Decolonizing Missions

Any evangelical Christian will be familiar with the Great Commission— the name given to the task Jesus assigned to His disciples before his ascension. That task of making disciples in every nation has been the goal of Jesus-followers ever since. The people yet to hear the gospel have been referred to as unreached people groups.

According to The Traveling Team, there are an estimated 16,591 people groups in the world. As of 2021, data provided by The Joshua Project shows that the number of unreached people groups is down to 100.

Breaking Tradition

In the west, the traditional method of reaching the unreached has long been to send westerners overseas to foreign countries. However, in recent decades, the strategy has shifted toward encouraging locals in their native countries to take on the task. While some western churches are hesitant to shift to the new model, others are seeing that empowering locals has better results in the long run.

Doug Cobb, founder of The Finishing Fund, has witnessed firsthand the positive impact supporting locals has had. Through his organization, investors raise funds that further the Great Commission. According to Cobb, 99 percent of those benefiting from the funds are natives.

“We are a partnership of donors who give to ministries that will go for the first time to a people group that nobody's ever been to,” he said. “We've been doing that now for [nearly] four years, and we've helped get the gospel to over 500 unengaged people groups.”

The work being done through The Finishing Fund has successfully continued to show results. Different strategies going beyond the traditional western model of Missions is often behind that success. Matthew 28:19 is what sparked the Great Commission movement, where Jesus tells his followers to “go out into all the world and make disciples in all nations.” Cobb points out that the focus in the verse is the word “nation.”

“The first thing that I think most people don't understand about the Great Commission is what Jesus meant by nation,” he said. “The word that's used there in the New Testament is ‘ethnos,’ a Greek word, and it describes an ethnolinguistic people group.”

An ethnolinguistic group is a group of people sharing a common first language and ethnicity. Organizations like The Finishing Fund have found that sharing the gospel is easier when individuals speak the same language and understand one another’s culture. Western missionaries have to invest more time, finances, and energy to assimilate into the nations they are trying to reach.

Supporting locals

Heart Cry is an organization that supports both cross-cultural Mission strategies and indigenous strategies. According to their data, “The traditional Missions method of only training and supporting North American and Western European missionaries is not sufficient in itself to reach the world.” The team behind Heart Cry emphasizes that neither model is “wrong,” but simply that supporting native missionaries has its advantages.

One advantage is what Heart Cry refers to as “identification.” In many countries, there is a bias against Western Europeans and American missionaries. Before communicating the gospel can even begin, western missionaries have to work hard to earn the trust of the people they are attempting to reach.

The work done through Heart Cry has often found that missionaries from the west also have an unwillingness to live on the same level as those they minister to. “Some western missionaries live in homes that seem like mansions to the native; they drive expensive cars, while the native takes a bus; and they send their children to private school, while the native sends his to public school,” their site says. “In contrast, the indigenous missionary lives in the same neighborhood, takes the same bus, and sends his children to the same school.

While some western missionaries have mastered the task of church planting, the work to be done afterward can be more challenging for an “outsider.”

According to Heart Cry, “For the cross-cultural missionary, establishing a church is often not as difficult as the later transitional period when the missionary bids farewell and the church comes under national leadership. The church often suffers a great deal during this transitional period, loses members, and is greatly discouraged … This is not a problem when the church is planted by an indigenous missionary and is under their leadership from beginning to end.”

Mission strategies get complex when discussing methods and models, but there is one thing most western and overseas churches can agree on: the sense of urgency.

“It's a direct command of Jesus. That's one reason it should be urgent,” Cobb said. “It's probably the most definitive milestone that [Jesus] gives us about His return. In Matthew 24:14, He told his disciples, ‘This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a witness— a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.’”

Cobb also leaves room for interpretation, “There may be more to it than we understand … there's always uncertainty, but clearly, the completion of this milestone event [can open] the door to the return of Christ. So, that makes it even more important.”

That sense of urgency is often what drives an individual’s passion for Missions work. While Cobb, and many others, believe the traditional method of sending westerners overseas is honorable, overseas Missions come with a cost.

“One of the hard things about the western model is that it's just become so expensive to send westerners,” he says. “Through The Finishing Fund we can hire and support national missionaries for a fraction of what it would cost to send American family to do the same work.”

Short-term Missions alone can cost thousands of dollars. The support costs for long-term missionaries can vary depending on their family size, their lodgings, and whether or not they need language courses.

Local missionaries save funds by already speaking the native language. Additionally, locals have a better chance at connecting with hard to reach people groups. The most unreached nations don’t always draw western help.

“It is very difficult for westerners to go to the actual gospel frontier to these unengaged or unreached people groups,” Cobb said. “It's culturally very, very distant from what we know and understand. These are places that are hard to live in, so most westerners don't try to take that on.”

Considering the added challenges of language barriers, unfamiliar lodgings, and little access to modern amenities, the actual unreached are still unreached by western missionaries. Because of this, more and more westerners are now shifting their views on Missions to the newer model of encouraging locals in their native countries to share the gospel.

What Cobb has found through The Finishing Fund, is that much of the missionary work being done in unreached nations is already being done by locals.

“The vast majority of the last mile of the work that's being done among these unengaged groups is being done by what we describe as near-culture missionary,” he said.

A near-culture missionary may not necessarily be from the people group they are ministering to. This label refers to missionaries from a nearby people group in the same country. They typically share a language with the group they are trying to reach, eat similar foods, and have a similar culture. For example, India alone has upwards of 2,000 ethnolinguistic groups. While each group is different, languages, culture, and religion often cross over. Cobb notes that near-culture workers can have a lot more impact more rapidly than western missionaries.

Developing strategies

As more American churches stray away from the traditional model of sending workers overseas, the question often being asked is, what role do westerners now play?

Despite there being room for the western church to still play a vital role in overseas Missions, some church-goers struggle to let go of the traditional Missions model. There are many reasons why adjusting one’s perspective on missionary strategies may be a challenge.

“My one speculation I have is that [the Church] doesn’t want to see the tradition done away with,” Cobb said. “They understand the value for westerners and for the western Church to be personally involved in this work. That makes them defensive of the idea that it can all be done by [natives]. They fear something will be lost from that.

For Doug, the two models both have value and should work in tandem. It's wrong, in my opinion, to put these things against each other as though one is good, and one is bad. They should be and can be complementary.”

As for how the two models could work in tandem, Cobb notes that maybe the western church just needs to grow and evolve.

“We're kind of shifting into a different era,” he said. “Maybe [westerners] were the ones at the forefront of Missions work for a time, and now we can release some of that responsibility.”

To shift to this two-model ideology, western churches may need to both accept where they are not needed, and embrace what they still have to offer.

“I just think there's a lot of things that make it hard for westerners to hand [the responsibility] off,” Cobb said. “Americans think of ourselves as the center of the universe. There's a certain sort of colonial mindset that goes with that, and that can be hard to escape … I think even people that are aware of it suffer from that.

Cobb points out that more work is being done through the cross-cultural model now than it was 25 years ago. The shift takes time. More churches are starting to catch on to the idea of sending skilled individuals to train native missionaries overseas rather than sending missionaries.

Building cross-cultural teams starts with churches in the west building empathy toward different cultures. Especially in the United States, where many cities are culturally diverse, the key may be for individuals to go out of their way to understand people different from them. Sharing meals with foreign neighbors, supporting international students, and launching programs that care for immigrants are just a few ways to build cross-cultural empathy.

For Cobb, at the end of the day, sharing the gospel to as many unreached peoples possible should be the priority. Whether it is the west sending missionaries or individuals stepping up to the plate in their own countries, he just wants to make the name of Jesus known.

“God's kingdom is such a huge place, and there's so many good things happening in it,” he said. “It's exciting to see the National Church stepping up. Our job should be to welcome them into it … and help each side find what they can best contribute.”