The dilemma of the Missionfield

It may sound old-fashioned, but, yes, Christians still talk about mission fields. And why not? They have no reason to shun the phrase. On many pages of the Bible they read about fields and harvests in connection with mission. In fact, Jesus himself was fond of the imagery of sending out workers into fields. He said, ‘Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.’ (Matthew 9: 38, NRSV)

The problem with the metaphor of mission fields is that it evokes at least three misconceptions in Christian minds. First, when Christians think about mission fields, they often envisage a faraway place: it takes a long and tough journey to get there. Secondly, mission fields are thought to be unknown territory. Only pioneers can wrestle their way in. Thirdly, mission fields are associated with hard labour. The pictures that come to mind are of people removing heavy rocks and ploughing through sticky soil.

Jesus painted a much brighter portrait of mission fields. The fourth chapter of the Gospel according to John reports Jesus’ sojourn in the land of the Samaritans. Although this land was right in the heart of Palestine, devout Jews would not step there, fearing ritual contamination. But Jesus did not exclude anybody from his mission and happily visited Samaria, taking along his grudging disciples. They could not believe that they were called to ministry in this place. But Jesus used their resentment to tell his them how to view mission fields. It was a lesson that the world missionary conference of Edinburgh 1910 badly needed to hear too.

Enjoy your mission  here and now

Jesus called his disciples to open their eyes to the mission fields around them. ‘I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.’ (John 4: 35) In other words: do not think of mission fields as something geographically or temporally distant. What matters is your situation here today! You may not expect your mission field to be so near. But is your presence here then without a purpose? You may prefer to think that your mission lies in some far away, unknown land. But are you not merely evading your responsibility to follow Christ here and now? 

A mission field here and now, does that disappoint you? Were you hoping to go to somewhere more spectacular and exotic? ‘Look around you and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.’ This is an exciting place to be! You are not even called to plough, to sow, or to wait for harvest season. Harvest season is here! Enjoy it! ‘I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’ (John 4: 38)

The dilemma: what is mission, what is church?

Like Jesus’ disciples, the members of Commission II of the Edinburgh 1910 conference struggled with the issue of ‘the church in the mission field’. The title given to the Commission confused the commissioners. They pondered: Where is that mission field? Is it only in Africa and Asia or also in other places? And when does the mission field stop being mission field? When does that transition from mission to church take place?

Unable to find a way out of the limbo, the commissioners courageously admitted their bewilderment. On the one hand, they said, ‘the whole world is a mission field, and there is no Church that is not a Church in the mission field. Some Christian communities are younger and some are older, but that is all the difference.’(The Church in the Mission Field, 4) On the other hand, they could not work with such a vague and general idea of the mission field. They decided to use two criteria to clarify what they meant by the term: the church in the mission field is ‘surrounded by a non-Christian community’ and ‘it is in close relation with an older Christian community from which it first received the truth, which stands to it in a parental relation’(The Church in the Mission Field, 5).

The mission field is out there

If only the members would have had the courage to live with an unresolved dilemma! But they were commissioned to give sensible advice on the organisation of the church in the mission field! That advice was not meant to deal with their own European and American churches, but with the churches in the colonized world. So they had to locate the mission field out there, even if they knew better. Their two contested criteria, a non-Christian society and a parent church, proved foundational. They would breathe a spirit of Western supremacy into all their deliberations.

Their first criterion betrayed that they considered European and American societies Christian societies, as opposed to the pagan societies of Africa and Asia. They stereotyped the cultures of Africa and Asia in a typically colonial fashion as dark heathenism, inhabited by wild and savage races. By doing so, they displayed a sense of cultural hierarchy. The Nigerian theologian Teresa Okure rightly asks: ‘Did Europe of the time, or of any other time, ever qualify as a Christian civilization in the Gospel sense of the word? Was Europe devoid of its own barbarism at the beginning of the twentieth century in decimating, plundering and despoiling Africa?’ (‘The Church in the Mission Field,’ 66)

This negative evaluation of African and Asian cultures in fact perpetuated the parent-child relation between ‘the church at home’ and ‘the church in the mission field’ – the second criterion. Elements from African and Asian cultures that entered church life had to be eradicated, for they represented paganism. The ‘younger churches’ certainly needed the help of the ‘older churches’ to fight this battle, the commissioners thought. One such element was polygamy, a certain sign of the degradation of pagan cultures. The members of Commission II described in great detail how churches in the mission field must deal with this issue.

Farsightedness

While busying themselves with the specks in the eyes of the churches in the mission fields, these white Western males of Edinburgh were unable to discern the beam of colonialism in their own eyes. It was to be their own loss. The churches in the mission field would choose their own path in the course of the 20th century. But the Europeans and Americans would be late to discover the mission fields around them.

They were late in discovering that they the church was more at home in the mission field than they had thought. And they sensed late that the mission field was in fact the context for their churches at home. Teresa Okure observes: ‘If the Church in any part of the world (north or south) fails to ask self-critical, faith-based questions in its own context, if it occupies itself only with monitoring other peoples, and if it exercises a supervisory role over their questions and presumes a superior right to judge their answers, then that Church has lost the sense of its Christian gospel life and mission… For too long the West has concentrated its energy on guiding the life of the young churches, neglecting itself.’ (‘The Church in the Mission Field,’ 70) Roland Allen too, in his prophetic book on missionary methods, writes about this, contrasting the mission of the western church with the mission of Paul and, I believe, the mission of Jesus:

‘St Paul’s method is not in harmony with the modern Western spirit. We modern teachers from the West are by nature and by training persons of restless activity and boundless self-confidence. We are accustomed to assume an attitude of superiority towards all Eastern peoples, and to point to our material progress as the justification for our attitude. We are accustomed to do things ourselves for ourselves, to find our own way, to rely upon our own exertions, and we naturally tend to be impatient with others who are less restless and less self-assertive than we are.

We are accustomed by long usage to an elaborate system of church organization, and a peculiar code of morality. We cannot imagine any Christianity worthy of the name existing without the elaborate machinery which we have invented. We naturally expect our converts to adopt from us not only essentials but accidentals. We desire to impart not only the Gospel, but the Law and the Customs. With that spirit, St Paul’s methods do not agree, because they were the natural outcome of quite another spirit, the spirit which preferred persuasion to authority.’ (Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours?, 6)

The commissioners of Edinburgh 1910 thought they were faced with a dilemma concerning the mission field. But it was in fact a false dilemma. For the mission field will always remain the mission field and the church will always remain the church. The church is in the mission field, always and everywhere. It is tempting to point to other places and cultures as mission fields, while feeling at home in one’s own place and culture. For it means we only need to convert others, instead of converting ourselves. In spite of the enormous changes in world Christianity, this temptation is still very much alive for Western Christians. But a hundred years on from Edinburgh, they cannot afford to give in to that temptation.

Literature:

Teresa Okure, (‘The Church in the Mission Field,’) in: David A. Kerr and Kenneth R. Ross, eds., Edinburgh 2010: Mission Then and Now, Oxford: Regnum Books, 2009, 59-73.

Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St Paul’s or Ours, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1962.

World Missionary Conference, 1910, Report of Commission II: The Church in the Mission Field, Edinburgh and London: Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier, 1910.