Divine Plagiarism

Sun Tzu teaches that the direct approach is not always the most effective approach. Sometimes, we need to take a step back to see the difference between the things that we want to do and how we want to do them. Sometimes, means and ends are mutually exclusive, and in those times we must decide whether it is more important to do the things we are doing or to do the thing we set out to do. Doing the things we are currently doing generally is easier. But easier has little to do with more effective.

We are told to go into all the world and make disciples of men. There are no asterisks or parentheses in that command. It is not go into all the world (in ways in which you are comfortable) and make disciples of men (the way you want to, only working with people you completely understand.) The Great Commission was given to the body of Christ as a whole, not to one nation or one denomination. So we should accomplish it as one. And here we find another little irony that God built into this world: when we act as one, we generally take on a multitude of roles. When we all try to do one role, we never end up acting as one. When the body of Christ decides to be the body, the hands become more hand-like, because they don’t have to be the stomach, and vice versa. If the members of the body all want to do one specific function, rather than serve one goal together, the body splinters. If all the organs want to be hand-like, there is no need for any organ to depend on the hands. It is the same with an army. In an effective military, each unit figures out what they have to offer the whole, and they devote their time and energy to that thing. Our marching order is the Great Commission. So let us figure out what we have to offer to the mission of the body.

A friend of mine just came back from a short-term mission bubbling over with passion from her trip. And good on her for that, I do want to honor her willingness to go. But as a veteran of several short-term missions trips (and one medium-term one,) I wonder how much we allow our God-given zeal to cloud our God-given wisdom. As she tells the group about all the great things God did in her life while she was there, I find myself asking a question: In the course of the mission, how many others were reached? I ask the same of myself, thinking about my trips. Certainly, I came back fired up. But did I reach anyone? If I went to Urbana, or to Summit, I would come back fired up. But I would hardly be a missionary. Raising this thought, my critique was answered with ‘it says go, so we should go (however we see fit.)’ I am trying to think of another profession where the mere desire to succeed combined with any attempt at all is automatically considered a success. So hearing several different flavors of ‘short-term missions are important because of what they do for the people that go on them,’ I start to wonder if we have lost the why in the how. Andrew did not go to India to recharge his spiritual batteries. He went to spread the Gospel. Paul was not planning on going to Spain so that he could come back to Israel more energized. He went to reach people with the Good News. If we are not effectively doing likewise, we need to question what we are doing. If our why is unchanged, we need to rethink our how.

One-eighty off is rarely the right answer. As previously mentioned, I’ve been reading several of K.P. Yohannan’s books. I find his critique of current models of missions challenging and in many ways accurate. I don’t happen to agree with all of his solution, though. There is a strong overtone of ‘give us money and stay out of our way.’ North American Christians are tremendously blessed in terms of resources, no doubt. And we will held to account for our use of those resources, no doubt. But nowhere in the Scriptures, nor in the early church, is there any idea of ‘your group can’t play.’ In an army, even the quartermasters have something to bring to the fight. The typist from Black Hawk Down comes to mind. While typing was a useful skill, that Ranger proved himself pretty capable with an M4 Carbine, as well. Surely, it is not a healthy army where the quartermasters hoard all the weapons, using them only on brief forays to the front lines. But neither is it a healthy army where the logisticians are stripped of their sidearm and forever banned from the battlefield. Besides, you never know when you will need an air traffic controller or a paramedic to strap on a parachute and jump into the fight. So Brother K.P., though I hold him in high regard, is not all the way right, either.

There are, of course, worse discussion that we could be having. Most of the patronizing colonial missions nonsense is slipping away, and for the better. Similarly, Vinoth Ramachandra’s demands for self-flagellation and ‘America is the devil’ nonsense are not taken seriously, and rightly so, by most real missions organizations. So we are moving in the right direction, I think. Instead of spending all our time calling each other wrong, we’ve started to ask God what is right. This post is my attempt to do likewise.

Brother K.P. often repeats the argument that Americans simply do not understand the cultures of those who they are trying to reach, certainly not to the degree that an indigenous missionary would. By in large, this argument holds up. I saw missionaries who wanted to do everything po-Amerikanskiy, and I saw how ineffective they were. But I also saw American missionaries that understood the local culture better than the local Christians did. You see, Americans are not the only ones that associate certain sub-cultural traits with their faith. There are places where being Christian is associated with a certain ethnicity or class. In those places, an outsider’s presence may help the local body of Christ consider questions of relevance to their own culture. I think of Ukraine. I greatly respect the Christians of the Former Soviet Union, for they have endured more persecution than most of us could imagine. One of the results of persecution is a complete unwillingness to compromise. This trait serves one well when bring interrogated by the Soviet security services. It does not, however, help one to adapt when one’s own culture undergoes rapid change. So the Ukrainian Baptists were left irrelevant to their own culture. They could only attract Babushkas, because all the kids were too busy going to dance clubs. The inflexible air of the Baptists ended up scaring off all the young people, who were likely to be lectured on proper footwear or the authorized number of earrings in church. Mick Stockwell was the Southern Baptist Missionary to Khar’kov. A football player from Texas, he had an amazing understanding of the Ukrainian culture. He spoke Russian exceedingly well, understood the culture very well, and was even able to navigate the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the local government. Working closely with young leaders of the local churches, he managed to very effectively shape the churches toward relevancy with their own culture, while still respecting the church leaders from the older generation. I do not think that simply giving the Ukrainian Baptists money would have done nearly as much good as Mick did in reaching the area for Christ.

So we are all different. We all have different things we can bring to the fight. But ultimately, it is the same fight. So we are an army. The most effective armies use combined arms tactics, using their similarities to mass power and capitalize on their strength, while using their differences to exploit the weaknesses of their adversary. Through complimentary units, such an army is able to fight in many different types of environment, even at one time. So then, as American Christians, there are three things we must consider in finding our role: our differences, our similarities, and our specific corner of the fight.

We have different skills. We come from a country largely free of persecution, so we have time to study in peace. We have access to a tremendous amount of Christian training and resources. We also have access to a tremendous amount of physical resources. But we should not stop there. The American church has more to offer than just ‘stuff.’ American society is strongly rules-driven, with a strong sense of fair play, yet still quite informal and flexible. Change is almost constant in American culture. Hence, Americans are tremendously resourceful at building organizational structures, and generally can accomplish a lot through those structures. While operating in realms comfortable to us, we can accomplish a tremendous amount of goals per unit time. Of course, along with this comes a tremendous frustration with relationship-driven societies or cultures which cannot meet our demands for instant gratification. Hence, Americans are good at ‘kicking in the door,’ but are not so useful in the long haul. In summary, we have a lot of resources, and we are masters of organizational construction and optimization, but we have a hard time stepping outside ourselves.

We do have more similarities than we realize. Brother K.P., in his study of successful churches in China and Korea, overlooks the tremendous role that Chinese and Korean- American communities played in those revivals. In the instability following the Korean war, many Koreans made their way to America. Just as with the Irish and the Italians, religion provided a touchstone of stability with their own culture during the transition. That religion happened to be Evangelical Christianity. Now imagine you’re a Korean-American church, and many of your members understand Korean culture and speak Hangol. Where do you think you might send missionaries? Similarly, although to a lesser degree, the Chinese-American community has provided some amazing missionaries to Taiwan, and most likely to the mainland as well. Due to immigration, America has a tremendous capacity for home-grown indigenous missionaries to most countries. Similar to missions strategies targeting international students studying abroad in America, in reaching our own culture, we can reach more cultures than we realize around the world. But we must learn how to cross those boundaries here in order to have effects abroad. Therefore, cross-cultural missions in America may be a very effective avenue for Americans to reach the world. This combines the advantages of tent-maker missions (as we already have jobs here,) with relationship evangelism (as we already live here, and will be here for more than a week.)

Our fight is a unique one. And a costly one. It takes a tremendous amount of money to run a church in the United States. Surely, we could do with a bit less expensive carpet when there are starving Christians. But we avoid the work when we cite church building projects as the root of all evil. On a practical level, my church in Corpus Christ had eight services, and all of them were packed. They had outgrown their building two years beforehand, and legitimately needed a new building. Even then, they would still have three services. On a more theoretical level, artisans built beautiful cathedrals in Europe to celebrate the presence of God. The Israelites spent a tremendous amount on their temple. It was Judas, not Christ, who critiqued a woman for pouring expensive perfume on the feet of her Lord. On a strategic level, it is entirely possible that the money it took to have one church in Rome could have funded five churches in Ephesus. But God’s plan for Rome was not His plan for Ephesus. With the money it takes to fund one missionary with Christian Embassy, we could support one hundred native missionaries. But none of them could reach the people the Christian Embassy missionary could reach. Some fights simply take more resources. It takes at least $100,000 to shoot down an enemy aircraft. It takes a $0.50 bullet to neutralize an enemy soldier. It does not follow that an aircraft is worth 200,000 soldiers. Nor does it follow that we should no longer buy air-to-air missiles, because one missile could buy 200,000 bullets. There are simply different fights. The fights are interconnected, but not interchangeable. And some cost more to fight than others.

So how do we connect all of these things? There are groups within an army which devote themselves to the training and equipping of indigenous forces. Equipping includes money, but doesn’t stop there. Training involves the provision of sanctuary. You need somewhere removed from the front-lines if you are to train someone to be sent back out. Perhaps this is our role. This as specific as I will be about this on the open Internet. If you want more information, please email me.

We are tasked to go into all the world. We are generally most effective where we are already placed, for we have a lot of things built in. Hence, the advantages of indigenous missionaries. Yet, our most effective learning comes from those who challenge our paradigms. So indigenous missionaries cannot be our be all, end all. As the body of Christ, we must be able to do both. As American Christians, we must find our role in this mission. We may find ourselves as liaisons, as combatants, or as logisticians. Liaisons take lessons and resources and apply them where they are most needed. Logisticians make sure the right things get to the right places. Combatants pick up their swords and fight where they are placed. All of these are fights, and we need to engage all of them.

I read something once about the economics of a battlefield. Perhaps this is the beginning.