One of my readers requested that I look specifically at colonial mental models in mission theory and terminology. As I have been thinking about how best to process this, I thought that rather than jumping straight away into deconstructing something that it might be more helpful to focus on building a healthy missiology, and in doing so, strive to identify some common colonial traps.
Missiology is, at its core, the study of mission as it relates to God and theology. It involves everything from the Biblical mandates and examples to the history of mission in the church. It is a broad topic, in that regards, and covers the good, bad and extremely ugly of what’s been done.
It is a topic that has also been heavily abused and co-opted. It is important to say from the start that missiology is not an excuse to colonize. It shouldn’t ever be used as justification for civilizing people or westernizing people or modernizing people. This is a bit of a challenge because missionary work is so often in the hands of the colonizer and even where we mean well, problems can happen.
As I was processing these things, I was reminded of an article by Matthew Parris, an atheist journalist who wrote that he believed “Africa needs God.” And why? Was it because of the saving grace of Jesus and hope found in His kingdom? Not exactly. Rather it was the way a “post-reformation” Christianity cuts throw the need for a collective (and in so doing, “crushes tribal groupthink”). Such explicit (and modern - the article is from 2008) attempts to use missiology as a westernization tool is what we have to dismantle. To be perfectly clear - this isn’t an attempt to say that Jesus won’t change people (He does! I’m an example of that!) but rather to highlight how easily missiology is subverted.
I think core to this issue is that the Bible is seen as produced from the west and is predominantly interpreted from the west. At least this is the perception created and perpetuated that that is the only interpretation that matters. I remember meeting with an East African leader (not someone I regularly engaged) who asked if I could get them the latest Andy Stanley book. I asked “why?” and he expressed the need to read the work of American leaders to succeed in ministry at a macro (national and global) level. And then if I think back more than a decade to my own bookshelf (even after I knew I would be moving to South Africa), it was predominantly composed of books by white American men. These are again clear examples of colonial problems in missiology created by the perceptions we create. Dr. Vince Bantu expands on this issue in his book, A Multitude of All Peoples, which is well worth a read.
As a brief side note, I have found one extremely healthy way forward is to become conversant with liberation theology. I realize that combination of words is a bogeyman in evangelical circles but we should really get over it. Its head-on approach to addressing power dynamics is important to acknowledge in intentional decolonizing work. Its political nature also strives to capture what it means be in God’s kingdom rather than the world’s kingdom. This matters because politics actually _do matter (_just maybe not in the way we think - I’m not talking party politics here). Colonialism is an inherently political issue and Jesus is inherently political (despite what some might say - His message is the establishment of a kingdom that stands counter to the world’s kingdoms after all). Words like “oppressed” and “oppressor” and “systemic” and “institutionalized sin” tend to threaten American evangelical sensibilities though (even if they shouldn’t). A deeper awareness of these issues serves to deepen our missiological engagement.
To build on this, a really fascinating phenomena to check out is the development and proliferation of “basic ecclesial communities” alongside the development and deepening of liberation theology in South America. Basic ecclesial communities are small groups of people that get together to read and apply scripture to daily life that organically replicated. It mirrors what most of us reading this newsletter would call Disciple Making Movements; the book Ecclesiogenesis by Leonardo Boff is an important read regarding this aspect of liberation theology. And it’s something that has spread throughout the globe in liberationist settings.
I say all that as potential discussion launching points. As I said in the opening of this particular newsletter though, I would like to take some time to develop a healthy missiology (rather than spend all of my time deconstructing what is or focusing on other -ologies solely). To do that I am planning to take some time to engage some key Biblical stories. In part, I plan to engage the following in coming newsletters:
- Creation and the original mandate for mission
- Jonah’s struggle with Nineveh
- Jesus’ incarnation and kenosis
- Jesus’ message that the kingdom is at hand
- Luke 10 and those Jesus sent
- What Revelation might say
These likely won’t be all of the stories I engage; there are a few others that I’m actively wrestling with as well. But this provides a starting point, I think.