Are Our Missions Too American?

Whenever we bring the gospel to another place, it is very easy to take our own view of things and impose it on others.  Consider these statements from church leaders overseas:

“You assume we aren’t focused because we haven’t written up our mission, vision, and values like you have.  But we are very clear about what God is doing in our midst.”

“It was a nice day [of training], but I don’t think what they taught would ever work here.”

“I was surprised we studied Jesus’ ministry without really considering any of his miracles and his battling against the supernatural.”

“It isn’t that they [the short-term team] didn’t work hard…but they must remember that we built buildings before they came and we will build buildings after they leave. Unfortunately , while they were here, they thought that they were the only ones who knew how to build buildings.”

All of these are the result of American missionaries or mission teams making assumptions about the places they were going and what they were going to accomplish while there.  These statements are from the book Serving with Eyes Wide Open, by David A. Livermore.  Livermore is writing specifically about how we can improve our impact (and reduce our harm) in short-term missions.  

But I think there is a wider application to how we can view missions in general. It is very easy in our culture to believe we are on the cutting edge, have excellent training, understand modern approaches, etc, and then assume that what we have is what they need. This is not always the case.  There are vast differences in some aspects of our lives compared to theirs. They have experiences of persecution, fellowship, spiritual realities, prayer, or hardships that are very different than ours.  

Reading this book is quite humbling, and a good lesson for all of us about how we can insert our ideas and agendas regarding ministry, theology, and lifestyle into what we do, whether on the mission field or at home.  I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is in Christian leadership in America.  He lays out some very practical ways to look at things differently as we approach ministry to other cultures.  Let’s have our eyes wide open to the fact that God is much bigger than our own experience of Him.  And let’s take the gospel to a waiting world in a way that they can embrace and understand.