It has been said that the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn anything from history. A follow-up statement to that is that history does repeat itself — and that is because we weren’t listening the first time! If we look back through the history of the advancement of the Christian faith, we can see a lot of lessons about what we should have been doing and what we shouldn’t have been doing; unfortunately, we can see that we often didn’t catch on the first time round and we kept on making the same mistakes over and over. Maybe we have been a lot like the six blind men who came to seean elephant. The first took hold of the pachyderm’s trunk and proclaimed, “Oh, an elephant is just like a snake.” The next one touched his tusk and decided that his subject was similar to a spear. Blind man number three reached out and found the giant’s ear and surmised that a palm leaf was the best analogy he could make. The next guy blindly stumbled into the elephant’s side and assumed that the creature was like a brick wall. Number five, groping in his darkness, wrapped his arms around the monstrous leg of the animal and declared that it was just like a tree. The last visually deprived man found the mammal’s tail and pronounced that a rope was a fitting description of the beast. These six unfortunate evaluations of the elephant stand as fitting representations of six major misconceptions that have permeated the history of Christian missionary endeavors.
The first is an emphasis on numbers rather than people. Though not to place all the blame on one particular group, we can see some extreme examples of this in Catholic missions around the world. From the time that Constantine marched the Roman army through the river and declared them baptized members of the church and when Charlemagne insisted that conquered German tribes accept Christianity as part of the terms of peace, the pattern of mass conversion has persisted in their ranks. This has resulted in millions of people becoming Christian in name only, superficially following the practices of the church while still holding to their pagan belief systems and actually continuing their pagan rituals under the guise of Christianity. For example, there is a major Catholic church in Mexico which is built on the foundation of an ancient temple dedicated to a pagan virgin goddess. The worship that goes on there is still the same that it has been for centuries, only the name of the goddess has been changed to Mary. During the Lent and Easter season in the Philippines, the “flagelantes” — who practice flogging themselves and even subjecting themselves to crucifixion to atone for their sins — make a great public display of their suffering. This is simply an ancient pagan ritual reworked to incorporate symbols from the story of the passion of our Lord. In Haiti and in some parts of Africa, many of the Catholic clergy double as the local voodoo priests.
Now, to refocus the spotlight, let’s take just one quick example of the same error in the Protestant world. Evangelicals have long loved Haiti because it is a third-world nation just a short hop from our shore. For a relatively small financial investment and just a few hours of travel time, evangelists can visit the island, hold a rally, take lots of impressive pictures, and return home with enough photos and stories to fill their newsletters and raise plenty of money for their ministries. In fact, this practice was so popular at one time that a student of missions decided to investigate what was really happening. He discovered that there were actual organized schemes in the country to make money by putting on rallies and that some people essentially made their living by attending crusades because the organizers would give them food and aid for being present. He also took all the articles published by all the evangelists who had held crusades in Haiti and added up the numbers of salvations they claimed. The result was that over one hundred percent of the population should be born-again Christians. Well, I’ve been to Haiti several times — and I can personally guarantee you that the total population definitely is not saved!
The second misconception that has plagued historical missionary activity has been the transmission of culture rather than Christ. We have taught the nationals to become Westerners rather than Christians. In most of the mission fields where I have ministered, I find exactly the same denominations that I left behind in America. It is almost impossible to imagine native pastors wearing suits and ties in the steaming tropics. I wonder what must have been going on in the heads of the missionaries and their converts when they forsook the comfortable national costumes in order to conform to the stereotypical image of a Western Christian! No wonder Christianity has been called the white man’s religion. It is understandable why many nations ousted missionaries and Christianity when they gained independence because Christianity was so linked with America or Europe. The Apostle Paul had the right methodology in the New Testament times when he became all things to all men that he might win them to Christ (I Corinthians 9:22). In the same manner, we have modern-day examples of men who transcended the mindset of the typical Western missions organization and proved to us that it is possible to be a Christian without becoming a Westerner. These were men such as Matteo Ricci, Robert De Nobili, and Hudson Taylor who adopted the dress and lifestyle of the locals. We also have great national leaders such as Sadhu Sindar Sing who became a powerful Christian leader but maintained a totally Indian lifestyle and method of practicing and spreading his faith.
Fortunately, mission work today has realized the value of maintaining the indigenous culture when establishing national churches. In the churches of Nepal, for example, they sit on the floor with the women all on one side of the center aisle and the men on the other. Many of the songs are written to native tunes rather than translations of Western hymns. The preaching is a form of storytelling which is familiar to their culture rather than the Western point-by-point explanation. The national culture is preserved in traditional plays or dramas in keeping with the customary form of communicating cultural heritage. In fact, when the accusation is made today that missionaries are destroying the culture of the people, I often counter with proof that we are actually preserving the cultural heritage while the loss of culture should be attributed to Western television and movies that entice the locals to adopt a new lifestyle.
The third flaw has been the acceptance of involvement instead of insistence upon commitment. When conversions are forced as we saw in the case of the American Indians and the conquistadors and when conversions are a matter of convenience as with the politically correct decisions that were made in many European countries and during the time of Constantine or when the British government in Ceylon gave positions to those who accepted the Christian faith, the conversions are like the seeds in Jesus’ parable that spouted in the shallow soil (Mark 4:5-6); they are only superficial and will not stand when adversity arises. This was exactly the reason that General MacArthur insisted that the Japanese nation not accept Christianity by an act of parliament, but by individual acts of repentance.
Unfortunately, the church as a whole has not had this revelation and we still have a tendency to raise up multitudes of “rice Christians” who accept the faith after they have been given some form of humanitarian aid. No, we should not abandon the enterprise of feeding the poor and helping the needy; these are the exact activities that Jesus will use to judge our sincerity to Him. (Matthew 25:35-36) However, we must learn to teach the converts to truly accept the Giver rather than just His gifts — not an easy task because even in our own lives we have a tendency to seek His hand more fervently than we seek His face. Currently there is a tremendous thrust being made by anti-Christian forces in many areas of the world to accuse Christians of proselytizing by bribing people to become Christians. Large numbers of people are being “re-converted” to Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism as a result of these efforts. As sad as the stories are and as tragic as the persecutions have been, one important lesson has come out of this current wave — the realization that extreme caution must be taken not to even vaguely associate any material or social advantage with the call to salvation. This clear-cut distinction is not only necessary to protect the mission work from anti-Christian accusation, it is also necessary for the integrity of the message itself.
A fourth fault has been the confusion of emotion with understanding. In many cultures it is easy to excite people’s emotions and draw a response from them. However, true conversion is based on a decision made through a true knowledge of the gospel. Jesus asked those who would come to Him to take His yoke upon them and “learn of me.” (Matthew 11:29) Conversion that comes through emotion will last only as long as the emotion does; however, salvation based on knowledge will stand as long as the truth it is built upon does.
A number of years ago, I was traveling through Japan, ministering in various cities. It just so happened that my schedule seemed to follow almost exactly the itinerary of a couple of well-known American ministers who were reporting tremendous results in their crusades. The stories of the many hundreds of Japanese who were coming to the Lord had been some of the most sensational news in Christian circles around the world. Knowing that this sort of explosive growth was uncharacteristic in Japan, I began to investigate to see what was really happening. When I asked some of the pastors and leaders who had been involved in the crusades, I began to get responses like, “Not one person who came to the Lord in those meetings was an outsider. We brought them all.” Japanese do not make emotional on-the-spur-of-the-moment decisions; they slowly consider all the options and hold off on making a choice until they are fully convinced that what they are doing is reasonable and logically flawless. What had happened in these meetings was that seekers who had spent weeks, months, even years under the tutelage of believers came to the meetings already convinced in their hearts that the Christian message was the truth, and the message of the American evangelist simply proved to be the catalyst to help them make a public confession of their faith. If we look through the record of the Christian mission work, we can see time and time again where the work grew initially and then faltered because the converts had come through an emotional response but lacked the solidity of a true understanding of their faith.
The fifth error has been in substituting “followship” for leadership. When the Jesuits were evicted from South America, the work they had established disappeared because local leadership had not been trained up. David Livingstone lamented about this situation in his mission work, “I have utterly failed to develop Christian leadership among the tribes. To my disappointment and chagrin, I cannot even get one person out of the evangelized tribes to travel with me and bring the Gospel to another tribe fifty miles away. May God forgive me for this lack.” However, other areas of the world have seen missionaries come and go but the church remain because the missionaries took the time to reduplicate themselves in the local people. When the white man disappeared, the gospel remained because it was now embodied in black and brown flesh. Africa, for instance, is more than fifty percent Christian and well on its way to becoming a Christian continent — not because of what missionaries are doing, but be cause of what they have done in teaching others how to carry it on.
The final mistake I’d like to discuss is confusing action and reaction. Mission work is not to be a reaction to poverty, paganism, disease, slavery, or any of the other bondages that plague the world; rather, our call to the nations must be an action taken in response to the Great Commission. From Paul who said, “I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die…for the name of the Lord Jesus,” (Acts 21:13) to the Moravian brothers who were willing to be sold into slavery, to the brave souls of the Great Century who proclaimed, “Let a thousand fall before Africa be given up,” to you and me today — the story of successful Christian mission is birthed in the hearts of those who have forsaken all for the call of Christ. Though most of the world sings with Tony Bennett, “I left my heart in San Francisco,” the world is being changed by men and women like David Livingstone who had his heart removed and buried in Africa because he had given his heart totally to Christ and left it where Christ had called him.
On a contrasting note, let me add that there may also be many misconceptions from outsiders who view missions work from a secular viewpoint as simply being another form of humanitarian aid project of education, health, or relief. A power corrective to this distorted concept was recently published by a native African who revisited his homeland after more than a quarter century’s absence. The amazing reality about his observations is that the author was an atheist — yet, in spite of his atheism, he could clearly see the difference between the Christian missionary’s influence and the impact of mere secular aid.
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem — the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset…Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good…Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers — in some ways less so — but more open…Those who want Africa to walk tall amid twenty-first-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know how that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted…And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone, and the machete.