Am I a vulnerable missionary?

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By Dr. Jim Harries ⋅ August 20, 2008 ⋅

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(’Vulnerable mission’ here defined as mission work that uses the language of the people being reached, and that does not invest foreign resources in ministry.)

Missionaries may not take kindly to the suggestion that they are not sufficiently ‘vulnerable’ to the people. Setting up an ‘Alliance for Vulnerable Mission’ (see www.vulnerablemission.com…) is implying this. Is the Alliance condemning missionaries and cross-cultural workers of invulnerability?

An apparent contradiction in work in the ‘poor world’ such as Africa is that while the Bible advocates humility, Western Christians are seen as having, or being, the key to the solution of people’s problems. This through knowledge of a superior language, superior medical practice, superior education or technology, access to vast superior resources or even the superior power to lobby important political actors. The solutions that Westerners have to other people’s problems often seem to be urgently needed. The nationals of the countries being reached will go along with this urgency. They will often also acknowledge the superiority of the Western missionary. All this makes it hard to be ‘vulnerable’.

The reasons nationals, at least apparently, often agree with Western missionary superiority are many:

1. Whatever the missionary wants to do almost invariably involves money. Then various people stand to benefit regardless of the actual objectives of the activity concerned.

2. Because culturally it can be considered rude or offensive not to encourage someone in what they have set out to achieve.

3. In a world dominated by the West, Western missionaries are often in powerful influential positions.

4. (related to 2.) Financial and cultural dependence often obliges nationals to go along with a foreigner.

Western missionaries failure to be vulnerable is not by intent. They have the best of intentions. It is rather due to enormous pressure from all quarters, from home, field, nationals, missionary training college, etc., to urgently implement the ’superior’ product that they have in hand.

The superior product, be it medicine, theological education, dairy project, or whatever, is invariably formulated in the West and invariably operates in English or another European language.

Involvement in this superior product as a result makes it hard for missionaries to become a part of the local language community. Once the superior product is set up missionaries become the key people responsible for its success. They understand the superior product better than the locals because it is of ‘foreign’ design, so they usually have to be the ‘boss’. Missionaries are held accountable by donors for the success of their projects. Local people know it is in their interests not to keep the ‘boss’ too closely informed lest that should cause a problem with funding.

To avoid such dilemmas requires a denial of the inherent superiority of one’s own culture, language, people, procedures and so on, and a refusal to get caught up in providing urgent solutions to what are clearly long-term problems or issues.

A vulnerable missionary is not a bridge to the West for those hunting for dollars. A conscious refusal to solve problems using foreign money is required. Also, a refusal to communicate using international languages in favour of ‘doing things as locals do’, all this over an extended period.

My reader may object that a Westerner has by following the above erased the usefulness that he/she could have offered to a community. Indeed, in so far as foreignness is advantageous, to an extent a VM (vulnerable missionary) does this. Then he/she ends up on a level playing field with the locals, meaning that what they do, locals can also do, so it can be imitated. What marks out the VM from locals should, if anything, be their Christian faith, meaning that what they testify to is Christ, and not the superiority of Western ways.

As I follow the above guidelines, my own vulnerability arises from my refusal to jump in and solve people’s problems or to implement projects using resources of a non-indigenous origin. I am very slow to use foreign money or a foreign language to solve a problem. Conventional foreign-based avenues of operation are closed to me. I have to depend on the whim of local people to decide whether they will work with me, instead of paying them salaries or ’support’. I have to use the local language, as I have no choice but to work in local ways and link in with the local system.

Not using foreign resources to ease my task means that I run into all the obstacles that trouble local people, and more because my skin colour identifies me with ignorance.

Hence things can move incredibly slowly. But this means that what I do local people can imitate. It puts me constantly into a position of vulnerability where I need people’s freely offered help in order to ’succeed’. It means that I get constant practice in the local language.

My vulnerability to the local community arises from my being heavily dependent on them for what I do. I have also become vulnerable to Westerners, as I have allowed the foreign African ways to encroach on my heart and my mind. That is, I no longer stand entirely with the West looking over at Africa, so neither can I agree with all the West does or wants to do. Neither am I entirely with the Africans. I guess I am somewhere in-between.

(Note the above does not mean that I can operate without Western finding. I use outside funding for myself and a few children who I live with, but as minimally as possible for my other activities and especially Bible teaching and church ministry. The latter then remains independent of my finances.)

Vulnerable mission is like slogging one’s way through a jungle on foot, whereas conventional mission from the West can be flying over the jungle quickly to where one wants to go. The latter gets things done, and often quickly, but does not leave tracks that locals can subsequently follow.

For details of forthcoming vulnerable missions conferences, see www.vulnerablemission.com….