Summing Up
It is possible to view the evangelical church’s renewed preoccupation with social action as merely a difference in emphasis. And that is undoubtedly true in some cases. Because of the varying gifts in the body of Christ, some churches and missionaries will focus on mercy more than others: that’s to be expected. However, the social justice debate is not merely a squabble over whether the church should add one lump or two of mercy to its ecclesiastical tea. Ultimately, it is about making social action and gospel proclamation co-equal partners in the church’s mission. We believe that is not merely a difference in emphasis: it’s a different ecclesiology altogether.
Results and Solutions
What has been the effect of all this in Africa? It’s an oversimplification, but the result is the wrong missionaries doing the wrong things. The African church needs help. Good at celebration and community, the African church (with a few notable exceptions) needs all the help it can get when it comes to church planting, spiritual depth, and theological training. However, the West is currently sending primarily two kinds of missionaries to Africa: first, missionaries who are unprepared to truly help the African church—wonderful, compassionate, college-age girls who have come to do orphan care;and second, missionaries who are underprepared to help the African church—enthusiastic men or couples who are eager to lead mercy projects, but whose lack of theological training and ministry experience means that they can offer little help of real significance to the African church. The work they do is emotionally rewarding for the missionaries and for the churches that send them. However, fewer and fewer of the kinds of missionaries who will make a long-term difference in Africa—Bible translators, church planters, and leadership trainers—are being sent.
Pastors and church leaders in the West can do a lot to reverse the trend. First, missionaries on the field need to be encouraged to keep their eye on the ball: what a missionary can do and what a missionary must do are not always the same. Sending churches can encourage their current missionaries by regularly letting them know that the boring, humdrum, strategic proclamation work that they are doing is of the highest significance.
Secondly, preachers who are committed to proclamation-focused missions need to speak out, offering the church something better than they’re getting from the social justice bloggers and the popular missional authors. It won’t be easy. Who wants to be (unfairly) branded as being against orphans or clean water? We don’t. But the price of silence is high: the church is poised to lose a generation of missionaries to secondary work such as building schools and digging wells. And if history has anything to say about the matter, we might lose the gospel too.
Whatever the immediate benefits (some very real, some only imagined) of poverty relief, clean water, and orphanages, what will be the long-term consequences of the fact that a generation of Christian missionaries in Africa is putting social relief first and church planting and leadership training—at best—second? Long after the AIDS orphans have grown up, the wells have been blocked with sand, and the medical clinics have closed due to a lack of Western funding, the people of Africa will need churches to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if the Western church continues to send missionaries focused on social action, who will plant and pastor those churches? The church in Africa and around the world can flourish, but it takes the right kind of national leaders, and from the West, it takes the right kind of missionaries doing what only Christians can do: After all, people of good will of all religions and no religion can and do address the human need for food, clothing, shelter, health, education, justice and so on.
But Christians—and Christians only—can be expected to preach the gospel, win men and women of all nations to Jesus Christ, and establish churches that will worship and witness until Christ returns!
END NOTES- I) What some have called “amateurism” in missions is an ongoing problem. While not all missionaries need to be gifted and trained at the same level, it’s worth noting that the church of Antioch sent out their best: Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13:1–3). We encourage churches to remember that long term effectiveness in missions requires thorough theological training, not just enthusiasm.
II) Old-guard missionaries who are doing book-of-Acts kind of missions often feel pressure to embrace the new social justice model. There are at least four reasons for this. First, missionaries are genuinely compassionate people. Second, missionaries are as susceptible to trends and peer pressure as anyone. Third, a hubbub of voices is promoting the social justice model of missions: Which respected, clear-speaking voices are enthusiastically promoting book-of-Acts kind of missions? Fourth, missionaries can see that if they want to keep their support levels up, in today’s missional environment, they need to add a social justice component to their ministries. They know that, “We are in our fourteenth week of an exposition of Philippians in our church plant” is unlikely to receive the same response as “We cared for fourteen orphans this week.”
This series of articles was co-Authored by Joel James, D. Min., Pastor at Grace Fellowship, Pretoria South Africa AND Brian Biedebach, D.Min., Pastor at International Fellowship Bible Church, Lilongwe Malawi. Both authors have served as missionaries in Africa for over 20 years. This article first appeared in the TMS Journal- MSJ 25/1 (Spring 2014) 29–50
