Abstract
The explosion of “short-term missions” in the modern West has created a multibillion- dollar industry. While nearly two million Americans participate in one of these trips every year, recent scholarship has challenged the long-term benefit and efficacy of such missionary endeavors. Implementing Farrell and Khyllep’s work at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s World Mission Initiative, Freeing Congregational Mission seeks to harness the missional desire of congregants by drawing them away from self- glorification shaped by a history of colonialism and toward genuine participation in the missio Dei.
Drawing from the imagery of the three stones that form the diku—the eating and gathering place—of the Luba and Lulua peoples in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the authors offer three properly placed foundational stones that can lead to the flourish- ing of Christian mission. As the subtitle of the book suggests, these three stones are a theology of companionship, cultural humility, and an empowering of co-development.
The first two chapters of the book name the missionary malady the authors intend to address and the “transformational energy” (5–6) they seek to harness before moving toward a description of their three diku stones. The third chapter elaborates upon a theology of companionship by identifying four key elements: mutual accompaniment, shared vulnerability, the centrality of a sending God, and leadership from the margins. Chapter 4 focuses on cultural humility as an act of neighbor love wherein we recog- nize our own social locations and proximity to privilege. As the pattern suggests, chap- ter 5 centers the final stone of co-development by proposing a decolonized missionary practice of empowering agency.
The second section of the text turns toward application as the authors present how these stones might reshape popular missionary activities among US congregations. Chapter 6 proposes a reengineering of short-term missions as a place for mutual trans- formation that leads to generative change rather than self-service and gratification. Chapter 7 draws application for the biblical command to care for children by offering practices of caring for them in healthy and sustainable ways. The final chapter brings the reader back to the congregation by interrogating how churches might empower their own congregations as part of a missionary order.
Freeing Congregational Mission is a fine text for churches across America to eval- uate and self-assess the faithfulness of their outreach efforts to God’s active mission in the world. Written for a broad audience, the authors address challenging topics such as the tragic history of colonialism, the inadequacy of meal-packing programs and popu- lar sponsorship programs, and our modern consumer-capitalist culture. In return, they seek to reckon with these realities without dismissing the missionary project as a whole. They also offer preliminary discussion questions and several “tools” along the way to provide direction for concrete application. All in all, Farrell and Khyllep offer a well-rounded resource for the local congregation.
The redemptive vision for the church they propose is certainly appealing to those affected by and adjacent to these ends of these histories. While I hope Farrell and Khyllep’s project will lead to meaningful change, only time will tell whether this “transformational energy” they describe and seek to reclaim can be galvanized toward faithful mission, or whether the energy was for self-discovery and a crowd-funded vacation from the very beginning.