Missions and Anthropology

From Anthropological Insights for Missionaries

By Paul G. Hiebert
Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985
(Pages 13-28)

The Christmas pageant was over—or so I thought. Christ’s birth to Mary and Joseph
had been announced by angels, dressed in pure white. Their faces were brown and their
message in Telugu, for we were in South India. The shepherds had staggered on stage,
acting half drunk, but herding the smaller children down on all fours as the sheep. Not quite
what I was reared to expect, but something I could explain in terms of cultural differences.
Unlike Palestinian shepherds, who are known for their sobriety and piety, Indian shepherds
are known for their drink and dancing. But the message was not lost, for at the sight of the
angels the shepherds fell to the ground, frightened sober.
The wise men and Herod had appeared on stage in regal splendor. Now we sat cross-
legged and crowded, as the shepherds, wise men, and angels gathered with Mary and
Joseph around the manger. A fine ending to the Christmas story. Suddenly, out jumped
Santa Claus! With a merry song and dance, he began to give out presents to Jesus and the
others. He was the hero of the pageant. I sat stunned.
What had gone wrong? A case of syncretism, I first thought—a mixture of Hindu and
Christian ideas that one might expect in new converts. The older missionaries had warned us
that if drama were allowed into the church, it would bring in Hindu beliefs. But, no. Santa
was a Western idea, brought by the Westerners along with the story of Christ’s birth. What
had happened?

Biblical Messages and Cultural Settings

In our preparation for missionary service, we are well trained in the Bible and the
missionary message. When we go abroad, we assume that once we learn the local language
we can preach, and the people will understand us. It comes as a shock that this is not so,
that the task of communicating effectively in another culture is far more difficult than
imagined. But what do we need to improve this?
There is a gulf between ourselves and the people to whom we go in service. There is an
even greater gulf between the Bible’s historical and cultural setting and contemporary life.
How do we bridge these gulfs and make possible the effective cross-cultural and cross-
historical communication of the gospel?
Clearly we need to understand the gospel in its historical and cultural setting. Without
this, we have no message. We also need a clear understanding of ourselves and the people
we serve in diverse historical and cultural contexts. Without this, we are in danger of
proclaiming a meaningless and irrelevant message.
Too often, however, we are content to settle for only one of these goals. As evangelicals
we emphasize knowledge of the Bible, but rarely stop to examine the people and cultures we
serve. So the message we bring is often misunderstood and “foreign.” The liberal wing of the
church, on the other hand, has underscored knowledge of contemporary human settings, but
downplays the importance of solid theological foundations based on biblical truth. This group
is in danger of losing the gospel.
We need both approaches. We must know the biblical message. We must also know the
contemporary scene. Only then can we build the bridges that will make the biblical message
relevant to today’s world and its people everywhere.

Anthropological Contributions to Missions

How can we know the biblical message? Clearly, we must study the Bible, theology, and
church history. As missionaries we must also develop the skills of our ministry, whether this
be preaching, teaching, medicine, development, radio, or writing.
How can we learn about the contemporary scene? Anthropology, sociology, history, and
the other social sciences can help us here. They provide tools whereby we can examine the
cultural settings within which we work and supply information about the contemporary scene.
They can assist us in several ways.
First, anthropology can bring understanding of cross-cultural situations. For example, it
can help us analyze the Christmas drama mentioned above. Recent studies show that people
organize their ideas into larger blocks or domains. In this case it is clear that North Amer-
icans have a great many ideas associated with Christmas, but that they divide these into two
distinct conceptual domains, resulting in two different Christmases. In one, the sacred sphere,
they place Jesus, Mary, Joseph, angels, wise men, and shepherds. In the other, the secular
one, they place Santa, reindeer, Christmas trees, stockings, and presents. They do not mix
the two in their minds. Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, does not belong in the same picture
as the angels and wise men. Nor does Santa belong on the same stage as Jesus. Missionaries
introduced Indians to the basic concepts of “Christmas,” but failed to communicate the
implicit distinction between the two Christmases to their listeners. The Indians, therefore, did
not separate Santa from the manger scene.
Second, anthropology can provide us with many insights into such specific mission tasks
as Bible translation. Like missionaries, early anthropologists had to learn new languages,
many of which had no written forms, grammars, dictionaries, or teachers. They developed
techniques to learn languages quickly and accurately through local informants and to translate
messages from one culture to another. These methods have been invaluable to missionaries in
learning new languages and translating the Bible into these languages. Anthropologists have
also examined the problems of cross-cultural communication, and the insights they have
gained can help missionaries bring their message to other societies with a minimum of
distortion and loss of meaning.
Third, anthropology can help missionaries understand the processes of conversion,
including the social change that occurs when people become Christians. People are social
beings, influenced by the dynamics of their social environments, and a familiarity with these
psychological mechanisms is important to understanding the mission process.
Fourth, anthropology can help us make the gospel relevant to our listeners. As we have
seen, there is a deep chasm between contemporary cultures and the sociological contexts in
which the Bible was based. To bridge that chasm we need to understand both divine rev-
elation within its historical and cultural settings and modern humans in their present-day
environments. The latter we can gain in part through the social sciences.
Finally, anthropology can help us relate to people around the world in all their cultural
diversity and assist us in building bridges of understanding between them. The gospel breaks
down the barriers that divide people into Jews and Gentiles, slaves and masters, males and
females, First World and Third World, Americans and Russians, “us” and “them.” It calls
Christians to be citizens of the kingdom of God, in which people from all nations and cultures
are brought into common fellowship without destroying their ethnological distinctives.
In this book we will explore some of the insights that anthropology can bring to the
missionary task. Since I am assuming that my readers have acquired a thorough familiarity
with the Bible and have constructed their theological foundations upon that knowledge, we
will not seek to lay these foundations again. Rather, we will look at what anthropology has to
contribute to our study of different peoples in their historical and cultural contexts and
examine the implications these insights have for our ministries. These are areas in which many
evangelical missionaries are weak.
 Before we do so, however, we need to look briefly at some of the hypotheses underlying
this book. All studies are based on certain givens, and it is important to know what they are.
First we will look at this book’s theological assumptions and then at its anthropological
assumptions, to see how both shape our thinking. Then we will seek to bring together biblical
and anthropological insights to achieve a broader understanding of the missionary task. We
must avoid a double vision that keeps us from seeing things clearly.

Theological Assumptions

What are the theological assumptions underlying this book, particularly as they’ relate to
the missionary task? This is an important question. for we cannot divorce our anthropological
models from our theologies. To do so is to imply a separation between the spiritual and
eternal nature of human beings and their creaturely and temporal nature. Human history must
be understood within the greater framework of cosmic events, and our anthropological
models of humans must fit within our theological framework. It is biblical revelation that
provides us with the ultimate foundations upon which we build our social and historical
understandings of human beings.

God’s Mission

A theology of missions must begin with God, not humans. It must begin with the cosmic
history of the creation, the fall, and God’s redemption of his creation. It must include God’s
revelation of himself to humans, the incarnation of Jesus Christ within history, the salvation he
achieved through his death and resurrection, and the ultimate lordship of Christ over all
creation. The history of humankind is first and foremost the story of God’s mission to redeem
sinners who seek his salvation, the story of Jesus who came as a missionary, and the story of
God’s Spirit who works in the hearts of those who hear.
It is in this context of God’s activity within this world and throughout history that we must
understand our task. The mission is ultimately God’s, and we are but part of that mission.
Our planning and strategizing are useless, even destructive, if they keep us from seeking first
the guidance and empowerment of God himself.

Authoritative Scripture
 The Bible is the fully authoritative record of God’s self-revelation to humans. It is God’s
Word, and we turn to it not only to hear God’s message of salvation, but also to see how he
works in and through human history in accomplishing his purposes. Scripture is the standard
against which we measure all truth and righteousness, all theologies and moralities.
Because the Bible is God’s Word, it must be our message to a lost world. Our central
task is to communicate it to people so that they understand and respond. We may be
involved in many things—programs of preaching, teaching, giving of relief, healing, and
development—but these are not a true part of Christian missions if they are not rooted in the
Word and do not give expression to the gospel. Bearing witness to the gospel through
proclamation and life is the heart of the mission task.
God’s revelation is always given to humans in specific historical and cultural contexts.
Consequently, to understand the Scriptures, we must relate them to the time and setting in
which they were given. Even Christ came as a specific person within Jewish culture about
two thousand years ago.

Christocentric

Scripture must be understood in the light of Jesus Christ. He is the center to which all
revelation points. The Old Testament finds its fulfillment in him, and the New Testament
bears witness to him. As Son of God, he is the perfect representation of God. And as Son of
man, he is the perfect communicator of God’s self-revelation to humans. Christ therefore
becomes our exemplar, and his incarnation is the model for our mission. Not that we can
save the world, but, like him, we must seek to identify with those to whom we go in order to
bring to them the Good News of God’s salvation in ways they can understand.
Our message, too, is centered on Christ. It is both the Good News of God’s salvation
through his death and resurrection and a call to Christian discipleship. It begins in a deep
awareness of human sinfulness and ends in worship, when all in heaven and on earth will bow
before him and recognize that Jesus is Lord.

Ministry of the Holy Spirit

Missions cannot be understood apart from the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in the lives
of his people and in those who hear the gospel. He prepares our hearts to receive and
respond to the message of redemption. And the Spirit works within us to bring us to spiritual
maturity by pointing us to Christ. It is through his power that we minister to those who are
lost, to those who are broken in body and spirit, to those who are oppressed, and to those
who are starving and homeless.

The Kingdom of God

The center of Christ’s message was the kingdom of God, wherein God is still at work in
creation and in history to redeem the world unto himself. The person of Christ is certainly
central to that work, but it extends beyond him to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of
people, and to the work of God in the affairs of nations and in all of nature. The scope of
God’s mission is not only his kingdom in heaven, but also his kingdom on earth. Although it
has to do with the eternal destiny of humans, it also deals with their well-being on earth—
with peace, justice, liberty, health, provision, and righteousness.

The Church

At the heart of the kingdom of God is the church, the people of God on earth. Through
them he proclaims the Good News of his kingdom, and through them he strengthens those
who enter that kingdom. In missions we need a strong theology of church as a corporate
body, a community of the faithful. For the church is the discerning community within which
the mission task must be understood. Missions is not first the responsibility of individuals; it is
the task of the church as a whole.

Priesthood of All Believers

The church is a living body in which there are many members, each of whom has been
given gifts to be used for the body as a whole. While members have different gifts, they all
have the right to approach God and the responsibility to discern the message of God within
the context of the church. All believers are priests!
This is a radical message, and its implications for missions are great. It means that
converts in other lands have as much right as we to read and interpret the Scriptures. To
deny them this is to deny the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Our task, then, is
to bring them the Bible and help them discern within it God’s message to them. We are to be
models for them of God’s people, living in obedience to his Word. Our challenge is also to
allow them the greatest privilege we allow ourselves—the right to make mistakes and learn
from them.
But the priesthood of believers forces us to differentiate between the Bible, God’s
revelation to us, and theologies, which are human understandings of that revelation in
different cultural and historical contexts. Thus we speak of one Bible but of the theologies of
Calvin, Luther, the Anabaptists, and others. As we will see in chapter 8, this distinction
between the Bible and theological interpretations of the Bible does not relativize theology. A
Christian theology has one foot in biblical revelation and the other in the historical and cultural
context of the people hearing the message.
Since we are all given the right to read and interpret the Scriptures, our first task is to
remain faithful to biblical truth. This begins with careful exegesis, in which the message of the
Bible is understood within a specific cultural and historical context. Our second task is to
discover what the meaning of the biblical message is for us in our particular cultural and
historical setting and then determine what our response should be. This is hermeneutics.
Although the message of the Bible is supracultural—above all cultures—it must be
understood by people living within their own heritage and time frame.

Anthropological Assumptions

There are certain anthropological assumptions underlying this book which need to be
made explicit. Theories of cultural evolution dominated anthropology until the first quarter of
the twentieth century. In these, as in medieval Christian theology, the meaning of human ex-
perience was sought in terms of history. But in these theories history was explained purely in
naturalistic rather than theistic terms. “Culture” was seen as a single human creation in various
stages of development in different parts of the world. Societies were thought to progress
from simple to complex organizations, from irrational to rational thought, and from magic to
religion and finally to science.
This theory of cultural evolution was called into question after World War I. The optimism
about human progress that preceded that war had been shattered. Moreover, research
showed that far from being illogical, so-called primitive societies are as rational and complex
as those of modern mankind, though in different ways.
A rejection of the idea of cultural “evolution” does not mean we must abandon diachronic
or historical paradigms of explanation. The Bible itself explains humanity in terms of cosmic
history, a drama in which there is a “plot” with a beginning, a development, and an ending.
Scripture rejects the idea that human experience is a random set of events with no direction,
no purpose, and hence no meaning. Moreover, it claims that the driving force behind history
is not blind chance, but God’s purposes and human responses. We need to understand peo-
ple and divine revelation within the context of history.
By the 1930s theories of cultural evolution had largely been replaced, partly by structural
functional theories that focused on the diversity of human societies and saw them as self-
contained, integrated systems. Like living organisms, societies were thought to have many
cultural traits, all of which contributed to the survival of the society as a whole.
Such theories have contributed much to our understanding of social structures and the
dynamics of sociological change, and we will draw upon these insights here. In the extreme,
however, these theories become deterministic and overlook the role of the human as a
thinking, acting being. They then explain human thought in terms of social organization, and in
so doing they relativize all systems of belief, including all religions and ultimately the body of
science. In the end this relativism undermined the claims of the social determinists themselves.
As Peter Berger notes (1970:42), “Relativizing analysis, in being pushed to its final
consequence, bends back upon itself. The relativizers are relativized, the debunkers are
debunked—indeed, relativization ion itself is somehow liquidated.” Moving away from social
determinism has not, as some anthropologists feared, led to a total paralysis of thought, but
to a new flexibility and the freedom to ask questions of truth and meaning.
Another stream of thought that emerged after the rejection of theories of cultural evolution
was cultural anthropology. This focused its attention upon systems of ideas and symbols.
“Culture” came to mean not merely the aggregates of human thought and behavior, but both
the systems of beliefs that lie behind specific ideas and actions and the symbols by which
those ideas and actions are expressed. Cultures are seen as integrated wholes in which the
many parts work together to meet the basic needs of their members.
Far from reducing beliefs and behavior to predetermined responses, this concept of
culture makes rational human thought and choice both possible and meaningful. It has helped
us to understand how people communicate with one another and build larger societies
without which life would be impossible. It has also helped us to understand cultural
differences, the nature of cross-cultural communication, and how societies change. These
understandings are invaluable in the mission task.
Anthropologists have recently focused their attention on the fundamental assumptions that
underlie explicit cultural beliefs. Each culture seems to have its own world view, or
fundamental way of looking at things. If this is so, cross-cultural communication at the
deepest level is possible only when we understand the world views of the people to whom
we minister. It also means that people will understand the gospel from the perspective of
their own world view. Consequently, missionaries must understand not only the explicit
symbols but also the implicit beliefs in a culture if they are to communicate the gospel to its
people with a minimum of distortion.
Finally, anthropologists have developed specialized theories that deal with specific aspects
of human life, many of which are useful for missions. One of these is linguistics, which
examines the structures of human languages and provides us with important insights into lan-
guage learning and Bible translation. Another is psychological anthropology, which studies
human personalities and their relationships to cultures and change.
In this book we will draw widely from those anthropological theories that have most
relevance to the mission task. We will also seek to critique them from a Christian perspective
and to integrate them with our theological understandings of the mission task.

Toward Integration

How do we integrate our theological and anthropological views of humans? We need to

do this, and on a conscious level. So long as we use science in our everyday lives—in the
form of electricity, automobiles, computers, modern drugs, and a thousand other of its crea-
tions—scientific assumptions will influence our theology. The same is true as we draw upon
the social sciences. And if we leave these influences unexamined, our understanding of the
gospel can be distorted.
Any attempt at integration must be wholistic in nature. It will not do to simply pick a few
pieces of scientific thought and incorporate them into our Christian thought. If we wish to
draw upon scientific insights, we must face head on the question of how science itself relates
to biblical truth.
Here, in particular, we must look at scientific theories about human beings and compare
these with biblical teachings about the nature of men and women, for how we look at people
plays a crucial role in how we carry out the missionary task. Although we need to use sci-
entific insights as these fit our understanding of the Bible, we must also seek an integration
between what God has revealed to us through Scriptures and what he has shown to us
through his creation.
The term wholesome has many meanings today. For example, people speak of “whole
earth” and “whole medicine.” We will use the term in the anthropological sense of a broad,
integrated understanding of human beings that deals with the full range of human existence.

The Variety and Unity of Humankind

Missionaries share with anthropologists an interest in all human beings. Most people do
not, since they are concerned primarily with their own kinds of people, their own societies,
or their own parts of the world. They ignore the rest of the world except when it affects
them. Most of our newspapers are full of local news but carry little about the world at large.
Universities offer numerous courses on the history and literature of Europe and the United
States but almost none on India, Ghana, or Indonesia.
“All human beings” here has several dimensions. The term includes people in all parts of
the world—China, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Zambia. It refers also to people at all levels
of society—the poor and weak just as much as the rich and powerful. It further includes
people in all of history—those who lived in the past and those who will live in the future as
well as those who are living today. Only within this broad picture can we begin to understand
what it means to be “human.”
This study of people in all their settings has made missionaries and anthropologists aware
of the many differences between human beings. People differ in their biological and
psychological makeup. They differ in the societies they organize and the cultures they create.
As we will see. these differences raise profound philosophical and theological questions.
But missionaries, like anthropologists, are also concerned with human universals—what is
common to all human beings. Clearly, humans share most physiological functions. They bear
offspring, digest food, suffer illnesses, and respond to stimuli by the same biological
processes. They experience joy and pain and share mans’ of the same psychological drives.
They organize societies and create cultures. Without such human universals, it would be
impossible for people in one culture to understand or communicate with people in another. In
fact, recognizing our common humanity with other people is the first step in building the
relationship of love and trust that can bridge the deep differences that separate “us” from
“them.”
To these the Christian adds other human universals. All have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God. And salvation is open to all through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
There is no other way for the rich or the poor, the American or the Chinese. Accordingly,
we are concerned that all may hear and have an opportunity to respond to the gospel.
 The church, too, is called to be one body of believers that transcends the differences of
race and culture through the creation of a new humanity. There may be different languages
but there is only one gospel. There may be different forms of worship but there is only one
God. There may be different cultural settings but there is only one church.

A Wholistic Model of Humanity

We are interested in all people, but also in comprehensive ways of looking at them. We
frequently take a fragmented approach to humans. When we see them as physical beings
subject to the laws of motion, we can analyze what happens to their bodies when they are
involved in car accidents. Or we may look at them in other ways—as biological creatures,
when we examine how their bodies assimilate food, excrete wastes, reproduce, and respond
to stress; as psychological beings, products of conscious and unconscious drives, feelings,
and ideas; as sociocultural beings who create societies and systems of beliefs; or as sinners
who need salvation.
Each of these models helps us understand something of what it means to be human. But
how do we fit them all together? How do we avoid a fragmented view that breaks them up
into parts and loses sight of the fact that they are whole humans—not just arms and legs, or
bodies, or drives, or spirits?

Reductionism. The simplest and most common answer is reductionism. Although we

may recognize many dimensions in human life, we reduce them all to one type of explanation.
For example, in biological reductionism, we recognize that people find it hard to get along
with one another or have times of spiritual depression, but we “explain” these in terms of
biological causes such as hormonal imbalances and genetic tendencies. In psychological
reductionism, we would explain them in terms of conscious or unconscious drives and human
response patterns.
The danger of reductionism in missions is its overly simplistic approach to human need.
We tend to see people only in terms of either physical or spiritual needs. Christ ministered to
people in all their needs. Clearly, the eternal salvation of people is our highest priority, but we
must bring them the whole gospel. Salvation, in the biblical sense, has to do with all
dimensions of our lives.
In particular, we from the West must guard against a mechanistic reductionism. We tend
to think in terms of cause and effect and believe that we can solve our problems and achieve
our goals if only we have the right methods or answers. This approach has made us masters
over much of nature, but it has also led us to see other people as objects that we can
manipulate if we use the right formulas. In fact, even the social sciences can be seen as new
“formulas” if they are misused. The gospel calls us to see people as human beings, and any
effective mission action begins by building relationships, not programs.
A mechanistic approach also tempts us to seek to control God for our own purposes. We
set the agenda and try to make God do our bidding. But Scripture always calls us away from
this type of magic and toward worship and obedience. The missionary task is first the work
of God, and we must follow his lead. This does not eliminate the need to plan or strategize.
But it does mean that we must do so with an attitude of submission to God and a recognition
that he acts when he chooses, often in ways that we cannot understand.

Stratigraphic approaches. A second road to wholism is what Clifford Geertz has called
the “stratigraphic approach.” In this we simply stack different theories of human beings one
upon the other, without any serious attempt to integrate them. Each model, whether
theological or scientific, remains a self-contained explanation of some aspect of human life.
The result is a collection of fragmentary understandings about people that are gathered by
various methods of analysis. But, taken together, these do not give us a wholistic view of
what it means to be a human (Figure).
We can, for instance, see starving people and introduce modern agriculture, or bring in
hospitals for the sick, or build schools for the ignorant. But in so doing we often overlook the
fact that these factors are all interrelated—that knowledge can prevent illnesses and help

A Stratigraphic Approach to Human Beings

Theological
Models

Anthropological
Models

Sociological
Models
Psychological
Models

Biological Models

Physical Models

people to grow food, and that adequate food and health is needed for them to study. And
we fail to tie starvation, illness, and ignorance to their roots in human sin. We also fail to see
how they can lead to further sin.
Here, again, missionaries from the West must be on guard, for we grow up in a society
that draws a sharp line between religion and science, between the supernatural and natural.
This distinction is Greek, not biblical. It has led us to a stratified approach that explains ma-
terial order in terms of autonomous natural laws and relegates God’s activities to the
miraculous. It separates human spirits from their bodies and makes a sharp distinction
between evangelism and social concern. Evangelical missionaries too often see themselves as
ministering in one or the other of these spheres. Doctors, teachers, and agricultural workers
often see themselves as dealing with physical needs, and preachers often limit their concern
to eternal salvation.
But broken, suffering, and lost people listen to doctors, teachers, and agricultural workers
because these meet them where they hurt. The preacher’s message often seems irrelevant to
them at the moment. Consequently, they accept a secular science divorced from theology
and reject Christianity. As John Stott points out, we must see humans as soul-bodies. We
are not one or the other, but both in relationship to each other.
A stratigraphic approach to theology and science secularizes much of our lives by leaving
them outside of theological critique. In the long run, this approach also undermines theology.
Like it or not, so long as we use the benefits of science we absorb its views of reality, often
uncritically. We need to deal consciously with the relationship of theological and scientific
understandings of humans if we want to maintain our theological convictions.

Toward wholism. A wholistic approach to the understanding of humans cannot be gained

by reductionist or stratified models. We must learn what theology and the sciences have to
teach us about people and weave these insights into a comprehensive understanding of hu-
mans as whole beings, realizing that our knowledge is always imperfect and incomplete.
Such an approach must recognize the contribution different studies can make to our
understanding of people. Anthropology does so in the social sciences by showing how the
various insights each discipline brings relate to each other (Figure 3). For example, the
physical characteristics of humans affect the cultures they create. If they were ten feet tall or
if there were only one sex, their cultures and societies would be different.
On the other hand, cultures mold people’s physical characteristics. Humans are
remarkably imaginative in changing their bodies to fit their tastes. They drill holes in their ears,
lips, cheeks, and teeth to support ornaments; bind heads and feet to change their shapes; put
on glasses and hearing aids to improve their perceptions; paint and tattoo their skin, nails,
and hair; cut their bodies and shape their hair in a thousand ways. Cultures also influence the
ideas people have about health and beauty. In the West, where slim bodies are considered
attractive, women diet to stay slender; in Tonga in the South Pacific, where beauty is
measured by bulk, a woman eats to maintain a full figure.
Similarly the interaction of models must be studied in order to determine how people’s
biological systems affect them psychologically, how their psychological systems affect them
physically, and how both affect and are affected by their culture.
While anthropology has worked toward an integrated view of human beings from the
viewpoint of the sciences, we as Christians must ask a further question. How do scientific
models of human beings relate to our theological understandings of them? Unfortunately, dur-
ing the last century the relationship between scientists and theologians has often been one of
confrontation. In part this has been due to reductionist approaches to knowledge. Both the
sciences and theology have tended to claim a total and comprehensive view of reality, and
each therefore ignored the other. We are becoming increasingly aware that reality is far more
complex than our understandings of it—at best we can look at it from different perspectives.
Like complementary sets of blueprints of the same building, different bodies of knowledge
show us different aspects of reality. The sciences provide us with insights into various
structures of empirical reality. Theology provides us with an overall picture of the building,
the builder, and key events in its history.
Complementarity does not mean there will always be agreement between the sciences
and theology. When disagreements do arise, we need to reexamine our science and our
theology in the light of the Scriptures and creation. Since God is the source of both, proper
understanding of each perspective will not lead to conflict.
The Missionary Task

All authority has been given to me both in heaven and on earth. Therefore, as you go
make disciples of all peoples by baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and
the Holy Spirit, and by teaching them to observe everything which I have told you. And
behold, I always will be with you to the end of your days and to the end of history (Matt.
28:18—20, trans. Hans Kasdorf).
As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you (John 20:21).

With these words Jesus commissioned us to be his witnesses around the world. The
Christian church was once largely in the Middle East and the West, with small pockets in
Southwest India and in China for a time. Today the church is found in all parts of the world
and is growing most rapidly in many of the younger churches in Africa, Asia, Latin America,
and the Pacific Islands. Moreover, there is a growing interest in missions in these churches of
the so-called Two-Thirds World. Missionaries from Korea are serving in Los Angeles, those
from India in Europe, and those from one part of Africa in other parts of that continent. In
fact, the most rapid growth in the missionary force today comes from these young churches.
We can, therefore, no longer equate missionaries with Westerners. When we use the
word missionary in this study, we mean anyone who communicates the gospel in a cross-
cultural setting, whether he or she is an African serving in India, or a Latin American in Spain.
The illustrations used are slanted toward a Western audience, because this book will be used
largely in the West. But the principles examined apply equally to missionaries from the Two-
Thirds World. The reader need only think of local examples to replace the Western ones that
are given.