Can you do mission if you don't speak their language?

A challenging perspective on why good mission requires getting to know the host culture deeply

Marcus Grohmann, director of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission

Cross-cultural mission in parts of the world formerly colonized by the West can be complicated. As discussed in my March 24 post, Westerners still have more money and want to help, but money often comes with actual or perceived dominance. I’ve heard many stories of Africans doing what the Westerners wanted in order to get their money, even if they knew the proposed project was not what their community wanted.

Marcus Grohmann offers provocative insights on this topic. A German native, Grohmann has analyzed the power dynamics of relationships while studying post-apartheid reconciliation at multicultural churches in South Africa. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at Stellenbosch University’s Beyers Naudé Centre for Public Theology and director of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission (AVM), which encourages cross-cultural workers from the West to become genuinely integrated into the communities they serve, such as by using the local language and relying on locally available resources.

I’ve long urged learning other people’s languages as a way of valuing them and their culture, rather than telling them to speak my language. But the AVM goes farther, demonstrating (as Grohmann discusses in the Q&A below) how well-intentioned outsiders who don’t become deeply embedded in their host cultures can undermine their effectiveness.

The AVM is completing a handbook on vulnerable mission for practitioners, scheduled for release in June. You can find it and other articles and webinars on the AVM website or subscribe to its monthly newsletter.

Q&A with Marcus Grohmann

Why would you rather see Majority World mission rely on local resources rather than funneling in outside funds?

We believe this approach would not only redress some major power imbalances and support local sustainability and reproducibility. It would also raise awareness of the nature and depth of cultural differences that are so easily concealed when one is collaborating in a non-local language such as English and depending on foreign funds.

Despite much buy-in around decolonization in global church and mission structures, the AVM approach goes against views that are often taken for granted. Holistic mission appears to require outside resources, and former colonial languages are widely used by people around the world. But I know the validity of AVM’s concerns from personal experience.

God has used mission from the West in the past, but also, much has happened that we would not be able to endorse anymore today. We hope to address some of these issues without replicating old mistakes. To this end, we strive to equip practitioners based on a critical, academically grounded reflection on our own and others’ mission praxis.

Explain how “non-vulnerable” mission can be unhelpful.

If someone from the Global North ministers in English in a different cultural context, they are prone to miss not just nuances but major cultural orientations, convictions and ways of seeing the world among the people they minister to.

Here is one example. In the South African language isiXhosa, the word translated “to preach” covers a much broader range of meanings. Someone giving a testimony or prophesying can be described as “preaching.” If a conservative, multicultural church based on English decides that preaching is only for men but allows women to give testimonies, they may be able to justify that through Scripture. But churches speaking isiXhosa might come to different conclusions, either stricter or more lenient.

Speaking English leads us to believe that we speak of universals—that things like “preaching” or education or forgiveness exists in the same way for everyone. But different languages reflect different cultural contexts and social environments. If we ignore that, we risk either teaching people our culture along with (our version of) Christianity or finding only a rather shallow unity with our brothers and sisters.

In contexts of stark socio-economic inequalities, missionaries who are more affluent than the people they live and work with often feel compelled to minister to people “holistically.” By this, they usually mean giving material assistance or creating job opportunities along with “spiritual” work. While Christians are certainly called to be generous, becoming a source of material blessing to the people we are serving directly comes with certain risks as well. It can be harder for those in material need to be open and honest with us if dependencies are created. Giving can become a source of conflict if not everyone in the community gets an equal share. And we can compromise the gospel message, especially in situations where people’s traditions already see God primarily as a provider. God is to be trusted even if needs remain unfulfilled! Often, I fear, “holistic” ministry inadvertently feeds prosperity gospel thinking.

What are your main emphases for making mission more “vulnerable” and thus more effective?

Being vulnerable means giving up power and control to the extent that one can get hurt. If we work based on people’s vernacular languages, we will automatically start doing theology based on their cultural and linguistic assumptions, which can be quite different from our own theological traditions and convictions.

We encourage people serving cross-culturally to try to avoid becoming a direct source of funds to those among whom they are ministering. Of course, they can teach and try to help, provided that they do so in indigenous languages and without drawing on outside funds. But providing money or other material benefits unavoidably affects relationships—both with those to whom we relate directly and among the community as a whole. Declining to give becomes easier if there is not much to give—that is, if we share the living standard that is the norm for the people we work with.

A team of Mennonite missionaries worked with indigenous people in the Argentinian Chaco region. In their early years, they followed a classical approach, with a mission station, offering medical care, and speaking Spanish. Intimate sharing with people’s lives was considered inappropriate and even dangerous. The missionaries kept their infrastructure running, but the gospel wasn’t taking hold in the society.

The mission society, embracing vulnerability themselves, sought outside help to navigate the intercultural dynamics at play. This resulted in a profound “conversion” to a non-paternalistic form of ministry where the foreigners became “fraternal workers,” accompanying local people as they started to run their own churches based on their own languages and resources and drawing on their own traditions. Supported by this form of “mission without conquest,” a locally rooted form of church arose with different theological emphases that were very relevant and transformative in their specific context.

You have studied churches' efforts to be welcoming across cultural or racial lines, noting the subtle interpersonal or power dynamics that can affect those efforts. What have you learned that you think Christians engaged in this kind of work need to know?

One key insight was that some methods of pursuing “unity in diversity” actually pose a risk of undermining cultural equality and equity. A congregation usually requires a common denominator. Togetherness, though, rarely does away with cultural dominance. If it were otherwise, white people would more often be worshipping in churches led by people of color. But they don’t. We end up with racially mixed churches that are very similar in theology, liturgy, meeting places, and faith praxis to white churches. John Flett suggested that often in the global church, “Diversity, especially when defined in the narrow terms of gift, is cherished to the extent that it reinforces and does not intrude on the specific Western cultural heritage of the universal church.”

To experience true diversity, white people need to join others where they are, get exposure, and become guests—in a literal and a figurative sense. Why not start with visiting someone of a different cultural background and social class where they worship? You could join their congregation, start building relationships, and (if one senses God’s calling to build bridges in this way) perhaps even learn a new language. In an English-dominated, multicultural church, one could start doing Bible studies multilingually. When people read Scripture and explain it based on their own languages, this allows us to discover cultural differences and experience mutual learning in much deeper ways.

In cross-cultural mission outside the West, one could seek to work with indigenous churches outside the mainline spectrum or local ministries that run independently from Western involvement. There is much to learn from them.