Western Missionary, Know Your Handicaps

When it comes to today’s Western missionaries, we are very aware of the handicaps of our forbears. That is, we know all too well what the weaknesses and blind spots were for Western missionaries in past eras. They often conflated Western culture with Christianity, they built massive missionary compounds, they held onto church power too long, they didn’t contextualize, etc. You can go and read Roland Allen if you want a deep dive into the problems of the Western missions movement in the early 1900s. The problem is that we’re often unaware of our current handicaps, how contemporary Western missionaries bring their own unique weaknesses and blind spots to the field, and then proceed to do missions work that is, well, handicapped by these postures.

The following is a list of handicaps that, in our experience, most Western missionaries bring with them to the mission field. Yes, there are exceptions to these trends out there. Yes, most of these weaknesses also correspond to a particular strength of Western culture. And yes, this list is in some places shaped by our particular context in Central Asia. But I think many of these handicaps continue to show up globally as Westerners are sent out to fulfill the Great Commission. It’s because I care so deeply about that holy calling that I want other Western missionaries to have a greater self-awareness of these handicaps – and to pivot accordingly. If we remain unaware of these forces acting upon us from our own cultural background, these default postures, as it were, we will be unable to effect the kind of change we so hope for.

This is a longer post, so buckle up. Or, if helpful, you can scan the headings below and read the points that stick out to you.

We come to the field and leave as radical individualists. A typical prospective missionary will announce to his pastors that he has been called to the mission field and then expect their blessing. Then, when leaving the field, he will likewise announce to his colleagues and the local believers that God has called him elsewhere. Often, these decisions are made in private, with the hard-to-refute claim that God has spoken, and without the counsel of the broader believing community. Instead, we should be carefully involving faithful pastors and our church community in these momentous and costly decisions.

We treat locals as projects rather than genuine friends. Westerners are very goal and task-oriented. Often, this means we treat locals on the mission field more like projects than as actual spiritual peers and friends. They can’t help but sense this, and, long-term, it impedes our work’s effectiveness. We need to embrace a posture of spiritual equality and genuine friendship with locals. Yes, we are called to make disciples, but those disciples should also be becoming some of our very best friends.

We trust in our expertise instead of in the power of the Word and the Spirit. We Westerners are good at planning, preparing, studying, and strategizing. The problem is we often put our trust in these efforts, rather than pursuing them with our trust rooted in the power of God’s Word and God’s Spirit. This might seem like a subtle thing, but it makes all the difference. At the end of the day, do we work hard and trust in our expertise or trust in God’s power? The secret is that trusting in God’s power often means we’ll work even harder.

We are terrified of contaminating the local believers with our Western culture. We are desperate to not repeat the mistakes of the old colonial missionaries, which means deep down we are very afraid that we will ruin the indigenization or local ownership of our work with our own cultural imports or upfront presence. This fear is so strong that it will often keep Western missionaries from obeying clear biblical commands, such as the commands to do ministry by example, to teach, preach, baptize, and form churches. The better posture is to recognize that some cultural mixing is inevitable, so we should simply be aware and proactive in it, putting it always under the microscope of what is loving and faithful to scripture.

We prioritize culture over the Bible. Again, because we are so afraid of changing local culture, we will often shrink back when local culture clashes with the Bible. This is especially tempting in areas of costly obedience, such as church discipline, bold witness, churches that mix members of enemy people groups, etc. But every culture is fallen. And that means that when any aspect of culture goes against the Bible, we go with the Bible, come what may. This is vitally important for modeling for local believers how they can transform their own culture over the long haul.

We prioritize the shallow areas of culture while remaining ignorant of the deeper areas of culture. The ironic thing is that, for how much we Westerners talk about the importance of contextualization, we’re not very good at it. Instead, many missionaries fixate on the external, shallow aspects of culture while failing to recognize the deeper aspects of the culture where contextualization is truly needed. In our context, way too many missionaries are worried about locals sitting in chairs rather than on the floor when they should be worried about what to do about things like the deep patron-client and honor-shame commitments and assumptions that our locals have. While still prioritizing the Bible over culture, we Westerners also need to push much deeper into understanding local cultures and worldviews, and learning the local language well.

We dismiss certain practices or methodologies simply because they feel old-fashioned, traditional, or foreign. Good contextualization has nothing to do with how a certain form feels to us and whether it reminds us or not of uncomfortable things from our history or upbringing. Good contextualization is about making biblical principles and practices clear and compelling in a local language and culture. We Westerners have our own cultural and religious baggage, but we need to do our best to put that aside so that we don’t dismiss certain forms out of hand when they are both biblically permissible and locally effective. I may not like pews or cross necklaces. But that has everything to do with my background, and is, in fact, irrelevant when it comes to good local contextualization.

We don’t understand how forms carry meaning. Not every word, cultural ritual, or religious practice can be redeemed. First, the Bible outright prohibits certain forms, such as idols. In addition, some forms in a local culture simply carry too much anti-biblical meaning, such that locals will not be able to embrace a new meaning given to them, no matter how compelling a case we foreigners make. Other forms can be contested, and perhaps redeemed over time. Some are ripe for redemption. In our context, the term Muslim cannot be redeemed, even though its original meaning in Arabic is simply one who submits to God. However, the old Central Asian New Year holiday (Nawroz) is currently being contested by local believers and filled with Christian meaning. And the local word for the all-powerful creator God has already been redeemed and redefined biblically by the local believers.

We are drawn to silver bullet methodologies rather than the slow and steady path of healthy growth. Western culture programs us to be drawn to the new, the big, and the fast. This means that Western missionaries are vulnerable to methodologies that promise unprecedented results in record time. I believe much of the popularity of insider movement and movement methodologies like DMM is playing into this handicap of Western culture. But similar to how monetary investments grow, the healthiest long-term growth is in the slow, steady investment that brings in exponential returns after decades, not in a matter of a few short months or years. By way of analogy, we should want our work to be like forests of oak that cover the mountainsides, not grass on the rooftops. This is the kind of healthy work that we see in the New Testament, as well as in church history, punctuated though it is with occasional periods of miraculous growth.

We are dogmatic about our methodology and casual about our dogma. Human beings will be dogmatic about something. It’s inescapable. Western missionaries, reacting to the past again, tend to hold their dogma with a loose hand, while holding their methodologies with a dogmatic fervor. This belies a common mistake where we confuse principles with strategy, and go on to treat locally-specific strategy and tactics (methodology) as fixed and universally applicable, while forgetting about universally applicable principles undergirding the methodologies. A wiser way forward is to hold our methodologies with a looser hand, while holding to our Biblical principles and dogma with more conviction. The art of theological triage is especially helpful here.

We are anti-institutional. Popular Western culture is jaded when it comes to institutions and is experiencing an era of post-institutional ferment. That means Western missionaries are not naturally drawn to things like organizing, building, and institutionalizing. In fact, many methodologies tell us that it’s these specific things that will kill movements of the Spirit. We need to realize that much of the pull of organic, casual, low-hierarchy, house church-style Christianity for us is because of our own cultural moment, and not necessarily because it is effective locally or even biblical. Yes, house church is a good biblical option, but the way many Western missionaries go about it often leads to contextual ineffectiveness and spiritual compromise.

We have problems with authority. Many Westerners have been raised with this as one of our primary maxims: “Question Authority.” As a culture, we have lots of baggage with the concept of authority, and, because of this, we tend to not think very clearly about it. But one thing we do know about authority, we distrust it. However, whether we like it or not, we live in a world where authority exists. God created the universe to be a hierarchical one; healthy societies are those that honor just and proper authority, and even in the most natural of friendships, someone will always take the lead. Authority itself is fundamentally good, not bad, even though it is fallen. But Western culture tends to reverse this, or to pretend that authority isn’t really needed. Not only has this infiltrated much of our thinking about society, and men’s and women’s roles in the home and the church, but it’s also seeped into our missiology and our bearing on the mission field. Practically, this is a major factor in why we are drawn to certain methodologies and why we fumble so badly in societies that view authority more positively.

We cannot easily define a biblical church. Many Western missionaries on the field practice a missiology of reaction. We don’t know exactly what kind of churches we are trying to plant, but we know that we don’t want them to be like the churches back home. Often, this is a sign that we haven’t had the chance to truly develop a biblical ecclesiology. We also come from a culture that has, because of its radical individualism, lost most of its good instincts when it comes to church. Because of this, we can’t easily define what a biblical church is. In truth, every missionary should be able to easily describe a healthy biblical church, even in their sleep. Somehow, something so central to the work of missions has become one of the most common handicaps of Western workers on the field. We desperately need to learn frameworks that summarize the Bible’s teaching on this subject, such as 9 Marks or 12 characteristics of a healthy church.

We make the mission field a laboratory for our church fantasies. Because most of us don’t have a biblical ecclesiology, we can fall into making the mission field a laboratory for our personal fantasies about church. If we’ve had bad experiences with authority, we might try to plant churches that have no official leaders or teachers. If we feel like church membership or preaching are really Western accretions, then we might try to plant churches without them. If we have ideas about what authentic, pure, New Testament Christianity was really like, we can turn local believers into our guinea pigs. No, churches on the mission field shouldn’t look exactly like the churches back home do, but they are not our personal laboratories. The underlying elements should be the same, even if they are clothed in a different language and culture.

We think we are above the local church on the mission field. Many Western missionaries do not become accountable members of churches on the mission field. Instead, we prefer to keep our membership in our sending churches, even after faithful churches are planted in their context. This is often because joining a local or international church feels like it will be such a time commitment, and missionaries know their time is precious. The problem is that, because of this, many of us missionaries inevitably move out beyond any real spiritual accountability, which, long-term, must be local accountability. Zoom calls and a visit every few years will not cut it. We might live like this for decades, assuming that we are a special category of Christian who exists for the local church but not under the local church. But such spiritual free agents fail to model for local believers what faithful membership looks like, as well as dangerously expose themselves to great spiritual risk.

We use truisms to avoid exercising our legitimate spiritual authority. “I don’t want to build my own kingdom.” “I want to stay out of the way.” “Let’s trust the Holy Spirit.” “Locals are really the ones who need to take charge, after all.” We Western missionaries will commonly use phrases like these to excuse ourselves from taking spiritual leadership in missions contexts. The thing about all of these statements is that they seem so humble. But often they serve to cloak the fact that, because of our post-colonial angst, or our methodological commitments, or our simple insecurity, we don’t want to exercise the legitimate spiritual authority that we have as ambassadors of Christ. These statements often cloak a false humility and keep us from modeling spiritual leadership for local believers, leaving them to depend on the fallen leadership models they have from their own cultural background. We Westerners need to understand that our current issue is not that we love leading or being upfront. It’s that we are terrified of it.

We hold up our personal church size preference as the ideal. Everyone has a personal church size preference, whether we recognize it or not. And each church size has its own size culture that comes with its own positives and negatives. The problem is that we missionaries often latch on to our favorite size church and start thinking that this size is the biblically faithful way to do church. I once fell into this kind of thinking, back when I was a house-church-only advocate. As with methodology, so with church sizes. The underlying characteristics of a healthy church are universal and scalable. They can be implemented in a Philippian house or in a Jerusalem congregation of 3,000.

We have arbitrary definitions of reproducibility. Reproducibility is all the rage in popular Western missiology. And for what it’s worth, reproducibility is a biblical concept. But Westerners often throw this term around without defining it and without recognizing that their own understanding of what is reproducible is very arbitrary. 2 Timothy 2:2 speaks of four generations of believers, but it does not give us a timeline in which this multiplication is supposed to take place. We like to stick our own preferred timelines onto the text, but that not only leaves us importing our own ideas into the Bible, but also poorly prepares us to discern what sort of timelines are truly needed in our local context. Again, what are we going for? Oak forests or grass on the rooftops? And should that affect how we think about reproducibility?

We rely on salaried positions for raising up leaders rather than waiting for the slow and steady work of character growth. The quickest way to see ministry results and see leaders emerge in Central Asia is to hand out salaried positions. Unfortunately, most of these results will prove to be short-lived. The hard truth is that believers are not ready to handle salaried leadership positions in any culture until they have a proven track record of leading regardless of the money. But we Westerners are so eager to show results in our work that we are often tempted to skip the long, slow path of character development by means of salaried positions. This is made all the easier by the fact that the Western church has such a culture of generosity, where funds for this kind of thing are so easily come by.

We are hyper-focused on our people group to the exclusion of others God brings into our circle. Many Western missionaries have intentionally set their sights on an unreached people group. This is admirable, for without this kind of specific focus, many of these populations will continue to be without gospel access. The question is whether or not this kind of focus should be an inclusive or an exclusive one. Many of us will neglect to care for other believers or seekers around us, even if God puts them right in our path, because they are not from our people group. God forbid, they might even be other foreigners who require some of our time. Instead of this, we would be wise to maintain a determined focus on our main people group, while also trusting that if God brings us believers from other groups, he has a good reason for that. This past year, we befriended a believing family from Zimbabwe who had moved to Caravan City for a job opportunity. One year on, they had to unexpectedly move to Poet City, where they are now attending our previous church plant and encouraging our dear friends there. We had no idea when we invested time in them that they would later go on to invest in local friends like Darius and his church. We should not let a specific people group focus prevent us from caring for the broader body of Christ as well.

We are afraid to own the strengths of Western culture. Even though this is a post largely about the current weaknesses of Western culture, I would be remiss to not mention that one of those weaknesses is refusing to admit the strengths of Western culture. Western culture, like all cultures, truly if imperfectly reflects the image of God. It has also been deeply shaped by the Bible and by Christianity. This means Western culture has both real natural strengths and real Christian strengths. We missionaries from the West need to realize that we can be honest and thankful for these strengths without getting anywhere near sinful ethnocentrism or racism. I love how Western culture is so full of hopeful optimism, how it emphasizes hard work and honesty, how it dignifies the individual, and how it advocates for freedom of religion. I hope that Central Asian culture becomes more Western in these ways, without losing its distinctive strengths. We Western missionaries don’t serve our local friends by pretending our culture is all bad. Rather, we should model for them a humble and honest posture towards our native cultures.

We over-prioritize physical safety. Westerners are safer than ever, yet we continue to be more and more fixated on physical safety. This means we are often the first to bolt in case of security crises and the first to recommend our local friends flee in the face of serious persecution. There is often wisdom in fleeing danger, but we Western missionaries need to be aware of what we are modeling for local believers. Are we teaching them how to be afraid, or how to trust God in the face of danger? These are difficult calls and require much wisdom. But part of that wisdom is knowing that we come from a culture positively obsessed with physical safety.

We give up if something doesn’t seem to work quickly. We Westerners tend to start strong and optimistic. But if our work doesn’t prove fruitful relatively quickly, we tend to lose heart and move on to greener pastures. What this means in difficult contexts like Central Asia is that Westerners give up after the first or second implosion of their church plant, feeling that this must mean they have been doing something wrong. This is often accompanied by a dramatic conversion toward a different kind of methodology as well, usually one where the Westerner is insulated from the same kind of disappointment. Often, if the missionary had simply kept pushing and plodding a little longer, their church plant would have stabilised. The key here is to understand that Western culture, with its expectations of quick formulaic success, doesn’t often set us missionaries up for the kind of stubborn faithfulness truly needed on the field.

We trust others naïvely. When it comes to other people, we Westerners tend to view everyone as trustworthy until proven otherwise. But in cultures saturated with deception, betrayal, and hypocrisy, many people are simply not naturally trustworthy. Just as we have been trained by our culture with a bent toward authenticity and trust, others have been trained with a bent toward duplicity and distrust. And while this can make for lots of cross-cultural misunderstandings in normal relationships, it can spell disaster when a divisive person, abuser, or wolf comes to prey on the church. These predator types will run circles around us Westerners if we do not learn to be more shrewd and discerning in how we extend trust and responsibility to others. A good way to compensate for this weakness is to extend trust in small ways until someone’s trustworthiness can be proven over time – and to be ready to move quickly and with unity when a predator is revealed.

We confuse niceness for love. It’s been said that the first ‘commandment’ for Western evangelicals is “Thou shalt be nice.” But often, biblical faithfulness requires doing and saying things that do not feel nice, at least not on the surface. Pointing out sin and the need for repentance doesn’t feel nice. Neither does church discipline, nor standing up for women not preaching in church, nor telling someone they shouldn’t take the Lord’s supper because they’re not a believer. But each of these things is, in fact, loving. Something in Western culture has primed us to confuse niceness with love. We would do well to define love biblically and to know that that is true kindness.

We try to pretend we’re not rich. We Western missionaries are often much wealthier than our local friends. Sometimes this is true across the board. Sometimes, it may not be true in material wealth, but it is true in terms of connections, opportunities for upward mobility, or even things like books. Western culture emphasizes how we are all equal, so we are uncomfortable acknowledging these differences in wealth. We try to ignore them, but this doesn’t fool our local friends. A better way forward is to follow the Bible’s specific encouragements for the rich. We who are rich in this age are to glory in how the gospel humbles us, and makes us beggars just like it does every other sinner. We are to be rich in good works, generous, and eager to help others with the wealth we’ve been entrusted with. It’s not sinful to be rich, which is good, because in some of these ways, we are stuck with our wealth. But it is sinful to not seek to be faithful stewards of what we’ve been given.

We prioritize a vague Christian ‘unity’ over defined partnership. Most of us Western Christians have drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid that says ‘doctrine divides, Jesus unites.’ We care deeply about unity in the body of Christ, but the way we pursue that unity is by downplaying or sidestepping our very real differences and convictions. This is not the kind of unity that can really hold together when things get hard. Instead, it’s far better to define our unity, acknowledging where we have common ground, where we have serious differences, and what kinds of partnerships that frees us up for. This kind of posture not only equips me to partner in some way with (almost) anyone, but it also keeps me from the mistaken position that I should only partner with those who think exactly as I do. Again, the practice of theological triage here makes all the difference.

We don’t understand the importance of infrastructure for long-term impact. If previous generations of Western missionaries got sidetracked by having to maintain massive missionary infrastructure, recent generations have swung to the opposite extreme. The reality is that missionary families and local believers, after local churches have been established, need things like schools, employment, Christian marriages and burials, theological education, and decent healthcare in order to stay and establish a solid long-term presence. Even owning property instead of renting can mean a greater ability to withstand persecution. With church planting remaining as the vital core of missions, we need to recognize the importance of infrastructure for more effective long-term Christian presence and witness in a given context.

We try to erase those we’ve fallen out with. When Western missionaries part ways because of conflict, as we so often do, we try to memory-hole our former colleagues. We fail to mention the key part they played on our team or in our ministry, instead preferring to avoid mentioning them altogether. Instead, we should honor them as Luke honors Barnabas in the book of Acts. We can be honest about the fact that we parted ways because of conflict. But we should also be honest and grateful for how God used these brothers and sisters in our work.

We make saving people from hell our central motivation. I’m thankful that so many Western missionaries on the mission field still believe in hell. This is a courageous posture that shows real theological spine. However, some very bad things happen when we make saving people from hell our central motivation in missions. First, we come under immense pressure because of the crushing weight of the multitudes around us every day, headed to a Christless eternity. I’ve heard missionaries say that they can’t sleep at night because of this pressure. Second, this pressure leads to the development of unhealthy, rapid methodologies that try to do the math to see how many people need to hear the gospel in X amount of time, given things such as the current population growth rate and death rate. Turns out a hell-centered motivation is still a man-centered motivation. Instead, the glory of God and his future words of approval, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” should be our primary motivation.

We get offended when others disagree with our methods. We Westerners really struggle with the concept that someone can truly be for us, or love us, while deeply disagreeing with our lifestyle or methods. Christians understand how this is possible when we consider that homosexual friend or relative we have. But when it comes to our practices on the mission field, we missionaries feel that other missionaries or pastors back home should not be critiquing our work if they are truly for us. Rather, we need to realize that others being concerned that our work isn’t healthy or biblical is, in fact, one very important way they can show us Christian love.

We are not aware of why we respond to conflict or suffering the way we do. Many Western missionaries arrive on the field without going through the kind of counseling that helps them understand how they respond to conflict and suffering, and why. Without this sort of wisdom, when conflict or suffering comes, we often fall into old, sinful patterns or blow up all over our colleagues. The fact is that there are deeply personal patterns of sin and unbelief and aspects of suffering in our stories that shape how we respond when things get hard. We need to carefully bring the word of God to bear on our stories so that we can recognize wrong responses to conflict and suffering, remember where those things come from in our story, and choose to now walk in the light.

We signal to our spouses and kids that our work is more important than they are. Countless missionary kids grow up with the sense that their parents’ work is more important than they are. Their parents never tell them this, but in so many ways, that is the signal that is sent. We need to be aware of this message that goes hand-in-hand with our Western approach to work and ministry, and to directly combat it, both in word and deed. May the next generation of Western MKs grow up knowing deep down that while their parents often had to sacrifice family time for ministry, they were always more important to mom and dad than the ministry was.

I’m sure this long list is not conclusive, but these are some of the common and major handicaps that we have seen Western missionaries bring with them to the mission field. For the sake of the nations, we need to be aware of these default ways that we have been shaped by our culture and to seek to reform our approach accordingly. The weaknesses of Western missionaries a hundred years ago are mostly very different from our weaknesses today, and in some cases, on the opposite end of the pendulum.

What then should we Western missionaries do to compensate for these handicaps? Here again, in summary, is what I recommend:

Come to the field and leave the field with the careful counsel of the believing community.

Build deep and rich friendships of spiritual equality with local believers.

Trust ultimately in the power of God’s Word and Spirit rather than your expertise.

Don’t let fear of contaminating culture paralyze you, but be intentional in the culture mixing that will inevitably take place.

Prioritize the Bible over culture, especially when it seems costly.

Go as deep in language and culture as possible.

For good contextualization, be open to all of your biblical options, even the ones that feel old-fashioned or foreign.

Carefully assess cultural forms and their meanings to see if they should be redeemed, contested, or rejected.

Remember that healthy work is often slow, small, and time-tested, and don’t be pulled in by the silver bullet methodologies.

Hold firmly and graciously to your convictions and beliefs, but hold your methodologies loosely.

Organize effectively and build institutions.

Embrace the goodness of authority and seek to exercise it and submit to it biblically.

Learn how to easily define and explain what a biblical church is.

Instead of making the mission field the lab for your church fantasies, reproduce sound churches that have the same core ingredients as all healthy churches everywhere.

Whenever possible, become an accountable member of a church on the mission field.

Exercise your legitimate spiritual authority as an ambassador of Christ by leading, teaching, baptizing, and in general modeling Christian faithfulness by example.

Embrace all the Bible’s options for church sizes and enjoy each season of church that God gives you.

Define reproducibility as broadly as the Bible does, and be aware of any arbitrary personal timelines for this that you may be bringing with you.

Make godly character and its development the strategy for raising up leaders, not salaried positions.

Stay committed to reaching your focus people group without neglecting the other believers and seekers God brings your way while you do this.

Be open, honest, and thankful for the strengths of Western culture.

Take wise risks and beware of the West’s infatuation with physical safety.

Keep going, even if faithful work takes decades to bear fruit.

Trust others wisely and shrewdly test for trustworthiness, knowing that some are enemies of the cross

Love others faithfully, even when that means you’re accused of not being ‘nice.’

If you are a Western missionary, you are wealthy; seek to steward it well.

Pursue defined partnership and clarified unity.

Invest in infrastructure for the future of the local believers.

Honor those you’ve fallen out with.

Make God’s glory and affirmation your central motivation, rather than hell.

Be open to others’ concerns about your missionary work.

Learn how you respond to conflict and suffering and why.

Make sure your kids know they are more important than your ministry.

Embrace this kind of posture, Western missionary friends, and we will have, by God’s grace, compensated for many of our cultural handicaps. And I believe our lives and work will show the difference.

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