DOES HOLISTIC MISSION GUARANTEE HOLISTIC CHURCHES?

Abstract

The majority of the mission and development community agree that the aim of every local church worldwide should be to have the DNA and ability to both evangelize (in word) and care (in deed) within their communities. The reality is that many local churches throughout the world, birthed through holistic mission practices, are unable to achieve this aim because they are trapped in unhealthy dependency. The reason for this is that cross-cultural Christian workers wrap their holistic approaches in a Western package and deliver it in a cross-cultural setting. Patron-driven and worldview-ethnocentric missions are two major contributing factors to the above dilemma. The objective of this paper is to explore the above issues and suggest that cross-cultural Christian workers level off partnerships through vulnerability to avoid unhealthy dependency.