# The dangers of "going under" national denominations



## Pergamum (Oct 7, 2010)

Ralph Winter gives a case-study on the dangers of Western missionaries and agencies who “go under” national denominations and do not preserve their lateral equality. 

In the early 20th Century Presbyterian missions in the Middle East suffered greatly due to turning over control of missions to their indigenous partners. The Presbyterian Church (USA) turned over its daughter churches and all properties to national bodies and gave them the final decision regarding whether Western Presbyterian missionaries would or would not come to work anywhere in their countries. 

Being in an environment of persecution and unable to risk bold mission efforts, invitations from these churches in Muslim-dominant lands declined. works among Muslims suffered in the last century due to giving these minority churches in Muslim lands the say over what the West would send them and where these new Presbyterian missionaries would be placed. 

For instance, Ralph Winter reports how the churches in Pakistan, made up mostly of former Hindus actually thwarted efforts by Western missionaries attempting to focus on Pakistani Muslims. Winter recalls how a professor of the Christian seminary in Gujranwala, Pakistan, threatened an American, saying, “If you send missionaries to work among the Muslims, we will go to the government and have them expelled from the country.” Thus, there is something deeply wrong when, in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, the majority of Presbyterian church members never have been former Muslims but came from other backgrounds entirely. Samuel Zwemer’s (the great Presbyterian missionary to Muslims) own denomination, the Reformed Church of America, deferred all decision-making concerning the placement of new missionaries to its partner churches in the Muslim world. Due to this restraint, new works in sensitive were never initiated and western missionaries were limited by the oversight of these Middle Eastern churches. 


Can anyone verify this reading of missions history or provide more information?

Also, to what extent should Western missions agencies preserve their independance when working with national Christian bodies? I believe that missionaries ought not become members or paid pastors of the churches to whom they are ministering but act more like advisors while trying to raise up indigenous folks. Your thoughts?


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## py3ak (Oct 8, 2010)

The difficulty seems to be preserving independence while not adopting a superior attitude. It might be instructive to turn it around - if Eastern missionaries came to the US, how we would like them to interact with our churches?


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