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Author: Kendrick Storm
Date: 21.10.2010
Category: Unreached People Groups, Leadership Development
Who is doing most of the pioneer missions work on the mission field today - foreign missionaries or national missionaries? By pioneer missions work, I guess I will define it as making disciples among unreached people groups, so it is actually more specific than just planting churches where there were none previously.
I would like to hear what you have to say on this topic, because I hear a lot of ministries say that 90% or more of pioneer missions work is being done by national (or indigenous, native, local) missionaries. On the other hand, I have also heard that national missionaries are not doing a great job of purposefully reaching out to the remaining unreached people groups. Instead they tend to reach only their own people and rarely become a cross-cultural missionary. Yet, I know that many of the largest ministries that support indigenous missionaries are reporting that they are engaged in cross-cultural ministry and focusing on unreached people groups. National missionaries also now have a numerical size advantage. I’ve heard up to 300,000 national missionaries vs 100,000 foreign missionaries. So who is reaching out and winning unreached people groups? Nationals, foreigners, or a combination of both? Or maybe you reject my question altogether and want to revise it in some way. You can also post any sources and reading that might be relevant to this issue. Thank you so much and God bless you.
Keywords: national missionaries, indigenous missionaries, native missionaries, foreign missionaries, local, unreached people groups, pioneer
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Russia
Not much has been said yet so it might not be appropriate for me to just spout all of my thoughts and opinions in one sitting. :)
I see a couple of problems:
1) There is a movement in missions at the moment that rejects the notion of foreign workers. This has given rise to the concept of "send us your money from the west, but we are the best qualified to do the job."
This can be seen in India, it has also become the case in Russia.
2) In Russia the church by and large completely ignore the 100 plus minority peoples. There is still a notion of cultural superiority. The attitude of "oh, those people speak Russian anyway, why would I need to learn their language" is highly prevalent.
There is a high level of cultural insensitivity amongst Russian to indigenous peoples. So this means, that often when some ministry is being done among indigenous people it is from the context of coercing converts into a Russian expression of faith, mean while dominating and ignoring the real cultural needs of indigenous peoples.
The result is that very few indigenous peoples in Russia are actually responding to the gospel. The witness among indigenous peoples is very low in the first place.
The situation may be different in other countries, but I will speak of what I know first hand.
22.10.2010
United States
I would very much like to know the answer to this question as well.
In Chad—which is divided as is much of that portion of Africa—into North (Muslim) and South (Christian), there was little cross-cultural mission activity at the turn of the century. The missionaries were from Europe, the Pacific, and the USA. It has always been our prayer to see Northerner MBBs reach out to their neighbor unreached people groups, but MBBs are still a fragile and sparse population there.
21.10.2010
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