I admit it. I am writing this blog post to try and sort out some facts in my own mind.
I’m wanting to work out where I sit in a l-o-n-g line of cross-cultural workers in God’s kingdom.
As a good Christian kid, I was enthralled with stories of missionaries. As a Baptist girl, I sat ‘Sunday School exams’ in the kitchen of the little church my family attended. (The practice of ’Sunday School exams’ faded out not long after my time.)
Through the Australian Baptist Sunday School curriculum, I learnt about Baptist missionary William Carey (1761-1834) and his poor deranged first wife who was desperately unhappy about moving to India, then lost a child. Now that I have grown up and lived far from my passport country for a season, I have an inkling of how that poor woman must have felt, yet also can’t imagine the depths of her despair. Nevertheless, the bull-headed Brit, William Carey, did amazing work and his legacy lives on still. Those were different times.
What, I wonder, happened with Christian missions between the days of the Apostle Paul, missionary to the Gentiles, and William Carey, the father of modern missions? I don’t recall that ever being taught in Sunday school. There was a significant gap in our curriculum.
And what about cross-cultural mission these days?
Old and New Testament times
In Old Testament times, well over 2200 years ago, God chose a nation to be his own special people. They were the descendants of Abraham. Through them, he showed himself to the world.
Only his people often stuffed up.
Major understatement.
Missiologists call the model of mission in the Old Testament primarily ‘centripetal’. Think of a whirlpool, in which everything is sucked into the centre. That is an example of ‘centripetal force’. Similarly, non-Israelites would be attracted to the God of the Jews and want to join the people of God … or that was the idea, anyhow. It sometimes worked out that way.
Nevertheless, there were also occasions, such as in Jonah’s day, when God specifically sent a reluctant prophet to call a non-Jewish nation to repent of their wicked ways and turn to him. There were also many prophecies about a day when people from all types of nations would join God’s people.
In contrast to the Old Testament, ‘centrifugal’ is the term missiologists use to describe missions in the New Testament. Think of a centrifuge in a machine used to separate blood. You may be familiar with this contraption if you are brave enough to donate plasma. Your blood flows into a machine where a centrifuge spins it at high speed, causing lighter parts of your blood to spin off, thus causing it to separate into red blood cells and a transparent liquid. The red blood cells are pumped back into your body, while the plasma is donated. (That’s a non-medical person’s explanation, obviously.) It’s an example of centrifugal force, and similarly, the missions movement of the early church was one of followers of Jesus being spun OUT into the world.
“… But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Acts 1:8 NIV
Christian missions in the first century AD
We may not have many written records, but there are plenty of stories about how early Christians travelled the world preaching, performing miracles in the name of Jesus and establishing communities of Christ followers.
Think of Jesus’ 12 disciples. Apart from the one that took his own life, tradition suggests that the others all died in the work of being witnesses of Jesus in Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
James, the brother of John, was killed at Herod’s order while still in Jerusalem, but the others were scattered far and wide. It would seem that various ones of them went to Persia, Iran, Iraq, India, Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Italy and perhaps even as far as Spain and up towards Eastern Russia. Other early church members travelled far and wide too, sharing the gospel as they went.
If you’re interested in reading more on this, here is an article abiut the 12 disciples written by a historian and educator, Dr Ken Curtis:: https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/whatever-happened-to-the-twelve-apostles-11629558.html
The map below, freely available to share for non-profit purposes, shows just how far Christianity had spread in the early years of the church. During the first two and a half centuries, remember, Christianity was still considered by many to be a sect and a threat to Judaism or to worship of the Roman emperor.
Christendom
The early church was comprised of people from many backgrounds, all of whom were effectively going against the flow of society. That all changed, in the Roman Empire, at least, when Emperor Constantine decriminalised Christian worship in AD313 and in fact became a great patron of the church. From that point, and until recent times, Christian mission would often – not always but often – be aligned with geopolitics.
Be that as it may, cross-cultural missions continued through the ages, and it was often monks who went to places far from home. Think of the Nestorians, for example, or St Patrick, who, as an adult, returned to the land of his one-time captors after becoming a monk. Nestorius (founder of the Nestorians) and St Patrick both lived in about the fifth century AD.
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6659702
Then there were the medieval crusades of the Middle Ages which were, unfortunately, violent and ugly. Nevertheless, within that context, there were also Christian voices calling for peaceful means of establishing Christ’s kingdom. Spaniard missionary Ramon Llull (1232-1315) was a case in point. If you’re interested in another fascinating train of enquiry, google his name.
The age of exploration, (this term reflecting a European perspective, obviously), also gave rise to cross-cultural Christian work in areas previously not touched by Christianity. I am reminded of journalist Mr Stanley who uttered those now famous words to the missing missionary-explorer, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”
The colonial era followed on from this age of exploration. Just this past week, while following a rabbit trail of enquiry for some study I’m doing, I stumbled across an educational clip compiled by an atheist anthropologist, Dr Michael Welsch, in Papua New Guinea. He asked local people how they felt about the impact of cross-cultural missions on their communities. Not surprisingly, since he was interviewing Christians, they were positive. Like me, you might enjoy the 13 minute video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/uN2oLJ-UpsE
And that brings us up to the days of ‘the modern missionary movement’ involving characters such as William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and of course my personal hero, Gladys Aylward.
A question of perspective
As I consider some of the things that happened in years past, I find myself shocked at times. There were attitudes and actions of years past that I consider ‘improper’. The expectation that Mrs Carey should suffer dreadfully for many years and her children suffer as a direct result too, all so that her husband could ’fulfil his calling’ is one such example. The violence of the crusades is another. ‘We wouldn’t do that,’ I like to think. Yet I’m a woman of my time and again, my perspective is limited. I am challenged by this helpful quote from a portion of a book I’m required to read as part of some current study:
God used imperfect people with imperfect understanding in imperfect conditions to carry out his work in remarkable ways. We who stand in judgment must be willing to make the same sacrifices and realise that we, too, are people of our times and will be judged by those following us.
Paul G. Hiebert, The Gospel in Human Contexts: Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions, Baker Academic, 2009 p61
Cross-cultural missions today
Our world today is changing … fast. And so is the face of Christianity and of missions.
The age of Christendom in the West, at least, is long gone, though it ended with a fizzle rather than a bang. Christians rarely, if ever, travel as missionaries with the might of powerful ’Christian’ nations behind them these days.
Since the movement known as ‘The Enlightenment’ of the 1700s (give or take a bit), faith and science are generally seen as two quite separate entities. Faith is seen as ‘private’ while the science is ‘public’. Furthermore, in recent decades, postmodernism has led to many people being skeptical of claims that a particular so-called ‘truth’ is valid for all people at all times. This has even further diminished the esteem in which Christian mission is held.
Yet God’s kingdom continues to expand. The diagram above shows that there are more people who identify as Christians in Africa today than anywhere else in the world. South America has plenty too.
As the world changes, so does the face of mission.
Often, followers of Jesus reach out to share the gospel cross-culturally within their own countries. Take, for example, the church in East Asia. There are pockets of rapidly growing churches, but also pockets of people who have not yet heard the gospel. Sometimes these two groups of people co-exist within the borders of the same country. Christians are intentionally moving to the mountains or the deserts to share the good news of Jesus with people whom have never before heard the gospel. And people from there are moving to the cities for employment or education. Those missionaries don’t have trouble with visas. Mind you, often there are other challenges such as long standing hard feelings between a powerful majority people group and an under-trodden ethnic minority.
People are moving around the world these days, and there are significant opportunities for people like me to be involved in cross-cultural mission in our own passport countries too. I have friends from places in which I once lived or have visited, but can’t live there anymore. Friends from there are living here now.
Even in more ‘traditional’ cross-cultural missions settings, the face of the missionary community is changing. No longer is the movement ‘from the West to the rest’, but it is ‘from everyone to everywhere’. Significant numbers of Christian workers are sent around the world from Africa, India, South America and beyond. The international leadership of the agency through which I work reflects this change well. Of course, this poses challenges to traditional ways of funding missions, but that is a topic for another blog post, perhaps.
In 1910, missions was ‘from the West to the rest’…. Today, mission is ‘from everyone to everywhere’….
Allen Yeh, ‘The Future of Mission is from Everyone to Everywhere’, Lausanne Global Analysis Jan 2018 Vol 7 Issue 1, https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2018-01/future-mission-everyone-everywhere
In conclusion
The face of Christian missions has changed in the past and it is changing again now. The message of Christian missions, however, remains unchanged. God is king and, through Jesus, he offers people the chance to live under his kingship with all the privileges … and responsibilities … that entails.
Is there still a place for people like me in cross-cultural missions? I once asked this question to eminent Chinese leaders within the Christian missions movement. “Yes,” they said. “Most definitely. But your role is different to that of the pioneer foreign missionaries of past centuries.”
It’s God’s mission. He has been it for a long time now. And still he patiently perseveres with us and through us. Through writing this post, I am now clearer about where we fit into his work. Thanks for reading along.
