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Missions, like anything involving large numbers of people, goes through cycles or trends. In this letter, we reflect on a the one such trend and its unfortunate consequences for  the mission enterprise in Chad.  

Sometime back in the 70’s or 80’s, missiologists observed that all the low hanging fruit of Christendom in South America, Oceana, and sub-Saharan Africa had been picked, while huge swaths of mostly Muslim and Buddhist territory in Asia remained completely “unreached.” More distressingly, they also noted that the vast majority of missionaries still preferred to work in the amiable environs of “reached” areas. Thus began a seismic shift in the world of missions away from the traditional fields of ministry and towards these very difficult areas of the world. The admirable goal was nothing less than to see the Great Commission achieved in its entirety.

Now, 30 years later, if our observations of missionary work in Chad are anything to go by, the shift is complete. Virtually every new missionary to Chad waltzes off to the Muslim part of the country. With the exception of a few denominational missionaries working with the Baptist and Grace Brethren churches, no new missionaries have come to work with the “reached” tribes in the south of Chad in well over a decade.

This makes us, as missionaries to a “reached” people group wonder if it isn’t time for the pendulum to swing back. In hundreds of under-developed, marginalized tribes of Africa where churches already exist in some form (like the Kwong), the western missionary still has much to offer. Bible translation and discipleship would certainly top the list, but there are other more subtle, but no less important contributions he or she can make. Westerners bring organizational skills, and initiative which these churches desperately need. They frequently have the opportunity, as we have had, of setting before these churches by word and deed a vision of spirituality and a high standard of seriousness which they might never “discover” on their own, but which is essential to their long-term survival. And an outsider is virtually the only person who can speak with a prophetic voice to the enslavements of tradition and politicking which frequently strangle these tribal churches. All this and much more we have been able to offer to the 20-odd Kwong congregations during these past 19 years.

But what about the Muslim tribes our colleagues are going to? If even 1 or 2 congregations comparable to our pre-Vanderkooi Kwong churches are established among them, it will be a stunning achievement. But here is the irony: success would make those tribes “reached” to the exactly the same degree as many non-Muslim tribes which mission leaders do not regard as a priority today. Do they really anticipate leaving these new churches to fend for themselves like all the other “reached” people groups? We hope not. It would be a death sentence. We have no doubt, for instance,  that if we never came to this “reached” people group, the Kwong protestant church would disappear by 2030 with the death of the 4 or 5 men who held the whole thing together. Now the prognosis is much better – but will it last 200 years? Still hard to say. But ours is the comparatively easy case. Dare we imagine what it will take for a similar church in a Muslim context to endure even 20 years? We’d better. Put another way, we forget at our peril that cathedrals take a very long time to build.

This leads us to another question we ask ourselves: are all the young people we see going to unreached people groups really cut out for it? We can’t help but wonder whether some of them might be more suited in gifting and temperament to a “reached” context. We wonder whether the missiological juggernaut for unreached people groups has given these tender missionary candidates the erroneous impression that the only “real” missionary is the one who goes incognito into some “closed” North African or central Asian country and bangs his head up against the wall of a recalcitrant Islamic society. One wonders whether there might be a subliminal feeling that raising support is hard enough as it is, and that if they can’t make a sensational “unreached” pitch, they might as well forget it. But the truth be told, it takes a very special person to work in a Muslim or Buddhist context, and we don’t do our young people a favor to give them such a one-sided view of missions.

Will the pendulum swing back? We certainly hope so. We have found unspeakable satisfaction in the lifelong task of shaping the Kwong church into something we can present with pride (in the good sense) to Christ, and we heartily wish the same joy for another generation of young missionaries.

A caveat for the front page

We made the case in our front page essay for a new generation of missionaries to think about “reached” people groups. But there is a little caveat: many reached people groups don’t WANT a white missionary. Then there are others which do, but he is useful to them only as a chauffeur and as a way of tapping into western money. They might make a pretense of welcoming him, but they would never accord him any more than token ecclesiastical authority, nor would they countenance his continued presence if he threatens their vested interests or ecclesiastical traditions. None of this is strange – we would do the same in the West under similar circumstances. What is worth noting, though, is that this is the case (in Chad at least) for those tribes which have the longest history of missionary involvement, and/or have educated, urban populations – in other words, precisely those tribes which have the least need of a missionary. It is for this reason that we were careful to make our case only for those “under-developed, marginalized tribes” - which is to say people groups like the Kwong.