In the past 50 years, the center of Christianity has shifted from the West to the Majority World. As Zambian mission leader Lazarus Phiri told me during a recent interview, “Those who were once a mission field are now looking like a mission force.”
Yet all too often, well-meaning mission partners in the West operate as if this shift has not occurred. The reason, in part, is that the centers of power (including money, education, institution, passport privileges, etc.) remains in the West.
This power gap in mission partnerships between Western and Majority World members, if it is not acknowledged, can result in wasted resources, discouraged missionaries, decreased engagement, and broken relationships.
Author and missiologist Miriam Adeney relates a story she once heard from an African Christian leader:
Elephant and Mouse were best friends. One day Elephant said, “Mouse, let’s have a party!” Animals gathered from far and near. They ate, and drank, and sang, and danced. And nobody celebrated more exuberantly than Elephant.
After it was over, Elephant exclaimed, “Mouse, did you ever go to a better party? What a blast!” But Mouse didn’t answer. “Where are you?” Elephant called. Then he shrank back in horror. There at his feet lay the Mouse, his body ground into the dirt—smashed by the exuberance of his friend, Elephant.
“Sometimes that is what it is like to do mission with you Americans,” the African storyteller concluded. “It’s like dancing with an elephant.”
When I first read this story, it felt like a gut punch. I mentally scrolled through my 25 years of cross-cultural mission engagement and wondered if anyone would say this of me. Have I been an elephant? In my exuberance for the mission, have I ever crushed my friends and partners?
Of course, no one enters global missions with a plan to stomp on their partners. But if you speak with missions leaders from around the world, as my colleagues and I have in researching for the Mission Shift podcast, you will discover many unwitting elephants dancing across mission fields.
Considering the power differential in missions, how can we Westerners work with others in a way that lifts our partners rather than grinding them into the dirt?
First, we need to recognize the power of money. Mary Lederleitner, author of Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission, writes of the distorting power of wealth, “The person coming from the more affluent or developed country assumes he or she knows what is best.” She adds, “It is very counterintuitive to learn from people that have less wealth and less education than you.” But a failure to do so can lead to a sense of superiority that, when played out in partnership, becomes a patriarchal relationship.
As Layo Leiva, who has developed partnerships between Latin America and the United States through his regional role with Cru, said succinctly in an interview for our podcast, “The role of money is the role of power—who has the money has the power.” This is not to say that money should not be involved in missions. The sharing of resources within the body of Christ is central to gospel transformation. But we need to recognize the challenges to partnership it creates.
We also need to recognize the power of choice. Brian Virtue, who researched hundreds of cross-cultural partnerships for his PhD work, describes a scenario he saw multiple times:
People [on the lower side of the power difference] were granted access to the initial conversations, but when it came time for the decision-making and the implementation, they were no longer part of the process. It’s almost like they heard, “We’re going to go to the adult’s table and talk about it. And we’ll get back to you.”
Who is at the adult table in a partnership? If the table is populated exclusively by those from the West, or with the highest degrees, or with the biggest budgets, then your partnership is probably affected by power disparities.
There are many more powers in a mission partnership we need to recognize: education, nationality, organizational size, language, and history, to name a few. If we have eyes to see them, then we have a chance to use them for the benefit of the mission. You have money? Great! Invest it in God’s mission. You have education? Great! Use it to uplift your brothers and sisters. “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Rom. 12:6, ESV throughout).
But also, if we recognize the effect power has on partnerships, we can heed Paul’s warning: “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment” (v. 3). Elephant could have done so much good with his size if only he had recognized the potential dangers it presented.
Once we recognize the presence of power, we need to learn to walk softly in our partnerships. Slavko Hadžić, an evangelist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and associate regional director with Langham Preaching, advises, “If you come for the first time to a country or region, don’t come with an agenda. Come to observe. Don’t rush with promises. Wait, learn, be open to hear. Let the Lord lead the steps.”
Part of walking softly is recognizing that God is already at work on every continent and in every corner of the earth. What if we entered every cross-cultural situation looking for the signs of God’s work rather than a place to plant our flag or insert our own agendas? Too often we use the urgency of the mission as an excuse for injuring our partners in the mission. To walk softly, we must walk slowly.
Milan Michalko, a local pastor in the Czech Republic, also encourages a slow pace. “Partnership without relationship? I have no time for that,” he says. Relationships take time to build. Michalko has a theory as to why this is often hard for American organizations: “Because they have money, they have no time.” The abundance of money demands an abundance of quick results, but healthy partnerships demand more than a 30-minute lunch and a shared Google spreadsheet. “If you want a quality partner, that’s time consuming. You have to be here. You have to invest time. You have to build trust,” Michalko says. To walk softly, we must walk in relationship.
Forrest Inslee, coauthor of the book Re-Imagining Short-Term Missions, shared of a moment in Haiti when a team learned how to walk more softly in partnership. On the island of Haiti, the history of colonialism and inequality have embedded the idea that, because of their superior resources, the West always knows best. The actions of Western teams have only confirmed this conclusion.
Once, when a team was participating in some community performances, the American visitors took center stage, as if they were compensating for a program that was deficient or incomplete. But this time, the Haitian leaders spoke up. “Would you please stand in the back of the room instead of on stage?” they asked.
By speaking up, these leaders risked offending their guests and jeopardizing the flow of resources from their American partners. And some were offended. But the majority learned from the challenge. They stood in the back. Over time, the partnership grew in mutuality, trust, and health. To walk softly, we must sometimes stand in the back.
Leiva shares one nonintuitive way of walking slowly. In mission partnerships, the higher-power partner often shares the products of their system (money, books, programs) but rarely lets the lower-power partner behind the curtain to see how the products are made.
Money is sent, but no one shares how to raise money. Books are translated, but no one shares how to write a book. One partner maintains control, and the other becomes dependent.
Layo now asks his partners to not only send the product but also “transfer the technology” that produced it. This way, instead of creating endless dependency, we contribute our strength to grow our partners’ strength. As we walk softly, our power lifts our partners rather than crushing them.
When we recognize our power and learn to walk slowly, we have an opportunity to make the most important discovery in partnerships. The principle is found in another story of a mouse, this one from Aesop:
A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion’s nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.
“Spare me!” begged the poor Mouse. “Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you.”
The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.
Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter’s net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.
“You laughed when I said I would repay you,” said the Mouse. “Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion.”
Too often, we in the West define power by the ways we are powerful: money, education, passport privileges, and other resources. Like the Lion, we laugh at the idea of being helped by a Mouse. But other powers are at play than those that can be measured: cross-cultural flexibility and understanding, dependence on God, willingness to suffer, and missional ingenuity.
Every follower of Christ—even the one who appears small—is powerful. Every believer is filled with the Spirit. Every believer is a part of the body with a crucial role to play. Every believer is formed by God for his mission. And as Paul reminds us, those who seem the weakest are indispensable (1 Cor. 12:22–27).
Even lions and elephants have needs. In fact, sometimes our strengths are the sources of our needs. Because of our abundant resources, we can be slow to pray. Because of our efficient systems, we can be slow to improvise. Because of our set plans, we can often miss what God is doing in the margins. More than ever, the West needs the many strengths of the Majority World.
Even Jesus, whom Lederleitner calls “the ultimate high-power partner,” positioned himself to rely on the strengths of others. He made himself nothing, taking the form of a man. He walked softly among us. He invited the disciples “behind the curtain” of his life and shared everything with them. He entrusted them with the mission.
The Lion of Judah did not laugh at the contribution of common men and women from the villages of Galilee. He called them friends and gave them the keys of his kingdom. Likewise, our Lord has commissioned and empowered us with his Spirit. And whenever we follow his example, our mission partnerships will give us all a reason to truly celebrate.
Josh Irby is Cru City Global’s partnership director for Europe and a cohost of the Mission Shift podcast. He is a former missionary and coauthor of Cross on a Hill: A Personal, Historical, and Biblical Search for the True Meaning of a Controversial Symbol.
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