Mythbuster #2: The Myth of the Foreign Missionary

February 19, 2009 – 6:44 pm

CONFIRMED - The Myth of the Foreign Missionary

Before I present Kane’s quotation, I want to make it clear that I do not agree with Kane’s argument. As the title above suggests, this is not a myth (hence the “confirmed” status rather than the “busted” status). At the conclusion of the article I will give reasons for my disagreement with Kane.

Kane’s argument:

Jesus told us that the field is the world (Matt 13:38); but we have divided the field into two parts, home and foreign. In the popular mind a missionary is a person who is called by God to preach the gospel in a foreign country. The fellow who does the same kind of work at home must settle for a less exotic appellation.

This mythology projected the illusion that the primary missionary frontier was geographical. And so developed what might be called the mystical doctrine of salt water. The mission of the church was so closely identified with geographical expansion, and the missionary enterprise so exclusively considered in terms of geographical frontiers, that the term “mission” inevitably had a foreign connotation. Traveling over salt water was thereby gradually changed from being the obvious concomitant of some kinds of missionary service, to being the sine qua non of any kind of missionary endeavor, and finally to being the final test and criterion of what in fact was missionary. Being transported over salt water, the more the better, was given a certain logical and spiritual value.1

There is, of course, a great difference between preaching the gospel to Americans in Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York and preaching to the Auca Indians of Ecuador. The latter requires insights, attitudes, and skills not necessary for the successful prosecution of the former. In that sense and to that degree there is something “special” about the missionary who serves in a cross-cultural situation. It does not, however, justify the degree to which we have exalted the foreign missionary and played down the home missionary. Both are missionaries in the true sense of the word and deserve similar treatment.

The preference we show for foreign missions can be seen in our treatment of missionary candidates. Most candidates are required to raise their own support before proceeding to the field. Candidates looking forward to foreign service generally raise their support without much difficulty. Home mission candidates usually take much longer.

Somehow the home churches have surrounded foreign missions with an aura of sacredness not granted to any other form of Christian service. This is unfortunate, for it not only violates the principles of the New Testament, but it also polarizes the missionary enterprise into two separate entities, one superior to the other.

American churches give tens of thousands of dollars every year to mission projects in every continent except North America. Church members will travel thousands of miles to Quito, Ecuador, to see Radio Station HCJB that they have been helping to support, but they feel no obligation to support WMBI in Chicago. The only difference is that one represents foreign missions and the other home missions, and foreign missions usually win out.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the arbitrary difference between home and foreign missions. We used to think that foreign missions was more difficult and dangerous than home missions, and that a person took his life in his hand if he went to the jungles of Borneo, Amazon, or New Guinea. Today there are few places on the mission field as difficult or dangerous as the ghettos of our large American cities. Any pastor who leaves a wealthy suburban church for Christian service in the inner city is by any definition a missionary. Such an assignment is likely to require more courage, more faith, and more perseverance than most posts on the foreign field.2

While Kane’s perspective was shaped by the culture of the 1970s, it contains several harmful elements that are prevalent in churches today. His persistence that there ought not be a distinction between foreign and home missionaries might seem like a mere semantics discussion, but much more is at stake. In a chapter aimed at debunking the extreme usage of the “people groups” argument, Pastor Doran, in For the Sake of His Name, touches on the geographical nature of missionaries:

…the spread of the gospel is pictured in geographical expansion. That should not surprise us since Acts 1:8 details Christ’s commission in geographical terms.

What is true of Acts is also true of Paul when he speaks of his missionary endeavors. When he speaks about the gospel going forth, he uses phrases like “throughout the whole world” (Rom 1:8), “in all the world” (Col 1:16), and “in all creation under heaven” (Col 1:23). He commended the Thessalonians because “the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth” (1 Thess 1:8). When he writes of his missionary accomplishments and plans, he uses geography to mark them off:

• In the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ (Rom 15:19).
• But now, with no further place for me in these regions, and since I have had for many years a longing to come to you whenever I go to Spain - for I hope to see you in passing, and to be helped on my way there by you, when I ahve first enjoyed your company for a while (Rom 15:23-24).

Based on the cumulative weight of these texts, it seems clear that the primary focus of the New Testament is on the geographical expansion of the gospel into all the world, and that the definition of “all the nations” in the Great Commission should be understood in light of this, not vice versa. In fact, Acts 13:47 helps us bring these two ideas into their proper relationship to each other:

For so the Lord has commanded us, “I HAVE PLACED YOU AS A LIGHT FOR THE GENTILES, THAT YOU MAY BRING SALVATION TO THE END OF THE EARTH.”

The word translated “Gentiles” is the same word translated “nations” in the Great Commission, so it could be translated “as a light for the nations.” The key here is to note the parallelism between the two lines: being a light for the Gentiles/nations is parallel to bringing salvation to the end of the earth. In other words, even the concept of “nations” is tied to geographical language (”end of the earth.”)3

In addition to these arguments I would add that Kane seems to be inconsistent within his own book. As he develops a history of the modern missions movement, he highlights the spread to regions of Africa, the Orient, and the jungles of South America. Coverage of church planting in urban Chicago is absent from these chapters. While much has been written and presented on the connection between colonialism and evangelical missions, the command to geographically expand the gospel to unreached places predates Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, and William Carey for that matter. I wish that Kane would have applied the same principle to this topic as he did to the use of the term ‘missionary’ later in the book:

There are those who advocate that we drop the word [missionary] altogether. Others insist that it should be applied to all committed Christians. Stephen Neill has warned that if everybody is a missionary, nobody is a missionary…What is everybody’s job is nobody’s job. If every Christian is a missionary, missionary work is bound to suffer. It is correct to say that every Christian is, or should be, a witness. It is not correct to say that every Christian is a missionary.4

To this I would say that  ‘if every person doing some type of evangelism is a missionary, then we no longer have true missionaries, or at least not clearly defined missionaries.’ Definitions are so crucial. In this case, it is crucial that what a missionary is and what a missionary does is crucial for a local church, a missionary, and a church member to define. If we don’t know how to define it, how do we know that they exist or how do we manage them?

1 Keith R. Bridston, Mission Myth and Reality (New York: Friendship Press, 1965), pp. 32-33.

2 J. Herbert Kane, Understanding Christian Missions (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), p. 17-18.

3 David M. Doran, For the Sake of His Name (Allen Park, MI: Student Global Impact), pp. 148-149.

4 Kane, p. 29

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.

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