Western Individuality in Mission

I talk to many young adults who are preparing for overseas cross-cultural service. Many of them have a specific skill which they would like to use to serve God, such as IT, or teaching, or some social development work. It is great to see their passion for God. A trend that I have noticed is that many of them desire to go quite independently and have no real desire to join up with a mission agency. Some of them have already spent time in their target country learning language and don't really feel a strong need to join up with an agency with all the extra costs and procedures that they would have to go through. After all, why not just go and let God take care of the rest? Belonging to an agency can sometimes seem very restrictive. Sometimes their churches are happy to support them and give them official endorsement, although I have had phone calls from pastors who are concerned at the lack of accountability and transparency in sending them with out an organization caring for them.

Anna was a young lady who traveled to South East Asia and ended up working in an orphanage there. She was good at language and quickly learned to speak to the children, and made a valuable contribution to the work of the orphanage. After working there for three years she returned home to her church in order to raise support to return to the orphanage for another three years. Her pastor had been a overseas missionary and advised her that she would need to find a mission agency before the church would make a formal pledge to support her financially and in prayer. Anna was very upset that the church would place these kinds of conditions on her when she had already proven herself in the ministry and had a strong desire to go back to the orphanage in the next few months. When she talked to a few mission agencies she found out that the total budget that she would have to raise was much bigger than she would need to live and eat. It would also take almost a year to apply and even longer if she did not get enough pledges of financial support. It just seemed so unfair and unnecessary to have to go through the rigmarole of applying to the agency, raising more funds than she needed and even then there was no guarantee that they would place her in the orphanage where she
wanted to work.

I have to say that I am really happy to see the entrepreneurial spirit of people who are willing to risk all for Jesus and attempt a new venture in a foreign culture. At the same time I'm worried about the outcomes of young Western men and women going "alone" without the endorsement of a credible agency. For a start it is a very Western way of going about things in such an independent fashion. I know that in an Asian culture it seems very strange for someone to start their own project without having the proper networks in place to succeed. A young person will usually be very much a part of their group of friends and is very influenced by their family in what they do and how they go about it. So to see a Western man or woman coming along without "belonging" anywhere can be a real hindrance because they don't really "fit". It can be hard to find a proper place in the community without having a network to fit into. Of course some will succeed, but it will often take a lot longer without having others in place who can introduce you to the right people and commend you to the work that you are going to do. In patriarchal societies that we often find in Asian, have these referrals can be invaluable. When I taught English to Theological students their first question was what agency I belonged to. When I told them, they clapped their hands with delight because they knew that all the workers with our agency were able to speak their language well. I had instant credibility because of the organisation I belonged to, and I was invited to do this ministry because of it.

One of the chief dangers of "going alone" is lack of accountability. I appreciate the many times that older missionaries in my organization have pointed out to me how I could have done things differently or looked at things in another way. When I slouched in a meeting showing how bored I was an older brother came and pointed out that it was not an appropriate way to sit in that culture. If you are part of an organisation then this kind of correction is bound to happen, because what you do affects the credibility and the effectiveness of everyone else. If I am alone I don't have access to good models of ministry, and training to do things well in the same way. We may find people who will be willing to help us, but they may not be willing to risk the relationship by telling us that we have offended someone or that what we are doing is culturally inappropriate. While Anna may have been a good language learner in her own eyes, there may have been areas where her language or manner may have come across as inadequate, inappropriate or even impolite. Because the people she was working with looked up to her, they were not going to give her any of this feedback, which would feed her own illusion that she was doing well when in reality there were some issues in her language and manners that she really needed to work on. This lack of accountability can have some terrible consequences in leading to unresolved conflict and tension and can make the cross-cultural worker feeling betrayed or blind-sided when it blows up. Having older, more experienced workers who give feedback and direction when needed can help to diffuse conflict and tension before they get out of hand. 

In extreme cases, independent Christian workers can feel that they are not accountable to anyone, not even God. In one case there was a conflict in an orphanage where it had become obvious that the male leader had been sexually abusing some of the children. Because he was independent and in charge of the project, none of the employees were willing to make a statement against him because they would have lost their jobs and were not willing to implicate their boss. The leader refused to leave. There was no organization to step in and take appropriate action to have him removed, and the churches that were sending him money from his home country had no idea what was going on.

Maybe we need to have a more collective approach to the way that we do mission? Having a very individualistic attitude in going as a Christian worker to another country can have unforeseen consequences. There is a reason why agencies have a much longer life than the individuals that belong to them, and we need to recognize the importance of belonging to a credible agency that can introduce us to and show us the way in a new culture.