READ THE ATTACHED CHAPTER AND ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS FROM THE CHAPTER
Chilcote & Warner:
Chapter 26:
1. What happened to “parochial thinking” and action in the “globalized world?”
2. What is “parochial thinking and action?”
3. What is the most important and urgent issue on global missions’ agenda today?
CHAPTER 26
Strategic Issues in Missions — An Asian Perspective
Hwa Yung
Some time ago, while spending a few months in Britain, I met a dignified Chinese lady in the
kitchen of our hostel. A full professor from a Chinese university in a highly specialized field
of information technology, she was doing some advanced research at the local university, one
of the most prestigious in the country. Here was a person who epitomizes the future of China.
On finding out that I teach theology, she said: “You people must come to China and preach
the gospel.” Startled by her statement, I asked her whether she was a Christian. I was even
more amazed when she said, “No.” I then asked her why she said what she did. Her answer
stunned me. She replied: “China needs God. If China does not know God, there is no hope
for her future.”
I must confess that I have still not quite gotten over the conversation. It was a
Macedonian call to the church worldwide. But before we rush to China with all the
missionaries and resources at our disposal, we need to ponder for a moment the words of
John Sung, the greatest evangelist and revivalist of twentieth-century China. Sung was not
unappreciative of the sacrificial labor of many Western missionaries who gave their lives to
bring the gospel to China. Nevertheless, by the 1920s and 1930s, he noted that often it was
missionary control and dependency on Western funds that prevented the Chinese church
from growing. Repeatedly he urged the budding Chinese church to cut its apron strings and
move on toward independence and maturity. Asked shortly before his death in 1944 about
the future of the Chinese church, Sung revealed that God had showed him that a great revival
was coming. But the missionaries would all have to leave first. The history of the last fifty
years shows that this was the most profound prophecy concerning the Chinese church in the
twentieth century.
1
Asia, with some 3.7 billion people and less than 9 percent of whom are Christians, clearly
needs the gospel. But Sung’s prophetic statement reminds us that we cannot go on doing
things in the same old manner. What then is the way forward? For what it is worth, here are
some thoughts on the matter.
Three Trends and Three Issues Affecting Asian Missions
To begin with, those wanting to think strategically about Asian missions should note three
important global trends. First, sometime in the 1980s, the number of Christians in the nonWestern world exceeded that in the West for the first time in modern history. Figures given
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by David Barrett show that in A.D. 2000, the number of Christians in Europe and North
America was about 750 million (39 percent), compared to almost 1.2 billion (61 percent) for
the whole non-Western world. This shift of the center of gravity of the church from the
Western into the non-Western world is not merely demographic. It is also reflected in the
vitality and growing influence of non-Western Christianity. One can see these in the joy of
African Christian worship, the fervency of Korean church prayer life, and the dynamism of
evangelism in Latin American Pentecostalism, Indian rural house churches, etc. Parallel to
this is the perceived decline of Western Christianity, in the face of powerful secularist and
liberal pressures within an increasingly post-Christian milieu.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of this two-sided trend is Lambeth 1998, when Anglican
bishops from all over the world met together. The burning issue then was whether
homosexuality is an acceptable Christian moral alternative. In the end, this was
overwhelmingly rejected because almost all the African and Asian bishops opposed it. The
Times of London (August 6, 1998) commented:
Yesterday’s resolution, adopted by an overwhelming majority, was a surprising and uncharacteristically trenchant
dismissal of the liberal position … But the outcome also reflects the growing weight at Lambeth of doctrinally
conservative Third World bishops.
Lambeth 1998 may well mark a watershed in global Christianity. It was probably the first
time in modern history, at a Christian gathering of international significance, that an agenda
strongly driven by Western churches was decisively rejected by the whole body under the
influence of non-Western leadership.
A second observable trend is the changing shape of the international cross-cultural
missions force. The following summarizations are based on the total number of missionaries
from Protestant, Anglican, and independent churches given in the last two editions of
Operation World.
2
By A.D. 2000, the numbers from the non-Western world had overtaken those from the
Western world. Other evidences further support this pattern. For example, North American
missions appear to be facing a serious problem today of not having enough recruits to replace
those who are retiring. At the same time, Urbana 2000, a traditionally predominantly white
American conference in the past, saw the presence of at least 26 percent of the twenty
thousand or so students made up of Asian Americans or Asian nationals studying in North
America.
Much of the energy for Christian missions in the twenty-first century will probably come
from the non-Western world. In the West, the liberal churches will become increasingly
irrelevant. Evangelical and Pentecostal-charismatic churches will continue to contribute, but
even so it will not be like what it was before. Living in an increasingly post-Christian
environment, much of their spiritual energy will be sapped by having to face an increasingly
hostile spiritual and social environment outside the church, and the growing problem of
moral compromise within.
The third trend concerns how the wold is being reshaped today. Harvard professor
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Samuel Huntington, in The Clash of Civilizations, argues that fundamental realignments are
taking place in the post–Cold War era.
3
In the past, the battles were fought first between
kings, then later between nation states, and finally between ideologies in the Cold War
period. Now in the post–Cold War period, the clashes will be largely between civilizations, of
which he identifies eight major ones: Western, Orthodox or Slavic, Latin American, Sinic or
Confucian, Islam, Hindu, Japanese, and African. Huntington’s thesis has been seriously
discussed and critiqued by many. But after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, even
skeptics have to admit its validity to some degree.
In other words, civilizational patterns of thinking and action will drive much of the world
in the next few decades. This has tremendous ramifications for missions. For example, the
last couple of decades have witnessed the increasing resurgence of all the traditional religiouscultural groupings, including radical Islam with groups like al-Qaeda, and fundamentalist
Hinduism with India’s BJP, among others. Invariably, this means that pressures on Christians
in places where they are minorities will increase rather than decrease. Thus the empowerment
and sustenance of persecuted churches will become an increasingly important missions
agenda.
Apart from these three trends, the Asian church also faces three serious issues. To begin
with, the rapid growth of non-Western Christianity in the last half-century does not mean
that everything is well. In many places in Asia, serious problems exist. For example, in spite of
the wildfire church growth, especially in 1960s and 1970s, Protestant churches in South Korea
are facing a crisis today. Church growth began slowing in the 1980s, and plateaued or began
declining in the early 1990s. Contributory factors suggested include divisions, lack of social
involvement, overemphasis on megachurches, inadequate pastoral oversight, distrust of
leadership, and nominalism.
4
In the last few years, charges of autocratic leadership, nepotism,
and misuse and embezzlement of church funds have not helped to arrest the declining
pastoral image. Clearly, in many parts of the non-Western church, Christian fundamentals
are not in place, especially in relation to commitment, holiness, and character formation.
Secondly, the gospel for too long has been proclaimed in a truncated form. This problem
did not begin with the fundamentalist-modernist debates of the early twentieth century,
which led to the sharp dichotomy between evangelism and sociopolitical concerns. The roots
go back to the domestication of Christian theology by Greek philosophy, which underlies the
dualistic distinctions between soul and body, spirit and matter, and evangelism versus
sociopolitical action.
Consequently, the gospel is often presented in a distorted manner, with half of it being
proclaimed at best. For example, in the 1920s, precisely at a time when China was opened to
foreign influence for the first time in hundreds of years, many intellectuals rejected
Christianity. China was looking for national salvation. But the conservatives preached a
gospel that promised only spiritual salvation, never mind the plunder and destruction of
China through Western and Japanese imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
On one hand, Chinese leaders saw the gospel as yet another superstition, totally irrelevant to
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the future of China. On the other, the modernists’ social gospel offered much in terms of
education, science, medicine, and the modernization of China. But it had no real answer for
China’s spiritual need, and therefore lacked the power to effect moral transformation and
cultural rejuvenation. Hence that too was rejected. So long as we fail to show that the gospel
speaks holistically to all of life, many in Asia will simply deem it irrelevant.
China’s rejection of the gospel in the 1920s also illustrates a third missiological problem,
that of an alien Jesus. Whenever the gospel is presented in a manner that the hearer cannot
understand, because of the foreignness of the language and thought forms, and in ways that
fail to address the felt needs of the hearer or a culture, then an alien Jesus is being proclaimed.
Apart from a truncated gospel, other illustrations can easily be found. For example, many
missionaries working in Asia today still have real problems with the supernatural and
miraculous realm. They find it difficult to comprehend that almost everywhere in the nonWestern world where the church is growing rapidly, the form of Christianity found in those
places tends to take signs and wonders and deliverance ministries seriously. In their negative
response to such manifestations of spiritual power, these missionaries often forget that their
own versions of the gospel are products of Enlightenment Christianity, which Charles Kraft
has described as “powerless.”
5
If Asia is to hear and understand the gospel, then we need to
ask how we can avoid presenting a Jesus who is alien.
Five Proposals for the Way Forward
How are we to respond to the above trends and issues? I suggest that we need to consider
seriously five things in our missions agenda.
1. Empowering the indigenous churches. We must use all means possible to empower
indigenous churches. The goal is to enable them to move on toward genuine independence so
that they can take their place as equal partners in the global Christian community. The
reasons are obvious. For a start, given the growing importance of non-Western churches,
helping them to move toward increasing effectiveness would be one sure way to advance
world missions. Further, it is also the best method to tackle the continuing problem of
paternalism in missions. The latter unfortunately is still very much alive in various places,
with complaints directed not just against some Western missionaries, but also against many
from the newer sending churches in Asia. So long as this persists, the Holy Spirit will not be
free to do his work and indigenous churches cannot mature. The prophecy of John Sung
about widespread revival coming to the Chinese church only after all missionaries have left
should serve as a sharp reminder to all. Missionaries — whether Western or Asian — must
stop overestimating their own sense of self-importance so that the Spirit can have his way.
2. Challenging indigenous leaders on the issues of discipleship and character. Crucial to the
growth and maturity of the indigenous churches is the need for leaders with genuine
Christian commitment and character. In many parts of Asia, the churches are not short of
leaders, but rather the right kind. The Korean church was probably the most vibrant in Asia
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in the last few decades. Yet we saw that even there the gospel fundamentals are often not in
place. The failure usually begins at the leadership level. Thus, perhaps more than anything
else, the great need in the Asian church today is for able leaders who also embody Christian
character and exemplify servanthood. Here Asian Christians can learn much from the best of
the West.
Certainly, scandals among church leaders and shallowness of Christian discipleship and
holiness are also found in the Western church. Nevertheless, it needs to be said that Christian
character takes time to grow. Thus in the best of the Western tradition, where holiness of life
and Christian commitment have been nurtured over generations, we often find wonderful
examples of Christian character. For example, we know of many Western families who have
modeled missionary commitment and sacrificial service over several generations. Such things
are far less common in the non-Western world, simply because there has not been the same
long years of Christian traditioning and nurture. The implication here for our Western
friends is clear. Guard against paternalism at every point. But do not be afraid to exemplify
for us discipleship, commitment, holiness and character, if these have been granted to you.
3. Recovery of a holistic gospel. Earlier we noted that the underlying dualism of Western
theology produced a truncated gospel. Indeed, David Bosch notes that since the time of
Augustine, the individualization and spiritualization of salvation have become endemic in
Western theology. This, he says, “could not but spawn a dualistic view of reality, which
became second nature in Western Christianity — the tendency to regard salvation as a
private matter and to ignore the world.”
6 This was the particular weakness of evangelical
Christianity which Lausanne II in Manila (1989) sought to address, when it took the phrase,
“the whole gospel for the whole world,” as part of its theme.
The recovery of a holistic gospel will require us first to exorcise Greek dualism from our
thinking. As Francis Schaeffer noted,
True Christianity is not Platonic. Much, however, of what passes for Christianity does have the ring of Platonic thinking
in it … the body is bad and is to be despised. The only thing that matters is the soul. But the Bible says God made the
whole man, the whole man is to know salvation, and the whole man is to know the Lordship of Christ.
7
The gospel is holistic because biblical Christianity speaks to every human need.
Secondly, in our theological formulations, we need to reclaim “kingdom” categories. The
central theme of Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels is the “kingdom of God,” and the central
theme of the rest of the New Testament is that “Jesus is Lord/King.” We need, therefore, to
reconceptualize or, at least, reemphasize mission as the proclamation of Jesus’ lordship over
all of life — individuals, as well as whole communities; in every sphere of human life, be it
spiritual, psychological, socioeconomic, or ecological; and both now and in the world to
come! It is interesting that one mission leader, who has been visiting churches all over Asia,
told me recently that the one word that increasingly sums up the mission task for many Asian
church leaders is “transformation.” And transformation it seems, is exactly what the Chinese
professor mentioned earlier is also seeking.
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4. Contextualizing the gospel. Unless genuine efforts are made at contextualizing the
proclamation of the gospel and the practice of the faith, Christianity will continue to be
widely perceived as a Western religion. This matter has been discussed repeatedly, yet much
of Asian Christianity remains in Western captivity. This can be seen in the Gothic cathedrals
in downtown Seoul, in tribal Christians in rural Malaysia worshiping God dressed up like
American “angels” dancing with tambourines, in seminary training based almost entirely on
Western textbooks and methodologies rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, and so forth.
We seem to misunderstand the protest of the anti-Christian intellectuals of China in the
1920s when they screamed, “One more Christian, one less Chinese!” We have not heeded the
plea of Sadhu Sundar Singh, possibly the most influential Indian Christian who ever lived,
when he said that his people needed the “water of life” but “they do not want it in European
vessels.”
8
However, if Huntington’s thesis on the intensification of civilizational clashes in the
coming years is correct, then the issue of contextualization must indeed be addressed with
greater urgency and at greater depth. Because, to think in civilizational terms invariably
means to think contextually. We cannot go into the details of contextualization here, but
some examples will help.
First, we must begin with the everyday concerns of the church, such as its hymns and
worship, evangelistic and pastoral methods, architecture, etc. Second, it would require us to
be sensitive to cultural and civilizational tensions in our missionary approaches. A good
example of such sensitivity is found in the approach being taken by one established Western
mission agency. One of their leaders mentioned in conversation that they are building a third
missionary training college in Hong Kong. But why Hong Kong? His reply is instructive.
Their deep concern for Muslims has led them to conclude reluctantly that the thousand-plus
years of conflict between the Western and Muslim civilizations means that any breakthrough
among Muslims is unlikely to come from the West.
Thirdly, Asia includes four of the largest mission fields today — the Buddhist, Confucian,
Hindu, and Islamic worlds. Yet, to this day, there are relatively little serious apologetics,
theologies, and ethical discussions formulated in response to the challenges of these cultures
and worldviews. Unless we do our homework here, it is difficult to see how major evangelistic
breakthroughs can occur. Tom Houston, the former international director for Lausanne,
appears to be making a similar point in an unpublished paper entitled “Mobilizing a Church
on the Move — Global Clashes: Global Gospel.” Houston was making a missiological
response to Huntington. He notes that the church became universal in Europe and North
America because whole civilizations became Christian, not just individuals and small pockets
of believers here and there. If Huntington is correct that civilizational consciousness will
predominate, then similarly we need to think in terms of evangelizing whole civilizations to
bring them under the Lordship of Christ. This means that we cannot continue preaching a
merely Western gospel. Rather we must empower Christians from every civilization to go
back to their own peoples in culturally appropriate ways. “They are the only ones who will be
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able to take the imperialist face away from evangelization.”
9
5. Developing genuine partnership between Western and non-Western churches. The
centers of Christian growth are now largely found in the non-Western world. Yet despite this
fundamental shift, for the moment the centers of power remain largely in the West:
denominational and organizational structures, institutions and established mission agencies,
publishing houses, academically trained personnel, and, above all, money. This imbalance can
grossly distort our perceptions of the global church realities, and consequently the way we
work.
For example, in almost every global ecclesiastical and missiological gathering, Western
participants are in the majority. This gives the impression that Westerners are the key players,
when in reality the recent growth of non-Western churches has come largely through
national initiative and leadership. Thus the old paternalism is perpetuated in another guise.
Sometimes, this is clumsily insensitive. One major international organization, in planning a
major missiological conference, states that it wants a majority of participants to come from
the non-Western world. Yet, the same pamphlet shows that almost all the organizing
committee members are Western. And when the fees of such gatherings are set at levels
which only the rich can afford, it ensures that the participants, agendas, perspectives, and
ultimately the conclusions will be largely Western. Consequently, we remain blinded to
changing global realities and locked into outmoded courses of action.
To address adequately the issue of partnership would require us to seriously deal with a
whole range of questions. For example, in terms of finance and trained personnel, how and
what can the West contribute to augment the meager resources of many non-Western
churches? At the same time, how can this be done without giving rise to a dependency
mentality on the one hand, and the perpetuation of missionary control on the other. With
respect to developing leadership for non-Western churches up to the highest levels, what can
we learn form John Stott’s work through the Langham Trust of training national scholars
with Ph.D.s? And would international agencies, traditionally under Western control, dare to
incorporate non-Westerners fully into their leadership on the basis of genuine mutuality?
Moreover, we must resist the temptation to think that benefits flow only one way. Thus,
we must also pursue questions like how can missionaries (not merely immigrants) from the
non-Western world help revitalize moribund Western churches? How can the example of
Lambeth 1998 be a model of action for non-Western churches to help Western churches fight
the increasingly tough doctrinal and moral battles in a post-Christian environment? How can
insights from non-Western Christianity help to reshape Western Christian thinking, at times
distorted by Greek dualism, Enlightenment rationalism, and cultural biases, in a more biblical
direction?
In a globalized world, the days of parochial thinking and action in world missions are
clearly over. Moreover, the task is far too big for any one group to dare think that they can
manage it all on their own. The way forward has to be one of genuine Christian partnership
between Western and non-Western churches, and between the rich and the poor, whether
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materially or spiritually. The key question is how can the vast resources of the Western
church on the one hand, and the vitality and dynamism of non-Western Christianity on the
other, be fused together into a powerful synergistic whole for world evangelization? As we
ponder the possibility that the twenty-first century may indeed be the “great century” for the
advance of the gospel of Christ in the world, it is surprising that this question has occupied so
little space in our deliberations. But this may well be the most important and urgent issue on
the global missions agenda today.
1. William E. Schubert, I Remember John Sung (Singapore: Far Eastern Bible College Press, 1976), pp. 65-66. See also
John Sung, The Diaries of John Sung — An Autobiography, trans. Stephen L. Sheng (Brighton, Mich.: Luke H. Sheng &
Stephen L. Sheng, 1995), pp. 34, 183, and 198-99.
2. Patrick Johnstone, Operation World (Carlisle: OM Publishing, 1993), pp. 643ff.; and Patrick Johnstone and Jason
Mandryk, Operation World (Carlisle: OM Publishing, 2001), pp. 747ff.
3. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Simon & Schuster, 1997).
4. See, e.g., Bong Rin Ro, “The Korean Church: Growing or Declining?” Evangelical Review of Theology 19, no. 4
(October 1995): 336-53; and Yonggi Hong, “Nominalism in Korean Protestantism,” Transformation 16, no. 4 (1999): 135-41.
5. Charles Kraft, Christianity with Power (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Servant Books, 1989).
6. David Bosch, Transforming Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1991), p. 216.
7. Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City (London: InterVarsity, 1969), p. 74.
8. R. H. S. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology (Madras: CLS, 1975), p. 109.
9. Tom Houston, “Mobilizing a Church on the Move — Global Clashes: Global Gospel,” unpublished manuscript, n.d., p.
19.
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