Implications of identity in global mission

Introduction

The University of Pretoria’s Faculty of Theology in South Africa houses the late missiologist David Bosch’s library. Bosch did some of his theological studies at this university, and it is therefore a fitting home for his collection. I had the privilege of doing my PhD research at that faculty and grew in appreciation for Bosch’s contribution to mission theology, which is well documented. One of his helpful observations is the role missiology plays in serving as an annoyance (what he called a “gadfly”) to participants in mission who seek to maintain the status quo (1991: 496).

Bosch thought missiologists should “accompany the missionary enterprise, to scrutinize its foundations, its aims, attitude, message and methods” (1991: 496). This perspective serves this study that is about the implications of what it means to be an insider in a global mission structure and how this affects decision-making power and relationships for all participants, especially ones from the majority world.

Influence of independence movements

During the 1940s to 1970s, many territories in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific islands gained independence from their colonizers. As newly independent nations set their vision for the future, there were rippling implications on Christian mission agencies and churches, Western, international, and local. This era coincided with the mid-1900s, which was, according to church historian Dana Robert, “the greatest period of cross-cultural expansion in the history of Christianity” (2009: 70). This effected international mission agencies because the newly “independent nations viewed Christianity as a Western religion closely identified with colonialism. Therefore, when they escaped the control of colonialism, they sought to limit the influence of Christianity as well” (Terry and Gallagher, 2017: 279).

During this era, Wycliffe Bible Translators International (WBTI, now called Wycliffe Global Alliance) was formed in 1942 by William Cameron Townsend and William Nyman as the missionary resourcing organization for SIL International, which Townsend founded in 1934. By the late 1950s, Wycliffe was internationalizing as it spread from its US roots to Canada, the UK, Germany, and Australia from where it was recruiting personnel and sending them to Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America.

Edward L. Smither describes this era of 20th-century mission as being marked by “innovation and new strategies” reflected in new agencies, and he includes Townsend’s founding of Wycliffe and SIL (2019: 151). What Smither misses is how Townsend may not have appreciated the significance of the strengthening winds of nationalism, independence movements, and their effects upon colonialism and Western mission paternalism.

A way Wycliffe was innovating was to internationalize itself and it started thinking about how to do this in the mid-1960s. The term “international” is

semantically tied to a Western concept of territorial expansion. Mission agencies . . . used the word “international” in their name to identify them with a wider reach, but the location of their headquarters and the nationalities of their leadership teams indicated that international still reflected that the agency was Western based—usually in the US or UK—although it may have had affiliate offices in other countries. (Franklin, 2012: 136)

The move to becoming international during this era should have been a conundrum for Wycliffe International (WBTI). The organization through its 20 Western offices (called Divisions at the time) had sent 1,953 people across the world by 1969 and by the early 1980s this had grown by another 3,000.

As a researcher affiliated with Wycliffe, I have analyzed evidence in its archives of its Western leaders debating how Christians from newly independent nations could be encouraged to form their own Bible translation agencies. This was seen as more straightforward than creating pathways for them to formally join an international mission body like WBTI. But there were concerns about how national organizations would relate to WBTI and vice versa. And in technical terms, were Bible translators from the new national organizations going to be equal in their training and qualifications to their Western counterparts? Resolving these and other questions meant the pathway ahead was not clear, but developments in 1960s Ghana provide some insights.

Early roots in Ghana

In 1960, the late Ghanaian statesman John Komla Agama was studying in the UK where he learned about the work of Wycliffe. He met its British Council and asked them to send Bible translators to his country because there were many languages that did not have any Scripture. The need was noted.

This was the era of the 1960s wave of young and educated Christians in newly independent nations who made their voices known in regional and international church conferences. These emerging leaders “accused missionaries of paternalism and failing to turn over church leadership structures to national control quickly enough” (Robert, 2009: 68). Agama’s approach was nuanced. He wanted foreigners’ expertise in his country at least in the specific skill areas of linguistics and Bible translation.

In response to Agama’s request, John Bendor-Samuel was sent by Wycliffe from the UK to Ghana in December 1961. This was 18 months after Ghana had received its independence from the UK and the first African nation south of the Sahara to do so. Bendor-Samuel worked out a cooperative agreement between Wycliffe’s partner, SIL, and the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana. This stated that the two organizations would work together in the development of Ghana’s languages. Within a year, two British couples arrived in Ghana to carry out linguistic and Bible translation work.

The agreement was built upon the vision of Ghanaian leaders like Agama, William Ofori-Atta, and Gottfried Osei-Mensah, with whom Bendor-Samuel had formed friendships. These Ghanaian statesmen aspired to develop and use the nation’s languages as “a platform for the intellectual, political, economic, and spiritual transformation of their people” (Opoku-Mensah, 2012: 1). They had plans for a truly Ghanaian organization. Eventually that became known as the Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (GILLBT). It was the first National Bible Translation Organization (NBTO) to be affiliated with WBTI.

Concerns for founder

What was transpiring in Ghana paved the way for other NBTOs to slowly emerge with some organizational support from WBTI. This troubled William Cameron Townsend. By the mid-1970s he was no longer in active leadership of WBTI or SIL, but he still had influence and respect. In a speech to staff in March 1977, Townsend encouraged the use of “tribesmen” to do the translating of the Bible. ¹ He stated, “now of course, those [people] will not become members of WBT, at least not in the foreseeable future” (Hibberd, 2007: 50). He thought they could be employed by Westerners to do the translating. Townsend believed that national translators should not eliminate the need to recruit foreigners as the primary leaders and staff for Bible translation and other tasks.

Later, Townsend wrote a memo in May 1979 asking his leaders to exercise “extreme caution” because there were “dangers inherent in hiring national translators or investing foreign funds in NBTOs” (Hibberd, 2015). If NBTOs were promoted, Townsend believed the result would be the Western, especially US, church’s abdication of its “responsibility to be the major provider of translated Scriptures for the world’s ethnic minorities” (Steven, 2004: 228). Townsend wrote a prayer that expressed his concerns:

Please, Lord, don’t think we have decided to “pass the buck.” “Let the nationals do it” really makes sense. The reality is that if they can get adequate training, they can do a better job than we can. Of course, we have always worked with the [nationals]. We wouldn’t have gotten to first base without their help. Now, however, we’ll leave them to work alone while we seek financial help for them and provide a certain amount of training and consultant help. But please, Lord, we aren’t “passing the buck.” (Steven, 2004: 228)

Townsend’s fears included the “conviction that nationals should remain independent of [foreign] control” because he believed “his own [Western] colleagues would not treat nationals as equals” (Aldridge, 2018: 203). Townsend’s solution was to help local citizens form their own translation organizations “free of external control” (Aldridge, 2018: 203). These national organizations needed full responsibility for their human and financial resource requirements. This would lessen colonial attitudes creeping in from their international partners and would reduce “accusations of paternalism” if the foreign personnel were in control of the national organization, or vice versa (Aldridge, 2018: 203).

Townsend did not appear to support NBTOs becoming structurally included in WBTI and this created a dilemma for his colleagues who wanted NBTOs to be part of the international structure. This tension occupied many internal discussions in the 1980s.

Forming national organizations

Kirsteen Kim observes how the Holy Spirit is already active in each language, culture, and context and this demonstrates how “the Christian faith is not imported but emerges out of local experiences” (2009: 47). We see glimpses of this in the emergence of the NBTOs. These new organizations were growing in number and were influenced by the Holy Spirit’s activity in raising up local Christian missionaries.

As the NBTOs multiplied, they needed to each chart their course for the future, establish their local identity and make their own choices—to have agency. Graham Hill and Grace Ji-Sun Kim describe agency as “the freedom to make unrestricted and independent choices” (2018: 128). Albert Bandura states that agency is the “capability to exert influence over one’s functioning and the course of events by one’s actions” (2008: 16). The NBTOs needed agency “to determine their own futures and forge their own identities [and] . . . contribute meaningfully” (Hill and Kim, 2018: 128). This was difficult for the NBTOs because they had to discern whether they were equal to their much larger and more powerful international partners, and they had to work out their decision-making status within the larger mission structure.

The NBTOs grew to 11 in total by 1985 and held their first conference in Cameroon. These are the NBTOs that were in attendance, including their current situation.

This overview of the original 12 NBTOs shows the diversity of location, their purpose, how they were started, and some early leaders. Today, seven agencies still operate: ALEM, BTA, BTL, GILLBT, NBTT, and TAP (GBT still exists but it should not have been originally classified as an NBTO). Three organizations—IICCC, SICA, and SUBTALA—saw their work transfer or be integrated into other organizations that are directly involved in the Bible translation movement. This means only two organizations, AITB and BTCS, disappeared. Interestingly, the conference in 1985 was hosted by WBTI and SIL Board member Emmanuel Njock from Cameroon who was a founder of a later NBTO, the Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy (CABTAL).

Evolving structures and relationships

The NBTOs thought of themselves as the children of WBTI. But their national identities created challenges for them to be fully accepted into the international structure and decision-making processes. Therefore, the WBTI board discussed in 1990 the idea of the NBTOs setting up their own and separate international infrastructure. There were disadvantages because this could divert limited financial and human resources away from WBTI to sustain such a body. The board was reluctant to be too prescriptive of how the NBTOs should develop. Responding to this with an air of consternation, one NBTO leader declared in an international gathering in 1993, “this is not new since we instructed the International leadership in 1990 to move ahead for us.” The person was referring to how NBTO leaders in their conferences in Yaoundé, Cameroon in 1985, Mombasa, Kenya in 1989, and Horsleys Green, UK in 1991, had been calling for the inclusion of NBTOs into WBTI’s organizational structure for years. By 1991, through a frustratingly slow process, NBTOs were welcomed into WBTI.

As an indicator of this new structure, at the WBTI Convention in 1996, in addition to the 20 Wycliffe organizations, there were six applicant organizations and 14 affiliate organizations. The latter were former NBTOs along with some newer ones such as ACATBA of Central African Republic, ATALTRAB of Chad, and Kartidaya of Indonesia. In 1996, the terminology of NBTOs was dropped and the organizations were renamed as Wycliffe Affiliate Organizations, then Wycliffe Member Organizations with Language Programs, and finally in 2016, Alliance Organizations (i.e., of the Wycliffe Global Alliance; WBTI changed its name in 2011). This progression illustrates the changing nature of how NBTOs moved from being organizational outsiders to gradually becoming insiders. At this point it is prudent to pause and look back to see what other influences may have been shaping international mission structures. One was taking shape in eastern Africa.

The moratorium debate

Kenyan John Gatũ, serving as General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, was a prominent voice calling for changes to how Western missions were conducting ministry. At a conference in 1971 in New York he stated, “we cannot build the church in Africa on alms given by overseas churches; we are not serving the cause of the kingdom by turning all bishops, general secretaries, moderators, presidents, and superintendents into good, enthusiastic beggars when we continuously sing the tune of poverty in Third World churches” (2016: 128).

Gatũ championed “principles of selfhood, self-reliance, and self-determination for the church and the nations of Africa” (2016: 129). What Gatũ was calling for became known as the “Moratorium Debate,” and another leading figure of it was Liberian Canon Burgess Carr who attended the 1974 All Africa Conference of Churches where the moratorium was discussed. The issue in focus was the African church’s ability to “speedily [move] towards achieving self-reliance” (Carr, 1974: 8). Carr believed that after “a hundred years of missionary activity in Africa, the Churches are still not able to stand on their own feet” (emphasis original) (1974: 8).

In 1976, Pius Wakatama from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) promoted the moratorium in his book Independence for the Third World Church, published for a North American audience. He framed the moratorium as a way of exploring several concerns that included how Western missionaries brought the gospel “wrapped with cumbersome paraphernalia of Western culture”; Western mission agencies were not multi-racial or multi-cultural; Western missionary leadership detracted from the national church through financial and other types of control; and some Africans felt that Western missions successfully discharged their responsibilities and therefore should leave (1976: 13).

Some Western church leaders did not appreciate the moratorium. Samuel Gatere notes how Stephen Neill, then at the University of Nairobi, “once vilified [Gatũ] as an ‘ecclesiastic Idi Amin’” (after the Ugandan dictator) (Gatũ, 2016: 295). Johannes Verkuyl stated how the debate was causing Western young people to reconsider missionary service, and it was beginning to affect fundraising in Europe for mission in Africa. Herbert Works described the moratorium “as a tragic concept which would turn the evangelical world away from [worldwide evangelization]” (1975: 445). Billy Graham called for the rejection of the moratorium in his opening address to the 1974 International Congress on World Evangelization at Lausanne. These views saddened the moratorium leaders who believed their intentions were misunderstood.

Looking back on the effects of the moratorium, Robert Reese describes it as “either a threat to world mission or the dawn of a new and better era” and it was a symbol of the “shift from colonial to postcolonial mission” (2014: 246). There is also the issue of “institutionalization” that Paul Pierson says occurs “when the maintenance of the institution becomes more important than the original vision for which it was created” (2009: loc. 891–93). This was reflected in international missions losing sight of their ministry partnerships in the majority world. Later in his life, Gatũ observed how the moratorium “helped some missionary agencies re-examine their relevance in the changing world” (2016: 129). The moratorium was a gadfly for international mission agencies and their relationships with the majority-world church and mission movements.

Identity in international mission structures

Pius Wakatama who popularized the moratorium debate stated, “the rising spirit of nationalism makes it imperative that nationals be trained to take over the work in their countries from [foreign] missionaries” (1976: 79). While Wakatama was not directly addressing WBTI, he could have been. And if he was, the organization could have asked itself whether it made any difference to the future of national translators in areas such as their technical qualifications and how these differed from requirements for expatriates; funding of national translation programs; the adaptation of the organizational structure of WBTI to accommodate non-Western participants; or the assimilation of national translators into the future work of WBTI.

The NBTOs that are now organizations in the Wycliffe Global Alliance still have an identity challenge that is decolonized from the era from which these organizations started. Some have expressed it as feeling like they are a “birth defect” with one leader from Cameroon stating that his agency had “faulty DNA” referring to “genes” of dependency upon Western resourcing partners and how this has led at times to a distant or limited connection with their local churches.

I have witnessed firsthand the challenge of identity an NBTO faced in my years of serving under the PNG Bible Translation Association soon after it was founded in the 1980s. Much later when I was the Executive Director of WBTI/Wycliffe Global Alliance from 2008 to 2020, I visited many of the organizations that were NBTOs and saw the lingering effects of their formative years. On one visit to Accra, Thomas Sayibu Imoro, the chairperson of the GILLBT board told my leadership team and me that the global mission movement could only be as strong as its weakest link. He was referring to the Theory of Constraints that uses the metaphor of a chain when “one key constraint limits the capacity of the organization to achieve its institutional purpose” (Smith, 2017: 193). In other words, Imoro believed a global body was only going to be as strong as the smallest and least-resourced and least-developed organization.

Conclusion

David Bosch’s challenge started us off with the gadfly that makes the status quo uncomfortable and a launch of a process of change that may be “piecework, fragile and preliminary” (1991: 496). The discomfort in looking back into recent mission history through a lens of identity, acceptance, change, and transition as majority-world missions related to Western and international mission agencies has been charted. When NBTOs grew in number and maturity, the international bodies of SIL and WBTI, which helped form these organizations, did not have a clear strategy for them. The outcome was obvious—the NBTOs considered themselves second-class citizens in the larger global mission relational dynamic. That took decades to work through. This journey parallels the moratorium debate that caused international mission agencies to reexamine their structures of participation and decision-making in the changing world of majority-world mission activity. Behind the scenes, the Holy Spirit was already active in the lives of Christian leaders in the nationalism phase. Likewise, the Spirit was guiding international mission leaders to reconceive organizational structures to provide space for the newer movements.