In over 200 years of missions and an average of $20 billion in AID and RELIEF efforts given annually for the past several decades, Africa remains a complicated web of poverty, injustice, faction, corruption, and opposing religious ideologies. Why? Is God powerless to change this? Is money, education and medicine the wrong focus? What is at the heart of this perceived failure? In the cleared sections of jungle in Congo DR and in hundreds of other places on the continent of Africa, rusting tractors, abandoned wells, and dilapidated fish farms whisper the sad story to those who have ears to hear. Unsustainable infrastructures have been imported and are now in various states of disrepair. In our most compassionate, loving, and Christ-like manner we have created an insatiable thief that has robbed so many impoverished people of dignity and the desire to dream, initiate, and be creative in finding their own solutions to the spiritual and economic complexities of Africa and other places on the planet. We have created DEPENDENCY on Western aid and expertise and in many ways have created artificial environments dependent on the methodology of our imported church or mission philosophy that fall apart after we leave.
Steve Saint, whose father was martyred with four other men trying to make contact with the Waodoni (Auca) people of Peru in 1956, had strong words to say against some of our most common missional mindsets. In a September 2011 article in the Journal for the U.S. Center for World Missions he said:
“Our goal in planting Christ’s church where it doesn’t exist must be to produce churches that are self-propagating, self-governing and self-supporting; especially where the members come from a background of hopelessness, powerlessness and inadequate resources. The most important aspect of church planting is whatever that fledgling congregation needs most. In a growing number of cases, the greatest need new churches have is to become self-supporting.
Giving handouts creates more problems than it solves. It is like casting out demons with long leases. Break the lease or they will come back and bring more roommates (Lk 11:24–26). Where the Church is being established among people that perceive themselves as powerless, there is a great need for deep discipleship, wrestling with the roots of poverty at the community level rather than concentrating on the individual.
Financial help that does not develop sustainable, local, financial self-sufficiency is much more likely to create poverty than it is to meet real needs. Until we realize that we can’t overcome poverty with handouts, we will never be much help in completing Christ’s Great Commission.” (Click here to read the article)
It is time for a major breakthrough in how we think and thus act in terms of helping to establish and support the Church and impoverished communities in some of these difficult contexts. God has given us amazing hearts to help those in need, and this is so beautiful! In those cases of widespread catastrophe we must first stop the bleeding. But very quickly we must transfer the triage and care to the local community or they will become overly dependent on our solutions and we will become unnecessarily entrenched. In most cases, being part of the solution requires us to resist the knee jerk reaction to give benevolently when a more long-term approach of empowerment will bring much more independence and creative solutions to the local community. We must ask ourselves, “What is the potential long-term harm or benefit from our current missional approach?” “Who is in perceived leadership right now?” “How am I raising up indigenous leadership to be fully capable to do what I am now doing?” “How is my approach creating dependency?”
Please feel free to respond to these weekly Breakthroughs in Missional Thinking. We need your voice in this ongoing dialogue about how the Christian Church engages in missions in this rapidly changing world and culture.
Blessings,
Mark Mielbrecht
Director of Global Leadership Development
I am sure we all resonate with the words of the prophet Isaiah “how beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good News…” However, in this world of so much political, economic, social and ideological unrest, the question of how we bring that Good News must be re-visited. Is a traditional missional approach based primarily on proclamation evangelism, still putting our best “foot” forward? I think we need to take a hard look at how we can win the right to be heard in cultures with a spiritual ideology very different from our own. What does it mean to develop long-term social credibility so that your proclamation will one day be welcomed and your thoughts and ideas embraced, because you have established the trusting relationships of the community at large?
Living amongst the terrible tragedy of the Aids epidemic, a South African pastor began a ministry to mobilize many communities to train and educate their vulnerable young people about the consequences of HIV, unprotected sexual activity, and pregnancy. After these programs had been established the rate of pregnancies and sexual relations actually increased. In disbelief, the founding pastor asked the question, “Haven’t they been educated!?” He started interviewing the kids as to why the problems had actually increased with the provided training and was struck by one young girl’s reply. “There are no jobs, no housing, we have no hope for a better life… Even though we know better, there is no reason to do anything different. Maybe if I get aids I’ll get out of this hell-hole sooner!”
Would you ever consider letting someone do surgery on you with a sword? Of course not! Surgery is a very delicate procedure which requires precise, knowledgeable, pre-meditated cuts with the specialized blade of a scalpel. Not the wide-sweeping, indiscriminate chops of a sword. I submit to you that in order to be truly helpful in an at-risk or distressed community, the same kind of delicate, precise, knowledgeable care must be taken in your missional approach. What might feel good to us, and seem to be the right thing to do in our own culture or ministry philosophy, could have disastrous results when exported into another community context.
It is our hope that this collection of thoughts, ideas, rants, stories and models for doing missions will generate more innovative and necessary engagement to how we reach out and participate in Kingdom work for the sake of the nations. The time has come to re-think how we engage, interact with, and resource those whom we are working with in a variety of contexts. Leadership development that empowers those whom God has already raised up in their own cultures and contexts must be of paramount importance. 
We’ve shared with you before about Charles George of Delft, Cape Town, South Africa, and his remarkable work there with vulnerable children and orphans (for more information about him,
I am finally in Rwanda! I have experienced many of the emotional highs and lows of initial culture shock, but I am finding that each day I feel a little more adjusted. When I have woken up missing some insignificant things (like my sink) and some important things (like my family), I walk outside to brush my teeth and I am greeted by the thousand hills with their thousand red roofs, of which I am living right in the middle. I just can’t get enough of it and I know there is no place I would rather be. . .
Jesus welcomed a group of followers up on a hillside, and he began to speak to them. One profound statement, “Blessed are the peacemakers. . .”
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