Today, I was flipping through the most recent issue of Christianity Today, and saw an ad for Christian Aid Mission. What caught my eye was the large picture of a south Asian man holding a Bible in a language that looked awfully familiar. And, as I looked closer, I saw I could READ the front of the Bible! Always a fun thing to discover. It was a man from Bangladesh - a tribal man, to be exact.
The point of the ad was that it makes more sense to send native missionaries than Western people because 1) they already know the language, 2) they are already a part of the culture, and 3) they are able to reach unreached people groups. The ad claims that 90% of mission work is being done by native people, but they are only receiving 10% of resources given to missions, and for $50-$100 a month, I can support a native missionary. "They live at the same level of the people they're reaching, they eat the same food, and they never take a furlough."
Huh.
I'm obviously not about to go into all the fun little issues this ad touches on. I definitely don't think bashing all foreign missionaries is the answer. I think it comes down the fact that we need both: foreign and native. Both have valuable resources to share with each other. Foreign (in most cases Western) missionaries have the responsibility to build up a church and native leadership, in the hope that one day, missionaries will no longer be needed. It is undeniable that native missionaries can be much more effective in many areas than foreign missionaries, particularly in third world countries. I strongly believe that foreign missionaries must make deliberate efforts to raise up nationals to take over the ministry, and national believers must understand that it is their burden to take on; they can't depend on foreign missionaries forever.
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