Do we give more attention and support to more exotic mission work overseas and neglect our U.S. and local context?

After 29 years in various pastoral roles in the U.S. context, I found myself working as a minister of peace and justice for a mission agency located in the global mission division. In this new role I felt I needed to upgrade my knowledge of mission and did some cursory reading. And although my primary area of responsibility was in peace and justice, I also needed to look at my work and the church through a missional lens. By missional I refer to the church as being sent by God in all aspects of its life and to all dimensions of the world.

Among the many things I learned about becoming missional was that this new vision of mission went beyond the old mission paradigm of sending missionaries to convert pagans in the non-Western world. A clear understanding of the increasing secularization of our North American context made where we live as much a mission field as any other place in the global village. I noticed in my reading an emphasis being placed upon mission within one’s own cultural context. Also, in the missional vision the local setting of the congregation received a renewed focus for mission.

I looked at our denomination, congregations, mission agency, and peace and justice work through a missional lens. I noticed certain tendencies within the church toward what I call exoticism. In the 19th century, exoticism, particularly in art and music, was expressed as the “charm of the unfamiliar,” a fascination with anything foreign and “other.” The expanding Western missionary movement during this same period was not immune from the virus of exoticism. The wider culture caught the exoticism bug, and the church sneezed. The church was entranced by images, artifacts and stories brought back by the missionaries they had sent to exotic lands. Mission had to do with being sent to other places than our own.

There is an almost natural fascination with the unfamiliar and exotic, which is understandable. Who doesn’t like to travel to other countries and explore their histories, customs and cultures? But I observed in our church some tendencies that express and reinforce an exoticism that seems to hinder mission understood and practiced more fully in its national and local contexts.

A prevailing understanding of mission among individuals and congregations tends to place financially supporting global mission work over practicing local mission work. If we think about mission in our congregations primarily in terms of the visiting missionary with slides from a foreign land who shows artifacts and shares insights from another language, or the offering we took to support our favorite mission agency, as wonderful as that is, or point to the postcard from the couple from our congregation more than how our congregation is practicing mission in our local context, we are probably engaging in mission as a form of exoticism.

Sometimes exoticism expresses itself in the high level of admiration for and preference given to people, specifically white people, with experience in another country compared with those who have ministered in the U.S. context. Racial/ethnic people share stories around the church water cooler about the church’s tendency to give respect and preference for white people and their work in other countries compared with the respect they would like to see for their leaders and work in urban contexts in the United States that should be considered models of being missional.

Has the church significantly involved racial/ ethnic leaders and congregations, who are engaged in missional practice in North America, in telling their stories and sharing their knowledge and expertise with the wider church as much as we have utilized white “professional” missionaries we have sent to other countries? If not, doesn’t this reinforce engagement in mission as a form of exoticism?

Certain mission practices give clear evidence of this tendency. For example, the church has a longstanding practice of sending white missionaries to other countries while rarely sending people of color in the United States who are from those countries and cultures. How many of our missionaries are people indigenous to the countries they are sent to? And even though there have been efforts to place mission work in the hands of the indigenous people, the U.S. church has no comprehensive, long-term process for a full transference of power, decision making, leadership and resources to indigenous people in the countries where we send predominantly white, North American missionaries.

If the missional agenda with its renewed emphasis on the contextual and local is a priority, it would seem the mission of the church in regional, congregational, rural and urban settings would also be a priority of the church. In rural contexts the missional agenda calls for an understanding and practice that fits with the ethnic and racial diversity that now exists in the rural setting. Exoticism seems to be reinforced by our denomination’s and mission agencies’ inability to maintain a strong, wide-ranging urban agenda, while there is strong support for international mission work. I’m not speaking about the work of conferences, which support local congregations in mission and ministry in local and regional contexts. In spite of the fact that the church is becoming more and more urban, the urban agenda has struggled to have vital, comprehensive and adequately financed support in the denominational structure.

Our church’s strongest and best-supported urban work has been providing short-term opportunities for predominantly white children of our congregations. A more comprehensive urban agenda would involve urban theological education, church development, church planting, urban networking, social ministry support, training of urban leaders and congregations, creating and supporting multicultural congregations. In the 1970s, Latinos started a theological education project in San Antonio, Texas, that was not fully supported by white Mennonite leadership. More recent efforts have also struggled to find support.

Even my work in peace and justice was not immune to a form of exoticism. Mennonites have had a long practice of peacemaking dominated by an agenda of addressing wars in foreign places over U.S. justice issues. Is not peacemaking that directs its primary energies and resources toward wars on foreign soil a form of exoticism? Again, peacemaking focused on wars in other countries and contexts has not always drawn in racial/ethnic people in that it has not been relevant to the U.S. urban context of gang, school and inner-city violence, handgun proliferation, racism, discrimination, economic injustice and issues related to racial/ethnic veterans. Peacemaking that neglects a more comprehensive understanding of shalom that includes personal, familial, interpersonal and local contexts and that works for justice within the United States is probably being seduced by some kind of exoticism.

I recognize that within a global context the United States has greater wealth and resources to share in mission than do many other countries. So why wouldn’t the global mission work need greater support and resources than our own national and local missional work? This economic reality may answer some questions about what may be an imbalance between our global and domestic mission agendas, but it does not address other issues: for example, where the power and decision making is located for mission work.

These observations are not meant to simply denigrate traditional global missions or say the missional agenda in national and local contexts has been absent from the church and its mission agencies. There is much good work being done. They rather point to the continuing need to reform the church’s mission and correct the imbalances that tend to downplay or neglect our own context as a mission field.

In conclusion, let me offer some signposts along the missional journey that indicate when mission is moving away from exoticism toward a renewed emphasis on the domestic and local:

1. When white North American congregations see their own local context as much a mission field as mission work in another country.

2. When members of white North American congregations see themselves as missionaries.

3. When support for and the practice of mission work has to do as much with mission in local contexts as it does with work in global contexts.

4. When whites engaging in mission in the U.S. context become as well informed about issues of culture, abuse of power, the messiness, contradictions and blessings of working with U.S. racial/ ethnic groups as they are in doing their work as global missionaries.

5. When racial/ethnic people already doing missional work in domestic contexts are given the voice, respect, support and venues for sharing their stories and learnings with the wider church as those who have traveled to do mission work in global contexts.

6. When peacemaking is wed to justice, the global is local and the local is essential.

7. When our larger and longer vision of global mission moves us toward fully relinquishing power and control of global mission work into the hands of indigenous leaders and people where we send missionaries.

Leo Hartshorn is an artist, drummer for peace and (Ana)baptist theological educator in Portland, Ore.