Mythbuster #1: The Myth of the Vanishing Missionary

February 2, 2009 – 8:16 am

BUSTED - The Myth of the Vanishing Missionary

Many people believe that the missionary era is over and that the missionary belongs to a species soon to become extinct. The reasoning goes something like this: When the modern missionary movement got under way 250 years ago, it coincided with the thrust of Western imperialism into Asia, Africa, and Oceania. During the heyday of imperialism Christian missions worked in cooperation with the colonial governments, implementing and supplementing their programs of educational and social reform. World War II marked the end of the colonial period; and except for a few pockets of colonialism here and there the system is forever dead. [Since the writing of this work, 1978, even fewer countries are under the influence of Western colonialism.] The gunboats have been recalled and the white sahibs have all gone home. The Christian missionaries should do the same. This reasoning is common.

Every time there is a riot or a revolution with anti-Western overtones, someone is sure to demand the withdrawal of the missionaries. Even without riot and revolution there are those who insist that the missionaries represent the last vestiges of Western imperialism, and as such should be recalled. To clinch the matter they ask: “If the national governments can function without the colonial administrators, why can’t the national churches get along without the missionaries?” To all such people the missionaries at best are superfluous; at worst, they are downright dangerous. In either case, they should have the good sense to come home; or they should be recalled.

Our reply is two fold. First, the missionary’s identification with imperialism was one of the unfortunate accidents of history. They did not plan it that way and were happy when the unholy alliance was terminated. If, as the critics say, it was a mistake for them to go in with the colonialists, surely it would have been a mistake to come out with them. Two wrongs don’t make a right. To have come out with the colonialists would have confirmed what the nationalists and the Communists have been saying all along.

Second, the missionary task has not been completed. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done. To call it quits now would be to jeopardize all that has been accomplished up to this point. To compare national government with the national church is grossly unfair to the latter. The former is in control of the entire country and has the suppport of all the poeple. Moreover, it has access to sufficient funds to implement its programs regardless of the cost. By contrast the national church in some countries represents only 1 or 2 percent of the population. To maintain its existing work strains the budget to the limit. In all such places the missionary will be needed and wanted for years to come. In many parts of the non-Christian world church membership is barely keeping up with the population growth; in other parts it is falling behind. There are twice as many non-Chrisitans in India today as were when William Carey arrived in 1793. By no stretch of the imagination is the missionary a vanishing species.

In the 30 years since Kane wrote Understanding Christian Missions, the “anti-missionary” sentiment has only increased. With the global influence of the UN, Red Cross, and a host of other government and non-government organizations, many people are calling for the end of the “missionary movement.”

The number of people who see national leadership in a country and therefore see no value for the missionary (paragraph 2) seems to be growing as well. Books like K.P. Yohannan’s Revolution in World Missions stir the heart with the challenge to take the gospel to the 10/40 window, but diminish the role of the foreign missionary to the degree that many could walk away from it thinking that sending Western missionaries is damaging to the gospel. We would do well to consider where we send our missionaries and how we distribute them, but, as Kane notes, the need for cross-cultural church planters is far from being over. The Great Commission still stands; we still need laborers in the harvest fields. The stats that Kane offers at the end of this section fortify the claim that we still need Western missionaries.

J. Herbert Kane in his missions classic Understanding Christian Missions, attempts to debunk 9 popular missions myths. We will post each of these “mythbusters” in a series entitled “Missions ‘Mythbusters’” and offer critique and elaboration to the issues that Kane surfaces.