No Other Choice: Western Mission Agencies and World Christian Collaboration
As church and mission agency budgets have tightened over the last decades, even more so in the last few years, those agents have a greater desire to engage World Christians in sending cross-culturally. Several things contribute to this desire. First, thanks to the growth of Christian communities around the world and scholarship by them, there is a powerful desire to take the gospel across ethnic and national borders. Secondly, with the perceived decline of resources, Western Christian agencies have been forced to face their need for more team members (and leaders) who can be sent (or are willing to go) with fewer resources. Though this realization does not have to be taken as a pessimistic, "They only want to engage World Christians because they have no other choice." Instead, this discovery coincides with the growth of World Christianity and the timely discovery of both need and opportunity.
The International Mission Board [IMB] of the Southern Baptist Convention, in the last few years, has been emphasizing in their press releases the desire to aid and enable partnerships with Christian communities who desire to send Christian missionaries. The IMB is not without a tradition of partnering and sending. The case of the vast number of South Korean Christians around the globe (I have never landed in a place without a South Korean brother or sister already there) is a good example. The 175-year history of the organization does not include just Christian missionaries in their respective fields of service but also the mobilization of Christians to understand, train, and travel to those fields. This organizational experience should not be overlooked or downplayed, even as some might think of it as a massive conservative and "old-school" Western agency. That would be assumptions based on inexperience. However, at the same time, while we should take the IMB's 175 years of experience of mobilization and sending seriously, that same 175 years of sending Westerners does not necessarily translate to understanding and wisdom of partnering with a myriad of believers from a myriad of different points around the globe.
Other agencies, such as Pioneers International and Frontiers (among many others), have been engaging in multi-cultural mission sending for quite some time. The integration with their different hubs and leaders from multiple backgrounds is a great asset to engaging multi-cultural mobilization. However, there are still great difficulties in collaboration: who is "really" in charge, how do Occidental versus Oriental supervisory, leadership, cultural way of doing things affect mission strategy and teams. Assumptions can abound on all sides, and sometimes it is assumed that anything Western is wrong and anything non-Western is right (and vice-versa).
Including voices from outside the center, or even shifting the center, is a quagmire of unknowns and difficulties. This post aims to introduce this great difficulty and say immediately that this is the future– multi-cultural mission collaboration in sending and teaming. More study, more experience, and more (dare I say) Ph.D. dissertations and D.Miss projects are needed (especially from institutions with a deep commitment to Biblical Studies). Sources, such as World Christian Studies, Church History, and Mission Studies, all need to be involved. We need each other in this work, and it is a great blessing to have so many Christians around the globe (from Brazil, Philippines, China, Malaysia, Africa, Russia, etc.) going. Connecting us together in Christian mission will take incredible amounts of grace and wisdom. Thankfully, we have no other choice but to see the opportunity and put in the effort to take advantage of it.
See: “Filipino Baptists Sign Historic Covenant With IMB” https://www.imb.org/2019/09/19/121418/