Pitfalls Facing MIssionaries

Our friend keeps on moving to a new place and she got tired of moving her things around so she put all her books and book shelfs in our house. Of course, I don't mind it at all. But everyday I would browse the shelfs and look for something to read.

I found a photocopy bound compilations of missionary articles. I believe it is a good idea to share some articles here that I think would be very useful to missionaries and theologians.

This article is entitled "Pitfalls Facing Missionaries and Christian Workers" written by Dr. Ken Seino. In his article he presents several pitfalls that missionaries tend to fall. I give my comments in each.

Pitfalls of Pride

He says that missionaries are famous because it is being announced in the denomination or by deputation. They become famous because they are being prayed for by many people in many churches. In my opinion, this is only true if you are a missionary who comes from a big denominations with big churches. He warns that the missionary should not be proud because they are not famous because of their personality but for the kind of job they are doing.

He claims that sometimes the missionaries are given opportunity to serve in large meetings and conventions or interviewed by Christian newspapers. He says, that in certain cases, missionaries are "stars" among fine Christians. And this would cause the missionary to be haughty and arrogant. I could only hope that what he says is always true.

Pitfalls of Hypocrisy

Missionaries have the opportunity to work with wonderful leaders and thus they may belong to a ministry that are able to lead a great numbers of soul to the Lord and construct new church buildings. However, sometimes this accomplishment eclipse one of the most important goals of missions and that is for the believers to experience spiritual growth and that includes the missionaries own growth. Numbers do not necessarily means success.

Pitfall of Martyrdom

Missionaries tend to project themselves as living in a very difficult situation. They present themselves as miserable people who missed everything in their home country. The are tempted to create a story that tells the people back home that they are facing bigger hardships than ordinary Christians. Of course, all of these are true but missionaries have also blessings that ordinary Christians

Pitfalls of Money

The temptation of money is common to missionary. The missionary should be accountable and make a record of incoming and outgoing expenses. Missionaries should be a good steward of the Lord's money. This is most true if a missionary is being supported through a mission organization. Nonetheless, independent missionary should keep everything in orderly record. The ever present of spending the money to something not needed should be avoided.

Pitfalls of Dishonesty

Missionary should never lie for profit. Many missionaries fall into the trap of getting support from different missions organizations and keeping it a secret to them. Missionaries should be transparent. Just be honest about the sources of your support to the people or other missions group that want to help you and your ministry. Simple honesty will go a long way.

The over-simplification or slight exaggeration should be avoided at all times. An intentional misinformation may make for a good challenging story that may motivate people to support missionary works but it is still dishonest and the Lord of the harvest will not be pleased.

Christian Apologetic Mission in Asia

This is the last part of Augurlion's article published in Missio Dei, a journal of missions and evangelism of Myanmar Institute of Theology. He argues that apologetic missions is a good and inoffensive method of sharing the Christian faith in a pluralistic Asia.

The Asian countries, especially the developing countries, are greatly affected by Globalization. The global influence of Western cultures is a threat to the Asian cultures which were designed to function appropriately in Asian society. The distortion of the Asian cultures can lead to the moral corruption of the society. In addition, the economic globalization creates a great social gap between the people of Asia. Though there are some aspects of development, poverty has become widespread along with population explosion and endemic diseases. The privileged become rich and the outcast become extremely poor. Violence, exploitation and corruption also weaken the society. The state, the market, and the civil society are the sectors which are functioning in the society. However, without religious influence these sectors can not function properly. There are some religious representatives in these three sectors, but their influences in these sectors are ambiguous. In fact, religious factors are important for the strength of the civil society. Kang Moon-Kyu insists:

Without integration of religious factors and strategic alliances with organized religion, civil society is unlikely to gain sufficient strength to counteract the status quo. Is it possible to bring to life the third-sector's [civil society] proclaimed values such as solidarity, compassion, non¬violence, human rights, peace promotion, and an end to r, oppression without seeking strategic alliances with the major religions of Asia: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam?

As Christianity shaped the culture and mentality of the Western people, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and also Christianity have shaped or enriched the culture and mentality of their adherences in Asia. The religion is an important sector for the cultivation of peaceful and moral society. It can control the social order even when the state fails to govern properly because religious consciousness is a driving force for people to live peacefully and morally. Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions have functioned in the Asian societies since before the arrival of Christianity and the emergence of the Democratic, Socialist, and Communist systems. Thus, it would be unfair to persuade the adherences of these religions to abandon their religio-cultures. In fact, the problems in Asia are too much for Christianity to handle without the cooperation of other religions. Through cooperation other religions can be used as the tools or channels for Christian service to the world. But the cooperation is possible only when the non-Christians put aside their negative views on Christianity and see Christian mission as a rewarding task. Apologetic mission is the only way to change the non-Christians' misperceptions of Christianity and its mission.

Christian apologetic mission in Asia is to defend Christianity from the theological attacks and various accusations of the non-Christians. The oppositions that the church has faced in Asia alert the church leaders to think of Christian mission in defensive terms, instead of aggressive terms. The objective of Apologetic mission is not to conquer or to win but to reduce the prejudice on Christianity. It is a humble explanation of ourselves, our faith, and our mission in a way comprehensible and inspiring to those who criticize and misunderstand us. Our explanation must be the answer to the questions and the informative argument to the critiques.

Apologetic mission can take place both in academic level and grassroots revel. Various models of contextualization and interfaith dialogue can be applied in both levels. But they must be applied not as the tools for proselytizing but as Medias for sharing, clarification and conscientization. The function of apologetic mission in academic level, as it was the case in the apologetic work of Origen, is to defend the theological attacks on Christianity and, at the same time, sharpen the spiritual and moral insights of the non-Christians in the light of their own religious philosophies. This work can be helpful to enhance a mutual enrichment and understanding between the religions and also create a possible way for the co-operation of the religions in Asia for a common service. To allow this to happen, the idea and practice of "unity in diversity" in the ecumenical movement need to be extended to other religions.

As "the unity for service" was an important factor for the churches in West, it is important for the religions in Asia. Religious pluralism and diversity in Asia will not allow any religion to universalize its belief. The attempt to universalize a religious belief will surely end with conflict and hostility as it was the case with the European Christianity in the Reformation and post-Reformation world. Religious and ethnic divisions in Asia are the threats to the integrity and solidarity of humanity in Asia. The mission of the church in this setting is not only to remove the prejudice of non-Christians but also to defend the integrity and solidarity of humanity by developing inclusive theologies and practice the ecumenical theme of "unity in diversity."

To be inclusive or ecumenical, Christianity needs to be adaptable to the every local culture. But, on the other hand, Christianity needs to preserve its uniqueness and distinctiveness. Apologetic mission also includes the defense of our Christian spirituality, morality and commitment to Christ. Robert L. Ramseyer insists:

As Christian we have experienced the fact that it is not always easy to develop deep personal relationships with the non-Christians around us... As Christians we are different. We have committed our lives to Jesus Christ. He is our Lord and we want to follow Him. Therefore the ultimate authority by which Christians order their lives is different than it is for other people. This allegiance to Jesus Christ unites us as Christians and divides us from other people. At the same time, Christians have come from the general Christendom was successful from the late patristic period to the dawn of Reformation. Evangelists contributed very much to the growth of the Church in this period. However, the imperial power was the most significant sector for church growth. Under the direction and support of the imperial leaders the pagan nations were rapidly integrated into the Christendom. The use of imperial force in mission was the main factor that helped the growth of Christianity. However, such a kind of church growth can no longer happen.

The Medieval Christendom has become fragmented after Reformation. The rise of modernism and secularism has reduced Christianity to a private institution. Moreover, the rise of democratic rules and the post-modern pluralistic world provide no right for any religion to do proselytizing mission. In the areas, like Asia, where the majority are Hindus, Buddhists, and, Muslims, Christianity is a disregarded religion. There is no imperial power to support Christian mission. The government's support of the national religions and restriction of Christian mission make Christianization or aggressive evangelism impossible. Though the Patristic and Medieval model of Christian expansion is irrelevant to the Asian context, the patristic model of apologetic mission is still useful for the churches in Asia. Because of globalization the name Jesus and Christianity are no longer foreign to most people. Some non-Christians already have a general knowledge of Christian teachings. However, their perceptions of Christianity may be wrong. This is a challenge to the churches to defend Christianity through a humble explanation and clarification of Christian gospel, and by "living out" the gospel to the non-Christian neighbors. The objective of this sort of mission is to promote religious peace and to impose Christian mission spirit into the hearts of non-Christians so that all religions will work together for the success of the civil society and the spread of the Kingdom ofGod in Asia.

Theological and Philosophical Attacks on Christianity

Here is part 6 of Augurlion's article piblished in Mission Dei, a Journal of Mission and Evangelism of Myanmar Institute of Theology. The information presented here may not be fresh, nevertheless, I feel that what he points out are critical to the western missionary enterprise. Because of these criticisms, Asian missionaries can do missions in places that otherwise is impossible for the western missionaries to do. Read this article:

Most Christians, especially the conservatives, claim that Christian truth is unique and universal. But in the eyes of the non-Christians it is unreasonable and limited. From the Hindu perspective, Commitment to Christ represents only a particular way of devotion to the Reality. Hinduism is not an institution that bases on a specific dogma, but it is a polytheistic religion that allows various ways of approach to the Reality. The Hindus believe that "God has looks like tritheism." Islam also criticizes Christianity for not having a set of moral or Divine Law like Shari'a. Seyyed Hossein Nasr asserts: "Christianity is seen by the Muslims as a religion devoid of exotericism which then substitutes a message of an essentially esoteric, there by creating disequilibrium in human society."

Colonialism and Christian missionary attitudes have influenced the non-Christian views or assessment of Christianity. Both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant missionary movements were viewed as identical or related to Colonialism. Along with their colonial expansion, Spain and Portugal were given the responsibility to extend the Roman Catholic domain. Though the Protestant missionary movements that arose by the end of the eighteenth century could not be grouped together with colonialism, it resembled colonialism in one way or another. Along with Christianization, the Protestant missions introduced modernism and imposed Western culture that threatened the non-Western people of loosing their cultural and national identities. According to Andrew F. Walls, the mission awakening in the nineteenth century in Britain based on the belief of British people that they were the "chosen people." They believed that modernism and social progress in Britain were God's blessings. Therefore, they felt that they were responsible to evangelize the heathens and impose modernism and Christianity, which is their imperial religion.

The mission movement during the colonial era was basea on the concept of the expansion of the Christendom. Thus, Christianity was reviled and rejected by the non-Christians in Asia, whose adhered to Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Confucianism, and whose countries were subject to the colonial rule. Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933), a Sinhalese Buddhist reformer, argues:

Semitic religions have neither psychology nor a scientific background. Judaism was an exclusive religion intended only for the Hebrews. It is a materialistic monotheism with Jehovah as the architect of a limited world. Christianity is a political camouflage. Its three aspects are politics, trade, and imperial expansion. Its weapons are the Bible, barrels of whisky, and bullets.

Christianity, therefore, was seen as the European tool for the expansion of Western hegemony over the colonized countries. Some Hindu critique showed their reverence to Jesus but strongly criticized the Christians and the missionaries for perverting Christianity and the teaching of Jesus. Keshub Chunder Sen, a famous Hindu leader, delivered a lecture in Calcutta in 1866 and stated:

I regard every European settler in India as a missionary of Christ, and I have a right to demand that he should always remember and act up to his high responsibility. But, alas! owing to the reckless conduct of a number of pseudo-Christians, Christianity has failed to produce any wholesome moral influence on my countrymen. Yea, their muscular Christianity has led many a native to identify the religion of Jesus with the power and privilege of inflicting blows and kicks with impunity... I must therefore protest against denationalization which is so general among native converts to Christianity. With the religion of their heathens forefathers, they generally abandon the manners and customs of their country, and with Christianity they embrace the usages of Europeans; even in dress and diet they assume as affected air of outlandishness, which estranges them from their own countrymen.

There were also Islamic antagonism to Christianity which was influenced by the stigma of the Muslims' experience of Western colonialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The rise of Islam fundamentalism in 1950s was an attempt to re-assert Islamic identity against Western hegemony and Christianity. This anti-Christian movement based on the prejudice that Christianity has influenced the Western culture which "is self-evidently politically and militarily expansionist, morally corrupted, and religiously decadent." All these reactions certify that the Christian missionary movement or Christianization in history was seen only an expansion the Christendom and Western hegemony by the non-Christians in Asia. Christianization and modernization were only the factors that perverted the local cultures in the colonial countries. The rise of nationalism was a protest against Western hegemony that came along with Modernism and Christianity.

Religious Pluralism and Problems of Mission in Asia

This is the fifth part of Augurlion article in Mission Dei, A Journal of Mission and Evangelism of Myanmar Institute of Theology.

The ecumenical movement and the formation of the WCC in the west certified that the existence of the church as a Christendom was no longer possible after the Reformation. The emergence of city-states and the national churches became the phenomenon to be tolerated. Though the idea of the extension of Christendom was no longer relevant to the West it was still practiced in the non-Western world by means of Christianization. However, the extension of Christendom was more problematic in Asia than it was in the Reformation world. Andrew Walls puts it:

The success of the Spanish project to incorporate its new world into Christendom was thus more apparent than real. More important for the future of Christendom, however, than the apparent success of the Spanish was the fact that the Portuguese found the task impossible... The Portuguese began its empire with joyful acceptance of the task of expanding Christendom. But its resources were slander, its hole often precarious, and even in the territories it occupied, resistant Islam, and resistant Hinduism, and resistant Buddhism refused to lie down.

Asia is a pluralistic continent populated with millions of people from different ethnic, social, cultural, and religious background. The world major religions such as Hinduism, Buddhist and Islam have become the national and cultural identity of the countries where they have dominated. For example, Hinduism is the national and cultural identity of the India; Buddhism is the national and cultural identity of Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka; and Islam is the national and cultural identity of Pakistan, Indonesia, and many Arab nations. Thus the situation in Asia was and is totally different from the West. Reinsie Perera states:

It is true that in Europe, Christianity played the role of the dominant religion, and one might even say, the only religion for centuries. It is that influence that created the concept of Christendom. But this was and is not the case in Asia... In Asia many religions are competing with each other and the religious ethos has shaped the language, culture, and the psyche of the people. The religious impact on the life and destiny of people is so immense that one finds it difficult to make a clear separation between the sacred and the secular.

Christianization in Asia has always been a difficult task for the missionaries because conversion to other religions, for the Asian people, is a betrayal of their nations and their cultural identity. Loyalty to their nations, for them, is loyalty to the national religion of their countries. The missions in Asia have won converts most from the ethnic minority groups and the outcasts who have never attached to the religions of the majority in their countries. However, the number of converts from the major religions always be small. Therefore, Christians are only the minority Asia.

After having discovered that evangelism in India was difficult Robert di Nobili, a Jesuit missionary in India in the fifteenth century, tried to use the strategy of "contextualization." He dressed like a guru, studied Hindu Sanskrit and Brahmin Philosophy in order to indigenize the gospel. It is said that he won some convert among the Brahmans. Another early missionary who used this strategy was Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary in China. He studied Confucian philosophy and tried to accommodate Christianity in the cultural context of China. It is stated: "Ricci accommodated Christianity to Chinese life by allowing for the customary veneration of Confucius and of the ancestors among Chinese.

The Protestant missionaries who became active in Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also came to learn that evangelism in Asia was not as easy as they expected. They also came to realize "the need to live on someone else's terms. The first missionary conference held in Edinburgh in 1910 dealt with the issues which the missionaries faced in the non-western world, especially in Asia. The cultural, ethnic and religious pluralism in Asia enlightened the mission groups to work together and consider their mission techniques that met the need of the non-Western people. For these reasons, mission schools and medical mission came to the fore as the channels for evangelism. In addition, the mission strategies such as indigenization, contextualization, and inculturation became popular both in academic discussion and practical fields. Despite the use of these methods conversion to Christianity in Asia was and is very limited. No matter whatever strategy is used it is not successful because its objective is to conquer and to win. Christian mission was regarded as a threat to national unity and identity. Thus, Christianity has faced with the accusation, critique and hostility of the non-Christians. Christianity was perceived as a heretical religion in Asia.

Apologetic Mission in Asian Context (4)

The Collapse of the Christendom

The church was the center of the community as long as it was supportive to the moral integrity, social security, and spiritual welfare in the Christendom. Once the church ailed to support these factors, it lost its position as the center of the community. The decline of the Papacy and the emergence of nationalism in the late Medieval period was the result of the failure of the church to maintain its responsibility as the protector of its subjects. As the church became the tool of exploitation under the rule of the immoral priest, many seek to break from Rome. Reformation brought these sentiments to action which finally gave rise to the collapse of the Latin Christendom.

Though the church became the imperial tool in a different form in Western countries, individualism and personal perception of religion became widespread. Industrial revolution and urbanization heightened individualism and diversity became common in Christianity. The attempt to reunite the Christians under the Christendom or the imperial church caused a great conflict and fighting between the Roman Catholics, the Lutherans and the Reformed churches. The separatists also suffered a severe persecution under the imperial church. The apologetic mission during the patristic period was to express Christianity as a universal faith. The main task of the Church Fathers was to condemn diversity a'id universalize the church. However, such a model of Apologetic mission was no longer relevant to the European context after the Reformation because any effort to universalize the faith ended with quarrel and division.

The Reformation and post-Reformation world convinced the church to defend its unity in a different way. In such a world it was no longer possible to condemn diversity and demand for uniformity. The religious division in Europe, at that time, could not be settled by forcing the churches to unite undr: a single hierarchy with a single confession. The only way to heal the division was to practice toleration, accept diversity, and co-operate for a common mission. The ecumenical movement that came into being in the early twentieth century can be considered as another guise of apologetic mission. It objective was to defend the unity of the church. However, its concern was unity in service rather than unity in belief.