A Discussion of Vulnerability in Mission for the Twenty-first Century from a Biblical Perspective

Those ‘Sent’ in Pre-Christian Eras

If one starts to look at scripture from the perspective of vulnerability, one immediately meets the first couple. Their created perfection is spoiled by disobedience. This is termed ‘nakedness’. They needed to be covered. This may be an analogy to concepts of shame–honour, blame–innocence, guilt–freedom or even pollutedness–wholeness/holiness situations. In each case, covering oneself depicts the human perceived need for self-protection and invulnerability. The answer came in a provision by God himself, with concepts of ‘covering’ (Gen. 3:11, 21). To many evangelicals that looks like atonement through sacrifice. ¹³ So it seems that there is a wrong type of vulnerability from disobedience in the concept of nakedness.

The deterioration of humankind leading to the flood and then Babel begins to reveal a new redemptive revelation of God for humanity; it begins in the new concept of having ‘the people of God’, through Abraham to Israel. Leaving the very earliest chapters of Genesis, we move to the challenge of Abraham being sent away from his home origins in Ur and Haran, but not for the purposes of proclamation of the God who revealed that command (Gen. 12:1). He is often fearful, vulnerable as famine hits, as his nephew gets into trouble and needs rescue, as he works out God’s promises in his own way with Hagar until God provides Sarah with a miracle son. It seems the line of hope is established. To relate the whole of salvation history is not this present paper’s intent. However, the players within it show how God puts them out on a limb as they obey him and how faith is developed despite circumstances. That is a positive vulnerable position to be in. It seems that it is God’s intention for it to be so.

When Israel attempts to stand in self-protection mode, they fail. Once leaders with faith in God arise, they demonstrate potential unity of the community while they have willing followers. Moses is a case in point. He still has to handle Pharaoh, impossibilities of leaving Egypt, rebellion in his own ranks, at family and tribal levels. Joshua it seems has less trouble with vulnerability; the people trust him even after disasters as at the battle at Ai; perhaps here he was well accepted among the people, as their leader, not a newcomer as Moses had been; but still Joshua remained loyal and thus vulnerable to God’s leading.

Moving on to Judges, there are various stories of the weak being made strong by faith as in Gideon or even Samson’s case and on into David’s own story. Many a prophet was not well received amongst his own people, even to the point of being ‘sawn asunder’ if the extra biblical legend on Isaiah in Manasseh’s reign holds true (cf. Heb. 11). However, they were not sent cross-culturally. Can we find examples of vulnerability as sensitivity to foreign culture?

Daniel and friends appear to have had that role. They manage to survive as God revealed himself through them, against the gods of the Babylonians, including King Nebuchadnezzar himself or even later Darius and the Persian Empire. Refusal to conform to the cultural norms of diet is Daniel’s first stand. Refusing to bow in worship of the great idol of the King is the next. He grows in confidence until he, now an old man, can pray publicly while going against the new rule of the Medes and Persians forbidding any prayer to anyone but the King, knowing he will be sentenced to death in the lion’s den. We see not an assertion of political power from the ex-‘prime minister’, but faith vindicated.

Nehemiah (Neh. 2:1) another of God’s loyal servants, is challenged to go back into what should have been his home culture but it was foreign to him. He wanted to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls. He makes himself vulnerable by disobeying the King; he allowed his sadness to be seen on his face, something that was not permitted. He dared tell the king why he was sad, presumably having already gained his confidence. He was thus commissioned not only by God but with the King’s authority, challenged though that was once he arrived in Jerusalem as an interloper, even if he did want to serve the city’s people. He still went carefully, sensitively, at night, to survey the needs of Jerusalem. He did not go brazenly. He did, however, have to face the recipients of his embassy some of whom were willing to follow and rebuild and others who countered him. We see the positive end of the story with the walls built through local resources, motivated from the leaders who had been abusing their situation (Neh. 5:9). Nehemiah used his own resources, not those from a tax on the people. Was this outside money? He did also use local resources from what had once been the walls to rebuild them. It may be worth noting that those walls represented self-protection as also did the reassertion of the Torah to keep Judah ‘pure’ from outside influences (ch. 13). Vulnerability was the first picture, not the last.

Today’s missionaries to free nations are not ‘Nehemiahs’ with authority from external sources. They need, therefore, to know a sensitive way to gain their recipients’ trust by a confidence not in themselves so much as in God who sent them. Then they need to communicate that confidence carefully; a confidence while being vulnerable in a culture not well understood. In that way, the people to whom they go are subsequently protected as a result of what was initially vulnerability demonstrated by faith.

The Example of the Christian Era

The ultimate biblical example of vulnerability has to be that of Christ in his incarnation. Placing himself in a context whereby he would be rejected (Jn. 1:11; cf. Lk. 4:29) he knew what it was to be vulnerable. He could have protected himself even from his destiny on the cross by calling 12 legions of angels to defend him (Mt. 26:53). He did not do so. He calls us to deny ourselves, and take up our cross and follow him, not once, but daily (Lk. 9.23). He faced his destiny resolutely by heading towards Jerusalem destined for suffering (Lk. 9:51). He made it known to the disciples that they would also suffer as a result of following him, but that the Holy Spirit would be with them to enable them to ‘testify on his behalf’ (Jn. 15:18–27) not that the Holy Spirit would necessarily protect them from death (Jn. 2:19). To what end? Witness. Martyria has become known as testifying unto death. Is that what is required of today’s disciples?

Who were the original disciples? Were they the poor and deprived? At least some of Jesus’ disciples were part of the poor of the land. They were poor in power, out of control of politics, vulnerable to the invading forces. Did they have less to lose? Four men still gave up their fishing business. Matthew seemed to give up his tax-collectors’ job (Mt. 9:9) which would have made him vulnerable financially and socially from recent colleagues and Rome as his employer. Others like Zacchaeus deliberately volunteered finances so as to make amends for his past (Lk. 19:1–9). A member of the Sanhedrin like Nicodemus probably had much to lose by following Jesus. ‘Blessed are the poor’ – in spirit or in pocket? Matthew wrote the former, Luke the latter. Either way, they are both in scripture; poverty and being poor. Is it a case of material wealth and lack? Is poverty the same thing as being poor? Pocos is one word in Greek for poor; it is apparently the word with a hard inflexible, connotation; there is apparently a range of words in this semantic range, and Matthew uses pocos in the beatitudes for poor in spirit (Mt. 5:10); it has an extreme meaning of a beggar’s level of abject poverty. There are several words in scripture for ‘poor’: emptied, oppressed, dependent, even used of the most prayerful (needing to beg from God). God actually affirms them in the beatitudes. He does not condone the poverty that holds them captive. He wants to release the captive (Lk. 4:18). Jesus promises a sumptuous feast, and shared goodness is God’s gift. So there is no love of poverty. Yet, how does the richer person share with the multitude who are not rich? They also need to learn that they should be dependent on God for what they have. How then they can share it? Are they actually potentially poor in spirit, if not in pocket? Jesus followed up the Beatitudes with instructions (Mt. 5–7) on not seeking material goods ‘first’ but God’s kingdom (6:31); trust for all was needed and no showing off of their donations; that is a challenge to cultures where transactions are public as a matter of affirming through witnesses what is done (see Harries, 2015: 77).

The Disciples had to learn what it meant to follow Jesus. They were sent out on a short term mission (Lk. 9 and 10; cf. Mt. 10); they needed to find a ‘person of peace’ in the community to provide the welcome bridge into the community. In fact these passages can be a foundation for VM in a multitude of relationships – the teacher–disciple relationship, family, the needy, those persecuting. ¹⁴ Today therefore, we can try that model of simply ‘going’ in hope of being received and supported. ¹⁵ Is it however, just a temporary mode of mission (STMs)? How is that perceived today in cultures other than that of the sender? Within the culture of the sender it is a risky challenge both to the sent one and the receptor, let alone a culture very different to their own. The disciples had to learn the consequences and be willing as apostles to demonstrate the model of Jesus to the early communities formed as churches. We do see some acts of compassion (Acts 2:44–46; 4:32ff; 6:1 the help for widows; 9:36 Dorcas’ acts of kindness and compare 2 Cor. 8 and 9; Phil. 4:10–12). We also see problems arising inter-culturally from these compassionate acts in the early church (cf. Acts 6 and 13).

Paul highlights a vulnerable Christological model in the Phil. 2:5–11 passage; Christ for him was a model for a self-emptying servant leader. That matches the gospel accounts of Jesus’ teaching; a discipleship of self-denial and taking up of one’s cross daily (Lk. 9:23). Paul himself was often in dangerous situations, even by choice (Acts 9:25; 14; 16; 26). That alone can be considered as becoming vulnerable for the sake of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. His suffering was not usually caused as a result of his offering outside resources to help. He did suffer from misunderstandings at Lystra due to language difficulties. Surely there was no way on that first encounter he could have overcome that? He would have had to stay for a long time to learn the language and culture. Once beaten up and left for dead he left, only to return a while later to follow up those contacts he did make (Acts 14:6–22).

However, there are no instructions from Paul as to how to handle donations except that he expected it as a participation in the gospel (Phil. 4:10; 2 Cor. 8–9). How the Jerusalem church used some of that donation would have surprised the donors in Greece: for ritual purposes, not famine relief (Acts 21:23). Paul does not seem to have been accountable to the donors for how it was used. Examples for us to follow are not written up in detailed policies! Principles of Christ are to be worked out contextually, in our calling to serve God and our neighbours.

To leave this section on the same note with which we commenced, Jesus was deliberately vulnerable. He took up the cross for the purposes of dealing with the rebellion in humanity to be independent of God; we call it ‘sin’. In the light of much discussion on atonement theories, based on the epistles, Jesus bore our shame, our sin, and our guilt. He exchanged our human ‘nakedness’ for his own by his own vulnerability and yet at the same time asks his followers to take on a daily cross (Mt. 16:24; MK. 8:34; Lk. 9:23). Does that not mean being in a continuous state of vulnerability, ready to be misunderstood, criticised, and not answering back maliciously, as a lamb going to the slaughter? Jesus’ life is a challenge to our discipleship. How would he deal with the contemporary disparities in levels of prosperity, with poverty? ‘The poor you will have always among you’ (Mt. 26:11; Mk. 14:7). Did he not want to relieve suffering? He did so not at a surface level but at the ultimate level, by restoring a relationship first with God as Father.

The Answer?

The hope of the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission ²⁰ is that dependency will be avoided and that a more prosperous kind of self-sufficiency will become normal. Therefore, there needs to be a transformation to include the spiritual and psychological as well as the practical and material. It involves the newcomer becoming ‘vulnerable’. This paper aims to explore the nature of such vulnerability, in biblical perspective.

Jim Harries asserts, ‘In vulnerable mission, a missionary does not have financial incentives and related assets to offer to people so that they welcome him. A vulnerable missionary must receive (acceptance) from people before he can give anything.’ ²¹ Their orientation to learning and using an indigenous language in ministry and his refusal to use outside resources to produce friendships smooth their way into understanding the homologous relationship between language and society in that community.

The hurts of the past in mission history are not receding into that past. Damage has been done and still can be seen. Relationships, culture change, and transformation do not happen overnight, not even between colonial night and postcolonial dawn. Identification through language acquisition and usage, and cultural adaptations would have been default for missionary agencies to inculcate into their workers since the mid-nineteenth century if Hudson Taylor’s policies had been noted. Have Henry Venn’s three self-policies ever been acted upon? I found in investigating the world missionaries of the British Assemblies of God that ‘indigenisation’ was never really activated by many a missionary in a 3-self manner, let alone 4-self manner that would include self-theologising. ²² Even when the word ‘contextualisation’ became normal tender in missiological circles, few ever thought about how it applies to the incomer and recipient in terms of working order, superior–inferior; the colonial past remains into the postcolonial present. Patrons can be wanted by recipients. Even if becoming a patron is not wise, it seems to happen by default. It is not necessarily agencies from the West ²³ that have difficulty educating members; they are the easier groups to educate. Church partnering schemes that appear to be multiplying across the world, full of good intentions but making all the mistakes of our colonial past once again, may be the hardest to reach with this education. Yet people in the West want to help those less apparently materially fortunate than themselves.

Is therefore the prophetic edge of VM a continuation of the challenge in ‘indigenisation’ and ‘contextualisation’? Harries ²⁴ advocates facilitating people to use local resources to eradicate their poverty trap; he suggests that not all missionaries should bring in outside resources that will lead to unhealthy dependency. On whom can we be dependent? God. How do we model such dependency? In seeing who God is we gain a clue. Bevans commented, ‘God (in Christ) is vulnerable; he will not override human wickedness but will suffer because of it.’ ²⁵

With the rise of prosperity gospel teaching, this understanding of following Christ in the way of the cross, being vulnerable as Christ was, seems to be missing in many churches. Not least of these churches being many of the African ones. They have already suffered war, deprivation, bereavement in many places. They seek protection. They seek provision. They seek prosperity. They seek power in their ‘Jericho hours’ ²⁶ and replace their old power sources of Juju with the Holy Spirit’s power. That seems a great replacement. It is their means of being more invulnerable than they were; and yet, does it isolate them from the possibility of power through weakness as Paul advocated (1 Cor 1:26ff)?

Other churches may be in millennia old contexts where seeking not to be dependent on patrons is unheard of. Patron–client relationships are, to them, perfectly normal. The patron never assumes a ‘vulnerable’ position. A visit by an apparently rich patron in the form of a Westerner, or an expatriate African now in employment in the West, would communicate the coming of a ‘saviour’. So is the prophetic aspect of vulnerability a challenge to the patron–client culture just as much as it is to the Western culture of independence and individuality?

Jim Harries advocate of VM, has lived in rural Africa for over 25 years. He is a Westerner who, although inevitably still being seen as one who can leave and return to convenience lifestyles of the West, tries to get alongside by living under village conditions. Inevitably he has been approached as if he would be a patron to local people ²⁷ and while he has taken in orphan boys to care for, he has not provided for major development projects for them. However, in learning the local language well enough to comprehend its cultural framework, he has attempted to see life through the local people’s eyes. That they have overcome their desire for patrons seems doubtful, as he carefully considers before introducing any other outsiders to his neighbours. Have real friendships developed for him that are not dependent on wanting to depend on outside resources? Concepts of friendships are different across cultures. Being vulnerable is not showing weakness but a humility seeking to enable growth from the roots upwards, not from outside. Is there a real possibility of mutual vulnerability, trust across the differences, the risk, and even the conflict? Can there be ‘vulnerable bonding’ in creating West–South partnerships? ²⁸

Harries’ plea is that those who visit Africa should attempt a long term, linguistically valid, communication with Africans, which does not simply provide an outside patron. Compassion should be there for the needs of the local people and yet at times it must feel like being sent ‘as a sheep into the midst of wolves’ (Mt. 10:16); the wolves – as in opposition – not always being the local Africans so much as other Westerners not understanding his stance!

The people sent would have to willingly choose to dispose of presumptions regarding their own culture and begin to learn new social skills in the receptor culture. This could feel like divesting themselves of adulthood and becoming a child, learning life all over again. However, the innocence of childhood is not the same as a 5-year-old learning how to communicate for the first time. Adults are not five year olds in experiential learning. Becoming a part of the new, disposing of what we have known as ‘normal’, is what we are calling ‘becoming vulnerable’. VM could also then be termed ‘sensitive mission’.

However, we need to view VM also from further points of view. The other side, the recipients, may also have to choose to become vulnerable rather than self-protecting when it comes to not being provided with material help from outside. Harries wrote in response in the pearl lists, ‘someone who is vulnerable is “sensitive” to external impacts and forces.’ ²⁹ He therefore has no self-protecting armour on of his own culture. He hopefully understands both donor and receptor as a go-between.

Donors supporting agency workers and recipients may also have to rework their understanding of what VM means for them. Doing this while maintaining a good working partnership across the world’s churches and their cultures, is a risky tightrope to cross.