Indigenous church mission theory
Encyclopedia
Indigenous churches are churches suited to local culture and led by local Christians. There have been two main Protestant strategies proposed for the creation of indigenous churches:
1. Indigenisation. Foreign missionaries create well-organised churches and then hand them over to local converts. The foreign mission is generally seen as a scaffolding which must be removed once the fellowship of believers is functioning properly. Missionaries provide teaching, pastoral care, sacraments, buildings, finance and authority, and train local converts to take over these responsibilities. Thus the church becomes indigenous. It becomes self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing.
2. Indigeneity. Foreign missionaries do not create churches, but simply help local converts develop their own spiritual gifts and leadership abilities and gradually develop their own churches. Missionaries provide teaching and pastoral care alone. The church is thus indigenous from the start. It has always been self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing.
1. Indigenisation. Foreign missionaries create well-organised churches and then hand them over to local converts. The foreign mission is generally seen as a scaffolding which must be removed once the fellowship of believers is functioning properly. Missionaries provide teaching, pastoral care, sacraments, buildings, finance and authority, and train local converts to take over these responsibilities. Thus the church becomes indigenous. It becomes self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing.
2. Indigeneity. Foreign missionaries do not create churches, but simply help local converts develop their own spiritual gifts and leadership abilities and gradually develop their own churches. Missionaries provide teaching and pastoral care alone. The church is thus indigenous from the start. It has always been self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing.
Proponents
- Henry VennHenry Venn (Church Missionary Society)Henry Venn , was an Anglican clergyman who is recognised as one of the foremost Protestant missions strategists of the nineteenth century. He was an outstanding administrator who served as honorary secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 to 1873...
(Anglican, Church Missionary Society) (1796-1873) and Rufus AndersonRufus AndersonRufus Anderson was an American minister who spent several decades organizing overseas missions.-Life:Rufus Anderson was born in North Yarmouth, Maine, on August 17, 1796. His father, also named Rufus Anderson, was Congregationalist pastor of the church in North Yarmouth. His mother was Hannah...
(Congregationalist, American Board) (1796-1880) simultaneously developed a strategy of Indigenisation in response to the extreme paternalism exercised by western missionaries of the early 19th century, particularly in AsiaAsiaAsia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. They perceived that 'rice' Christians were completely dependent on missionaries and loyal to the church only as long as they were receiving free food. In exchange, missionaries expected complete loyalty from the 'natives' and resisted giving up authority and control. The system was thought to foster an unhealthy parent-child relationship between the missionaries and national believers.
- Anthony Norris GrovesAnthony Norris GrovesAnthony Norris Groves has been described as the "father of faith missions". He launched the first Protestant mission to Arabic-speaking Muslims, and settled in Baghdad, now the capital of Iraq, and later in southern India. His ideas influenced a circle of friends who became leaders in the Plymouth...
(1795-1853) attempted to avoid this problem in pioneer areas by guarding against any form of dependency from the start. He chose to represent no foreign denomination or missionary society, and he encouraged full co-operation between all Protestant missionaries for the encouragement of indigenous initiatives. He predated Roland AllenRoland Allen-Life:He was born in Bristol, England, the son of an Anglican priest; but was orphaned early in life. He trained for ministry at Oxford and became a priest in 1893. Allen spent two periods in Northern China working for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel...
by eighty years as an advocate of Indigeneity rather than Indigenisation. Looking directly to God for guidance and provision, he was a formative influence on Hudson Taylor and the "faith mission" movement, but the direct influence of his indigenous strategy is more evident in the remarkable movements associated with Bakht Singh in India and Watchman Nee in China.
- John Livingstone NeviusJohn Livingstone NeviusJohn Livingston Nevius was, for forty years, a pioneering American Protestant missionary in China, appointed by the American Presbyterian Mission; his missionary ideas were also very important in the spread of the church in Korea...
(1829-1893) served as a Presbyterian missionary to China in the late 1800s. After questioning the methods of western missionaries of his time, he wrote a book published in 1886, "The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches," which called for discarding old-style missions and the adoption of his new plan to foster an independent, self-supporting local church. He criticized the missionaries' practice of paying national workers out of mission funds, believing the healthy local church should be able to support its own local workers.
- Hudson TaylorHudson TaylorJames Hudson Taylor , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission . Taylor spent 51 years in China...
(1832-1905) was a Protestant missionaryMissionaryA missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
from EnglandEnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
to ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and founder of the China Inland MissionChina Inland MissionOMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...
. He became disillusioned with other Protestant missionaries in China that lived in compounds and employed indigenous people as servants. Taylor subsequently learned local dialects, adopted local dress, and went up and down rivers in China preaching. He sought to distance himself from any paternal organizations or denominations in favor of "faith missions" which relied on the support of nationals and individuals. He also sought to train indigenous leaders to lead churches and mission stations in China, rather than have them run by foreigners.
- Dixon Edward HosteDixon Edward HosteDixon Edward Hoste was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China and the longest lived of the Cambridge Seven and successor to James Hudson Taylor as General Director of the China Inland Mission, ....
(1861-1946) Was successor to Hudson TaylorHudson TaylorJames Hudson Taylor , was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China, and founder of the China Inland Mission . Taylor spent 51 years in China...
as director of the China Inland MissionChina Inland MissionOMF International is an interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society, founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.-Overview:...
. Hoste is credited with making the Chinese churches apply the indigenous principles of self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. This threefold motto was later adopted by the Three-Self Patriotic MovementThree-Self Patriotic MovementThe Three-Self Patriotic Movement or TSPM is a state-controlled Protestant church in the People's Republic of China...
after missionaries were expelled from China.
- Roland AllenRoland Allen-Life:He was born in Bristol, England, the son of an Anglican priest; but was orphaned early in life. He trained for ministry at Oxford and became a priest in 1893. Allen spent two periods in Northern China working for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel...
(1868-1947) also attempted to apply indigenous church principles to the missions of his day. After serving as an Anglican missionary in China from 1895 to 1903, he returned to England and spent 40 years writing about missions principles. Two of his books, Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or Ours? (1912) and The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And Causes that Hinder It, are still in print.
- Alice Luce (1873-1955), first an Anglican missionary in India, and subsequently an Assemblies of God missionary among Hispanics along the U.S.-Mexico border, was influenced by Allen's theory of missions and in 1921 she wrote a series of articles, "Paul's Missionary Methods," for the Pentecostal Evangel. Due to her advocacy, indigenous church principles became normative for Assemblies of God missions during the early part of the 20th century.
- Melvin Hodges (1909-1988), an Assemblies of God missionary to Nicaragua, again popularized the idea in the 1950s with his book, On the Mission Field: The Indigenous Church. He defined the indigenous church as "a native church . . . which shares the life of the country in which it is planted and finds itself ready to govern itself, support itself, and reproduce itself." Hodges believed that foreign money creates dependence and establishes paternalistic patterns within mission movements, leading to an unhealthy, anemic church. His experience as a missionary no doubt influenced his presentation of the Three-Self principles. He emphasized the need for flexibility and tailoring the principles to fit the need of the local believers.
- David BoschDavid BoschDavid Jacobus Bosch was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, married to Anne-Marie and author of Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission — a major work on post-colonial Christian mission.-Early life:Bosch was born in Kuruman, Cape Province, South Africa, and died in a...
(1929-1992), a Dutch Reformed missiologist, suggested in his book, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission that a fourth "self" needed to be added to the Venn-Anderson framework: "self-theologizing." Though much self-theologizing had already taken place in mission churches, much of it has been left unnoticed or considered syncretistic. Bosch suggested that in order to not fall into the two extremes of syncretismSyncretismSyncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
or "Babylonian captivityBabylonian captivityThe Babylonian captivity was the period in Jewish history during which the Jews of the ancient Kingdom of Judah were captives in Babylon—conventionally 587–538 BCE....
," self-theologizing must be in dialogue with the universal 'invisible' church. Only then would a truly indigenous church exist.