EMQ » Jul – Sept 2026 » Volume 62 Issue 3
Summary:African participation in global mission is expanding, yet this movement will not be sustained by replicating imported funding systems. Many prevailing models, shaped in Minority World contexts, fail to reflect African economic patterns, communal values, and cultural realities. Majority World mission systems must be rooted in local contexts while remaining globally connected. The article outlines the challenges associated with applying non-contextual funding models and suggests possibilities for collaboration and partnerships in God’s global mission.
By Gillian Mwaura (Edube)
It was a Sunday morning on my usual trips to visit missionaries. I was sitting at the back of a local church, mostly because I couldn’t understand the language. During the offering period, the missionary who was sitting next to me was invited to the front. Something happened that made me think deeply. One by one, the members of the congregation began walking to the front with farm produce. In a few minutes, small bundles of different produce were at her feet. As I observed what was unfolding, I found myself asking, “How can we meaningfully capture and account for forms of mission funding that are inherently difficult to measure?”
In their recent book, Africa to the Rest,[1] Yaw Perbi, Sam Ngugi, and Joshua Bojunjoko highlight the need to reconsider Africa’s role in global mission. They argue that Africa is no longer just a recipient of mission but a rising sender of missionaries to the rest of the world. Indeed, given that Africa is home to the largest Christian population in the world, the future of missions depends on recognizing and strengthening Africa’s missionary potential, which involves leadership and rethinking mission structures.[2] This article examines financial resources as a critical area that requires contextualization to sustain Africa’s mission movements. It also reflects on my personal experiences that have stimulated me to rethink some of our funding frameworks.
As founders of an indigenous mission agency in Uganda, our vision and mission were clear. We aimed to mobilize, equip, and send African missionaries to unreached and least-reached people groups across East Africa. Yet, as the first indigenous mission agency in Uganda, we lacked the structures and a framework even to get started. Having worked with enormous mission agencies from the West, we automatically adopted Western mission organizations’ models. However, we found these models were based on a “shoe we couldn’t fit in.” This article explains why we could not fit in the shoe.
Challenges in applying Western mission support models to Africa
In most Western mission models, missionaries are expected to secure most, if not all, of their financial backing before deployment. But the missionaries we were sending could not raise even a quarter of the expected annual budget. In many Western settings, support raising operates within a well-established framework. Financial partnership is regarded as a legitimate way to sustain vocational ministry. However, in our setting, fundraising is misunderstood as begging, especially when educated individuals try to raise support. Instead of seeing themselves as partners in a shared mission, potential supporters perceive such invitations as a form of personal dependence. In other cases, this perception can cause shame for the individual and their family because, after investing in education, they choose to beg rather than get a regular job.
There is also a mission identity issue. Many African Christians assume Africans are recipients of mission work rather than senders. This means the idea of serving outside the home community, even in another country, is often met with suspicion. Africans raising support, especially among other Africans, often face significant distrust. Our missionaries have to keep explaining why they are doing mission work, as many assume this work is reserved for White missionaries. With such a reception, fundraising is greatly affected. Similarly, receiving communities struggled to recognize and affirm African missionaries as legitimate agents of global mission. It took considerable effort to explain why they were receiving African missionaries. This reveals a deeper issue about who is expected to send and receive missionaries.
When our missionaries tried raising support from churches, they hit a roadblock. Unlike Western mission-sending churches, which have a specific budget for missions, most African churches, while emphasizing the importance of mission, do not do this. Mostly, they prioritize the growth of their congregations or supporting denominational programs rather than frontier or cross-cultural missions. Most of the churches we approached for mission partnership were clear; they lacked the financial resources.
While on the field, missionaries are supposed to keep providing feedback to the donors through newsletters, photos, and regular updates. However, our communication systems, especially when working to reach people in extremely remote areas, were inadequate. Our missionaries had no cellular service, no or limited internet service, no electricity, and no electronic devices to sustain communication or make stories to share with partners. They lived on a similar economic level to the communities and physically among those they served. This meant they lacked off-road cars and were therefore unable to drive to the nearest towns to seek those services, as most Western missionaries serving in those communities do. In fact, Western missionaries mostly live in the nearest towns and drive to the local communities. What happened, then, was a lot of work on the ground that could not be accounted for. Although we encouraged missionaries to keep handwritten journals and record their stories, when they returned to the office for training, we had minimal administrative support to conduct interviews and turn their journal entries into stories worth sharing with the world.
Most of our mission support, especially from the West, was targeted at specific projects. It came with conditions that it should not be used for administrative needs or that the allocation should be primarily for field-based work. This perspective seemed to assume that lower administrative costs would still lead to effective mission work. Part of strengthening mission efforts in Africa must be to invest in administrative efforts to design contextual systems and develop structures that can support the work on the ground. Administration should not be viewed as a distraction from mission, but as a vital part of enabling and strengthening mission.
Even when indigenous mission agencies solicit funds from the Western world, it always requires a lot of explaining how we can claim to be indigenous yet receive support from other countries. God’s mission cannot be carried out solely through our own resources or efforts. All resources, human and financial, ultimately belong to God. They can be stewarded by any part of his global church to advance his mission.
Another challenge is the persistent notion that Africa is culturally uniform. When Africans move within the Majority world, it is often assumed they don’t need missionary training. As a sending agency, it became clear that investment in contextualized training models tailored to the African context was necessary. The lack of resources to prepare missionaries contextually was affecting the mission’s effectiveness on the ground.
These challenges, among others, continue to limit the growth of Africa’s missionary movements. They also encourage us to try various contextualized models for maintaining missionary work, some of which I share in the next section.
Selected Contextual Models
While sitting in the church mentioned in the introduction, observing the missionary receive in-kind gifts, I realized the Majority-world problem is not a lack of generosity but rather how support is measured. Our system, initially adopted from the West, focused on monetary donations, overlooking in-kind support. In response, we began accounting for in-kind contributions. We also started discussions with recipient communities, finding ways they could contribute to supporting the missionaries they hosted. Over time, not only did Sunday services collect in-kind gifts to missionaries, but, in certain placements, local church and community leaders built simple houses for missionaries, families offered land for kitchen gardens, and provided cooked food for the missionaries. Although this didn’t meet the full needs of the missionaries, it was a great starting point that could be strengthened. It also made it easy for the missionaries to bond with locals, who introduced them to the local food, language, and culture.
Another contextual approach involved deploying missionaries using their professional skills, gifts, and talents, integrating them into existing systems. Many of our missionaries have gone to least-reached communities that are among the world’s poorest and most marginalized. They employed their diverse professional skills to meet the needs of the community through schools, hospitals, community projects, and churches. Their ministry is integrated with their professional work. For example, a teacher might work at a local school teaching math while building intentional relationships with students and their families. A health worker might serve at a local clinic while building relationships with the community that frequently visits the facility.
In some cases, the institutions they worked for provided modest allowances for the services rendered. Although these contributions did not constitute full mission support, they significantly improved the mission’s sustainability. This approach also encouraged the missionaries to work closely with the local church. Then, if the missionaries had to leave, the local church remained as a lasting witness within the community.
We also recognized the need to shift from individualistic fundraising models towards a more collective approach to raising support. We began encouraging the missionaries to view themselves as part of an interdependent community. When a missionary raised support of any kind, it entered a shared pool for all missionaries. This included the gifts in kind. Thus, when a missionary received a sack of maize or harvested onions, they didn’t consider it solely their own. Our quarterly meetings became a space where most missionaries came bearing food gifts for one another, rather than just being for administration and training. Watching them distribute what they brought reflected more than cooperation; it embodied what taking care of one another’s needs looks like. This concept closely aligns with the Majority World’s social realities, where communal responsibility and shared life are longstanding cultural norms. It also reflects the New Testament pattern of the early church sharing resources and possessions so that none among them was in need (Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–35).
These examples give us hope and invite us to think creatively about sustainable mission models rooted in contextual realities. The Minority World can still play a crucial role in strengthening indigenous mission movements. However, there is no single community that can advance God’s mission alone. Instead of retreating, Western mission agencies’ involvement in the Majority World must be carefully restructured and rethought. Global mission now requires partnership, which must look different, characterized by humility, mutual listening, and genuine willingness to serve one another, rather than imposing predetermined strategies.
Future Possibilities for Partnership and Collaboration
The partnership between the Majority and Minority Worlds must be driven by the understanding that God owns all resources, human and financial. None of the parties needs to look down on the others. Rather, together they need to steward God’s resources. Perbi, Ngugi, and Bojunjoko describe this as an “interdependence paradigm,” a model that rejects both total dependence and complete independence. Instead, reciprocal patterns of giving and receiving are grounded in the understanding that the global church functions as one body.[3]
Scripture consistently affirms this vision of unity. In John 17:20–23, Jesus prays that his followers would be one so that the world would believe. In John 13:35, he teaches that love for one another will cause the world to recognize his disciples. The apostle Paul further emphasizes the diversity and interdependence of the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:4–17. He calls believers to unity in Ephesians 4:1–16 and urges the church to stand together in one spirit and purpose in Philippians 1:27. Both the Majority and Minority World need each other and must see each other as valuable. This is not based on what each has but on who they are, partners in God’s missions.
For mission work to scale up to the next level, we must invest in strengthening institutional efforts to build local, context-specific systems. Any belief that administrative costs are not real mission needs must be replaced with an awareness that sustainable mission in the Majority World will accelerate when we empower administrations to strategize and build locally contextualized systems, designing programs that work within our context. Part of this involves developing the capacity of staff who serve the missionaries so they can find ways to design and develop sustainable financial and other resource management that reflects our economic and community realities.
Deliberate efforts and resources must be invested in developing curricula and training for African missionaries. Cross-cultural ministry in Africa requires comprehensive preparation due to the continent’s diverse cultural, linguistic, and social realities. African missionaries, like other cross-cultural workers, must develop the ability to interpret culture and communicate the gospel effectively outside their local context. Mulugetta Dagne argues that there is a need to move beyond simply sending workers and instead focus on intentional training and holistic formation that properly prepares intercultural workers for faithful ministry.[4] Such efforts require funding and provide opportunities for partnerships and collaboration. Contextualized training models that are genuinely tailored to African missionaries rather than adapted frameworks from other parts of the world are essential.
Another partnership avenue is to empower researchers and practitioners to produce knowledge rooted in local realities while collaborating with global scholarship. Joint research efforts involving African scholars, practitioners, and international partners can generate insights that inform sustainable strategies and support structures suitable for Majority World settings.
Collaboration should extend beyond traditional Majority-Minority global relationships to include greater cooperation among Majority countries. Global South-to-South partnerships can broaden networks by encouraging shared theological reflections and facilitating the exchange of practical ministry experiences among similar contexts. Though these efforts already exist in conferences, there is a need to be more creative. Beyond that, longer-term involvement that might include short-term ministry targeting younger generations, to support contextually appropriate systems building.
A partnership with the Majority World cannot ignore the local church. Strategic investment involves allocating resources to help sending agencies equip the local church in the Majority World to develop effective mobilizing and sending frameworks. Sending missionaries remains the task of the church, which requires equipping. Mission agencies could be strengthened to partner with local churches for effective frontier mission work.
A shift in partnership efforts must be characterized by mutual accountability. The Majority and Minority World, as partners, share responsibility for ensuring that resources entrusted to mission work are managed with integrity, transparency, and trust. Reciprocal accountability strengthens trust, preserves the credibility of mission efforts, and lays a foundation for enduring collaboration in advancing God’s mission.
Mary Lederleitner, in her book Cross-Cultural Partnerships, states that financial resources are not just practical tools for mission. They also carry cultural significance that can greatly influence relationships and outcomes. Misunderstandings about resources often weaken mission partnerships when participants interpret financial practices based on their own cultural assumptions. A successful global mission partnership requires more than just financial support. It also requires cultural understanding, mutual respect, transparent systems, and shared stewardship of resources.[5]
Conclusion
The future of missions by Africa to the rest of the world cannot be sustained by copying imported funding systems. While these models have served global mission efforts for a long time, it’s time to rethink models that reflect the economic patterns, culture, and local church realities in the Majority World. Africa does not lack resources. Rather, it lacks systems and models that can leverage our realities. For these systems to be developed, global collaboration and partnerships are vital. The mission of God has always advanced through the global church’s shared participation, not in isolation. As Africa increasingly responds to God’s call to the remaining task, the central challenge is not a lack of passion. Instead, there is a need for contextual structures capable of sustaining that calling through locally rooted systems strengthened by healthy global partnerships.
AI Declaration
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[1] Dr. Yaw Perbi, Sam Ngugi, and Dr. Joshua Bogunjoko, Africa to the Rest: From Mission Field to Mission Force (Xulon Press, 2022).
[2] Perbi, Ngugi, and Bogunjoko, Africa to the Rest.
[3] Perbi, Ngugi, and Bogunjoko, Africa to the Rest, 144.
[4]Mulugetta Demissie Dagne, Equipping Ethiopian Intercultural Workers for Mission: A Contextualized Design for Mission Training (Langham Academic, 2026).
[5] Mary T. Lederleitner, Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission (InterVarsity Press, 2010).rch 21, no. 1 (1997): 3.
Gillian G. Mwaura/Edube has been involved in cross-cultural missions in Africa and Norway. She has been in vocational ministry for 16 years, designing programs, training missionaries in Africa, and equipping Cross-cultural workers. She is a co-founder of Global-Link Afrika, an indigenous mission agency in Uganda. She has a PhD in educational studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) and an MA in intercultural studies from Wheaton College Graduate School, USA. She leads Lapiz Consultancy, helping organizations with curriculum design and programming. She is married to Robert Edube and, together, they have two biological children (Roy and Bernice) and one adopted son (Ephraim).
EMQ, Volume 62, Issue 3. Copyright © 2026 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: [email protected].
Very Thankful!
Thank you Gillian for this and thank you for highlighting that majority of the Christian population resides in Africa. This means a lot for us mobilizing and training missionaries in Africa. We can not escape the question of resourcing mission work. I agree with you, there is need to develop and employ contextual models and the need for global partnership in order to tap into what God is doing in Africa and the rest of the world.
I can never forget how the hospital Admin of the mission hospital i was sent to serve failed to locate me at the bus stop because he expected and was looking for a white face, we still laugh about it!
Thanks, Loyce. Your efforts at such a time will yield in God’s timing. You are also in a good place to rethink systems, so don’t shy away. Keep trying what works. Lead with courage.