Category: Education

Learning in Four Dimensions

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The following is a presentation that I did years ago for learning cognitively, affectively, behaviorally, and spiritually. It is loosely based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning. Although it is old, I still don’t have too much of a desire to update it. I think it is still pretty valid.

A major concern I have is that in the church there is often a lack of desire to integrate the different learning modes (head, heart, hands, habit) in discipleship. Even at seminary, we only focused on the cognitive side.

Integrative Steps of Learning from Robert Munson

What is the Best Way to Teach Theology in Church?

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I have been reading “Character Theology: Engaging God Through His Cast of Characters,” by Tom Steffen and Ray Neu. I hope to have a review done in a couple of weeks. However, I was reading a passage that got me thinking:

“Recall Charles Hodge’s perspective that the Bible is a “store-house of facts” and “the duty of the Christian theologian is to ascertain, collect, and combine all the facts which God has revealed concerning himself and our relation to Him.” We are in the process of jettisoning some of this baggage…”

<Steffen, Tom; Neu, Ray. Character Theology: Engaging God through His Cast of Characters (p. 23). Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.>

I do have to admit that Charles Hodge has long been one of the great examples of who I don’t want to be as a minister and theologian. But on a practical level, I do find myself drifting into a focus on “facts.” The section of the book where this quote is speaks of Steffen and Neu struggling with the fascination with faith and abstractions.

This reminds me of an experience pretty early in my mission work in the Philippines. I was visiting a Christian and Missionary Alliance church (or as it is known in the Philippines, “CAMACOP”). I have never been a formal member of that denomination, but had attended churches this denomination for several years of my life. A friend had invited me to speak at his church. I was invited to sit in on the Adult Sunday School. It was an interesting experience. Sunday School is a hard-sell in the Philippines, so I was impressed by the high percentage of adults who attended.

The language of the Sunday School class was Ilocano (if I remember right… although it could have been Kankana-ey). I did not know the language beyond a few words. Despite this, I was able to follow along in much of this. Much of this was because the training was being done in some rather heavy doctrines. The doctrinal aspects were, unsurprisingly, very jargon-driven. Being trained a fair bit in fundamentalist theology, I knew the words and realized that the adults were dealing with some fairly heavy theology.

I was a bit jealous. My own denomination (Southern Baptist) tends to be rather theologically “light weight.” If anything, theology is given even less importance in the Philippine SB churches than those in the US. So why was it that a denomination that was born out of the desire to be more practically focused in terms of church and ministry being so dedicated to indoctrination of, well… doctrine.

Over the years I have thought about that a fair bit, and have had some questions regarding this.

#1. Is focusing on doctrine such a good thing in Sunday School? Perhaps it is not out of a desire for adults to grow in their relationship with God, but a fear that their church plants may veer away from their parent churches in the US. Perhaps they believe that it is okay for US churches to wrestle with theology and doctrine, but mission churches should just be trained in the end results.

#2. Theology is a reflective process, so isn’t simply teaching doctrine short-circuiting the process of real growth? Charles Hodge, in another well-known quote, stated that he came to the conclusion that (Reformed) theologians before him pretty much got everything figured out, and so his job is to collect and disseminate this compendium of knowledge to the next generation. (I am giving my own take on the quote… I don’t have it in front of me.) But theology is supposed to change since it serves as a bridge between God’s revelation and our changing setting. As long as our setting changes, as well as the questions we have, theology must change. Focusing on indoctrination can leave the adults ill-equipped to deal with changes of circumstances and settings.

#3. Related to the last, does the theology and doctrines of the US churches express God’s character, actions, and interaction with us with the language, categories, and metaphors that are most suitable for the Philippine Highlands? It certainly seems unlikely.

#4. Is the best way to train people theologically through written instruction and lecture? Maybe it is through group interactions with a facilitator wrestling with lived experiences.

#5. While the area where this church exists is in a place of high literacy, perhaps a greater focus on story would be better. In that area, the traditional ethical system is/was “lawa at inayan.” This means something like “curses and duties.” However, it is essentially an ethical system that is built on stories and transferred to the next generation through stories. Perhaps a better way to instruct in theology is not to teach new terms that label abstract categories, but to embrace stories (primarily but not exclusively Biblical stories). Such a theology may naturalize better than labels. They may also be more easy to apply to life situations better.

Anyway, I am not complaining about the church in the story. I was impressed by their dedication to training up their adults— a rare thing in churches worldwide. I just feel that there may be a better way.

Holistic Training in Ministry

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I am planning to teach a course on “Foundations of Holistic Ministry” this coming semester at Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary.

This got me to think about a presentation that my wife and I did years ago on integrative learning. It is based (loosely) on Bloom’s Taxonomy, and looks at three learning domains:

-Cognitive domain

-Affective domain

-Behavioral domain

Bloom had taken each of those domains and identified them as having steps from the most basic to higher levels of learning. My wife and I played around with these a bit. Then we theorized what a “Spiritual domain” of learning might look like with something akin to Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The reason is that the goal of holistic training is to bring these up the steps together. The following is the presentation we did. Hopefully when I use it in my class I will find reasons to improve it.

https://www.slideserve.com/RMunson286/integrative-steps-of-learning-in-christian-ministry

https://www.slideserve.com/RMunson286/integrative-steps-of-learning-in-christian-ministry

Contemporary Issues in Missions— Part Two

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Continuation of Part One. I am speaking of issues to deal with in a class I will be teaching in a couple of weeks.

So what are very relevant issues that are contemporary and worth focusing on? This is only an eight-week course, and the final two weeks are for students to share a contemporary issue they choose to research and share. That means that I choose six topics.

#1. The Challenges to “4-F Missionaries.” This is a term that I use for “Foreign, Full-time, Fully funded, Forever” missionaries. The challenges on each of these descriptors have been around for awhile. The challenges make us rethink who is a missionary and who is not. They challenge our traditional view of ‘missionary calling.’ But with the pandemic, the challenges have grown. Because of some recent changes, I am only spending half of my time in the Philippines instead of full-time. Despite that I am teaching in the Philippines full-time, through online teaching. Now suppose I spent all of my time outside of the Philippines, could I be thought of as a full-time missionary to the Philippines if I am ministering online to those in the Philippines?

These concerns have been around from the beginning even if we did not always focus on them. Many people consider Paul to be the greatest missionary of all time (I feel like we are would need a God’s-eye view to make such a judgment). Paul was not fully-funded. Paul was not foreign… most of those he ministered to were Hellenized people of a fairly similar culture to himself. He arguable was not even full-time. He ministered full-time, but he spent considerable time in Antioch between mission trips, and spent several years in Ephesus as well. And frankly, he was a good churchplanter, but the thing that makes him ‘great’ in terms of missions was the influence he exerted on the history of the church through his writings. In other words, his greatest influence in terms of missions on church history was in ministry work that was away from where he was actually resided. It may be an old issue… but it is more relevant than ever.

#2. Honor and Shame Missions. This has been a big issue for some years now. However, it seems to be going mainstream and sneaking into theological development. I have also been wondering whether we need to look at other paradigms of missions and theology as well. For example, Robert Strauss has spoken of Justice cultures, Honor cultures, Reciprocity cultures, and Harmony cultures. Is there a place for all four to provide paradigms for theological and missiological development? Anyway, in the Philippines, there still is a tendency to define “good theology” is what comes from America. Rethinking theology and missions in a new setting needs to be driven home.

#3. Localization of Theology. Bosch and Hiebert and others have spoken of Self-theologizing of the local church. This is still thought of as controversial by many (most?) but it is starting to go mainstream. But that has led to several concerns: What is GOOD local theology? How does one DO local theology? How does one identify FLAWED or heterodox theology?

#4. Missionary Member Care. Okay, I have to explain this one. Missionary Member Care is NOT NEW. But in New Sending Countries such as the Philippines it is still pretty new. I remember a few years ago leading a training in missionary member care where my host warned the audience here in the Philippines that what I would be sharing was “controversial.” I did not consider this as remotely controversial. However, I have heard some missionaries and church leaders speaking of mission work as suffering. There is suffering in missions, but some seemed to think that missions real if there is suffering, and missionaries who struggle are “Weak” and perhaps “not truly called to serve God.” In the US, MMC is old news, but it is still being developed here in Asia.

#5. Shift to Great Urban Centers. For a long time it was cutting edge to talk about UPG (unreached people groups) or UUPGs (unreached and unengaged people groups). There are still those who think of it as cutting edge. However, missions is changing fast, and urban ministry is becoming central in missions. This urban ministry shows itself in dealing with multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-racial settings and people where UPG just doesn’t make a lot of sense. And with the huge growth of certain cities (Great Urban Centers, GUCs). If one likes Ralph Winter’s Three Wave model for Protestant Missions, it could be argued that the GUCs define a fourth wave.

#6. Orality Movement. Bible Storying from New Tribes, and other systems, have been with us for some time, acknowledging that there are groups that cannot read. However, in more recent times, the movement has grown and transformed. Orality is also about how we learn, dealing with cultures and sub-cultures that CAN read but DON’T or WON’T, or who learn better through oral processes. It has also moved into things such as Bible translation and theological education. In other words, Orality is not simply a tool, but but from hermeneutics, to pedagogy, to visual and performance arts, it is becoming a major field with the potential for great impact in all parts of the world.

Obviously these are only a few… and perhaps not the best. Hopefully, my students will then choose even better issues for their own presentations.

Contemporary Issues in Missions– Part One

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I will be teaching a class called “Contemporary Issues in Missions” at Asia Graduate Theological Seminary (ABGTS). Although I teach a lot of missions, and have been involved in a few types of missions, that doesn’t mean that I am on the cutting edge of the missions movement. For a number of years I had relied (at least on the undergraduate level) upon two books that spoke of trends and issues of recent years in missions:

Stan Guthrie Missions in the Third Millenium: 21 Key Trends for the 21st Century, Cumbria, UK: Paternoster Press, 2000.

James Engel and William Dyrness, Changing the Mind of Missions: Where Have We Gone Wrong? Downer’s Grove, IL:

InterVarsity Press, 2000.

The problem of each is that they were published 22 years ago (and researched and written before that). As such, some of the issues are not really issues anymore.

For example, one of the issues was “The Southern Shift of the Church.” Christianity has been growing strongly in Africa, Asia, South America and more. The “Old Sending Countries” of North America and Europe are sending out less missionaries, and the church in these places are seen as a bit stagnant (or worse). “New Sending Countries” have been taking up the slack and are gaining more influence worldwide. When I came to the Philippines in 2004, some of the wonder of this transition was still felt. American missionaries still had a strong presence but many were in the process of leaving. Many Philippine Christians were wondering what the future would hold. Although there were Filipinos who were going out to do missions— it was a great novelty.

But things have changed. I used to use Charles Kraft’s book on Cultural Anthropology for ABGTS. I felt pretty good about that until one year when my class (made up of students from Samoa, Myanmar, and the Philippines) started asking me why the book would say this and that. I found myself repeating myself. I would end up saying something like this… “Well, Kraft was writing this back decades ago for students in the United States who pretty much don’t understand Christianity in terms of other cultures.” The more I was explaining this, I began to realize that I should have let the textbook go (we use textbooks longer in the Philippines than in some countries). Even though Kraft was trying to break down biases that needed to be broken down, But these students don’t have these biases. And today, Filipinos that I talk to feel nothing strange about missionaries being Filipino, Asian, African or anything else. While there still is a lingering tendency to think that foreign religious leaders are a bit more experts than local leaders (a deeply flawed assumption— I stifle a scream every time someone I talk to express a theological opinion and then ‘prooftext’ their belief by quoting John MacArthur or some other self-styled expert). But even that is SLOWLY fading.

This doesn’t make the book by Guthrie useless, or the book by Engel and Dyrness. It is a snapshot of issues. It is like looking back at the missionary conferences of the IMC, WCC, and Lausanne movements. They identify the concerns and values of the time. I have the book “Understanding Christian Missions” by J. Herbert Kane from the late 70s. It deals with issues of the “Three Worlds” (first, second, and third world countries), the Cold War, and the independence movements that were removing the shackles of colonial powers. There is value in studying these… but the issues of the these different times disappear, are replaced, or morph.

Part 2 will look at the topics I am going to have in the class.

Ivory Tower With Muddy Footprints

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I teach at two seminaries, and soon I will probably be teaching with another school soon. This puts me firmly in the world of the “Ivory Tower”— institutions that are seen within the broader church culture as out of touch with the ‘real world’ and church life. On the other hand, I teach in the more practical fields in academia— Christian Missions and Pastoral Care. Additionally, I have been involved in both missions ministry and pastoral care ministry. It is true, however, as I get older, more and more of my practical work is within the school setting— teaching, mentoring, and supervising.

There is value to the Ivory Tower— in its proper context.

But not all feel that way. In Evangelism, the story of the fishermen is often used to look down on the the ‘armchair experts.’ People write about fishing… go to ‘fishing conferences’… act as fishing consultants—- however, they don’t actually go fishing. With this story… the members of the ivory tower are seen as out of touch intellectualizers. Can this happen? Of course.

I started reading an article this week that was talking about the differences between the more conservative views of the common members of a certain denomination versus the ummm… less conservative views of the academicians of his denomination (it is far too much of a stretch to suggest that the term ‘liberal’ applied to anyone in his denomination). It seemed pretty clear that the writer was unhappy that the professors and theological writers in his denomination were “out of touch” with the broader church.

I think that is a bit of an error, however.

First… Multiple perspectives are needed for dialogue. And dialogue is how we learn. We don’t tend to learn in an “echo chamber.” The value is in dialogue. In other words, we don’t need a Magisterium of out of touch dogmatists telling the churches what is true and what is false. We also don’t need a ‘Primitive Church’ in which specialists are denied a role in the church body.

Everyone benefits from challenges. We get inundated by perspectives from all different sources. Some of these perspectives become popular. Popular doesn’t necessarily mean true. It is popular in some denominations to connect salvation to the Sinner’s Prayer. Others may link it to Baptism, or to Confirmation, or to church membership. All of these perspectives have problems regardless of how ingrained they may be in the church. We gain from have our untested beliefs…. well… tested.

Dialogue is valuable between the local churches and the seminary. A few years ago the issue came up as to whether the term “bishop” could be used by Baptist churches in the Philippines. Of course, my initial response was a resounding “NO!!!” The Baptist tradition sees itself as tying its Ecclesiology to the first century church. The term that became “bishop” was not a special office above other church leaders in the early church. But of course, one can’t stop there. One must remember that we cannot ignore 2000 years of the church. The church exists in 4 dimensions. The input of the Universal Church should not be ignored. As such, the term ‘bishop’ has developed as a separate role in hierarchal churches and we cannot act as if that hasn’t happened. (Two millennia of church history is the reason that I don’t call missionaries “apostles.” The term ‘apostle’ has changed so much over two millennia so that we simply cannot use the term as it was used in the first century AD without confusion.) Additionally, we have to take seriously the context. In the Philippines the term ‘bishop’ is shaped by the Roman Catholic church. And some government rules are structured around that understanding. It actually causes some problems in interacting with the government as a denomination if we don’t have someone with the title of bishop, even if doing so is in some ways a ‘useful fiction.’ On the other hand, there has become a cottage industry of having organizations that basically grant the title of ‘bishop’ to those seeking status above their denominational peers is a separate concern. Further, some (all?) in our denomination who seek that title are probably doing so for prestige—very much an worthy goal. (Of course I can’t say that my motives for seeking a doctorate were fully above reproach.) Anyway, we gain by many voices— academic, ministerial, clerical, laity— that may be needed to consider what is best with godly wisdom.

Second, ALL Christians are theologians on some level. Recently listened to a presentation by Philippine theologian, Dr. Honorina Lacquian. She quoted Stanley Grenz as far as five classes of theologians. They are:

—Folk

—Lay

—Ministerial

—Professional

—Academic

(Grenz “Who Needs Theology”)

Lacquian stated, and I think that in this she was agreeing with Grenz, the goal is to move people away from the ends. We want less “Folk Theologians”— those who pick up different thoughts and ideas piecemeal from all sorts of sources with limited reflection and rigor. Additionally, we need less of the “Academic Theologians.” These are the types that don’t leave the Ivory Tower much… but reflect on theology disconnected from most of the church.

I think there is a place for the Ivory Towers of Religious Academia. However, the Ivory Towers should be full of muddy footprints. The inhabitants of the structures of academia should enter practical ministry and the public domain and interact with the church and its people at all levels. Additionally, Lay Theologians and Ministerial Theologians should be welcomed into these same structures to learn, challenge, and dialogue.

Muddy shoes in the ivory tower is not a sign of impurity or of the mundane or banal. Rather, they demonstrate a vibrancy that comes from interaction with the bigger world.

Years ago I visited a friend’s house. He was a banker and his house, though not palatial, certainly was impressive. The inside of the house was all white walls and white marble. It impressed, but was also rather cold. Then we went into the living room. There was a green throw rug in the center of this ivory-colored room. Bright colored toys were strewn about. In the center of the rug sat his 2-year old son playing with the mom. My friend apologized for the mess. He needn’t have done this. It was the most beautiful room in the house.

Wicked Missions

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I first heard the terms “Wicked Learning Environment” versus “Kind Learning Environment” in an interesting little Youtube video a few days ago on a channel called “Curious Tangents.” Then only a yesterday it came up again when talking to a cousin of mine in the context of the work of Daniel Kahneman (in his book, Thinking Fast as Slow). I decided to look into it a bit more. As far as I can see, the terms were developed by Emre Soyer and Hogarth.

Conceptually, it is quite simple. A “Kind Learning Environment” (KLE) is one in which one’s experience (one could also say training in all of its flavors) can be considered reliable in preparing one for future activity in that environment. A “Wicked Learning Environment” (WLE) is one in which one’ experience must be recognized as unreliable in preparing one for future activity in that environment.

Generally, Kind environments (or domains) are ones where the rules don’t change or the object of study does not change. Chess rules don’t change (as most sports don’t change, or change very slowly), so training and experience in chess in the past will be informative in the future. Human anatomy doesn’t change so training in human anatomy will remain helpful for those fields of work that have to deal with that domain.

This is not to say that there is no need for continuing education in Kind domains. Things still change, but even then, the changes can be understood as specific “tweaks” to the foundation of learning rather than the need to throw things out.

Wicked domains are those where the rules keep changing (software design) or the object studied is constantly changing (like business). Ones past competence is not only necessarily a good indicator of future performance. And further, it is possible that the experiences and lessons one has gained from the past may be an impediment for success in the future.

With this in mind, Christian Missions is VERY WICKED. First, Christian Missions is heavily contextual in terms of ministry setting and time. Things change over time. What is needed in missions in 2020 is not what was needed in 1820 or 620. Settings vary geographically and culturally with varying needs. Based on this alone, if a person had 20 years of experience in Setting A as a missionary, there is no certainty that this experience will be helpful in Setting B.

Second, Christian Missions has different goals. While some (like McGavran or Winter) saw this in terms of evangelism and churchplanting, other goals are almost always realistic, whether it is community development, relief ministry, leadership development and more. And even if one believed that evangelism and churchplanting were the only goals, the specific, strategies to do this may vary greatly in terms of time and place.

Third, the factors that make experience unreliable as a predictor of success is even more true of formal education in missions. Much of missions education is limited to only certain goals, utilizing only certain systems of missions (like 4F — foreign, full-time, fully-financed, forever— missions), that is applicable in only certain places. Add to that, the missions training was probably developed by older missionaries that had developed their knowledge base from their experiences from decades before, and you have a real problem.

Does this mean that formal education and experience has no value? NO. However, one must more consciously enter every mission situation as a learner. At the point where one concludes that one has it all figured out, we are starting down the wrong road. As Daniel Kahneman notes in the book I referenced above, we tend to use our own experiences as reality— that is just the way it is. It it may be that that WAS just the way it was at that point, in that place, under those circumstances.

Personally, I think this is why it is better to learn Theology of Missions to provide a centering for missions. It is also good to study History of Missions, not to learn exactly what to do and who to copy, but rather to understand missions in its variety, its changing quality, and the harshness of lessons. It is also good to learn the principles of Cultural Anthropology, not to understand a culture, but to learn the process for tentatively understanding cultures. It is further important to learn how to do research (especially qualitative research) and how to interpret and utilize findings.

Training in Missions

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On occasion I have thought about what topics should be covered in Missions Training. I looked at some stuff I put together in 2010. Looking it over, I liked a lot of it. The main lacking I think was not recognizing the importance of theology in missions. So I would like to divide missions training into three levels and three areas.

Missions Areas:

–Missiological. This is a vague term, but relates courses that fit into a lot of the “practical topics” that fit into missions.

–Theological. While many of the missiological topics could be described as being part of practical theology, this section involves very intentional theological rigor as it relates to Missions.

–Sociological. This is that part of Missions that focuses on the social sciences… especially anthropology.

Levels:

–Level One. Should be taken by all seminary or Bible school students. Or, for those seeking to g. o formally into missions, these may include courses that would be considered introductory… and perhaps taken in the first year or semester or module (depending on the structure of the training)

–Level Two. Should be taken by all missions students— especially in the middle, meaty, part of the training.

–Level Three. Electives or finishing courses for missions students.

With that in mind, the curriculum would break down something like this (I guess):

MISSIOLOGY

-Level One

-Introduction to Missiology

-Level Two

-Missions History

-Strategy and Planning of Missions

-Contemporary Issues in Missions

-Level Three (examples)

-Missionary Member Care

-Short-term Missions

-Urban Missions

-Community Development

THEOLOGY

Level One

-Biblical Theology of Missions (NOT “Biblical Basis for Missions”)

Level Two

-Missions Theology

Level Three

-Localizing Theology

SOCIOLOGY

Level One

-Introduction to World Religions

Level Two

-Cultural Anthropology

-Cross-cultural Communication

-Interfaith Dialogue

-Ethnographic Research

Level Three (Possible examples)

-Ethnomusicology

-Specific culture/religion-targeted missions

Of course this list presupposes other trainings that are more general but valuable to missions students. I am assuming that Evangelism, Discipleship, and Churchplanting are not seen as specifically in the Missions Department— even though in the areas above they would loosely fit under the Missiological section. Likewise, it is presumed that students would get Biblical Theology, Historical Theology, and Systematic Theology (along with Biblical Studies) from other departments. And in terms of the sociological side of things, it is assumed that students are trained in other departments homiletics, Christian education, music and worship.

Better Questions and Al Yagoda

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The Dunning-Kruger Effect has become popularized in recent days. Unfortunately it sometimes gets reimagined as “Stupid people often think they are smarter than they really are.” Of course, that is not the issue. It is that people tend not to be self-aware of their own incompetence in a subject. People who are very ignorant in a topic often feel that they are quite knowledgeable in the topic. This is hardly surprising, since it is a truism that…

“We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know”

This reminds me of a satirical post in the “Babylon Bee.” The title was, “Scholars Now Believe Job’s Friends Were First-Year Seminary Students.” Since the story was certainly used in the training of young men in rabbinical schools for millennia, I can’t help but wonder if it is more truth than satire (“Not the Onion”-worthy).

“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.”

— Thomas Sowell

Perhaps a bit more surprising is that people who are genuinely experts in a topic often feel that they are more ignorant than they really are. The more one studies a subject the more one understands how vast it is. Although experts tend to be more realistic than novices, one may become so focused on the vast vistas of the unknown that one may lose sight of the level of competency that one has achieved. When I was in first year college for mechanical engineering, a question had come up in mathematics that was new to me. I decided to ask my dad. He told me that he had no idea what the answer was. I was shocked. My father had a bachelors degree in mathematics (magna cum laude), had been “human computer” (back when those were the only computers that existed) in missile design and then a test engineer at a high-performance bearing company. As I went on in my education, I gained a better understanding of how vast mathematics. It is so vast that no one embraces all of it with any level of competence. Expertise narrows. When young, my dad was an expert in college-level mathematics… as well as mental math. When older, his expertise became Weibull distributions and failure analysis (small but important parts of the vast, infinite, plane that is mathematics).

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

–Charles Darwin

So:

  • Incompetent people in an area tend to think that they much more competent than they actually are.
  • Highly competent people in an area tend to think they are somewhat less competent than they actually are.
  • Highly competent people in an area tend to think that they are more competent than they really are in areas that they lack expertise.

It could be suggested that the first point on the list is unnecessary. Pretty much all of us are experts in something, and every single person on earth who is an expert in something is going to be incompetent in a vast range of things. So you get people like astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson speaking about philosophy with great confidence but without competence. I shouldn’t pick on him alone. I find people talking about climate change with great confidence (actually on both sides of the issue) but with know training in the matter. I have seen Nobel prize winners talk with great confidence on topics that they have little expertise in.

In fact, we all do it. We are all rather incompetent in most ways…. but we really don’t want to go around and sound ignorant. We all want to appear competent and that we know exactly what needs to be done. I teach Interreligious Dialogue and I have my students write up case studies of themselves in interreligious dialogue. So many are uncomfortable because they are afraid of being asked something that they don’t know the answer to. They are afraid of that “Gotcha!!” moment where they feel stupid. (Strangely, in most cases, the person they were talking to probably would have respected them more if they simply said, “Wow, that is a great question. I need to research that. Or maybe we can figure it out together.”) We want to be the Gotcha!! guy like Ben Shapiro focused more on belittling the other than on seeking truth.

We all want to be Al Yagoda.

Who is Al Yagoda? One of my bosses back when I was a mechanical design engineer told me to avoid Al Yagoda. When we have a question, don’t listen to people that answer with, “Al Yagoda do is….. ” or “All you need is…”

Answers are rarely that easy. We rarely know the answer. I tell my seminary students to embrace the sentence, “I don’t know.” It is a good sentence because it is commonly true. It is also often true when you think it is not true (As the Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests).

This does not mean that one must end with “I don’t know.” I don’t know is a starting place, not an endpoint. In the classes I teach, someone asks a good question. I often will say, “I don’t know… but here are some thoughts I have on this.’ Or maybe, “I don’t know… but maybe someone else here knows.”

Sometimes, I don’t know is followed by a strategy to find out. I remember as an engineer, a friend of mine was making an electronic cabinet and wasn’t sure what thickness of sheet metal he should use. He asked me what I thought would work. I said, quite correctly, “I don’t know.’ However, I then followed with, “I think I know how we can find out.” I took him downstairs to the testing department where there were a number of electronic racks. I pointed to three of them and told him to sit on them and push on them. He did. I told him the thicknesses of sheet metal used for each. Based on that he had a good idea what to use. He discovered the truth, and did so in a way that was more visceral. Me telling him what I thought was the best thickness may or may not have been right… but it certainly would NOT be the best way to inform him.

Being an expert in a field is often not about having better answers, but having better questions. I think this is especially true in missions and in theology. I like to tell my students that they should not expect that I have the best answers. I can be wrong. I am wrong every day. I have met people who think that they are experts and so should be believed. I don’t think anyone living today is such an expert in a subject that they have earned the right to be unquestionably believed. But PERHAPS they should be taken seriously.

That is what I tell my students. They can disagree with me… and they may be right in doing so. Based on my training and experience, I don’t expect to be believed… but I DO expect to have my thoughts taken seriously. If all I do as a seminary professor is indoctrinate them to parrot my beliefs, I have done little, if any, good.

But if I can train up people to gain some sense of the vastness of theology and missions, have the self-awareness to recognize their own expertise AND ignorance, and help them to ask better questions, I have accomplished something wonderful.

That is something that I am pretty sure that I know.

Should Missionaries be Evangelists?

On By missionmusingsIn Education, Evangelism, Missions as VocationLeave a comment

So I was talking to a friend of mine named Tom (his name is NOT Tom) who is a minister in an Asian Country where Christians are a tiny minority. He was talking about mission work in his country. He noted that missionaries had brought a lot of good things to his country… such as hospitals, church buildings, and community development projects— among other things.

However, he said that one way missionaries haven’t been that helpful have been in terms of Evangelism. He noted that foreign missionaries are not all that good at evangelizing people in his country… because they are foreign. He noted, that in some rural areas, they have had some success in gifting the poor with things they need and these poor respond, converting and joining the church. Later, however, when the missionaries are gone, the gifts stop or slowly break down, and the people drift back into their community’s majority faith.

Of course I have heard this before… even here in the Philippines where many Filipinos are comfortable with English, and the there is commonly enough Bible literacy so that the American-style gospel presentations are effective. (I will not address the question of whether these presentations lead people to Christ, or bring people who are already saved to a different denomination.) It is well understood here that Filipinos are better at evangelizing than foreigners. Foreigners are not that effective even with other religions. I mean, even the American Mormon boys (and girls) sent to the Philippines to proselytize their own message are more and more often matched up with Filipinos. It is entertaining to listen to American youth stumbling through the Mormon message in Tagalog or Visayan or Ilocano, but it is simply not that compelling. The biggest mosque here in our city has worked very hard to fund local boys so that they can train them to evangelize their Tawhid to others here. There are many foreign Muslims here… but few if any have any impact in the presentation of their faith.

But if Christian Missionaries are not good Evangelists, is this a new thing? No. Apparently, Occam (a Native American) was a much better evangelist to Native Americans than Wheelock (a European) in the 1700s. In the 1800s, Karen Evangelists were more effective in sharing the gospel than their American counterparts. Of course, one may go back to 1st century missionaries, such as Philip and Paul and Barnabas in hopes of finding something different. However, in these cases, these missionaries were reaching out to people who were not that different from themselves (E-1 or at most E-2). Paul and Barnabas were Hellenistic Jews from Asia Minor and Cyprus, who reached out to Hellenistic Jews and Hellenistic Gentiles in Asia Minor and Cyprus. Philip, presumably a Proselyte to Judaism before becoming a Christian, reached out to Samaritans (who shared the language used by the Jews, and almost all of the beliefs of the Jews), and a (presumably) proselyte to Judaism from Ethiopia. Their effectiveness, outside of divine empowerment, was linked to the commonality of language and culture.

So let’s look at it a different way. Consider three settings where a Missionary can Serve.

#1 is Where the Church IS NOT. (No viable church within the region, or culture)

#2 is Where the Church HAS NOT. (The local church may be weak or young and needs help to empower them to carry out its work.)

#3 is Where the Church CANNOT. (The local church may be strong, but still lacks unique capacities such as ability to support radio transmission, publishing, medical services, and so forth.)

So what should the role of Missionary as Evangelist be in these three situations?

For #1. Of course, The missionary is an apostle in the classic sense— sent into a place where the church is not. As such, his (or her) role is to proclaim God’s message of love, and draw those who seek to follow Christ to come together as church bodies. Yes, such a missionary pioneer should evangelize, but really should focus on training new believers to evangelize and then move to new roles of discipling and leader development so that the missionary (as soon as possible) is not needed there.

For #2. Maybe. The Missionary MIGHT be needed to evangelize occasionally— especially if the local church has not embraced its role as a proclaimer of the gospel in its area. But such a role should be very temporary and cautious. After all, even a young church can have young believers who can effectively evangelize. Thus, if it is not happening, having missionaries do the job can easily maintain an unhealthy dependence on missionaries. In fact, that unsatisfactory condition may exist because missionaries as pioneers focused too much on evangelizing and not on encouraging that role to be passed on to locals.

For #3. No. Every church can evangelize. The local church may not be able to establish a publishing house, or operate a counseling center, but they can share their faith with others. Missionaries doing the evangelism in these settings is unhealthy… except as simply a fellow participant with local Christians.

Tom when noting all the good things that missionaries brought to their country noted one thing that they really did not bring. They did not establish seminaries. Mission groups come over to evangelize, and they come in to teach locals how to share their faith like a foreigner. But they did not help establish schools for locals to be trained to contextualize/localize the Christian faith… and remove their scholarly dependence on foreigners.

A few years ago, I was investigating joining a major mission agency. At the time this agency was moving away from theological education and developmental ministries, and seeking missionaries who had a strong “evangelistic spirit” and focused on rapid church multiplication.

On the surface, this seems so right… but I think it is flawed. Most countries don’t need a bunch of foreign evangelizers coming in with big dreams of saturation strategies and CPMs. Are these things wrong? Probably not. However, Big Dream Missions (DAWN, AD2000, and other such missionary-driven movements) promise much but tend to deliver little. The biggest movements come from small groups of local Christians faithfully doing small things to transform their small places.

So should Missionaries be Evangelists? Sometimes, but few if any should have it as their primary passion. The vast majority should be passionately motivated to empower local Christians and local churches to reach their Spirit-empowered potential.