“It’s like there’s a basement where there are some very dark things. We know it’s there, but we can’t find the door to it. If only we could get down there, then we could actually bring those things out into the light, and hopefully get to dealing with whatever it is.”
I remember sharing this sentiment with a veteran missionary and pastor in our region of Central Asia a couple years ago. We had been discussing the remarkable ineffectiveness of the missionary work among our people group over the last couple of decades.
Since the early nineties, a very significant number of gospel laborers and an astounding amount of funding has gone into planting churches among our people group. Most of it seems to have failed. Most of those who have professed faith are scattered or have fallen away from the faith. Most of the churches that have been started have imploded. Most of the workers have left.
Over the years, I have grown in conviction that at least two things are necessary to see this situation change. The first is the irreplaceable work of slow, steady, faithful ministry by example that is backed by prayer. Whatever else is needed, this is needed more. The locals must taste and see over the long term the beauty of a healthy local church and how faithful Christians live. Forget novel and exciting methods. As veteran missionaries once told us, “mostly they need people who can show them how to suffer well.”
Yet alongside of this, I share a conviction with some of the other veteran workers that there are some significant pieces of the culture that we are still somehow missing. It feels a little bit like what I’ve heard of black holes in space. You can’t see it, but you know something is there because of the destructive evidence being exerted on its environment.
A young local pastor told me that he believes the failure of the missionary work might be because his people are under a spiritual curse, some kind of hardening of heart because of all the times their ancestors committed genocide against the ethnic Christians of the region. I do not pretend to know very much about intergenerational spiritual realities, but perhaps this brother is right. Could there be some kind of spiritual bind that can only be broken by the Church’s Daniel-like repentance for the sins of the past?
Or is it that we foreigners simply need to press even deeper into understanding the hearts and minds and culture of those we are desperately trying to reach? On the one hand, the gospel’s effectiveness is not dependent on missionaries becoming expert anthropologists. On the other hand, stories like Peace Child and Bruchko are real, where gospel breakthrough happened when the missionary was able to wed the good news to some aspect of local culture or myth/memory that seemed to have been sovereignly planted there for that very reason. “In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness” (Acts 14:17).
However, I hesitate because in the case of our people, it feels like we are not so much in need of finding something good that has remained as much as finding something dark and twisted that needs to be torn out – less redemptive analogy and more cultural exorcism, as it were.
At the very least, alongside prayer for spiritual breakthrough, a more systematic study of the culture will not hurt. Whereas missionaries to remote tribal peoples are trained to do this very kind of exhaustive cultural study, most of us in our region have taken more of a posture that assumes that if you systematically study the language, you’ll get the culture thrown in as well. But we have found this to result in some big holes. Some, merely odd. Some, very concerning.
I’ll never forget when a leader in training in our church plant told us very matter-of-factly that there’s a special spiritual word you can use to command the soil not to decompose a body until you can rebury it elsewhere, and it will obey you. He claimed to have seen this work on a body buried for over a month. And he seemed to have no idea that this folk religious/sorcery belief was incompatible with Christian belief and practice.
How many more beliefs are just like this, unseen beneath the surface, only emerging in times of crisis, in times that expose what someone really believes about the nature of life, death, and the spiritual realm? And are any of them regularly sabotaging church plants and relationships between local believers because they continue to go unknown and thereby unaddressed?
One of the reasons I’m excited about my new role when we head back to Central Asia is that it will require regular and deep study of the culture. The plan is for this study to then lead to biblical and contextual resources that address the things that emerge – including those things that emerge from “the basement.”
Some of it is not hidden at all, but well-known. As of yet there are no Christian resources in our language that take evil things like wife-beating, female circumcision, and honor killings head on. This must change.
God willing, it will. And sooner or later, God’s people will bring some light into that basement – and get to work banishing the darkness.
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Entrusted to the Dirt 
Interesting! Do you ever teach on passages such as Deut 18:9-14? The reaction might be interesting!
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Very interesting thoughts. As a former missionary for over 10 years in Latin America, I have had similar experiences with syncretism which is some of what you are describing in your article. The blending of other religious (often animistic) beliefs into Christianity. And the result is certainly not biblical Christianity, which is what has the true power to save and transform. In Ecuador, the indigenous Christians, even leaders, would often continue similar animistic practices (such as pouring out the remains of their drink on the earth in order to satisfy the god of the soil and get a good harvest) while at the same time preaching the message of Christianity. It was frustrating at times. Then I came to realize something. We all struggle with syncretism in one degree or another. Ours may not be as blatantly obvious as commanding the soil not to decompose a body. But it shows up in the less subtle ways such as how we impose a lot of western cultural belief on our interpretation of Christian truth. Whether it is the way we look at money, happiness, self-esteem, a lot of times we are adding something to the purity of the Gospel and biblical Christianity, and therefore falling prey to syncretism. But God is merciful to us and continues to lead those who truly seek Him and He continues to transform them into the image of Christ little by little. Be encouraged. Keep preaching and teaching the message of the Gospel. We all have junk in the basement where we can’t find the door. But Christ will build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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Very interesting thoughts. As a former missionary for over 10 years in Latin America, I have had similar experiences with syncretism which is some of what you are describing in your article. The blending of other religious (often animistic) beliefs into Christianity. And the result is certainly not biblical Christianity, which is what has the true power to save and transform. In Ecuador, the indigenous Christians, even leaders, would often continue similar animistic practices (such as pouring out the remains of their drink on the earth in order to satisfy the god of the soil and get a good harvest) while at the same time preaching the message of Christianity. It was frustrating at times. Then I came to realize something. We all struggle with syncretism in one degree or another. Ours may not be as blatantly obvious as commanding the soil not to decompose a body. But it shows up in the less subtle ways such as how we impose a lot of western culture belief on to our interpretation of Christian truth. Whether it is the way we look at money, happiness, self-esteem, a lot of times we are adding something to the purity of the Gospel and biblical Christianity, and therefore falling prey to syncretism. But God is merciful to us and continues to lead those who truly seek Him and He continues to transform them into the image of Christ little by little. Be encouraged. Keep preaching and teaching the message of the Gospel. We all have junk in the basement where we can’t find the door. But Christ will build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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