EMQ » Jan – March 2025 » Volume 61 Issue 1
Polycentric Arts
Summary: The landscape of global Christianity is shifting, and this is impacting global mission. The arts have always been critical to mission, but how we use them has changed from a bring it – teach it to a find it – encourage it approach. As engagement with local arts are embraced, Christianity is becoming more deeply rooted in the world’s diverse cultures.
By Héber Negrão
In January 2023, the World Evangelical Alliance, Mission Commission (WEA-MC) gathered in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for its Global Consultation with mission leaders from several different countries. We were very excited to meet for the first time after the pandemic. In the opening ceremony, we were welcomed by Chansamone Saiyasak of the Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand’s executive committee.
We were also looking forward to hearing Jay Matenga, the Mission Commission’s executive director, address the participants who had traveled so far for that special moment. Instead, Matenga (who is from New Zealand and has a Māori identity) entered the stage with his back turned to us in the audience and addressed only our Thai hosts who were on the stage.
He was wearing a beautiful kākahu (a feathered cloak) and greeted them with a ceremonious Māori chanting for blessing. He presented Dr. Saiyasak with a gift of a carved wooden paddle and concluded with a traditional Māori song of unity. This is an excellent example of an artistic tradition in a polycentric mission event and its effect.
As a religion, Christianity has shifted and spread from its point of origin in the Middle East to the rest of the world. Today, we are observing the ever strengthening of global centers of Christianity with most Christians now living in the Global South. This change impacts the global missionary movement. The arts in global mission have a part in this ongoing transformation.
Christianity is an Outside Religion
Despite current understanding, Christianity does not belong to the West. It is, first and foremost, an outside religion. In his book, Polycentric Missiology: Twenty First Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere, the missiologist Allen Yeh lists four pieces of evidence to contend for this view.
First, since its origins, Christianity has been marked by cultural diversity. “Christianity is the only religion in the world that has no one majority racial or ethnic group… .”[i] In fact, the first multiethnic church was the one founded in Antioch (Acts 11). Second, Christian Scripture was not written in its founder’s language. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament was written in Koine Greek (a widespread trade language in the eastern Roman Empire), but Jesus spoke Aramaic.
Allen’s third piece of evidence of Christianity as an outside religion is its translatability to every culture. Christianity can fit to every people. Lamin Sanneh, a missiologist from the Gambia and a convert from Islam, confirms this. He said, “Christianity is remarkable for the relative ease with which it encounters living cultures. It renders itself a translatable religion, compatible with all cultures. It may be imposed or resisted in its Western form, yet it is not uncongenial in any garb.”[ii] One reason for such adaptability is the Indigenous-led contextualization of the faith and the relevance Christians have in their communities.[iii]
Finally, we can confirm that Christianity is an outside religion because it has no geographic center. As Yeh explained, “Many global faiths claim one geographic center. Muslims claim Mecca. For Judaism, it’s Jerusalem. In Hinduism, Varanasi is the center. Mormons see Salt Lake City as their center. And while Rome may be a center for Catholics, global Christianity has no center.”[iv]
Therefore, we can affirm that Christianity is the only outside-originated religion. Once it is adequately rooted in culture, it can flourish and produce inside cultural expressions to the point that its believers can go elsewhere and replicate the spreading cycle.
Research conducted by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity compared the spread of Christianity in the 1900s with 2020. According to that study, in 1900, 82% of Christians were in the Global North, while 18% were in the Global South. By 2020, however, Christianity’s geography and its center of gravity had shifted drastically. Only 33% of Christians were living in Global North nations, while 67% were in Global South.
It is projected that by 2025, 23% of Christians will remain in the Global North, and 77% of Christians will be in the Global South. “The future of World Christianity,” therefore, “is largely in the hands of Christians in the Global South, where most Christians practice very different kinds of the faith compared to those in the North.”[v]
Three Eras in Global Protestant Missions
Such changes impact the way we do missions. While Christian missionary efforts can be traced back to the first century, we can divide the global Protestant missionary movement into three major eras: colonial, Western, and polycentric.[vi] Because the arts are a powerful means of communication, they have been used by missionaries frequently in the gospel witness. But in each of these eras, missionaries incorporated them in different ways.
Colonial Missions
The first era, colonial missions, is also known as the Great Century of Missions (1792–1910). It happened during the political and historical context of the Great Expansions from Europe to unknown territories overseas. In my country, Brazil, this moment was marked by Jesuit missionaries[vii] who came with the Portuguese colonizers to catechize the native population of Brazil.
During the colonial missions era, the standard approach to the arts was bring it – teach it. An outside art form was brought and taught to people of another culture to help in evangelism and discipleship.
Such practice, however, “often results in miscommunication of emotions and messages, communities that see God as foreign to them, local artists who feel excluded and demoralized, and a sense among local communities that Christianity is irrelevant, and a weakening of kingdom diversity.”[viii] Therefore, we cannot say that the arts are a universal language.[ix]
Western Missions
The second era of missions is known as Western missions or the Great Century of Ecumenism (twentieth century) due to the combined effort of North American and European churches and agencies to evangelize the, so called, third world. My grandparents (from both sides of my family) were reached by missionaries from the Global North. Many churches were founded in Brazil through the blessed efforts of this generation of missionaries from the twentieth century.
The bring it – teach it approach in the arts (for example, the practice of importing Western songs for other cultures) continued to be popular in most missionary teams worldwide. However, by the second half of the twentieth century, missionaries started to have a new mentality toward local arts.
The find it – encourage it approach began to be more and more emphasized by mission organizations in cross-cultural settings. In this approach, “the missionary learns to know local artists and their arts in ways that spur these artists to create in the forms they know best.”[x]
Vida Chenoweth and Tom Avery, ethnomusicologists from Wycliffe Bible Translators, spearheaded a movement to give value to the study of local music. This resulted in a corpus of Indigenous hymnody “in which the local people themselves produce Christian songs in the local language and music system.”[xi]
This movement sparked the need for a group of people to think together about common practices and move towards a common understanding about how people could use their own music to communicate with God and with each other.[xii] With that purpose, the Global Consultation on Music and Mission (GoCOMM)[xiii] and the Global Ethnodoxology Network (GEN)[xiv] were founded in 2003.
As more people gathered in these groups, discussions led to a broader approach that included using all the arts instead of concentrating solely on music. Ethnoarts began to be the focus of the study because, in many cultures, events of artistic communication tend to include an intricate fabric of artistic domains, not just music.[xv]
Ethnodoxology was the discipline that emerged from this movement. Drawing their expertise from the fields of ethnomusicology, missiology, and worship studies, ethnodoxologists aim to see people engaging with God and others through their artistic expressions.[xvi] They encouraged people to use their own arts in community worship, evangelism, discipleship, and community events. Following this new trend in global missions, outsiders started to value local art and encourage its use in the church.
Polycentric Missions
Because of the shift of the church’s center of gravity to the Global South, we can say now that Christianity has multiple centers. Missions now happens from everywhere to everywhere.[xvii] Because of this, the twenty-first century is also known as the Great Century of World Christianity. Brazil is now a sending country. By 2020, the Brazilian church had sent twice as many missionaries to other countries than the number of missionaries it had received in its entire history.
Many Brazilian mission organizations were founded in this era. My own organization, the Linguistic Evangelical Missionary Association (ALEM, wycliffe.org.br), was established by the combined efforts of Brazilian missionaries and American linguists who wanted to continue the Bible translation work of SIL and Wycliffe for Indigenous languages in our country.
According to Yeh, “In 1910, mission was ‘From the West to the Rest.’ In the 21st century, missions is ‘From Everyone to Everywhere’ because, instead of being uni-directional, it is polycentric and poly-directional. World Christianity is not just a momentary trend; it looks like it is here to stay.”[xviii] Not only does Christianity now have multiple centers (polycentric), it also moves in multiple directions (polycentric missions).
In this third era of global missions, we have moved from foreign missionaries bringing and teaching their own arts to missionaries who appreciate and encourage the arts of local cultures. Today, more Majority World Christians value their own arts in the church and are passing on their appreciation for local arts as they serve as missionaries elsewhere.
Yet we still need the values of ethnodoxology to spread farther – to wherever missionary activity is happening in the world.[xix] The reason for that is that the sin of ethnocentrism is not exclusive to Western missionaries. It is a mark of our fallen nature. Christians actively involved in polycentric missions are still vulnerable to it. Majority World missionaries can impose their customs on people from a culture different from theirs in the same way that colonial era Western missionaries did. No one is immune to this risk.
Although we may see Western Christianity decline in this era of polycentric missions, ethnocentrism may remain in the missionary practices of Global South missionaries going to other countries. Latinos need to understand culturally appropriate ways that Middle Eastern Christians worship. South Koreans need to be culturally sensitive to the arts of people in Eastern Europe. African missionaries need to consider how Polynesian ethnic groups use their arts to express their faith in God.
In an interview with Mission Frontiers Magazine, I said, “Given the ruthless effects of globalization and the beautiful diversity God has created in all cultures, I am convinced that ethnodoxology is truly indispensable for the future of the multicultural Christianity.[xx] Additionally, if there’s one good reason to place local arts in polycentric missions, it is that it conveys the message that the gospel is the good news, not because it has a Western origin.
Examples of Local Arts in Polycentric Missions
In our article for Lausanne’s State of the Great Commission Report, Robin Harris, Roch Ntankeh, and I pointed out the importance of using local arts for gospel witness because “in many cultures of the Global South, people are seen as fully creative human beings (rather than divided into ‘artists’ and ‘non-artists’) and rely on visual, oral, relational, and artistic forms of communication rather than abstract, propositional, and apologetic-based approaches.”[xxi]
Examples abound of how this is already happening. Ethnodoxologists from the Global South and the Global North are actively encouraging the use of local arts in countries where they serve.
From South Korea to Africa
Younhee Kim is a visual artist from South Korea, and she led an arts workshop among women in an African country using local fabric. The women thought of art as something that required a unique pattern, like the urban textiles of other groups of people.
Younhee asked them, “What can you make with this fabric, apart from clothing?” The women thought about souvenirs, jewelry, bags, or hairbands. “As they began to work with their own fabric, they discovered something important: beauty exists in what was theirs, too.”[xxii]
In another experience in Benin, Younhee featured a painting art camp for children and a fashion program for young ladies, which culminated in a runway show in which the women presented what they made. Also, participants of one of Kim’s workshops in Tanzania “discovered the high value that exists in arts of all kinds, not only music, and that the creative process brings life to learning, teaching, and engaging with Scripture.”[xxiii]
From Venezuela to Spain
Juan Arvelo, from Venezuela, serves in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain with WEC International. When his city was recognized as a European Capital of Culture in 2016, he organized a multicultural art gallery to celebrate. The organizing team was multicultural. It had people from the UK, France, Spain, and Venezuela. The exhibition had artists from all of these nations. Christian artists were able to naturally share the gospel as they shared about their art. Juan noted that this was a breakthrough in a context where evangelization is resisted.
In another project, Juan integrates local arts in the National Day of Prayer for Basque Country. After a day of prayer, they gather the people and celebrate the Lord with unique Basque dance and worship songs. Juan also started a project where he and his team use music and other arts to encourage and inspire the pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain.
Polycentric Artistic Action in Brazil
A couple of years ago I conducted a Scripture Engagement Project for the Paypa people, an Indigenous group from central Brazil. The goal was to make the recently translated Gospel of Luke available for the people in a different media. Our multiethnic team was composed of an American (Angie Oliveira, the translation facilitator), a local representative of the Paypa people (Mário, the Bible translator) and a Brazilian (me).
Together, we created a video that shows the parable of the foolish and wise builders (Luke 6). We contextualized the parable to the reality of how the Paypa people traditionally build their houses. For that we used visual arts that depict a traditional Paypa houses, their building process, and the village itself.
Mário used the very Bible verses he translated to narrate the video. Angie painted all the visual art which, once approved by some Paypa representatives, I used to create the video. During the project, we had a good dialogue and discussions about the video. When we completed it, the Paypa people decided how the video would be used.
From Everywhere to Everywhere
In preparation for the Fourth Lausanne Congress that happened in Seoul, Korea in September 2024, I joined the prayer initiative team. My role was to put together an uninterrupted prayer video that would stream on YouTube, where people could join for a 5-minute prayer time every day. The video had prayer prompts in seven languages to reach as many non-English speakers as possible. But I wanted something more. I invited artists from different parts of the world to contribute to the video with pieces of visual art that would appear alongside and complement each prayer prompt. Each artwork depicted a reality of a different culture.
We ended up with 32 paintings and drawings from artists from Colombia, India, Brazil, the United States, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, and Hong Kong. During every hour of every day from April 2024 until the end of the weeklong congress, intercessors prayed and were inspired by the artworks and connected with the global church. Christian artists from several countries blessed and encouraged intercessors from every country with the gifts God gave to them. This was a genuinely everywhere-from-everywhere effort.
All of Us Together
The Global Ethnodoxology Network comprises a great number of ministries, networks and individuals that are committed to use local arts in global witness. “Many of these people are engaging with networks such as the Lausanne Arts Issue Network, Arts+, Crescendo, Initiative Francophone … Associación Latinoamericana De Etno Artes (ALDEA), European Community of Christian Artists (ECCA), and Arts in Mission Korea, among others.”[xxiv] If you are interested in learning more about arts in global missions, subscribing to the GEN newsletter can be a good place to start (worldofworship.org/newsletter).
After the WEA-MC Global Consultation in Chiang Mai, the listening committee, for which I was a part, created a report. In the final part of the report, we articulated “Our missions’ future:”
“It involves all of us together, who are compelled by the love of God, from north, south, east, and west; men and women; young and old; bearing witness to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and testifying to the power of the gospel to bring transformation.
All of us together will be for the praise of God’s glory in the diversity of ethnicity, language, culture, and lived expressions of faith in Jesus.
All of us together demonstrating the mind of Christ as we show respect to one another –especially in our manners, actions and words, and as we seek to listen and to learn from, and with, one another.
God calls all of us together – the insider and outsider – to depend on the Spirit of God to guide and empower us in the mission of God.”[xxv]
I firmly believe that the local arts are a powerful way to accomplish this purpose. This is what God is calling us to: from everywhere to everywhere, all of us together.
Héber Negrão (heber_negrao@wycliffe.org.br) holds an MA in ethnomusicology and is a PhD candidate in world arts at Dallas International University (DIU). He is a missionary ethnomusicologist serving as coordinator for anthropology and ethnoarts at the Evangelical Missionary Linguistic Association (ALEM, Brazil). He has been involved in the ethnoarts ministry in Brazil since 2006. He has worked with oral Bible translation for six years among Indigenous people in northern Brazil.
[i] Allen L. Yeh, Polycentric Missiology: Twenty First Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016), 214.
[ii] Lamin O. Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture, 2nd ed., rev. and exp., American Society of Missiology Series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2009), 56, http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0818/2008021715.html.
[iii] Gina A. Zurlo, Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2022).
[iv] Allen L. Yeh, “What Is Polycentric Mission?,” EMQ 60, no. 1 (2024): 8–13.
[v] Zurlo, Global Christianity, 3.
[vi] Yeh, Polycentric Missiology.
[vii] Catholic and Orthodox missions movements preceded the Protestant missions movement by several hundred years and have continued alongside the Protestant missions movement.
[viii] Brian Schrag, Creating Local Arts Together: A Manual to Help Communities Reach Their Kingdom Goals, ed. James Krabill, Spi edition (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2013), xxi.
[ix] Héber Negrão, “The Arts Are Not a Universal Language: Ethnodoxology and Integrating Local Arts in Worship,” Lausanne Global Analysis 11, no. 5 (2022), https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2022-09/the-arts-are-not-a-universal-language.
[x] Schrag, Creating Local Arts Together, xxiii.
[xi] Thomas L. Avery, “Music of the Heart: The Power of Indigenous Worship in Reaching Unreached Peoples With the Gospel,” Mission Frontiers, July 1996, 7, https://www.missionfrontiers.org/issue/article/music-of-the-heart.
[xii] Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16.
[xiii] Now known as GoCAMM: gcommhome.org.
[xiv] GEN: worldofworship.org.
[xv] Another reflect of such development is that the Global Consultation of Music and Missions (GCOMM), changed its name to Global Consultation of Arts Music and Missions (GCAMM) in 2021.
[xvi] Global Ethnodoxology Network, “What Is Ethnodoxology?,” 2023, https://www.worldofworship.org/what-is-ethnodoxology/.
[xvii] Some missiologists chose to say from everyone to everywhere to focus on the people of God who are actively involved in witnessing: Samuel Escobar, The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone, Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2003); Joseph W. Handley, Polycentric Mission Leadership, Regnum Studies in Mission (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2022); Allen L. Yeh, Polycentric Missiology: Twenty First Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2016).
[xviii] Yeh, Polycentric Missiology, 216.
[xix] Learn more in “GEN’s Core Values,” Global Ethnodoxology Network, https://www.worldofworship.org/core-values/.
[xx] Robin Harris, “The Future of Ethnodoxology in Arts and Mission,” Mission Frontiers 45, no. 5 (2023): 32–35.
[xxi] Robin P. Harris, Héber Negrão, and Roch Ntankeh, “Visual Affect as Validation of Truth,” in State of the Great Commission Report, ed. Matthew Niermann (Lausanne Movement, 2024), https://lausanne.org/report/trust/visual-affect-as-validation-of-truth.
[xxii] Becky Robertson, “Seven Core Values That Guide GEN,” Mission Frontiers 45, no. 5 (2023): 16.
[xxiii] Robertson, “Seven Core Values,” 16
[xxiv] Harris, Negrão, and Ntankeh, “Visual Affect as Validation of Truth.”
[xxv] Karsten van Rizen et al., “Global Consultation 20223 Review,” WEA Mission Commission (blog), 2023, https://weamc.global/gc23/gc23review/.
EMQ, Volume 61, Issue 1. Copyright © 2025 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
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