Jamie the Very Worst Missionary has a knack for the brutally honest. Her recent post Deciphering Missions argues that a lack of accountability in missions results in some missionaries being able to sound spiritual while doing virtually nothing. In her experience,

Every innocuous coffee date with a friend [turned] into ‘discipleship time’. Hours spent circling Facebook were important to ‘support development’ and everyday interactions with grocery store clerks and bank tellers suddenly became meaningful when referred to as ‘intentional relationships’.

Now, this problem isn’t unique to missions — lots of vocational ministry is self-directed, with the potential to sound holy while slacking off. Nor is this a problem which is true of all missionaries or mission organisations (and Jamie’s writing into an American context where missions is something of an industry).

It’s a good thing to have greater transparency in missions and more involvement on the part of supporters. But what exactly is a missionary supposed to be held accountable to? Here are two complexities of missionary ‘work’ and some suggestions.

1. Functional service needs functional people

Oh, and the things your supporters do in their time off (like running, or taking classes, or hanging out with their kids) are things you get to claim, according to Missionary Code, as work.

Jamie’s absolutely right on one hand. Exercise, personal development and family life are all ‘work’ for us, and they’re all things that our organisation asks us about and checks up on. But that’s because there is no such thing as ‘time off’ for us. Please don’t worry about us – we’re fine! But we don’t eat, sleep, shop, speak, dress, wash, interact with one another, watch TV, cook, parent or exercise like we would in Australia. Even things we do to rest carry a sense of foreignness and extra stress. That’s part of what it means to live cross-culturally, especially in the early years. It means that burn-out is an ever-present danger for missionaries.

Yet, a missionary’s wellbeing goes hand in hand with their long-term stickability and effectiveness on location. That means that part of a missionary’s ‘work’ is to care for themselves. And supporters ought to hold missionaries accountable to that, not just as a way of loving them, but also because (under God) the long-term investment depends on the functionality of the missionary.

2. Relational ministry needs relational people

The problem with missionary work is that it’s about people, and people come in the package of a culture, a language and relationships. It’s not that different from any other ministry, except that in the case of missionary work, the culture is distant, the language foreign and relationships built differently. That means it takes time — lots of time — to get to a point of even basic functionality, and then it takes even more time to reach some sort of proficiency, and even longer to get down deep enough to have some idea that, maybe, you might be making a lasting impact.

Jamie has rightly highlighted the danger for missionaries to slack off; its counterpart is the tendency to jump in too early in an effort to be productive and do something concrete. Biding your time is an important discipline for missionaries, one that is counter-intuitive for activists who ‘want to make a difference’. Sometimes you can only serve a people when you know them, not just on the surface, but in deep ways that only come from being, listening and not-doing.

It’s one thing to want to serve people; it’s another entirely for them to invite you into their lives. It’s one thing to see yourself as a servant; it’s another to be known as one by others. While western culture is concerned with KPIs and being able to quantify our work, other cultures view this with suspicion, and put value on being, on time and on relationships. These might sound vague to western ears and there’s no way you can measure them, but they’re vital for understanding, friendship and community, all of which are essential for sustainable ministry.

Accountability questions

Jamie’s call is not to neglect self-care, nor is it to privilege doing over being. She’s calling for transparency and clarity so that the right people do what they’re called to. Our organisation already has excellent structures in place for these, but if you’re interested in how to hold us accountable here are some suggestions of things to ask.

1. What’s on your mind at the moment?
2. What is energising you at the moment?
3. What needs patience at the moment?
4. What relationships are you working on?
5. What changes have you noticed in yourself?
6. What’s the next stage for you guys?
7. What can I pray for?

And when we give you answers to these things, if we slip into ‘Missionary Code’ language, ask us for a practical or concrete example!

I’m always casting around for new experiences; it’s part of what drives me. I’m always animated by innovation, exploration, and the possibility of discovery. And, after a couple of months living here in Tanzania, Swahili lost its newness — so I automatically started fishing for something new. I continued with my regular practice of navigating trends in Australia and USA. I continued reading a lot, mostly online, most of it funnelled through social media; most of it, in effect, headlines.

‘Your head’s not really in Tanzania,’ noticed Tamie.

Although I’m living in Tanzania with daily Swahili tutoring, my mind has been elsewhere. It’s not that I’ve been slacking off. It’s just that contextualisation involves different stages. There are many layers to be transformed. It’s a bit like conversion. Someone’s beliefs might have changed, but their thinking will be next; a person’s conduct might have changed, but their wallet needs to follow.

It’s time for the next step towards being more fully present in Tanzania — in both mind and body. I need to put some interests on ice in order to be more a part of this place.

Currently we’re still in a half-way house, without much in particular to offer Tanzanian students, but it’s time to get constructive: after several years trawling hot topics, it’s time to put down some more groundwork for missiology and student movements. I’ll be reading about postcolonialism, discipleship, classical Christianity, global theology, African ethics, and vulnerable mission. Exciting stuff — but, God help me, more connected with life here. It’s time I returned to books in earnest, so I’m pulling back from social media. I won’t have gone far, but I’ll be publishing rather than reading and commenting.

(There’s still some other stuff I’ll be trying to sort out along the way, like: to the extent that ‘evangelical’ is a viable identity, what makes one?)

Thanks for being part of this with me!

You use different words to talk about locations that are general (e.g. in town), specific (e.g. at my home) or inside (e.g. in the house). There are several ways to say ‘in’. There are at least 3 distinct constructions you can use to talk about location. What seems like superfluous detail in English is built into the structures of Swahili.

I’m not a linguist, but I feel like language, including language constructions, can carry cultural baggage, if not cultural meaning. I wonder, is there something cultural in this precision about space?

One thing that makes this particularly fascinating is that while the average Tanzanian has an intricate knowledge of the geography of Tanzania and the idiosyncrasies of each town and tribe, their knowledge of world geography is very general. Even after people find out we’re from Australia (not America or England where all wazungu hail from, apparently), they console us about the hot sun in Tanzania. It comes as a great surprise that Adelaide gets hotter than Dodoma! It’s as if there’s Tanzania, and maybe ‘Africa’, but everywhere else is simply ‘other’.

Likewise, the specificity of references to space doesn’t extend to talking about the human body. Hand, wrist, forearm, elbow, shoulder, etc all have their technical words, but most people are happy to call them an ‘arm’ and work it out from context.

Why is there such precision around location but not around other spaces?

On the classification of body parts, perhaps there’s an etymological explanation. Swahili was influenced by both Bantu languages and Arabic.

There may be an extent to which Tanzanians simply don’t care that much about classifying body parts, or knowing much about the outside world. However, many have not had the opportunity either. I guess it’s possible that if more Tanzanians studied and talked about these things, language would change over time. (I’m not saying this necessarily should or would happen!) It’ll be interesting to see how true these generalisations are of uni students.

Another hypothesis regarding geography is that this reflects Tanzania’s place in a wider world. They know about England because the English were colonisers (and you could argue Americans are neo-colonial.) For many, their main interactions with foreigners are with tourists on an exotic holiday: transactional rather than relational, with little interest in learning about the other from either side. So there’s little need to develop precision in speaking about other countries.

Whatever the reason, what is there to celebrate about this idiosyncrasy?

While it seems superfluous in English, Swahili’s precision about location enhances a reading of the Bible’s ‘in him’. One thing I’ve found exciting is that a passage like 1 John 2:5 is a little more striking in Swahili because the ‘inside’ words, the most ‘zoomed in’ construction are used. Rather than just being ‘in him’ as in the English version, in Swahili, we are something like ‘on the inside of him’. I love how vivid this is.

After an hour’s talk, I asked Rollo point blank, ‘Does the SCM put the atoning blood of Jesus Christ central?’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Well, we acknowledge it, but not necessarily central.’ Dan Dick and I then said that this settled the matter for us in the CICCU. We could never join something that did not maintain the atoning blood of Jesus Christ at its centre; and we parted company. Norman Grubb

It’s part of the history of CICCU when, in 1918, SCM approached them to discuss reunification. This encounter clarified CICCU’s doctrinal emphasis, and has been seen as a key moment behind the foundation of IFES.

It’s the story with which John Stott begins The Cross of Christ, it’s the story that was referred to a number of times during my undergraduate years in my local IFES group, and it’s the story that was part of galvanising an evangelical identity and ministry pathway for me personally.

It was inspiring. It was also a cautionary tale: ‘And look what happened to SCM! They lost the plot!’

‘Do you put the atoning blood of Jesus Christ central?’ Yes, I said; and now I look back at the nature of my faith then. How much did I care about the many other elements of the gospel story, the incarnation, the healings, the teachings, the resurrection, the ascension? They were important in theory, and I wouldn’t have said they were dispensable. But I probably hadn’t heard so much about them, which meant that I didn’t give them much oxygen myself. As long as I had the cross, I was fine. As long as I had the cross in first place, other things could fade into the background, because they did not need to be foregrounded. I might have not have said as much, but my vocabulary of choice would have told you otherwise.

The centrality of the cross had, consciously or unconsciously, become a reason not to consider other dimensions of faith. Is that the inevitable end of using the CICCU story as a cautionary tale — or even of asking what the ‘centre’ of evangelical faith is?

Well, it’s a bit unfair to claim that, isn’t it? It’s a slippery slope argument.

‘The slippery slope’ is a logical fallacy, and all it takes is one counter-example to overturn the whole thing. Here’s one: John Stott himself resisted evangelical efforts to prioritise and summarise truth. He is known for saying, ‘Who wants an irreducible minimum gospel? I want the full, biblical gospel!’ Even The Cross of Christ goes on to explore a broader ‘centre’ than the CICCU story might suggest.

It’s not fair to say, ‘Focus on the cross and you’ll forget everything else.’ But this cuts both ways: it’s also not fair to say, ‘Take the cross off centre stage and you’re basically liberal!’ When Norman Grubb laid claim to ‘the atoning blood’, it might have been appropriate to the issues of the time, but it doesn’t mean every generation needs to take a stand on the same thing, and it doesn’t mean you’re going wrong if you don’t do the same.

Yet the slippery slope is more than just a convoluted way of saying, I’m right and you’re wrong. It’s a way of establishing our identity: a way of saying, we’ve decided on our direction, and this is how we got here. And the same goes for the idea of a ‘centre’. As Scot McKnight says in this excellent article about the atonement, we need to be honest enough (or postmodern enough) to admit that we search for a ‘centre’ in order to prop up our existing belief and practice. At one level, that’s entirely natural and appropriate, and there’s nothing to fear in being completely frank about that.

We always build our identity through stories, but the challenge is to keep ourselves from wielding our stories against others. As Tamie and I continue our involvement with the student movement, what stories will we tell? What decisions will we refer back to? What will be the defining moments? And, most importantly, how will we define ourselves constructively rather than by tearing down others?

During our intercultural training, we were warned that parenting is one of the areas where people are most likely to become inflexible and judgemental. I’ve said before that I feel that dressing Elliot in ski gear in this climate would be cruel, for example.

But if this collection of mothers around the world is anything to go by, a little bit of cultural humility is called for. So many of these babies are wearing beanies and extra blankets! I might feel justified in my objection but I am still in the total minority on a global scale! Likewise, while not having a pram seems odd coming from my cultural background, for most women in the world, it’s simply normal to tie your baby to your back with a bit of fabric.