African-Americans, Missions, and a Chinese Teenager

by David Parks

African-American Christians have a significant role in the global spread of the gospel for many reasons. One unique contribution was clearly illustrated as I was leading a few seminary students on a trip to a Southeast Asian country where I had previously lived. While we were there, I witnessed one of my students accomplish something in six minutes that I didn’t accomplish in six years.  

Photos courtesy David Parks

African-American Christians have a significant role in the global spread of the gospel for many reasons. One unique contribution was clearly illustrated as I was leading a few seminary students on a trip to a Southeast Asian country where I had previously lived. While we were there, I witnessed one of my students accomplish something in six minutes that I didn’t accomplish in six years.  

Jessie was simply walking across the field to get in position for the next pull in our game of ultimate frisbee with the local youth ministry. That’s when Wilson, a Chinese teenager, made a statement that completely shocked Jessie. If it had been said in an American night club, the music would have ceased with a loud awkward squeak, the waitresses would have dropped their trays full of glass-bottled drinks, and everyone would have been trying to decide whether to stare or just pretend they didn’t hear it. “I think it’s great that you’re from the U.S. That means that you have the equivalence of a white man.”  

As Jessie, an African-American student at Beeson, was trying to process the statement he had just heard, the teen went on to explain that he, too, shared in the white man’s credentials because of the length of time he had spent in Australia.  

Keep in mind that when Jessie repeated this first sentence from Wilson (not his real name), I had never experienced this particular encounter between an African-American and a Chinese youth.  Yet I immediately knew how the rest of the story was going to play out. And it made this white man very happy. Let me explain.    

Preparation for the Field

As I prepared for missions, there had been a great deal of discussion in my seminary courses about the challenges of building up national leadership in many parts of the Majority World. The majority of the modern missions movement was undertaken in the context of Western nations colonizing Majority World peoples and even carving out the current geo-political boundaries.  

Superiority in technology, military strength, and education led towards the assumption of both the westerner and the national alike that the white man was, in fact, superior. What followed was a stifling reluctance (again on both sides) for emerging national churches to produce leaders for themselves. Long-term dependence on Western funds and leadership virtually eliminated the potential for churches to multiply and severely limited the reach of the gospel.

While a great deal has changed in the last few decades, much of the old mindset remains. The West is still more dominant in many of these same spheres than most nations that will receive missionaries. There are also new challenges resulting from globalism. Exposure to the rest of the world through media has only contributed to an inferiority complex, especially among the young.  

One of the clearest descriptions I have read about the emergence and subsequent effects of an encroaching global youth culture is from a chapter of a secular book entitled Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. In this chapter, Mark Leichty details the dramatic shift that occurred in Kathmandu when Nepal, which had long been closed to all outside influences, suddenly opened up to the rest of the world. He writes about a teenager named Ramesh, who had been in and out of drug addiction, and details the influence that had come from movies, novels, and magazines.  

While the night life in Tokyo interested him, it was the stories of gang life in the Bronx that fascinated him the most. Liechty explains, “Ironically, it seemed sometimes as though Ramesh already lived in New York. ‘The Bronx’ in particular seemed to be a kind of shadow universe where his mind roamed while his body navigated the streets of Kathmandu” (Amit Talai and Wulff 1995, 186). Ramesh consistently used what Liechty calls an “external self-referent” to describe Nepal: “out here in Kathmandu.” Using the phrase “out here” to refer to your own country is simply impossible outside of the reality created by global media. In the contrast between Nepal and America, Nepal always seemed inferior.  

Ramesh summed up the situation with the following: “You know, now I know soooo much. [pause] Being a frog in a pond isn’t a bad life, but being a frog in an ocean is like Hell” (1995, 187). 

Indeed, many people today are increasingly peering through the lens of movies and music into worlds that are presented as far superior to their own. When their eyes avert from the screens of their TVs, computers, and movie screens, and into the reality in which they live, they often feel as if they are “out here in Kathmandu.” Or Indonesia, Uganda, Paraguay, etc.  

My Personal Experience 

The country where my family and I lived for six years is the same Southeast Asian country where Jessie had his encounter on the frisbee field. Jessie and I were there for only two weeks as a part of his cross-cultural ministry practicum for Beeson Divinity School, where I serve as director of the Global Center. In 2006, I had started an ultimate frisbee team in a different city as a means to meet students, both national and international. The weekly time of frisbee became, for me, a foundational source of relationships that eventually paved the way for a full-blown student ministry.  

It became apparent for me early on that my status as a white man and an American greatly helped my ability to coach this team. It seemed that they listened to me in an unquestioning way that wasn’t necessarily merited. While the latter statement is partly from observation, I was also specifically told several times, “It’s a good thing you’re an American. It will be easier to start the team.”  

While I had taken active steps to establish leadership among the students (and a couple of graduates) for the purpose of eventually giving over all of my leadership to them, it didn’t quite work out that way. When the time came for me to step down, they chose a European to coach them.   

In the local student ministry, it was paramount for me that we train students to lead in the ministry. We were able  in fact to train up a core group of students to take ownership of several key roles. However, it was definitely more of a struggle than I had experienced in the States.  There was also a period of time in which another American leader (Candis, who was finishing a two-year term) and I had intentionally prepared the students for her exit from the country. For months, we reminded them that she was leaving and trained them for the specific leadership roles they would need to fill in her absence. Then, the time came.  

She went home. They dropped the ball. The student ministry suffered. A short summary of other observations from the field are as follows:

• While many churches had established local leadership, church planting was still seen by most of them as a job for Americans.  
   
• American speakers were always a bigger draw than local speakers.
   
• While it was my great desire to train up national youth leaders for local churches, the only vision many local leaders had for their youth ministries was to try to recruit an American to come and serve for a year or two. Little did these Americans know that their very presence was reinforcing a reluctance among nationals to take ownership of a task that they should have seen as theirs.
   
• A bright spot for national leadership was found among a core group of youth ministers I taught at a seminary. After receiving consistent encouragement from myself and other trainers from Youth Ministry International, they stepped up and began training other national youth workers without any input or oversight from me.  Having said that, one of the consistent themes discussed in our courses, as they were being prepared for ministry to youth, was the issue of self-image among their students.  

Back to the Story 

So how did Jessie react? Probably exactly how you think he reacted. It wasn’t the response a seminary student, having recently studied the importance of the doctrine of eternal security, gives to a young Christian who is worried that she may lose her salvation. There was no attempt to remember an outline of a recent Bible study or struggle to recall a nugget of truth written in a book on which he had recently been tested.

No, this was a visceral reaction. It’s the response of a man who has spent his entire life reminding himself, and being reminded by his African-American community, to not let others look down on him because of his ethnicity. It’s the reaction of someone who can understand the ‘mystery’ that Paul talked about (that the Gentiles are now included by faith into the family of God) more intuitively than a white American Christian who has always taken it for granted that God loves his people as much as anyone else. So Jessie responded this way:

Let me explain something to you. I’m proud to be black and you should be just as proud to be Chinese. Your self-worth has no bearing on whether or not you’re ‘associated’ with white men. And neither does mine. I’m black because God made me that way, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way that God made me. You’re Chinese because God made you that way, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way that God made you! You’re created in the image of God. Embrace who you are!

The Difference

When Jessie told me about the conversation, the truths above seemed as fragrant, tangible, and meaningful as I had ever experienced them. You see, I had repeated them often during my years of ministry in this country. However, I was always aware that, even if they didn’t say this out loud (which they did occasionally), they were at least thinking it: “Easy for you to say. You’re white.”   

This time, of course, it was different. How can you know the first thing about the history of African Americans (I’ve found that many people around the globe understand the basics) and excuse yourself by saying, “That’s easy for you to say?”

It had never occurred to me until the clarity of the encounter of Jessie and Wilson the enormity of influence the African-American Church could have in building up indigenous leadership in other parts of the world. There are many positives that can result. I’ll focus on two.

Identity and self-image. In virtually every country in the world, there are minority people groups who are looked down upon by the majority and suffer from discrimination. One of the most extreme examples would be the Dalits in India. How encouraging would it be for these people, many of whom are living in a type of bond slavery, to hear testimonies from African-American Christians who can tell of how God saved them individually and how their people have gone from being slaves to being able to travel the world? I can’t help but believe that it would make the truth of our adoption as sons and daughters (Eph. 1:5) become more believable among Christians from minority peoples across the globe. As much as they may struggle with it, they are less likely to respond with, “That’s easy for you to say.”  

Non-dependence. While national churches in Majority World countries are often trapped in an unhealthy pattern of dependence on Western money and leadership, the African-American Church can serve as a great example to them. Sure, there many social ministries in African-American communities run by white people, but the churches have been fiercely independent for quite some time.   

To illustrate the point, here are some things you will never hear an African American say to a white person—even a Christian whom he or she knows is genuinely trying to help:  

• “They’ll follow you better than they will follow one of us.”
• “We have leaders for our local churches, but we need white people to start new churches.”  
• “White men are just better preachers than us.”

I don’t know what the future holds for the African-American Church and its role in what God is doing among the peoples of the earth. There seems to be a growing consciousness, however, that it is time for their participation in the Great Commission to increase. I, for one, am hopeful that this will happen. Such a movement could serve to the global Body of Christ as a fresh reminder of God’s glorious gospel which is for every tongue, tribe, and nation.   

Reference

Amit-Talai, Vered and Helena Wulff. 1995. Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. London: Routledge.

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Dr. David Parks is the director of the Global Center at Beeson Divinity School. He served in Southeast Asia for six years with the IMB and Youth Ministry International training leaders of student ministries and starting local student outreaches.

EMQ, Vol. 52, No. 3 pp. 256-261. Copyright  © 2016 Billy Graham Center for Evangelism.  All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMQ editors.

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