What Missions Can Learn from the Peace Corps

by Robert Moffitt

The average American university student believes Christian missionary service is obsolete, paternal and culturally alien. Conversely, on-campus recruiters tell him that the Peace Corps provides opportunity for service which is relevant, fraternal, and culturally accordant. In the resulting conflict, many missionary-oriented youths are faced with the dilemma, missions or Peace Corps?

The average American university student believes Christian missionary service is obsolete, paternal and culturally alien. Conversely, on-campus recruiters tell him that the Peace Corps provides opportunity for service which is relevant, fraternal, and culturally accordant. In the resulting conflict, many missionary-oriented youths are faced with the dilemma, missions or Peace Corps?

Not long ago I was a missionary-oriented youth faced with this problem. I chose the Peace Corps. My experience was positive and I often encourage Christian young people to take advantage of this type of volunteer service. Yet, more than ever, I am convinced of a gigantic need to share the Gospel cross-culturally to an extent not possible in a Peace Corps-like context.

I am not an analyst of missions’ methods, but I am a missions enthusiast. Through participation and observation I have sampled both the Peace Corps and missions. Each could learn from the other. Because of my commitment to the Great Commission, I am specifically concerned that missions look and profit from a comparison of itself with successful Peace Corps methods.

In spite of admitted faults, the Peace Corps presents an admirable image to the intelligent and socially-concerned individual. True or not, missions has created a stereotype of the kind described by Pearl S. Buck and James Michener. Students hear that missionary activity is paternalistic, authoritarian, colonialistic, and motivated by "white man’s burden" mentalities. They know such an approach in today’s nationalistic world is unacceptable. They learn from history and sociology courses; as well as from contact with international students, that the Christian missionary and his task are unpopular.

I recently heard an African student tell a group of American young people of his impression of missionaries. He knew them as white people who talked of love and brotherhood, but who kept the "natives" out of their houses because they didn’t want dirty feet on their clean rugs.

Since returning to the United States I have shared my vision for missions with many high school and college groups, and I find it is the exceptional student who has not dismissed missions as an option intelligent people can still make. "Can’t the national Christian communicate the Gospel better than the missionary?" they ask. "Don’t missionaries find it difficult to identify with the culture while national believers are already part of it? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to use nationals who have no language and cultural barriers to overcome? And what about the anti-white, anti-American slogans that appear daily in the news media? How effective can a white American be if his race and nationality create suspicion and hate?"

Furthermore, it is common knowledge that many mission boards determine needs from missionary reports rather than considering national ideas of need. The Peace Corps freely informs volunteers that the needs it speaks of are not born of Peace Corps imagination but are established by host countries.

Job descriptions in missions recruitment are too often ambiguous. For example, I read recently a promotional magazine requesting "7 couples for evangelism, 8 couples with a burden and calling for evangelism among Muslims, 1 teacher for . . . . academy."

Not so the Peace Corps! It recognizes a direct relationship between a student’s ability to meet a specific need and his response. Prospective volunteers therefore are presented with specific proposals. For example, as a college graduate with a science-education major, I was approached with an offer to teach high school science in a specific African country. At the same time I was given information about the country, about living conditions there, and told what would be expected of me as a volunteer.

Without well-defined job descriptions it is impossible to know what qualifications are needed to meet field requirements. The inability to look intelligently at one’s potential to cope with a projected task is highly frustrating. Without adequate information neither the candidate nor the sending agency has a basis on which to predict success.

Most mission societies place emphasis on life-time or vocational commitment rather than short-term service. Young people are generally unwilling to sign for long terms-especially when needs are nebulously defined. Missionary service is often such an unknown that recruits have little basis for predicting success. Long-term commitment is simply too big a gamble.

A Peace Corps term is set at two years. Volunteers, I know, say two years is enough to identify real needs and to make a genuine contribution. Some mission leaders feel that mission programs cannot be built on short-term service. Significantly, over half of all returned Peace Corps volunteers have changed vocational plans while in service. Would it be presumptuous to anticipate similar changes with short-term missionaries?

Missionaries are often very poorly prepared for service in a foreign culture. Courses given in Bible schools and seminaries are general. Specific cultural situations are treated superficially. I interviewed several dozen missionaries on my return trip. Very few had a pre-field, cross-cultural background. Except for former missionary children, even fewer had any area studies before their service. Most were dispatched to their post with no more preparation than the average tourist. In addition, these missionaries had to pursue what little orientation was required by their society at their own expense.

Because of rapidly rising sophistication in developing areas of volunteer service, the Peace Corps feels a thorough background in politics, culture, and economics of the host country is imperative. As a result recruits are required to take specific area studies and job preparation-at Peace Corps expense. As much as $10,000 per volunteer may be spent for the standard three-month orientation. Though mission societies do not have that kind of money, it is clear that the Peace Corps feels preparation has a great deal to do with volunteer success.

Dr. Marvin Mayers, associate professor of anthropology at Wheaton College and Graduate School, has reported the institution of a new screening and orientation system for volunteers in Wheaton’s summer Student Missions Project. Because of this screening and orientation, he said that the number of positive summer experiences has increased from 50 percent to as much as 96 percent-a significant indication of the value in relevant preparation.

The Peace Corps requires volunteers to live at levels of nationals who hold similar occupations. Mission boards generally lack living standard policies. As a result a majority of missionaries live at levels their national counterparts can never hope to reach. Missionaries freely admitted to me that upon arrival in the host country they expected to live at far lower standards. Because of mission-provided housing and the value of the American dollar, however, they lived better than they had thought possible. Few of these missionaries expressed a willingness to step down to previously-anticipated living levels.

I discovered that the missionaries most defensive about high standards of living were those with them. At one location in India, not one missionary I contacted felt that their standard of living was a serious barrier between themselves and nationals. To check, I asked nationals which barriers they considered significant. Almost unanimously, they felt that the standard of living was the most significant barrier.

The success of the Peace Corps projects is measured largely in intangibles. One of these is the ability to be, as much as possible, a fully participating member of the adopted community. Numbers of missionaries I met, however, made a practice of withholding their membership from the national church-the very church with which they were working. Others insisted on tithing outside the national church. Some did so even when a serious financial crisis existed. Though there may be good arguments for such policies, nationals do not readily interpret such behavior as a genuine desire to participate in the life of the community.

Another Peace Corps yardstick is the ability to approach and solve problems on a group basis as equals, i.e., volunteer with national and each with equal voice. Missionaries are prone to set themselves up as mini-kings who direct or dictate rather than attempt to engage local peoples in problem solving. I observed this as especially true with veteran missionaries who had been responsible for development of institutional projects. For these missionaries, a capable national was most often one who would do things exactly as the missionary. Such a person, even in one’s own culture, is rare indeed. Foreign control, whether direct administrative or indirect financial, is highly offensive to the legitimate pride of nationalistic peoples.

In America we often judge a missionary by how many projects he has conceived, directed, and completed. The Peace Corps judges a volunteer by how successful he is in promoting national responsibility and independence. I feel the basic problem in missions evaluation is the standard. It is most often ours, the missionary’s or another missionary’s, rather than the national’s. The Peace Corps’ standards are nationals’ standards.

Implied in the success of the Peace Corps is the use of effective cross-cultural tools. For missions this implication demands an honest study, and implementation of any such tools relevant to the task of evangelism. There is much to be done. Can the muscles which strengthen Peace Corps programming also flex for missions?

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