VULNERABLE MISSION

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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