languages, or thinking styles from the beginning of a missionary endeavor, missiology has
historically made allowance for getting to the self-realization of the indigenous church by
degrees. And it is only fair to note that by degrees is, from a missiological standpoint (rather
than a blindly imperialist one), a deliberated compromise rather than a justification for
easy, self-serving methods.
Furthermore, the introduction of no foreign resources, languages, and thinking styles, to
the degree possible in a cross-cultural relationship, is a logical corollary of the goal. If the
end is self-support, for example, the most direct means is quite obviously not to introduce
foreign support. To take a well-known representative with a Latin American outlook, in
1953 Melvin Hodges was able to quote a missionary in Colombia as saying:
112
No money for [national] preachers and [national] churches is not a handicap nor hindrance;
it is a challenge to missionary ability and a policy that, if adopted generally and
more rigidly, would save many a heartache and produce a stronger, more humble church
in the foreign field. 10
Advocacy of “no money” as the means to self-support is not novel; VM is not proposing
new methodology but rather agreeing with extant missiological wisdom by which Hodges
felt sixty years ago missionaries should “generally and more rigidly” abide. While the
difference between Hodges and VM on this point seems to be that Hodges was willing
to say, “The right use of money has its place in missions,” we still have to acknowledge
that Hodges was advocating throughout his book—as a methodological outworking of
Roland Allen’s proposals—the introduction of no foreign funding. 11
Moreover, the infamous “moratorium on missions” last century was “not because of liberal
theology or anti-Western bias, and it was not intended to signal the end of missions”
but was an attempt to foster “an alternative to remaining dependent on foreign funding
and personnel.” 12 We might understand so drastic an approach as the recognition that
there is no way to use only local language, resources, and thinking styles as long as foreign
missionaries are present. The only way to avoid compromise on some level is to dissolve
the cross-cultural relationship altogether.
10 Melvin L. Hodges, The Indigenous Church: Including The Indigenous Church and the Missionary, Kindle ed. (Springfield,
MO: Gospel Publishing House, 2009), locs. 1212–14.
11 Ibid., loc. 1124. See loc. 128 for the specific connection to Allen’s missiology.
12 Robert Reese, “Western Missions and Dependency,” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 2,
no. 2 (August 2011): 69.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
Because missiology assumes the necessity—and the benefit—of the cross-cultural relationship,
it is dedicated to mitigating cross-cultural challenges and increasing the missionary’s
capacity for contextual discernment. One can imagine easily that, given this
purpose, missiology would advocate the use of local languages. If mission history is rife
with examples of missionaries using colonial languages or depending upon translators,
we need not confuse that fact with missiology’s own perspective. The goal is the selfrealization
of the indigenous church, and one method for everyone concerned is the use
of local languages. David Hesselgrave states in his influential volume Communicating Christ
Cross-Culturally:
Almost without exception, missionaries will be well advised to learn the language of their
respondent culture. . . .
If one wants to communicate Christ to a people, he must know them. The key to that
knowledge always has been, and always will be, language. 13
Or consider the position of linguist and missiological luminary Eugene Nida:
As regards a very high percentage of the social and religious culture language is an indispensable
instrument for transmitting not only the outward forms but the inner content and
subjective evaluation. Perhaps the best evidence of the essential function of language as a
transmitting mechanism is seen in the almost total failure of meaningful cultural contact
when effective communication is lacking. . . . If a culture cannot and does not transmit its
own concepts except by language, how can missionaries expect to inculcate wholly foreign
concepts without using the only language which the people really understand? 14
What is even more noteworthy, though, is the quantity of Nida’s work that simply takes
for granted the missionary’s use of local languages. 15 Local language is missiology’s presumed
method for even the initial communication of the gospel. How much more so for
the self-realization of the indigenous church? On this point too it seems as though VM
is not proposing a new method but rather suggesting that missionaries actually employ
the method missiology knows to be so indispensable.
That brings us to the final VM method, local thinking style. It is especially important for
this paper because it is Nussbaum’s addition to the VM agenda. 16 He states, “A paradigm
is a tool that an analytical thinker uses to compare two or more systems. Non-analytical
13 David J. Hesselgrave, Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally: An Introduction to Missionary Communication, 2nd ed.
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 355.
14 Eugene A. Nida, Customs and Cultures: Anthropology for Christian Missions (Pasadena: William Carey Library,
1982), 212–13.
15 E.g., Eugene A. Nida, Message and Mission: The Communication of the Christian Faith, rev. ed. (Pasadena: William
Carey Library, 1990). Writing about the communication of the faith, Nida deals with many complex
anthropological issues. Yet, he never says that the communicator should use the local language. For a linguist
and translator helping missionaries overcome cultural disparities, the use of local languages is a sine qua non. It
is so self-evident, there is no need to say it.
16 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 74, states that
his proposal contributes to the “trend in missiology to attend to thinking style as an aspect of worldview. This
is greatly needed because the message has not got through to many mission practitioners and even mission
agency leaders yet. They do not comprehend the orality issue and assume it as a core aspect of mission strategy
in nearly the same way they assume contextualization and sustainability.”
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
(oral) thinkers do not use that tool because they never undertake that task. They simply
do not look at their worlds that way.” 17 He explains further, quoting John Walsh:
114
“When people routinely assume that the opposite of orality is literacy, they are making
only a superficial contrast. The real contrast is not oral vs. literate. It is oral vs. analytical.”
In other words, an oral style is a story or narrative or holistic style of thinking as opposed
to a conceptual style that breaks everything down into pieces and then connects the pieces.
Oral thinkers apprehend whole ideas; analytical thinkers comprehend them one piece at
a time. 18
Orality is therefore a way of looking at the world that is non-analytical and holistic.
As Nussbaum mentions in a footnote, accounting for this sort of local thinking style is
not methodologically novel. First, authors such as Duane Elmer and Sherwood Lingenfelter
have dealt with “holistic thinking” in popular missiological publications—and
they have done so by placing holistic thinking in relation to a much larger complex of
cultural variables that more amply characterize “local thinking” in its sundry configurations.
19 Second, as Nussbaum hinted, the bigger issue is the way local people “look
at their world”—their worldview. It is an immense understatement to say that missiology
has been concerned with worldview. One prominent representative is sufficient for
our purposes here. Paul Hiebert’s Transforming Worldviews is a thoroughgoing overview
of worldview theory, including sections on various kinds of logic and narrative epistemology
and a whole chapter on “Worldviews of Small-Scale Oral Societies.” He also
presents a chapter on “Methods for Analyzing Worldviews”—which moves well beyond
the suggestion that we should use local thinking to methods for doing so, including the analysis
of wisdom literature (including proverbs) and aesthetic culture (including music and
festivals). 20 These are not best characterized as “quirky interests of a tiny minority.” 21
There is undoubtedly only a small portion of the missionary force that undertakes rigorous
worldview analysis, but in the context of a discussion about what methods missiology
offers for achieving its goals, that is hardly the issue. These are mainstream methods.
They are well-developed, widely published, and accessible.
If these methods have been at missionaries’ disposal for so long, why then have they
continued to use foreign languages, resources, and thinking styles? The answer, I believe,
is that the complexities and difficulties of cross-cultural cooperation require mutual
discernment and, often, ad hoc decisions. This reality is hardly an excuse for the many
poor decisions that have led to dependency and paternalism. At the same time, doubling
down on the counsel to use exclusively local methods is not a practical solution to the
complexity of cross-cultural relationships that has prevented missionaries from doing so
long since. Thus, in my own historical and cultural location I am left with a number of
questions that challenge VM.
17 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 72.
18 Ibid.
19 Duane Elmer, Cross-Cultural Connections: Stepping Out and Fitting In around the World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP,
2002), 142–49; Sherwood Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers, Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model
for Personal Relationships, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 51–64.
20 Paul G. Hiebert, Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 2008), esp. chs. 2, 4, and 5.
21 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 73.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
PROBLEMATIZING VULNERABLE MISSION
What About Urbanization?
VM gives the impression that it has rural contexts in view. The idea of local language
quickly becomes problematic in areas where urban migration is a factor. The urbanization
of Latin America is a well-known phenomenon. I live in Arequipa, Peru, a city of
about a million inhabitants. In Arequipa, there is a confluence of Spanish, Quechua,
and Aymara—the three official languages of Peru. Spanish, of course, is the dominant
language; that of the conquerors and colonizers. But it is, as a matter of historical reality,
the first language of most urban inhabitants. It is the language of the school system,
business, government, and the transcontinental social construct called “Latin America.”
In Arequipa, Spanish is colonial and local.
The indigenous persons who migrate to Arequipa do so for a variety of reasons. In
general throughout Latin America, “industrialization and the introduction of capitalist
modes of production in rural areas from the 1930s onwards triggered a process of concentrated
urbanization that seventy years later had led to a majority of the societies in the
region crossing the urban threshold.” 22 Although rural to urban migration had tapered
off in many countries by the 1990s, 23 in Peru no few fled the countryside in the wake of
Maoist group Sendero Luminoso (the Shining Path) during the 1980s and 90s. Droughts
during the same time period also precipitated urban migrations. Currently, urban migration
tends to be a matter no longer of industrialization per se but of its cousin modernization,
driven primarily by the same economic impulses that marked earlier patterns
of urbanization. Yet, it is not truly representative to characterize urban migrants’ motives
as purely economic. In a study by the Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research
Group, researchers developed a culturally specific model of wellbeing that identified the
most important and most frustrated life aspirations of Peruvians. Regarding analyses
specific to migrants, James Copestake summarizes the study’s findings:
Overall, what emerges from both the quantitative and qualitative evidence is the complexity
of the personal wellbeing trade-offs entailed in migration. For many, the main cost of
searching for a more secure livelihood was not delaying starting a family but being forced
to live in a more insecure and uncertain environment. Migration behaviour is also revealed
to be more than a movement of individual workers driven by real wage differentials or
even the outcome of diversified household livelihood strategies: it is also part of a life-cycle
process of seeking independence from and often then negotiating interdependence with
relatives, particularly parents. An understanding of the relational dimensions of migration
should not be regarded as a useful supplement to a separate understanding of more
important material dimensions. Rather, material, relational and indeed emotional effects
of migration are profoundly interrelated. 24
22 Dennis Rodgers, Jo Beall, and Ravi Kanbur, Latin American Urban Development into the 21st Century: Towards a
Renewed Perspective on the City, Studies in Development Economics and Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2012), 3.
23 Ibid., 8.
24 James Copestake, “Development and Wellbeing in Peru: Comparing Global and Local Views,” WeD
Working Paper 09/48, Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group (June 2009), 18–19, http://
www.welldev.org.uk/wed-new/workingpapers/workingpapers/WeDWP_09_48.pdf; See James
Copestake, ed., Wellbeing and Development in Peru: Local and Universal Views Confronted, Studies of the Americas
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) for the complete study.
115

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One area of the wellbeing paradigm, called improvement from a secure base (ISB), was
of special importance: “In-depth interviews revealed there to be a strong positive ISB
motivation for migration to urban areas, particularly Lima: this being associated with
terms like ‘betterment’, ‘superación’, ‘improving life conditions’, ‘securing the future’ and
‘upward social mobility.’ ” 25 In fact, three ISB goals were statistically the standouts for
disparity between aspiration and achievement: “Perhaps the most distinctively ‘Peruvian’
aspect of [the results] is the low satisfaction with achievement of highly ranked status
goals for education, salaried employment and professional status.” 26
Copestake notes, “The ISB goal can be viewed as corresponding closely with the Western
idea of development, and suggests a desire to be part of a modernization process,
subject to not taking excessive risks.” 27 Certainly, there are among Arequipa’s urban migrants
those less voluntary participants in the city’s modernized social arrangement—
refugees from natural disaster or insurgent violence. But we can safely postulate that
the vast majority of first generation rural to urban migrants, whose primary language is
Quechua or Aymara, desire to be in the city precisely in order to participate in the opportunities
modernization affords, to which the dominant Spanish-language criollo culture
plays host. 28 They endeavor, often at great risk, to enroll their children in a Spanish-only
school system, to participate in the local urban economy, and to attain status as defined
by urban Peruvian culture.
Especially regarding the Spanish-only school system we may recognize dynamics at work
that are important to VM.
116
Whereas, in the past, formal education was exclusively Spanish in medium of instruction
and urban and Western in content, the last quarter of the 20th century brought a shift in
both policy and practice toward greater inclusion of indigenous language and content,
usually under the label of bilingual intercultural education. 29
Peru, in other words, made a legal requirement the use of both the local language and
Spanish in the classrooms of indigenous communities. As the quotation intimates, the
use of local language is necessarily a change not only of medium but also of content.
And while the simultaneous use of Spanish might mean that “interculturality” is “simply
a new guise for the ‘same old’ enlightened assimilationism that yet maintains the hegemony
of Spanish as the language of writing, of formal communication, and of power,”
it is also possible that the recourse to local language affords “a genuinely new intercultural
ideology that seeks to incorporate indigenous languages, cultures, and ways of know-
25 Copestake, “Development and Wellbeing in Peru,” 18.
26 Ibid., 20; emphasis added.
27 Ibid., 14.
28 I am using criollo in the general sense of “colonial descent.” The word has a variety of uses, and in Peru it
refers to a coastal subculture that combines Spanish, indigenous, and African elements (similar to the English
word creole). But originally, the term referred to children of Iberian descent born in Latin America. In general
usage, it has now come to mean “local” or “homegrown.” Yet, in much of the literature on Latin American
history and culture, it still denotes Iberian identity reshaped by the Latin American context. This etymology is
itself a manifestation of the way the colonial becomes the local.
29 Nancy H. Hornberger, “Bilingual Education Policy and Practice in the Andes: Ideological Paradox and
Intercultural Possibility,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 31, no. 2 (June 2000): 176.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
ing into a new national identity.” 30 Here we have, for the indigenous peoples themselves,
the opportunity to choose, at least to some degree, their local language and local thinking
style. In the urban context, we must therefore reckon with the decision of migrants to
uproot their families partly in order to place their children in Spanish-only, urban, Western
schooling. Second generation migrants usually speak their parents’ language poorly
if at all and typically do not use it outside the family context. But why should they, when
their parents have sacrificed so much to assimilate to the urban environment?
The question for the missionary in urban Peru, then, is what local language and thinking
style to use. The difference between Spanish and Quechua, as well as the difference
between indigenous and urban worldviews, is every bit as significant as VM asserts. Yet,
is it the missionary’s place to overrule the indigenous migrant’s intention to live in the linguistic
world of her second language? If she speaks Spanish but still “thinks” Quechua,
need the missionary insist upon a Quechua approach—or is this even a realistic view of
language? Nida notes the complexity of what he classifies as “a heterogeneous society
with included face-to-face constituency”:
When a single over-all social structure involves not only a dominant group but an included
face-to-face constituency, it is essential to recognize not only their differences of structure,
but also their interrelations. One of the most serious mistakes in missionary work has been
to imagine that Indians in the Americas, for example, should be reached as a separate
constituency and developed as an isolated community, when all the time they are in highly
dependent relation to the urban center. 31
Nida points out that it is more common to err in the other direction, when the missionary
“lumps them together without regard to their different structures.” 32 So, even in this
urban nexus VM provides a corrective when it provokes the sub-cultural sensitivity to
which the melting pot can numb the missionary. But I emphasize Nida’s point about
“interrelations” here because VM seems to disregard the complexity of the urban environment
with its local-only formula:
In a heterogeneous society with an included folk culture there is always the acute problem
of dealing with people in a state of transition. How are they to be ministered to—in terms of
their rural circumstances, or in their city setting? In a sense, it all depends on where they
are and how they view themselves. 33
The point here is to juxtapose the urban Latin American scenario with Jim Harries’s
rural African context, from which much of the VM perspective apparently arises:
Presumably the content of African languages arises from the content of African lives. Does
learning of another language “magically” result in a change in way of life? Or is the widespread
use of English making people dependent on what they do not understand because
it is not a part of who they are? If we had examples of non-European languages ‘succeeding’
[as the medium of enlightened advanced education] then perhaps we could say that
the choice of a European language for an African student is a free or arbitrary choice. As it
is, if it is a choice at all, then it is a choice that largely precludes taking the African person’s
30 Ibid., 177.
31 Nida, Message and Mission, 188–89.
32 Ibid, 189.
33 Ibid.; emphasis added.
117

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
118
own context seriously. This default option for African students handicaps them for the rest
of their lives.
For example, consider the contrast between monism and dualism. English is “at home”
in dualistic communities. When used by dualistic people, it can be extremely productive,
because the way it is used fits the contours of life of the people concerned. But if used by a
monistic people, it loses its moorings. Its implicit categories are no longer the right ones. It
serves a monistic people very poorly. This is the case unless they adapt English so as to use
it in their way. Such “adaptation” of English defeats the original intention—that English
be a means of easing communication with the wealthy and powerful international community
and a means of achieving development and prosperity on Western lines. 34
The parallel is strong. Spanish is the colonial language and the “means of achieving
development and prosperity on Western lines.” But the practical issue is Harries’s theory
of language, which the Peruvian urban migrant’s intentions challenge. The logic of
Harries’s argument is that the context (“the content of African lives”) is what determines
their language. This is unidirectional, though, because in his view their context actually
determines their worldview (monism) first, and their language is merely the manifestation
of their worldview. Language is a surface element, which means that learning a new
language cannot result in a new worldview (dualism). The context is still determinative,
therefore the new language will be employed (adapted) only in terms of the existing
worldview.
To this view, the urban migrant essentially poses the question: What if I change contexts?
Is it possible for the Quechua speaker to see the world differently enough that her use
of Spanish does indeed cohere with the native Spanish speaker’s use? The missionary’s
expectation that every person’s worldview can be transformed into that of Jesus and
VM’s expectation that the missionary can effectively adopt local language and thinking
styles both require an affirmative answer. The oral thinker can learn to think analytically—they
“simply do not look at their worlds” analytically, but they can do so every bit
as much as the missionary can learn to think orally in order to “use local thinking styles.”
It is clearly paternalistic to require non-Westerners to conform to a Western worldview,
but it is equally paternalistic to deny non-Westerners the agency to use non-local languages,
non-local thinking styles, and non-local resources should they so choose. It is paternalistic
to opt against partnership because potential partners may find it “very difficult, if
not impossible” to “understand that the resources provided by the Western mission body
to support the spreading of the gospel are not the gospel.” 35 The methodology of using
only local language, thinking styles, and resources, rigidly applied in urban Latin America,
stands to become one more way that Western missionaries say, “We know what’s best for
you, whether you realize it or not.”
Another way of putting this is that my context reveals the peculiarity of VM’s stated aim,
to seek “more perspectives on VM from Majority World people whose contact with the
West has not persuaded them to approach mission like Westerners.” 36 I must ask, instead,
34 Jim Harries, “The Need for Indigenous Languages and Resources in Mission to Africa in Light of the
Presence of Monism/Witchcraft,” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 4, no. 1 (February 2013):
57.
35 Ibid., 60–61.
36 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 77.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
why not equally seek the perspectives of Majority World people whose intentional contact
with the West defines their reality in terms of interculturality and hybridity? The
mestizo voice should not be marginalized here as well. 37 It calls out a challenge to the
notion of local culture as static and closed. It asks missiology to consider new, dynamic
configurations that are oral and analytical, narrative and propositional. It seeks dialogue,
discernment, compromise, and provisional decisions appropriate to contexts that are in
flux.
What About Theological Education?
With the mestizo voice in my ears, then, I want to discuss the question of what language
and thinking style to use from within the concrete (though diverse) situation of theological
education. There are three principal issues that shape the conversation: (1) the nature
of theology, (2) the extant voice of Latin American theological scholarship, and (3) the
inevitability of cross-cultural interactions in the globalized world.
The Nature of Theology
There is no doubt that the dominant current of theological reflection in Christian history
is part and parcel of the various Western church traditions. The recent overhaul
of church history mentioned by Dyron Daughrity in the present issue implies a recovery
of previously subdued non-Western theologies as well. Backing away from this development
for a wider perspective, Western theology has already been in a long process
of self-criticism, intensified by postmodernism, in which the idiosyncrasies, foibles, and
blatant deficiencies of Enlightenment streams of Christianity have been laid bare. To
some degree, Christianity finds itself in a theological malaise induced by an uncertainty
about what to do after the assertion that theology is culturally conditioned. The instruments
of communication that might potentially span the gap are themselves subject to
the deconstruction of Western imperialism: rational discourse that assumes a particular
rationality; communication media embedded in globalization; the practical need for
linguae francae that finds a path of least resistance in formerly colonial languages; the
written word, which excludes a variety of oral and grassroots theologies—not to mention
academic standards such as peer review that further delimit publication. Paralysis results
in theological ghettoization.
Personally, I hail from a theological tradition that drank deeply from the Enlightenment
well and developed a hermeneutic that programmatically denied the possibility of theological
pluralism, cultural or otherwise. Thus, along with the rest of Western Christianity,
sectors of the Churches of Christ have been in a period of profound introspection,
after which we see clearly that our culturally conditioned ways of talking about God are
not universal and definitive. For all that, I maintain a commitment to the primacy of
Scripture that must, for the Churches of Christ, be the point of departure for a discussion
about the nature of theology.
37 I am using the term mestizo in the sense of cultural hybridity. See Diccionario de la Lengua Espanola de la Real
Academia Espanola, 22nd ed., s.v. “mestizo, za,” http://lema.rae.es/drae/?val=mestizo: “Regarding culture,
spiritual matters, etc.: Resulting from the mixture of different cultures.” (author’s translation).
119

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
There is vast diversity among literate cultures; conflating literacy with Western thought
will never do. 38 Yet, the VM advocacy of only local thinking styles among oral cultures
runs up against theological education that makes Scripture central. Nussbaum contends
that the contrast between orality and literacy is superficial, but superficial or not, illiteracy
is a component of orality. To concretize the issue, what should theological education
look like for my illiterate or functionally illiterate Arequipeño brothers and sisters?
Scripture stands as a testimony to the people of God’s enduring, trans-cultural impulse
to center theology upon the written word. We may make historical caveats about the
illiteracy of the majority, the priority of narrative, and the variety of cultural patterns
that mark the reception of the text, but these do not obviate the nature of Scripture as
scripture. Moreover, the rabbinic and Hellenistic modes of theology canonized in the
New Testament demand to be met on their own terms by readers of every culture. At
this point, it hardly needs saying, the cultures of the Bible stand at tremendous distance
from US, Latin American, and African cultures alike. How could missionaries who focus
upon Scripture not introduce foreign thinking styles? The use of local language in missiology
intends to mitigate the distance, but as Nida said, the purpose is still in virtually
every context “to inculcate wholly foreign concepts.”
The Western tradition’s historical-critical tools may be indelibly marked by the culture(s)
in which they developed, but it is something else to say they are irredeemably compromised.
Christopher Wright says:
120
There is no point, it seems to me, in swinging the pendulum from Western hermeneutical
hegemony and ignorance of majority world biblical scholarship to the fashionable adulation
of anything and everything that comes from the rest of the world and the rejection of
established methods of grammatico-historical exegesis as somehow intrinsically Western,
colonial, or imperialistic. 39
At their best, historical-critical tools allow us to meet biblical cultures on their own terms.
If the choice is between attempting that cross-cultural encounter with the text or subjugating
it to the autonomy of a local thinking style, theological education should choose
the former in every context. As a scholar who has spent much of his career giving the
Latin American context a voice to critique and improve Western hermeneutics, René
Padilla’s words on this point are weighty:
It has been argued, however, that . . . the grammatico-historical approach is itself typically
western and consequently not binding upon non-western cultures. What are we to say to
this? . . .
No interpreters, regardless of their culture, are free to make the text say whatever they
want it to say. Their task is to let the text speak for itself, and to that end they inevitably
have to engage with the horizons of the text via literary context, grammar, history and so
on. . . .
38 See, e.g., the discussion of various logics in Marlene Enns, “Theological Education in Light of Cultural
Variations of Reasoning: Some Educational Issues,” Common Ground Journal 3, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 76–87. University
students from both China and the US are both highly literate, but Chinese students reason holistically.
39 Christopher J. H. Wright, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2006), 42, fn. 14.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
The effort to let Scripture speak without imposing on it a ready-made interpretation is a
hermeneutical task binding upon all interpreters, whatever their culture. Unless objectivity
is set as a goal, the whole interpretive process is condemned to failure from the start.
Objectivity, however, must not be confused with neutrality. 40
Similarly, as a twenty-first century American, my encounters with Irenaeus, the Cappadocian
Fathers, Anselm, Calvin, or Karl Barth are all cross-cultural. Theological education
actually seeks to challenge the student’s local thinking style, not to place it in a
reservation.
Latin American Theological Scholarship
Vibrant theological scholarship already exists in Latin America, though its scale is modest
relative to the number of churches it serves. Latin American theological scholarship
bears certain prominent traits that present difficulties for VM methods. First, theological
leaders think of themselves in terms of Latin America and therefore undertake their task
internationally in Spanish or Portuguese. Entities such as the Latin American Theological
Fellowship and the Evangelical Association of Theological Education in Latin
America represent this characteristic most prominently. 41 Second, they are participants
in the theological discourse of the global church. Prominent leaders such as Samuel Escobar
and René Padilla have played vital roles in the Lausanne Movement, for example.
They participate in this global scene, as well as publish, in English.
The weight of these simple observations increases in proportion to the degree that theological
leaders of the dominant criollo culture do indeed represent their diverse national
contexts. This is not to say that local languages should be ignored—the principles of
sound missiology stand. But even in indigenous communities in Latin America, “in the
pedagogical process and in the development of an integral formation both languages are
necessary and complementary”: 42
The educational process, within the framework of the religious conscience is decisive in a
socialization which will allow the aboriginal people and other participants to elaborate critical
and constructive relations with the society in which we are living. The contrary, within
current conditions, would inevitably lead to one form or another of the extermination of
minority groups. In this sense, the proposal which certain anthropological currents uphold,
to “maintain the indigenous cultures in a state of purity” simply brings on the same tragic
consequences that the destruction/absorption plans have produced. . . .
The aim of a school in the aboriginal context is a double one: on one hand, to rescue and
affirm the values of their own culture, language, identity, religious cosmovision; and also to
offer adequate training so as to enable participation on a level of equality in a multi-cultural
society, which at the same time is a dominating and vicious one towards certain sectors. 43
40 C. René Padilla, “The Interpreted Word: Reflections on Contextual Hermeneutics,” Themelios 7, no. 1
(September 1981): 21.
41 See Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana, http://www.ftl-al.org; Asociación Evangélica de Educación
Theológica en América Latina, http://www.aetal.com/esp/index.html.
42 Samuel Almada, “Intercultural Dialogue Perspectives in Theological Education with Originary People,”
Journal of Latin American Hermeneutics 1 (Summer 2004): 3.
43 Ibid.
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
If it is necessary to introduce Spanish-language theological education into the indigenous
community rather than maintain a purely local-language theology, how much
more must Spanish-language theological education be the right approach in the urban
context, where indigenous migrants have made dominant-culture socialization their
goal? It is invariably best to bring students’ culturally and linguistically determined thinking
styles into dialogue with Spanish-language theology, first because balance is necessary
in order not to perpetuate marginalization, and ultimately because the “promotion of
inter-religious and intercultural dialogue for an improved mutual integration into a pluralistic
society” is one of the goals. 44
Considering Latin American theological leadership, it is important to note that Nussbaum
sees the charismatic movement in Latin America as an example of Jim Harries’s
“VM approach to theological training.” 45 It may be that we see here the contrast between
largely analytical mainstream theological scholarship in Latin America and that of supposedly
oral charismatic Christianity. Yet, charismatic Christianity in Latin America is
notoriously marked precisely by a lack of theological education, not an alternative “oral”
model of it. 46 And while many “grassroots” groups have certainly developed without
foreign funding, it is not the case that they demonstrate a particular care for local languages—in
fact, in Arequipa there are a significant number of native Quechua speakers
participating in Spanish charismatic church services. Here as well, urbanization is
determinative, and charismatic churches flourished first and foremost in Latin American
urban environments. 47
If it is right to describe the widely diverse charismatic movement in terms of Nussbaum’s
conception of orality, then there is no doubt that the movement’s chief characteristic
in regard to thinking style is not local indigeneity but socio-economic marginalization,
along with which goes a lower level of education. José Míguez Bonino summarizes various
sociological descriptions of Pentecostalism’s emergence:
122
A series of diverse hypotheses arose, but with a common denominator: They saw Pentecostalism
as a movement which found its space in Latin America’s transition from a
traditional society to a modern one, or more specifically, in the transition from a largely
agrarian society to a partially industrialized one, from a rural to an urban society. 48
The socio-economic implications of this transition are well known. The connection is
clear between the indigenization of Pentecostal churches and the nationalist stirrings that
44 Ibid., 2.
45 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 75.
46 See Emilio Antonio Núñez C. and William David Taylor, Crisis and Hope in Latin America: An Evangelical
Perspective, rev. ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1996), 316, 464 for representative general comments. See
also José Míguez Bonino, Faces of Latin American Protestantism: 1993 Carnahan Lectures, trans. Eugene L. Stockwell
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 72–75. His discussion of Latin American Pentecostal theology deals with
“the relation between the ‘lineal logic’ and ‘enlightened’ rationality which we usually take for granted, and the
rationality of the symbolic.” He concludes that “the need remains for the Pentecostal movement to examine
its ‘explicit’ theology in terms of the ‘implicit’ theology in its foundational experience” and examines how
fundamentalism short-circuits the encounter with the biblical text.
47 Ondina E. González and Justo L. González, Christianity in Latin America: A History (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 281, 295.
48 Bonino, 57–58.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
accompanied the rural to urban transitions of poor, oral, uneducated populations. 49 It is,
however, difficult to demonstrate that a principle of orality was the cause of indigenization.
It is perhaps a simpler explanation that lack of education, and therefore continued
orality, became endemic in transitional groups precisely because marginalization prevented
them from completing the transition they intended, which in turn led to a break
with the wealthy, educated, analytical culture that marginalized them. They did not
indigenize because they were oral but remained oral because they indigenized through
conflict at a time when their identity was shaped by limited access to education.
To put it this way highlights the fact that one notion of education is regnant in Latin
American urban society. There is no romantic notion of local indigenous education
at work here. Rather, there are systems of urban poverty that perpetuate a divide between
those with greater educational opportunity and those without. In this context,
an “oral” rather than analytically trained mind is indeed the default mode of cognition,
but it is hard to imagine idealizing such orality as an equally beneficial thinking style in
a society that functions economically, legally, and politically in a more analytical mode.
Indigenous migrants know as much and for that very reason seek every opportunity to
integrate.
Furthermore, it is similarly difficult to think that such orality in the church context should
not be challenged by the analytical theological mode that is itself indigenously Latin
American and understands its context in the socio-economic terms pertinent to the urban
reality of uneducated oral communities. There are strong links here to Paulo Freire’s
conscientization—part of a pedagogy for marginalized groups that focuses on “critical literacy,”
dialogue, and engagement. 50 Freire’s influence on Latin American liberation theology,
which much of Latin American evangelical theology has appropriated to varying
degrees, finds expression in mainstream Latin American theological scholarship in the
tendency toward discourse and interculturality. This disposition is especially concerned
to empower the voice of the marginalized, yet it certainly expects theological education
to be dialogical rather than monologically “local.”
Cross-Cultural Interaction in the Globalized World
Theological education cannot afford to treat local cultures as closed systems; especially
in urbanized contexts, attempting to treat them so is futile. The world is plugged in, and
there is no going back. Harries says, “The responsibility is on the West to communicate
and interact inter-culturally.” 51 That is a justifiable challenge to the ethnocentric Western
missionary force; a historically reasonable corrective. Especially because the missionary
enters the local culture to instigate the cross-cultural relationship, the burden to assume
an incarnational posture is hers. Yet, when it is a matter of the local Christians’ theological
education, to insist upon banning non-local thinking styles handicaps the resident
of the globalized urban setting. What is more, to place the responsibility of the cross-
49 González and González, ch. 10, passim, esp. 276.
50 For Freire, “critical literacy” was vitally important for conscientization, “the process of developing a critical
awareness of one’s social reality through reflection and action” Freire Institute, “Conscientization,” http://
www.freire.org/conscientization. For an overview of Freire’s theory of critical literacy, see also Peter
Roberts, “Extending Literate Horizons: Paulo Freire and the Multidimensional Word,” Educational Review 50,
no. 2 (June 1998): 105–114.
51 Harries, 64.
123

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
cultural relationship solely upon the West is, inversely, to advocate the ethnocentricity of
local Christians.
Were Western missions to achieve a moratorium on ethnocentric short-term missions and
cut all “dead aid,” local Christians would nonetheless need the capacity to self-theologize
(a self unmentioned in Nussbaum’s proposal) in dialogue with the global community. 52
This precludes the local-only thinking style—or perhaps, more accurately, redefines the
local in relation to the global. Of Harries’s context, Mercy Amba Oduyoye said twenty
years ago—just before the hyper-acceleration of globalization through the Internet:
124
We short-circuit the cultural context of Black Africa if we forget that the contemporary
culture, except maybe in the remotest of villages (and how many do we have left?), is fast
becoming an amalgam of Arabic, European, technological, and African cultures. The
context is today as it has been shaped by yesterday, and continues to interact spatially
within a world of changing cultures. 53
Missiologically, there is little to gain by ascribing moral value to globalization. It is not
intrinsically good or evil; it affords opportunity for both. More importantly, it reshapes
local realities regardless of our judgments. The missionary who judges it negatively may
choose, to the extent possible, not to be an instrument of globalization. But globalization
will change her context in any event. Therefore, the missionary task of contextualization
must account for that change:
For some missiological reasons, traditional indigenization has been enthusiastic about preserving
our Indian culture, especially in Indian dialects. This indigenization has been to
a large extent romantic, in the sense of looking to the past and glorifying the noble savage
without seriously taking into consideration the present, much less the future. Contextualization
is asking for the incarnation of the gospel, not in a traditional and static culture, but
in the struggle and agony of the people in search for a new culture, namely, a better way
of life for them and their children. 54
Beyond the inevitability of globalization, the bare fact that Majority World churches
are engaged in cross-cultural mission throughout the world is enough to bring localonly
thinking under scrutiny. Just as VM (and missiology) calls Western missionaries
to respect local thinking styles, missionaries from oral cultures must learn to meet more
analytical cultures on their own terms. 55 This critique becomes all the more urgent given
that theological leadership of the global church must begin to arise from the Majority
World. On this point, no one speaks more eloquently than Andrew Walls:
It is inevitable that the religio-cultural transformation of the 20th century will place Africans
and Asians more and more in positions of leadership in world Christianity; the
more so since the Great Reverse Migration will ensure that the United States and Europe
52 Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), ch. 8.
53 Mercy Amba Oduyoye, “Contextualization as a Dynamic in Theological Education,” Theological Education
30, Supplement 1 (Autumn 1993): 110.
54 Núñez and Taylor, 336–37.
55 Paul Yonggap Jeong, “ ‘Mission in Weakness and Vulnerability’ in Selected Writings: From Lesslie Newbigin’s
and David Bosch’s Missiological Books,” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 4, no. 1
(February 2013): 17. Jeong similarly applies the missiology of weakness and vulnerability to “the missionary
forces from the Majority World, since [they] tend to think, generally speaking, that [they] . . . are now replacing
Western missionary forces.”

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
become more consciously multi-religious as well as more secular entities, and as the once
axiomatic identification of the West with Christianity becomes more and more problematic.
But any leadership needs to be an informed leadership; it is incongruous to have
Western intellectual and theological leadership of a non-Western Church. That Africa will
bring gifts to the church is widely recognized, and many see those gifts as including zeal
for Christ, unembarrassed witness to him, energy and delight in worship, and fervency in
prayer, all of which will bless the wider church. But Africa and Asia must bring other gifts
too. Intellectual and theological leadership of the Church must increasingly come from
Africa, Asia and Latin America. As a result, theological adequacy, rubbing along, is not going
to be enough. There must be excellence, world-quality capacity for leadership. Africa,
Asia and Latin America will increasingly have to be the powerhouses of Christian thought.
If we translate this into academic terms, it means that Africa, Asia and Latin America must
first become centers of creative thinking, world leaders in biblical and theological studies.
And theological and biblical studies may be one of the few disciplines, possibly even the
only one, in which this will be true for much of the area. Economic and other factors will
always give Europe, North America and East Asia the edge in scientific and technological
disciplines, and in many branches of the humanities and social sciences. But for the sake
of the Christian Church worldwide, Africa, all Asia and Latin America, home to so many
Christians, must pull their true theological weight. 56
This is not to reduce theological studies to Western modes of academia. There is much
that other cultural modes of study and reflection can bring to balance and correct Western
scholarship:
It may again be time for Christians to save the academy. And it may be that salvation will
come from the non-Western world; that in Africa and Asia and Latin America the scholarly
ideal will be re-ignited, and scholarship seen as a vocation. To follow a calling means
putting other things aside as distractions, laying aside every weight; and the scholarly vocation
may be best fostered by breaking with some of the Western models; developing new
structures that encourage the community of scholars, rather than their competition. And
in theological scholarship—the area in which Africa and Asia and Latin America have to
excel for the sake of the worldwide Church—this will mean scholarly communities that
maintain a life of worship and are in active relation to Christian mission. 57
By itself, the Western church’s need for an intelligible, dialogical corrective from Majority
World theological leadership is a powerful reason not to establish local Majority World
churches with a purely self-oriented vision of ecclesial existence. The resistance to dependency
and paternalism that powerfully compels the conscientious Western missionary
should not engender a reactionary methodology that ultimately blinds the local church
to God’s global mission. Theological education of local Majority World churches for
global theological leadership cannot be reduced to Western academia, but it must certainly
encompass Western modes of theological reflection.
What Is Vulnerability?
I affirm the need for vulnerability in mission. The narrative of Jesus’ incarnation, life,
and death provides the theological imperatives for mission. 58 Nonetheless, those impera-
56 Andrew F. Walls, “World Christianity, Theological Education and Scholarship,” Transformation 28, no. 4
(October 2011): 238.
57 Ibid., 239.
58 See Jeong; Ben Langford, “The Art of the Weak: From a Theology of the Cross to Missional Praxis,”
Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 3, no. 1 (February 2012): 14–25. The contrast between a
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MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 110–133
tives need nuance. It rings true that Western missions has often compromised its own
missiological principles because of the temptation to work from a place of strength and
convenience. At the same time, it is not clear that mission in weakness and vulnerability
can be flatly equated with exclusive localness.
On one hand, Jesus certainly did not leave humanity to its own resources. As Mary
Lederleitner puts it, “Jesus is the ultimate high-powered and highly resourced partner in
global mission. . . . I am glad Jesus didn’t say, ‘You know, there is such a big gap between
what I can do and what you can do. Why don’t we just work separately?’ ” 59 I get the
sense that the VM response to this point is that it was the Holy Spirit rather than Jesus
who brought these “outside resources” to bear, and that missionaries have relied on their
own resources rather than the Holy Spirit. Yet, the analogical mode in which incarnational
theology issues its imperatives for mission also permits us to compare Jesus’ power
and authority with whatever resources the Creator has placed at our disposal. Taking
for granted a biblical worldview, what resources would a missionary actually arrogate to
herself, as her own strength?
On the other hand, there is nothing more vulnerable than the attempt to negotiate crosscultural
partnership in the most faithful and beneficial way in our postcolonial reality.
The missionary who seeks to prevent dependency and facilitate sustainability is far more
vulnerable to frustration and failure when she serves in a mode of genuine mutuality and
intercultural dialogue rather than avoiding the complexity of the cross-cultural relationship
and the reality of the globalized world. Absolute local-only methods may take missiology
to its logical conclusion, but in abstraction from local realities, they may serve as
oversimplified answers to questions whose difficulty makes us truly vulnerable.
AN APPRECIATIVE COMPARISON
I conclude with a comparison between VM and the mission work I am a part of in
Arequipa, Peru. There are two facets of the work in Arequipa: church ministry and
development ministry. The missionaries conceive of both together in terms of kingdom
sowing, but for practical and heuristic purposes they may be separated. I limit my comments
to church ministry. 60
theology of the cross (which is the consummation of the vulnerability of Jesus’ incarnation and life) and a theology
of glory (or glorification, in Pauline terms) is an eschatological one that perhaps assumes a false dichotomy.
Mission must locate itself between the already and the not yet in the proclamation of the kingdom, which
implies the triumph of the king but permits no ecclesial triumphalism. The resurrection was a foretaste of the
future and the inauguration of a new epoch, and the Spirit brings the power of the resurrection and glorification
into the present life of the church (Eph 1:17–23). Thus, the church’s life is a sign of the future when it
conforms to the way of Jesus, who lived the foolishness and weakness of the cross because he was completely in
step with the Spirit (1 Cor 1:18–2:14). The foolishness and weakness of the cross is the power (du/namiß) and
wisdom (sofi÷a) of God (1 Cor 1:24) that Paul prayed for the church (Eph 1:17, 19). The resurrection and
glorification of Jesus, then, is the vindication of Jesus’ way rather than its supersession. Glorification cannot be
understood apart from the cross (John 12:23–33).
59 Lederleitner, 124.
60 The development facet is an equally relevant case study but would require an entire paper of its own.
See http://cudaperu.org/about for an idea of what our developmental ministry looks like. Of particular
relevance to the present discussion is our Living Libraries program, which promotes literacy by providing
Peruvian public school teachers with staff development opportunities in the area of literacy education and by
placing age-appropriate reading books in public schools that do not have funding for libraries. The local think-
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VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
Historically, Churches of Christ have tended toward a building-oriented strategy in Peruvian
(and Latin American) urban church planting, whether renting or building facilities
in order to establish a congregation or beginning in homes with a view to renting or
building facilities. In either case, raising funds from US churches has been normal. Our
intention to establish churches in poor urban communities caused us to doubt the appropriateness
of such an approach. We concluded our study of the context:
Naturally, in the context of the poor, the rental or construction of a building is neither
reproducible nor often sustainable. For churches intended to multiply themselves, it is not
an acceptable model of church planting. Practically, churches that would choose to train
leaders capable of growing congregations large enough to reproduce the building model
will stifle the potential for church multiplication. This leads to a second point—that of
leadership training. Building-centered strategies are virtually always locked into a pastorlaity
dichotomy fostered by the institutional structure of the church. The assumed roles
and tasks of church leadership professionalize ministry to the detriment of church-wide
equipping. The assumed goal of growing large further removes the possibility of “ministry”
from many would-be spiritual leaders and frustrates even natural leaders’ best efforts.
Furthermore, the quality of the church communities that have had the most growth is contingent
on the dynamics of small groups that have no need for a building. Lastly, the building
of church buildings among Peru’s poor, as well as the leadership style it assumes, fails to
contrast strongly enough with the religiosity that spiritually impoverishes nominal Catholic
believers. Such an approach cannot adequately redefine and reconstitute “church” for
new Christians. On each of these points, a building-centered strategy is at odds with the
contextual factors uncovered by the best of Latin American missiologists and sociologists. 61
Thus, we bring new Christians into a house church network. The use of local resources
is not our only concern, but our critique of standard strategies does have some similarity
with Nussbaum’s discussion of the financial implications of the “analytical church”:
Biases that go with assuming a mature church must be an analytical church
1. Professionalization—the leaders are the best analysts; laity tag along.
2. That kind of leader needs special schooling for analyzing the Bible.
3. A congregation must be big enough to support a professional pastor.
4. That size of congregation will need a building.
5. The building, the schooling, and the pastor all require major funding. 62
These assumptions are generally typical in my context as well. Yet, the issue is really professionalization—a
particular model of theological education—not a particular thinking
ing style is surely marked by illiteracy or functional illiteracy (ability to read but inability to comprehend), but we
agree with the Peruvian school system that this should not be the case. Evangelism and church growth is in fact
subject to the limitations of adults who long to read the Bible for themselves (perhaps a “Protestant ideal” but
undoubtedly an aspiration of many Peruvians I have met) but cannot follow the thought units of large portions
of the Bible. Therefore, we see promoting the literacy of children in the present as a gift to the church in the
future (and to Peruvian society as a whole). To that end, the use of foreign resources to supply books to school
children is a compromise we are willing to make.
61 Greg McKinzie, unpublished strategy document for the Team Arequipa mission work.
62 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 73.
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style. 63 Because theological education in the urban Peruvian church must take into account
the nature of theology as dialogue with the historical church, dialogue with extant
Latin American theological leadership, and dialogue with the global church within the
globalized world, we are searching for an alternative model of theological education that
does not professionalize students and conforms to the economic reality of Arequipa.
Nussbaum’s proposal is suggestive:
128
Alternative model if a mature church can be an oral-thinking church
1. The laity can be involved in developing the theology of the group.
2. Special schooling not required for leaders; they can be apprenticed.
3. Congregations can thrive and sub-divide though too small to support a pastor.
4. Buildings are optional.
5. Little or no funding required. 64
Practically, apprenticeship is the model of theological education for Nussbaum’s oral-thinking
church. The rest are implications of refusing to professionalize ministry or otherwise
grow congregations into large budget-maintenance mechanisms—implications that are
also the goals of an alternative theological education model in Arequipa. The question,
then, is whether apprenticeship will be sufficient to equip theological leaders to serve
the urban Peruvian church. We affirm the essential commitment of VM: to foster an
ecclesial existence among poor urban communities that is truly Peruvian (self-governing),
economically sustainable (self-sustaining), and reproducible as the Peruvian church participates
in God’s mission (self-propagating). Nonetheless, we must also promote the
“fourth self ”: self-theologizing.
Self-theologizing in the urban Peruvian context must not be a detriment to the economic
sustainability of the church. In fact, because theology is done by the church, the
nature of the church as contextual, sustainable, and missional should provide strictures
for its self-theologizing, including the equipping of those gifted to be theological leaders.
Therefore, it is unreasonable that theological education would entail costs incommensurate
with the local economy or require foreign subsidy.
At the same time, theology is the point where historical, social, and global dialogue become
indispensable. While the trappings of the Western academic edifice are both unsustainable
and unnecessary for the education of poor Peruvian theologians, there may
be some vital components that are more costly than the local church can afford. For
example, one area where we have departed from a local-only resource methodology in
Arequipa is the acquisition of Spanish theological texts. Books are more expensive in
Peru than in the US, despite the relative weakness of the Peruvian economy. Therefore,
US Christians have donated texts to the church in Arequipa. Is this the slippery slope of
dependency, or is there a place for cautious, deliberate collaboration?
63 Additionally, in Latin America, the impulse to rent or build a building is not solely based upon the size
of a group necessary to support a professional pastor. Deeply embedded conceptions of church, holy space,
and religious identity carry over unchallenged from popular Roman Catholicism into much of evangelical
Christianity.
64 Nussbaum, “Vulnerable Mission Strategies vis-à-vis Mainstream Mission and Missiology,” 73.

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
Discussing the “western captivity of theology,” Andrew Kirk, a theological educator in
Latin America and other Majority World contexts, articulates the basic problem that
theological education faces in contexts such as Arequipa’s:
Theological education is restricted in many instances to those who have reached a particular
level of academic achievement, who can lay hands on sufficient financial resources
for study and who share the cultural background of the educator. How is theological education
to be made available to people who inhabit a “non-book” culture, i.e. for those
who have not succeeded in meeting the expectations of the normal educational process?
Present patterns of theological education will probably continue to reinforce the Western
Church’s alienation in deprived, urban areas. How is it possible for existing Western theology,
given its cultural assumptions, to equip a genuinely indigenous leadership in all strata
of society? 65
Both local resources and local thinking styles are at issue when we decide to make the
theological library a component of education. It is not a decision to make lightly. Of
course, the same can be said about the decision to translate, mass publish, and disseminate
the Bible. Even if we hold firmly to VM convictions, when practical benefit outweighs
idealism we must discern legitimate compromises. Undoubtedly, Christianity can
thrive and expand without access to theological texts. But what is most beneficial for the
urban Peruvian church: absolute economic independence or access to historical, social,
and global dialogue? This is a situational dilemma that cannot be reduced to a choice
between right and wrong but instead requires discernment of the contextually most beneficial
option—which in turn makes us vulnerable to error. We must pose such questions
prayerfully and humbly. And it is perhaps best to reiterate that our commitment to
missiological principles already excludes Western academic institutionalism, ministerial
professionalization, and economically unsustainable church forms.
I believe interculturality is the best mode for Latin American theological education—and
probably for the global church of the twenty-first century. In Peru, at least, it is already
an intelligible pedagogical framework. In this dialogical mode, which fosters theological
interdependence, hybridity, and “a new level of partnership that is fully bi-directional,”
it is a legitimate compromise for wealthy churches to put theological tools at the disposal
of under-resourced churches. 66 The use of those tools in a contextually appropriate educational
framework will require creativity, experimentation, a permanently repentant
heart, and attention to Latin American theologians who are already leading the way. 67
65 J. Andrew Kirk, “Re-envisioning the Theological Curriculum as if the Missio Dei Mattered,” Common
Ground Journal 3, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 33–34.
66 Timothy Tennent, “Theological Education in the Context of World Christianity,” keynote address at
the 2012 Lausanne Consultation on Global Theological Education, held at Gordon-Conwell Theological
Seminary, http://conversation.lausanne.org/uploads/resources/files/12418/Transcript_-_
Theological_Education_in_the_Context_of_World_Christianity_-_Timothy_Tennent.pdf.
67 See, e.g., the curriculum of the Centro de Estudios Teológicos Interdisciplinarios (CETI):
http://kairos.org.ar/images/pdfvarios/ceti/cetidiplomaturasprospecto.pdf. CETI is a ministry of
the Kairos Foundation:
[Kairos was] formed as a community in 1976 by a group of Christian leaders residing in Argentina.
Its main objective was the formation of disciples of Jesus Christ who would relate their faith to every
aspect of life and particularly to their own professions. In 1987 the community was registered as a
non-profit organisation called ‘Fundación Kairós’. For over thirty years Kairos has been inspired and
led by René and Catharine Padilla.”
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VM seems to look at such a compromise with the expectation of impending dependency
and paternalism because the history of Western missions justifies pessimism. Western
missionaries have long felt empowered to compromise where it seemed expedient without
regard for the imperative of vulnerability or the long-term cost of “strength.” Looking
upon a global missionary movement prone to compromises that have undermined
missiological principles, it seems reasonable to feel a more radical position is the only alternative
for real change. My call for discernment and cautious compromise can appear
to be just another path back to colonialist practices. I have great sympathy with the VM
perspective and great appreciation for its intention to be consistent. In many cases, missiological
principles need simply to be carried to their logical, hard conclusions. Yet, missiology
also gifts us the fundamental insight of contextualization: there are no universal
formulas. Urbanization and globalization are not excuses for missiological delinquency,
but they are realities that complicate our notions of local, create new opportunities that
are both risky and possibly constructive, and, ultimately, may require more than a localonly
methodology.
Greg McKinzie (http://gregandmeg.net/category/greg) is a missionary in Arequipa, Peru, where he partners in
holistic evangelism with Team Arequipa (http://teamarequipa.net) and The Christian Urban Development Association
(http://cudaperu.org). He is a graduate (MDiv) of Harding Graduate School of Religion. He can be contacted
at gemckinzie@gmail.com.
130

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133

Vulnerable Mission in Angola: An Intra-
African Conversation with Jim Harries
DannY reeSe
The Vulnerable Mission movement grew first in the rich soil of rural Western Kenya, based in the deeply
contextual insights of Jim Harries. Africa, however, is large, diverse, and changing. This article considers
what Vulnerable Mission might look like in another corner of Africa: the cities of Angola. The contextual
differences require that Harries’s proposals undergo considerable alteration. Vulnerable Mission strategies
in Angola must recognize Portuguese as a truly local, African language and must take into consideration
the globalizing changes that have redefined local identity and resources.
In its relatively brief existence, the concept of Vulnerable Mission has undergone a
subtle but far-reaching seismic shift in its foundational assumptions—a shift which perhaps
the seismographs of the movement have not adequately detected. This shift, in a
word, is context. VM grew first from the fertile soil of the African continent, specifically in
the life-experience and work of Jim Harries, long-term missionary to rural Zambia and
rural Kenya. Harries’s writings draw deeply from local African culture and language,
struggles in the African church, and pan-African philosophy. As a result, Harries’s strategic
proposals are explicitly aimed at mission to Africa. 1 However, his proposals struck a
chord with mission practitioners from around the world, and in recent years his Alliance
for Vulnerable Mission2 has attracted voices from Latin America and Asia and others
who write on behalf of the “Majority World” at large. 3
Without doubt, the VM discussion has much to offer non-African contexts. But I suggest
that the shift in the discussion has happened so rapidly as to preclude careful reflection
on the side effects of abandoning the contextual roots of the discussion. 4 Therefore, in
this reflection paper I intend to take the VM conversation back to its roots: I engage in
an intra-African conversation with Jim Harries. Specifically, I will interact substantively
only with Harries’s thought as canonized in his 2011 volume Vulnerable Mission, a collection
of fourteen previously published articles written as early as 1997. 5
1 See, e.g., the subtitle of Harries’s influential volume, Vulnerable Mission: Insights into Christian Mission to Africa
from a Position of Vulnerability (Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2011). Indeed, even as the VM movement gains
worldwide momentum, Harries continues to write specifically about Africa, as is apparent from a perusal of his
articles at http://jim-mission.org.uk/articles/index.html.
2 See http://vulnerablemission.org.
3 E.g., the substantive collection of VM articles concerning the Chaco in Argentina (http://jim-mission.
org.uk/discussion/index.html), Gene Daniels’s contributions on Kyrgyzstan (http://jim-mission.org.
uk/discussion/seen-in-a-different-light.pdf), and the articles in the current issue of Missio Dei from Paul
Yonggap Jeong of Korea and Jean Johnson of Cambodia. Stan Nussbaum stands as a prominent representative
of the tendency in VM circles to write concerning the Majority World, effortlessly drawing examples from
mission works of great geographical diversity without regard for contextual differences.
4 A similar concern is evident in Greg McKinzie, “Vulnerable Mission: Questions from a Latin American
Context,” Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 4, no. 1 (February 2013): 110–33.
5 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, xiv. Having read several of Harries’s other articles, I judge that the articles in this
2011 compendium well represent his larger corpus.
MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 134–153

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
Harries’s encapsulated strategic proposals—the use of local languages and local resources—are
nothing novel to missiology. 6 Rather, the strength of his contribution lies in his
exposition and defense of those proposals grounded deeply in his personal and studied
experience of Africa over the last two and a half decades. His writings are replete with
references to Luo customs; linguistic comparisons of Dholuo, Kiswahili, and English;
and ground-level assessments of “what is really going on” in African initiated churches.
Thus he provides a refreshing and at times unsettling corrective to much current missiology
that pays lip-service to contextualization but lacks the deep contextual grounding to
substantiate its claims.
Unfortunately, Harries’s strength is also his weakness. From the vantage point of a Luo
village in Western Kenya, he writes on behalf of plenary sub-Saharan Africa. 7 In this
tendency to gloss over significant contextual differences across the continent, Harries can
claim a prestigious heritage of African scholarship. Classic studies of African culture
such as John Mbiti’s African Religions and Philosophy and Geoffrey Parrinder’s African Traditional
Religion mix examples indiscriminately from West, East, and Southern Africa, yet
still today are widely cited to substantiate missiological approaches in particular African
contexts that may or may not fit the paradigms they espouse. 8 Such generalization may
have been justified in a fledgling field of study, but it is time for African missiology to
come of age, resisting the temptation to paint with one brush a continent that incorporates
54 sovereign nations, over 1,000 languages, countless local histories, and a stunning
diversity of current economic and social influences.
To highlight the need for contextual sensitivity, therefore, I bring to the conversation
my local experience in another corner of Africa: the city of Huambo, central Angola.
Through reflection on Angola’s context and an analysis of how Harries’s assumptions
and proposals fit (or do not fit) this local setting, this essay will demonstrate the need for
two key correctives to Harries’s proposals. First, the use of local languages in African
missions may well need to include so-called “European” languages. Second, the identification
of local languages and local resources may well be more globalized, even Westernized,
than Harries is willing to admit. At stake in this discussion is our view of what
Africa really is and our willingness to fearlessly contextualize the VM approach amidst the
whirlwind of globalizing change on the African continent.
6 McKinzie, 111–12.
7 E.g., Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 57, fn 2; and 164, where he admits the possibility that there may be exceptions
to his broad brush strokes of sub-Saharan Africa.
8 John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969); Geoffrey Parrinder, African Traditional
Religion, 3rd ed. (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1976). In relation to his own local context Harries
recognizes the danger of this generalizing tendency, e.g., when he sides with indigenous Luo scholar Okot
p’Bitek regarding the traditional Luo conception of God over against the more common generalization represented
by Mbiti and by Ghanaian Kwame Bediako. Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 4, 9; Jim Harries, “The Need for
Indigenous Languages and Resources in Mission to Africa in Light of the Presence of Monism/Witchcraft,”
Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis 4, no. 1 (February 2013): 59.
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INTRODUCTION TO MODERN ANGOLA 9
To say that Angola is a former Portuguese colony is true but insufficient to convey the
depth of impact the Portuguese had. A quick contrast with the British colonization
of Kenya may at least provide some idea. The Portuguese arrived in Angola in 1483;
within a decade they had built their first Catholic mission and begun their cultural expansion,
and within three centuries they had militarily and economically subjugated the
vast majority of what is today Angola. 10 The British, on the other hand, arrived in Kenya
with cultural impact only in the 1880s—a difference of 400 years. The Portuguese
founded Luanda, Angola’s capital and largest city, in 1576; the British founded Nairobi,
Kenya’s capital and largest city, in 1899. At the height of colonial occupation, more
than 335,000 Portuguese called Angola home; 11 fewer than 56,000 British lived in Kenya.
12 From early days Portuguese colonists intermarried with black Angolans, creating a
large and influential mestiço population; 13 interracial marriage in British Kenya was rare.
The Portuguese settled widely across Angola, founding cities as they went; in Kenya a
large segment of the British population attempted to isolate themselves in the “White
Highlands.” The British began pulling out of power in Kenya in 1959, granting full
independence in 1963. 14 At that time, Portugal was busy redoubling their presence in
Angola; independence would come only in 1975 after an intense and prolonged military
struggle. In short, compared to other colonial powers in Africa, the Portuguese arrived
much earlier, dug in deeper, and stayed longer.
Even before the Portuguese left Angola, a civil war erupted that would dominate Angola’s
existence for twenty-seven years, devastating the country until 2002. The war
shaped modern Angola in many ways, but three are especially relevant to our study. In
all three cases, the war continued and substantially accelerated trends that were already
in progress from colonial times:
1. Intermixing of ethnolinguistic groups. After the abolishment of the slave trade, a widespread
colonial system of forced labor caused large-scale internal displacement
and thus intermixing of Angola’s tribal groups. 15 But the civil war intensified this
displacement many times over. People fled to other regions to escape the violence
9 For the purposes of this paper, an introduction to Angola and our mission work can be only cursory. However,
it may still be sufficient to enable the reader to grasp the import of the need for contextualization of VM
approaches.
10 W. Martin James, Historical Dictionary of Angola, new ed., Historical Dictionaries of Africa 92 (Lanham,
MD: Scarecrow, 2004), xxv–xxvi.
11 Gerald J. Bender and P. Stanley Yoder, “Whites in Angola on the Eve of Independence: The Politics of
Numbers,” Africa Today 21, no. 4 (Fall 1974): 31.
12 Bethwell A. Ogot and William Robert Ochieng’, eds., Decolonization & Independence in Kenya, 1940–93, Eastern
African Studies (London: J. Currey, 1995), 113.
13 David Birmingham, Empire in Africa: Angola and Its Neighbors, Ohio University Research in International
Studies, Africa Series 84 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006), 8.
90.
14 Martin Meredith, The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence (New York: PublicAffairs, 2005),
15 I use the terms tribe and tribal neither in a pejorative manner nor a romanticized manner, and I do not
intend for them to have primitive, rural, or pre-colonial connotations. Rather, I use the terms to denote ethnolinguistic
groupings based on common ancestry.
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and destruction and then would flee again when war arrived at their new location.
In addition, both government and rebel forces pressed any available men or children
into military service, taking them to every corner of the country, many never
to return home. This intermixing resulted in the breakdown of tribal barriers. In
some cases whole tribal societies were broken down by the war, to be replaced with
the national identity-shaping experience of civil war. 16
2. Urbanization. In 1960, before the war for independence and the civil war, urbanization
in Angola reached 11% as a result of normal push/pull forces. 17 The wars,
especially the civil war, created massive internal displacement as villagers fled the
war, often being uprooted two or three times before finally “settling” in the relative
safety of a provincial city such as Malange, Benguela, or Huambo. 18 But they were
not safe even there when the war reached the cities in 1993 and 1994—wave upon
wave made their way to Luanda, bloating the capital’s population many times
over. 19 The result: by the end of the war well over half of the country’s population
lived in urban areas. 20 Contrary to Western assumptions, they would not return
“home” to the rural areas. The only “home” they had was the city. Current estimates
place Angola’s urban population at 59% of the total population. 21
3. Use of the Portuguese language. The colonizers mandated education in Portuguese,
and mission schools across Angola provided the means for the goal. 22 But the war
succeeded beyond the colonizers’ dreams. Precisely through the processes of urbanization
and intertribal mixing, Portuguese became the only viable means of
communicating on a daily basis. In addition, because the UNITA rebels championed
the use of Bantu languages, the MPLA (government) forces that controlled
the cities outlawed use of indigenous languages, allowing only Portuguese. As a
16 James, xliv, highlights that this destructive trend toward nationwide identity had its deep roots in Portuguese
military domination of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: “The Portuguese unknowingly laid
the foundations of Angolan nationalism. By dismembering the great kingdoms, the Portuguese allowed the
inhabitants to slowly begin to view themselves not as some part of an ethnolinguistic group but as belonging
to a greater entity: Angola.”
17 Tony Hodges, Angola: Anatomy of an Oil State, 2nd ed., African Issues (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press, 2004), 22.
18 Filomena Andrade, Paulo de Carvalho, and Gabriela Cohen, “A Life of Improvisation! Displaced People
in Malanje and Benguela,” in Communities and Reconstruction in Angola: The Prospects for Reconstruction in Angola from
the Community Perspective, ed. Paul Robson, trans. Mark Gimson, Development Workshop Occasional Paper 1
(Guelph, Canada: Development Workshop, 2001), 135.
19 Bob van der Winden, ed., A Family of the Musseque (Oxford: WorldView, 1996), 74, calls this the “third and
largest wave” of migrants to Luanda. However, the last and most brutal phase of the war (1998–2002, after
his publication) produced many more internal permanent refugees, at least another 1,000,000 (Development
Workshop, Centre for Environment & Human Settlements, and One World Action, Terra: Urban Land Reform in
Post-War Angola: Research, Advocacy and Policy Development, Development Workshop Occasional Paper 5 [Luanda,
Angola: Development Workshop, 2005], 68).
20 Hodges, 22.
21 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Population
Prospects: The 2010 Revision” (New York: United Nations, 2011), http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Sorting-
Tables/tab-sorting_population.htm. In contrast, Kenya is 22% urban. A brief glance at the list of nations
reveals that the region of eastern Africa maintains the lowest statistics of urbanization on the continent.
Rural Kenya is not “typical” of Africa.
22 Lawrence W. Henderson, The Church in Angola: A River of Many Currents (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1992), 137,
296–99.
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138
result of this confluence of factors, an entire generation of Angolans that function
primarily in Portuguese has reached adulthood. Tony Hodges relates the stunning
statistics of a 1996 survey:
No less than 42 per cent of children under 9 years of age and 34 per cent of those
between 10 and 19 speak Portuguese as their first language. . . . It is now common to find
young Angolans, especially in Luanda, who do not speak any African languages at all—a situation
which has no parallel elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. The implication is clear:
almost half of today’s children are being brought up to speak Portuguese as their first
language, and Portuguese seems set to outstrip all the African languages. 23
That was 17 years ago. Those “children under 9 years of age” are now parents of
a second generation of Angolans who speak Portuguese as their mother tongue—
and often as their only tongue.
The war ended abruptly 11 years ago, but its impact remains. Angola today is an urbanized
nation where tribal identities have been blurred and a national identity has grown
strong, epitomized by the use of the Portuguese language as the language of Angola.
Mission in Angola, even Vulnerable Mission, must take account of this reality. In the
following section I will share our mission team’s attempt to engage with this bewildering
context that is Angola. In the process, the reader will get a glimpse into what these
national statistics look like from ground level.
INTRODUCTION TO OUR MINISTRY IN ANGOLA
In July 2011, our mission team of six adults and four children moved to Angola for
the purpose of long-term church-planting ministry. Though we are the first long-term
missionaries from the Stone-Campbell Movement to Angola, we did not come with a
pioneering mentality. Rather, we took seriously the Christendom context: 95% of Angolans
claim to be Christian, 24 and churches are ubiquitous but proverbially shallow in
biblical knowledge. Rather than create more division within this “Christian” context,
we accepted the invitation to work with the Igreja de Cristo em Angola (ICA), an indigenous
Angolan church movement. ICA began as an interdenominational association
of Angolan Christians praying for peace in Angola, and in 1974 they adopted the name
Igreja de Cristo, meaning “Church of Christ.” In the mid-1980s ICA first learned about
“Churches of Christ” in other nations, specifically Brazil and Portugal, and over the next
two decades had sporadic interactions with these churches. For the most part, however,
ICA continued to make its own way forward, isolated from the world by the same factors
that kept Angola as a whole isolated during many years. As a result, the dreaded dependency
disease has not afflicted ICA—what they’ve accomplished, they’ve accomplished
without outside assistance—and their theology and church practice are characteristically
Angolan. When we arrived, ICA comprised about 36 congregations, mostly in Luanda
and the northern regions of the country. They asked us to help in Bible teaching, church
planting, evangelism, and social outreach ministries.
23 Hodges, 25; emphasis added.
24 David B. Barrett, George T. Kurian, and Todd M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative
Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, 2nd ed., vol. 1, The World by Countries: Religionists, Churches,
Ministries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 62. About two-thirds of Christian adherents in Angola are
Catholic.

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
Our team was determined not to make a mess of the promising situation into which we
stepped. So as not to introduce dependency, we have very carefully avoided the use of
Western resources in ministry. 25 Also, we have been careful to avoid stepping into positions
of power—but that has been easy. In the existing ICA systems of power and influence,
we young missionaries are welcome participants but decidedly low on the totem
pole!
After surveying many possible locations, we settled in Huambo, an urban center of perhaps
350,000 in one of the hardest-hit regions during the civil war. 26 Huambo’s geographic
centrality makes it an ideal strategic base for ministry with a nationwide focus;
indeed, our team has already visited churches in 16 of Angola’s 18 provinces. We are
currently gaining experience in church planting in the Huambo area in a variety of
settings: urban, peri-urban, and rural. 27 We pray that in the future this experience will
be useful as we mentor Angolans in planting and maturing healthy churches with a nationwide
scope. In all we do we try to partner with Angolans rather than working alone.
This is not the financial “partnership” oft glorified and much maligned in missiological
literature, but the daily camaraderie of getting our hands dirty together in the labor of
church planting and maturation. God heard our strategic plans as prayers, and he has
graciously allowed our team to participate in the planting of four new churches in the
past year, all initiated by our Angolan coworkers.
I live with my family in an Angolan-style house in the bairro (low-class high-density periurban
neighborhood) of São Luís on the outskirts of Huambo city. 28 Day after day I
walk fifteen minutes through the labyrinth of narrow dirt alleyways to the area of the
São Luís ICA church plant, where I devote the bulk of my ministry efforts. In the bairro
my interaction with Angolans is ground-level, devoid of grandeur. I drink kissangwa in
their homes; I overhear drunken brawls in nearby courtyards; I sit in solidarity with family
members at their funeral wakes; I join in arguments about the local football scene; I
stumble over my phrases of Umbundu, the predominant Bantu language of this area,
25 Our non-use of Western resources has two notable exceptions: we own 4x4 vehicles which we use in
ministry, and we have instituted the Bibles for Angolans program, in which individual Christians in America
donate funds to buy Bibles for individual Angolan believers (see http://www.angolateam.org/pitch-in/
biblesforangolans). These exceptions will be discussed below.
26 Population estimates in Angola are at best educated guesses; a complete census has not been executed
since 1970. This population estimate for the city of Huambo comes from 2008 data and trends in John
Mendelsohn and Beat Weber, An Atlas and Profile of Huambo: Its Environment and People, Development Workshop
Occasional Paper 10 (Luanda, Angola: Development Workshop, forthcoming in 2013), 62.
27 The term peri-urban denotes the areas surrounding the city center that appeared at a startling pace as internally
displaced peoples (IDPs) settled chaotically during the wars. These areas are certainly not rural: people
are crowded in at urban densities, virtually no space remains for subsistence farming, and urban social dynamics
predominate. But neither are they urban: there is in many cases a complete lack of urban infrastructure and
services such as roads, schools, electricity, or piped water. See Paul Robson and Sandra Roque, “Here in the City
There Is Nothing Left Over for Lending a Hand”: In Search of Solidarity and Collective Action in Peri-Urban Areas in Angola,
Development Workshop Occasional Paper 2 (Guelph, Canada: Development Workshop, 2001), 10–11. In
Angola, the peri-urban population forms a distinct third segment of society. This is in contrast with the norm
in other developing countries, where peri-urban areas form “a spatial continuum between the traditional concepts
of urban and rural.” There is a distinct cognitive and lifestyle disconnect between rural and peri-urban
populations in Angola.
28 According to Mendelsohn and Weber, 62, we share this peri-urban bairro setting with 89% of Huambo’s
population. Only 11% live in “formal housing.”
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which I am in the throes of learning. And in all of this, I try to bring God’s word to
interact with their lives at their level.
The point of this somewhat extended introduction to our ministry in Angola is simple:
that the reader may understand that our mission team shares the values of Vulnerable
Mission, and that we are struggling to apply these values and principles to the particular
Angolan context in which God has placed us. In the process, we have learned that
several key assumptions of VM as espoused by Harries simply do not fit the Angolan
context. If we cannot say “Amen!” to Harries’s proposals for mission in Africa, it is not
because we differ in strategic goals; rather, it is because the “Africa” of urban Angola is a
world away from the “Africa” of rural Kenya. 29
VM ASSUMPTIONS THAT DO NOT FIT ANGOLA
If I were to list the VM assumptions that do apply well to the Angolan context, the list
would run to pages and pages. Harries is correct in saying that there is much in the
African mentality that is common across Africa. 30 However, the following assumptions
that do not hold true in Angola are foundational enough to Harries’s proposals that they
must be addressed:
European languages are not local, and thus should be avoided in mission.
Harries argues strongly that European languages, though widely used in Africa, are so
disconnected from the daily life and thought processes of Africans as to preclude helpful
communication, especially as regards a topic so intimate and far-reaching as the gospel.
European languages are foreign, based on vastly different cultural foundations, and instruments
of dangerous cultural imperialism. 31
In response, allow me to introduce some of the members of the São Luís ICA church,
still less than one year old, planted in the bairro by an Angolan. 32
y Jeremias was one of the first baptized and is growing by leaps and bounds in his
Christian life. His father is Chokwe by tribe, from Lunda Norte province, more
than 700 km away from Huambo. His mother is Ovimbundu 33 by descent, but
spent most of her life in Luanda and some in the Democratic Republic of Congo
29 Like Harries, I will ground most of my comments about the reality of African life on personal experience,
even though I cannot claim the decades-long exposure that he can. My own experience in Africa began
early—I was born in South Africa—and encompasses visits to churches and mission works in twelve sub-
Saharan nations.
30 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 164.
31 Ibid., 17, 68, 95, 121, 127, 146, 156, 251.
32 I joined as a Bible teacher in this church plant soon after it was started, but the majority of members that I
introduce here became part of the church before my arrival. Others that have joined since then are family and
friends of existing members, reached through existing relational networks. Thus it will not do to claim that my
white presence has significantly skewed the survey population.
33 Ovimbundu are the people who speak Umbundu. Huambo is traditional Ovimbundu territory.
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(DRC), where she learned Lingala. Jeremias only speaks Portuguese; he cannot
even greet in Umbundu.
y Gideão’s parents were both Ovimbundu. They died when he was eight. For the
last eight years he has been raised by extended family, also Ovimbundu. His life is
only in the bairro; rarely does he venture more than one kilometer from his house.
Yet Gideão neither speaks nor understands Umbundu. Portuguese is his first and
only language.
y Nanda is a grandmother and a faithful Christian. She is fluent in Portuguese and
Umbundu and truly enjoys worshiping in Umbundu. She is semi-literate in Portuguese,
but cannot read a word of Umbundu.
y Mama Chinha is a young mother who sells tomatoes in the local market. Her parents
from Kwanza Sul Province speak Kimbundu, which she partially understands.
She speaks only Portuguese. I often forget and greet her in Umbundu—I always
receive a Portuguese response.
y Avelino is a father who struggles with alcoholism. Umbundu is his first language,
but he is also completely comfortable in Portuguese. He can read relatively well in
Portuguese, but not at all in Umbundu.
y Moisés lives in Luanda but works in Huambo. Portuguese is his first language, and
he also learned Kikongo at an early age, since he is Bakongo by tribe.
y Pedro, fourteen, speaks Portuguese as his first language. He also speaks Umbundu,
but often struggles over vocabulary since he uses it much more rarely than Portuguese.
y Paulo, eighteen, is one of Pedro’s close friends. He is Muila by tribe, but speaks Portuguese
as his first language. He has learned enough Umbundu to communicate
when needed.
About half of the church members speak Umbundu. Half don’t. Not a single member
is capable of reading Umbundu. Every single member is comfortable speaking Portuguese,
and the vast majority can read (to some extent) in Portuguese. None speak English
or other European languages, though the youth would like to learn English.
To put this in context, Umbundu is the most widely spoken Bantu language in Angola,
and Huambo province is one of the most ethnolinguistically homogeneous regions of
the country. Here, in the heart of Ovimbunduland, I listen to children playing on the
streets in Portuguese, drunks cursing the world in Portuguese, churches worshiping in
Portuguese, people in the market buying vegetables in Portuguese, and family members
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engaging in chores at home in Portuguese. Huambo, like Angola in general, functions
in Portuguese. 34
European languages remain rooted in foreign cultures; they do not
become Africanized.
Harries admits that some of his linguistic argument would not apply “if European languages
were allowed to become African”:
142
Should communication with European originators of the foreign languages used in Africa
suddenly cease, then the very languages will become Africanised. This is not currently happening,
because (at least in East Africa) Northern languages are valued exactly because of the
links that they enable with the North, and are assessed using foreign standards. 35
Angolan Portuguese stands as a counter-example to Harries’s assumptions. Since a majority
of people in Angolan cities function primarily in Portuguese (in all contexts of life,
even home life), and since a sizeable minority speak no other language besides Portuguese,
it is clear that they have found a way to Africanize the Portuguese language—to
root it in the Angolan context and adapt it to fit Angolan life. A hypothetical glimpse at
the vocabulary of an Angolan morning may illustrate the case:
Paizinho wakes up before the sunrise and immediately goes outside for his matatino (morning
run), a typical Mwangolé (Angolan) morning routine. Back at home he draws water
from the cacimba (well) to take a bath, conserving the water bué (very) carefully since it is
August, near the end of cacimbo (the dry season). Clean and refreshed, he takes a few moments
to matabichar (eat breakfast) before heading out for the day. Normally Paizinho works
doing candongueiro (informal business that involves buying, transporting, and selling), but
today he must visit the soba (local authority figure) to discuss some makas (problems) regarding
his family in the kimbo (rural area). Before going to the jango (meeting hut), he winds his
way through the beko (alleyway) to the market to buy a gift to present to the soba. He knows
which sellers will give him eskebra (a little extra for free); perhaps today someone might even
give him kilapi (informal credit), since he is short on cash.
34 I am painting only one side of the picture. Umbundu is also widely used in the bairros of Huambo, especially
among women. It is fairly easy to find a few women in the market who do not speak Portuguese, typically
those who travel in from rural areas to sell their goods. In rural areas, Umbundu predominates, but Portuguese
is also very widely spoken. In contrast, the city center of Huambo uses Portuguese almost exclusively. Someone
who speaks only Umbundu would not be able to accomplish basic tasks in the city center. I am not trying
to say that Bantu languages have been ousted from Angola, but rather that Portuguese has been grafted in and
has become an inextricable part of Angolan life.
In Luanda, the national capital, where a third of Angola’s population resides, the situation is even starker:
“In Luanda Portuguese is used almost universally, at home and in the street, although people have sometimes
introduced words from the local languages as well as recently created terms.” Robson and Roque, 82.
35 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 156; emphasis added. See also his similar reasoning on p. 250, where he thinks
about the possibility of “a big wall . . . to keep Westerners out.” In effect, the civil war was that big wall. For
27 years the Western world abandoned Angola—except for supplying it with armaments—and precious few
foreigners dared to live in Angola during that time (with the notable exception of the South African and Cuban
military forces during the early years of the war). Doubtless this isolation provided major impetus for the
Africanization of Portuguese. However, from what I can deduce in conversation with Angolans, the process
of Africanization was well under way before the civil war. From the picture that Birmingham, 8, relates, it
seems that the Africanization of Portuguese truly began among the Angolan mestiço urban elite that dominated
Luanda during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries.

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
The italicized words above are purely Angolan. Native speakers in Portugal may not
have a clue what they mean, except the few words that have come to Portugal as slang.
Moreover, these words are not Bantu. They are Portuguese. Though some have etymological
roots in Kimbundu, Umbundu, or other Bantu languages, they made their way
into Angolan Portuguese generations ago and are now used widely across the nation
of Angola, from Cunene in the south to Cabinda in the north. They are used daily by
Angolans who speak only Portuguese. And many Angolans would be quite surprised
to hear that citizens of Portugal don’t even know how to communicate with these basic
Portuguese words. “Do people in Portugal not eat breakfast?” they might ask. 36
Adaptation of the language has enabled Angolans to use Portuguese effectively in even
the most traditional African settings. Last year I had the opportunity to be a bystander
in a sensitive situation where a church leader was accused of using witchcraft to possess
a teenage boy with his spirit, resulting in debilitating madness. The case was handled by
the soba (traditional communal leader) and included input from the traditional herbal
healer who was watching over the boy in the far-flung rural area of his home. The
process lasted parts of three days—and all of it was conducted in Portuguese. The only
times someone broke into Umbundu were when they wanted the opinion of the boy’s
grandmother, who was not comfortable in Portuguese. Immediately after hearing her
opinion, the participants would switch back to Portuguese. 37 Portuguese is Angola’s medium
of choice to handle the intricacies of African life.
Portuguese today belongs to Angola as much as it belongs to Brazil or Portugal. Each
country has its version of Portuguese; the differences reflect the variations in culture, and
the similarities foster fraternal connections between the three continents.
Ethnolinguistic ancestry is the key identity for Africans.
Harries relates the unwillingness of the Luo people to accept him, a white man, as part
of their tribe. The reason is simple: “in much of Africa, unlike in the West, someone’s
key identity is rooted in their ancestry.” 38 I suggest that this observation forms a defining
assumption that undergirds the whole of Harries’s thinking. For example, he makes
much of the cultural roots of language, and his (usually unspoken) assumption is that in
36 Many, many more Angolan Portuguese words could be listed. See, e.g., the list of 249 terms at http://
casadeluanda.blogspot.com/2008/03/dicionrio-angolano-de-a-d.html, http://casadeluanda.
blogspot.com/2008/03/dicionrio-angolano-de-e-l.html, and http://casadeluanda.blogspot.
com/2008/03/dicionrio-angolano-de-m-z.html. Moreover, these terms and many more are legitimized
by their inclusion in Portuguese dictionaries by major publishers such as the Porto Editora publishing group,
whose Dicionário Plural da Língua Portuguesa includes more than 1,500 “Africanisms”; see http://pluraleditores.
co.ao/PLE03.asp?area=3&tema=1&id=9803.
It is also worth noting that Angolan Portuguese should be categorized neither as a pidgin nor as a creole. It
is true Portuguese, conforming to the international Portuguese Acordo Ortográfico of 1945, but with expanded
vocabulary and the particularities of contextual usage so familiar to Harries and other students of linguistic
pragmatics.
37 It was not my white presence that influenced their choice of language. For the most part, they could not
have cared less that I was there—it was not my business. Several times I wandered off to do other things, but
the conversation continued in Portuguese.
38 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 169–70.
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Africa, cultural means tribal. 39 I concur. In my experience in many parts of Africa, tribal
(ancestral) identity is key.
Angola is not, in this sense, like “much of Africa.” The two-sided sword of ethnolinguistic
mixing and urbanization has pierced deep. In our local church this intermixing
has already been noted. The church, which averages fewer than 20 adults on a typical
Sunday, includes not only Ovimbundu but also Kimbundu, Bakongo, Chokwe, and
Ovamuila persons—here in the most ethnically homogeneous region of the country. In
the cities of Lubango and Luanda the situation is even more pronounced. Paul Robson
and Sandra Roque conducted an excellent ethnographic study among migrants to the
cities and found that the exigencies of internal displacement have created a pervasive
heterogeneity:
144
People end up renting or building a house wherever they can. This is one of the main reasons
why the peri-urban bairros are so heterogeneous. People go to live where it is cheapest
or where there is space, and this is not necessarily in the bairro where they first went to or
where live their relatives, friends and other people originally from their area. [This has]
important consequences . . . for the social dynamics of the peri-urban areas. 40
Among the important consequences is the disappearance of ancestral traditions. “Nowadays
few traces of rural traditions remain in the social life of Luanda’s peri-urban
areas.” 41 Even in Huambo, “traditional festivals like ovinganji, olundongo, and evamba
are almost non-existent.” 42
The question remains: despite changes in language, customs, and urban heterogeneity,
do Angolans still hold ancestry as their key identity? For many, the answer is no. One
may catch a glimpse of this in their conversations with each other. When making a new
acquaintance, Angolans do not typically ask, “What tribe are you?” as might be common
in other nations. Rather, they ask, “What area are your parents from?” The answer
often shows that the choice of phrasing is not superfluous. “I was born in Moxico while
my mother was fleeing the war, but she is originally from this area (Huambo). Her father
was from Malange. My father grew up in Luanda, but his family is originally from Uíge.
. . .” Moreover, the rhetoric of ethnic rivalry was used by government and rebel forces to
perpetuate the civil war. Angolans of today explicitly shun such rhetoric; they want no
part in undoing the peace they have gained at such great cost.
Angolans have had to forge new identities and new sources of identity. The central
worldview question “Who are we?” is always rooted in a story, and when the story changes,
so does one’s key identity. Traditional Bantu myths emphasize the cyclical nature
of life: we are a community composed of members from the past, present, and future.
Ancestors play a vital role in the continuity of life, and numerous community rituals
(birth rites, circumcision, funerals, libations and sacrifices, etc.) function to reinforce the
39 On my use of the terms tribe and tribal see fn. 15.
40 Robson and Roque, 58.
41 Ibid., 82.
42 Ibid.

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
communal and cyclical coherence of life together with the ancestors. 43 This story defines
each tribal social grouping in contradistinction to others.
The continuing importance of ancestors has waned significantly in peri-urban Angola, 44
and many other elements of the traditional story, including rituals, have been removed
or replaced, as noted above. Perhaps it is not too bold to say that peri-urban Angolans
explain their place in the world not primarily in terms of the traditional story, but in
terms of the story of how they have survived the war and rebuilt since the war. It is this
story that has redefined the social groupings. For some, such as the returned refugees
from Kinshasa, their new community is not their tribe but the people who accompanied
them in their journey of survival. Thus this group does not speak Kikongo (their tribal
language) but Lingala (the language of their refugee story). They feel a unique solidarity
with each other, but not with other Bakongo. 45 For other residents, their social group is
their immediate family. They are the only ones who have stuck together through thick
and thin—there is no story which binds them to their neighbor, regardless of ethnicity.
One of the most important social groupings, by the assessment of several independent
observers, is the church community. Fellow church members are the people who have
endured the struggles of the story together and hence share a solidarity that is not found
in the larger peri-urban population. 46 But for many, key identity has shifted to the national
level: an individual is, first and foremost, an Angolan, regardless of region, social class,
language, religion, or race. A national identity has been forged in the furnace of the
nation’s story of struggle, a story that binds Angolans together and distances them from
surrounding peoples, many of whom used to be family. For many Angolans, a redefined
story has redefined communal identity. 47
Perhaps the illustration of this reformation of communal identity that would most surprise
Harries is Angola’s breakdown in racial division. As he notes, where tribal identity
is key, whites must necessarily remain foreigners in black Africa. So great is the racial
divide of his Kenyan context 48 that Harries naturally adopts the racial divide into his
own terminology:
43 Adebayo O. Oyebade, Culture and Customs of Angola, Culture and Customs of Africa (Westport, CT: Greenwood,
2007), 29–30, 43–45.
44 In a recent conversation I asked several Ovimbundu friends of differing ages what impact the ancestors
continue to have on life. They generally agreed that during the first year after a family member’s death, the
spirit remains influential—for better or worse—in family affairs. But the ceremony at year’s end liberates that
spirit, and it ceases to have any impact on life. I pressed them, suggesting that surely people might still pray to
the ancestors for protection, etc. Their response was unanimous as they laughed at me: “Friend, that was a
long, long time ago. Perhaps our great-grandparents did that, but not today!”
45 Paul Robson, “Communities and Community Institutions in Luanda,” in Communities and Reconstruction,
170; Robson and Roque, 36–37, 81. It is this social segment, defined by a refugee story and not by ethnicity,
that birthed the ICA movement with which we work.
46 This is the conclusion of Robson and Roque, 130–41; Van der Winden, 113–14; Robson, 178; Andrade,
de Carvalho, and Cohen, 143. Fernando Pacheco, “Rural Communities in Huambo,” in Communities and Reconstruction,
97–98, 110, makes clear that this vital role of churches began in the rural areas, though it has gained
importance in the peri-urban context.
47 Birmingham, 99, points out that similar identity revolutions took place among the Kimbundu people
three centuries earlier.
48 Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 163.
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146
Use of the term “black” . . . is applied to people of African origin wherever they are now
living. The term “African” is reserved for those black people who are living in (and are
assumed to have been born and raised in) Africa. 49
Thus Harries concurs with the assumption of his Luo neighbors that a white person
cannot be African. 50
My thoughts turn to Alexandre, Huambo’s local veterinarian. He was born, raised, and
educated in Huambo. His parents, too, are from Huambo. But he is white. Alexandre
says he is Angolan, and his passport agrees. Through his paternal grandfather he can
trace ancestry back to Portugal; but his identity is formed by his story, not by his ancestry.
At the end of the work day, Alexandre walks home with his black receptionist who shares
his story, for she is also his wife. It would never occur to their two mestiça daughters that
a white man cannot be Angolan.
The racial divide runs so deep, writes Harries, that “for a white man to become a leader
in black Africa in other than an ‘oppressive’ way, is almost impossible.” 51 But no one
informed José Luís de Melo Marcelino, Huambo’s municipal administrator, that such
was the case. Marcelino is white, Huambo born and bred, and in a government position
of great responsibility. He is also respected by the people of Huambo: black, white, and
mestiço. From an elevated vantage point, he shares the people’s identity because he shares
their story.
Examples could be multiplied. The point is simple. Through ethnolinguistic and even
racial integration, Angolan identity has shifted from its roots in tribal ancestry toward
new roots in the shared national story of struggle, survival, and rebuilding.
Westerners maintain economic and cultural hegemony over Africa.
The last of Harries’s assumptions with which I will contend is that, because of the great
economic gulf between rich Western nations and poor African nations, Africans are
forced to follow Western leading, hoping for a handout. This particular strand of the
dependency virus, he maintains, has infected Africa at the national level, the institutional
level, the communal level, and the personal level. 52 His analysis is perceptive and convincing;
it rings true with much of what I have seen in other parts of Africa.
What makes Angola different? In a word, petroleum. Crude oil. As Africa’s second
largest producer of oil, Angola has no shortage of cash. 53 On the contrary, the nation
has emerged from its war years to find itself in a position of considerable economic clout
in the global arena. It did not take long for Angolan politicians to discover the ease with
which petroleum dollars can overturn American idealism, French justice, and interna-
49 Ibid., 164. Harries is here explaining his own non-pejorative use of the terms black and African.
50 Ibid., 169.
51 Ibid., 180; cf. 169.
52 Ibid., 70, 173 (national level); 171 (institutional level); 85 (communal level); 169 (personal level). In these
discussions, he repeatedly describes the cultural and intercultural dynamics which make it virtually impossible
for African leaders to refuse offers of international aid, even if that aid will harm the community in the long
run.
53 A wealth of diamond mines also contributes to the national status as “rich boy on the block.”

VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA: AN INTRA-AFRICAN CONVERSATION WITH JIM HARRIES
tional armament embargoes. 54 With its pockets lined, Angola wasted no time becoming
bedfellows with the superpower that is China. 55 But perhaps the most poetic twist in the
international plot was when Portugal, the former colonial power, came on its knees begging
for a financial bailout from Angola, its former colony. 56 Of course Angola condescended
to open its purse! Who could pass up the chance to reverse history, to rise from
slave to master with all the world watching?
What does this look like at street level in Angola? There is lots of money floating around
in this country. As “wealthy Westerners” in Angola, we find ourselves consistently unable
to afford the exorbitant prices that wealthy Angolans throw money at. We stay as guests
in homes in Luanda that would rent for $20,000 a month. There are also many poor
Angolans who live on just a few dollars a day; the lifestyle gap between rich and poor is
astounding!
So what does this mean for dependency issues in Angola? Angolans, like other Africans,
will take a handout no matter who it comes from, but most of the time in Angola it
comes from wealthier Angolans. International aid dependency, whether from the IMF,
NGOs, or churches, is still a problem in Angola. But it is dwarfed by the issues of internal
dependency. A church here might ask us missionaries for funds to build a new
building, but when we don’t prove golden, they waste no time in turning to their list of
Angolan donors, who consistently prove much more generous than the stingy foreigners
who keep mumbling on about missiological ideals. In this context, the all-important
purse strings are held not by Westerners, but by wealthy Angolans who walk in the ageold
African paths of patronage. 57 This pattern holds true at levels from the individual to
the national. The result is that in Angola, Westerners are seen as potential donors, but
their influence is not dominant because they do not carry the biggest wallets. 58
54 Regarding the US, I refer to the abrupt switch in allegiances in the early 1990s from overt and covert
UNITA support to solid MPLA relations. Regarding France I refer to the infamous Angola-Gate scandal; see
“Angola-Gate: Relations between Angola and France Remain Troubled,” The Economist (19 November 2008),
http://www.economist.com/node/12630028. Regarding armaments, I refer to the steady flow of Eastern
European arms into Angola during the latter stages of the civil war, despite the limitations set by the Lusaka
Protocol; see Alex Vines, Angola Unravels: The Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process (New York: Human Rights
Watch, 1999), 103–6.
55 China’s multi-billion-dollar oil-backed loans are the bread and butter of Angola’s infrastructure program.
See e.g. Scott Johnson, “China’s African Misadventures,” Newsweek (3 December 2007), 46–47.
56 “Angola’s Eduardo Dos Santos Offers Help to Portugal,” BBC News (11 November 2011), http://bbc.
co.uk/news/world-africa-15790127.
57 Perhaps the best accessible explanation of African patronage is found in David E. Maranz, African Friends
and Money Matters: Observations from Africa, Publications in Ethnography 37 (Dallas, TX: SIL International, 2001),
125–42. Harries, Vulnerable Mission, 152 agrees with Maranz that all friendship relationships in Africa have an
element of financial dependency. In this context, therefore, our attempt to uphold VM principles has resulted
in our friendships being somewhat stultified, incomplete. Angolans do not have a reference point from which
to understand our stinginess. Surely, they think, if anyone of means can help the church financially, the missionaries
would be the first to jump at that chance! They are not looking to us as sources of Western wealth,
but as sources of patron-friend wealth.
58 These dynamics opened the door for us to make one exception to our no-foreign-resources strategy: the
Bibles for Angolans program. Donating Bibles has provided us a small-scale method to exhibit generosity
without creating dependency. Bibles are readily available in Angola for those who wish to purchase them, and
the cost is not out of the range of most Angolans. We place Bibles in the hands of believers, or almost believers,
who would not choose to purchase one, and the act of generosity has in many cases already spurred people on
to a greater personal appreciate for the Word of God. In a few cases the recipients have, after months of Bible
147

MISSIO DEI 4.1 (FEBRUARY 2013): 134–153
One final note regarding the dynamics of wealth in Angola is important. Wealthy Angolans
serve as a wide-open door between Angola and the globalized world. Many Angolan
businessmen make their millions internationally; not through aid, but through trade.
As such, they swim in the urban currents of New York, São Paulo, and Beijing, drinking
from the global fountains of politics, materialism, and religious pluralism. These ideas
(and things!) flow steadily into Angola down the patron-client canals, eventually inundating
even the lowest socio-economic rungs of Angolan society. Whether we missionaries
want to participate in this globalizing current is a moot point. Angola is already there,
with or without us.
IMPLICATIONS FOR VULNERABLE MISSION IN ANGOLA
If these assumptions that are at the heart of Harries’s contextual concept of Vulnerable
Mission do not hold true in Angola, how are we to move forward? VM’s key principles,
the use of local languages and local resources, remain missiologically sound, but they
must be radically adapted for use in the Angolan context. I suggest that the following five
alterations to Harries’s recommendations do not require a lengthy defense, but rather
emerge naturally from the above analysis of Angolan culture.
1. Mission in Angola should be primarily in the Portuguese language, with secondary usage of Bantu
languages to the extent they are used among the target population. Missionaries’ fluency
in Portuguese should be honed in the Angolan context, so as to reach Angolans
in the local flavor of their heart language. Angolan Bantu languages should not
be neglected, since they provide an important window into Angolan culture and
thought, but should not be imposed as the primary means of communication.
2. Mission in Angola should strongly consider a nationwide strategic focus, since Angolans increasingly
define their own storied identity at a national level. 59 To missiologically target an ethnolinguistic
group is to recreate historical divisions that Angolans do not embrace.
More importantly, it is to misjudge the identity-shaping story of the Angolan
people. There are contextual exceptions to this rule: small homogeneous ethnic
groups that survive on the peripheries of Angolan culture. 60 Mission to these particular
groups should closely follow Harries’s original proposals.
3. Mission in Angola should train some Angolan Christians to function missionally as a cultural
bridge from the urban and peri-urban to rural environments. The urban-rural divide plagues
many aspects of Angolan life, and the church should be at the fore in bridging the
divide: helping urbanites relate to their uneducated rural neighbors and helping
rural Angolans know how to cope in the whirlwind of globalizing change. Rural
areas should not be approached in isolation, since they yearn to share in the national
Angolan identity; neither should they be neglected in favor of greener urban
pastures, as many Angolan churches already tend to do.
study, chosen to give their lives to Christ in baptism. We believe the prize is worth the strategic risk.
59 This is, in short, the reason we chose to purchase 4x4 vehicles for use in our mission work.
60 Examples are the Kilenge, Kwandu, Kuvale, and Ngendelengo peoples in Namibe province and the
Dhimba, Tchavikwa, and Hakaona peoples in Cunene province. These small and isolated groups are unreached
in the true sense. My thanks to Linda Jordan for bringing them to my attention.
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4. Theological education in Angola should include training in how to translate theological concepts
between Portuguese and Bantu languages. Portuguese should be the primary vehicle for
theological education, but teachers should ideally be conversant enough in Bantu
languages to model healthy translation processes. This dual-language approach
will (1) mimic the translation processes already in use in daily Angolan life, (2) open
Angolan church leaders to the published resources of the Lusophone world, especially
Brazil and Portugal, (3) enable nation-wide networks in which Angolans can
mature theologically together, and (4) facilitate the urban-rural bridge mentioned
above.
5. Mission in Angola should use the resources that Angolans typically have at their disposal, whether
local or global, giving preference to the local. In an urban environment, local must be understood
as an ill-defined range in the graduated spectrum from individual to global.
To the extent that Angolans customarily call on resources from other neighborhoods,
cities, or countries, missionaries should be willing to follow suit, while always
being vigilant to watch for signs of dependency that may catch Angolans unaware,
and while consistently reminding Angolans not to undervalue local small-scale
resources. Moreover, foreign missionaries should avoid introducing external resources
that are not already a well-integrated part of Angolan culture.
CONCLUSION: WHAT DOES ANGOLA HAVE TO DO WITH
AFRICA?
If the contextual situation of urbanized Angola contrasts so dramatically with that of
rural Kenya as to necessitate such significant revisions to the core strategies of VM,
then perhaps Angola should simply be treated as an outlier—noted and ignored—in
matters related to African missions. Perhaps missiologists in sub-Saharan Africa should
embrace and advocate Harries’s approach while including a footnote that says, “except
in Angola.”
Angola is indeed exceptional in some aspects. I know of no other sub-Saharan nation,
for example, where the colonial language has become the first and only tongue of so
great a segment of the population. The historic moment when the former colonizer,
Portugal, entreats the former colony, Angola, for financial assistance is perhaps unprecedented.
But it would be a mistake to equate “unprecedented” with “won’t happen
again.”
Africa is changing. In some aspects, Angola is not exceptional but rather simply ahead of
the curve. Urbanization is the obvious example. The pull of the city is relentless across
Africa: urbanization is expected to march forward at about 1% per annum, 61 which is
among the highest rates on the globe. Thus Africa as a whole will pass the 50% urban
mark by 2035, 62 and will triple its urban population by 2050. 63 Already thirteen sub-
61 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, “World Urbanization
Prospects: The 2011 Revision: Highlights” (New York: United Nations, 2012), 11, http://esa.un.org/unpd/
wup/pdf/WUP2011_Highlights.pdf.
62 Ibid., 1.
63 Ibid., 12.
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Saharan countries are at least 50% urban. 64 Even among those nations with lower urban
percentages, Christian mission cannot afford to overlook the cities.
Urbanization will continue, across Africa, to increase the percentage of Africans who
speak trade languages, including former colonial languages, as their first language. Urbanization
will continue, across Africa, to bring people of different ethnolinguistic backgrounds
shoulder to shoulder as neighbors. And above all, urbanization will continue to
open doors to the already pervasive influence of globalization. Whether we like it or not,
global languages, global resources, and global thinking styles are irreversibly becoming
a part of the local African scene. In these aspects, Angola is not exceptional but rather
ahead of the curve. Perhaps we should see it as a preview of coming attractions.
Moreover, Angola is not the only African nation whose national story has been so intense,
so epic, as to forge within its flames a new national sense of identity. In this globalizing
world, Africans across the continent are being challenged to rethink tribalism’s
place as key identity. If missiologists are to exercise diligently our anthropological duties,
we must be ever bold enough to probe the worldview questions of Africans as they are
becoming, not simply as they were.
The vital lesson in all this is beautifully simple: each local context demands that we approach
it with fresh eyes, ready to see it for what it is, not what we remember from another
context. Local stories are unique; local mission strategies, too, must be unique—even
in Africa.
I close with a few words from a project manager, a foreigner, living in another city in Angola.
He was asked to do a radio interview about Africa “in general,” but when time and
again his down-to-earth Angola-specific responses did not live up to the preconceived
notions of the interviewers, “they cut me short and decided instead to interview someone
in Cameroon, where they must have a much better idea of what Africa really is.” 65
May God grant us the ever-renewed vision to see what Africa really is and the ever-increasing
wisdom to reach Africa with the word of his saving grace!
Danny Reese delights in the maturation of God’s church on the continent of Africa, the continent that witnessed both
his physical birth and his spiritual birth. He lives with his wife and daughters in Huambo, Angola, serving as part of
the Angola Mission Team (http://angolateam.org). Danny holds an MDiv from Harding School of Theology. You
may contact him at danny@angolateam.org.
64 Gabon, Djibouti, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Africa, Republic of Congo, Cape Verde, Botswana,
Angola, Gambia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. UN Population Division, “World Population
Prospects,” http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Sorting-Tables/tab-sorting_population.htm.
65 Jenny Gal-Or and Eran Gal-Or, Electric Trees: Reflections of Angola (Lewes, England: Sylph Editions, 2009),
9–10.
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REFLECTIONS

A MISSIONAL CHURCH IS . . . :
ARTISTIC EXPRESSIONS OF A FUZZY CONCEPT
by Aaron Sparks
The Chattahoochee Valley Church in Columbus, Georgia commissioned the “Missional
Church” series after Mark Woodward presented a series of lessons. I had done a few
smaller projects for earlier themes the ministry staff had presented to me.
Each of the posters is purposefully simplistic and relies on symbols to portray the statements
in a way that expands upon each of the ideas. It’s great to have the opportunity
to use artwork to inspire, encourage, and develop the church in a way that will hopefully
get them thinking more missionally. I hope that these images will serve to communicate
to everyone from longtime Christians to newly reborns. It’s my hope that these images
are able to constantly preach, every time someone views them. For example, if they
remember the image of the church building with its walls felled and pointing outward,
then imagine how they are to bring Christ to the world outside those four walls, I would
deem the purpose of the images a success.
I hope the message received is that the whole church body, not just its leaders, is tasked
with sharing the gospel to its neighbors, coworkers, and friends. I’m struck by how quickly
the early church was able to spread the gospel, even through persecution, because
all had taken on the duty of spreading the good news. They were excited about it. I’m
not sure what steps need to be taken to stop the pervasive cultural misconception that
mission work is “not my job” among the church members. We’ve assumed the roles of
spectators and performers rather than a unified cause for Christ.
Aaron Sparks is a former youth minister who moved to the UK in 2010 to attempt vocational mission work and is now
starting a career in social care work for young people. He has a beautiful wife, a five-year-old Star Wars fanboy, and a
three-month-old Princess Leia in training. He is most likely found in a coffee shop reading a good book.
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158

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159

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BOOK
REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS
JEAN JOHNSON. We Are Not the Hero: A Missionary’s Guide for Sharing
Christ, Not a Culture of Dependency. Sisters, OR: Deep River Books,
2012. 335pp. $15.99.
Missionaries strive to leave healthy, indigenous churches that are relevant to their host cultures
and lead by local leaders. These dreams fall short, however, as they settle for planting
unhealthy churches that are too dependent upon the missionary’s skills, resources, and
Western ways of “doing church.” Missionaries unintentionally leave behind unsustainable
models of church growth, leadership, and development that the local church cannot hope
to emulate. What is needed is guidance and coaching to ruminate on the challenges associated
with indigenous church planting.
In her first book, Jean Johnson provides a catalyst for rethinking missionary methods. Johnson
previously spent sixteen years as a missionary in Cambodia, and she currently works
as a leadership coach and consultant for both missionaries and indigenous church leaders
with World Missions Associates. As she reflected on the history of Christianity in Cambodia,
as well as her own challenges and failures on the mission field, Johnson came to a realization:
although the mission churches she had helped plant were “healthy” and had good
attendance, they were not able to multiply and grow effectively. These churches were, in
essence, too Western in their worship, preaching, evangelism, and leadership development.
They depended upon Western funds to sustain their outreach and church programs. With
this realization, Johnson began to adjust her efforts in order to plant effective indigenous
churches run by Cambodian leaders. Johnson challenges the reader to a “premeditated”
missiology that focuses on “multiplication, indigeneity, and sustainability among the respective
people groups” with whom they work (13). Using stories, parables, and case studies
from her own time on the field, as well as those of other missionaries, Johnson seeks to share
her new missiological understanding with her readers.
Johnson’s mantra throughout the book is, “Day 1 affects Day 100” (64). Missionaries often
focus much of their time, effort, and energy on how to enter the culture. Even more
important, however, is for the missionaries to focus on how to phase themselves out of the
work. Sustainability must be worked into the DNA of the church from the first day, in the
way that we reach out to the community and conduct evangelism. Indigenous evangelism
focuses on relevant cultural forms: stories and songs, parables and poetry, etc. When the
gospel is shared in culturally relevant ways, Christianity is no longer seen as a “foreign religion”
and the new converts can easily share what they have learned.
Shockingly, Johnson calls missionaries not to plant churches. When missionaries begin
planting churches, they unknowingly import Western forms of church: singing translated
Western songs instead of using indigenous melodies; preaching expository sermons instead
of telling stories; training through seminary classes rather than coaching and modeling.
Instead of planting churches, Johnson calls the reader to plant the gospel:
Allowing the gospel (God’s presence and transformational work) to take root within a community
in such a way that the community expresses and spreads its faith in an organic manner.
. . . This organic expression may look very different from the cross-cultural communicator’s
church experience. (241)
In order to build a sustainable evangelistic movement, missionaries must be intentional in
every action they undertake. From the very beginning, missionaries should do evangelism
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with reproduction in mind. If the local leader cannot reproduce the missionary’s efforts and
materials, and in turn teach others to do the same, then these methods must be rethought.
According to Johnson, every aspect of the missionary’s method and lifestyle must be rethought
in light of the receptor culture.
Johnson’s book is broken into three parts and an introduction. In the introduction, Johnson
calls missionaries not to think of themselves as heroes, which comes with an air of superiority
and colonialism. Instead, she challenges missionaries to enter the culture humbly as
learners and servants, walking alongside the contacts or Christians as a guide. Part 1 reveals
the need for indigenous, self-reliant church movements that create disciples. Johnson uses
the history of Christianity in Cambodia to highlight the need for multiplication, sustainability,
and self-reliance. Part 2 helps the reader reflect on how to plant healthy, indigenous
churches in which local leaders take the lead in all aspects of worship, evangelism, teaching,
and expansion. Part 3 is more practical, helping the missionary conceive how these ideas
can be put into practice. My only complaint with the material is in its organization. Parts
2 and 3 should have been integrated into one another in order to provide a cohesive flow.
Also, at times the ideas of multiplication and sustainability overlap, and these areas could
have been addressed together. Overall, however, the book was incredibly insightful and
convicting.
Two sections were very thought-provoking. First, Johnson focuses on the differences between
oral and literate societies in chapters ten and seventeen. Western communicators
learn through bullet points, outlines, diagrams, and abstract concepts. Seventy percent of
the world’s population consists of primary or secondary oral learners, however, which necessitates
a different approach to communication, teaching, and evangelism. Johnson calls
this type of communication orality. “Orality is a method of communicating truth by dressing
it up in parables, poetry, riddles, stories, drama, dance, and song” (158). Johnson calls us
to focus on the values and worldview characteristics of oral cultures by emphasizing community,
working with heads-of-households, and using examples from everyday life in order
to best communicate the gospel. She also reflects on ethnomusicology (“heart music”) as
the best manner to convey biblical truths. Johnson’s insights into oral cultures are important
areas of growth for most missionaries.
Second, Johnson calls the missionary to take the lesser role in ministry and instead work as a
“shadow pastor.” Mission works often start with the missionaries as the leaders and then go
through a process of nationalizing, in which local leaders are raised up and trained to take
over these roles. Instead, Johnson calls us to practice indigenizing, coaching local leaders
from the beginning and allowing them to succeed (and sometimes fail) in leadership as they
learn to grow and thrive (247–48). The missionary keeps the focus off of himself/herself
and instead mentors these new leaders behind the scenes, which allows local leadership to
thrive faster than in traditional models.
Johnson’s book challenges the readers to rethink their missiological practices in light of
what is best for the culture of their receivers. It would serve as a great textbook for an upperlevel
missions class or for missionaries who are strategically planning their work on the field.
Daniel McGraw
Community Life Minister
Houston, Texas, USA
164

BOOK REVIEWS
W. ROSS BLACKBURN. The God Who Makes Himself Known: The Missionary
Heart of the Book of Exodus. New Studies in Biblical Theology
28. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012. 238pp. $17.00.
Ross Blackburn’s study contributes to the recent rise of attention given to the theme of
mission in the interpretation of Scripture. His purpose in this monograph, an iteration
of his doctoral thesis written under Christopher Seitz at St. Andrews, is to argue that mission
is the governing theme of the book of Exodus. At first glance this aim may strike the
reader as peculiar, if not backward: how is mission the driving theme of Israel’s story of
liberation and constitution? Anticipating such a question in the introduction, Blackburn
defines his use of the word mission as God’s desire to right what is wrong, principally
through God’s commitment to be known among his people and, through them, among
the nations. Blackburn proposes that, when read as a coherent narrative within a canonical
framework, Yhwh’s missionary impulse explains his motivation in each major development
in the story and resolves some thorny hermeneutical issues therein.
After an introduction (ch. 1), Blackburn divides his treatment into six chapters. In chapter
2 he builds the case that the primary theme in Exod 1–15:21 is the revelation of
Yhwh’s name/identity as redeemer. Through the burning bush, the plague cycle, and
deliverance of the people from slavery, Israel and Egypt (to a lesser extent) come to know
Yhwh’s redemptive character, Yhwh’s supremacy, and that Yhwh’s identity and mission
is tied up with Yhwh’s goodness toward Israel.
Both chapter 3 (15:22–18:27) and chapter 4 (19–24) explore how the provision of torah/
teaching carries forward God’s missional intention to make his name known. Blackburn
argues that the sequence of wilderness trials serves the purpose of training (better than
the commonly translated “testing”) Israel in the knowledge of her new sovereign. The
giving of water, food, and security seeks to instill trust in Israel as preparation for Sinai.
Chapter 4 casts Israel in a priestly role for the sake of reflecting the character of God
before the watching nations. The law’s essence is a revelation of the character of God;
thus, Israel’s holy imitation of Yhwh (by keeping the covenantal demands) aims toward
the larger goal of mediating knowledge of God among the families of the earth. Israel’s
witness pulsates out from her distinctive conduct.
Blackburn next turns to the dense tabernacle legislation in chapter 5 (25–31). The instruction
detailing the materials to be used in the tabernacle’s construction and its accoutrements
communicates the sanctity and kingship of Yhwh, dwelling in Israel’s midst.
Moreover, within Israel, the tabernacle was a palpable, microcosmic symbol of Yhwh’s
orderly, macrocosmic reign over the universe. The presence of Yhwh among his people
in the tabernacle is an end in itself, but the purpose of the tabernacle was not limited
to this end. Rather, the tabernacle pointed in nuce to God’s missionary desire to reign in
similar fashion among all the nations.
Chapter 6 wrestles with how Moses’ petitions persuade God to forgive Israel’s transgression
committed in the golden calf debacle (32–34). Blackburn persuasively argues that
Moses succeeds in his remonstrations by appealing to Yhwh’s honor among the nations.
In short, Moses defends God’s reputation before God. Thus, Yhwh restores Israel because
Yhwh’s name among the nations is at stake. Yhwh’s judgment and mercy emerge
from the same motivation—to be known among the nations. Yhwh’s forgiveness restores
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the plans for building the tabernacle (35–40), which Blackburn treats briefly in chapter
7. The construction of the tabernacle signals that forgiven Israel can now fulfill her commission
to be a priestly kingdom and holy nation. God dwells in her midst—this is both
the object and method of Israel’s missionary vocation.
The main body of the work is well written, well researched, and for the most part well
reasoned. Blackburn’s commitment to reading the text in its canonical presentation as a
coherent narrative pays rich exegetical dividends, especially in tracing underappreciated
connections to the larger Exodus story in the wilderness narratives and Moses’s appeals
to God in Exod 32–34. So too, Blackburn’s insistence that the minutiae of the tabernacle
legislation carry theological, even missiological weight brings a welcomed corrective to
traditions that devalue priestly texts. Because his work is in an evangelical series on biblical
theology, Blackburn rounds out each chapter (and sometimes begins them) with reflections
on texts outside of Exodus, mostly connecting his emphases to New Testament
motifs. While this move helps further elucidate themes under discussion in some chapters
(e.g., his parsing of the relationship of gospel and law in ch. 4), in others it feels more
like an appendage that provides too terse a treatment. Blackburn concludes his work
with four brief observations concerning how mission in Exodus informs the mission of
the church. Because this is precisely the kind of theological payoff needed by churches
(and so often lacking in rigorous works of biblical theology), the book could have been
enhanced significantly if this chapter were longer than a thin five pages.
Blackburn’s book is a solid attempt to show how a missiological hermeneutic opens up
the interpretation of a central Old Testament book. Yet, the book suffers on two accounts.
First, Blackburn is in danger of instrumentalizing Israel’s election. His appreciation
of God’s larger purposes undersells the promises to the patriarchs as a reason for
the Exodus and creates some unnecessary tension with the subsequent history of God
with Israel. For example, how does Israel’s future interaction with the nations (e.g., Canaanites)
make sense of the missionary bent of Exodus, if this is indeed the governing
theme of her root narrative? The conquest, which itself draws on themes from Exodus,
fits this trajectory with difficulty. Israel as a “missionary people” may fit some of Isaiah’s
prophecy—a prophet who draws liberally on Exodus themes—but is this the most apt
theological backdrop for, say, the oracles against the nations? Moreover, what does it
mean for the nations to know Yhwh? Is the acknowledgement expected of the nations on
par with Israel’s acknowledgement? As a work of biblical theology, I would have liked
these questions addressed with more rigor. Second, and related, Blackburn’s definition
of mission will strike many as too narrow for biblical theology. He rightly stresses that in
Exodus Yhwh’s presence is what makes Israel holy—attending to Yhwh’s presence is to
make Israel distinctive, thus mediating knowledge of God. But does this fulfill the book’s
subtitle: The Missionary Heart of the Book of Exodus ? The missional theology of Exodus is
chiefly centripetal, and I am not certain it is the heart of the book, that is, the central
theme giving life to all else. Nevertheless, I recommend the book for students and scholars
alike, and I look forward to future works from Blackburn.
Nathan Bills
Assistant Professor of Old Testament
Lipscomb University
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
166

BOOK REVIEWS
A. SCOTT MOREAU. Contextualization in World Missions: Mapping and
Assessing Evangelical Models. Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2012. 432pp.
$22.03.
Certain subjects linger in a state of cumulative chaos, waiting for the right scholar to create
a sense of order. The discussion of contextualization among evangelical Christians is such a
subject, and Scott Moreau has proven equal to the task of systematizing its diverse parts into
a balanced presentation. The undertaking requires both a comprehensive understanding of
a multifaceted debate and the methodological rigor necessary to avoid reductionism. In Contextualization
in World Missions: Mapping and Assessing Evangelical Models, Moreau combines these
qualities in an orderly, economical rendition of the issues.
A. Scott Moreau has taught missions at Wheaton College for more than two decades. In
addition to authoring or editing a variety of missiological works, he has been the editor of
Evangelical Missions Quarterly since 2001. A prominent evangelical missiologist, Moreau aims
to “map” evangelical models of contextualization. Some prominent treatments of contextualization
have lumped evangelical contextualization into a single category among a more
theologically liberal array of options. Thus, the impetus behind his endeavor is the need for a
truly representative analysis of evangelical perspectives. Moreau hopes his cartography will
help readers explore the diverse regions of the evangelical “continent” of contextualization in
order to make informed judgments about particular proposals.
The book bears a popular academic style that does not shy from technical content but consciously
avoids scholarly wordiness. The real key to the book’s success, though, is its systematic
and restrained exposition. The body comprises two sections of nearly equal length. The first
section illuminates Moreau’s methodological concerns, and the second section is the substance
of the proposal itself. Though Moreau’s descriptive endeavor is potentially fraught
with subjectivity, in the first section he so thoroughly explicates the assumptions and criteria
at work in his map that there is hardly any cause for uncertainty. Moreover, he manages to
introduce working assumptions, such as the meaning of “evangelical” or the place of holism
in contextualization, convincingly, without bogging down in topics that could be books unto
themselves.
The proposal trades on Moreau’s credibility rather directly. He classified 249 examples of
evangelical contextualization from published sources, according to seventy-nine criteria. In
this process, he “discovered” six initiator roles (195). Moreau utilizes these six roles as his
models of contextualization, cross-referencing them with other criteria to define exemplars
of each model and their respective tendencies. The selection of these models, as well as the
definition of the various criteria, is completely Moreau’s prerogative despite the clinical feel of
his data analysis. By section two, though, the reader is convinced that Moreau is anything but
arbitrary in his procedure, and his credentials certainly merit the benefit of the doubt. The
skeptical reader may wonder, nonetheless, whether the source material could be organized
into different categories, as Moreau cannot defend his choices in a work this size.
Moreau’s map seems to represent the major regions of evangelical contextualization. His
models are Facilitator, Guide, Herald, Pathfinder, Prophet, and Restorer. One problem with
these categories is that some examples fit equally into multiple models. Anticipating such objections,
Moreau clarifies that his intention is not to communicate “that the individual never
takes on other roles or that the method is constrained by that role” (175). Taken as typical
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rather than definitive, and in relation to the many other variables in Moreau’s dataset, the
models are a powerful tool for “locating” contextualization efforts on the evangelical map.
One question lingers, primarily regarding the Restorer model. Although “the restorer comes
to heal or deliver from bondage of any type,” most of Moreau’s examples have to do with
spiritual warfare. Curiously, the evidence suggests that “evangelicals consider demons qua
demons somehow immune to contextual or worldview considerations” (299). “A criticism
of initiators as restorers,” states Moreau, “is that practitioners rarely discuss their methods
as explicitly contextual” (307). The question, then, is why Moreau considers this a model
of contextualization, when its presuppositions are acontextual on average and nearly anticontextual
at worst. It seems that the Restorer is a model of mission work rather than a model
of contextualization. And this observation highlights a concern for the other models to a
lesser extent. Approaches to mission that deal with issues in their contexts (such as spiritual
bondage) are not thereby necessarily contextualized, as per Moreau’s own definition of contextualization
(36). One danger of being as impressively thorough as Moreau has done is to
be overly inclusive to the detriment of a limited notion of contextualization.
Because Moreau intends to systematize existing proposals rather than rehash them, the specific
processes of contextualization in his models are never in view. He stays at a bird’s eye
view of each exemplar, leaving the reader wishing for a more concrete understanding of each
one, which would help clarify why each one is in fact an example of contextualization rather
than just missions methodology. The book would be far more lengthy with that provision,
though, and the bibliography is available.
A couple of other peculiarities are noteworthy. One, Moreau’s definition of evangelical appears
to exclude Majority World evangelicals. There are a few exceptions, and he is aware of
the issue (320–21), but it is clear that American evangelicalism is in view. This is due primarily
to the use of published exemplars, of which there are far fewer from the Majority World. The
point here is not that Moreau would chose to exclude Majority World exemplars given an alternative
(although his definition of evangelicalism does have roots in American culture wars),
but the fact that he cannot represent them severely limits the representativeness of his map.
As with Europeans’ “discovery” of the Americas, once readers venture off the map, they may
find the second half of the world—or more, in this case. Two, large portions of the book read
as an extended exchange with Charles Kraft. Kraft is an influential and controversial missiologist
whom Moreau could not wisely marginalize in these discussions, but at times it seems
as though evangelical contextualization comes down to Kraft’s proposals and their dissenters.
One of the key successes of the book is that it makes evident the occasion of the contextualization
discussion. The urgency of talking about particularly evangelical contextualization,
and to a large extent the urgency of the dialogue with Charles Kraft, is a symptom of the
ongoing shift within conservative Christianity toward critical realism. The mapping of contextualization
models among evangelicals is fundamentally about establishing an epistemological
continuum on which to locate contextualization efforts. Though evangelicals will need
to move beyond Moreau’s descriptive contribution into critical and prescriptive proposals,
they can now do so with the profound yet accessible insight he has provided regarding what
is truly at stake.
Greg McKinzie
Missionary
Arequipa, Peru
168

BOOK REVIEWS
J. D. PAYNE. Strangers Next Door: Immigration, Migration and Mission.
Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2012. 206pp. $10.91.
J. D. Payne serves as the pastor of church multiplication for The Church at Brook Hills
in Birmingham, Alabama. Prior to his current position in Birmingham, Payne was a
domestic missionary with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist
Convention and an Associate Professor of Church Planting and Evangelism at Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also directed the Center for North American
Missions and Church Planting.
Payne’s book, Strangers Next Door, has a twofold purpose: (1) to educate Western evangelical
churches on the large-scale global migrations that are taking place as the peoples of
the world move to the West as long-term and short-term workers, students, refugees, and
asylum-seekers (18); and (2) to challenge Western evangelical churches to reach, equip,
partner with, and send the least reached people living in their neighborhoods to return
to their peoples as missionaries (19). Payne’s book is neither a theology of mission nor a
practical guide to missional living, though it includes elements of both. Rather, it is an
impassioned plea and a vision, calling for evangelicals in the West to notice and act on a
unique missional opportunity of the twenty-first century: the presence of migrants from
least reached, unreached, and hard-to-reach people groups in Western countries, living
right next door to us.
After defining his terms and outlining his theological assumptions in chapter one, Payne
uses half of the book to make his case first that migration is occurring in the modern era
on an unprecedented scale (chs. 2, 6, 7, and 8) and second that many of these migrants
are moving from unreached or least reached areas of the world to Western countries (ch.
3), by which he means the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many of
the countries commonly referred to as Western Europe. On both accounts, Payne demonstrates
his claims very persuasively with extensive statistical data. However, with regard
to his second claim, Payne reveals a significant theological bias that obscures much of
his data, namely, he considers people groups comprised of less than 2 percent evangelicals
as unreached. He borrows his definition of evangelicals from the Joshua Project (55),
but based on which countries he labels as unreached, Payne clearly excludes most, if
not all, members of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and mainline Protestantism,
among others. For example, he lists France, Portugal, and Spain as among the most
unreached countries in the world (60), three countries known for substantial Catholic
populations. Although this bias does not diminish the importance of Payne’s overall thesis
and argument, it does limit the usefulness of the book in determining which countries
and peoples are unreached for one who operates with a more inclusive understanding
of Christianity.
The rest of the book focuses on what Payne calls “diaspora missiology,” which brings
migration research to bear on missiology. In chapters four and five, he demonstrates from
Scripture that God has constantly worked through migrations to accomplish his purposes
in the world. In chapter nine, he shares inspiring stories of people who have acted
on this vision to reach the unreached through migrants. Finally, chapters ten through
twelve offer guidelines and a strategy for accomplishing the task of reaching, equipping,
partnering with, and sending migrants back to their home countries as missionaries to
reach the unreached peoples of the world. Payne suggests helpful missiological insights
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in these chapters, but due to the nature of his book as a vision-casting plea, these suggestions
remain surface level and brief. For example, his section on contextualization is
three paragraphs long. Anyone wanting to learn about how to contextualize the gospel in
migrant communities in their neighbors will need to look elsewhere for advice.
Payne’s overarching vision, that churches in the West should focus their efforts on reaching
migrants in their neighborhoods from unreached or least reached countries, with an
eye towards partnering with and sending those migrants back to their home countries as
missionaries, is worthy of attention and consideration for all, including non-evangelical
churches in Western countries. I recommend this book to any church leaders and lay
people willing to re-envision their task of sharing the gospel with the nations. As Payne
argues, for those of us living in the West, the nations have come to our doorstep and we
are now confronted with an exciting missional opportunity to proclaim the gospel to
them without ever having to set foot on a plane.
Garrett Matthew East
Missionary in Training
ACU Halbert Institute for Missions
Abilene, Texas, USA
170

BOOK REVIEWS
BRYAN P. STONE AND CLAIRE E. WOLFTEICH. Sabbath in the City: Sustaining
Urban Pastoral Excellence. Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 2008. 168pp. $15.60.
Stone and Wolfteich challenge the missional reader with the reminder that “while the
Bible begins in a garden, it ends in a city” (90). Sabbath in the City: Sustaining Urban Pastoral
Excellence records the discoveries of 96 urban pastors who are given the opportunity,
through the Boston University School of Theology and the Lilly Endowment, Inc., to
examine their missional approaches to ministry. The project seeks to answer two questions:
“What constitutes pastoral excellence in the urban context? What sustains it?”
(ix). Excellent urban pastoral leadership requires a unique approach to ministry, one
that involves serving the city as well as serving oneself. “If your . . . soul and spirit is not
growing and at peace with God, the sheer intensity of urban problems will overwhelm
and crush you” (63).
While defining four needs of urban pastors—partnership, spiritual renewal, Sabbath,
and study—the authors specify each need as an individualized spiritual discipline. Spiritual
friendships are to be interpreted as one enjoys Christ as a friend: a life-giving addition
to pastoral ministry. Spiritual renewal is found in embracing spiritual disciplines
that continually refocus one’s energies on the purpose and presence of God. Sabbath, a
challenge for an overworked and understaffed urban pastor, is a reminder that the work
of God can find completion while the man or woman of God carves out mandatory
rest. Study allows the pastor to contemplatively hear a sermon for the people as well as a
sermon for oneself while lounging in the Word.
Through their partnership with urban pastors, the authors discover that excellent urban
pastors know and love their cities. This means that they also know and love the people:
To know and love the people of the city and to practice a solidarity with them creates a
space for confession, pardon, and forgiveness. To know and love the people of the city is
to treat no one like a heathen, a demon, or an outcast, and this honoring of ‘the other’
we encounter allows us first to hear them; second to serve them; and third, to be open to
allowing them to creatively transform our ministries. (xiii)
A warning repeats throughout the book, from authors as well as pastors, that if urban
pastors overlook the practice of Sabbath, they will not effectively serve the city. Urban
ministry presents many needs and few resources. With the focus on required renewal,
the participating pastors also receive a four- to eight- week compensated sabbatical. “We
cannot talk of sustaining pastoral excellence without talking about the pastor’s ongoing
spiritual renewal, for receptivity to God’s Spirit precedes any work of ministry” (63).
Sabbath not only includes rest, but play, setting higher boundaries, and a fresh commitment
to one’s family. Counsel from one pastor’s spiritual director reminds her that, “Just
because you have the time to do something doesn’t mean you should do it” (55). Rest is
a requirement for renewal.
The honest voices of the 96 urban pastors should be heard by all pastors, not just those
in the urban setting. Sabbath in the City should inform the students in seminary who begin
with a vision of excellence and are often extinguished by exhaustion and frustration. The
stories of the participants will powerfully inform future decisions for current readers.
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Missional ministry requires one to go and serve incarnationally, fulfilling the missio Dei.
Being a sent people requires preparation, partnership, and pauses throughout the journey.
Urban pastors are by their very nature missional, since many have moved into the
city to serve with decreased funds and increased functions. The practical guidance detailed
in Sabbath in the City will enhance the journey of any seminary student, pastor, or
layperson who seeks to serve. Stone and Wolfteich have gone into the city, found the
hearts of servants, and are striving to replicate their beat through their excellent voices
of wisdom.
Kate Sullivan Watkins
Doctor of Ministry Student
David Lipscomb University
Nashville, Tennessee, USA
172