 Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. Typically, on the episodes that we produce, we pull in people outside of the Anabaptist Perspectives organization to talk about different issues. But for this episode, Marlon Summers and Regan Shrock, who are here on the interview, are both from Anabaptist Perspectives production staff. And what we're going to talk about today is mission work. Over the past, I guess ever since the beginning of Anabaptist Perspectives, we've had on a wide variety of missionaries and people involved in mission work to speak on our channel. And we've received a lot of feedback about that. A lot of it has been good to hear people express that they have been encouraged and edified by what they've heard from the missionaries talking on our episodes. But there's also been a pretty significant voice of people who have offered critiques and criticisms of what we're advocating for and the kinds of things that we've been promoting through the interviews with missionaries. And so on this episode, we are going to engage with some of that feedback and respond to the criticism that we have received. One of the big things that came up in our response to an interview that we did several months ago with Randall Graber, somebody who's working with the mission organization in Greece, we received comments on that video. I just like to read them. Basically, the claim is that mission work is somehow intertwined with American politics. An individual named John left a comment and he said, you can show you genuinely care for them by not going into their country and destabilizing the countries so we can steal their resources. This is a very backward way of being a missionary. The same individual left another comment in which he said, destabilize the region, send in missionaries. Wonder why the people hate the USA? Newsflash. It's not because of freedoms. So again, in both of these comments, he's talking about the way that American politics and military conquest has somehow benefited mission work. If I understand them correctly. So that's one of the criticisms. I guess the question to that is, what does American politics have to do with foreign mission work? Another thing that I'd like to bring up here just at the beginning, go back through and talk about each of these, is the issue that missions don't even work and there's not a hope that whatever major of success, the missions will be successful. A comment that reflects that came through YouTube. I'm not sure who left this comment, but somebody said, it's a joke to think that you'll convert a Muslim. So the question I guess I would ask about that is, what is the role of, as he said, conversion in foreign missions? And how does that factor into the success of missions? So there's two things that have come up here. One is the role of American politics in foreign missions. And the second question is, do missions even work? And is there some sort of success that we can let him say? This is a success that we can reasonably expect to happen from our work. So maybe just in the response to the first question, let's just start by acknowledging that, yes, large sections of the American church are way too tied to imperialistic American policy. And in our own Anabaptist circles as well, that's maybe limited a little bit by the fact that people do hold to non-resistance and so on, but there's still this, actually another production staff used this term in church yesterday. There's this kind of emotional investment in American politics, even within our Anabaptist circles, that does tie people back to those negative things that our first commenter referenced. However, I think in my experience, it's the people often who actually are attempting to spread the gospel, make disciples another part of the world, who are best positioned to push back against those tendencies in the church. So I'm not sure that it's fair to blame those attitudes on quote-unquote missionaries. I'm sure many of them take those attitudes, but that's also a good source of pushback against American kind of arrogance in home churches. Yeah, Americans, interesting because I've been around the world a few times and things. Americans do have this cultural supremacy mindset that's very interesting. We're so used to thinking we have all the answers. And one of the things the church has going for it, the Church of Jesus, is that we can say, well, no, our particular culture that we're in, which right now we're in America, does not actually have the answers. It just does not. You know who actually has the answers? It's Jesus and it's Jesus as people and it's his kingdom and it's people living out every day what it looks like to live with Jesus as king. That's where the real answers are, the real solutions. So when we get all like you're saying this almost emotional attachment to American politics and we came through a really interesting election, you know, a few months ago, I think we all kind of saw that where it's almost like, oh, this is so either so good or so bad that my particular whoever I thought would be best for Christianity didn't get in and it was just this devastation. And I was just like, wow, the church should be so divorced from that because we're following King Jesus. That's the real solution, not our particular culture or whatever. I think that one of the keys here, this person mentioned the Middle East specifically, you know, one of the things we have as Anabaptists, we can look at what has happened in the Middle East, whether it was the US invasion, which is the most recent in Iraq 2003 or the British invasion 100 years before or the Ottoman imperialistic expansions or you take your pick. There's been a ton of different empires through there. All through that history, the Anabaptist people have never been a part of that, have never condoned that violence, have never been okay with that. Instead, they've said, here's the real solution, what you guys are doing is not the actual solution. Worldly empires are going to do what they're going to do, and that's kind of just how it works, I guess. I mean, it's earthly empires, right? God's people are way above that. And, you know, particularly for us, again, in America, the whole US invasion of Iraq, yeah, it tends to get Christians politicized on one side or the other thinking this was right or this was wrong or whatever. God's people should not stoop that low because the solutions aren't about what earthly empire is going and killing bad guys or whatever you think they may be doing. Really, at the end of the day, God's people should be doing what God's people have always done, which is bringing redemption to this world. I think that's how I would answer that person. In a way, he's actually got a point. The US has done some things that have been really not good for some people. You know, they may have been good for the US, but they weren't good for, say, people in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that's not really our... That's not why we're here. We're here to bring redemption. I don't know if that's... Maybe that even makes it more complicated. No, that's really good, and that's where we need to be. And yes, I think the Anabaptist tradition has provided some good, generally a good testimony along those lines with obvious weaknesses, obvious places in our history where we lost some of that focus in different groups and, you know, quite frankly right now is also kind of a crisis time for a lot of Anabaptist churches where a lot of that is... I hope it's not being thrown out, but with some of the reactions, especially in the last year, it feels like some of that's in danger of being thrown out and we've got to really come back and strengthen it. Maybe for a bit of a summary, what you're pointing out, Regan, is that America has done some very problematic things in the way that it's negotiated with military and political power in the Middle East, but you would say that it's incorrect to associate that with what the American missionaries are doing. Particularly the missionaries who do have a proper prioritization of the kingdom of God, which takes precedence over any loyalty to the United States. You wouldn't want to confuse the issues there. Yeah, that's the ideal. Now, we're all humans. Does that mean we actually live up to it? Probably not, you know. I mean, when I travel around the world, I am carrying an American passport. I'm using American money. I can't ever... And that's okay. I'm a citizen of this country. That's how it is. But if I go into, say, Iraq or Afghanistan and be like, America was awesome and we killed a bunch of bad guys and this is great and, you know, yay, I'm going to wave an American flag, obviously that's a problem. You know, that's for one thing. What is that saying? It's saying the real solutions come from earthly kingdoms doing what they always do. And the church, I believe the church shouldn't believe that that's the case. You know, the church isn't here to do that. It doesn't matter what passport you're on. And I think that when I was... When we were going through this before and I was just jotting some notes down, the point I really want people to get away from this episode or bring away is the church is universal. You know, it's not tied to your particular country. I've been in some places where you're, you know, with people from all over the world and they're all working together to, you know, help start a school for children who can't go to school or provide aid for people who need food. And it had absolutely nothing to do with what passports we were carrying. It was like, we're all here because we're believers in Jesus and we want to help people. And that's very hard because, you know, we live in this country. So we automatically have some, you know, things about our country baked into our worldview and that's not necessarily wrong. It's just be aware of it and understand this is so much bigger than yourself or your particular country. One other thing, practically speaking, I hope the audience remembers, you know, America is literally 4% of the global population. 4%. Like we're about this big when it comes to the sense of the entire world. There's a lot more going on out there outside of our country. And that means 4%. That means there's a lot of Christians, followers of Jesus that are not part of our country. And that's a beautiful thing and we should embrace that. That's another thing to think about with the modern missionary movement that's a blessing is how really global it is. I mean, some of us still think, some of us still have, you know, the back of our minds, the stereotype, you know, first Europe sending them out and then Americans sending out missionaries. But this is really global. The US is actually a major target for missionaries from other countries coming to do mission work in the US. And similarly, there's missionary streams all around from culture to culture. There's the Chinese major movement of Chinese Christians working their way into the Middle East. Another one that I think is a nice example is I know somebody whose goal is to disciple people in an Islamic country. And, okay, my friends are American citizens. They came from the US. But the organization that they're working under that's giving them direction is an African organization. I think that's a beautiful illustration of, okay, yes, there is this unholy, idolatrous link up between some of the American church and American foreign policy. But there's a whole lot more going on. Maybe we should come back to a related issue here. And that is, I suspect that some of this pushback is probably not just complaints about, oh, missionaries are linking up with governments and policies. There's probably some who feel that, well, I know there's lots of people who feel that the very enterprise itself that says, oh, we want to go to other countries and get people to embrace Christianity, to follow Jesus rather than whatever God or gods they worship, that that itself is kind of objectionable cultural imperialism or something. And so I wonder if it wouldn't be good for us to step into that a little bit. It'll also help kind of transition us to that second question about why you think you're going to convert anybody. So, yeah, how would you respond to that person who says I think this is ridiculous? I think that was on an interview we had done with someone working with refugees or something to that effect. And it was like, oh, okay, interesting. What do you think of that terminology, though? So I'm not sure where to go with terminology. I do think we talk about conversion. We should qualify the terms there. As that's used in the world, it's often used simply as switch religions or belief systems and maybe switch a whole culture with it. If we want to use that as a Christian idea, it should be the idea that when a person becomes a follower of Jesus through discipleship, the idea of conversion is a lot changes. It's bringing the life of Jesus, the righteousness of Jesus in instead of what was there. I think that's the side that we know that we mean. If we talk about conversion as Christians but culturally, conversion is often seen as just get people to make the external switch. Convert at the point of the sword except baptism, whatever. So I don't know if we should have a lot tied into that word convert. Like Reagan, you were saying before the show, something like focus on that word discipleship, learning from Jesus. I'm not sure if when this person says something about converting Muslims, or you know, I'm not sure if I quite agree with that terminology. I think there's a better way of mentioning it. When we're saying mission work or working cross-culturally, say, this is not, should not be about a particular culture coming and saying you need to be like us. Which is something that the church hasn't always done very good at where we have this almost savior complex. You have to be like us to improve your situation. Instead I think using terminology from the book of Acts here is the way. The way of Jesus. Here's where we're walking. Here's, you know, here's something. If you want to join, you can be a part of this. But this isn't like back in the day, crusade style, you know, convert at the point of the sword. We'll kill you if you don't believe like us. That is not what we're trying to do here at all. But you know, if you look at a country like Yemen or Syria, there are some real difficult challenges there. And there are people there who don't like the systems that are in place and would like to find something different for their lives. Whether that's a different religion or a different thought process, whatever. That's not the point here. What we're saying is here is the way of Jesus and you can join it if you like. We're not here to, again, that whole word convert just brings a whole lot of connotations with it that I don't think we want. People often think of that as, oh okay, then that means you're changing all their lifestyle and ruining their culture and changing all this stuff that's changed to begin with. And that's not what the church should be doing. The church is out there saying here's the way of Jesus. You can join it if you like, but it's not that we're making people come to a certain belief system. One thing we should emphasize here is some of the offense is going to be simply stumbling over the claims of the gospel of Jesus. Jesus does make universal claims both about who he is, but he's to be worshiped and no one else is to be worshiped. And then there are ethical things that come from that or righteousness. How do we live the way? So yes, we are saying that everyone in the whole world should give up worshiping idols. But that also cuts to American culture, too. Everyone should give up the pistol under your pillow unless you live in bear country and you're thinking about wild animals. But if you're thinking about people, you should. Every one of you give that up no matter what your culture. So there is the claim that Jesus' kingdom is for all cultures and some people are going to react just to that and label that as self-imperialistic. And we can't back down from those universal claims of Jesus. Yeah, but at the same time, we're just out there offering this and showing people this but that's it. Instead of when we think of imperialism as very invasive British imperialism, American imperialism, whatever, where they would come in and just be like, hey, you're changing, you're going to be like us and that's just the way it is. The church doesn't do that. Or at least it shouldn't. There have been times in the past where it has, I suppose, or you could claim maybe that that wasn't actual Christianity however you want to look at it. That's not what Jesus is about. Right, the application of force to get people to line up is a huge problem. Or coercion of any kind. Coercion of any kind, right. And the second thing that is a big problem that we've been touched on often this is subconscious, but identifying that universal claims of Jesus with some things that are really far more culturally specific that makes missionaries tend to undermine culture. And that's a task for really anyone who wants to spread the gospel is to kind of sort out, okay, how do I understand the difference between some culturally specific things, my way of thinking and genuine teachings. Even, you know, something as simple as the different ways that cultures look at time. You know, Americans for the most part you have an appointment at a certain time, you better meet it. And we view that as part of respecting other people and keeping our word and so on. And in fact, in America it probably is. But you don't have to import that to another culture and say oh well, if they truly were followers of Jesus they would adopt the standard of starting meetings exactly on time. You'll have other ways in that culture of respecting people and keeping your word and not letting people down that are different. Nothing may just say about what's important for somebody who you know, missionary itself in that term. Because of cultural baggage and so on. But somebody who wants to do discipleship cross-culturally. Discipling people to Jesus. One concern is that people do things because people go in incompetently, naively, mess up things. So doing it right is important. Not that you wait to go until you've got everything perfect and you come in as a savior. It's not the right thing to do. But sometimes there's very specific technical training you need. Other kinds of preparation before you go and then just entering the culture with a lot of humility and asking questions first to understand where you're going before you start bringing everything into it. So what I hear y'all doing is painting a picture where mission work can be done done well. The Jesus way. Talking about things like voluntary, not involving coercion, not importing culture and demanding that others comply. But something that bothers me is that I think all of these things could be in place. Yet mission work could still go terribly terribly wrong. And something that made an impression on me quite a bit is in the last couple months I listened to a podcast series by I Heart Radio called The Missionary. And it follows the story of a woman named Renee Buck who operated a charitable treatment center in Uganda where she tried to serve children who were facing severe malnourishment. And a lawsuit came out of this and the allegations tied up with this lawsuit was that 105 children died in her care. So it appears and like whether or not this is true, I'm not trying to make any claim you can go listen to the The Missionary podcast and also I think several other news media companies cover the story so you can go look for yourself but from the appearance of it while trying to do good and trying to be the proper kind of missionary she ended up doing a tremendous amount of harm or at least facilitating it and those in the audience from conservative Mennonite churches will probably recognize a serious thing that came out a couple of years ago where there was a missionary within one of our organizations who went to the mission field and ended up doing a tremendous amount of harm recognizing all these pitfalls, the possibility of just drastically misunderstanding a culture or having white savior complex or neglecting good that needs to be done within our home communities instead of spending a tremendous amount of energy going to other cultures people to whom we are less responsible How do we see how do we see mission work is even justifiable understanding all the many ways that mission work can go wrong and often has gone terribly wrong So on a very practical note this is what you mentioned here about Renee Bach so she goes and starts a clinic without any medical degree, medical license medical experience really and this is something she said herself didn't really have this but it's like well how hard can it be that kind of attitude is very obviously wrong we shouldn't have that just because it's a nation more poor than you you can't do that there's a level of preparation somewhere to help people you need to be offering them something specific that is a way of empowering them so if you want to go to a certain country maybe you could go get an engineering degree and help them learn a form of engineering that they may not be aware of something useful, something skillful that you have trained in and are equipped to actually tackle that in this case and whether the allegations are completely true or not it doesn't really matter because it ruined her witness and it was not a good situation she didn't go through the proper channels she didn't actually take the time to get the training to learn how to do something well and use that to help empower the people she was there to serve so if you're there to serve people your best option is to empower them and teach them and help them along their way instead of you coming in and just swooping in and getting some nice pictures for Instagram that's actually a real thing in missions people will go for two weeks and they'll go build a school for these poor children in whatever country and get some nice photos for social media and it's like wait a second now we could have saved an enormous amount of money hired some people in that country who maybe need a job and told them to build a school why don't we think of doing that instead we're going to fly a whole bunch of short termers that don't have a clue of the culture they're entering in so they can have a nice cultural experience I guess there's some real practical things here that organizations doing this really need to face and take a hard long look why are we actually doing these certain things is this even helping or empowering that people are here to serve and if it's not you need to get out why else are you there this is a real problem with humanitarian aid groups not just Christians but just in general there's a documentary called Poverty Incorporated where humanitarian aid becomes big business where if there's not a disaster happening somewhere in the world they start losing money so it's like you need to find some way of coming in and giving aid to people so you can keep operating as an organization and then it quickly devolves from being a way of helping people to a way of making yourself look good and like you said white savior complex this is real stuff and I sure hope this hasn't happened to people watching this but it's very very easy to do I mean yeah I've seen it first hand in a lot of different places actually it's quite sad I don't know Marlon what do you think yeah I was thinking a variety of things there while you're talking first on that training point you know she didn't have the proper training and it really came back to bite and I think that can be a weakness in our anabaptist circles in particular we're so used to doing stuff small scale you figure it out you wing it which depending on what you're doing works great but then that attitude comes across we don't need certifications we don't need regulations we can just move faster without red tape we start to play that line well you know there's very real skills skills that need to be learned and certifications if they're the right certifications are designed to actually make sure you have those skills and it's important to honor that and in fact in some countries this goes with being culturally flexible in some cultures those certifications certifications are a lot more important than they are here and that's something we should honor in that culture as well and on a practical note because I think most of our audience is probably Mennonite or some form of that culture we have a high emphasis on things like agriculture, building, construction things like that let's say you want to do a mission trip where you go and build a school somewhere you would not send a whole bunch of office workers to do that job we inherently know you're going to want some guys on that team to have some construction experience so we know that about practical hands on thing if you go and turn somebody like me loose and say go plant a garden and teach these people agriculture that would be terrible, go get the Amish farmer down the road he has a lot of life skills experience, he knows that field so we intuitively know that when it comes to agriculture, construction, whatever what about like medical or engineering or teaching English all of a sudden there tends to be like you're saying that attitude we're just kind of going and wing it we understand it in certain fields but in other fields it doesn't quite click and that's something again we need to address and think that through and I think it's more a blind spot than some deep set issue of white savior complex, probably not that but hey maybe you should go to college for four years learn some skills on how to teach English well and then go to that country and teach in a university sure but don't just go in and start bringing it we use the term white savior complex a couple times perhaps as an alternative to that if that would be a vice the proper way to look at ourselves would be with proper humility and understanding our own limitations and enough self-awareness reflection to know the kind of biases that we're bringing into our desire to help others and also to be aware of our own need to develop and to learn from the people that we're serving and to be properly equipped rather than just enthusiastic and ambitious and assuming that we already have the solutions to problems that we perceive others to have yeah solutions to problems are often much more nuanced than we think like we'll walk into a foreign country and be like my goodness like can't they have you know whatever thing we have in America that maybe they don't have it can't be that hard actually it's probably a little more complicated because if it was that easy somebody probably would have done it they have brains too I'm sure they've thought about it and there's probably a limitation here you're not aware of I think a really good motto to keep in mind in all of these things something to the effect you could say in a number of different ways but just people helping other people that's who we are we're just normal human beings maybe we have a specific skill set again Mennonites we're really good at building stuff a lot of people in our circles that know how to build houses well I'm not one of them don't have me go on a trip to help somebody build something it's going to be a disaster because that's not my skill set and that's okay to understand the strengths and weaknesses I was in Liberia last year and doing some video work for an organization there that is an entirely Liberian organization they're run by the local people who are there helping people it's just people helping people but they didn't have anyone on their team with good video skill sets I had some family connections like hey you should come over and see the work and why don't you bring some cameras along we'll make some videos so yes I'll go over there I have a particular skill set that they needed great so I'll do that I'll serve them I'm helping them but you know will I go over there and run the school for them no because they know the culture they understand so many things there that I could never they will do so much better than me so we go with the a sense of I'm empowering and helping you know I'll do my part but they've figured out how to do a lot of it like they don't need me to come in and fix something you know I'll go do my part that I may have a specific skill in that maybe someone on their team doesn't have but that's it that's all you know and as Americans again we tend to think oh we can just come in and you know take care of stuff and that's not really true most times and like you mentioned with the video thing you know there is a place for cross-cultural skills and what we talk about is community development and so on and it's not that you know we're better than the people we're helping there but it's maybe we're able to have certain skills sometimes it just takes an outside perspective on a situation which means that you know we as Americans should be open to people coming from other countries and giving us an outside perspective on how we could do things better right they should go both ways and sometimes just the fact that you have economic connections if you go in humbly and using your skills right those can be economic connections that are important because often times it isn't underdeveloped economy or the economy was ruined by war or whatever and so you know having a foreigner who comes in with the right attitude can actually be very helpful Jesus wants disciples and worshipers from every nation which means every ethnic group and you can't give up on that just because things have often been done wrong and obviously some things have worked I mean we think of China and Africa as missionary destinations because they were that not so very long ago but in fact both of those places are major missionary senders now and I mean there are or have been in recent decades American churches that have had to put themselves under African leadership because the church was so bad in America so yeah there are things that have worked I mean it wasn't just that the missionaries accomplished everything but somebody had to go to plant seeds that then grew or Christianity grew in those cultures well thank you Marlin and Reagan for responding to the questions that we received actually there were more criticisms but we appreciate both the criticisms and the comments and the questions that you and our audience send to us we are grateful for the feedback this is the end of this episode but thank you for joining us to having you back for the next episode of Anabaptist Perspectives