Aid in emerging world countries is looked upon more and more as “justice” or the nature and will of God. Lionel Young has written in A “New Breed of Missionaries”: Assessing Attitudes Toward Western Missions at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. That emerging world countries are looking at AID not just in terms of justice, but strategic mission thinking.[1]
The challenge in the West will be to convince evangelicals, who are often more passionate about planting churches than taking care of orphans and widows, that a larger percentage of Western money should be allocated to help their impoverished brothers and sisters in the Majority World. If this is accomplished, other questions remain. How can sharing be done without promoting a “dependency syndrome”? How do we offer accountability without lording it over those who are recipients of the generosity of Western donors? Mission agencies that are struggling to find their niche in the new global market may want to consider retooling in order to position themselves as specialists who help guide the process of partnership. If mission agencies can make these difficult changes, the wisdom and knowledge they have gained from their years of work out in the field could prove to be invaluable to the development of strategic partnerships. If they do not change, they will quickly become irrelevant. The African leaders and students I interviewed believed that if we are truly the body of Christ, we must find a way to share resources so that “there may be equality” (2 Cor. 8:14 KJV). As
Isaac M. T. Mwase observes, “What world Christianity has to figure out is how to have interdependent relationships that are healthy and mutually rewarding. There are pitfalls to be sure, but rather than preventing us from being generous, they should call us to be wise in our generosity. In the words of one student, “All resources, both human and financial, belong to the kingdom and should be used faithfully for the kingdom.”[2]
[1] International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 36, No. 2
[2] Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (New York: Anchor Books, 1994), p. 143.
