0 évaluation0% ont trouvé ce document utile (0 vote)
264 vues3 pages
How do we balance the urgency of the task with the need for cross-cultural training? missionary attitudes can create dependence, says glenn schwartz. Good solid missionary training might take several years of concentrated effort. "Come study with us and begin your cross-cultural ministry now," he says.
How do we balance the urgency of the task with the need for cross-cultural training? missionary attitudes can create dependence, says glenn schwartz. Good solid missionary training might take several years of concentrated effort. "Come study with us and begin your cross-cultural ministry now," he says.
How do we balance the urgency of the task with the need for cross-cultural training? missionary attitudes can create dependence, says glenn schwartz. Good solid missionary training might take several years of concentrated effort. "Come study with us and begin your cross-cultural ministry now," he says.
This is an article from the May-June 1998 issue The Mission to the Aucas.
May 01, 1998 by Glenn Schwartz
How Missionary Attitudes Can Create Dependency The Sense of Urgency Regarding the Task If the demeanor of the missionary is so important, it points to the importance of cross-cultural training. But how do we balance the urgency of the task with the need for adequate cross- cultural training? Or how do we balance the urgency of the task with waiting for local initiative to develop? Let me suggest something which may help to move us in this direction. Assume that all who are preparing for cross-cultural ministry accept that they need cross-cultural training. (I wish that were true, but lets assume it anyway.) Good solid missionary training might take several years of concentrated effort, if not a life-long commitment. Several weeks of training are only immunization which convince missionary candidates that they have had enough of that; now they can get on with ministry. Little wonder they dont have the patience to wait for local initiative to develop. Some of this tension might be resolved if those who are committed to the urgency of the task will also commit themselves simultaneously to the training. Fortunately, this is more and more becoming possible through distance learning which a number of institutions are pioneering these days. But what about those who arent mature enough to go to any field far away from home anyway and would benefit from serious concentrated cross-cultural studies even in a classroom? With the help and creativity of those designing the study program, why not build active ministry into the process in a multi-cultural inner city situation nearby? Here is the pitch: Come study with us and begin your cross-cultural ministry now. Or better yet, Are you eager to get to the field and begin your ministry? You can do it right now while you are studying on the side in our training program. Remember, for the sake of the urgency, the studying is on the side, not the ministry. That brings the urgency issue together with the importance of training. It also gives some candidates time to mature while they make their blunders closer to home where the expense is not so great. And so far as the patience required for local leaders to come on board, perhaps this period of training will give the Christian time for patience to develop. What about Paternalism and the Missionary Demeanor? Admittedly paternalism sometimes creeps into the heart of Western altruism and perhaps even more often into the demeanor of missionaries. There isnt time to develop it here, so I will just mention it in passing. We as Westerners cannot imagine how our benevolence or altruism could possibly be at the root of the dependency syndrome. After all, we use money to solve many problems. Furthermore, we get such a good feeling from giving that we may not even realize when paternalism creeps in. Sometime ago we challenged someone on what was clearly to us paternalism. His response was classic. He said, How can you accuse me of paternalism? I treated them like my own children and they didnt appreciate it! I am sure you will agree that there are many ramifications to the dependency syndrome. I have barely begun to scratch the surface in this brief paper. For a longer treatment of the subject, there is an eight-hour video series available through World Mission Associates. 2
What Hope Is There for the Future? Is there a ray of hope for this situation in the future? Is it not that todays and tomorrows missionaries have access to training that was not available even thirty or forty years ago? If they take advantage of it, the Christian movement will certainly be better off in the next generation than it was in the last. Of course, the effectiveness of this depends on whether those teaching missions are familiar with the dependency syndrome and know how to help everyone avoid it. This represents a challenge for many of us. There is another ray of hope. It is in the new missionary forceespecially from the non-Western world which is not so well endowed financially that it will create and perpetuate financial dependency as the Christian movement spreads. As Art Glasser once said about the China Inland Mission: We barely had enough money on which to survive as missionaries ourselves. We could not have spoiled churches with money if we wanted to. 3 When this came up in a recent gathering of retired OMF missionaries, we heard his colleagues who had lived on modest income agree with resounding affirmation. Conclusion Missionaries can speak and act with authority and urgency, and they do not need to create the dependency syndrome in the churches which are started. But it will take a new and sometimes radical approach for that to happen. It remains to be seen how many are prepared to pay the price for the innovation and how many have the courage and humility it will demand. After all, taking this approach means bucking a lot of history over the last century.