VULNERABLE MISSION

VULNERABLE MISSION VIS-À-VIS MAINSTREAM MISSION AND MISSIOLOGY
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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