When missionaries return to their passport country and attend that first worship service, they often find their eyes welling up with tears. Why? For many it is because they are worshiping Christ with God’s people in the church culture most familiar and comfortable to them. That is normal and good. All Christians have a local church culture they most understand and enjoy. But it is important that missionaries understand their strong Christian cultural background and its inevitable tendencies, because that understanding will aid their cross-cultural efforts.
Cross-cultural church planting can be challenging. The successful transfer of leadership from a cross-cultural missionary to a national person is more difficult still. Many missionaries don’t realize how easy it is to add to these challenges by expecting local believers they seek to serve to meet their foreign Christian cultural expectations.
Complicating Our Mission
Missionaries are tempted to recreate the church culture they admire back home. One reason this happens is that they have not taken the time to understand the differences between their cultural Christian experiences back home and what the Bible actually teaches. They don’t realize how much their idea of what a local church should look like comes from cultural expectations or simple habits (often unconscious). For example, standing in the pulpit to preach or preaching while seated, men and women sitting on opposite sides of the room or together, whether or not children are included in the worship services, offerings collected publicly or privately, professional or more casual dress for worship, special music and choirs or simple congregational singing, how often each week the people meet, as well as when they meet for how long or how outreach is done.
If missionaries assume their home church culture best reflects biblical Christianity, they will probably seek to duplicate that model on the field. As a result, cross-cultural church planting can become far more complicated than it ought to be. Cross-cultural church planters then become frustrated and discouraged—and so do the local believers.
How can missionaries begin to understand the difference between their own cultural Christian expectations and what is healthy to expect from believers on the field? The starting place for missionaries must be understanding that they do indeed have a strong cultural Christian perspective. This perspective influences what they assume is important and what they consider necessary for the church-planting ministry.
The Culture of Abundant Spiritual Privilege
Most folks reading this have come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith in contexts where Christians are or have been numerous in the recent past. In cultures where Christianity flourishes, economic prosperity usually follows as well. The majority of cross-cultural missionaries have been sent out from contexts like this.
Multiplied material comforts and conveniences
Local churches in these settings have all kinds of assets to accommodate their membership and allow for further growth and ministry activities. Most congregations have private property and buildings dedicated to worship and ministry. Large numbers of believers can often make such purchases through pooled resources.
Many church buildings are elaborate and stunningly beautiful. Some have athletic fields, a gym, a children’s play area, a spacious parking lot, a comfortable auditorium, and a large dining hall with incredibly equipped kitchens. A church might even have its own Christian school, coffee shop, teen center, buses, or other vehicles. The ministry is usually covered by insurance and has tax-exempt status.
High concentration of spiritual gifts
A single congregation might have several, dozens, or even scores of mature Christian men who are qualified to be elders and deacons. Multiple members might be capable of leading music, playing instruments, teaching Sunday school classes, providing hospitality for events, etc. Such abundant giftedness allows for other possibilities such as age-graded Sunday school classes, Bible institutes, choirs or other music groups, or time-of-life focused care groups.
The teaching available through Christian books, theological journals, magazines, podcasts, radio, Bible translations, and videos is overwhelming. And then there are complementary ministries such as Christian camps, conferences, apologetic and Creation science ministries, and biblical counseling.
Vocational pastors
Many churches can fully support a pastor’s family, enabling the man to serve full-time. Some even support several pastors where the number of believers in the congregation requires this. Smaller churches with fewer resources might still be able to at least supplement the pastor’s income, so that he could support himself with only part-time work in a secular employment.
These privileges have also created a norm of highly educated professional pastors. In many circles a Bible college and seminary education is expected. These graduates then often expect employment in a local church or Christian ministry.
Christianity has been declining steadily in the West, but several of these privileges remain for many Christians. While there are plenty of churches that don’t have most of the advantages mentioned here, many churches have some of them.
Reality check about spiritual privilege
All the above blessings are possible because of the superabundant level of grace Christ Jesus has poured out. The available resources are incredible, but the Christian local church culture developed in such prosperous times is not normative for much of Christianity. Most Christians throughout history and most alive today have never had this level of privilege.
The possessions and norms stated above can become distractions for God’s people, keeping them from what is truly important. Notice that none of the specific advantages are mentioned in the New Testament. That means the assets, activities, and ministries many missionaries “swam in” during their formative Christian experience are non-vital. We may have been greatly blessed through them and enjoy them, but none are necessary for cross-cultural church planting.
Discernment About Local Church Culture
Now that we’ve considered several aspects of Christian local church culture that might be the norm for many missionaries, we can begin to compare them with what the New Testament says a local church must do and be.
Local churches that have experienced great gospel privilege and have abundant resources should not feel guilty for having them. Our purpose is to draw attention to the fact that local church cultural norms of cross-cultural missionaries are not the experience of most Christians in this world. It may not even be desirable that it be so.
Cross-cultural missionaries must not think that a local church in an unreached culture is less than what Christ desires it to be if the congregation does not have what the missionary’s church back home has. Nor should local Christians in the “Majority World” desire or expect to copy the norms of believers in very privileged settings.
Cross-cultural missionaries must be able to separate the local church cultural norms they experienced back in the USA from the realities that are possible on the foreign field. Biblical principles should be the guide toward acceptance of any differences. Once the missionary can do this, he should be able to guide believers toward establishing local churches founded upon the essentials shown in the New Testament without being tempted to insist on his cultural expectations and preferences. Missionaries who don’t get this right will create unfortunate obstacles to effective church planting and find transition to national leadership far more difficult than it might have been.
In the next article, we will consider what the essential activities of the local church must be. Knowing those essentials will help us understand better what believers in church plants around the world need most.
Photo by Roger Starnes Sr on Unsplash