Lausanne World Pulse – World Pulse Archives – World Pulse Archives

Peruvian missiologist and anthropologist Rubén “Tito” Paredes is general secretary of the Latin America Theological Fraternity and a member of Latin America Mission. On a recent trip to Peru, World Pulse guest editor Deann Alford spoke with him about issues facing missions in Peru and Latin America.

What is the role of the Western missionary in Peru and Latin America?
I think the role is to come along and put themselves at the service of the church. Rather than coming already with projects or ideas of what they should do, they should come to Peru and coordinate with the leaders and find out what are the real needs, where the church needs help. I’m afraid that there are still some missionaries who are coming here to run things, in order to do their own projects, bypassing the church. That’s not right. One of the areas where there is need is theological education. Another area is cross-cultural missions, but that again has to be done with churches, not just missionaries who come from the West on their own. There’s an awakening to cross-cultural missions in the church. With the experience of the West, they can come and join hands rather than coming and doing their own thing. Third-World missions are bound to repeat the same mistakes of the past. It’s important that we be conscious of the lessons that we can learn from missions in general.

What does wholistic mission look like?
Thirty years ago if an evangelical talked about the social aspect of the gospel, he was labeled as a socialist or a communist. Now it’s pretty much accepted that part of the mission of the church is to express the gospel with its cultural and social mandate, as well as with its evangelistic mandate. In that sense, I think that wholistic mission is really part of the mission of the church now moreso than it used to be in the past. That’s something to rejoice over. But there are other issues to be dealt with, such as the place of women in society. There’s still a lot of work to be done there. There are churches that have not opened space to women yet in recognizing their labors. There’s still an attitude that women are not on the same level as men. That may be a reflection of Latin American machismo that has gone on through the churches, but often that has been reinforced by a reading of the Bible that keeps women in second place, particularly by some sectors of the church. We had a conversation just last week where a pastor presented a paper of the human rights of women. He was trying to look at the biblical basis for it. We had a very interesting debate on it. In a sense, the issue of wholistic mission 30 years ago is similar to the issue of women today. I think that we have to work more to bring more justice and more space for women in church and Latin America society.

What is your evaluation of Latinos in the Muslim world?
Sometimes they say because you’re Latino you can very easily go to the Muslim world. But I don’t think it’s that easy. I think you really have to work very, very hard at the culture. Learn the culture, learn the language, learn the Muslim religious context. There is no easy task, that just because one is Latino one can easily relate to the Muslim world. I think there is a hard task that has to be done, as with any mission going cross-culturally.

What would you say are the causes of Latin American mission attrition?
Lack of good training. Probably also the fact that the Western models were being imitated without really contextualizing them in the sense that the Latin church, the Latin situation is different from the church in the US. Therefore, we cannot just copy a missionary structure from the US or Britain and think it would work in the same way for Latinos. The missionary structure itself has to respond to the Latin America missionary situation, and of course, the situation where we are going to. It brings a lot of frustration. Probably the lack of experience in their own setting before going to the field is also a factor. Before we go to another cross-cultural situation to do missions work, we should do it in our own backyard even if it’s just part of the training. For example, for cross-cultural missions, they say we should go to Africa, Muslim countries. I think it’s important that we do cross-cultural missions here because there are so many possibilities. We have 40 different indigenous communities here, so many different missions situations in the mountains or even in the cities, that can help us get missionary training, and then we can go to other places.

Andrew Walls, a missiolo-gist from Edinburgh, Scotland, has written that the gravity of mission is now in the Two-Thirds World. In the first century, the gravity of mission was Jerusalem, then to Antioch, the Gentile world and on to Europe, Ireland, Britain and the US. In today’s world the gravity is in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in great part because millions are coming to Christ in these continents. Churches are being established, and along with that growth there is that vitality and desire to do Christian missions. I think the church in the developed countries needs to recognize that fact and work along with these churches in the Two-Thirds World as brothers and sisters and not try to bypass them. There are many who come and really work side by side, but there are always a few who don’t go that way.

November 23, 2001