Bad Language
"Western missions" has become meaningless
Three quick notes before I jump into today’s topic.
My article on deconstruction dropped in Mere Orthodoxy this past week. Check it out! Click here to jump there.
I also did a podcast interview with Matthew on the deconstruction of mission. You can find it here.
I am researching discipleship. I am not interested in particular discipleship programs (yes - there are great ones out there). Rather, I am looking for analysis of how we in Evangelicalism have understood, practiced, and taught on discipleship. Trends, global trends, and similar research would be super helpful. Send me a message on Substack if you have any ideas for me, please.
On to Bad Language…
Within the missiological world the phrase, “Western missions” has been used a great deal. It the the ying to “the Global South’s” yang. These two phrases tend to split the missions discussion in two, providing a means of separating the West from the rest in a categorical way.
The problem with the phrase is that it is not really that helpful anymore. Last week I was in the UK, at an international leadership gathering for a missions agency. Following that I was at Oak Hill College in London and had a chance to hang out with my wonderful English hosts. The striking thing to me is not the similarities we shared as “Westerners” but the differences between my US church experience and what so many other “Westerners” face in their own cultures and countries.
The issues faced by American missionary organizations are quite different than those faced by UK or Canadian organizations. This is not a revelation to anybody, but our language has not caught up to describe this reality. I find that there are many similarities between the British Commonwealth countries. In that list of similarities would be a smaller percentage of evangelicals in the general population, a church focused on diaspora more so than international missions, and funding issues that make infrastructure investment difficult. The UK does seem to be experiencing a rising interest in Christianity among young people (the “quiet revival) which is also true in the US, but even that is a different type of rising interest.
Meanwhile, the US church is seeing major shifts (more men, fewer women, for example), the exodus of “nones” has at least slowed, if not reversed itself, and there seems to be talk of a youth movement afoot with a particular focus on men. The extent to which the US evangelical movement is willing to mix politics and religion versus their “Western” counterparts is stark. The size of churches, how leadership is exercised and a host of other issues are starkly different than other “Western” nations.
So… I suggest we avoid using this term unless we are speaking historically about a distant past in which “Western” was a better description. Thinking that we are all monolithically Western might be as bad as thinking that the Global South is monolithic.
good insights but could have explored other aspects. What is often called " The Rest" has been educated and supported by Western worldview and Western finances, such that the "Rest" sometimes looks like a parody of the West.