A Nigerian lab technician serves in Malawi, and an Indian dentist shares Christ’s love in Liberia. Missionaries are increasingly coming from new sending countries in the Global South. As God raises missionaries worldwide, the future of Christian mission will undoubtedly be more diverse and international.
Medical missionary Matthew Loftus wrote, “It is exciting to see how missionaries from non-Western countries are aggressively working to fulfill the Great Commission in ways that seemed unthinkable a century ago. Yet, questions of fairness, parity, cross-cultural teamwork, and funding are pressing. How can legacy mission organizations, particularly those exclusively US-based, integrate and partner with these new workers well? As the proportion of Westerners among medical missionaries shrinks, what do we need to do differently so that we do not make life harder for our brothers and sisters than it needs to be?”
These are broad and important questions. God is sending his people to reach communities without Christ from every nation to every nation. It is no longer “from the West to the rest” but from anywhere to anywhere. Let me sketch out three ways SIM has tried adapting to the challenges and opportunities, under the headings of 1. Culture, 2. Organization, and 3. Vision. This blog will only be an introduction. I want to go deeper in future blogs by responding to your comments.
Culture and diversity
Matthew’s question implies that Western (especially American) missionaries make life harder for our brothers and sisters from non-Western contexts. Yes, many times we do make life harder, often unconsciously! Our cultural assumptions can lead to cross purposes. Conflicting perspectives can become an anchor dragging a team backwards.
SIM health and development missionaries met together for a conference with their African colleagues in a training meeting in Nairobi in the early 1990s. David van Reken, an American SIM pediatrician, had just written a Billy Graham monograph on the future of medical missions; he painted a picture of moving from doing to training, then progressing to enabling national co-workers. As a Western mission agency, SIM took baby steps to work with non-Western colleagues. After some helpful conversation, the Africans asked to see SIM’s “secret manual.”
“What?” they were told. “No such secret manual exists!” SIM leaders responded. “Why would you think SIM has a secret manual?”
Our African colleagues continued to insist that there must be a secret manual.
“Why?” they were asked.
They responded, “Because every new generation of medical missionaries keeps making the same mistakes!”
Some of SIM’s mistakes included:
- Superior attitude
- Pushiness
- Colonialist, master-servant attitudes
- [Having] hands in pockets when worshiping or praying
- Not taking time to greet, befriend, and eat with partners
- Not sharing one’s own time, life, family
- Not taking time [avoiding] African doctors in the hospital
Despite our technical skills and training, Western medical missionaries can come with cultural blinders.
“The secret manual”
Lingenfelter and Green’s Teamwork Cross-Culturally redefines mission “not just as a project to be accomplished but as a place where all involved need to learn and demonstrate a kingdom lifestyle through a radical pursuit of unity amid diversity.” His book puts discipleship at the center of mission.
Lingenfelter points out that in the book of Nehemiah, God used the task of building the temple to disciple the people to worship and walk with Him. We tend to think the task is central and the people are peripheral. But God used the task to build the people. Developing people is what discipleship is all about.
Here’s another cultural assumption that gets in the way of fruitfulness. Too many of us medical folk feel that our call to missions is for us personally, not a call to a team. We act as if it were “my” mission instead of “ours”. Lingenfelter said, “Anyone who does not think they are called to a body is just wrong.” In response to this drive to individualism. SIM developed multicultural team workshops about 15 years ago. In these workshops, SIM missionaries from different cultures shared their perspectives on everyday issues, including vacations, leadership styles, and prayer.
As medical professionals, we are trained in a very task-oriented environment, which can reinforce some of our cultural biases toward achieving success. American culture, especially, can be arrogant, me-centered, energetic, and problem-oriented. The good news is that God uses our colleagues to shape and grow us, especially in our relationships with colleagues from other cultures. God uses the tasks and challenges to grow the team.
As we tackle challenges together – even through conflict — we can create new mission patterns for Christ-centered healthcare.
Organization and diversity
Learning to serve Christ as a diverse mission takes more than good multicultural teamwork. Changes must occur at the organizational level. Mission leadership must want a more international vision. Our organizations must believe that healthy diversity in mission is His agenda, not merely a response to the practical realities of our world.
SIM is an evangelical mission organization once dominated by North Americans but is now increasingly multinational. I don’t just mean we have British, South Africans, and Koreans working with Americans and Canadians. We have intentionally become a mission where Bolivian, Ethiopian, and Central Asian missionaries can serve shoulder-to-shoulder with those from the “West.” Our support structures have had to change so that these brothers and sisters are supported at a financially viable level. Our sending structures around the world have been strengthened. Our leadership is becoming increasingly diverse.
“Strengthened through diversity”
Over the past three or four decades, SIM has been more intentional about pursuing one of its core values: strengthened through diversity. “We are intentionally international, multiethnic, and interdenominational because we believe this best expresses the unity of the body of Christ in the world.” We have much more to learn, but we are happy to share what we have with others, including what we’ve learned from our mistakes.
Missiologist Alex Douglas said, “[SIM] broadened its approach to a new model for mission which supported missionaries from new sending nations.” His research into SIM explores “the governance and structural changes implemented to move from a shareholder to a stakeholder model of governance [to] give voice to an increasingly diverse workforce.” For an in-depth look, see “SIM – strengthened through diversity? An examination of the origins and effects of cultural diversity within a multi-national Christian mission agency 1975-2015.”
What needs to happen in your organization to encourage diversity for the sake of the kingdom of God?
Vision and diversity
How do we create a shared future vision with non-Western medical missionaries and agencies? Diversity is not a vision, but a means to a more effective Christ-centered vision. Building relationships of trust comes first, starting with humble service alongside each other and tackling everyday issues in delivering care. Vision is built out of genuine collaboration.
But collaboration alone is not enough, even diverse collaboration. Unity and integration of vision must come from a common understanding of Scripture. Jesus preached and healed as an integrated whole. As God establishes his church among the nations of the earth, people of each nation and culture contribute something essential to our journey of integrating faith and healthcare.
“Diversity itself is not a vision”
Our modern Western worldview tends to split sacred and secular. Modern medicine typically compartmentalizes faith and healthcare. (See my book Healthcare and the Mission of God.) The stress of providing good medical care in a resource-poor environment raises all sorts of practical and ethical issues. Tackling those issues (the task) by exploring Scripture together allows us to develop a common, Biblical approach to our problems and a Christ-centered vision.
Learning the history of God’s work can also inspire us. A helpful exercise in our Christian Global Health in Perspective course has been asking our doctor and nurse participants to discover and share the roots of medical missions in their own countries. How did Christian missions begin? What stories can inspire us? How has the church helped shape medical care in my country?
As medical professionals, our job is to take the time to build trusting relationships with believers from all over the world. Love for one another allows us to use our challenges to create a genuinely international and biblical mission and vision. It promotes the integration of healthcare and the gospel. This way, Jesus will display His glory and proclaim His name in communities that are still broken and suffering.
What is your perspective? How do we “make life harder for our brothers and sisters than it needs to be”? What must we consider to move forward together?
Leave a Reply