I spent the last three days in a meeting with a large number of people representing various missions, churches, and seminaries that work with lowland indigenous groups in Bolivia. There were gringos and other foreigners, urban “national” Bolivians, and a few indigenous Bolivians as well. There was also an indigenous Christian leader and a missions leader both from Brasil, who are both heavily involved in a Brasilian network of indigenous churches and another network of non-indigenous missions and churches that work in indigenous communities. The purpose of the visit from the Brasilians was to give us the historical context and current state of these networks and explain to us how they came about because the rest of us were gathered there to talk about forming a consortium or association among institutions dedicated to working with lowland indigenous groups in Bolivia. 

Since we work in that area, and since this group came together with the intention of working alongside the indigenous Christian leaders network we helped form, I thought it would be a good idea to attend. Actually, we helped plan the event. Now I know going into this that there would be present missionaries and Bolivian church leaders who do not understand missions the same way I do or who have not thought through the implications of their actions much, but I knew that the one thing we have in common is a passion to reach the same people with the Gospel. So I went along, and I was not disappointed by my expectations. In fact, what was before a suspicion of some of these people was fully confirmed as fact by day three. Many of these things are issues I have been chewing on for quite a while and which really came to a head this week, so what I have to say is not some knee-jerk reaction but a product of long hours of reflection and conversation with friends. This blog, then, is my attempt at the deconstruction of the dominant missionary discourse among traditional evangelical missions to indigenous groups. I’m warning you now, this will be a long post, so I will try to break it up with headings if you don’t want to sit and read it all right now. I hope you do finish it though.

HISTORY

Let’s start first with the missionaries understanding (or lack thereof) of history. One who spoke in the very first session this week mentioned that in the year 1900, 94% of “Christians” were in North America or Europe (or of European descent like the Australians) whereas today at least three-quarters of all Christians are from the global South (Latin America, Africa, Asia, Pacific). While his point that the demographics of the Body of Christ has changed dramatically in the last century is very true and very important to our understanding of the church today, it was obvious from his first statistic that the only Christians being counted were evangelicals. In 1900, almost the entire population south of the United States all the way to the tip of South America was Catholic, but apparently those don’t count. It became clear from the presentations of other missionaries and Bolivian pastors and teachers that they too considered that the gospel of Christ did not exist in Latin America until the arrival of North American evangelicals around the turn of the 20^th century.

This, of course, is absolutely false and very dangerous. This kind of narrative on Christian history is biased and creates a false notion that somehow the evangelical branch of the Christian church is the only true keeper of the Truth. This is dangerous because it allows for us then to draw lines elsewhere too. Where does it stop? Who made us the deciders of who is accepted as Christian or not? Aren’t we called NOT to judge? And what disturbs me the most about this attitude is that here we were sitting at a conference to talk about how to come alongside and support the indigenous church, but the very same people who stand to talk about how important it is to value our native brothers and sisters and “empower” them are either unable or unwilling to value other expressions of the Christian faith. If they cannot see the value in other European expressions of Christ which are culturally and historically much closer to them, where in the world are they going to find the ability to value indigenous expressions of Christ? Or can one choose to see one as valuable and the other as not with any integrity?

Another danger in taking this view is in the justification that many of the missionaries and Bolivian pastors make for their exclusion of the Catholics from Jesus’ fold. They say, well, there is a lot of syncretism and they drink a lot, and besides that there is such a terrible history of violence and oppression and of using force to convert and being a tool of the conquistadors to help Europe gain access to the riches of this continent which we are not any part of. We see here the danger of an ahistorical narrative of Christian history. First of all, we don’t have time here to go into the huge amount of church rituals and holidays we celebrate and take for granted as Christian which are syncretic with northern European pagan rituals and practices. So these missionaries first erase the historical account of their own tradition. Then, if we are unable to look back at the history of the Catholic evangelization of the continent, if we can’t see it and recognize that yes, these people were evangelized and they did hear in some form some part or whole of the Gospel that I profess to believe and also share, then we will be unable to learn from their mistakes. The attitude is that we don’t feel we need to say, “Let’s look at what went wrong here,” because whatever went wrong has nothing to do with us and we are going to be different. Perhaps this is a large reason why this past century of evangelical missions in Latin America has had many of the same results as the Catholics did in the last 5 centuries. We apparently don’t have anything to learn from the colonization of the Americas and the roles of the church in that brutality, so that leaves us open to repeat it in the 20^th century, and up until today.

Looking back today we now recognize that evangelical missionaries have been one of the main contributors of the destruction of indigenous identities, economies, practices, and knowledge in their attempt to “civilize” the natives as part and parcel of their evangelistic efforts. Sound familiar? I wonder if we would have been able to avoid that more if we would not have ignored the first 4 centuries of evangelization that the Catholics generally botched up.  This week I learned, sadly, that there is still a strong tendency in the evangelical world down here to think in this manner, but even worse, there is a strong push to cover up and ignore their own past. Many missionaries would admit that they made mistakes in the past, but I heard frequently this week of an urgent need to prevent the negative portrayal of missionaries that anthropologists display. Of course those anthropologists have their own agenda and own point of view like everyone does, but there was no attempt by the missionaries to take the critiques of anthropologists and see if any of them might hold water and look at how that might inform their practice to do better next time. Instead they just throw them all out in an effort to look better. So we see how they first ignore the Catholic history of this continent and then they repeat many of the same offenses in other guises, and then they choose to ignore that too once they see what went wrong. Does anyone think they might be setting themselves up to make the same mistakes again? Or because they refuse to be confronted with the negative impacts of their own well-intended actions could it be that they are now repeating those same mistakes already, just in yet another disguise? This is what I think is often times happening.

CODE WORDS

There were certain words I heard repeated often this week. Some of them I wondered if those using them really knew what they meant, but it began to dawn on me that whether the users knew what those words meant in some places, they had invested a certain meaning into those words to fit the needs of their narrative. The only problem is that many times their definitions left them with gaping holes or contradictions in their own narrative that they wanted to sell to the Bolivians there. The words, or phrases common to this particular missionary discourse are “empowerment,” “culture,” “partnership” or “we need each other” and “the three waves.”

                The three waves

The particular school of missions that participated in this discussion this week is very fond of talking about “the three waves” of evangelical missions to the world. The first wave, they say, is the North American and European missionaries who came to Latin America and other parts of the global South. The second wave of missions is the “nationals.” These are the urban, Westernized “mestizos” of Latin America who were first taught by the foreign missionaries and are now carrying out the work themselves to their neighbors. Finally the third wave is the indigenous people themselves going out to obey the great commission and make sure the gospel is preached to all peoples. They put a huge emphasis on the fact that today, in order to reach the very last remaining people groups who have not heard the gospel it is important that all three waves work together. So the phrase “we need each other” was almost always uttered in some form whenever they talked about the three waves and their function. Before getting into their “need” for each other I first want to address the issue of the three waves.

While at first glance this seems like a great description of the reality of the history of missions in Bolivia and much of Latin America, I think it is important to consider who we include in these waves. In my experience and observations here, those missions who use this kind of language do so because they have come to realize the importance of context in the work of evangelism and they realize that who better to evangelize a group than someone from that context? I completely agree. What I have a problem with is seeing this actually put into practice. Many of these missions will brag that the majority of their missionaries are now “nationals” or indigenous people. I totally agree with them that this is better in every way—in terms of time, money, resources, contextualization, etc. However, when I actually get to see these Bolivians in action, the sense that I get is that they are just North Americans with brown skin. Essentially, their teaching, their way of leading, the way they structure their church, their liturgy—everything is carried straight over. I am in no way saying that any of those expressions of the Church or faith are inherently wrong, just that they are not born out of any context relevant to life and culture here. There is very little room left for authentic expressions of faith to come from within those people who have been trained to replace the foreigners. So instead of the foreign missionaries actually valuing their native brothers and sisters in all their aspects like they claim, they still don’t trust them to think for themselves. What we have, then, are Bolivians, indigenous and non-indigenous, who have been trained to copy the way their foreign teachers do church and theology. So when these missionaries talk about the three waves and how effective indigenous people are at spreading the gospel to their own people, what they mean is “they are more effective than I am at convincing their own people to believe the way I want them to believe.” Is this really valuing the indigenous brother or sister as a human being made in God’s image and deserving of his love?

                We need each other (partnership)

This brings us back to how the missionaries claim that the three waves need to work together in order to be most effective. I have no problem with this claim in itself and I believe that it is true. In fact, one night I gave a talk on the interdependence of the Body of Christ. But the way that these people talk about needing each other made it clear that this was code for something else. Let me explain: The vast majority of the first evangelical missions here all came with the same egotistical and ethnocentric attitude that said, “You poor, ignorant, brutish people. Here, let me show you what you need to ‘better’ yourselves and then let me do it for you.” This idea of the three waves and their interdependence is meant to counter that attitude which many missionaries today, like the ones at this meeting, would say is obviously wrong. They now recognize that they can’t assume they know what the other person wants or needs. This is a very important step to make. However, that is as far as they seem to be willing to take it. So what the attitude of these missionaries and pastors now seems to be is, “instead of assuming what you need, you tell me what it is and I’ll see if I can get it for you.” I was talking in private with some of the indigenous leaders in the conference about this hidden discourse, which they seemed to see as well but were uneasy about pointing it out. But my suspicion became fact when during a question-and-answer time with the meeting speakers one pastor asked, “So let me get this straight. What we are about here is that the first and second waves need the third wave to let us know what their needs are so we can help meet those needs and thus strengthen the indigenous church because they are our best hope for reaching the last, unreached tribes?” All of the panelists shook their head in agreement.

They explicitly admitted that their “need” for the third wave is just to tell them what needs the third wave has so we can supply for those needs and for them to evangelize the groups the gringos have a hard time reaching. I do not think that helping meet the needs of our poorer brothers and sisters in Christ is wrong at all. In fact, scripture mandates that we do so. However, if the foreigners and the urban, Westernized Bolivians can only see their need for their indigenous sisters and brothers in those terms, then they truly have not learned to value or love them as human beings. In their great passion for reaching all peoples of the world with the Gospel, they are sacrificing the people they are purporting to reach out to, ignoring the image of God in each one of them. What is being communicated to the indigenous church is that, “you still need our theology, our economic resources, our contacts, our liturgy, etc., but we don’t need you to give us any of that because we already have plenty of it.” They have made “Evangelism” their god and they still consider themselves as better than the others just as the last generations of missionaries did; the only change is the mask they use to hide it. 

Our need for the Indigenous Church in reality goes much further than that. A short example (which I could draw out much longer if this wasn’t already forever long): As persons made in God’s own image, people of every society and culture, and even those cultures themselves, bear in them some piece of God’s truth—a revelation of his divine character. Also, because of our humanity and our limitedness as creatures on this earth we all have a point of view that we come from, which is where the beauty of the global church lays. As I get to know my sister from another culture and as I get to know about her culture and way of life, I get to learn something about God and his creation that I could never have discovered on my own from my own point of view and lived experience. So while, yes, it is true that the first and second waves need the third to reach the last unevangelized peoples of the world, it is also true that we need them to speak God’s truth into our own hearts, into our churches, and into our societies. If we took their theology as seriously as we take our own, the North American Church would be a very different place right now, and, to be honest, so would the Indigenous Church.

Taking this one step in the right direction and insisting on listening to the other at least gives the indigenous person the chance for their voice to be heard more than before, which gives them value, but to me what it seems to boil down to is that the missionaries are not willing to let that voice question their position of power in their relationship. They still put up boundaries around what they consider is worth listening to from their indigenous brother. Thus, we turn to the term “empowerment,” which was probably the most-used term after “three waves” the whole week.

                Empowerment

Right before lunch on the second day of this gathering, the moderator used an illustration to try to clarify exactly what the aim of this consortium we were talking about creating should be. He took two of the indigenous attendees, one to represent the third wave and one, “unreached” peoples. Then he grabbed one “mestizo,” urban professional Bolivian, and one white North American to represent the second and first waves. He explained again the concept of the three waves moving these people around in the center of the circle we were all sitting in. As he was concluding the illustration he said, “So the first and second waves are to partner together with the third wave in order to understand what the third wave’s needs are so they can then empower them to reach the unevangelized groups.” This is the way the word empowerment was used all three days, and it is very wrong. It was clear that empowerment was code for “the giving of resources” just as “we need each other” is code that the indigenous church has learned to use with these missionaries to say, “We need your economic resources.” From the way people talked these resources could be anything such as a theological system, teaching methods (These missions insist on the chronological Bible teaching method. I honestly am not qualified or experienced enough to judge if it is as great or effective and they say it is, but I find it interesting that all indigenous church leaders trained by these certain missions assume that that is the only appropriate way to teach the Bible. Whose voice is being heard here?), or technical training, but it mostly refers to economic resources.

The indigenous church is cash poor, however rich it is in many other ways. But the first and second waves are happy to “empower” them by providing more efficient modes of transportation, building churches, paying for VBS materials, paying for seminary training, or just paying them to preach and teach. Again, none of that is wrong and it often serves a very important role in the spread of the Gospel, but it is far from empowering and certainly not sustainable to depend economically and theologically on outsiders. Interestingly, the biggest problem identified by indigenous church leaders in Amazonian indigenous churches today, now that the first generation evangelized by the foreign missionaries is dying and most missions are leaving, is the lack of leadership developed from within the church itself and the general lack of interest in the church and its message from the newer generations. Could this be evidence that the missionaries intents to empower the indigenous church to propagate itself were really disempowering?  If the indigenous churches really were empowered, why do they tend to look (and often sound) like a copy of the white North American church?

                Culture

Now these missions and churches represented at this meeting would protest at my last comment. And I must recognize that they have come a very long way in recognizing that there is nothing inherently evil in indigenous cultural expressions such as dance, song, dress, etc. In fact they are very proud of promoting the recuperation of indigenous cultural expressions for the glory of God. This is wonderful and good and is an excellent way to begin to empower the indigenous church. One of the deepest wounds the missionaries gave the indigenous church in Latin America was to say that their cultural expressions are Satanic and evil and that the missionaries’ cultural expressions are godly. This still is being taught by many missionaries today, but there are many like the ones gathered at this meeting that recognize this is wrong. However, there seemed to me to be a tendency to limit the concept of culture to just these outward, concrete expressions of the people. Culture is something much deeper and pervasive than that. It shapes the way we think and perceive the world around us and interpret everything that happens to us, including our biblical hermeneutics and practice of the Christian life. But what I saw this week is that the missionaries and churches were in no way willing to cede that their theology and that many of their cultural values and even material things are just points of view and that other points of view might also have value. I do not mean to belittle the missionaries’ point of view or say that it is wrong. I know that it has many true things to share. But it is still a human, fallen perspective just like every other. It was clear that when they spoke about “contextualizing” the gospel into the local culture, it just meant they should respect and get to know the people’s way of thinking and in doing so we can more effectively encase the message we want to transmit to them in a way they understand. In other words, the value of the other culture is simply in its utility for the missionaries to effectively share what they believe is important to give to the indigenous people. There is no value seen in the culture beyond that and thus they are essentially not valuing the persons who are a part of that culture.

I do believe that contextualizing the gospel is absolutely vital to the sharing of the gospel, but the message that they want to share is not just the gospel. It includes all their doctrinal and denominational and liturgical preferences which come encased in a certain historical, cultural, and social point of view which is foreign to the people they are evangelizing. This is the problem with reducing culture to external material and social expressions such as art, song, dance, food, etc. I blinds us to the fact that while we encourage the indigenous church to redeem these things in their church in light of the gospel, at the same time we are demanding that they learn to see and interpret scriptures (and the rest of life) from our own perspective, which we see as more valuable and important. In the end, does the indigenous believer feel valued and loved for who they are under these circumstances?

CONCLUSION

I could go on. And I will if anyone has any questions, comments, or critiques, but I want to conclude with this:

I believe that these missions are doing a sincere and great work. I believe that God has and will continue to work through them. I believe that they are much closer to treating the indigenous church as full, participating, equally-valuable members of the Body of Christ than many other missions and churches. But I think they still lack an ability to critically reflect on their own actions and to consider their own presuppositions and values in how they may affect the people that they seek to share God’s love with and because of that the indigenous people the y seek to reach may not see God’s love as clearly as intended, or the work may not endure to future generations due to still present paternalistic and colonialist mentalities masked with the language of partnership, cooperation, and cheap empowerment.

Perhaps the true test of where we actually place our heart is this: If a missionary who has spent most of his or her life in the field is able and willing to reevaluate their life’s work and accept that they made a lot of mistakes (maybe even wasted a large part of their life’s efforts) and that they may need to start completely over again from zero (which is the reality in many indigenous tribes in Bolivia), that is someone who values Christ and his Kingdom above all else. But, if the cognitive dissonance is too great for them to overcome and they continue to practice mission the way they always have and refuse to admit their mistakes and learn from them (as in the case we have looked at) then it seems to me that they value their own human efforts over Christ and the people they are supposedly sent to share Christ’s love with.

I know this might upset some people, but these are things I have learned here and I think need to be said. It is important for me to humbly recognize that I am also human, make mistakes, and don’t have all the answers. I simply hope that we can have a true dialogue in the church about these issues rather than surrounding ourselves with people who think alike and will not challenge us in our comfortable presuppositions.