Going home to participate in world missions

I have considered it rather fascinating - the notion of encouraging foreigners in our midst to go home for the sake of the gospel. I appreciate how Packer iterates the points clearly and succinctly. Practically, there would be less of a cultural barrier (and language barrier) and there would be less suspicion of colonial-type of forceful influence by a foreigner coming to impose a foreign religion upon the indigenous people. Whereas the foreign person would have to find a reason to obtain a long-term visa, be it education or work, the local missionary could be seeking genuine employment (until the church plant has grown large enough to sustain a full-time pastor). I am apprehensive about the efficacy of short-term missions with durations below 2-3 years, and the indigenous missionary would be able to make long-term plans and participate even indefinitely. Monetary-wise, especially if the area of the mission field is a developing country, the same amount of money would go further funding a native citizen as compared to funding a Westerner.


From J I Packer's article on the Lausanne Movement page:

The Work of the Holy Spirit in Conviction and Conversion - Lausanne Movement

POWER AND WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT I I live in Vancouver, Canada, where the wind rarely rises beyond a gentle breeze. But in Britain, where I lived before, gales would strip branches from trees, roofs from sheds, and make it...Read more ›

"We also need to recognize the intrinsic superiority of nationals evangelizing within their own or similar cultures. This is more effective than having others bear the brunt of evangelizing cross-culturally where the receiving culture differs from their own in a radical way.

National evangelism is superior to cross-cultural evangelism because: (a) nationals have freedom [of] movement, living in lands whereas by A.D. 2000, 83 percent of world's population are expected to to be living in lands to which church-planting Western missionaries will not be admitted; (b) throughout Asia, and in other parts of the Two-Thirds World, anti-Western prejudice is strong; (c) in Asia and Africa, missionary money from the West goes much further when supporting nationals rather than Westerners; (d) pioneering by Western missionaries perpetuates the myth that Christianity is the religion of the West as Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are religions of the East, in other words, that Christianity is an ethnic rather than a universal religion; and (e) the efforts of Western missionaries in the East so easily look and feel like neo-colonialism and denominational imperialism. But the deepest reason is that appreciating the full humanity of a person who culturally is not felt to be “one of us” is harder than when a person is felt to be a part of that culture. This makes it more difficult for cross-cultural communication to be perceived as incarnational and, therefore, as convincingly true. It is as simple, and as far-reaching, as that. In lands where there are no churches, cross-cultural missionary work remains the only way to begin."