The tables are turned. After generations of Europeans and North Americans evangelizing and discipling the peoples of the Third World, Western nations are becoming one of the many mission fields for the exploding developing nations’ missionary movement.
Of the nearly 200,000 Protestant and Catholic missionaries today, more than 60,000 are from the Third World. Some experts estimate that by 2000 the number of missionaries from the Third World will exceed the number of their Western counterparts. With 75 percent of Christianity’s 1.7 billion adherents living outside the United States and northern Europe, the shift is inevitable.
According to AD 2000 & Beyond—an umbrella coalition of Protestant missionary agencies, pastors, and lay leaders—there are 6,000 Protestant missionaries from India, 3,000 from Latin America, 15,000 from Africa, and 11,000 from Asia proclaiming Jesus around the globe. Mestizos from the Amazon River basin have navigated up the Amazon River to start more than 200 churches in the past 15 years. Korea has sent missionaries to more than 50 countries, with a goal of having a missionary in every nation by 2000.
Peruvian theologian Samuel Escobar, a professor at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, says the freelance missionary movement is booming. “Among the 100,000 Peruvian economic emigrants each year, there are an estimated 5,000 evangelicals, none of whom have been sent by an official missionary agency. However, each one of these evangelicals is a potential missionary because their beliefs drive them to proclaim the gospel wherever they are.”
Doing it their way
Rather than being a clone of the First World church, the Third World church is its alter ego. The Western church is largely middle class, middle aged, and middle of the road. In contrast, the church in former colonial lands is poor, young, and spiritually radical. This makes for a missionary force much more attuned to oppression, hunger, and the supernatural. Argentinian Luis Bush, international director of AD 2000 & Beyond, says, “From the economically and politically weak Third World, God is raising a mighty spiritual force.”
“We are in a new age of Christianity where its main base will be in the Southern continents,” says missiologist Andrew Walls. “Its dominant expression will be filtered through the culture of those continents.”
One of those filters is an identification with the poor. While a traditional missionary family of four may need to raise $50,000 for their first year in the field, many Third World missionaries are sent out with little, if any, money and few tools. African Enterprise in Southern Africa sends two-person evangelistic teams with $50 and the clothes on their backs. Amen, a missionary agency in Peru with more than 500 workers overseas, expects missionaries to raise support among the people they reach. “This forces us to hit the pavement immediately lest we die of hunger,” says Amen missionary to Puerto Rico Jorge Robles. “It also helps us to better identify with the hardships of those we have come to serve.”
With this approach and few overhead requirements, Third World missionaries may be deployed more easily and quickly. “As soon as someone feels called to plant churches cross-culturally, we send them,” says Robles. This is in contrast to the traditional missionary worker, who may spend up to five years raising funds before going.
In addition, Third World missionaries need less than traditional ones because lifestyle expectations are lower. Christian Aid Mission says 50 Third World workers can be funded for the same amount required to support one North American missionary family.
Despite the help offered by U.S.—based agencies such as Christian Aid Mission, most Third World agencies are locally financed, even in the midst of atrocious economic conditions. Differing approaches, however, do not prevent Third and First World missionaries from cooperating. Last summer various organizations deployed evangelistic teams of young representatives to the Olympic Games.
Sergio and Susi LaRosa are typical of the growing partnership. Sergio is from Peru and worked as an evangelist in the Amazon where he met Susi, the daughter of U.S. missionaries. They came to the United States to receive biblical training, and for several years Sergio copastored two Chicago-area Latino churches. Now they are missionaries in Ecuador, sent by Leadership Resources, a U.S. missionary agency.
“The need for laborers is acute, and with the slowdown of laborers from North America, it makes sense to partner with the Latins God is raising up,” says Craig Parro, director of Leadership Resources’ International Ministries. “Sergio and Susi become immediately useful because they understand the nuances of a culture an expatriate might never pick up.”
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Opening doors
The explosive growth of the Third World missionary force not only adds numbers to the effort but also opens up doors previously closed to the dominant Western missionary force. Says Nigerian Femi Adeleye, “The best way to reach Nigerians is for them to see one of their own preaching the gospel. When they see a black person with a belief in God, exercising the power of God, and sharing the good news, this meets the argument that Christianity is a white man’s religion.”
In the same way, a converted Muslim or Hindu who has been persecuted and ostracized by friends, family, and society will be trusted much more by Hindus and Muslims who must pay the same cost if they become Christians.
An example of the advantages available to the Third World cross-cultural missionary force is the inroad Latin Americans are making in Arabic countries, a region where Western Christians have had little conversion success. Similar facial features and skin color, and shared cultural values, make it significantly easier for relationships and exchange of religious ideas.
Despite advantages Third World missionaries have, they are not immune to making the same ethnocentric mistakes as those from the colonial powers. Puerto Rican missionaries in the often hot and humid Venezuelan Andes insist that church members wear suits and ties. In Spain, Argentinian missionaries are having difficulty using culturally appropriate Spanish songs rather than their favorite Argentinian hymns.
Still, the mushrooming Third World missionary force is bringing the Good News every day to places that would not have been reached otherwise. Robles, who lives on an island Columbus introduced Christianity to 500 years ago, sees an irony: “God is now raising the Indian to proclaim the gospel to the whole world.”
By Andrés Tapia.
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