Episode 7: Practical Splinters

About this episode

Missions debates get abstract fast—until you follow the money, the power, and the practical decisions that shape real lives. Episode 7 turns to the nuts and bolts: who leads, who funds, and what happens when good intentions create dependency. With questions raised by voices like Mekdes Haddis, Greg Parsons, and Harvey Kwiyani, this episode challenges easy answers and asks what “all hands on deck” could look like without repeating old patterns.

People featured in this episode

Imer Santiago⁠ — Host. Puerto Rican–American trumpeter, jazz musician, and worship leader based in St. Cloud, Florida.

⁠Ted Esler⁠ — President/CEO of Missio Nexus (since 2015). Former church planter in Sarajevo, Bosnia; previously held leadership roles with Pioneers. Author of The Innovation Crisis; holds a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary.

⁠Mekdes Haddis⁠ — Ethiopian-born missiologist and author challenging “missions as usual” approaches in the Western church. Founder of The Mutuality Lab. Author of A Just Mission.

⁠Greg Parsons⁠ — Missions leader associated with Frontier Ventures (formerly the U.S. Center for World Mission) and William Carey International University.

⁠Harvey Kwiyani⁠ — Malawian theologian and missiologist known for work on decolonizing mission and global/diaspora Christianity. Author of Decolonizing Mission.

⁠Mark Charles⁠ — Speaker, writer, and consultant on the intersections of race, culture, faith, and American history. Co-author of Unsettling Truths (with Soong-Chan Rah) on the legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery.

⁠Mark Matlock⁠ — Ordained minister and author focused on youth discipleship and next-generation leadership. Founder of WisdomWorks and Senior Fellow at Barna. Co-author of Faith for Exiles (with David Kinnaman).

⁠Aaron Renn⁠ — Writer and consultant based in Indianapolis. Senior Fellow at American Reformer; previously a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Managing Director at Accenture. Author of Life in the Negative World.

⁠Sarah Breuel⁠ — Christian leader originally from Brazil and based in Rome. Founder/director of Revive Europe; has served with IFES and the Lausanne Movement.

Music

Soundlufs / Dramatic Verdi Opera / courtesy of Envato
Hanna Lindgren / Drifting Off / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Hanna Lindgren / Ray of Sun / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Hanna Lindgren / The Alabaster Coast / courtesy of ⁠Epidemic Sound⁠
Additional music by ⁠Imer Santiago

Credits

Host: Imer Santiago
Produced by: Arrival Creative
Presented by: Missio Nexus

Show overview

Polyphonic: Mission After Empire is an 8-episode narrative podcast hosted by

Imer Santiago and produced by Missio Nexus. If youʼve ever wondered whether “mission” and “empire” can be untangled—or if weʼve been pretending itʼs simpler than it is—this show is for you.

Imer brings his experience as a musician and teacher into conversations with historians, missiologists, practitioners, and everyday voices—tracing what we inherited, what we missed, and what we might need to admit before we can move forward. Music isnʼt background here—itʼs the glue, the metaphor, and sometimes the argument.

This isnʼt a definitive answer guide, because we probably wonʼt get all the answers before Heaven. Itʼs a place to start listening—polyphonic in the truest sense: many voices, each with its own melody, heard together.

Host

Imer Santiag o is a Puerto Rican–American trumpeter, jazz musician, and worship leader. Heʼs from Lorain, Ohio, and now lives in St. Cloud, Florida.

He studied Jazz at Ohio State University and earned a Master of Music in Jazz Studies in New Orleans.

He serves as Director of Bands at St. Cloud Middle School and performs and leads worship throughout the year.

Transcription for this episode

Episode 7 transcription

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I love opera. I to live a 10 minute walk from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. I would go there every week. You can actually get rush tickets for $25. You ah know, you can buy it once a week, so you can literally go once a week for $25. Now you gotta be quick on the draw to get those. But even if don’t, there’s standing room tickets there that are cheap.

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But people don’t know about New York because there’s lots of ways to get things cheap, even though it’s a very expensive city. I do think that there are a lot of profound insights into the human condition uh in opera. One of the operas that I think has one of the most powerful artistic depictions of God’s grace is Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser. It shows the sovereign grace

of God, his ability to set people free from sin, both in this world and, of course, eternally, even when the church itself does not want to forgive, when man does not want to forgive. When most people think of opera, they probably think of high society snooty people watching from a balcony through brass and mother of pearl opera glasses. But Aaron mentions the very real

down to earth themes of redemption and forgiveness in Wagner’s Tannhäuser, which is not the music that’s playing right now, by the way.

Sometimes the reality of the thing is different than how people perceive it. People often think that missiology is boring ivory tower talk as well.

Missiology, think one of the downfalls of it is it’s so academic that it’s boring and the normal person doesn’t read about it. So the problem just stays there. don’t have practitioners just jumping into it because they were able to understand. They’re just doing their own thing. They’re entrepreneurial. They do this, but they don’t have the tools that would help them theologically.

I think to bridge that cap, I tried to tell a story, my personal story of trying to find my path in being a missionary here in the West, what that looked like for me, that it didn’t look like what everybody else would think when they think of mission. Just like Mectis, everyone has to find their own way. But there are very real down to earth practical outcomes to the way we think about missions.

Early on, Mark Charles mentioned that Jesus wasn’t a good model for missions. Was this true? Was he meant to be the prototype for us? Something I’ve wondered about sometimes is like, can we consider Jesus a missionary? So he’s in heaven.

eternity and then he leaves heaven to come to the earth. You know there’s a gospel story but when you think about it like okay if heaven’s a culture or eternity and being part of the godhead is culture it’s probably I’m not a

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A theologian, pardon my expressions or but he did leave heaven to come to earth. he was sent. To me, like, I wonder. Well, in missiology, that is called the incarnational model of mission. And I think people that believe in that model would say that, Jesus is the model for us. He did leave uh his, you know.

kingdom culture in a sense to become one of us. so I can remember being taught that in missions courses that we’re to do what Jesus did and become incarnational in that culture. You learn language, etc. You learn culture. But I’ve also been in conversations with missiologists that say that that just shows your hubris and your pride. Because basically you’re saying that

you’re incarnating God in this culture. uh that that model itself is colonialistic. that was a conversation I had with one of the premier academic institutions in missions, some of their leaders and professors. And they really were negative about that incarnation model.

So even that baseline question of whether we should view Christ as a model could be seen as colonialistic. What about other practical issues?

How do we finance missions? Should locals or non-locals do the work? Should individuals go alone or should they use an agency? Mechthis starts the conversation right at the top. How do we structure leadership with missionary work in foreign lands? And is that leadership structure a lever of Western power?

there’s still the kind of top to bottom approach to missional uh sending agencies and their approach to, em you know, raising up leaders. And um as much as it’s good on this side, because you’re able to, you know, control the projects, you know, have metrics for growth, whatever it might be, when you go into these, you know, countries, several nations and

and languages that are just very different and unique. uh There needs to be an opportunity for them to contextualize and lead in a way that may not make sense in your central spaces, you know? And uh I have, because I grew up in Ethiopia, because, you know, I have friends that are on the ground and are working with some of these Western mission organizations.

I hear the frustration firsthand that they do not have the ability or the resourcing to do the work the best way they know how for their community because they have to worry about it making sense on this end. So there’s just this huge gap. so if you know, let’s say, so I think that makes me think of trust. There is no trust with these large

you know, sending spaces and then the local tiny minister who doesn’t have a lot of salary, but he’s investing all of who he is paying a lot of sacrifice, but needs the support to make sure it’s done that way. There’s no trust or knowledge of his existence uh or like the value that he brings to the table because there’s no understanding of the cultural value of all of these different.

spaces that these organizations are interested of overseeing. I’m pretty, I always say, let’s go small because again, like, I mean, I don’t see in scripture where, you know, the Holy Spirit is not sending individuals, right? And I don’t see in scripture where they’re not being nimble and they’re not changing plans, you know, and they’re not contextualizing.

they’re going left and then God calls them to go right. all of this happens. But at the end of the day, they had the support of, you know, a local body that they would go back and visit and all of that. uh I feel like because, you know, mission has become so Western, unless it’s understood and digested by the Western leadership, there is no, no resourcing of.

the local small work that needs to be done. And we have a long way to go in terms of getting there. And so, mean, for example, for a lot of Ethiopian churches here in the US, we send money back to our community, Let’s say like if I send $100 a month,

for a missionary that does so much. That’s like his salary, that’s his, you know, bus ride, all of this, like, and it goes directly to him. doesn’t, there’s no like cost for this and that. It goes directly to him and he’s able to feed his family comfortably, live, you know, not luxuriously, but be comfortable and be able to do the work without paying unnecessary cost.

only for $100. So it’s like $1,200 a year for me guarantees one missionary, local missionary being able to do the work well, and then also doing it in a manner that’s like authentic to the culture. so, but then if I was to put that in these structures that exist, I have to convince so many people what is actually happening. It just doesn’t make sense. So at times I wonder like if

They really understand how disengaged their approach is to what’s actually happening in the ground. And I say, like in the book, I talk about how organizations that help with Bible translation or language work, like those kinds of organizations, they’re doing amazing work. But when it comes to discipleship, when it comes to leadership training, equipping locals,

That stuff needs to be done by locals and there needs to be a lot of freedom given ah for resourcing or whatever. So I think that’s where I see a huge gap and it’s a real pain point for me because I see the power dynamic there. And it’s really hard for me when the people that are doing the work are on the ground and they are the ones that have the ears of the people who need to hear the gospel.

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I don’t understand this power dynamic and lack of trust. She brings up a lot of really important questions. If locals can do it more effectively and cheaper than foreigners, should we continue to send people crossculturally? If not, what would that mean for Christ’s call for us to go? And if so, should that be individuals or missions agencies? If funds are coming in from the West,

Does there need to be any oversight or reporting on how they are spent? Would lack of reporting pave the way for abuse? And if those requirements can’t be fulfilled, should funding from the West be stopped and what implications would that have? I talked to Greg Parsons about the idea of funding locals directly. He shares a couple of stories that highlight some of the dangers of this approach. The problem with just sending money is it’s really hard to do.

because you create situations and dependencies that uh don’t reflect the gospel. I mean, I know people who train in these areas of how to watch out for creating dependencies. uh they will tell you, you know, so let’s say,

Let’s say, okay, we want to do something with our missions budget. We’re at a local church, we got some money. Maybe we don’t have anyone to send or we’re afraid to, and we just have decided we’re going to send money. But then they decide, oh, you know what, here’s this guy and we connect with him in India and he’s, you know, he’s a great guy. He doesn’t have a lot. We’re not going to pay him, but we’re just going to get him a bike.

And so now he’s got a bike. He can go village to village. He can spread and go a lot further. The gospel can spread, you know. You’ve all heard this. The only trouble is now everybody in that culture, and we’re talking about poor, very poor, poorer than most of us have ever seen in the US and is in the US anywhere, almost. Now he’s got something no one else has. And so then you say, well, the next guy says, I’ll do what you’re doing.

You need to become a Christian? Okay, I’ll become a Christian if I can get a bike. I mean, you just have introduced this complexity, know, if you want to look it up on the internet, you look up a rice, the rice, I forget what the phrase is now, but it’s the rice Christians. People have become Christians because they get food. Now, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do food distribution, but just how to do it well.

Boy, could tell you. Well, I’ll tell you one other story. So there’s an uh assembly of God. uh It’s been good historically. You may not agree with them and all that, okay, but different denomination, maybe than yours, whatever. They are good at planting churches and multiplying churches. And they had done that in India. And they had lot of, again, little teeny things we’re talking about. Probably most of them no building, except for a few in the big city, whatever.

And all of a sudden another group that was a funding group came over and started to talk to these pastors and say, hey, we’ll give you this if you call your church instead of the Bangalore or Assembly of God or whatever the name was. You now you’ll call your church and their mission organization was in the name. And the pastors, hey, $100 a month? To us, that’s nothing to a pastor that’s in India. That’s unbelievable.

So sure. So they had, I think it was something like 10,000 churches that left the assembly of God and went with this other group. The assembly of God leaned over and he was telling Dr. Winter this story. He leaned over and said, the only problem, I don’t care. He said, what I care is those churches will stop multiplying because they can’t give $100 to the next church. And so they weren’t.

you know they would do they would use their money to train and they’d even use trainers within india not bring in outsiders you know to train they would do things like training they would do things like conferences or events or or maybe uh… you know help a church with an outreach thing but if you start supporting pastors and even missionaries then you can’t multiply it you can say well just send more money well okay you try

It’s limited compared to what needs to be done. So that’s the challenge, doing it well. I think you can, but don’t think it’s going to be easier than sending your own people. You won’t have maybe people coming home crying or worse because something happened or they’re not as effective. But you will have other problems if you don’t do it well and pay attention to it.

to be limited in certain ways by finances. But maybe it doesn’t need to be this way. Harvey had moved to Minnesota to do a doctoral degree, and while he was there, he planted a church. But the real question about whether it would grow seemed to be, was the coffee good enough? I mean, I remember when I was in Minnesota, I planted a church in Minnesota. ah It was a small…

congregation, just a few of us, not a large one. We tried to do this in a way that was not money dependent that much. So our annual budget was very little, but it was much smaller than the coffee budget for the congregation next door. Right? When I planted that church, the church planting,

training that I went through made it clear that the quality of your coffee on Sunday morning determines how your church grows. Sorry, uh that did not make sense to me. So of course I would see my fellow pastors around me putting a lot of money on the quality of their coffee because this is a church growing strategy.

that won’t work in other places in the world. So how do we find ways of sharing the good news without having to default back to we have more money, or we have more technology, or we have this, we have that, and just really be like, like, like, in a community, and be sharing the good news in that way. It becomes impossible.

Here in the UK, it’s a well-known fact that the British Christianity is very much in the middle class. All right? And it’s in the middle class because to some extent it fails to engage and evangelize the people in the upper class. And it’s that dynamic. It’s the same dynamic that makes it easier for North American missionaries to go to Africa than come to Europe.

It’s the same dynamic. So yes, we need to figure this out and say, you know, we need to be able to evangelize people who are rich in the nest. When you mentioned a few minutes ago about the disciples in Acts chapter three, or I think it’s chapter three, but my mind was going there. I was trying to look it up and I said, well, I’ll look it up later, but Peter and John, and when they said silver and gold, have I none? And I think

As you’re answering this previous question, I’m wondering if that’s part of what has to be done is say, Lord, at the end of the day, it has to be you doing the work. Can you deposit in us through your spirit what we need? Because our money can only take us so far. And so I wonder if that posture is probably one to have is just silver and gold. We’ll never have enough anyway here on this earth for that. So it won’t work in the spiritual realm eventually. There has to be something deeper.

Westerners um tend to think that money answers all questions, That if there is a mission problem in a way, just send money. It’s going to resolve things, many of them. And I think this is just the connection between Western Christianity, mission and capitalism. And I do think that actually um a great deal of mission can happen without money.

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I mean, that’s why I started with the story of the Galileans, because not long after that conversation with Jesus, they meet the sick man on a beautiful gate in Acts chapter three. And of course they don’t have money to help him. And yet they share the good news. And so it’s, do we then work together in mission if we take the money question away?

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I do wonder sometimes that actually most of my Western friends, British friends, European friends, if money is off the table, they don’t have really much to give.

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right? Because that’s, that’s, that for them is mission. And really sometimes it’s an intentional pushing of them to say we don’t, let’s, we don’t need your money. Forget the money. We just want you to come and be here with us.

You’re not coming here to solve any of our problems. Just come be with us.

Come pray with us. All order. But I do think that

What things can happen out of that? Even just look at the whole basis model of missions. When I was pastoring a church, when I was preaching at a church on a reservation, I preached about mission and I preached about going out and bringing the gospel. And after the sermon, one of the elderly members of the church I was at, on the Navajo Nation came up to me, she was a boarding school survivor. And she said, that was a great sermon, pastor, thank you. She said, I can’t do that. I said, why?

She said, because I never graduated high school, let alone college, I can’t be a missionary. Now, you and I know, right, the right answer is no, God can use anyone. But you and I also know if she applied to any mission agency, she would not be accepted. Right? You don’t have enough education. You don’t have enough financial support. You don’t have enough, right? You can’t be a missionary. The institution would not allow her, except in some tokenism way.

And she knows that, she sees that. She’s like, yeah, I can’t be a part of this because there’s requirements, there’s educational levels and there’s all of these. And I would preach to our people all the time. I said, on the reservation, right, you have the experience regularly of praying for your daily bread.

I one half of one percent of all the missionaries you’ve ever met have never literally prayed for their daily bread. Why? Because their mission agencies won’t let them go until they’re fully funded.

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And even if there is a crisis, they have to have evacuation insurance to pull them out. So God forbid they die. This is what the institution does.

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I participate in a number of different missions, arenas. One of them is the funding arena. I sit on a couple of foundation boards and I see what funders are thinking about in Global Mission. Honestly, one of my goals is to help fund the Global South Church. That’s one of the reasons why I participate in these efforts. Not exclusively, also funding the Western movement as well, but ah there’s great potential.

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in the Western Church to help fuel missions globally. But a repeated message of, don’t need Westerners involved, which is a rising message, is going to sideline uh resources I think that could otherwise play a role. Plus, I just question how Kingdom-centric it is to say, you know, these people are the ones that we want to have playing the game and these people should be left out. How is that not a repeat?

of one of the big critiques of colonialism. Because it pretty much is the same kind of idea that this is for one group and not for others. I would just say overall, I think it’s really important for us to make sure that as we move forward that we don’t lose the potential of all hands on deck. And really understanding these issues of colonialism, both from a Western perspective and from a non-Western perspective.

I think are gonna make, it’s gonna make the entire effort of helping that one third of the world that don’t know Jesus learn about him. If we’re to have all hands on deck, we need to consider how most people interact with missions, at least at the start. And that is oftentimes through short term trips. But these trips have some pitfalls that we should try to avoid. I remember from Urbana 22, there was a speaker and her name is evading me right now. I know she’s from Compa.

Compa Ministry, is a student ministry, I believe, in Mexico and maybe in Latin America as well. And when she spoke, one of the things she mentioned was, she said, students, as you go, whether it’s to Mexico or other, you know, cross-cultural missions, opportunities internationally as well, keep in mind that you’re most likely not bringing the gospel for the first time here. And so she gave examples of how in Mexico, like we have a theologians, have missionaries, we have

hundreds of years of a church that has been serving Jesus faithfully here. And so I thought that was a good reminder to us there, like to not have that mentality that I’m gonna go save the world. You’re like, some places they’re doing okay. And if anything, we could learn from them. Well, especially in the short-term space, like when you’re doing short-term missions, mean, there was a professor, one of the…

Divinity schools who actually did like a comparison of where short-term mission trips go and like popular vacation spots and There was a quite an overlap, you know, not the people are going on vacation on mission trips But that there was accessibility, right? And so these are places that have established churches and whatnot and my friend Corey Greaves he runs uh

mending wings. uh It’s a ministry on the Yakima reservation in Washington. And he got tired of seeing short term trips come to the reservation, say the same 12 kids every week, and then walk away saying, Oh, look at what we did. And then at the end, you know, he’s like, maybe we got a building painted or something like that. So he started something called slam trips, students learning about missions.

And it was, hey, we will invite you to come and participate in what God is doing already, you know, on the reservation. And they kind of shook things up and it changed the posture. But I think that’s an important thing, Amir, to talk about. And that is that, um you know, the flip side of going is coming.

And there’s two aspects to the mission work. One is going and being sent. 26 57

The other is coming in a good way, which is something we practice at Urbana. We want to make sure we have the right posture when we enter into another culture. One, because, you know, as you said, you know, God has already probably been at work there. In fact, one of the Missy, the missions writers, missionary that impacted me a was a guy named Don Richardson. And he wrote a book called eternity in their hearts.

And it was this idea that God had already placed redemptive analogies in the cultures of people. And so his perspective was we go into culture and we try to find those redemptive analogies or hooks that are already there present in the culture by which we can help them connect to Christ to. And that was really powerful. But yeah, like I have friends in India that can trace their salvation all the way back to

the disciple Thomas who when he came to Chennai, uh you know, after the resurrection and it’s pretty, you know, that’s pretty amazing, right? Because they were somewhat isolated there, you know, there’s a real direct uh linkage. In fact, there was a point where the church of Thomas was uh my understanding of it is that they were being persecuted there and they actually wrote to Antioch.

and said, please send people here. And so settlers came and came and live with them to bolster their numbers in the church. um So pretty, pretty interesting there. But you’re sitting there going, wow, you know, I, can trace my salvation back to my great, great grandfather. When he first came to Christ, I don’t know the person that led him to Christ, but I can trace it back to that moment in time. And when he first immigrated to the United States, um

But to go back all the way to a disciple, wow, that’s pretty cool. is, yeah. And that’s India, right? mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Westerners really have to rethink how we think about ourselves as, especially those of us that are white, uh, you know, um, rethinking how we see ourselves globally. We’ve been going back to the continent of Africa, like it’s mentioned in Old Testament and New Testament as well. So, uh, I’ve been reading some articles as well where it’s kind of reclaiming that like, Hey,

we’ve had theologians come out of Africa long time ago. 100%. Yeah. Now there are unreached peoples and some people don’t even like that language because it’s kind of loaded in and of itself. But we know that there are places where the gospel is not as present, where the church is not as active, where there is a need for the gospel there. And those are different conditions. But my guess is that even if you went in there, you’d find that God is at work.

You know, we’re hearing from more and more, um, you know, communities, uh, where, people are literally having visions of Jesus. And then they’re going and seeking out missionaries and other people saying, this man, you know, came to me and told me he was Jesus and that I needed to find you to find out more about all this. And those kinds of stories are abounding all over.

and uh that’s pretty exciting. God is certainly at work in the world and we should be aware of that and join those efforts. But whether it’s short or long-term work, we need to constantly be pulled back to the fact that there are people out there who have no way of hearing the gospel of Christ. But is the missions agency model the primary way of sharing the gospel or is that a relatively new method? The story of mission agencies.

It’s 200 years old. Here in the UK, it’s William Carey, 1792, who initiates this. Christians have been migrating with the gospel for the past 2000 years. And so that’s part of what’s happening with African Christianity. It’s just Christians carrying their Bibles as they wander around the world.

who is very well known for his writings on cities, you know, talked about it used to be to reach the people groups of the world, we would go, you know, to visit this tribe, this country, et cetera. But now, with migration of populations around the world, his line was, God has brought the nations to the neighborhoods. So if you go to Queens and New York, there are 5,000 of everybody.

Now that’s not true of like every remote Amazonian tribe or something like that, but there really are people from all over the world in these big cities today. And so in a sense, the geography of the mission field in terms of the nations is a little more complex and heterogeneous than it used to be because you can’t assume that all the people of one particular ethnic group reside in a particular

geography. Some of them may reside there, others may reside in London, others may, you know, reside in Dubai, they might reside in New York, and so people are all over. So we can think about, for example, you know, reaching people in a particular country. There may be more complex scenarios today than there were in the past. So rather than, you know, you’re sort of Baptist missionary from rural Indiana learning the language of getting on a plane and going to Africa, it may be

that uh people are reaching Africans in New York City and then they’re going back and taking it to their own people. Or it may be the reverse of what we’re thinking, that people in Africa are partnering to plant churches in places like New York. They’re actually sending uh evangelical or missional resources to the First World. I’m aware of one church planting effort in London

There was a partnership between a church in Nairobi, Kenya and a church in uh Indiana. And they were partnering and they were trying to reach in part some of the Kenyan community in London. But the idea was it was going to be a multicultural church and it was designed to evangelize in a city where there’s very, very low levels of religiosity. So now some of these, you know, quote unquote, third world countries are much more Christian than these European countries. So.

As migration becomes more common and the mission field shifts westward, we need a way to prepare the next generation of Christians to share their faith naturally as they migrate around the world, particularly in Africa. There is an awareness now and there is a growing intention around how do we prepare our people in the continent for when they migrate.

there’s a realization that actually the African corporation is young. Africa is going to be, for lack of a better word, the labor capital of the world pretty soon. We see it image already. Israel managed to get thousands of young kids from Kenya and from Malawi to come and work in their farms last year.

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And again towards the end of last year, 2024, the government of Germany signed a contract with the government of Kenya to bring 250,000 young people from Kenya to work in Germany.

So there is a sense in which Africans are going to migrate even in larger numbers. African leaders in churches and mission agencies are beginning to say, let’s prepare our children for when they will migrate because chances are they will migrate. And the conversation is how do we prepare them while they’re in high school?

They will not migrate because they are being sent by mission agents, but they’re going to work in Germany or they’re going to work in the UK. Let’s give them an understanding of what’s going on that includes the story of the mission of God that as they migrate, possibly God has a hand in it and he’s taking them from here to wherever they go to share the good news with whoever they meet.

As we think about missions to unreached peoples, whether it’s through the traditional agency model or funding locals or migration around the world, one question continually arises. Should we do global missions or should we focus more here at home? If I were to be concerned about missions, and I’m not saying I’ve seen anything here, what is a domestic trend that you should watch out for?

One is the America first idea. And so I think skepticism towards uh foreign uh relations, if you will, and much more of a desire to focus at home, it is easy to see how that attitude could affect missions as well. People will say, look, I know that there’s problems in their countries. We have a lot of problems in this country.

And I think at a parallel that you could say, the one argument might be, I know there are a lot of people who aren’t Christian in other countries, but we have a lot of people in our town who are not yet, who are Christian. This is no longer a Christian nation. We have to be evangelizing our own people. We cannot just spend all of our money trying to reach the Sentinelese while Christianity is in decline in America and their entire group’s here, nobody’s trying to reach. And so I haven’t directly seen that.

quite clear, I’m not saying something I’ve seen, but it’s very easy to see how that attitude, if it is applied to missions, becomes much less favorable towards foreign missions and much more supportive of domestic. You know, I don’t think mission needs to be international. You can do backyard mission here. I think we emphasize going into all the nations before looking at, you know, that’s Matthew 28, right? And

But before we look at Acts 1 8, where Jesus tells them after He commands them, you know, to go, He says, stay until you’re filled with the Holy Spirit. And then He says, then become witnesses in your Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth. I think that’s what guarantees you that you don’t mess it up, right? Yeah, we all make mistakes again when we started talking. I told you, thank goodness for grace. But I think…

When we are led by the Holy Spirit, um when we hear where He tells us to go, um we are better for it. And I see that as a formula. Like when you bear witness in your Jerusalem, you can’t help but go to the next, because everybody’s like, oh, there’s somebody, know, there’s more, keep going. So I think the damage we do, again, because we have so much power, is that we decide we want to go wherever.

feels good to go or it’s like this exploring thing that we get to do. ah But that’s not how scripture tells us when we follow the Holy Spirit to reach the next thing right next to us, that that’s what guarantees that we build fruit and then doesn’t have to look like, you know, this huge missionaries work. What is for me comes out of the obedience that’s, you know, right in front of me.

And for me specifically, that means my family first, my kids first. That is it, right? And then everything else comes out of that. So for everybody, it’s going to be their Jerusalem first and the outworkings of that. um And I’m in that journey as a mom, like, OK, then my Judea is the friends that my kids bring, you know, and then it just keeps going like that. And it’s so beautiful when we get to follow Jesus. To the discussion of like,

Is it here locally or globally? I understand, I don’t think it’s either or, that of course there’s a lot of needs in any culture. But if that’s to hinder, ah it would be very naive to look at the American missionary, ah to the American need on the church right now and to look, just the sheer number of people that never heard the gospel in other parts of the world and to think that there’s no need. it’s part…

the way that we have received it is the way that we should go. And I think there’s a boldness coming out of, yes, the Brazilian church and also the church in China and the church in Asia, that they just don’t have the same questions of like, it’s not a question like, if we should go or not, like we are called to go and we are called to share where we are and we are called to take where Jesus is not. So I do think that um every culture has, which is natural, of their blind spots.

And I do wonder if this is becoming a potential blind spot. I’m sorry to be harsh, but I’m just coming from the outside and saying, looking from the outside, I think the American missionary movement ah needs to embrace the boulders of the simple call to go instead of the whole theological discussion of what we’re happening. We’re to share Jesus. Where we are, we are called to go. And that’s it. And let’s obey and go. And that’s where I’m coming from. And that’s a voice.

that I think I’m learning from the Asian church, I’m learning from the Brazilian church, and it’s an honor for us to have received. I would not be here if there were not Americans that said yes and obeyed and shared about Jesus with my grandmother. And I do want generations after, two or three after generations to say, because of some people said yes and because some people went, I’m a follower of Jesus now. So yeah, those are my thoughts. With so many different points of view, how do we come together and progress?

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How can we overcome the division among ourselves? You know, one of the hard things about answering some of these questions, Amir, is that we live in a very divided world. And that’s true in terms of how we do missions as well. There are so many different perspectives and takes on that.

Everybody thinks they’re right. And how do we bring all that together?

and find some kind of unity in it. And I think it’s great that there are different viewpoints on things. You one of the things is I’ve stepped into this role, I found there’s two major kind of views and missions. One is everything is missions. And the other is when everything is missions, nothing is missions. And I find both of them are right to a certain extent.

And so I’m always kind of in search of that overlap, you know, like, so what is that place where those things intersect? And is that really what mission is? But uh and even the word mission, right, is loaded with colonial, you know, baggage in it. And so I think there’s just a real interesting moment right now, especially because the majority church is in the global south.

And and so those of us that

in the West that have maybe a lot of money and a lot of infrastructure capacity that’s built up over time. We’re having to ask our we’re having to find out, OK, Lord, how do we serve now? uh What do we do with us? And the powers dynamics have totally changed. And um and how do we now be good stewards of that? And it’s really hard because especially in the Protestant tradition.

You know, protest is what is at the heart of it. And we splintered away because we wanted theological purity and we just kept splintering. And we see that people will splinter over mission methodologies, strategies, every single thing. And, you know, I love the fact that we’re trying to pursue the ideal and we’re trying to get it right. But boy, isn’t that what the Pharisees.

did too. They were probably the closest theologically to Jesus of any other group in that day. Their idol was holiness, but it led to self-righteousness in their pursuit of it. And they missed Jesus when he was there with them. Many of them did. Many of them followed too, right? But I think that’s kind of the thing that I’m always challenged with. mean, if I were going to write a biography about myself, it’d probably be, I was a teenage Pharisee.

because I was definitely this legalistic, arrogant, I know it all kind of person. The more that I’ve tried to emulate Jesus, the more I’ve just realized, wow, I need to be more generous in the way I treat others in the faith that may have some different views and realize that there help maybe the sparks that fly between us is like iron sharpening iron and we’re getting a better understanding of who Jesus is.

What we get in coming together is this bigger picture of God and who He is. And that it just makes us fall down and say, oh Lord, how do we serve you? And how do we get out of the way so that we can be your hands and feet to the people who don’t know you? That’s what it’s all about, right? Being the hands and feet of Jesus to the people who don’t know Him. And if we get nothing more out of these discussions, perhaps we will at least be reminded to remember the big picture.

We’re all working toward the same goal of sharing Christ with the world. And we’ll get there faster if we work together. But are we moving in the right direction? And how do we move forward? Well,

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Polyphonic, Mission After Empire is hosted by me, Imer Santiago, and produced by Missile Nexus and Arrival Creative. Thanks for listening.