Vulnerable Mission in Africa: Why Some of Today’s Intercultural Missionaries Should Restrict Themselves to Local Languages and Resources

Abstract

Intentionally rooting this article in a church visit by the author connects to African contextual reality. Interpretation by the author may be unlike indigenous African interpretation, that will be affected by financial and other dependencies, and arise from contextual presuppositions unfamiliar to the West. Practice of vulnerable mission (use local languages and resources), implemented with determined conviction, is proposed for a Westerner to acquire eyes and ears in indigenous contexts. For Westerners to communicate good sense in the light of indigenous realities is difficult. God’s love is universal, but how his love is understood is not.