By Jean Johnson, Director of Five Stones Global
The Lausanne Movement describes integral mission as a style of mission that recognizes “no biblical dichotomy between evangelistic and social responsibility.” Putting this concept into the form of an action statement, we might say that integral mission is “integrating the proclamation of the gospel and social action.”
When I served in Cambodia, I sure thought I was practicing this integral approach to mission. But there was one significant problem—one day I turned around and realized that none of the Cambodians were following in my footsteps.
The reason they were not following was quite simple: they couldn’t do what I did without my money, my donors, my novelty that goes with being an American, and my worldview understanding. They either had to become like me—an impossible goal for them—or rely on me.
As I realized this, it dawned on me that integral mission loses its integration, social action loses its action, and social justice loses its justness when I as a missionary make it difficult for cultural insiders to seamlessly proclaim and demonstrate the gospel to their neighbors without depending on my worldview systems, donors, donations, and donor-driven complexities. Simply stated, just because the mission was integral for me didn’t make it integral for them.
This new revelation changed my assignment. I understood now that I had to inspire local people to put their heads together and use what they had to create what they needed for integral mission.
Over the years I have seen an increase in locally reproducible models for the proclamation of the gospel (such as disciple-making movements, or DMM). But for some reason when it comes to the social action piece of integral mission, we tend to throw out best practices.
For example, let’s say we raise funds to start and subsidize a preschool, which is conceptualized and organized based on our worldview assumptions, to act as our social action partner in the proclamation of the gospel in a particular country. If the local people themselves cannot readily start, sustain, and reproduce Western-style preschools, we have created a unbiblical dichotomy between evangelistic and social responsibility. I know this sounds harsh, but if we model the integration of gospel-as-word and gospel-as-action without the DNA of reproducibility and spontaneity for local people, we are flirting with colonialism—making ourselves the center of attention, indispensable to the ability of the local people to love their neighbor as themselves. We can disguise our efforts in words like poverty alleviation, community development, partnership, non-profits, and compassion all day long, but integral mission is not integral if the local people cannot integrate it without us running the show.
If we truly want to promote integral mission, we need to put the cross-cultural work back on our own shoulders rather than requiring the local people to adjust to us. We will have to learn the local culture and worldview enough to know how to use local ideas and resources to create what we need for integral mission.
Jim Harries with Vulnerable Mission Alliance advocates for an alternative that affirms local people to own, drive, and indigenize integral mission and social justice in their own neighborhoods: “Progress through local initiatives in line with local lifestyles.”
My next blog will speak to this question: How can we encourage locally initiated, lifestyle-based endeavors of social justice and social action?
Something to Think About:
1. How have you possibly created a breakdown in the integration of gospel-as-word and gospel-as-deed because of centering it around your worldview systems, donors, donations, and donor-driven complexities?
2. How can you encourage and model integral mission and social justice that is reproducible and organic for the local people you serve?
Click to Visit Social Justice 1 – God Designed Social Justice — Don’t You Dare Hit Her!
Click to visit Social Justice 2 – How Does Spiritual Justice Play Out?
Want More! Get Your Copy of:
We Are Not The Hero book, participant’s Guide, and videos
Standing On Our Own Feet Workbook
Go Light! Go Local!: A Conscientious Approach to Short-Term Missions
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What you are describing is a healthy vision of social justice which I strongly agree with. However many people using the same terms mean something very different. Here for example is what social justice as applied to law looks like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0lyp-9Cd5s
The debate between Cornell West and Ta-Nehesi Coates is also instructive. West shares our understanding generally. He critiques Coates who holds an understanding which is popular but riddled with fundamental errors of analysis. Particularly nihilism and race essentialism. If you encounter opposition to the term social justice it is from people who care about what you do, but have studied how the perversions of it are folded into the term as well.
For an deep study consider, “The Quest for Cosmic Justice,” “The Gulag Archipelago” and “Factfulness: 10 reasons why the world is better than you think.” The latter was endorsed by Obama. The second was written by a nobel prize winner who brought down a corrupt power by telling the truth while on the run from secret police and in prison camps. The first book explores the philosophical and economic underpinnings of traditional and social justice.
Personally I find psalm 64 encouraging as well 🙂
Hi Ben! It is so true! You could fill a room with people and ask them what social justice means to them and you would get many different answers. Also, perversions do work its way into the term, as well. In some very small way, I am trying to tackle two of those perversions: 1) Western people who think they can implement social justice activities in cross-cultural contexts through Western systems, worldviews, and donor-driven agendas that send the message that local people must wait on heroes from the outside. 2) If we hold to the viewpoint that gospel-as-word and gospel-as-action need to be offered in harmony, we do a disservice if either of these parts are utterly dependent on us in other people’s countries. The apostle Paul told his disciples: “Keep putting into practice everything you heard from me and saw me do”(Phil. 4:9). As cross-cultural missionaries, it is a tragedy when local people cannot follow in our footsteps because we make ourselves the experts, the source of foreign aid, and heroic leaders in their midst. Thanks Ben for passing on the links.
Hi Ben, Some fascinating insights there! I need to explore some more. I’m standing very much with Jean on this. Previous analyses I have made, point out that in practice the implementation of what we are here calling ‘justice’ actually requires ‘magic’, to fill the gap between what’s envisioned and what is possible. E.g. see here: http://www.academia.edu/attachments/53619882/download_file?s=portfolio
Hi Jim,
I read the article you posted. Very well articulated. It gets to the crux of contextualization that both Christian and secular development and aid miss to the detriment of those we seek to serve. Certainly, your work is part of the broader paradigm shift that is underway–one that we Christians are leading. We usually are not at the leading edge of cultural shifts, rather lagging behind a half a century. But in terms of development in the majority world, Christians are the agents for the monumental shift starting to take place. Thank you.
Hi Ryan,
It’s good to hear from you.
I was very glad to receive this comment. I didn’t respond straight away. But, I think I should respond … to say ‘please continue to do more of the same’! I don’t know much about you, except for having read your book … I agree there is a shift in the offing. And indeed a MASSIVE one. A painful one also for the Western world to acknowledge given the direction it has been taking.
Why is the term “social justice” part of this conversation? Implied in that term is a sense of victimization and respsibility shifting that is not necessisarily helpful to those who are seeking to apply Christian values as Gospel in action.
The Gospel in action, focused on positive activities, is the best way to overcome social injustice in the long term, while best representing the Gospel.
Hi Mike! Good question. Social justice has many meanings and different meanings to different people these days. In global missions, there is a present trend to use the term social justice interchangeably with or in place of terms gospel in action, compassion ministry, loving thy neighbor, caring for widows and orphans, poverty alleviation, development, etc. And that is exactly how I am using the word in this blog . . . social justice is another way to say Gospel in action, as you have worded it. In this case, social justice (Gospel in action) and Gospel in proclamation need to be reproducible and doable for the local people based on their determination, drive, love, vision, resources, interdependency, and cultural relevancy; rather than dependent on the foreign missionaries (otherwise it ends and starts with us).
I certainly agree with the broader point of your blog and wish this sensitivity could be more fuller developed. Two out of three missionaries who visited our church recently were raising money and soliciting construction team help to build large buildings to serve as community outreach centers. They certainly sell well to the American church where little to no consideration of foreign, local ability to effectively use or support such a facility is given.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but such projects often end up being monuments to the missionary, used in pictures shown back home as tangible evidence of ministry success.
Keep up the good work!
Hi Jean,
Great post. I live in South Africa in a divided society still reeling from settler colonialism and apartheid. There are lots of attempts by local, ‘suburban’ (i. e. white dominated) churches to live their faith integrally in the Western sense you have described. The good thing is, they recognise the enormous inequalities and that they (or their forefathers) were unjustly privileged by the law in the past. In this context, where many who were identified as Coloured or Black understandably have a ‘you owe me’-attitude (White people should make good for the injustices of the past), what would you suggest how those having a desire for ‘integral mission’ should go about? ‘cos saying ‘We don’t come to invest our money in your neighbourhoods, we will try to work with what’s there” may come across as greedy, insensitive to ‘Black pain’ and as an unwillingness to face the injustices of the past …
Hi Marcus! May we glean from you for awhile. What is not working and working for you and others in South Africa in regard to a context and complexities that you describe?
Hi Jean,
Yeah, why not start here …
What’s working and what’s not certainly depends on one’s perspective. I am an outsider to this country, I have been here for only two years and have therefore limited knowledge and insight. What I do observe, though, is that a lot of ‘social justice’ activities have the objective to share (resources, knowledge [incl. theological knowledge], skills, space, etc.) with those who are less privileged. Those who regard themselves as privileged want to see others thrive and therefore try to enable and equip them.
Coming from your post, my question is to what extent this way of equipping people can be reproduced or sustainable, as it usually starts with language and knowledge which is not shared by the less privileged and necessary cross-cultural work is usually skipped over. In a similar way, helping with financial/material resources, often seem to be acts of charity (even if framed as ‘making good’ for past injustices) than using the resources of the people themselves.
And maybe this is what is needed to some extent. Maybe it will help people move forward if they are given an asset (a house, a church building, a school, etc.), it is just difficult to reproduce in a local way, because it doesn’t really challenge or change the underlying structures.
Now over to you 🙂 .
I wish I could say that all giving/acts of social justice cross-culturally with good intentions always produces good things. The intentions or even the act of charitable giving is not harmful in and of itself, but rather when the attitude and manner of giving from foreign outsiders to the local insiders, projects, provokes, and attracts poverty over the long-run. For example, in the settings I have served for the long-term, the constant subsidy from the West to the Rest has created short-term gain, but long-term pain. The unexamined one way giving has altered the psyches of the recipients to the point they have determined that dependency is the norm.
I think we could learn a lot from Luo Tao:
“Go to the people.
Live with them.
Learn from them. Love them.
Start with what they know.
Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.’”
But because we want to help while skipping the sacrificial and necessary cultural work, we tend to reverse his philosophy:
“Go to the people.
Come and leave.
Teach them. Fix them.
Start with what we know.
Build with what we have.
Even with the best of leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say, “They did this for us.”
I think there is room for shared knowledge, skills, and space, but we tend to overshadow the “shared” part with paternalism, power, and money. We tend to dance like elephants until we end up stepping on the mouse. In this case, where is the justice in the social act? Global interdependency doesn’t work if it stifles local-local interdependency. I know there are local Boaz(s) in most countries that could help their own Ruth and Naomi(s), but if we do it for them, they will sit back. It is just human nature. How do we project, provoke, and attract dignity as we engage?
What you write resonates a lot with what I’m feeling about the context I live in at the moment. It just becomes even more tricky and complex here when all parties concerned are in a sense ‘locals’ but not on a level playing field.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, I hope they will contribute to reducing pain and to finding long-term gain.
My immediate reaction to Marcus’ post, was to say ‘well, people should just live separately, why not give whites their own ‘homeland’ somewhere in S Africa, then they can live there the way they want, while Blacks can live in their own place(s), also the way they want to. But then, I suppose that would be ‘back to Apartheid’?
Marcus’ post illustrates a reason why our issue of dependency and so forth, is more than ‘local verses foreign’ – it’s a particular problem about the involvement of Western people, it seems to me. That is to say – Western people have an inherent power that orients them, pretty much by default, to dominating other people. Their way of thinking, we could say, is inherently powerful. Hence people all around the world are desiring English – trying to get a corner onto that way of thinking. (But, learning a language does not give someone a mindset! People who thus learn English end up more dependent than ever on that peculiar mindset of the Westerner.)
I have hit against that mindset again recently. I have been preparing some teaching materials for use in Africa. Some books written in the West have been recommended. Those are books designed for ‘global’ consumption. What I noticed was a peculiar but very dominant pattern, was that of justifying understanding on the basis of a grasp of what is ‘real’. That is, in Western reasoning, we distinguish what is ‘real’ from what is not. That difference is pretty clear in our minds. Then we only consider that of the ‘not real’ acceptable if the ‘real’ supports it. Westerners build their understand on ‘real’, then if they are Christians, show how the ‘non-real’ (including religion!) impinges onto it. This approach underlies our approach to history … and everything else! It made me realise, that using Western books written in English to teach African students was to constantly, what, undermine them, confuse, dislocate.
Similarly in S Africa, it’s as if Whites can’t help but dominate everything … something which others don’t always appreciate.
(This should have been the first paragraph in my comment.) “All parties are in a sense locals, but not on a level playing field,” Marcus says. I guess that’s a pretty good way of summing up the situation in S. Africa! It leads to questions like ‘what is an African’? My understanding of ‘what is an African’ from East Africa, is that it is much to do with skin colour, but it is also inherently to do with one’s ‘culture’. Traditionally we say with one’s ‘worldview’, although these days I’m thinking that it’s more accurate with respect to Africa to talk of ‘world-feel’ than ‘worldview’.