Missions Fraud

What we think is happening might not be happening

Last week I had the great opportunity of being with about 80 folks at the Missio Nexus CEO and 2iC event. What a great time together and Tod Bolsinger did a great job of presenting leadership challenges for our group. Next year’s event is in the planning stages - stay tuned.

During that event I talked about doing some research on numeric reporting on “fruit” by missionary agencies and indigenous missions groups (this post is not that deeper dive). One of our participants was David Bogosian of Christian Aid. In one of the many one-on-one conversations I had with CEOs, David and I got onto the topic of missions fraud. He reminded me that in 2017 he did a webinar for Missio Nexus called Detecting and Preventing Mission Fraud. I have taken it out from behind the paywall and encourage you to give it a listen.

Using an image of the conmen from the movie “The Sting” might be over the top. Usually, when we talk about fraud, we mean financial fraud. This is an aspect of missions fraud, to be sure, but it perhaps points directly at “scams and con games.” “Missions fraud” might be better understood if we enlarged the meaning to include over-optimistically believing the best and naivete. Is this fraud? I am not so sure. I do think that we too often naively believe missions reports, particularly aggregated reports by networks.

Let me tease just one of the ideas David shared in this presentation and why I think it is important.

David described “The Gutzlaff Syndrome.” This syndrome is:

The failure to recognize when deception is happening on the mission field, and as a result becoming a participant in perpetuating the deception among donors.

In the 1840s, Karl Gutzlaff felt led by God to create a plan for the rapid evangelization of China by the Chinese themselves. I know we tend to think that only contemporary missions focuses on indigenous movements, but this is false. It is not a new idea but one that needs continual rediscovery. Gutzlaff’s plan generated significant enthusiasm in Europe, prompting the Rhenish and Basel Societies to send support to China. By 1850, Gutzlaff had assembled numerous Chinese workers who reported on their missionary activities across all 18 provinces of China, distributing Scriptures and forming Christian groups.

Gutzlaff visited Europe, and, while there, his colleagues delved into his work with a goal of understanding what was happening. It was discovered that most of his Chinese workers were frauds—opium addicts and criminals who had not ventured far from Hong Kong. Funds had been wasted, and there was no real spiritual fruit in the work. To be fair to our friend, Karl, much of his work did provide a foundation for those who followed him to be more concerned about indigenizing the church. He also wrote extensively and was a contributor to the contemporary missiology of his day. Yet, what had looked like promising initial work turned out to be fraudulent. This was not intentional fraud on the part of Gutzlaff but the consequence of being misled by people conducing the work. The patron/client relationship he had with them opened the door for their fraud.

Let me iterate that “being misled” is a loaded statement. This is because of the difficulty that patron/client relationships create cross-culturally. It is tempting to read this story and think that Gutzlaff was naive and foolish. A better way to read this story is to ask yourself, “Would I be susceptible to deception in the same way that Gutzlaff was?”

I know that I can be susceptible. Thus, I think you can be as well.

Before I go on, let me establish my credentials. There are very few of you reading this that have visited as many field missionary situations as I have. I have also been privy to far more extreme examples of mission fraud than what Gutzlaff experienced. I have friends who have been scammed directly. I am no babe in the woods when it comes to misrepresenting missions work. I know this stuff happens, and at scale. I also know that God works in ways that amaze us, unpredictably. Thus, my self-perception is that I would be hard to dupe, yet I am not jaded but very open to God working miracles. I would guess that many of us think of ourselves in this way.

A while ago, let’s say some years, I attended a conference in Asia in which a prominent movement spokesman was presenting their ministry. It was an urban area in which there was great mixing of people and religions. Most of the work presented was from the dominant religion. At one point, I asked about any work among minority groups. The next day the ministry trotted out numerous minority group representatives, and we interacted with them in a panel discussion format. I was highly impressed.

It just so happened that I had a friend living in this city. He had served a decade among one of the minority groups. He spoke their particular language. I had invited to join me on that day and thus we sat together and listened to this impressive presentation of God working among this minority people group.

At the end of the day, my friend told me to be very cautious about this reporting. He was respectful, careful not to load the grenade of “they are committing fraud,” yet he questioned the validity of the testimonies.

“Ted,” he told me, “You are thinking about this in a Western way. We have identifiable classes of people in the West, bound by ethnic identity. Here, they don’t have the same categories. What you heard today was a series of testimonies from those born into the majority religion. They physically live in minority areas of the city, but they do not speak that language in their homes nor would they be considered a part of this minority group. Sure, they are Christians now, but they represented them as if they were a part of the minority group, among whom there are no known believers. When you asked to hear from members of the minority group, you were thinking that they would have been born into the minority religion. That is not who we heard from today. The work here is good, but it is not what you might conclude based on how they presented it. They were trying to please you, and this was the easiest path toward doing that.”

I was floored. Savvy Ted is not so savvy after all.

Thus, I think we should be far more cautious about what we report from the mission field. Transformation in an unreached culture is seldom quick. It is a generational game. Unfortunately, we are not wired to wait upon the Lord but instead are looking for miracles. This makes us susceptible to believing the news, hopeful that it is a work of God, and then reporting on the wonderful things that are happening even though it might not be quite like we think it is.

Just like Karl Gutzlaff.