Rich, Poor and Missions

by Jon Bonk

The above topic is my nomination for a course constituting a part of the academic frontier in missiology. Let me proceed to describe the course as it has been carried on here in Winnipeg.

The above topic is my nomination for a course constituting a part of the academic frontier in missiology. Let me proceed to describe the course as it has been carried on here in Winnipeg.

The course consists of a survey and application of biblical teaching on the stewardship of money and possessions, with special reference to the historically unprecedented disparity between wealthy countries of the North and poor countries of the South. We look at the ramifications of this for missionaries going from the North to the South.

The course has three objectives:

1. To Inform. Our personal life styles as missionaries from the North are examined and evaluated in the context of global distributions of wealth and resources. We attempt to achieve some understanding of historical and contemporary factors (social, cultural, ideological, political, etc) contributing to this growing disparity. We do a critical self-analysis because many Christian workers seem to operate on the assumption that life consists in the abundance of material possessions,

2. To challenge. Biblical teachings on the stewardship of money and possessions is then surveyed and applied in light of the fact that missionaries from the North must number themselves among the rich of this world.

3. To change. With a knowledge of at least some of the more obvious data as a background to biblical teaching on the relationships that should appertain between rich Christians and the poor, each participant is encouraged to discover and implement practical answers to the question, "How should I then live?"

This course emerged as a result of many factors: my 10 formative years of life in Ethiopia as the son of Canadian missionaries; my experience as a missionary in Ethiopia during the mid-1970s revolution; a growing conviction that we have often not considered carefully the impact of our affluence upon our effectiveness as mediums of the message that "Christ for our sakes became poor,, that we through his poverty might be rich"; extensive reading on the subject over the past five years; and doctoral research that created a heightened awareness of the struggle of 19th century missionaries from the North in this regard.

An excerpt from a letter written by a 19th century Welsh missionary poignantly illustrates the need for this course. After two years of labor in Central Africa, David Picton Jones discovered that his employees from Zanzibar were winning converts to Islam while he himself was barren. As he lamented to the LMS Secretary:

…, it is a remarkable fact that these Zanzibar men have had far more influence over the natives than we have ever had-in many little things they imitate them, they follow their customs, adopt their ideas, imitate their dress, sing their songs, and…speak their language. I can only account for this by the fact that the (Muslims) live amongst them in a simple manner like themselves, inter-marry with them, and to some extent partake of their notions. Our life, on the other hand…is {^r above them, and we are surrounded by things entirely beyond their reach. The consequence is, that they despair of trying to follow us, – indeed they cannot follow us , . , I have found by experience that they are exceedingly ready to imitate anything within their power…and! feel sure in my own mind, if we were to bring ourselves nearer their own level … we would gradually raise them to a higher standard…As it is they have nothing to lay hold of, they despair of ever becoming like us, they regard us as being of another order, and they believe that our religion, however well adapted to us, is to them altogether unsuitable. When I talk to them of (God), and that we are His children, they will answer coolly, pointing to the wonderful things in and about our house – you are His children indeed, (Jones to Thompson, December 2, 1884, Council for World Mission Archives, SOAS, London),

Lectures, assigned reading, class discussion, research projects, audio-visual presentations, and the preparation by students of special reports are among the means utilized to insure the achievement of course objectives. Students are provided with a rather extensive bibliography of materials relating to the subject, and are required to read from a broad range of sources-Christian and non-Christian. Among the required sources are:

—Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
—David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators
—Miriam Adeney, God’s Foreign Policy
—Harvie Conn, Bible Study on World Evangelization and the Simple Lifestyle
—Piero Gheddo, Why is the Third World Poor?
—William Byron (ed.), The Causes of World Hunger
—P, T, Bauer, Equality, The Third World and Economic Delusion
—Paul Harrison, Inside the Third World
—Jules Henry, Culture Against Man
—Stewart and Newen, Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness

The lives and the writings of missionaries from the North who have grappled in a significant way with the problem of their affluence in the context of the South are also studied. Among them are Roberto De Nobili, James Gilmour, Daniel Johnson Fleming, Mother Teresa, and Bruce Olson. Films and other audio-visual presentations are readily available here in Canada through government sources and mission agencies such as the Mennonite Central Committee.

I would be very interested in corresponding with any who have similar concerns.

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