VULNERABLE MISSION

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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