Wednesday, June 28, 2006

10 Ways to control the natives

Steve Addison's World Changers blog has this interesting post.
in-dig-e-nous: 1. Having originated in and being produced, growing or living naturally in a particular region or environment. 2. Innate, inborn. Syn. Native.

Growing indigenous leaders is every true missionary’s greatest challenge. Keith Bateman proposes this ten point plan for (not) producing better indigenous churches. He’s writing out of his fifteen years of missions work in Africa, the Caribbean and the Far East.
Here’s what not to do:
  1. Keep missionaries around long after the work has been established.

  2. Support national churches with funding from abroad.

  3. Train national leaders in United States-style classrooms, with US professors, using US seminary curriculae.

  4. Introduce a “stateside” methodology as the correct way to run a church “program.”

  5. Promote US technology as necessary for successful Christian ministry.

  6. Send national church leaders to every conceivable world congress and other “frame-of-reference-expanding” conference.

  7. Talk about strategizing and planning, but do not actually put it into action.

  8. Stress formal classroom instruction as superior to practical “on-the-job” training.

  9. Present Christianity as the way to the good life.

  10. Insist upon multi-degree teachers for overseas training assignments, especially those trained in the important areas of anthropology, sociology and psychology.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

#9 is my favourite.