Some Reflections on
Money and Missions
Glenn Schwartz
Editor’s note: This article was prepared for a recent conference and has been edited for general circulation. It contains illustrations that have been used in other writings as well as the WMA video series on dependency. The author apologizes for any duplication.
Introduction
There is a debate in progress regarding the use of money in cross-cultural missions. What follows are a few reflections on some elements of that debate. Since my experience is drawn primarily from East, Central and Southern Africa, most of my remarks will be limited to that area of the world.
Some who deal with money and missions are primarily concerned with how to get westerners to give more – usually through charitable giving – to evangelize the world and help alleviate global poverty. They draw attention to the significant resources westerners have, reminding them to live simply and give generously. No one can argue with the importance of this challenge. I have written an article in this area which I called “Developing a World Christian Lifestyle”. It can be found on the WMA web site (address below).
Having said that, my observation is that money and missions is a much larger issue than what to do with the wealth of westerners. If one concentrates so much on what to do with the source of funds, the result may be fashioning a missiology based on the source of funds. The result would be a “donor driven” missiology.
I work primarily at the other side of the issue. My concern relates to what is being done with the resources given by wealthy westerners and others (such as Koreans). So for the past twenty years or so, I have been concentrating on issues of dependency and self-reliance as it relates to mission practice and methodology. I was actually introduced to the conditions of dependency long ago when I served as a missionary in Zambia during the 1960s. Though I was frustrated by what I saw, I knew little about the subject then, and to this day still have a lot more to learn. For those who are not familiar with the issues involved, hopefully this article and others that my colleagues and I have written will raise awareness about the magnitude and importance of the subject.
What is the problem?
Due to the methods of church planting used by wealthy westerners and others over the past century or so, many mission-established churches have been born handicapped. By that I mean that many are born with a congenital inability to walk on their own two feet – sometimes even after they are a hundred years old. It should concern us all that many in the West — and many members in those churches — have concluded that this is normal. They rationalize that, "It is just the way things are and always will be.”
I have come to believe that churches with such disabilities can actually be healed. There is a lot of evidence for it. In other words, dependency does not need to be considered a terminal illness or a life-long handicap. From a Biblical perspective, the role of the generous benefactor in cross-cultural church planting is hard to substantiate. In fact, the precedent for the transfer of funds in the New Testament is from a mission field church (like Macedonia) to the so-called “mother church” in Jerusalem. In that case, it was from people who were in “severe trial and extreme poverty” who “begged for the privilege of giving” (2 Corinthians 8:2). Home churches supporting mission churches does not have a New Testament precedent.
One sometimes gets the impression that if the whole world learned to stand on its own two feet and showed that outside assistance were not needed, North Americans would feel cheated. As TIME Magazine once said, “Developing countries which develop spoil the mission of the self-appointed First World shepherds who look upon the Third World as their flock. For them to play savior there must be someone to be saved. . .” (December 4, 1995, Page 108) By contrast, I am one who rejoices every time I hear someone say, “Don't help us, we can do it ourselves.” If we ever figure out why that is an affront to many westerners, we will begin to understand why there is so much unhealthy dependency in the Christian movement.
I wish to emphasize again that my experience has been in East, Central and Southern Africa where I have lived and worked beginning back in 1961. I do not claim to be a specialist on dependency or other cultural issues in any other part of the world. However, I have been told that the dependency syndrome exists in India, Cambodia, Vietnam and, of course, Haiti. To emphasize the point, we recently sold ten sets of our video series on dependency to those working in Viet Nam and twenty sets to missionaries working in Cambodia. Yet I tend to think of this as an Africa problem.
What is wrong with outside funding?
I have come to believe that outside funding often distorts reality and makes people think that things are not the way they really are. For example, when an aid agency pays four times the prevailing wage in Africa - that distorts reality. An African pastor taking such a position will not be able to live on the salary of his church when the crisis passes and his job ends. In some cases it is outside funding that actually convinces people that they are poor. One church leader from Uganda said recently, “We did not know we were poor until someone told us we were." In fact, many who are the recipients of outside assistance are only in relative poverty until someone gives them the impression that they are in absolute poverty. I believe that most unhealthy dependency in the part of Africa on which I have been concentrating is among those who live in relative poverty, not absolute poverty. Otherwise those who drive Mercedes Benz cars would not allow people overseas to pay their pastor with outside funding as one finds in some parts of East, Central and Southern Africa.
One could very well question whether outside funding is the key to alleviating poverty. In actual fact, I believe that the opposite could be closer to the truth. One piece of evidence after another points to the contrary. Indeed, I believe people are better able to climb out of poverty when they are not dependent on outside funding. That is what the US government concluded in the Report of the South Commission in which they said that with all the grants, gifts, loans and material aid given to the Southern Hemisphere during the decade of the 1980s, the Southern Hemisphere was worse off at the end of the decade than it was at the beginning. Clearly something other than giving handouts is required if people are to make progress getting out of poverty.
I have recently read a book by C. K. Prahalad, a professor from India teaching at the University of Michigan School of Business. The title of the book is The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. Dr. Prahalad is promoting a new way of dealing with poverty by focusing on the trillions of dollars worth of resources available at the bottom of the pyramid. He gives case studies and one example after another of how people have seen their personal economics transformed by mobilizing local resources. Hernando DeSoto (an economist from Peru), in his book called The Mystery of Capital says something very similar. Writing from a secular point of view, in neither case do they believe that mobilizing western charity is the key to economic development. Of course, from our perspective, increasing the standard of living is not the only objective because one could end up with wealthier unbelievers than before. Spiritual transformation is our objective through preaching the Gospel and establishing healthy churches. I contend that when Christian stewardship is built into the earning process, true development takes place. Following are some examples.
How much outside funding is required for the church to grow rapidly and in a healthy manner?
Consider China after the Communist takeover – In 1951 when western missionaries were forced out of China, they left behind about a million believers – plus or minus. Thirty years later (by 1980) the one million had become fifty million or more. All of this was done without any outside missionaries or outside funding. All they had was the belief that churches could support themselves, govern themselves and propagate themselves. Thankfully they were not made dependent on outside funding. Also, thankfully those CIM\OMF missionaries and others did not introduce the current concept of “partnership” or “interdependence” as the prevailing mode of missionary strategy. They simply introduced the idea that churches can support themselves, govern themselves and propagate themselves. According to Dr. Art Glasser, CIM missionaries were themselves poor and had little or nothing left over with which to spoil anyone. One gets the feeling today that western mission societies cannot say with the Apostle Peter “silver and gold have we none”. And the danger is that neither will we see the power of the Holy Spirit released among the poor in the same way.
Consider Ethiopia - When the Italians invaded Ethiopia in 1938 they drove out western missionaries. About a hundred believers remained. Five years later when the missionaries returned, the one hundred had become ten thousand - without any outside missionaries and without any outside funding.
Consider Kenya several decades ago – In the early 1970s, Dr. John Gatu asked for time to see if the Presbyterian Church in East Africa could get on its own feet financially. Funding from Scotland was regularly brought in to pay salaries, build buildings and buy vehicles. After he called for the stopping of overseas funds, local people began to build their own buildings, buy their own vehicles, pay their own salaries and plant new congregations - all with their own resources. They even began a pension fund for their pastors; something they were told could not be done when funding came from overseas. Then, one day after the transition was well under way, they learned about homeless children on the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland from where their support previously came. In response to this need, those Kikuyu Christians took a collection of 200,000 Kenya Shillings (about $30,000 at the time) in support of an orphanage in Scotland. These were the same people who previously were dependent on Scotland for their existence.
As one can see, stopping funding from outside the country does not necessarily mean the end of the church. It might actually be the beginning of something much healthier!
Consider South Africa – In the 1970s a senior African pastor by the name of Rev. Nicholas Bhengu came to America every year to collect funds for his poor church back home. Once while he was here, God spoke to him and said, “Don't ask the Americans for any money, but go back home and get the funds from your own people.” He said, "But Lord, in my church I have only unemployed women and children. Is that where you expect me to get it?' The Lord said, “Yes”. How many of us have thought that a church of unemployed women and children is the ideal place to go for fundraising?
Rev. Bhengu said to the Lord, “I will do it, but you need to show me how.” The Lord told him to do four things:
· Go home and teach the women how to care for their families.
· Teach them how to evangelize their husbands
· Teach them how to make something with their hands so they can earn a living
· And teach them to tithe – to give something back to God in thanksgiving.
The result? That Assemblies of God Church now gathers annually for a weekend conference at a place called Thaba Nchu. Several years ago they took an offering of about four million Rand! With an exchange rate of 4-1 at that time, that was about one million dollars. How many of us have ever been present when the collection amounted to one million dollars anywhere? If so, was it in a church formerly comprised of unemployed women and children?
Consider Papua New Guinea – In the 1980s a church in New Guinea celebrating the 20th anniversary of its founding, sent air tickets to the missionaries back in America to come for the celebration. When the missionaries arrived, the church leaders put them up in a hotel in Port Moresby, then put cash into their hands for meals while they were there. That same mission society planted several congregations in Ukraine where the new converts offered to repay the missionaries for the expenses they had in bringing the Gospel to them. It is clear that churches do not need to be born handicapped. Of course, it all depends on a series of assumptions which are quite different from the norm.
Hopefully by now, you see why I believe that dependency is not inevitable or an incurable illness in cross-cultural church planting. But something needs to change, and that something will be different is different places. But, I do not believe that the American dollar (or western material and industrial capacity and technology, etc) is the secret to having people climb out of poverty. Much of the world dislikes westerners precisely because of their wealth and arrogance. Furthermore, if funds from western agencies like churches, mission societies, NGOs, governments, the IMF and the World Bank were the solution, then the economics of the rest of the world would be healthy by now. If outside funding were the solution, then Haiti would be a shining example of development. Haiti is not and never will be an example of healthy development so long as outside funding pours into an unchanged spiritual paradigm. Without a genuine paradigm shift in Haiti - based on spiritual transformation - it will continue to be an economic basket case. Will the spiritual paradigm be challenged and changed? Or will we continue to think that well-meaning donors will solve the problem through philanthropy?
Conclusions regarding the use of mission funding
The following are several conclusions I have come to in relation to issues of dependency.
1. First, I believe that the way we use funding in cross-cultural church planting often distorts the Christian Gospel. This is apparent when some people see the Gospel messenger coming, they have a raised expectation level about what they will receive. They sometimes expect used clothing, a clinic, an overseas scholarship or simply a church building or a roof on the building – things that short-termers from America delight in providing. In Western Tanzania when the people found out that two women missionaries from Sweden did not have shipping containers filled with used clothing, they said, “What kind of missionaries are you – no shipping containers?” The true gospel is about giving back to God from what He has given to us. When we get that backward, a distortion of the Gospel takes place. Little wonder that unhealthy dependency develops.
2. Second, many westerners are convinced that our wealth is the key to setting things right in the Christian movement and the rest of the world. It is reasoned that we have plenty of material resources, others do not - and the only way to right the imbalance is for us to distribute it among those less well off than we are. Sometimes we do this whether or not it creates unhealthy dependency among those who are on the receiving end. I do not disagree that some attention must be paid to the wealth which westerners possess. But at the same time, great care must be taken so that the benefits of Christianity are not seen only in material terms. In that respect, Haiti is not the only place where the paradigm must shift.
3. True help for the poor will result from addressing underlying spiritual issues. The question inevitably surfaces regarding what should be done about those who are truly poor. I have sought to address this in other places. For example, in a paper I did for the Salvation Army several years ago, I tried to show that climbing out of poverty is best done by learning spiritual principles and following them in everyday life. This paper is on the WMA web site under the title Searching for Meaningful Ways to Help the Poor. Time and space do not permit going through the steps here.
However, allow me to share one example. Several years ago I conducted a seminar in Mozambique. A young pastor stood up and said, “Let me tell you what we did in our area. We had so many unemployed people that we decided to call a prayer meeting at 5:00pm three times a week - Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Soon our people became employed and began to produce so many things, but we had no market in which to sell them. The church came together to discuss what we should do. We learned that some of the men in the church had big trucks which went into Maputo empty every week to bring out goods for the rural shopkeepers. They offered to take our excess materials to Maputo for us.” Imagine people on their knees as a solution to poverty! I have not heard the US Government advocate praying three times a week to deal with unemployment.
Reactions to Self-Reliance Thinking
The following are a few reactions to what I am saying about dependency.
First, for some, indicating that American money is not the solution to the problems of the rest of the world is unthinkable. Money is how we in America solve problems. We will gladly pay Chinese evangelists to do God’s work, even if being paid as foreign agents might destroy their credibility, their effectiveness and even endanger their lives. As westerners, we believe in the value of the almighty dollar.
Second, there are those who feel that what I am saying is unbiblical. The head of one mission agency which is anti-western missionary and proposes just supporting “nationals”, actually believes that opposing dependency the way I do is evil – using his term. The fact that churches might remain dependent on others forever, does not seem to bother him. But then his understanding of the Bible is that there is no evidence that anyone in the New Testament ever carried the Gospel cross-culturally. Perhaps that statement puts us into two different worlds from the starting gate. What ever was the Apostle Paul thinking when he mentioned going to Spain (Romans 15)?
Third, there are those for whom what I am saying is a breath of fresh air. Some missionaries have been frustrated by severe dependency, but they did not know that the syndrome has a name. They certainly didn’t know that it has a cure. When they learned about the name for the syndrome and the possibility of a cure, they were relieved to find out that they were not becoming unhinged. Steve Saint, son of martyred missionary Nate Saint, is one of those who, when he read what my colleagues and I were saying about dependency, found that his psychic equilibrium was restored. He is not the only one who has had a similar reaction.
Fourth, there are those who because of “missiological sophistication” believe the three-self principle is simply out of date or unbiblical. Some have tried to add other “selfs” or rewrite the principles completely. Does this mean that we are content to see people dependent on someone else forever? Is that somehow biblical? My point is that the three-self principles may not be sophisticated, but they are basic to any understanding of a healthy indigenous church. To use a medical analogy, the indigenous principle is about as fundamental to cross-cultural church planting as the germ theory of sickness is to medicine. What a blessing when medical people learned the importance of washing their hands between patients. Lives were saved. We now know a lot more about medicine than the germ theory, including anti-biotics, nuclear medicine and cell composition. But just because we know so much more, doctors still believe in the germ theory of sickness and wash their hands between patients.
Just because we know so much more about indigenous characteristics, such as indigenous theology, etc, no one should conclude that it is unhealthy for churches to support, govern and propagate themselves. Thankfully, China has shown that these three things were fundamental in laying a foundation for the growth of the church after Western missionaries were forced out.
Conclusion
By now it should be obvious that I do not believe unhealthy dependency is inevitable or incurable. There is too much evidence to the contrary. It may take a radical new approach in the thinking of those who have excess spendable income, but when the assumptions change, so can the outcome.
For those who are interested in a deeper treatment of this subject, WMA has produced an eight-hour video series on dependency. It can be ordered for purchase through the WMA web site. It shows that we do not take the issue lightly. Also, on our web site there are more than eighty articles on issues related to sustainability in the Christian movement and related cross-cultural issues.
I welcome interaction with anyone who wishes to grapple with these issues. Feel free to contact me by e-mail at GlennSchwartz@wmausa.org
WMA Web Site: www.wmausa.org or www.dependency.org