Category: md-4-1

The goals of mainstream mission and missiology have gone widely unmet. The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission (AVM) proposes better methods for reaching those goals. The AVM has advocated the methods of local languages and local resources. This article expands the vulnerable mission methodology to include local thinking style. In particular, Western missionaries need to use oral thinking styles rather than the analytical thinking style that creates dependency in oral societies. Missionaries must decide whether to supplement local methods with foreign “strength” or to accept the vulnerability of using only local methods.

As a missiologist who has observed a lot of missions and churches in a lot of countries for a lot of years, I want to try to position “vulnerable mission” against the broader backdrop of trends in missiology and mission practice today.2 My hope is to help the rest of the mission world connect more easily with what we are talking about in this conversation, so that fruitfulness and glory to God may connect more commonly in mission practice just as they connect in John 15:8.

Underlying the paper is my personal conviction that we in the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission have a theme that ought to resonate with a lot more mission scholars and practitioners than our current circle. What could or should we be saying that we are not saying clearly enough to find more people who are already doing or desiring something akin to VM, no matter what label they put on it?3 In this paper I will try to answer my own question, and I invite you to answer it even better.

I will compare and contrast the theory and practice of mission in three areas: the goal of mission, the methods of mission, and the big question that Western missions face today. Along the way I will relate VM to the three trends or camps of mission with which we overlap most—partnership, self-sufficiency (overcoming dependence), and orality (storying). This brief exercise will require some sweeping generalizations that readers may wish to challenge.4

The Goal of Mission

If we look at the Edinburgh 1910 missions conference and its coordinated planning to turn this into a Christian planet by planting churches everywhere, the methods appear to have worked even beyond the planners’ dreams a century ago. Churches have been planted across huge stretches of previously unevangelized territory.5

But if we look at Roland Allen’s Missionary Methods book from 1912, we have to ask, “What kind of churches?” The goal in Allen’s terms was self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating churches.6 For our purposes, and to save us getting bogged down in the long debate about the adequacy of that famous Three-Self Formula, let me use three more recent and roughly parallel terms: contextualized, sustainable, and missional. These are very prominent in missiological writing in the last 40, 20, and 10 years respectively, and it seems almost everybody writing about mission now takes them for granted as three marks to look for in a healthy church.

But what is the state of the church globally? The harvest does not match the three-part goal very well. For the vast majority of the world, believers and unbelievers alike, Christianity appears to be more culturally foreign, money-driven, and confusing than contextualized, sustainable, and missional.

Allen’s goal	Current buzz words about goal	Frequent results
Self-governing	Contextualized	Foreign
Self-supporting	Sustainable	Money-driven
Self-propagating	Missional	Confusing

I am not saying that twentieth-century mission was a waste or a failure or that the global church is a basket case, needing rescue by us as if we are the enlightened part of the world. But I am saying that we have not yet arrived at well-contextualized, sustainable, missional churches (even in the West), because if we had, the missiologists would have quit talking about these things. They would be losing their jobs for being behind the times, writing another book about contextualization. They keep their teaching positions because they are focusing the next generation on the things churches do not yet have but that missiologists think churches should try to get.

In case you need any reminders that the church has not yet arrived at sound mission practice, here are three very painful ones I have recently encountered, all indicating that the bull-in-the-china-shop approach to missions is alive and kicking:

• Steven Ybarrola concludes a 2008 article by sadly noting, “It was twenty-six years ago that I was first exposed to this application [of anthropology to mission work, that is, of contextualization] at the U.S. Center for World Mission. However, in my experience . . . I still find this perspective to be largely lacking.”7
• Two weeks ago I was requested to answer a few survey questions for a researcher, one of which was, “The multi-language translating software can be used to translate foreign languages. The use of SMS, multimedia, internet, and satellite services can enable followers of Jesus Christ to communicate the gospel with non-believers, whose language is different, more efficiently and effectively than a missionary physically going to a nation in which the native language is different.” I’ll admit that I checked “strongly disagree,” but only because there was no option that said, “violently disagree.”8
• Three weeks ago a missions pastor friend of mine returned from a trip where he heard a veteran missionary say, “Satan has taken full advantage of the short-term missions movement in [his Asian country]. We would be so far ahead of where we are if no teams had ever come.”9

To sum up, VM does not propose different goals than mainstream mission and missiology.10 We are arguing that the mainstream methods of reaching those goals are not achieving them very well. The contextualized, sustainable, missional church is not here yet.

Better Methods of Reaching the Agreed Goal, Including Oral Thinking Style

As someone has said, “Stupid is not doing stupid things. It is doing the same things and expecting a different result.” Let’s apply that to mission.

The biggest shift in mission from Western countries in the last twenty years is a massive increase in short-term trips and short-term workers (a year or less). In a sense, this is a new “method,” but in a deeper sense, it is the same old method of the colonial era, putting monocultural, ethnocentric people into cross-cultural settings.

In a way it is worse, because now that quick trips are possible and affordable, the trippers have no time to grow out of their ethnocentrism and no clue about why they should. They stick to the methods that ethnocentric people can use, even though these fly in the face of the goals of mainstream missiology. They rely on English or a personal translator, they operate as “haves” among “have nots,” and they cannot begin to imagine doing mission with an oral approach to life rather than an analytical approach.

Missiologists and most advocates of partnership in mission know this kind of mission activity will not reach the goals of mission, so they make some major improvements to the ethnocentric model, such as advocating that Westerners do things with people instead of for people. They promote these better methods even among short-termers whenever possible.11

Goal	Partnership methods	Short-term mission methods
Contextualized	English or local language	English only
Sustainable	Prime the pump, or top up local resources	Provide from outside
Missional	Simplify the message	Operate analytically without realizing it at all

VM takes the whole thing one step further, though none of us are claiming that VM methods are the silver bullet that will solve everything with one shot.

Goal	VM methods	Partnership methods
Contextualized	Local language	English or local
Sustainable	Local resources	Prime the pump, or top up local resources
Missional	Local thinking style	Simplify the message

VM has been very explicit about the first two methods (local language and resources) and has not yet said much about the third, that is, local thinking style. We have assumed that oral thinking style is naturally built into local languages and resources, but I believe it might be helpful to raise it to the status of a third defining mark of VM.

What is a “local thinking style”? In the broadest strokes, there are basically two styles—oral thinking and analytical thinking. Various labels have been used for these two styles.12 I am indebted to John Walsh for the following explanation which greatly helped me on this point: “When people routinely assume that the opposite of orality is literacy, they are making only a superficial contrast. The real contrast is not oral vs. literate. It is oral vs. analytical.”13 In other words, an oral style is a story or narrative or holistic style of thinking as opposed to a conceptual style that breaks everything down into pieces and then connects the pieces. Oral thinkers apprehend whole ideas; analytical thinkers comprehend them one piece at a time.

Again in very broad strokes, the preferred local thinking style is analytical in the West and oral in the Global South, though oral thinking is growing quickly among younger Westerners and analytical thinking is widespread among people with a lot of Western education, regardless of their home culture. The aspect of this relevant to our discussion is that the vast majority of mission today is undertaken by analytical thinkers working in contexts where oral thinking is the preferred local style.

Let’s return then to the earlier comment about doing mission with “an oral approach to life.” This hit me like a bombshell while I was giving some guest lectures in a Central Asian seminary a few years ago. I was talking about Bosch’s overview of paradigms of mission throughout church history14 and the question was asked, “What is a paradigm?” My on-the-spot attempts to answer did not shed any light for the questioner. In later reflection I realized that a paradigm is a tool that an analytical thinker uses to compare two or more systems. Non-analytical (oral) thinkers do not use that tool because they never undertake that task. They simply do not look at their worlds that way.

Further, I realized that every lecture by a foreigner and every book in that seminary library (except the biographies) was structured for analytical thinkers and was basically lost on the oral ones. I understood why a Scottish faculty member at the school had said, “We try to get them to answer the questions on an exam but often all they do is give testimonies.” The entire seminary system was set up to turn oral thinkers into analytical thinkers rather than to capitalize on their natural strengths as oral thinkers.

Whether that illustration was helpful or not, here is the abstract description of the problem. Outside money is often used for mission methods such as building a seminary or paying a salary for a church planting pastor, which are seen as the best or only means to the desired goal, such as a strong church or a successful outreach plan. There may be several Xs in a chain; for example, Bible schools (X1) are seen as the means to theological orthodoxy (X2) and spiritual maturity of pastors (X3), good study habits using good study tools (X4), and quality sermons (X5)—in order to reach the goal of mature believers and a mature church.

But the vision of the “mature” church may have been flawed in the beginning because it assumed that genuine disciples are analytical thinkers and their leaders must use analytical methods to help them grow. Look at the financial implications of this ethnocentric assumption.

Biases That Go with Assuming a Mature Church Must Be an Analytical Church

1. Professionalization—the leaders are the best analysts; laity tag along.
2. That kind of leader needs special schooling for analyzing the Bible.
3. A congregation must be big enough to support a professional pastor.
4. That size of congregation will need a building.
5. The building, the schooling, and the pastor all require major funding.

Alternative Model If a Mature Church Can Be an Oral-Thinking Church

1. The laity can be involved in developing the theology of the group.
2. Special schooling not required for leaders; they can be apprenticed.
3. Congregations can thrive and sub-divide though too small to support a pastor.
4. Buildings are optional.
5. Little or no funding required.

It boggles the mind to think how much Western mission effort and funding have gone into things the alternative model does not need at all. It also makes one wonder how many of today’s Western missionaries are missing golden opportunities for fruitful witness that they could seize if they could adapt to an oral thinking style. Here are a few examples, which have a few advocates but in my experience are usually regarded as quirky interests of a tiny minority.

• Ethnomusicology. Music shapes the faith and life of emerging churches more than anything else. How can it be a sidelight of mission? A network of Christian ethnomusicologists is encouraging wider use of the kind of Christian music development that happened spontaneously in the VM churches.15 Let this become a mainstream pursuit. Cultural outsiders cannot do the composing and choreography but they may legitimize it for the local composers, give a little guidance for it, and act as cheerleaders while the new music emerges.
• Proverbs. Proverbs are distilled oral thinking, masterful carriers of profound truth. How can these be incidental to preaching and witness? Why not routinely build them into mission work. For example, here is an ethnographic project for a one- or two-month short-term experience for a college student: “Write a paper of five pages or less that answers this question: What are ten local proverbs that every missionary who comes to this place should learn on arrival, and what would they know about the local people if they really grasped these proverbs?”16
• Festivals. How can festivals be so neglected? They are communal events celebrating the great acts of God in the biblical story, intriguingly and graciously open to outside observers, involving music and drama, processions, symbols, colors, and many layers of meaning.17 Westerners are festival-deaf and festival-blind, but the rest of the world is fluent in festival. I would love to see us change the dominant paradigm for mission from a war to a festival, so that we automatically think of ourselves more as carriers of joy than agents of force. Might the festival be so effective that it would have an even greater impact on both evangelism and discipleship than sermons do?

A shift to an oral thinking style would also go a long way toward helping us understand and utilize the shift that N. T. Wright, Dallas Willard, and Scot McKnight are calling for—the recovery of the biblical “gospel of the kingdom” as opposed to an exclusive focus on the “gospel of salvation.” I cannot summarize that here. I only want to note that the “gospel of salvation” (our standard way of preaching and teaching the gospel in the West) is an analytical gospel, that is, it breaks the gospel into concepts and pieces, while the gospel of the kingdom is a narrative and is much more intelligible to oral thinkers.18

Emphasis on local thinking style would reinforce the other two marks, relate VM to the familiar Three-Self Formula, and point us toward another emerging mission network (the International Orality Network) as a naturally ally of VM.19 It would also align VM squarely with the healthy trend in missiology to attend to thinking style as an aspect of worldview. This is greatly needed because the message has not got through to many mission practitioners and even mission agency leaders yet.They do not comprehend the orality issue and do not assume it as a core aspect of mission strategy in nearly the same way they assume contextualization and sustainability.

Perhaps most importantly of all, emphasis on local thinking style would make our vulnerability more obvious to us than the other two marks. As Mary Lederleitner said in her paper, “It is always hard for people with a lot of money and education to learn from those with less.”20 But our money will not help us become oral thinkers, and our education, since it is so analytical, will actually hurt us.

The instant we try to shift from analytical to oral thinking, we know we are off our turf and out of our depth. Local oral thinkers are the experts, and we are in kindergarten, so we have to let them lead and learn from them as they do. When we ask them how to write a song, quote a proverb, hold a festival, or explain the gospel in an oral way, we know we don’t know!

This is a huge challenge, almost incomprehensibly different than our analytical ways. I ran into it as I worked with oral thinkers in Lesotho a generation ago, and I tried to explain it to my American supporters this way: “Teaching the Bible in Lesotho means teaching parts of the Bible we don’t often read (like Hebrews) to teach truths we don’t understand (like purification) to meet needs we don’t feel (like body-soul cleansing) by using methods we don’t like (like memorization).”

Once I taught a two-day course on worldview at a YWAM training base in England and included some of this material on thinking styles. At the end a Swedish student commented, “Now I see not only why I felt lost for most of the six months I served in Tanzania. I can see for the first time just how lost I really was!”

If missionaries among oral peoples tried from the beginning to shift to oral thinking, they would find out much sooner “just how lost they really are.” Then they would slow down, invest much less money and energy in poor (i.e., analytically based) mission strategies and programs, and do much less damage before they started doing some good.

The Huge Methodological Choice for Western Missions Today

If VM methods—local language, local resources, local thinking style—are so much better than others, where are they working? It is a fair question. If Jim Harries has come up with such a valuable theory, why has his own VM approach to theological training not yet caught fire in Western Kenya, spread across Kenya and even to other countries? Where’s the beef in the VM theory?

The answer is hiding in plain sight, and it is a lot bigger than Jim or any of the rest of us. Arguably the three most fruitful mission movements in the entire twentieth century were three that operated almost entirely on VM principles. (I realize these do not fit with Jim’s definition of VM as an issue of Westerners working in the Majority World, but bear with me.) The three movements are African indigenous churches, Chinese house churches, and (to a lesser extent) the charismatic movement in Latin America. Mainstream mission thinkers and leaders are fully aware of all three and generally admire them, yet they seem not to have grasped the implications of their fruitfulness. Consider this:

The AICs [African Instituted Churches] have shown how much mission can be done for free. It takes no money to retell the story of the calling of the founder or to tell people about one’s own walk with God. It takes no money to pray for someone to be healed. It takes no money to sing and dance or to write a new song that praises God. It takes no money to receive dreams or prophetic revelations from God. It takes no money for each member of a congregation to stand up and speak in a service. It takes no money to be freed from alcoholism, wife-beating, jealousy and witchcraft. It takes no money to become an honest, hard-working employee.21

The massive success of VM is not just a twentieth-century phenomenon. In our new century in India, Mongolia, the Philippines, and across the Muslim World, things are beginning to happen that look very similar to Africa 100 years ago and China 50 years ago. And the movements are typically working on VM principles because they have no other options.

If it is true that in the twentiety century God spread his kingdom most widely by VM methods, and if it is true that he seems poised to do the same thing in the remaining “neglected corners” of the earth in the twenty-first century, then we in Western missions need to ask ourselves one huge question, perhaps the biggest question facing Western churches, the Western mission establishment, and the next generation of Western missionaries: Complement or copy? To what extent does God want us to use our strengths (methods and resources) to complement the groups and churches who are using VM by necessity, and to what extent does he want us to copy their VM methods ourselves by choice, leaving our “strengths” on the sideline?

Complementing seems to be the obvious choice if we are thinking of the global church as a body where different members have different functions. For example, groups like Gospel for Asia promote mission by combining the money of the West with the manpower of the East. There are many more nuanced variations on this model, which is the premise for all forms of partnership. But in light of Paul Yonggap Jeong’s paper in the present issue, we have to recognize that every attempt to complement is an attempt to do mission from a position of strength. We want our strength to complement their effort in some area where they are weak.

VM is pointing out that the body is not working like it should when one member acts like Saul trying to help another “weaker” member, David, by offering some armor. That is interference not body life. It comes from the kind of well-intentioned thinking that says, “We are stronger than you, you need what we can provide, we are willing to help you, so accept it as God’s provision for you through us.”

Sometimes this thinking is true; God is providing by this route, but perhaps not nearly as often as we think. I believe a great deal of what is interfering with the carrying out of the Great Commission today—the foreignness, the money-centeredness, the fuzziness of the message—is largely the result of many Davids accepting Saul’s armor and trying to fight while they wear it.

We in the wealthy countries have to become much more self-critical. Are our strengths really strengths? Is David’s weakness really weakness? It all depends on what the Lord of the mission wants to do and how he wants to do it. If we assume that our money and technology, which look like strengths from a human perspective, are what God is most likely to use to get his mission done and to bring glory to himself, won’t we forget to check with Jesus, the general director of the mission, whether he actually wants to use our money and technology in each particular case?

Are we not overlooking 1 Corinthians 1 as the default setting for mission—God using the weak to confound the strong? Are we not relegating that “weak” and vulnerable method of mission to those who are too poor to be able to afford to do mission the way we do it?22 Are we not assuming that people do mission from a position of strength if they can and from a position of weakness if they must?

Three Requests for Readers

While we consider the mega-issues of oral thinking style and “complement or copy,” there are three very down-to-earth activities I would love to see readers engage in. I am doing them already and benefiting, but I am only one person. We need to multiply this.

1. Getting more perspectives on VM from Majority World people whose contact with the West has not persuaded them to approach mission like Westerners (we’ve been confining the dialogue mostly to Westerners). For me this happens mainly through ongoing communication with a house church pastor in Central Asia.
2. Discovering where and how VM overlaps with other movements and trends in the mission world, particularly “partnership” and “orality” (we’ve been describing ourselves mostly in isolation or in contrast to others). For me this means staying in touch with the COSIM and ION networks.23
3. Finding and sharing more success stories about VM in practice (we’ve been refining the VM theory, and I’m still mostly doing that in this paper). For me this means promoting Thomas Oduro’s book Mission in an African Way.

Conclusion

There is broad consensus among the overseas churches I am familiar with, missionaries, and mission scholars that the Western missionary movement has not produced the desired amount of the desired fruit, and that the shift to emphasis on short-term mission is not helping much if at all. There is widespread work on method improvement, especially among advocates of partnership.

VM takes things a step further, advocating much greater reliance on local language and resources than we currently see. I am proposing that we also advocate a much greater reliance on oral thinking as opposed to analytical thinking.

There is a very difficult choice for the next generation of Western Christians. Should they complement the “weak” VM of the Majority World church with their strength, or should they forego their strength and copy the VM that the Majority World uses by necessity?

If God is in this, then we need to widen the VM circle and connect with others among whom he is also stirring. It is his mission, and it ought to be done in his way(s), which we can find in consultation with others he guides.

And here is the heart of the matter for VM. If missionaries and mission agencies are so interested in bringing more glory to God,24 why would we not cut back on the mission methods that are failing to bring much glory to him? Why not replace them with a more vulnerable strategy, one that for its inspiration harks back to the cross, the resurrection, and Pentecost instead of the conquest of the Promised Land? Why not pay the prices of vulnerable mission and bring to God the glory that vulnerable mission in his name brings?

Dr. Stan Nussbaum is Staff Missiologist of GMI Research Services and Adjunct Professor at Wheaton College. He has also taught the Breakthrough course at the Overseas Ministries Study Center in Connecticut, at the World Link Graduate Center in Portland, and (including earlier versions) in England, Korea, Malaysia, India, Egypt, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Congo (Dem. Rep.), and Nigeria.

Bibliography

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Butler, Phill. Well Connected: Releasing Power, Restoring Hope through Kingdom Partnerships. Colorado Springs: Authentic Publishing, 2005.

Christian Storytelling Network. http://christianstorytelling.com.

Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Ministries. http://cosim.info.

Elmer, Duane. Cross-Cultural Connections: Stepping Out and Fitting In around the World. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2002.

Hiebert, Paul G. Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008.

The International Council of Ethnodoxologists. http://worldofworship.org.

International Orality Network. http://oralbible.com.

Johnstone, Patrick. The Future of the Global Church: History, Trends and Possibilities. Colorado Springs: Biblica, 2011.

Krabill, James R., ed. Worship and Mission for the Global Church: An Ethnodoxology Handbook. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2013.

The Lausanne Movement. “The Lausanne Standards: Affirmations and Agreements for Giving and Receiving Money in Mission.” Documents. http://www.lausanne.org/docs/standards/lausanne-standards.pdf.

Lederleitner, Mary T. Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2010.

Lingenfelter, Sherwood G., and Marvin K. Mayers. Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003.

McKnight, Scot. The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011.

Nussbaum, Stan. American Cultural Baggage: How to Recognize and Deal with It. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2005.

________. “Vulnerable Mission Strategies.” Global Missiology 10, no. 2 (2013): http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/article/view/1135/2630.

________. Waking Up to the Messiah. Morton, IL: Enculturation Books, 2011.

Oduro, Thomas, Hennie Pretorius, Stan Nussbaum, and Bryan Born. Mission in an African Way: A Practical Introduction to African Instituted Churches and Their Sense of Mission. Marturia series. Wellington, South Africa: BybelMedia, 2008.

Rickett, Daniel. Making Your Partnership Work: A Guide for Ministry Leaders. Enumclaw, WA: WinePress, 2002.

Standards of Excellence in Short Term Missions. “The 7 Standards.” http://www.soe.org/explore/the-7-standards.

Vulnerable Mission. http://vulnerablemission.org.

Winter, Ralph, and Steven Hawthorne, eds. Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader. 4th ed. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2009.

Ybarrola, Steven J. “Avoiding the Ugly Missionary: Anthropology and Short-Term Missions.” In Effective Engagement in Short-Term Missions: Doing it Right!, edited by Robert Priest, 101–119. Evangelical Missiological Society Series 16. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 2008.

In this manuscript, I share key experiences from my sixteen years of cross-cultural ministry in Cambodia in regard to mobilization of local resources. Additionally, I speak of Jesus’ incredible ingenuity for affirming and mobilizing local resources. Through personal experiences, biblical examples, and insights from others, I challenge cross-cultural Christian workers to avoid imposing outside resources, but rather facilitate local people to mobilize their local resources.

God had informed Moses that he was to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of their mental and physical prison into a land groomed and cultivated by God. Moses asked God with a great amount of pleading in his voice, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me?” God responded to Moses, “Throw that old rickety stick aside and let me give you something worthwhile for the task!” Surely, God did not respond in such a manner. Rather, God asked, “What is that in your hand?” (Exod 4:2).2

God did not give Moses additional resources but rather affirmed and used what was already in Moses’ hand. All missionaries should adopt the same question, both as a working question on the field and as a driving principle for their mission paradigm. A question that asks the local people, “What is that in your hand that God can use?” In the book Walk Out Walk On, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze share about communities that have learned to work with what they have to create what they need.3 If we were to turn this into a Moses-type question, we would ask: “What can you and God do with what you have to create what you need?”

In this article, I will share “aha moments” that I have experienced during my sixteen years of cross-cultural ministry in Cambodia in regard to mobilization of local resources. In addition, I will speak of Jesus’ incredible ingenuity for affirming and mobilizing local resources.

I was riding with a group of Cambodians in a truck to a village. In a ministry setting, most of these Cambodians were very timid and unsure of themselves as communicators of Jesus Christ. But, there in the truck they communicated with animation, passion, and confidence. What was the difference? They were interacting with stories, proverbs, riddles, and songs versus logical explanations and debates. In that very moment the truth dawned on me—I had imported and forced my teaching styles on the Cambodians. I cleverly taught the Cambodian believers how to study and present the Word of God through systematic theology, definitions, outlines, reasoning, apologetics, and interpreted narratives. While some of those who learned from me sorted out how to communicate like a Westerner, their Cambodian audience looked at them with blank stares.

I had made a huge mistake. I imported my resources and modes of teaching and communication. It was time for me to be the vulnerable one—not them.

I gathered up all my Western-oriented materials that I had written in the local language, tossed them in a cabinet, locked the door, and threw away the key. Then I started asking the Cambodians the Moses-type question: “What do you have in your hand?” The Cambodians revealed, “We have stories, drama, symbols, rituals, parables, riddles, ditties, poetry, music, songs, and dance.” Indeed, these were the resources of communication that the Cambodians could use for all aspects of ministry: planting the gospel, discipleship, training, teaching, counseling, and so forth. My duty as a missionary was to recognize, affirm, and learn how to use their local resources. I liken the missionary’s role to that of a cheerleader. We do not have to tell others how to play the game or play it for them, rather we cheer them on saying, “You can do it!”

I entered the Cambodian church and looked for a place to sit down. My favorite time of the week was when I could praise and worship God with Cambodians in the local language. While I was worshiping, I noticed a Cambodian man worshiping in a way different from all the others. I curiously leaned over to take a closer look. At that moment, I realized that the man was blind. Unlike the others, his posture represented pronounced reverence. He worshipped God the exact way a Cambodian would behave in the presence of a king or someone important: bowed lowly, no eye contact, and both hands tightly pushed together, pressed against the chest. The others worshipped standing straight up, seemingly making eye contact with God, and hands lifted upward with armpits showing. This experience would not be so bad, if I were not the one who planted the church.

I had made another a huge mistake. I imported my form of Western worship. Why? I knew better, but I wanted to plant a church before I could grasp the indigenous music of Cambodia. Since a real church needed formal worship—so I thought—I took a shortcut and introduced some Western songs translated into the Cambodian language and modeled modes of worship from my experience in North America.

Again, I should have asked the Cambodians, “What is in your hand?” They would have answered, “A roneat, a pia, a chapey, a tro, a skor. We use pinpeat, chreing chapey narrative singing, ayai repartee singing, shadow plays, melodies that tell stories, lullabies, mohori ensembles, plengkar, ramvong, and so forth.” I should have continued to ask, “What is the most culturally relevant form of worship for you?”

It was time for me to be the vulnerable one—learn, adapt, and facilitate the Cambodians to produce their own indigenous hymnody: “a body of hymns and spiritual songs which are composed by members of an ethnic group and thought of as being their own.”4

A local Cambodian pastor requested that I work alongside of him to train a church planting team. I remember the first training session well. I made the following request: “Please, each one of you share your story of how you came to know and walk with Christ.” Their stories were similar: “I received free eyeglasses. . . .” “The Christian organization gave us rice. . . .” “I was given a job with an NGO. . . .”

I knew we were in trouble in regard to planting healthy indigenous churches. In a matter of months, the church planters requested eyeglasses, rice, and connections to job opportunities to share among the people with whom they were planting churches. Additionally, they expected material goods and financial compensation for their effort in church planting. I had matured enough to know that the moment I gave subsidies to the church planters and material goods for them to use as handouts, I would have created unhealthy dependency on me. Subsequently, the local pastor and I encouraged the church planters to remain bi-vocational and find ways to share compassion with their local resources—visit a patient in the hospital, work side by side on a project, teach a child to read, and any other compassionate acts that start with what is in hand.

Imported teaching styles, worship forms, and welfare evangelism were all detrimental to the process of mobilizing local resources for the sake of healthy indigenous churches that make a difference in their Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria (Acts 1:8).

Almost on a daily basis, I receive emails from Africa, India, and Asia. The emails are always requests. “Please come and do crusades. Please conduct seminars for our leaders. Send materials, books, and DVDs. Will you partner with us?” Most emails state a little something that informs me that the invitation involves money. All the emails are from seemingly well-established leaders. What does this reveal to me? It reveals to me that something went wrong in the birthing and early development stages of those churches and organizations. The planter or those giving birth instilled a mindset that resources from the inside are inferior.

Capable leaders are driven to look constantly outside themselves to the West for their human and material resources. Instead of mobilizing people and resources around them, they make pleas to those completely removed from the context. These churches and ministries are sometimes kilometers apart from one another. Instead of reaching out and collaborating with one another, they bypass capable disciples of Christ in their own villages, districts, states, regions, countries, and continents to ask for help from the point farthest from them. In my perspective, it is time for the West to ask, “What can you and God do with what you have to create what you need?”

Yesterday, I received an email from India. The sender of the email has completed master of divinity and master of mheology degrees. This minister is now pursuing a PhD in missions. The purpose of the email was to make a request for books, DVDs, and magazines to do research on the house church movement. The composer of the email expressed that he wanted the resources for free because he could not afford to buy materials for his research.

One reason local Christians in places such as India feel the need to look to the West for resources is because Western missionaries and churches have conveyed the message that the educated and the affluent have some sort of edge in fulfilling the Great Commission. We have introduced structures and paradigms that are complicated, expensive, and definitely not mandated by Jesus for the purpose of making disciples in all nations. It is slightly ironic that the Indian gentleman came full circle. In other words, he has spent a significant amount of human and material resources to eventually research the house church movement, which has a secondary name: the simple church movement—a method that intentionally promotes simplicity, low maintenance, usage of local resources, and reproducibility. I have two books on this subject sitting on my desk entitled The Church in the House: A Return to Simplicity and Simply Church.5

Keep in mind that simple does not mean inferior. On the contrary, simple has an element of purity, authenticity, depth, and of course reproducibility. “It is not that the content is simplistic or shallow—it is often very profound—but the pattern for doing it is simple and therefore easily reproduced.”6

Being seminary trained or well funded certainly were not key ingredients to fulfilling the Great Commission for the disciples or Paul. Ben Chikazaza, a church leader in Zimbabwe, answered his own question:

I wonder what the apostles Paul and Peter would say if they came down and saw the state of the church today? They would be shocked at the amount of money needed to convert one soul today! God help the African pastor to remain simple and obedient. The apostle Paul preached a simple gospel and could not demand what was rightfully his for fear that he would be disqualified. David refused to fight Goliath using King Saul’s armour and we cannot fight our battles using the world’s armour. Many of God’s servants are so heavily loaded with materialism that they cannot lift a hand against the enemy.7

Jesus was born right in the midst of local resources—a manger in the town of Bethlehem. As you follow Jesus’ journey through the Gospels, you see that the only resources he introduced from outside the community were himself, the disciples, and signs and wonders. When Jesus entered a community, he utilized resources that already existed in that context to fulfill his ministry. He preached in existing synagogues (Mark 1:39). He preached and had dinner with tax collectors and so-called sinners in homes (Mark 2:2, 15). Large crowds caused Jesus to teach parables from boats along lakeshores and the beatitudes from mountainsides (Mark 4:1; 5:1). When a Samaritan woman came to draw water from the community well, Jesus led her into a saving relationship through himself, the living water (John 4:7). Jesus rebuked demons out of a man and sent them captive into a herd of pigs, which committed suicide by frantically running off a steep bank into a lake (Luke 8:33). He taught the people many things in parables using everyday objects and experiences (Mark 4:2–3). A withering fig tree along the road became a prophetic object lesson (Matt 21:19). The disciples brought a donkey to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and had Jesus sit on it (Luke 19:35). Jesus took bread during a holiday meal, broke it, and gave it to the disciples saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). Jesus poured water into a basin and washed the disciples’ foul-smelling feet, then dried those feet with a towel that was wrapped around him (John 13:5). Jesus died hanging on a cross made of local wood and was laid in a local tomb, located in the garden near the place where Jesus was crucified (John 19:17, 41–42).

You never read about Jesus opening a duffle bag or a crate to unleash resources on the people. He never requested that Judas give funds to the people to enable them to build a church. He did not send out the disciples with ample supplies and donor funds to set up humanitarian projects. Even when Jesus miraculously fed five thousand people, he accused those recipients who received a free meal of being interested in merely filling their bellies.

Jesus expected the same from his disciples. He trained his disciples on-the-job with local resources and sent them out without even sandals.

There’s a great harvest waiting for you in the fields, but there aren’t many good workers to harvest it. Pray that the Harvest Master will send good workers to the fields. It’s time for you 70 to go. I am sending you out armed with vulnerability, like lambs into a pack of wolves. Don’t bring a wallet. Don’t carry a backpack. I don’t want you to even wear sandals. Walk along barefoot, quietly, without stopping for small talk. When you enter a house seeking lodging, say, “Peace on this house!” If a child of peace—one who welcomes God’s message of peace—is there, your peace will rest on him. If not, don’t worry; nothing is wasted. Stay where you are welcomed. Become a part of the family, eating and drinking whatever they give you. You’re My workers, and you deserve to be cared for. Again, don’t go from house to house, but settle down in a town and eat whatever they serve you. Heal the sick and say to the townspeople, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” (Luke 10:2–7; The Voice)

Jesus had church; he didn’t make church. Jesus had church at a water well, in homes, on the mountainside, and in a boat. He made disciples using fig trees, parables, demons in pigs, donkey rides, meals, and washing feet. Jesus was the first to instruct people to share and be generous among the needy; but He did this very thing through loving relationships and creativity, utilizing that which was locally available. Local resources served as the color for Jesus’ artwork of discipleship making. He saw what was near him and turned it into a parable. He used everyday articles to make a life-giving point. Homes and seashores served as his mobile pulpit.

On the contrary, we are so quick to introduce our resources from the outside. We race to set up buildings and impose foreign organizational structures. Missionaries and sponsors serve as conduits of money. While Jesus modeled church in an everyday context, we model church in ways that can only be sustainable through our funding. Both Gailyn Van Rheenen and Jonathan Bonk echo this reality:

“Western temptation is to conceptualize and organize the missionary task on an economic level that can only be sustained by Western support and oversight.” This has resulted in the development of mission strategies which are “money intensive,” signifying that one must have a lot of capital to do Christianity Western-style.8

Josphat Charagu, a pastor in Kenya, expressed to me that the missionaries organized their mission work according to a Western context with complete disregard for the African context and thought. David Phillips, founder of the Nomadic Peoples Network, has revealed that the Western, imported model of church caused nomads to count Christianity as a faith for the rich who can afford to erect and maintain buildings—not a faith for communities who intentionally move from one place to another. A camel herder’s statement says it all: “When you can put your Church on the back of my camel then I will think that Christianity is meant for us Somalis.”9

Pastor Charagu told me how one day he arrived at his church and saw a pile of rocks dumped right in the front of the entrance. He became upset and exclaimed, “I have had enough with our neighbor; he continues to make things difficult for us!” Pastor Charagu called the head of his men’s department to complain. The department leader responded, “Pastor, slow down! The neighbor did not unload those stones in front of the church. One of the cell groups brought those today as part of their contribution to build our permanent church.” Pastor Charagu was utterly encouraged to see the church members give sacrificially and without provocation.

This community of believers plans to build their church using a method called “divide and rule,” which is used by local politicians. Unfortunately, politicians abuse this method, but they plan to implement this approach in a righteous way. In this “divide and rule” manner, different people will be responsible for different facets of building the church, such as the drawing plans, stones, roofing, pillars, windows, and so forth.

The ingenuity, sacrificial commitment, and resolve of Pastor Charagu and his church are an example of the beauty of mobilizing local people and local resources. It is what happens among the people who use local resources through dependence on God and on one another that make the difference: prayer, sacrifice, faith, companionship, gift sharing, creativity, teamwork, capacity building, and perseverance. I guarantee that when you see an elaborate structure built with outside funds, you will NOT see the make-a-difference characteristics that you would observe among a community that has built its own church or creatively found ways to do church within existing structures (homes, community centers, urban garages, businesses, backyards, under trees, etc.) The beauty is in the process, not the finished product. Better the small that reveals a group’s effort toward responsible self-help than the big that reveals donations from outside. Our big and better methods in someone else’s country do not fool God according to Leonard Sweet:

The ancient Hebrews compared God’s workings to the monstrous cedars of Lebanon and wings of eagles. Jesus loves looking at mustard seeds, grains of wheat, leftover crumbs, and barnyard hens. He invites us to look around at our fields, our gardens, our orchards, our vineyards, our backyards. Jesus is not against large but invites us to start small and do little large. “Little is much if God is in it.”10

We need to cease making people of other nations believe that money and what money can accomplish are the key to making disciples. If we despise the small beginnings of other nations by shoving our supposedly efficient, bigger and better structures and methods down their throats, we are guilty of crushing the dignity and initiatives of men and women. We can learn from the interchange between the angel and the prophet Zechariah on behalf of Zerubbabel who was responsible for rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem:

I asked the angel who talked with me, “What are these, my lord?” He answered, “Do you not know what these are?” “No, my lord,” I replied.  So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty. . . . Then the word of the LORD came to me:  “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this temple; his hands will also complete it. Then you will know that the LORD Almighty has sent me to you.  Who despises the day of small things? Men will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.” (Zech 4:4–10a)

The interaction between the angel of God and Zechariah reveals to us the key ingredients to godly success, which are God’s Spirit and small beginnings. Let us Western missionaries not swallow up these key ingredients by imposing our resources onto others in cross-cultural contexts.

All of us are quick to say that the Bible is our principal and God-given manual for our mission practices. Dr. Christopher Little challenges the distortion of that claim:

Most if not all people involved in fulfilling the Great Commission today would affirm that the sole basis for Christian faith and practice is the Bible. Yet for whatever reason there has been a preoccupation with the former to the neglect of the latter. That is, the church has concentrated on “orthodoxy,” right or correct doctrine and thinking, to the exclusion of “orthopraxy,” right or correct practice and action. This predicament is most discernible in the area of finance since, according to Herbert Kane, “no other one thing has done so much harm to the Christian cause” (1976:91). As such, it is imperative that the Western church recovers biblical models regarding the proper use of money in mission.11

The apostle Paul was the most successful missionary of all time. We would be foolish to count his orthodoxy as passé. Paul purposely set aside regular support for himself, expected the churches he birthed to be self-supporting from the beginning, and encouraged poor churches to contribute to those who were facing famine, all for the greater purpose of planting healthy churches. Jesus and the disciples gave of themselves endlessly, yet that giving never included an unloading of material resources on a people. If we appreciate the success of Jesus, the disciples, and Paul, we may want to take their practices more seriously.

God asked Moses what was in his hand. Jesus asked the same question indirectly throughout his ministry on earth (John 21:6). Philip emphasized what the Ethiopian eunuch was holding in his hand—the Scriptures (Acts 8:30). Paul exhorted Timothy to fan into flame his resource—the gift of God that was given to him through the laying on of hands (2 Tim 1:6).

Instead of being providers of resources, let us affirm and facilitate local people’s identification and mobilization of their local resources to create what they need. May the question, “What is in your hand?” be forever on our lips as we participate in the Great Commission. In this way, God will receive the glory, not us.

Jean Johnson, a cross-cultural communicator, spent 23 years living and serving among Cambodians in the USA and in Cambodia specializing in worldview strategic church planting, orality, and reproducible training. Presently, Jean is a co-director of World Mission Associates and an international coach in parts of Asia, Africa, and North America. She coaches and teaches pastors, churches, missionaries, organizations, and teams on how to intentionally inspire indigenous people to mobilize their local capabilities, resources, and cultural creativity. Her publications include We Are Not the Hero: A Missionary’s Guide for Sharing Christ, Not a Culture of Dependency (Sisters, Oregon: Deep River Books, 2012), reviewed in the present issue.

Bibliography

Bonk, Jonathan J. Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem. American Society of Missiology Series 15. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Chikazaza, Ben. “Self-Reliance and the Church.” The Network for Strategic Missions (October 1997): http://www.strategicnetwork.org/index.php?loc=kb&view=v&id=9912&fto=1378&.

Dale, Tony, and Felicity Dale. Simply Church. Austin, TX: Karis Publishing, 2002.

Fitts, Robert. The Church in the House: A Return to Simplicity. Salem, OR: Preparing the Way Publishers, 2001.

Little, Christopher. “Partnerships in Pauline Perspective: The Economics of Partnership.” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 27, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 61–68.

Phillips, David J. Peoples on the Move: Introducing the Nomads of the World. Grand Rapids: IVP, 2001.

Schrag, Brian, and Paul Neeley. All the World Will Worship: Helps for Developing Indigenous Hymns. 3rd ed. Duncanville, TX: EthnoDoxology Publications, 2005.

Sweet, Leonard. Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There. Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010.

Van Rheenen, Gailyn. “MR #2: Money and Mi$$ion$.” Missiology.org. http://www.missiology.org/?p=278.

Wheatley, Margaret, and Deborah Frieze. Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey into Communities Daring to Live the Future Now. BK Currents. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2011.

Dr. Flanders is the Director of the Halbert Institute for Missions and an Assistant Professor in Missions in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. He spent eleven years doing mission work in Thailand, seven of those working as a church planter in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. He is a consulting editor for Missio Dei as well as a member of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission executive board.

A non-Western church leader recently remarked, “When I hear the word partnership, I run the other way!” Why? Because despite their rhetoric and intent, Western missionaries often end up creating the very thing they seek to avoid, viz., dependent churches.

Though we must be thankful that most missionaries today do hold (in theory!) incarnational, contextual, and empowering as appropriate modes of mission, we all know that quite often our practice falls short. The indigenous, empowering, partnering type of mission that is the “canonical” version of modern missions theory is frequently unrealized in our mission efforts. In the end, dependent churches are often the result.

This is not true in every case. Some examples exist of Western missionaries establishing local churches that thrive, become able to carry out the work of God utilizing local capacities and resources, and exhibit full ownership of their lives under God. As a whole, however, such is less frequently realized than we all desire. What noted mission historian Wilbert Shenk has claimed remains the case, that since 1850 the “indigenous church” has been central to Protestant mission theory but infrequently practiced.

This is a problem. It is a dependency problem. And dependency is about resources—control of, use of, and access to resources.

While we often focus on the use of money (and money does represent a huge challenge), think of the multiple resources missionaries often represent or control directly. These include language (non-local languages, often English, either to evangelize or for use in training and worship), leadership (non-locals making significant or primary decisions for local believers), theology (note the dominance of translated Western works but the paucity of local writing and the imposition of Western theological conclusions), competence (many local believers look to missionaries as more authentically “Christian” or equipped to do ministry and make the important church decisions), worship style (Vineyard, Hillsong, and contemporary English praise and worship songs dominate across the globe as do modern Western liturgical patterns), and access (Western missionaries can provide networking to potential donors and funding sources). Additionally, recent scholarly studies demonstrate that thinking styles (not just communication styles), identity construction, and the configuration of the human self are significantly different across cultures.1 Many missionary-planted churches default into Western preferences in these areas, thus creating all sorts of subtle but ultimately destructive dependencies.

Dependency, whether financial, theological, cultural, linguistic, psychological, technological, or personal, remains among the greatest challenges for mission in the twenty-first century.

A recent incarnation of the age-old dependency/resources conversation is that of “Vulnerable Mission” (VM). Taking its cue from biblical (e.g., Luke 10) and contemporary (modern studies on western aid and development activities) resources, the VM conversation takes as central the call to address these important issues with vigor. VM advocates that some missionaries take seriously a model of mission that steers away from using the power of non-local resources for mission. Instead, VM advocates capacity-building missionaries that rely upon local resources.

As Stan Nussbaum reminds us in his article, VM as an approach is something with which most of us are already quite familiar. Three modern mission stories of note (the independent and African-initiated churches in Africa, the modern Chinese house-church movement, and certain Pentecostal movements in Latin America) all rely upon what VM advocates suggest as the best ways to achieve the goals of mission.

The papers in this issue of Missio Dei represent some of the current and best thinking on VM. On the Campus of Abilene Christian University in March of 2012, the Halbert Institute for Mission (ACU), the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, and TransWorld Radio jointly hosted the first global conference on VM. It was simultaneously livecast on the internet with participants from every continent.

Whether one adheres fully to the principles advocated by Vulnerable Mission proponents, the questions they raise demand serious consideration from a church that often takes easy, conventional wisdom. In particular, VM forces us to grapple with both priority in mission and our mode. What is the goal of mission? What is of most importance? What way(s) are most consistent for participating in God’s reconciling reach toward the world? VM advocates contend that often our goals and our mode do not properly match.

Is VM something new? In one sense, it is not. VM represents the age-old questions of missions, use of resources, and dependency. Yet, the new context in which we find ourselves presents different challenges and calls us to evaluate our mission practice anew. This new context involves the massive surge in short-term mission, the growing vibrancy of the non-Western church, the continued financial dominance of the Western world, and the ambivalence created by post-colonial global commitments.

This is what constitutes the conversation we call Vulnerable Mission. It is a renewed probing of the hard questions that we must ask in order to see our ultimate goal fulfilled—churches fully reflecting the glory of God in their local contexts.

What does this conversation mean, then, for missions in Churches of Christ and Christian Churches? Particularly in these two branches of Stone-Campbell churches, mission has operated primarily without the denominational structures of a mission agency. One consequence of this is that anyone, anywhere, can send or do missions, regardless of their qualifications, preparation, or approach. With the current swell of short-term mission efforts, the number of “missionaries” has vastly increased. Yet, many of these “missionaries” unwittingly create and perpetuate structures of dependency.

Additionally, our commitment to Scripture as the foundation of mission practice requires us to be deeply concerned about the examples of Jesus and the earliest Christians. Vulnerable Mission advocates suggest that Jesus, the disciples, and the early church all operated with a very vulnerable approach to mission.

These papers represent not a final destination or some fully articulated theory of mission, but a conversation. In my opinion, it is worth pursuing precisely because of the high stakes. After reading and considering them carefully, we hope you will join us in this important conversation!

Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch were two of the last century’s outstanding missiologists. This essay demonstrates how both of them consistently and convincingly rooted their theology of mission in the weakness and vulnerability of the cross. Their faithful voices are an important reminder that the call is to mission in Jesus’ way.

Not long ago, I was in a Bible study group. The group was studying the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” they asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, “Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor.” He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of faith. (Mark 6:1–6a)2

As the people who were present wrestled to understand whether there was a deeper meaning in the reason why the people in Jesus’ hometown were so hostile to him, it dawned on me that an incarnational approach would require vulnerability from the messenger of God. When we are vulnerable enough to approach people face to face, the message that the messenger carries then becomes genuine. The message and the messenger are not separable; rather, the messenger’s heart and attitude are already melted together in his communication so that the messenger becomes intrinsic to the message. Therefore, without true vulnerability from the messenger, the love of God cannot flow with his or her spoken words into the hearts of the recipients of the message. Therefore, when Jesus himself came as a person into the world and tried to give life to the townspeople, he had to risk hostility and rejection.

Needless to say, we must go back to the Bible if we want to be grounded on solid rock before we articulate any form of mission from the perspective of mission theology. In this article, however, I want to deal with the theme of “mission in weakness and vulnerability” that appears in missiological writings, specifically from the writings of Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch. In my opinion, how missiologists see the theme of mission in weakness and vulnerability is crucial in understanding and formulating mission theology for missionary movements. The writings on the theme of mission from a position of weakness and vulnerability from missiologists such as Newbigin and Bosch will illuminate us as to how missionaries and mission theologians have tried to understand mission in Christ’s way.

Lesslie Newbigin

Lesslie Newbigin acutely indicated that modern missiology remarkably lacks the understanding of weakness and vulnerability that should essentially accompany the messenger if the message that the messenger carries is to be authenticated.3 In his book, Mission in Christ’s Way, Newbigin unfolds what it means to do mission in the way of Christ.

First of all, in order to do mission as Christ did, according to Newbigin, we need to realize that gospel is revealed, yet hidden, in Jesus Christ; people are naturally asking how a man crucified as a sinner can be the embodiment of the wisdom and power of God. It is like a parable. It is hidden, yet revealed in the eyes of believers. It is there on Calvary that the kingly rule, the kingdom of God, won the victory over all the powers of darkness. The cross is not a defeat overturned by the resurrection, but the cross is itself the victory proved by the resurrection. The disciples who saw the resurrected Jesus began to understand that it was when the Lord of Life was crucified that he exposed and disarmed the power of the darkness and overcame death itself.4

Therefore, the kingdom of God, Newbigin went on to say, now has a human face and a human name. Without Jesus, we cannot comprehend the kingdom of God, and without the kingdom of God, we cannot think of Jesus. Jesus Christ himself is the very embodiment of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God has been given to us (not that we establish, expand, or extend it by ourselves) in the form of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh. In this milieu, the cross embodies the weakness and vulnerability of God that turned out to be the power of God. It is in this vulnerable love out of which overflowed the saving and healing power of God for humanity.5

Thus, to Newbigin, mission is not a success story. The world yearns for success, but the gospel is, by no means, a success story. Mission does not have to do with a pragmatic or effective effort, or an accomplishment that can be much more easily achieved with ready-made tools or highly developed scientific statistics. In both Newbigin’s time and ours, the most vital mission has not taken place in more developed countries but rather in areas where Christianity is persecuted, believers suffer, and where Jesus’ followers do not have much means to offer—a position many would define as vulnerable or weak. However, the effectiveness of our mission is not in our own hands. It is the work of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, who himself arises, is with and comforts the weak and vulnerable community of the believers, and manifests the power of God through this earthen vessel.6

John 20:19–21 clearly shows how mission is to be carried out in Christ’s way, says Newbigin:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:19–21)

The words written in John show that Jesus had sent the disciples (and us) exactly as the Father has sent the Son into the world. In the same manner that the Father sent his Son, the Son now also sends us. For the disciples to understand more fully the manner in which they were to be sent, Jesus showed them his hands and side. Here lies the ultimate foundation for vulnerable mission. The church, which is the body of Christ, as the bearer of mission, will have the same scars as she goes out to the world and preaches the gospel of the kingdom. These scars will authenticate the mission that is undertaken and the very gospel that they preach.

The cross—the scars—that the disciples bear is not a suffering that the church has to passively endure. Nor is it a defeat that the church should receive. It is not an act of oppression that the church should tolerate submissively. The scars are “the marks of Jesus” that the Apostle Paul talks about (Gal 6:17). It is the weakness, vulnerability, and suffering that accompanied Paul when he preached the gospel. We see these characteristics constantly demonstrated in the life and ministry of Paul (e.g., 1 Cor 4:8–13; 2 Cor 4–5; 12:1–10).7 To heal the sick and cast out demons is “an active and uncompromising challenge to all the powers of evil, yet . . . a totally vulnerable challenge so that (and here is the profound mystery) the final victory is God’s and not ours.”8 In weakness and vulnerability, seemingly a defeat, the victory of God is assured.

The concept of mission from a position of weakness and vulnerability is also addressed in another of Newbigin’s books, The Open Secret. Although The Open Secret deals primarily with the broad area of theology of mission within the framework of trinitarian view, Newbigin always focuses the reader’s attention to the fact that the cross is the way of Christ for mission and that we are to follow him in his example. As a missionary from the West, Newbigin was very sensitive to how people in other parts of the world might feel about Western colonialism, and he recognized the incongruity of the tie that Christian mission had with expanding Western power.9 Newbigin insisted that those involved in present-day mission should learn from New Testament examples “what it means to bear witness to the gospel from a position not of strength but of weakness.”10 Newbigin went on, saying that “this picture of the mission is as remote as possible from the picture of the Church as a powerful body putting forth its strength and wisdom to master the strength and wisdom of the world.”11 The opposite is true in this case. The church is weak and vulnerable. However, it is in the church’s state of weakness and vulnerability that the Spirit of God himself manifests his power through her. A true mission cannot be done by using military strategy, mastering the strength and wisdom of the world, and neither can it be done by a successful sales campaign. The victory is not ours. The victory is and always has been won by the One who is greater than we are. Newbigin’s description of mission in weakness and vulnerability is well presented in this way:

The real triumphs of the gospel have not been won when the church is strong in a worldly sense; they have been won when the church is faithful in the midst of weakness, contempt, and rejection. And I would simply add my testimony, which could be illustrated by many examples, that it has been in situations where faithfulness to the gospel placed the church in a position of total weakness and rejection that the advocate has himself risen up and, often through the words and deeds of very “insignificant” people, spoken the word that confronted and shamed the wisdom and power of the world.12

What constantly appears in Newbigin’s theology of mission is that significant advances of the church do not happen when we depend on human power, decision, or the ability of “mobilizing and allocating of ‘resources.’ ”13 Rather, significant advances of the church happen without advance knowledge and without human power.

Earlier, I mentioned that The Open Secret was written within the framework of the trinitarian view. What is intriguing in Newbigin’s emphasis on the trinitarian approach is that the element of weakness and vulnerability found within christology is always combined with the fresh, surprising action and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Influenced by Roland Allen,14 Newbigin dared not omit the essential place of the Holy Spirit in mission. The evidence of Newbigin’s emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit is clear in his ecclesiology as well.15

Newbigin’s emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit is also apparent in his understanding of the Gospel of John. With the dominant theme of “sending” apparent throughout the Fourth Gospel, Newbigin confirms that the writer of the Gospel is truly concerned with mission.16 The earlier quotation, having established mission in Jesus’ way, continues: “And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven’ ” (John 20:22–23).

Various roles of the Holy Spirit are previously mentioned in the Gospel of John, especially in chapters 14–16. This emphasis on the role of the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel is culminated in verse 22, preceded by Jesus’s remark as to the way in which the disciples will themselves be sent—with scars (v. 20). What I am trying to point out is that the great commission in the Gospel of John (20:19–23) combines an emphasis on the power of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) with the weakness and vulnerability (christology) of the messenger—so much so, that there is no room for any kind of triumphalism even as we are used mightily by God Almighty in the communication of the message. As much as “the Church on earth is by its nature missionary,”17 mission as having been sent is by its nature vulnerable.

In another of his books, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, Newbigin deals with the meaning of the cross.18 In an attempt to shed light on the relationship between the meaning of history and Christ, Newbigin recognizes the centrality of the cross in the kingdom of God. What is the meaning of history and what does history move toward? Referring to Hendrikus Berkhof,19 Newbigin elaborates the prominent placement of the weakness and vulnerability of the cross, both in the kingdom of God and throughout history.

To Newbigin, history has to do with the gap “between the coming of the kingdom veiled in the vulnerable and powerless Jesus and the coming of the kingdom in manifest power.”20 Thus, patience and watchfulness are greatly required because we live between the times. What is critical here is that the character of this time in which we are waiting is determined by the character of the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. The church, while journeying through history, is destined to participate in the suffering of Christ.21

In our present period, the meaning of the cross has both been revealed and yet still remains hidden. Though the event of the crucifixion of Jesus was seen as a real historical moment by believers and unbelievers alike, the resurrection of the Lord, on the other hand, was seen only by those who had faith in him. This hiddenness of the kingdom of God has been throughout history. However, to Newbigin, it is this hiddenness that “makes possible the conversion of the nations.” Because of this hiddenness of the kingdom, nations may continue to freely turn to the Lord. Without the hiddenness of the kingdom of God, nations would be forced to turn to the Lord because of the terrible majesty of Jesus revealed in glory with no room for a free will of their own. Here is the significance of the weakness and vulnerability of the cross, both in the kingdom of God and as evidenced in history:

When the Church tries to embody the rule of God in the forms of earthly power it may achieve that power, but it is no longer a sign of the kingdom. But when it goes the way the Master went, unmasking and challenging the powers of darkness and bearing in its own life the cost of their onslaught, then there are given to the Church signs of the kingdom, powers of healing and blessing which, to eyes of faith, are recognizable as true signs that Jesus reigns.22

Acceptance of vulnerability and weakness in mission is, to Newbigin, not only appropriate but also indispensable for the authentication of the gospel of the kingdom that the messenger preaches.

David J. Bosch

Though David Bosch, a South African missiologist, wrote several important books such as Witness to the World, Transforming Mission, and Believing in the Future,23 I will primarily address only two books in this article: A Spirituality of the Road and The Vulnerability of Mission.24 A Spirituality of the Road was written earliest among his books, and The Vulnerability of Mission was written just before he died in a car accident, and yet both of them are very relevant to the theme of “mission in weakness and vulnerability.” It shows that the theme of mission in weakness and vulnerability had been on his mind constantly throughout his lifetime. It should also be added that his book, Transforming Mission, which many missiologists regard as a magnum opus, also deals with this issue in much broader context, which is beyond the scope of this article.25

As a white man who had stood against apartheid in South Africa and had kept his integrity about racial issues until death, Bosch knew better than most that missionaries and missiologists should live and carry out their ministries with vulnerability. Bosch solidly developed the theological foundation for the primary thesis of A Spirituality of the Road from 2 Corinthians. In the last chapter, Bosch commends that we as believers above all need to have the courage to be weak.26

What Bosch noted in the Apostle Paul’s life is that “true mission is the weakest and least impressive human activity imaginable, the very antithesis of a theology of glory.” This Apostle followed his Master. To Paul, weakness and vulnerability was “a necessary precondition for any authentic mission,” said Bosch.27

The same precondition of weakness and vulnerability is true within authentic community. The community of Christ is not the assembly of spiritual giants. It is the gathering of the broken people and led by people like Peter who experienced brokenness. Mission involves not just the vulnerability of the people whom we want to convert, but also requires the vulnerability of the missionaries themselves; because Jesus himself revealed our own sins by his vulnerability. Our sin would have remained hidden if Jesus had not been willing to be vulnerable.28

Even my own experiences are evidence that our failures and mistakes can become assets. When we become vulnerable, yet courageous enough to share our failures and mistakes with others, these failures become rich assets, and transform the hearers. As we begin to take the road to weakness and vulnerability, we see people changed.

Bosch seemed to understand how powerful it is to be in a position of vulnerability. He stated that Jesus had never been so close to the world as when he was on the cross. In vulnerability, Jesus was able to embrace the world so closely and in this same vulnerability he was able to relate himself to the world. Though Bosch also believed that it was on the cross that Jesus stood against the world more than any other occasion, it was Jesus’s involvement with the world that Bosch wanted to highlight.29

Bosch’s perception of the relationship between the vulnerable mission and the world was broad. To Bosch, mission in vulnerability and weakness does not only pertain to so-called “spiritual matters,” but that mission in vulnerability and weakness also applies to ministry that has social dimensions. To Bosch, the distinction between “spiritual and social” ministries was caused by dichotomistic thought that originated from Greek spiritual ancestors. Vulnerable mission legitimately encompasses social issues as well as personal and spiritual ones in a traditional sense.30

As a final comment on A Spirituality of the Road, I also want to note that Bosch views missiology as “the study of the Church as surprise.”31 Reciting Ivan Illich,32 Bosch asserts that theology, especially missiology, is always in process. Because missionaries constantly bring their own experiences into their own areas of reflection as they continue to engage in mission, their way of thinking or frame of reference also constantly changes.33

This discerning attentiveness with the thorough grasp of the meaning of mission in weakness and vulnerability should assure that militant vocabularies like “soldiers, forces, advance, army, crusade, marching orders, strategy, planning, and many more” should be used discreetly in describing mission.34 For after all, it is the Spirit of God who works through the messenger who is obedient in a position of vulnerability and weakness. Through this position, we might come to realize that we are not there as messengers to give correct answers or to resolve problems with superior technology or tools, but that we were sent by God to show scars in vulnerability, and relate ourselves with the people to which the message is being given, because we too are weak and vulnerable. By doing mission in our Master’s way, taking the road to weakness, instead of strength and power, we will move “from surprise to surprise.”35

As I address another of Bosch’s books, The Vulnerability of Mission, I will not discuss issues related to the book, Silence, written by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō, which Bosch referred to in the beginning of his own book. I want to specifically avoid talking about apostasy in Silence, since Bosch also describes Endō’s book as a disturbing novel. However, the main point Bosch tried to draw from Endō’s book was that the cross is not about the power of God, but the weakness of God.36

In The Vulnerability of Mission, Bosch states that the cross is not a beauty or a power contest,37 nor is mission to be carried out by crusading minds but by crucified minds.38 What Bosch eventually tried to discuss was the problem of the colonialism that Westerners have imposed on the rest of the world. For it was natural in the Christendom model that where the power of Western countries went, their religion (Christianity) was expected to go as well.

Although Bosch addresses the flaws of colonialism and Western mission, Bosch’s statement also sounds a note of warning against the missionary forces from the Majority World, since we tend to think that generally speaking, we (the missionary forces from the Majority World) are currently replacing Western missionary forces. We may not be performing our ministry under the banner of colonialism; however it is often done with substitute colonialism such as the power of money, technology, popular business brand, and the like.

Whether it is from Western countries or the rest of the world, if mission is to be authenticated according to the way of our Master, mission should have the marks of Christ. Here, I would like to make sure, along with Newbigin, that Jesus is not portrayed as a victim, nor do we accept our suffering passively, but that Christ and we are submitting to God actively.39 Nevertheless, mission is not a success story either.40 Desmond Tutu once declared that the church of Christ should be a “failing community rather than a success-driven one” in the face of a South African government that was outlawing nineteen ministry organizations, arresting many of the church leaders, and operating banning orders.41 We have no choice but to follow the footsteps of our Master. In the words of Jonathan Bonk, there is nothing “strategically efficient . . . about taking up a cross.”42

The analysis of Bosch and his understanding of mission in weakness and vulnerability may be stated here in a rather brief manner. However, his mission praxis, personal life, and his difficult journey in the context of South Africa continue to serve as the clearest example of a position of mission from weakness and vulnerability. From the beginning of his ministry period (1957–1967) as a missionary among the Xhosa in Transkei until the time of his death in April 1992 he was constantly in a situation in which he had to be vulnerable; in the context of apartheid, as a white man, Bosch found himself caught between the blacks and Afrikaners (whites). The situation of apartheid continued to become more pressingly difficult for him as he continued to stand for and with those who were black.43 Bosch understood that to be an instrument of reconciliation, he could not avoid being “crushed in between.”44 As Bosch began to identify himself more with the suffering blacks, his family, including his young children, had to go through the same difficulties.45 Here, I do not feel that I am dealing with this issue of mission in vulnerability and weakness somberly enough to accurately convey to the reader how crucial it was to Bosch. For Bosch, his writings were reflections of his lifetime struggles for mission in vulnerability, weakness, and integrity. With utmost integrity and seriousness, he embraced this vulnerability into his life, into his heart and mind, and in his flesh and blood, and sacrificed greatly for it. He understood that it was an essential part of his mission.

In this short article, I have examined the writings of Lesslie Newbigin and David Bosch. However, throughout history this theme of mission from a position of vulnerability and weakness was not ignored by conscientious men and women of God. The reason we must now re-emphasize it is because somewhere along the way we lost touch. As Protestants, we tend to launch our missionary movement with triumphalism and ambition, and choose to settle for mere effectiveness in activities. We have forgotten how our Master did his mission. We have not paused to think about the true meaning of the cross and its implications for our mission. We have tended to go ahead of the Lord carelessly whistling, as Kōsuke Koyama has described.46 We have hastily embraced the theology of glory before we have tasted the suffering. We must want to know Jesus more with the willingness to have the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings (Phil 3:10).

Mission in weakness and vulnerability does matter. As we comprehend the true meaning of the gospel of the kingdom of God, we must put the cross, the scar, and the weakness and vulnerability at the center of the kingdom of God. And we shall humbly follow our Master. That is authentic mission.

A graduate of the Korea Military Academy, Paul Yonggap Jeong was voluntarily discharged from the army to pursue his calling as a minister. After graduating with an MDiv from the Korean Baptist Theological Seminary, Jeong became the senior pastor of Hanter Baptist Church in Seoul, which he also jointly established. He earned his ThM at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina and his PhD in intercultural studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He was the interim pastor of Winston-Salem Korean Baptist Church and the senior pastor of Carrboro Korean Baptist Church. Currently, he teaches at the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary and serves as the International Director of Vision for the Kingdom, which is a cooperative mission for world evangelization.

Bibliography

Allen, Roland. The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church and the Causes Which Hinder It. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962.

Berkhof, Hendrikus. Christ the Meaning of History. Richmond: John Knox, 1966.

Bonk, Jonathan J. Missions and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem. American Society of Missiology Series 15. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

Bosch, David Jacobus. Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture. Christian Mission and Modern Culture. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995.

________. A Spirituality of the Road. Missionary Studies 6. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979.

________. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. American Society of Missiology Series 16. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.

________. The Vulnerability of Mission. Occasional Paper (Selly Oak Colleges) 10. Birmingham, England: Selly Oak Colleges, 1991.

________. Witness to the World: The Christian Mission in Theological Perspective. New Foundations Theological Library. Atlanta: John Knox, 1980.

Flannery, Austin. Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1975.

Illich, Ivan. Mission and Midwifery: Essays on Missionary Formation. Mambo Occasional Papers: Missio-Pastoral Series 4. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 1974.

Jeong, Paul Yonggap. Mission from a Position of Weakness. American University Studies 269. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

Koyama, Kōsuke. No Handle on the Cross: An Asian Meditation on the Crucified Mind. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1977.

Kritzinger, J. N. J., and W. A. Saayman. David J. Bosch: Prophetic Integrity, Cruciform Praxis. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Cluster Publications, 2011.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.

________. The Household of God: Lectures on the Nature of the Church. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2008.

________. Mission in Christ’s Way: Bible Studies. WCC Mission Series. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1987.

________. One Body, One Gospel, One World: The Christian Mission Today. London: International Missionary Council, 1958.

________. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

________. Unfinished Agenda: An Autobiography. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.

Contextualizing principles like those identified by Vulnerable Mission may be used to avoid creating unhealthy dependency. They may also be used to other ends, such as persuading a donor or gaining information to subdue an enemy. This highlights the importance of underlying narrative, the frame of meaning at work that largely determines the impact such principles have in a given situation. Beginning with Jesus, the early Christian movement penetrated the vast cultural mosaic of the Roman empire over several centuries without, on the whole, creating unhealthy dependencies. This essay explores a narrative at work that may help to explain this remarkable achievement and suggests an understanding of the role vulnerable principles played in that achievement.

Introduction

Vulnerable Mission offers two specific proposals to avoid creating unhealthy dependencies and ultimately harming those who receive the attention of Christian workers:

1. Working in indigenous languages—or more broadly, a firm commitment to understand people deeply, on their own terms, in their own context.
2. A commitment to depend on local resources, avoiding outside resourcing in the conduct of local work.2

Cultural competence as demonstrated by language mastery and dependence on local resources can be potent tools in the service of God’s mission. At the same time, it cannot be the case that these qualities by themselves constitute the essence of Vulnerable Mission. It is possible, for example, that one could learn a language and culture in order to be more effective in exploiting that culture.3 Alternatively, people might enter a culture bearing no outside resources simply because they are poor or escaping oppressive circumstances.

In this essay I want to follow one stream of early Christian thought to describe how the commitments identified by Vulnerable Mission found expression among the early followers of Jesus. To be more specific, I will trace a certain continuity between the notion of an “economy of grace” as developed in the letter to the Ephesians and the actual missionary practice of the early Christian movement, beginning with Jesus and continuing through the early Christian centuries.

To begin I will examine several key but sometimes neglected themes in Ephesians. We will need to consider some familiar terms in somewhat unfamiliar ways as we enter the thought world of Ephesians.4 In the following section I will survey some implications of these themes as they played out in the mission of Jesus and in the early missionary movement, and conclude by suggesting how these insights might inform our understanding of Vulnerable Mission. As the study proceeds a useful question to explore will be, “If linguistic/cultural competence and dependence on local resources are important for the transmission of the gospel into new settings, then how do we find these principles embodied in the earliest Christian mission?

An Ancient Ecclesiology: Church as Economy of Grace

To begin I will explore two key themes and their relationship as developed in Ephesians: grace and economy.

Grace

The idea of grace in the Western, Protestant churches has been dominated by the Reformation emphasis on the unmerited gift we have received in Christ—the grace by which we are saved. A classic text underlying this focus states: “For it is by grace (charis) that you are saved through trust, and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God—not by works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:8–9).5

While this take on grace was an important corrective and pillar of the Reformation, it represents only one dimension of the meaning Paul and the early church invested in the word charis.6 Most notably for our study, it is only a subset of how charis is used in Ephesians.7 In the widest sense a grace (charis) is a gift, “that which pleases or brings delight (chara).”8 However, in the New Testament and Paul’s work in particular, more specialized understandings of the term come to bear in significant ways.

Charis is broadly understood in Paul’s writing to embrace all of God’s gracious, self-disclosing work in Christ. This widely encompassing notion of grace, especially emphasized in the Eastern church tradition, can be summarized, “Grace is God dispensed into us.”9 God’s greatest gift is the gift of God’s own self. Important in this broader understanding is that, while it includes God’s incarnational “dispensing” in Jesus Christ, this view of grace also helps us make sense of a major, often overlooked, dimension of that work, namely God’s self-investment into each of his people as individuals and in the community called the “body of Christ.”

Simply put, this is the grace for which we are saved—to become the embodiment and revelation of God. A classic description of this dimension of grace follows closely on the text quoted above: “For we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared in advance for us to walk in” (Eph 2:10).10

This statement beginning with “for” seems jarring in light of what follows until we see the broader sense of grace in view. Works per se are not the antithesis of grace. Rather, it is human works—works of human initiative and strength in which we could boast—that have no place in the salvation of God. The works God has predesigned for us to do are precisely an expression of that grace—a theme that will continue to be developed through Ephesians.

This dimension of grace, the grace for which we are saved, is given specific shape in the next chapter where the unique calling of Paul is described as his grace: “Though I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given to me: to proclaim to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the economy of this mystery” (Eph 3:8–9).

This is Paul’s standard way of describing the work to which he has been uniquely called by God: “to me this grace has been given.”11 Paul routinely uses “grace” as a synonym for God’s calling on his life, his divinely appointed vocation. But in Paul’s thought such a grace belongs to every believer. As Ephesians continues, this dimension of grace as vocation moves to the center of the argument. “And yet, to each one of us a grace has been given according to the distributed gifting of Christ” (4:7).

The “and yet” that begins this statement marks the shift in chapter four between the unity that characterizes our calling—“one Lord, one Faith, one baptism”—and the diversity of that calling—“to each one a grace.” To “walk worthy of the calling to which you have been called” (4:1) entails an embrace of both the unity we share in Christ (the grace by which we have been saved) and the diversity of our respective gifting and assignments in the household of God (the grace for which we are saved).12

In this sense of vocation, then, grace is the measured dispensing of God’s purpose and power into every unique person of God’s family household. Although this understanding of grace has been somewhat muted in the Western church, it is clearly seen elsewhere in Paul, in Peter’s writing, and in the commentary of the church since the first century.13 And as we will see, it is developed more fully in the verses that follow.

Economy

Our second theme, economy, is based on the term oikonomia, which occurs three times in Ephesians.14 The term conveys a range of meanings: household rule, stewardship, order, plan.15 It is often used regarding the management of large estates in the ancient world. At times it conveys the notion of underlying structure. In more contemporary thought a useful translation might often be, “operating system.”

Especially prominent in Ephesians is the theme of the economy of God, his pre-ordained system for the summing up of all things into himself by way of Christ through the church. This theme is introduced in Eph 1:9–10: “making known to us the mystery of his will, in accordance with his good pleasure that he purposed in himself, leading to the economy of the fullness of times, to head up all things in Christ—the things in heaven and the things on the earth—in him.”

This economy is the object of God’s self-purposed pleasure, something revealed in the fullness of times, which has been a mystery but has now been made known. These ideas are taken up and developed more in 3:8–11:

To me, less than the least of all saints, was this grace given: to announce to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ and to enlighten all that they may see what the economy of the mystery is, which throughout the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things, so that now, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies the multifaceted wisdom of God might be made known through the church, according to the eternal purpose which God made in Christ Jesus our Lord.16

Here this finally-disclosed economy is revealed as no less than the church, God’s means of displaying his multifaceted wisdom to the heavenly powers.17 In chapter four, what this means for the church is stated even more explicitly in an extended description of the church as the body of Christ. The case is summarized thus: “From Christ the whole body is joined and held together . . . by means of the distributed divine energy of every single growing part of the body working to build up his body in love” (4:16).

God’s divine energy is distributed to each growing part of his body according to the distinct grace each one bears. As each one exercises that grace under the headship of Christ, the body of Christ, the church, is built up, and God’s multifaceted wisdom is fully revealed in that completed person, the bride of Christ.18

Economy of Grace in Ephesians

Having discussed grace and economy we can summarize the Ephesians presentation of church as an economy of grace. Six observations provide an overview:

1. Ephesians claims to disclose a great mystery. This mystery has been hidden in God in the past but now, in the fullness of time, has been made known to us (1:9; 3:9–10).
2. Furthermore, this mystery is revealed in an economy (oikonomia), that is to say, a household rule, or operating system that has its origin and its ultimate fulfillment in God through Jesus Christ by way of the church (1:23; 3:9).
3. This economy, or household rule, is a divinely designed system for the dispensing of God’s multifaceted wisdom and for the display of that wisdom to powers and principalities in the heavenly realms (3:10). Simply put, this self-disclosure of God is the church.
4. God’s multifaceted wisdom is revealed, in fact, as an economy of grace (3:2).19 What makes this economy a display of the many, many forms of God’s wisdom is that God’s power (energeia) is distributed (metron) uniquely as a grace (charis) to each part of the household body (4:7, 16).20
5. The body is built up (oikodomeo) to its mature, healthy expression when every single part is doing its particular, divinely graced and empowered work (4:14–16).
6. The church, as the operating system for the grace of God, therefore, functions to fulfill God’s delight in reconciling all things to himself through Christ (1:9–11).

Economy of Grace in the Mission of Jesus and the Early Church

The letter to the Ephesians, by identifying the church as God’s economy of grace affirms and clarifies core themes of the Hebrew/Christian narrative that underpinned the early Christian movement. In broad strokes, those themes included:

1. From the beginning men and women were designed to display—in their collective diversity—the image of God.21
2. Although people have been broken and estranged from God by sin, God nevertheless has chosen through Abraham to bless all the families of the earth.
3. Through Jesus Christ, Abraham’s descendant, the power of sin has been broken and by the Spirit of Christ, God’s design in people is again being revealed.
4. People from all the families of earth are now being gathered in a divine family that displays God’s multifaceted wisdom—an economy of grace.

This framing narrative came to deeply shape the thought and action of the early followers of Jesus.

In view of this vision of church as God’s economy of grace, I want to reflect briefly on three themes illustrated by the earliest Christian mission that I believe bear directly on the nature and practice of vulnerable mission. These include the locus of initiative, the nature of leadership, and the context of mission.

The Locus of Initiative in the Economy of Grace

The initiator in the economy of grace can be none other than the economy designer and grace-dispenser, God. If God has chosen to display God’s multifaceted wisdom in this economy, then those who would follow the Master’s lead must learn to pay attention to God’s gracious initiatives in general, and to those initiatives in people.

Just this kind of deep attentiveness to God’s initiative characterizes the life and mission of Jesus.22 And as Jesus trains his disciples this theme features prominently. Jesus sends his disciples off in pairs to the surrounding villages with these instructions:23

Go! I am sending you out like lambs surrounded by wolves. Do not carry a money bag, a traveler’s bag, or sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whenever you enter a house, first say, “May peace be on this house!” And if a person of peace is there, your peace will remain on him, but if not, it will return to you. Stay in that same house, eating and drinking what they give you, for the worker deserves his pay. Do not move around from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and the people welcome you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in that town and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come upon you.” (Luke 10:4–7)24

This instruction by Jesus is grounded in the conviction that those with whom God intends the disciples to work—the household of peace—will be ready to receive these vulnerable disciples, so the disciples are not to waste their time casting about for other options. Attentiveness to the Master’s prevenient work in people, here invoked by the image, “the Lord of the harvest,” becomes the means by which the disciples appropriately concentrate their work out of one household that will become a beachhead for the coming kingdom in that place.

This instruction to his disciples simply mirrors the approach they repeatedly witnessed Jesus himself taking. He is steadily on the watch for those ready to receive him and, on discovering such people, goes into their homes. This careful attention to God’s initiative does not end with the life and missionary training of Jesus. It continued naturally in the early apostolic teams and among those who formed the household-based churches of the first centuries, as we will see in what follows.25

The Nature of Leadership in the Economy of Grace

What does it mean to be a leader in a household economy—if you are not the owner/master? Throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, to have such a role meant to be a steward, a household manager, an oikonomos. Those given responsibility within an oikonomia, the household economy, were servants of the household under the master/father’s leadership.

The dominance of the household theme in the New Testament, and God’s role within that household as Master/Father helps to explain, not only Jesus’ prohibition of calling people “father,” but also explains the curious shortage of the word “leader” as applied to believers in the New Testament. Where the notion of leadership is in view, it is usually Jewish leaders opposing the coming kingdom, or Gentile leaders whose “lording” approach is explicitly prohibited.26 By contrast, positions of influence and responsibility in the church are routinely described in the language of servanthood and stewardship.27 The focus of that stewardship within an economy of grace can be given sharper definition by reclaiming the old English word, eduction, which means “the drawing forth of what is latent or potential in another.”

In Ephesians 4, this idea offers a most helpful and comprehensive way to understand the function of Christian stewardship. In God’s economy of grace, certain gifts are given to call forth the gifting of the whole: “It was [Christ] who gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers to equip the saints for works of service to build up (oikodomēn) the body of Christ” (4:11–12).

“To equip” in this context conveys more than simply teaching, modeling, directing, or exhorting. God’s intended purpose for the equipping/leadership gifts is to call forth the full expression of all the body parts according to God’s design. In a word, this is the work of eduction. If divine self-dispensing is grace, then eduction, the calling forth of the divine in others through self-dispensing attention is a means for grace multiplied.

To thus prioritize eduction entails a profound shift from common assumptions about the nature of Christian leadership: from leader as the source and sustainer of God’s work to leader as the attentive supporter and co-learner of God’s work as it is being revealed in the world, in people, and in the myriad ways God has of disclosing his purposes. Leaders function as stewards, not simply in name, but in practice under the conviction that the household wherein they work is not theirs, and the vision they are to enact is most reliably discovered together under the Master. To say it differently, the work of these leaders is a stewarding of stewards, each of whom may hear from the Master to the benefit of the family and its mission.28

So in an economy of grace, while various kinds of oversight are affirmed, it must be emphasized that eductive stewardship is not limited to any sub-group. Rather it is a core value that permeates the lifestyle and belongs to every member. As John Howard Yoder puts it:

Paul] . . . proclaims that in the midst of a fallen world the grace of God has apportioned to every one, without merit, a renewed potential for dignity in complementarity. This is not an anti-structural stance; it is the affirmation of a structure analogous to the human organism. God has done this not by making everyone the same, but by empowering each member differently although equally.29

The work of building up the body is owned by every family member on behalf of every other family member—in keeping with the development, capacity, and calling of each. Peter makes this explicit: “Each one should use whatever gift (charisma) he or she has received to serve others, as good stewards (oikonomoi) of the multiform grace (charis) of God” (1 Pet 4:10).

A steward, by definition, operates in the context of an economy. This thought is a natural extension of the household/kingdom teaching of Jesus and his call to faithful stewardship for each of his followers.

What, then is the primary function of good stewardship? To cultivate a household that in every respect is aligning with the Master’s intention. Paradoxically, the household itself, comprised as it is of the multifaceted graces of God, is both a primary means of discovery and the key to embody the Master’s intention in each case.30 The wisdom and dispensed power to do God’s will are already present in the church, however latent.

Economy of Grace as the Context of Mission

The earliest Christian mission deeply embraced a vision for life in God’s household economy of grace. This is well confirmed by the shape that the mission’s communities took over the following centuries. Joseph Hellerman concludes his substantial study of The Ancient Church as Family with this observation:

From first century Palestine to third century Carthage, the social matrix most central to early Christian conceptions of community was the surrogate kinship group of siblings who understood themselves to be the sons and daughters of God. For the early Christians, the church was family.31

The family Hellerman is describing, the “surrogate kinship group,” was an extended family typically based in the home of a nuclear family, but developing a more diverse membership over time.32 As Jesus anticipated, these groups were not merely a metaphorical family of brothers and sisters. Rather, they became the functional family replacement for those who had “lost father and mother, homes and lands” for the sake of Christ. That is to say, they saw themselves as a real family with God as their common Father, and they treated each other as real siblings.33 Unlike natural families, however, these groups were often remarkably non-homogeneous—a living demonstration of the multifaceted wisdom of God.34

Karl Sandnes, in A New Family, writes extensively of the vital role these families played in making it possible for people in the ancient world to consider a new life as Christians and, having become converts to Christian faith, to survive and thrive in that new life. He concludes: “The family vocabulary was not only a matter of language; it was put into practice. The Christians considered themselves brothers and sisters, and lived accordingly.”35

The degree to which these surrogate families functioned as powerful witnesses to the “multifaceted wisdom of God” and the in-breaking of God’s kingdom is often attested to in antiquity by the off-handed observations of their detractors. For example, in AD 360 the last pagan Roman emperor, Julian, laments to a pagan high-priest:

Why do we not observe that it is their [the Christians] benevolence to strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pretended holiness of their lives that have done the most to increase atheism? . . . When . . . the impious Galileans support not only their own poor, but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.36

Perhaps the most compelling evidence for the witnessing power of these household communities is the relentless pace at which Christianity permeated the Roman empire, despite an array of opposition.37 As Sandnes noted: “An individual who sought for and really needed a family-like fellowship had good reason to expect that he/she would find a sheltering home here. . . . This might furnish a partial explanation for why Christianity grew so rapidly in its earliest history.”38

The concrete expression of the household economy of grace was a day-by-day family experience of sharing in every significant dimension of life. Such tangible philadelphia, “brotherly love,” in the early church produced a durable and inviting affirmation of its divine source. As J. H. Elliott observes, “Households thus constituted the focus, locus and nucleus of the ministry and mission of the Christian movement.”39

Conclusion

In this study we have explored the idea developed in Ephesians of the church as God’s economy of grace, designed, in the fullness of time, to disclose God’s multifaceted wisdom. By thus establishing God’s household rule among people, the divine desire is being fulfilled to bring all things together in Jesus Christ.

This idea, taken seriously, has profound worldview implications that frame our understanding of the missionary enterprise. In concluding I want to reflect briefly on those implications as they intersect with Vulnerable Mission.

First, if we take seriously that God is the one forming the family of God, at both the universal and local level, then we would expect to find certain capacities in people who have the specific stewardship of bringing the news of the kingdom to new pockets of people. These stewards are the “sent ones,” designated in English as apostles and missionaries, depending on our preference for the Greek or Latin root.

At this point especially the commitments of Vulnerable Mission play a vital role. These cross-cultural workers must have the capacity to discern those “people of peace” in the local culture who are ready to receive their message. Having discovered such people, the missionaries must be prepared to receive the hospitality of those people, entering their context with the vulnerable gifts of dependency and some degree of linguistic/cultural competence.

Secondly, as the persons of peace understand and receive the gospel, they have, as a matter of course, the stewardship of sharing the good news and calling forth the graces of those within their own extended circle of influence. A new family of Jesus forms. In this phase, concerns for linguistic and cultural competence are diminished, since this competence within the household may normally be safely assumed. Similarly, questions of economic disparity are mitigated by first-hand knowledge of the parties involved and the growing philadelphia of the forming family.

Thirdly, as this nascent economy of grace begins to demonstrate the fruit of divine life within their household, the news naturally spreads among their extended relational networks. Here again, because the economy of grace has formed within the local culture with local servant leadership, the message is inherently well contextualized.

While this outline is clearly an idealized description, it nevertheless recapitulates a message and process that can be traced from the mission of Jesus through the pre-Easter mission of the apostles and on through the expanding mission of the church in its early centuries.

Against this backdrop, Vulnerable Mission clearly has an important, even vital role in the ongoing task of bringing the gospel to unreached peoples. At the same time that role must be seen as one dimension of the broader mission enterprise, which for the earliest Christians was the outworking of the multifaceted wisdom of God in and through the church. Apart from a clear self-understanding by the missionaries of their role as stewards in the story of divine initiative, the graces of Vulnerable Mission may well lose their value in service of the kingdom. Missionaries come in vulnerability and in strength; in human weakness and divine power. In other words, the practices of Vulnerable Mission find their great usefulness in the service of God’s in-breaking economy of grace, in the formation of vibrant families of Jesus that display the multifaceted wisdom of God.

When that economy of grace is released in a new pocket of people through the faithful stewardship of missionaries, we draw closer to God’s ultimate purpose in Jesus Christ. That process, the early Christians believed, will see the consummation of God’s delight when those of “every kinship, tongue, tribe, and people” gather for celebration with the eternal family.

Dr. Kent Smith has taught in the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University since 1991. His teaching and research focus has been in the area of spiritual nurture systems, especially as they relate to new expressions of church. He directs ACU’s graduate internship in missional leadership and the Missionary Residency for North America (MRNA) and has been a trainer for international mission teams over 20 years with ACU’s Halbert Institute for Missons. Kent can be contacted at smithpk@acu.edu.

Bibliography

Bauer, Walter, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Duffy, Stephen. The Dynamics of Grace: Perspectives in Theological Anthropology. New Theology Studies 3. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993.

Elliott, J. H. A Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, Its Situation and Strategy. Philadelphia, Fortress, 1981.

Gehring, Roger. House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in Early Christianity. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004.

Hellerman, Joseph H. The Ancient Church as Family. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2001.

Hutson, Christopher. “Enough for What? Playacting Isaiah 53 in Luke 22:35–38.” Restoration Quarterly 55, no.1 (January 2013): 35–51.

Jeremias, Joachim. New Testament Theology. New York: Scribners, 1971.

Kenneson, Philip. “Visible Grace: The Church as God’s Embodied Presence.” In Grace Upon Grace: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Langford, ed. Robert K. Johnston, L. Gregory Jones, and Jonathan R. Wilson, 169–79. Nashville: Abingdon, 1999.

Lohfink, Gerhard. Jesus and Community: The Social Dimension of Christian Faith. Translated by John P. Galvin Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984.

Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob, ed. New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. 5 vols. Nash- ville: Abingdon, 2006–2009.

Sandnes, Karl Olav. A New Family: Conversion and Ecclesiology in the Early Church with Cross-Cultural Comparisons. Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums 91. Bern: Peter Lang, 1994.

Snodgrass, Klyne. Ephesians. The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.

Stark, Rodney. Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006.

Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church: A Clear, Detailed Introduction to the Orthodox Church Written for the Non-Orthodox as Well as for Orthodox Chrisitans Who Wish to Know More about Their Own Tradition. New York: Penguin, 1993.

Yoder, John Howard. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the Watching World. Nashville: Discipleship Resource, 1992.

This essay argues that globalism retains the same qualities that defined ancient and modern empires. The all-pervading boundarylessness of capitalist enterprise is analogous to the Rome of Paul’s day, and in his first letter to the Thessalonian church Christians can find and appropriate his advice for living in the midst of empire. The virtues required of disciples today to live faithfully in empire are a reimagination of the vows taken by St. Francis: obedience, poverty, and chastity. By taking on these disciplines, followers can begin to root out the ways empire makes claims on their lives and resubmit themselves to the way of Jesus.

Hans Christian Andersen’s story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” is a familiar tale to most Westerners.  The story goes that a monarch with a penchant for finery searches for the most luxuriant, expensive clothing he can find.  In the midst of his shopping about for tailors who can fulfill this aristocratic need, he is approached by two such craftsmen promising to sew the most lavish linens possible.  The plot of the story turns upon the clever assertion of the tailors, that the clothing remains invisible to those either unworthy of their office, on the one hand, or those, on the other, who are mere fools.  Thus, as the swindling tailors daily pretend they are busy at work sewing a fine suit, the king and his court dare not question the invisible clothing, for such would be a confession of foolishness and unworthiness.  Finally, the tailors announce that the suit is ready and mime the dressing of the king, who then parades about the streets in the nude.  The matrix of pride and self-deception work their magic not only in the emperor’s court, but also in the streets, and the crowds of people proclaim their amazement at the finery of the monarch’s attire.  However, the spell is finally broken by a child, who, unburdened by the need for social standing, shouts that the emperor is indeed naked.  Once the elephant in the room has been spoken, the crowd’s whispers turn into a roar as they all guffaw in amazement at the emperor’s narcissistic nakedness.

Our world is in a state of undress much more insipid and tyrannical than the blunderings of the monarch in Andersen’s story.  Indeed, the fabric of globo-capital enterprise stands as the new empire, having neither boundary nor regulation. However, the ideology of this new empire stays true to the old story; globo-capitalist culture retains the character ascribed to ancient Rome by the historian Tacitus:

Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.1

In our day, global capitalism displays similar disregard for both peoples and land. For instance, in 1995, pharmaceutical company Pfizer tested their drug Trovan on children in Kano State, Nigeria.  Half of the patients in the study were treated with ceftriaxone, the gold standard treatment for meningitis, and the other half were given the experimental drug Trovan.  After eleven children died in the trial (and the ethics of such drug trials on children notwithstanding), parents claimed they were not informed that their children were being treated with an experimental drug.2 Pfizer, claiming their practices were ethical, fought the suit in court, and, according to a Wikileaks cable, investigated the prosecuting attorney in order to pressure him to stop the legal action against the drug company.3

An even more disturbing example of corporate misdeed is that of the technology firm, Foxconn Electronics, which builds parts for Apple iPads as well as Hewlett-Packard printers.  Reports reveal the firm hung netting around the dormitories where company employees sleep, in order to discourage suicide attempts.4  While no one can say for certain why fourteen workers jumped to their death in 2011,5 it may have to do with hours worked by employees, some of whom worked over 100 hours of overtime in one month.  In light of this, Foxconn’s tripartite business philosophy, consisting of “efficient ‘Total Cost Advantages,’” “revolutionizing the conventional inefficient electronics outsourcing model,” and “devotion to greater social harmony”6 seems rather weighted against the latter. The “revolutionizing model,” it seems, is a suicide machine.

In the first part of this essay, I further articulate how global capitalism functions as empire, engaging secular philosophers, political theorists, and theologians. In the second section of the essay, I suggest that in the writings of Paul we have resources to engage empire. Finally, I will suggest a theo-political response to our current situation of empire for disciples, including some suggestions for a post-imperial missiology.

Naked Empire

A sculpted relief at Aphrodisias in Asia Minor symbolically shows the power and terror of the Pax Romana. The relief features a male figure framing the top of the sculpture, nude, with the exception of a helmet on his head and a cape billowing behind him. On the ground below him lies a woman, right breast bared, hips on the ground, and torso raised. The male is grabbing her head with his left hand, and appears to be violently holding it up; his right arm is raised, and, though the relief is broken, appears to have been wielding a sword. The figures are identified as the Emperor Claudius and the woman as the nation of Britannia, Rome’s most significant exploit during his reign.

Of course, in this setting, the emperor’s nudity shows not his incompetence, but rather his heroic strength.7 The relief makes clear through its hierarchical imagery the power of Rome, embodied in the emperor himself. Thus, above is to below as man is to woman as Rome is to the nations as conqueror is to conquered.8 Further, the partial nudity of both figures, man and woman, suggests undertones of sexual violence. In this instance, the rape of Britannia is both figurative and literal; as Tacitus tells us, one of the grievances the woman warrior Boudicca names against the Romans is that “nowadays Roman rapacity does not even spare our bodies. Old people are killed, virgins are raped.”9 As I intend to show in the following section, the rape of Britannia described above reveals the lust for domination lying at the heart of empire.

While empire is a term frequently employed in political and philosophical discussions, it avoids easy definition. Political scientist Herfried Münkler describes a few characteristics of empires, analyzing empires from ancient Rome to modern nation-states:

First, “Imperial boundaries . . . involve gradations of power and influence”: that is, there is a structural difference between imperial and nonimperial space.

Second, “Imperiality . . . dissolves . . . equality and reduces subordinates to the status of client states or satellites”: that is, international relations are not between equals, but between a “center” and a “periphery.”

Third, “Most empires have owed their existence to a mixture of chance and contingency”: that is, there need not be a “will to empire” (i.e., “imperialism”) or a “grand strategy,” but rather, a series of circumstances that lead to increased power and control of people and/or territory.

Fourth, “The capacity for reform and regeneration . . . makes an empire independent of the charismatic qualities of its founder (or founding generation)”: that is, there is temporal continuity that transcends the original situation that generated the empire.

Fifth, “An empire cannot remain neutral in relation to the powers in its sphere of influence”: that is, it cannot allow either independence or nonparticipation without retaliation.10

These five aspects provide a good frame for descriptive purposes; however, they fail insofar as they do not account for nonpolitical entities which still exert massive control over economics and the daily lives of individuals.11 For instance, a corporate entity such as Google might compete for power in its technological sphere, similar to characteristic number five above, but it would require semantic bending to assert that Google has “client states.” Because of this, philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri assert that empire of today is unlike Rome in that it has no centralized government or military power; this is why the United States, despite its military strength, cannot control the Middle East or other parts of the globe.12

Political and corporate lines increasingly blur in today’s world. This was manifestly clear when, on the evening after the attacks on the World Trade Center, then President George W. Bush declared to the world, “the American economy will be open for business.” The subtext of such a statement is that “you can’t hurt us as long as people keep buying,” which reveals that true power lies in corporate stocks. In poorer countries, corporations have more direct influence. Naomi Klein notes that the economic power which companies yield give them the ability to dictate public policy, particularly in the factory-dependent countries of Asia.13 The mercenary corporation Blackwater took the power over life usually reserved for the state in its proceedings in Iraq, while the networking capability of Twitter has been celebrated as crucial to the recent popular uprisings across the Middle East and Africa.14 For this reason, I follow Hardt and Negri in their proposal:

Along with the global market and global circuits of production has emerged a global order, a new logic and structure of rule—in short, a new form of sovereignty. Empire is the political subject that effectively regulates these global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world.15

Hardt and Negri note that empire, as they view it, is founded ultimately upon boundarylessness. This boundarylessness has four qualities. First, they emphasize that this global empire has no spatial limits. As we have seen, corporate power moves fluidly throughout the earth with little resistance from traditional nation-state sovereignties. The Coca Cola company is one example of such borderlessness. I myself can attest that its products can be found from the epicenters of New York and Rome to the equatorial jungles of Kenya and the deserts of Mexico and Mali. Recent Coca Cola advertisements in the United States even show polar bears drinking Coca Cola in the Arctic. Second, Hardt and Negri explain, empire presents itself with no “temporal boundaries” as the end of history. Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man, a celebration of Western liberal democracy, effectively displays this arrogance.16 Third, Hardt and Negri assert that empire is the “paradigmatic form of biopower,” seeking to rule life in its entirety. They later explain that biopower “is a form of power that regulates social life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it, and articulating it.”17 While missiologists might find biopower strikingly similar to “worldview,” biopower connotes an element of createdness. Worldview or culture are generally considered passive concepts—no one entity makes worldview, rather all participate in it—while biopower has an active component. It assumes both an active party and recipients. When a company advertises for its product, seeking to create demand in consumers, or when a government dictates certain behaviors or modes of thinking, these are instances of biopower. A good example of biopower is in Orwell’s classic, 1984. In this dystopian novel, the main character, Winston Smith, tries to rebel against an authoritarian state led by a larger-than-life persona, Big Brother, who decries individuality and reason as thought crimes. Smith is eventually captured and tortured psychologically. Finally, the novel ends with a brain-washed Smith realizing, “it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”18 Biopower strives toward this telos—a political subject who, shaped by the forces of empire around her, desires that which the empire wants. The final quality, Hardt and Negri note, is that “although the practice of Empire is continually bathed in blood, the concept of Empire is always dedicated to peace—a perpetual and universal peace outside of history.”19 This dedication to peace gives empire its mission. As Münkler notes, mission serves as a self-sacralizing virtue for empire, expanding its necessity beyond the interests of any private actors, as well as providing a theory of ends to justify any means needed to accomplish such a task.20 This mantra of “peace and security” will be discussed further below.

Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat suggest four characteristics as definitive for empires.21 First, empires are built on systemic centralization of power. This is related to both the first and second characteristics that Münkler describes, in dissolving equality and in gradating power. While Hardt and Negri contend that empire today is marked by decentralization, this does not necessarily contradict Walsh and Keesmaat, for indeed there are multiple centers of power that both compete and work together. Second, they are secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control. This characteristic relates to Münkler’s first, second, and fifth characteristics, and in fact, it is the control secured by military and economic forces that give empire, in Münkler’s definition, the ability to retain power. Third, they are religiously legitimated by powerful myths. For instance, one common American myth is that of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps”—in other words, if you are poor, it is your own fault for not working hard enough—everyone can be successful if they want to. This myth undermines the notion that economically successful individuals or companies may have become so by disadvantaging others, as well as bolstering the idea of the lazy poor. Adam Smith’s notion of the “invisible hand” of the market which self-regulates wealth represents another common myth supporting the increasingly unregulated capital of the elite. Fourth, empires are sustained by imperial images that capture the imagination of the population. In ancient times, these images were distributed via sculpture, architecture, and coinage.22 In the Roman Empire, the dying Gaul was the image of the archetypal barbarian, while now Hollywood takes up the mantle by creating villains to match the political climate.23 Today, the ubiquity of advertisement is easy enough to see: from television to billboards to user-specific internet advertisement, empire takes captive the imaginations of the populace to serve its own economic interests. These last two characteristics—myths and imagery—are missing from Münkler’s defining features, while they relate to Hardt and Negri’s concept of biopower. In fact, imagination may be a better term than biopower, for in the “capture of imagination,” subjects can be manipulated toward certain ends by their own will rather than external force. This is the very heart of biopower.

The language of empire, as we have seen, is at times ambiguous and fraught with abstraction. Many institutions, from political states to corporations, can display qualities of empire. This aspect of empire as a qualitative term relates to theologian Walter Wink’s discussion of the language of the powers in the New Testament. He argues that the various words for powers in Scripture refer at the same time to both spiritual and material realities, and that these realities are not different, but rather, “simultaneously the outer and inner aspects of one and the same indivisible concretion of power.”24

To conclude, I suggest that empire is an inner aspect of many external realities which function together in a global network of power relations. Various institutions (governments and supra-governmental organizations, like the IMF or NATO) work with the help of ideologies (e.g., capitalism, progress, democracy, and security) to create a boundaryless empire. There is no one epicenter to this empire, rather, it has many foci, from the economic centers of London, New York, and Tokyo to the military nexi of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the Israel Defense Force in Tel Aviv. Internet-based Facebook, Twitter, and Google further function as gathering points through social technology. These epicenters of power are bolstered by a combination of military and socioeconomic structures, as well as biopower in the form of foundational myths with imagery supporting these myths.

Rhetorical Intifada

In the global economy, it is not the emperors who are stripped of their decency.  In a version of the story “Salome and the Dance of the Seven Veils,” Alphonse Allais shows this with striking imagery.  As Salome the dancer removes her veils one by one, king Herod, overcome with desire, keeps crying out, “go on, go on,” until Salome, already naked, begins to rip the flesh from her body.  “Listen,” cries the prophet Micah, “you . . . who tear the skin from my people and the flesh from their bones” (3:1–2; niv).  Emperors, and the empires they serve, have a consuming appetite.

Understanding the prophets of ancient Israel as critical of the elites of their day has been easy enough throughout Christian history. More recently there has been a wave of scholarship reading New Testament Scripture through eyes focused on issues of empire. I will use this empire-critical lens to read what scholars consider Paul’s earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians, as a text with clear rhetoric against the empire of his day—Rome.

We learn about Paul’s missionary activity in Thessalonica via a short passage from Acts. After Paul and company made some converts in the synagogue, Jewish leaders became jealous and stirred up a crowd. Unable to find Paul and Silas, the crowd captured some new believers and took them before the politarchs (city officials), with the accusation that they were stirring up trouble as well as defying the dogmas of Caesar (Acts 17:1–9).

Thessalonica had a long history of loyalty to Rome. Its support of Octavian and Antony paid off when Thessalonica was given status as a free Roman city in 42 BC.25 This freedom gave Thessalonica ability to rule itself free of military occupation, and even could mint its own coins. Because of this, Thessalonica, by all evidence, worked with intention to keep strong ties to Rome. Coinage from 29 to 28 BC shows Thessalonians honoring Julius Caesar as a god; later, Augustus was inducted to this rank as well, considered “divi filius,” the son of a deity.26 A statue of Augustus, as well as a temple to him , were installed in the city, and are dated to the time of Paul.27 The installation of a priesthood for the goddess Roma both acknowledged the divine status of Rome’s power, as well as intimately linked the inhabitants of the city to that power.28 As Charles Wanamaker notes, “politically, the establishment of the imperial cult made good sense because it cemented Thessalonica’s relations with Rome and the emerging imperial order.”29

Further, E. A. Judge has shown that the politarchs of the city—to whom the angered crowd took Paul’s converts—were responsible for ensuring loyalty to Caesar and his decrees. An example of such an oath taken from Paphlagonia reads as follows:

I swear . . . that I will support Caesar Augustus, his children and descendants, throughout my life, in word, deed and thought…that in whatsoever concerns them I will spare neither body nor soul nor life nor children…that whenever I see or hear of anything being said, planned or done against them I will report it . . . and whomsoever they regard as enemies I will attack and pursue with arms and the sword by land and sea.30

Another oath of allegiance, this one to Tiberius, pledged reverence and obedience to the new Caesar.31 Finally, Judge cites an inscription suggesting that the local authorities had the responsibility to manage violations of the loyalty oaths.32 This evidence suggests that there was in Thessalonica an ideology of the Roman empire which Paul’s message threatened.

In fact, the Acts account tells us what that message was: there is a new emperor, one called Jesus (Acts 17:7). A quick survey of 1 Thessalonians tells us more about this “ideological intifada”33 which Paul and Silas were proclaiming. First, we note that Paul remembers the opposition to the gospel he preached (1 Thess 2:2). This antagonism was to the subversive nature of his counter-imperial gospel. As Dieter Georgi reminds us, the strongest correlation to Paul’s use of euangelion is the Priene inscription. Relevant text from this inscription reads as follows:

Providence . . . has set in most perfect order by giving us Augustus . . . sending him as a savior (sotēr), both for us and for our descendants, that he might end war and arrange all things . . . and since the birthday of the god Augustus was the good tidings (euangelion) for the world.34

If this text represents a normative association of good tidings with the birthday of Augustus, called a god, then we can understand why indeed there was hostility to another gospel, one proclaiming Jesus as savior and Lord (kyrios). The Greeks had a long history of naming their current ruler as savior,35 while Deissmann notes that kyrios was used to denote a Roman emperor at least from the time of Nero, though probably from Augustus onward.36 Further, God has called the Thessalonian believers into his own kingdom (1 Thess 2:12). Again, such statements about another kingdom threaten the imperial rule of Rome, who throughout history were known to crush opposition.37 Moving to chapter four of the letter, we have the political terms parousia and apantēsis, the former denoting the visit of a royal official, and the latter word describing the entourage of dignified citizens who would greet such an official.38 This specific political terminology highlights that Jesus is the new royalty. Finally, we come to Paul’s mockery of Rome’s “peace and security” (1 Thess 5:3; nrsv), which Donfried calls a “frontal attack” on the early Principate.39 The peace and security mantra of Rome epitomizes imperial propaganda in the face of its “permanent crisis of legitimation.”40 According to historiographer Ernst Bammel, “Everywhere that Rome makes an appearance, the provision of peace and security is made to justify the loss of autonomy and more than compensate for all the initial terrors.”41 Thus, Rome’s peace was secured through military victory and the threat of violence, which explains why Augustus built his forum around the temple to Mars, god of war.42 For Paul, this peace and security is an imperial illusion. Peace comes from God (1 Thess 5:23), not an imperial benefactor.

The new believers are to be an assembly gathered in the name of God and his son Jesus Christ rather than Julius Caesar and his divine son Augustus.43 While the politarchs are obliged to act on their loyalties—ones the Thessalonian disciples may have once had!—the new converts now have different allegiances. Because of this, Paul urges his new believers to live in certain ways. They turned from idols (1 Thess 1:9); both idolatrous images of the Roma and her divine Caesars, as well as the mystic cults of the city.44 However, they are experiencing persecutions (1:6), no doubt similar to the very reason Paul and Silas fled the city as political subversives. Paul offers strong apocalyptic language as an antidote to this persecution; because of the ultimate lordship of Christ, he encourages believers to resist the pursuit of power through association with Rome. Instead, they should continue to practice faith and love (3:6). Faith was an imperial virtue, binding subject to conqueror. For instance, Augustus claims in his Res Gestae that, through him, the nations experienced the “good faith of the Roman people.”45 Paul understands that true faith is shown by sacrifice, not violence or fear. Further, the church should practice an economics which goes against the local grain. Wanamaker suggests that economic elites in Thessalonica encouraged cultic allegiance to Rome in order to benefit from such close ties.46 In the midst of this atmosphere of seeking power through benefaction, Paul tells the disciples to practice economic independence and lead a quiet life (4:11–12). Such anarchic practice enables the converts to speak more freely, as they do not need the largesse of the ruling elite, who depend on their associations with Rome for their economic and political success.47 The disciples themselves should model peace (5:13), but not that of Rome that comes with military might. Rather they should not repay wrong for wrong, but work for the common good (5:15). Finally, they should be of critical mind, discerning good from evil (5:21–22). This practice helps the disciples navigate the ways empire seeks to co-opt their imaginations through ritual and imagery.

Sketches Toward a Missiology of Resistance

In the Spanish fable on which Andersen based his story, the tailors declare that the clothing cannot be seen by someone of illegitimate parentage, making their ploy dependent upon social class and lineage.48 In this version, it is a black man who already has no social position and so has nothing to lose who breaks the spell of the tailors and utters, “to me it matters not whose son I am, therefore I tell you that you are riding without any clothes,” informing the king of his true state. Whether the child in Andersen’s story, with little notion of the social mechanisms of honor and shame, or the black man of the Spanish version, who is at the bottom of a race- and class-based economy, it is those at the margins of the socio-political empire who can see clearly.

Anthropologist James C. Scott notes that societies tend to have what he calls a “public transcript” between those in power and the dominated subordinates. This becomes heavily ritualized with greater disparity between the elite and the oppressed, and masks the intentions of both sides—that is, the public transcript functions as a display of power and control for the ruling class, and disguises the true feelings of the lower class in performance of deference.49 However, at times this transcript is broken. According to Scott, “the moment when the dissent of the hidden transcript crosses the threshold to open resistance is always a politically charged occasion.”50 When the oppressed can endure no more, when the severity of life under the public transcript becomes as difficult as the punishment for piercing the veil of subordination, or when like the black man in the Spanish tale, the dominated simply have nothing to lose, the subjugated breech the unspeakable and show their true beliefs. These moments change the ones who openly resist the public transcript, and in fact, function as a conversion of sorts, insofar as they give new life to the oppressed. For instance, Frederick Douglass writes after he stood up to his master, “I was nothing before; I was a man now. . . . After resisting him, I felt as I had never before. It was a resurrection.”51

My conviction is that one of the central tasks of Christians today is to break the spell of the public transcript—that is, to see empire for what it is, and to live and to speak against it. For those of us from the global North who benefit from empire, this will be difficult. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s distinction between the subjective and objective is helpful on this point. He notes that Stalin’s daughter Svetlana wrote memoirs describing her father as caring and warm, and propelled to mass murder mostly by his associate, Lavrenty Beria. Some time later, Beria’s son Sergo similarly declared that his father was a compassionate family man, who merely followed the orders of his terrible superior, Stalin. We too, lie in this tension, as we benefit from the military-industrial complex that oppresses others. Subjective experience perceives the technology of communication as benign, yet the iPhones we communicate with were made by workers in suicidal conditions. Medicines which heal us often are the products of unethical drug trials. Our Wal-Mart goods are cheap because someone else works for extremely low wages. The point is, “the experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie—the truth lies outside, in what we do.”52 Not only this, but we also think that we cannot live without what we now have. As Wendell Berry declares, “the great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent upon what is wrong. But that is the addict’s excuse, and we know that it will not do.”53

Undoing the roots of empire within and without requires the formation of communities of disciples analogous to those Paul worked to establish. These communities, like the ecclesia in Thessalonica, must live peaceably, practice a new economics, and work for the common good of each other. Lenin allegedly said the following words on his deathbed:

I made a mistake. Without doubt the oppressed multitude had to be liberated. But our method only provoked further oppression—and atrocious massacres. It is too late now to alter the past—but what was needed to save Russia were ten Francis of Assisi’s.54

This suggests that the quintessential Marxist revolutionary realized that material transformation depends on inner conversion. Similarly, Ched Myers suggests that discipleship communities should once again take up the spiritual disciplines of obedience, poverty, and chastity used by Francis and his followers.55

First, contends Myers, obedience should mark our mission. Obedience has to do with the sphere of social relations. The evangelical question of the first-century ecclesia was, “who is kyrios—Jesus, or Caesar?” What we learn from Paul is that submission to Jesus as kyrios entails a concurrent resistance to Caesar, which is why, as tradition tells it, Paul was executed by empire. The missiology of the church must recover submission to God as a central theme of the gospel. This has importance on a communal plane as well. That is, just as Christian anarchists understand the confession that “Jesus is Lord” means that no one else can be,56 so peaceableness between each other is predicated upon the dissolution of social hierarchies within community. All are on an equal plane in relationship to Christ. In this vein, discipleship communities have much to learn from Quaker meetings which have experience in testing the common good by means of consensus decision making.

Poverty relates to the sphere of economics. The discipline of poverty is helpful in many ways. First, as Paul counseled the Thessalonians, economic self-sufficiency enables Christians to free themselves from the yoke of empire. How can we practice this economic independence? Kirkpatrick Sale offers some characteristics of sustainable local economies.

Control over investment, production, sales, and development would promote economic stability and provide insulation from the boom-and-bust cycles of distant market forces;

It would break dependence upon remote bureaucracies, transnational corporations, and the “vortex of world-wide trade;”

The trade balance would tend to be favorable because the economy would be geared to local “import-replacements” rather than more expensive imports.

Locally controlled currency would provide quicker economic feedback and reinvestment and could discourage accumulation and capital flight;

Local production would enhance overall health of residents because of reduced consumption of toxic or nonnutritious industrially fabricated products.57

This “economy of scale” (Myers’s term) is already practiced by many Christian communities, like Catholic worker farms and Bruderhoffs, as well as secular ones. To carry out this sort of economics, disciples need community. It is difficult to be self-sufficient alone. Farmers, artisans, traders, and builders are all needed. A life of independence from the infrastructure of empire will be challenging.

Paul encourages the Thessalonian church to promote hard work, and such is good counsel for us as well. In the United States, the discipline of poverty relates also to the war-making of our nation. One of the ways some Christian communities choose to be prophetic is by refusing to pay federal taxes which fund the wars of the state. A common method to do this is by simply living below the taxable income level. In this case, the discipline of poverty keeps disciples free from imperial consumerism as well as the blood-soaked peace of empire.

Finally, the discipline of chastity is that apocalyptic practice of critical analysis in the midst of empire. Chastity has to do with boundary maintenance. As the boundarylessness of empire pervades all parts of life, Paul’s warning to discern good from evil remains appropriate—and perhaps even more difficult—for us today. Just as Jesus told his disciples on the Mount of Olives to stay awake and keep watch, so too must we practice “insomniac theology.”58 Chastity helps us to remain watchful and critical of the myths which undergird the power of empire. There is a Lacanian joke about a doctor whose friend asks for medical advice. The doctor—unwilling to give advice without a fee—examines his friend and tells him solemnly, “you need medical advice.”59 Chastity gives us the ability to resist corporate answers, and instead search for root causes of the symptoms of empire in our lives. Though the myths prevail in the rhetoric of political pundits, corporate ads, and pop writers like Thomas Friedman, disciples are called to discern the times and critically discriminate between that which promotes the common good and that which destroys it. We must use discretion in order that we do not proclaim the good tidings of Jesus while our lives betray the lordship of corporations in our lives. An apocalyptic theology, declares Ched Myers, must practice seeing what could be in the midst of what is.60

The following are some concrete suggestions for practicing obedience, poverty, and chastity:

1. If obedience marks the relationships both of disciples to God and of disciples to each other, then missionaries must dissolve the often hierarchical nature of missions. Paul quite clearly describes living among the Thessalonian disciples and working hard to do so. In contrast, many missionaries even today live in luxury in comparison to their target population—walled compounds, expensive vehicles, and imported foods are indicators of loyalty to empire rather than signs of solidarity with fellow disciples. From the beginning, include converts and local disciples in decision-making.
2. Practice downward mobilization in the pursuit of an economics of poverty. Plant a garden, and eat from it. In doing so, one rejoins the agricultural cycle of the energy that sustains us, and slashes the umbilical cord of empire that nourishes us with its mass-produced food. This undercuts the empire’s myth of timelessness that feeds us with tomatoes that are available year-round. As the global migration to cities continues, it will be more and more difficult for urban communities to practice self-sustainability, as land is the base for such an economy. Therefore, as missionaries help those in cities to learn urban gardening, they must also attempt to persuade those still in the countryside not to give up the “gift of good land,”61 a phrase coined by Wendell Berry. Use public transportation. This is inconvenient, but puts the missionary in closer contact with the population she is allegedly serving. Use the internet café to communicate with home. This alerts one to the real costs of technology, and at least diminishes one’s participation in it.
3. The practice of chastity is a matter of boundary-keeping. Make it a practice to examine the rhetoric of advertisements; find out the ways in which the corporations are trying to capture the consumer’s imagination. Similarly, examine the myths undergirding national holidays and events. These cultural rituals, often thought of as benign, propagate subtle messages about empire. In the United States, the patriotic holidays such as Independence Day and Veterans Day portray the nation-state and its subjects as the prime benefactor, vying for disciples’ loyalty over their commitments to Christ. Chastity means looking askance at the propaganda inherent in the midst of such holidays.

I conclude this essay with a joke. There is an old psychoanalysis joke about a man who thinks he is a seed of corn. After visiting his therapist for many sessions, the therapist tells him he is cured, and can now go about his life free of this delusion. A week later, to the therapist’s surprise, the man returns to the office. “What happened?” asks the therapist. “I thought you had finally concluded you were not a seed!” “Yes, yes,” the man replies, “the therapy worked for me. My problem is that I still don’t know how to convince the chickens!” Like the psychological ailments of the man in this joke, the roots of empire run deep, and resist easy conversion. My reading of 1 Thessalonians suggests that the gospel call is not to convince the proverbial chickens, but rather to create communities who model submission not to the empire of the day but to the cosmic lordship of Christ.

David Pritchett lives in North Manchester, Indiana, and works as a Physician Assistant. He spends free time reading and growing vegetables.

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