Barbara Helen Burns
The extraordinary growth of two-thirds world missions is an exciting development of our day. After years of being missionary receivers, thousands of churches around the world are beginning to send their own missionaries. Mission agencies and training schools are springing up as auxiliaries to the movement. I can think of no better word than “adventure” to describe the privileged journey I have had as a participant in the growth of missions in Brazil.
Twenty-five years ago a very small Denver inner city church, made up mostly of Hispanics, had the faith to send their first missionary to Brazil. Off I went, armed with their prayers, a few dollars, and some basic goals that had largely been conceived in missions classes at Denver Seminary with a man named Ray Buker, Sr.
After finishing language school, I moved to a town in the state of Paraná called Cianorte. Cianorte was small, but had one of the largest Bible schools in Brazil, the Instituto Bíblico Presbiteriano de Cianorte or IBPC. The IBPC was formed when the official Presbyterian church had excluded the leaders and churches involved in a renewal movement. The many young people working in church planting and growth as a result of the revival needed training, so they built their own school.
When I arrived, the IBPC had more than a hundred students. At the same time a group of Americans connected to the “Sonship Movement” came for special meetings. This heretical and divisive teaching shattered the school. Several students and teachers left when the school refused to adopt the new theology. A few months later the director invited me to join the staff. He was still distrustful of Americans, but decided to take the chance. I felt certain it was God’s will for me, even though I was professionally a public health nurse, not a teacher.
That certainty helped me through the next months of culture, spiritual, emotional and physical shock. Besides having to meet legalistic requirements about personal apparel and appearance, there were hours of early morning and all-night prayer meetings, days of fasting and hours of faculty meetings. I was expected to teach five subjects in my still very broken Portuguese, and to top it off, each weekend the teachers had to accompany groups of students as they went to the surrounding towns for more praying, fasting, preaching and teaching in churches, bus stations, market places and jails. Any preconceived ideas of “lazy” Latin Americans exploded around me. I was in a crash course of Brazilian Christian living and trying very hard to apply the concepts of identification and contextualization I had learned under Dr. Buker.
A major early frustration was that the IBPC would not allow missions in their curriculum. They felt it was too crowded already and that missions just wasn’t for them anyway. They were too busy planting churches in northern Paraná. For them, “missions” was for rich North Americans. In their denomination there was a category of church worker called “missionary,” but he was one who for some reason was unable to obtain the positon of pastor and so was relegated to preaching in “unimportant” outposts. He could neither baptize, give the Lord’s Supper nor make administrative decisions. Being a “missionary” was certainly not desirable.
My discomfort began to grow more and more with this situation of excited, growing churches, committed Bible school students and yet no cross-cultural missionary interest or understanding. I began to emphasize the missionary aspects of the subjects I was teaching and speak about missionary texts in the churches. I wanted to help these beloved fellow-believers live in obedience to the central purpose of God revealed from beginning to end in the Scriptures–to reach the unreached with the true Gospel.
A breakthrough finally came when one of our most popular students, Clecius, decided to go to Mozambique to help in a drug rehabilitation program there. Miraculously he gained his support and arrived in Mozambique just a few months before the communist take-over in 1975. In July we learned that he was in prison along with several other missionaries. The reaction in Brazil was predictable; many people, including his family and church, laid the blame directly on my shoulders. The many who had been against the whole idea of missions felt reinforced in their position were adamant in denouncing the idea that Brazilians should be missionaries. In desperation a group of us at the IBPC began to pray for Clecius every day, not knowing if he was still alive or in what condition. That prayer group evolved into the first Brazilian cross-cultural mission, the Antioch Mission. Our friend in Mozambique came home after ten months, but other members of the prayer group eventually went to Eastern Europe, Portugal, Israel and Africa. The directors of the IBPC, who had been so against teaching missions, became the directors of the Antioch Mission, as well as participants in other missionary operations such as the WEF Missions Commission, Project South America (PAS), COMIBAM and the Antioch Mission seminary and missionary training school. The Lord turned a very scary and painful experience into a new impulse for missions in our part of Brazil.
At this same time others in Brazil were becoming more involved in missions. The Baptist Convention, a women’s Bible school in the North (Betel Brasileiro), Overseas Crusades (SEPAL), Wycliffe, New Tribes Mission and World Evangelization Crusade began to emphasize Brazil’s role in cross-cultural outreach. Several Brazilian agencies were formed, along with the Association of Brazilian Cross-cultural Missions (AMTB). Churches began a deeper involvement when the First Baptist Church of Santo André in São Paulo invited other churches to their annual missions conference, with attendance of church leaders from many distant states. At the same time missionary training schools emerged, along with inclusion of missionary studies in several Bible schools and seminaries. During the late 70’s and early 80’s Brazilian ideas about mission were being transformed.
An expression of and encouragement to this transformation was the Latin American and EuroLatin COMIBAM conference in 1987, and more recently the 1993 Brazilian Missions Conference. In 1987 enthusiasm was high and the week-long conference was a celebration of new challenges and high faith to meet them. In 1993 the tone was quieter, perhaps more mature. People had experienced the opposition of Satan and the human element in the missions movement, expressed in some heartbreaking disagreements and even divisions. Reports had filtered back about Brazilian missionaries who had repeated the failures of which many in Brazil had accused North Americans and Europeans. Moral failures, paternalism, lack of respect, individualism, character flaws and a high early attrition rate had caused serious problems in some receiving countries. At the same time many Brazilians were doing their job well, seeing the Gospel accepted and God’s Kingdom expanded, making disciples and planting new churches. In 1993 the question was, “How can we avoid failures and increase effectiveness for Brazilian missions?”
There is a growing number of American and European organizations wanting to answer that question for the Brazilians and for others who are experiencing rapid growth in missions. Some of them have romantic ideas of “Third World” missions and people who are supposedly automatically capable of evangelization, cultural identification, contextualized church planting and Biblical discipleship in other “Third World” settings. They would just send money to get them out to the world as fast as possible.
Others would like to impose canned short-term training programs for fast mobilization. A desire for number-building or an over-emphasis on setting an arbitrary date (such as AD 2000) for reaching the world carries with it the danger of sacrificing quality for speed.
Missions mobilization without theological underpinnings is another danger. A lack of either theological reasons for missions and the theological content of missionary praxis jeopardizes the transformation aspect of the gospel. We are just coming out of a period where culture has been over-emphasized, with results in what I call a kind of cultural imperialism–the reign of culture to the point of even accepting what is clearly declared as sin or idolatry in the Bible.
Without space to be able to examine further different philosophies of missionary training, selection and practice, suffice it to say that the Brazilians are correct in sitting down together to reflect on what kind of missions they want to do and what training is necessary to accomplish it. Those from the outside need to listen, encourage and support them insofar as they attempt to follow Biblical guidelines for missions.
As one who is involved in the Brazilian missionary movement, and as an International Missionary Training Associate for the WEF Missions Commission, it seems to me that both as participants in the process and supporters from the outside, we have several roles to play.
- We need to encourage excellence. This means preparation that leads to maturity in Biblical knowledge and cross-cultural understanding, character, relationships and ministry skills. It means training that is sufficient so the missionary can humbly carry out his or her mandate (arrogance and aggressiveness are usually results of insecurity and lack of preparation rather than the other way around, something the Apostle Paul strongly warned against in passages such as 1 Timothy 3:6). To not encourage excellence reinforces many types of failure, and it fosters a parent-child relationship not only between the outside supporting organization and national missionary training and sending agencies, but also between EuroAmerican missionaries and Two-thirds World missionaries as they try to work together on the field.
- We need to provide tools. More and more people are recognizing that we must work together in this modern-day missionary movement. It means sharing finances and resources, mutual respect, learning from each other and working side by side as brothers and sisters. This does not mean irresponsible gifts from the “rich” to the “poor.” It does mean helping provide a means for growth, supporting projects that can be carried on by the national agency or school. It means textbooks and computers and a chance for continuing education. Agencies in the richer nations need to give enabling support, not the kind that creates a crippling dependence or fosters the creation of personal kingdoms. Outside helpers need to be sensitive to real needs so their gifts can be wisely given.
- We need to accept as equals. Romantic attitudes about Two-Thirds World missions are just as harmful as condescending attitudes. We need to learn from each other and be unafraid to teach each other as well. We must not blindly support what can be destructive or overlook the positive. To treat as equal means to help, with humility, the other to grow.
Two barriers to acceptance as equals on the field are (1) a lack of competence on the part of the missionary, and (2) a perceived lack of competence. Let us help prepare competent missionaries and then make sure they are accepted and utilized according to their competencies and gifts. Supporting agencies along with missionaries in the fields will have to learn to work humbly, respectfully and honestly with the personalities, successes and failures of missionaries from all over the world.
- We need to renew the emphasis on theology as a basis for missions. Learning how to contextualize without knowing what to contextualize is like taking an empty suitcase on a trip. Many missionaries have empty bags in our day. The results of our pragmatism and immediatism may be disastrous up the road, with syncretistic or superficial churches, or worse, immunized communities who are no longer willing to hear the Gospel.
The Bible provides amazingly wonderful reasons, guidelines and parameters for missionary training and practice. Let us base missiology on the Scriptures and integrate our learning and practice on a knowledge of God’s Word. The closer and deeper we get to real meaning of the Biblical text, the more accurate the contextual application for ourselves and cross-culturally.
After twenty-five years I still feel we are still at the beginning. We have a chance to improve and grow. We can learn from the mistakes and be transformed by God’s power. We can keep on learning to do God’s work in His time and way and for His glory. “Let us with patience run the race. . . ,” encouraging and helping each other in this wonderful missionary challenge.