American Leadership in World Missions

Just before the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, I was on leave from the Royal Air Force and read an article by Norman Grubb on the future of missionary work. He expressed the view that although for many years Great Britain had been the leader of the world-wide missionary enterprise, a new day had dawned. Just as political, economic, and military leadership had passed from the old world to the new, so would spiritual and missionary leadership.

As I look back over the intervening twenty-five years, two facts stand out. First, it was striking that at a time when everybody was thinking of little else than how to finish the war, here was one man who was already planning the peace—so far as missionary work was concerned—and doing so with remarkable accuracy.

The second fact that comes to mind is the difficulty I had in accepting the truth of what he had written. When one’s own country has dominated the scene for many years, it is not easy to accept the fact that her influence is on the wane, and this was much harder for the older people than for the young ones. I remember showing the article to an older Christian who rejected it indignantly and commented, “Britain is not finished yet.” National pride and objective judgment make uncomfortable bedfellows.

Now we can see how accurate that forecast was. Before World War II, Britain supplied approximately two-thirds of all the Protestant missionaries in the world. Soon after, it was the United States that was providing two-thirds of the personnel, as well as a much larger percentage of such specialized services as Christian radio, literature, aviation, and linguistics. But Britain was not finished. Although in the past twenty-five years the contribution of the British church to the cause of world evangelism may have dwindled statistically, anybody who has seen the impact of the ministry of John Stott at the Inter-Varsity Missionary Conventions at Urbana, or seen something of the impact of the British Inter-Varsity publishing program overseas, or the influence of British and commonwealth missionary personnel, knows that it still has a vital role to play.

Just as 1945 marked a change in missionary leadership, so could 1970. Kenneth Scott Latourette has observed that missionary leadership has usually been exercised by the nation that holds the place of economic and political leadership in the world. Historically this has been so, but the present age has several distinctives that may radically change this principle. We need to ask ourselves, Does this mean that missionary leadership is about to pass from the United States? And if so, to whom is it passing?

It is likely that future historians will consider 1956 one of the turning points in world history, and it is instructive to review some of the events of that year.

1. It was the year that Great Britain was discredited by her disastrous venture in the Suez Canal.

2. There was the revolution in Hungary that was suppressed with such brutality by Russian tanks that even many people who had been pro-Russian were disillusioned. This disillusionment was felt not only in neutral countries but also in the Communist parties of such countries as France and Italy.

3. Khrushchev denounced the Stalin cult of personality.

4. France granted independence to Tunisia and Morocco.

All these events gave impetus to the movement toward national independence and weakened confidence in the big nations. Prior to that year, the whole world had been mesmerized onlookers as the two giant powers, Russia and America, maneuvered for position and advantage. Now the small nations gained in number and confidence as they were wooed by both East and West.

General de Gaulle seems to have been one of the first statesmen to see the implications of this, at least as far as the eastern European countries were concerned, and to shape his policies accordingly.

We have witnessed a significant reversal of the pattern of history. Previously the pattern had been for small nations to be eliminated by various great nations. Now we have seen a situation in which great countries are continually bringing about the creation of new small nations. One out of three people alive today lives in a country that has been independent for twenty-five years or less. This is the day of the small nations, all of them conscious of their rights and privileges. And these attitudes bear directly upon missionary work.

This process coincides with remarkable developments in the United States itself. In the fifties and early sixties, America experienced a remarkable degree of prosperity in religion in general and Christianity in particular. Americans who have not spent extended time in older countries—and have therefore not seen a contrast—rarely appreciate the extent of this boom, or the effect it had on the missionary contribution.

Recent years have witnessed a decline of much of this interest. Although the decline has often been exaggerated by talk of the “post-Christian era,” church attendance is indeed diminishing, and the state of the Church in America today should lead us to think furiously (though not to panic).

Accurate comparative figures for missionary recruitment are hard to compile because there have been changes in the pattern of missionary service. There are now more specialized and service agencies, more short-term missionaries, more forms of non-professional missionary service. Moreover, some missions do not like to be very frank lest their supporters get the impression that the mission is on the decline. It is probable, however, that there is a fall-off in the number of recruits. Among college students I have seen more interest in foreign missions but less commitment to actual service.

Some of this is to be expected. The increase after World War II was somewhat artificial in the sense that the war itself left a backlog of missionary recruits, a manpower reserve that swelled the number of missionary recruits for some years as men finished their education.

Fifteen years ago there was a period when all over the United States missionary budgets were expanding and money was relatively easy to get. To have a missionary budget that grew larger year by year was the hallmark of a spiritual and vital church and a badge of evangelical respectability. The financial resources of the evangelical church in the United States are still enormous compared with those in other countries, but they no longer seem inexhaustible. In many well-known missionary churches, a plateau seems to have been reached. There are as many explanations of this as there are missionary speakers, but they are beyond the scope of this article.

In many parts of the world there is a growing disenchantment with things American, and it does not make missionary work for Americans any easier. It is no new experience for missionaries to be working among people with whom they are not popular; what is different now is that we are no longer in the age of gun-boat diplomacy, and countries can easily expel all missionaries. Even if they let missionary work continue, they are apt to be choosy about whom they want in their country.

And the critical attitude toward the Westerner is not limited to the governments. A good number of evangelical Christians in churches overseas resent interference and are far less tolerant than they used to be of American leadership. Often the most innocent of actions and opinions are wrongly construed. A missionary friend of mine who is unusually progressive and sensitive was on a panel with some other men when a question was asked about birth control. When my friend pointed out some of the problems of the population explosion, he was told bluntly that he took that view only because like all other Westerners he wanted to keep down the population in younger countries lest he be outnumbered. This critical attitude is sometimes accompanied by a request for financial aid “with no strings attached.”

The situation is further compounded by the internal anguish that is tearing apart the social structure of the United States. The alienation of youth from the Church is a threat not only to the home church but also to its missionary program. To be sure, some churches are coping with this problem; but too many young people have told me they have given up going to church because it is irrelevant and dead for me to take this development lightly. What makes it so serious is that many of these young people have not “lost their faith,” nor are they malcontents; they are consecrated, idealistic Christians who feel that their churches today are out of touch with reality. And often their view of missionary leadership is similar to their view of church leadership.

What should be our response to tighter money and falling recruitment? Probably the most obvious reaction is to upbraid the youth for their unwillingness to undertake a missionary life of sacrifice, and to criticize the Church for lack of sacrificial giving. It is certainly good to consider the fact that what we see is a failure on the part of God’s people, and a healthful type of self-examination is always in order. However, another possibility should be considered.

A decline in the number of American missionaries overseas could be the will of God for this time. It may hurt our pride to admit that God can push us aside and use other nations, but we shall do well to remember that God used Germany to be the spearhead for his purposes during the Reformation, and that it pleased him to use Great Britain for leadership in world evangelization a century ago just as certainly as he used the Church in the United States for the last twenty-five years. God can easily pass on this role to other nations, and indeed it might be to the everlasting good of those nations if he did. The missionary hope of the world is not the United States of America; it is the Lord (though to hear some missionary addresses one would not think so).

There are strong churches in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and in these days when there is so much resentment against the white man it would be appropriate for spiritual leadership to be exercised by a group of nations in a kind of fraternal partnership rather than by one giant.

Will this be so? It is too early to know. But if it does happen, will we be ready to recognize it and accept it in good grace, or will our national pride get in the way?

To some extent we have been too influenced by the thinking we developed during World War II, when we learned that sheer weight of numbers and economic production coupled with American courage and ingenuity could bring victory against any foe. But we are living in the day of Viet Nam and have learned that victory by the great and powerful is not always so easily guaranteed.

We have not always used our missionaries well. Perhaps too often exorbitant amounts of money have been spent in sending large families to the field so that the expensively trained man can spend his time in maintenance work that could be performed more economically by a national.

With our passion for measuring spiritual blessings by statistics and our confidence in methods and techniques, we may yet need to hear God say to us as he said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many … lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘My own hand was delivered me.’ ” It is well to note that the Lord said that only after the “Spirit of the Lord took possession of Gideon.” After all, in the eyes of the statisticians, Jeremiah was something of a washout, and in the eyes of the specialists in church growth, Samuel Zwemer left a lot to be desired!

Spiritual blessings cannot be measured by the acre, nor missionary effectiveness by the body count or the budget. The American role in world evangelism in the future is going to demand a great deal of imagination and, above all, humility. God can fit his Church to meet this hour.

Eric S. Fife is a former missionary director of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. He has written “A Highway for our God” and is co-author of “Missions in Crisis.”

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