Should We Stop Sending Missionaries?
by Robertson McQuilkin
Principles
for avoiding the corrupting power of money
"Thank You For Not Coming" read the banner headline in a full-page
ad in Christianity Today. It was a promotional piece urging
us to send money, not missionaries. The rationale is clear:
In most cases, sending just a portion of our surplus$50-$100 each
monthwill provide support for one full-time national worker. The
typical cost to send an American missionary family overseas is over
$50,000 a yearthe same cost as supporting 50 or more national workers.
Think of what that money could do for the Kingdom of God!1
Admittedly, this rationale is appealing. Nationals have the language
and the cultureand they cost so much less. More than 140 organizations
are now built on the premise of gathering and sending money, not
people. One of the largest of the money-gathering agencies reports
that it now supports 3,300 full-time workers in over 50 countries.
But what about the dark half of the world where there are no "nationals,"
no witnessing church? At least a billion of the lost live among
a people where there is no evangelizing church movement, often no
witness at all. For these, by definition, someone must leave home
to reach them. If a foreigner doesn't go in from the outside they'll
never hear the Gospel. The fundamental premise of the "send money,
not people" movement is misguided because there are no nationals
to reach these billion people even if money were sent.
We're told that the burgeoning Third World missionary movement can
handle the rest of the job since God seems to be bypassing the North
American church. We exult in the move of the Spirit to mobilize
a heretofore untapped resource, even if only a fraction of those
thousands of Third World missionaries are going to the unreached
peoples. The problem is, though they now account for half the worldwide
missionary task force, the numbers from all sources combined are
wholly inadequate to finish the task. If present growth rates are
sustained by the "new breed" it will take them at least a half century
to complete the Great Commission. More likely, a full century.
It's not just that North American missionaries are still needed
to complete the task, however; the North American church needs to
send its own for the sake of itself, its own spiritual health. The
sin of disobedience to the heavenly vision can't be atoned for with
dollars, and the spiritual loss is highly visible in a self-centered,
materialistically-minded people. The original mandate has never
been rescindedthe Pauline role of pioneering is still the primary
mission of the church toward the world. Biblically, no church anywhere
can claim exemption from the mandate until every person has heard
with understanding the way to life in Christ and a church has been
established in every community.
Perhaps the solution is to send both our sons and daughters and
our money. True, but we're going to have to rethink how we send
money because sending money to support the ministry of others is
very hazardous for the receiving church. Jerry Rankin, president
of the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention,
puts it this way:
... it is a mistake to try to accelerate growth by
an infusion of financial aid to build churches and support pastors.
One thing inevitably occurs when North Americans subsidize the
work of churches and pastors on the mission field: potential growth
is stalled because of a mind-set that it can't be done unless
an overseas benefactor provides the funds. ... Jealousy often
develops among the pastors and churches who don't receive assistance
toward those who develop a pipeline of support from the United
States. ... In the long-term, support breeds resentment, especially
if the support is not sustained indefinitely, because it creates
a patronizing dependency. ... People are deprived of growing in
faith, learning to depend on God and discovering that He is sufficient
for all their needs.2
The church or church leaders that secure a financial pipeline to
the USA soon become mired in an ecclesiastical welfare state, because
the send-money approach, rather than strengthening the souls of
national churches, keeps congregations from becoming "self-governing"
and "self-supporting." The recipients of these funds often suffer
the following maladies.
Believers learn to depend neither on God nor on themselves.
Because they have no need to give sacrificially of their own
resources (however meager they may be), they never gain a sense
of ownership. This postpones the day of true indigenization.
Leaders become preoccupied with raising North American funds.
On a trip I took to India I was overwhelmed by the many who
"worked" me for a dollar connection. Such a ministry orientation
inevitably weakens faith, corrupts pure motives and compromises
leadership integrity.
Those leaders who can't get to the "pipeline" become demoralized.
They come to believe that the work can't be done without outside
assistance, so why try?
Believers sue believers. In India, I was astounded to find
few churches or ministries that weren't in the courts at war
over property purchased using American dollars.
An independent and unaccountable higher class of Christian
workers arises whose stylish life-styles are envied by "unconnected
believers." It is little surprise that the motivation for "spiritual
growth" is soon driven by something less than a hunger after
righteousness. Should the donor seek to hold the recipient accountable
for the use of funds to prevent such problems, the donor would
be accused of reverting to the old paternalistic pattern and
roundly condemned.
Recipients become ungrateful. The ingratitude can take a number
of forms: "Sure, you gave us something, but look how much you
still have;" or, "It's not yours anyway; you owe it to us."
When I was president of Columbia International University, I
knew something was bothering some of the African pastors studying
with us. We discovered it was money. Though none could have
been there without great generosity on the part of some sponsoring
mission and the school, several recounted how they were owed
so much more. One pastor said, "Actually, you should not only
fully support us now, you should support us for the first 5
or 10 years after our return since you have dis-fitted us for
ministry in our homelands."
Perhaps the missiologist most knowledgeable about the hazards of
the just-support-nationals movement is Glenn Schwartz, founding
director of World Mission Associates. In an interview with Mission
Frontiers (January-February, 1997) he says:
We believe that churches in the non-Western world can
do what God is calling them to do with the resources which He
has put within their reach. ... I don't think anyone would support
that approach ("just support nationals") if they had gone out
as a missionary to plant churches cross-culturally according to
healthy principles of self-support and then had someone come along
and entice away their best leaders with foreign money. That is
what I call "shepherd stealing." The "just support nationals"
people are doing it shamelessly and on a very large scale (p.17).
The editor of Missions Frontiers, Rick Wood, puts it even
more strongly:
Many churches in the U.S. have bought into this scheme
as a way of getting more "bang for their missions buck." But what
they don't realize is that this "bargain basement" approach to
missions is going to blow up in their facescreating a dependency
on the mission field to foreign funds that is deadly to the vibrant,
reproducing church planting movements that we want to see within
every people. Every church and every people has the God-given
privilege and responsibility of supporting its own ministry and
cross-cultural outreach. Foreign money robs these peoples of the
incentive to give of their lives and resources to support the
ministries of their own churches.
Remember that your giving should always encourage "psychological
ownership"... never do for others what they can do for themselves.
Avoid dependency like the plague that it is (p. 7).
A number of non-Western church leaders quoted in the same issue
of Mission Frontiers agree with Schwartz and Wood. Bishop
Zablon Nthamburi of the Methodist Church of Kenya said, "The African
Church will not grow into maturity if it continues to be fed by
Western partners. It will ever remain an infant who has not learned
to walk on his or her own feet" (p. 18).
One leader in the Friends Missionary Prayer Band, a leading Indian
mission, said, "It's sad to say that foreign money has caused more
harm than good in Indian missions. The result is culturally irrelevant,
pseudo-Christian leaders and organizations that have long forgotten
their roots" (p. 23).
Atul Aghamkar, an Indian specialist in urban ministries, said, "Western
money continues to make the national church dependent on the West.
It creates a sense of rivalry, greed and competition. It often robs
the national church of its natural potential. When the easy money
from the West is available, very few want to explore indigenous
ways of fund raising" (p. 23).
There are, then, great hazards in giving and receiving. We have
not yet discovered how to use North American funds to assist non-North
American ministry without negative spiritual fallout.
For years I have resisted addressing the issue because I haven't
had a clear-cut solution to offer. But searching for the key to
unlock this, the greatest puzzle in the current missions enterprise,
I have become convinced that the approach needs to be measured against
the following four Biblically-based principles concerning giving
and receiving.
Does the giving win the lost?
Paul was willing to become anything to anyone for his single-minded
objective: to win the lost, to win as many as possible, as widely
as possible. Everything he dideven to risk-taking and imprisonmentwas
measured in Great Commission terms. So today, one test for any missions
approach should be its evangelistic effectiveness. Does money invested
promote or retard long-term church growth and evangelism?
The incredible story of the church in South Korea is instructive.
From the outset, it was the showcase for the Nevius method of establishing
self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating churches. That
may have meant slow growth at first, but today a third of South
Koreans name Christ as Lord and the church has sent out a missionary
task force of thousands! There are other factors in the growth of
the Korean church, of course, but the foundation of independent
dependence on God is cited by many as the chief factor.
Does the giving encourage true discipleship?
While evangelization is the controlling objective of the missionary
enterprise, it is useless if it doesn't produce Christ-like character
in both the giver and the receiver.
So we must ask if the giving arrangement nurtures generosity, humility,
unity, and compassion on the part of the giver. Is the church being
truly generous if it is willing to send money, but not its own sons
and daughters to the mission field? Like Jesus coming to earth,
does the giver feel a solidarity with, a responsibility for the
brother in need, as Jesus did? Are gifts given from the stance of
a benefactor, or of a servant? "I am among you as one who serves,"
said Jesus.
I know an American missionary who, burdened by the corrupting power
of the American dollar on giver and receiver, has chosen to live
among the poor of Calcutta, along with his Indian colleague, on
$50 a monthfor livelihood and for ministry. The balance of any gift
income (unsolicited, by the way) is invested in a poverty-chained
people. That isn't the only legitimate approach, of course, but
it is an approach that models our God's incarnational, personal
giving in Christ. I call that incarnational.
The same question of discipleship must be asked of the receiving
church. Do giving arrangements produce in the receiving church a
spirit of sacrificial giving, of responsible ownership of the ministry,
including the cause of world evangelism, a greater reliance on God,
and an attitude of genuine gratitude among the recipients? If these
are not the results, the money is actually more a taking than a
giving.
Does the giver honor the role of the local church?
The New Testament pattern of giving was church-centered, whether
sending people or funds. People gave to their churches from which
Paul received the offering (II Cor 8,9). When these funds were for
the poor, not for the support of his own missionary team, he then
delivered the offering to the church for distribution. The authority
Christ invested in the church is lost when giving or receiving bypasses
the church. The traditional independent mission or the contemporary
money-gathering agency needs to exercise great care, especially
when investing in something other than its own missionary team,
not to bypass the supervisory authority of the church at both ends.
Does the giving nurture generous givers?
God's people are to givecompassionately, generously, sacrificially,
joyfully (see II Cor. 8 and 9). Because this spirit of generosity
serves as a fundamental test of the quality of spiritual life, Paul's
admonition to "excel in the grace of giving" is not for the wealthy
alone. There is a special obligation of the wealthy to give (I Tim
6:17-19), but Paul commends the poor of Philippi for having given
generously for the needs of the poor in Jerusalem.
Though this generosity principle should govern giving, I list it
last because the other three are much more dominant in the commands
and examples of Scripture. And yet many "send money, not missionaries"
advocates are, I believe, in danger of operating from this principle
alone to the exclusion of the other three principles.
The primary commands and examples for giving money in the New Testament
center in one group: the poor. The astounding offerings of propertied
people in the church of Jerusalem were to aid the poor (Acts 4:34-35),
and the offerings Paul gathered from the "missionary churches" were
also for the poor in Jerusalem, the home church. There is a reference
to giving to support Paul's missionary team on the part of the "younger
church" at Philippi (Phil. 4:10-19), and there is the incident of
Paul asking for financial assistance for another missionary (I Cor
16:11). But I can find no instance, let alone any command, to give
toward the ministry of another church.
One reason for this is evident. There were no church buildings or
institutions like hospitals or schools, and local ministers were
bi-vocational. If the early church is any model, it seems that paid
ministry, buildings, and institutions emerged only as the church
was able to afford them. From the beginning the small groups were
self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. Apparently
the spiritual strength derived from this independent reliance on
God was more important, in the mind of the Apostle, than was any
kind of external subsidy to move things along more rapidly.
Scripture is clear, then, that those who have material resources
are to share with those who lack them. In the New Testament this
was providing the physical needs of the impoverished, what today
might be called "relief" or "development" projects. But when we
take the principle to mean assisting others in their spiritual ministry,
we have no Biblical command or precedent. If we justify the practice
on the fourth principle of the need to exercise generosity, we have
yet to find a practical way to do so without spiritual damage to
giver and receiver.
Money is power, it is said, and power corrupts. These Biblical principles
should prove a helpful antidote to that corruption. Note the order
of importance. If we begin and end, as many seem to do, with the
single principle that the haves are to provide for the have-nots,
we shall inevitably be corrupted. At the least we will slow the
progress of the Gospel to the unreached. But we shouldn't be surprised.
The church has been through this before.
The church at Jerusalem focused on its own needs so much that God
had to bypass them for Antioch as the missionary sending church.
The dark ages were dark at least partially because the church was
introverted. The Reformation wasn't mission minded and never created
sending structures.
But most instructive, following Edinburgh 1910 the missions juggernaut
of the nineteenth century was sidetracked into focusing on ecumenical
unity. The mainline historic church began to concentrate its attention
on interdenominational and cross-racial unification with financial
assistance from North America, and the evangelistic mission shriveled,
in at least one major denomination to nothing at all.3 If we shift
the missions focus from reaching the unreached to demonstrating
the unity of the body with financial aid, how do we differ from
the ecumenical mission of the twentieth century?
So, do we send money or people? Certainly we send people and keep
on sending them to cross the frontiers till the task of proclaiming
the Gospel to every person within every people is completed. And
we send money to assist the poor and disenfranchised in our worldwide
family. Beyond that New Testament pattern, I not only find no justification
for supporting the ministry of other churches but also great hazards
in doing so. Sharing financial resources in a way that is spiritually
empowering and Great Commission-completing for both donor and recipient
remains our greatest unsolved problem.
End Notes
Bob Emery, president of Global Opportunities for Christ in
Great Commission Opportunities Guide, 1998, p. 17.
The COMMISSION, August 1997, p. 53.
Of course, there were underlying doctrinal reasons for this
shift as well. And many contemporary evangelicals are beginning
to follow in that same direction, too. For example, the redefinition
of who is lost and how salvation comes.
Robertson McQuilkin is author of The Great Omission.
[Used with permission
from Mission
Frontiers magazine (May-Aug '99)]