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Some of us find real pleasure in discussing theories of cultural engagement. Missionaries like to swap culture stories and distill their meaning. (“He saw me pull my camera out to take a picture and said, ‘Oh, that’s why you came’ and I knew I was dead meat. Would you have anticipated his offense? Does it jibe with your grasp of the culture?”)

Yes, theorizing, whether from analyzing our experiences or from reading about others, has its place. But the best training prepares people for real work in the real world. There is a limit to the value of theories, and that limit seems to be regularly ignored these days. When missiological correctness paralyzes missionary activity, we’ve lost the balance.

A missiologist I admire and respect read a paper at a conference. He decried an ethnocentric missionary practice in a remote Asian village. He mentioned, almost as a footnote, that the village had recently received a road for the first time, and westernization was flooding its pristine culture. The main point was that the missionary wasn’t doing enough to ensure that a context-ualized Christianity would root. At the very end of the Q&A, somebody asked the question on my mind: “What about the inevitable advance of westernization into this village because of the road? How should that affect the practice of the missionary?” The presenter replied, in so many words, “I have nothing to say about that.”

Nobody can be expected to have all the answers. But the anecdote serves to illustrate a point germane to missionary training: ideas, however lofty, ultimately need to inform and enhance work on the ground. Robert Greenleaf captured it: “Early on I made a distinction between wisdom and scholarship; and the former, what works well in practice, has long been my central interest.”

Anybody who has seen missionaries freeze trying to figure out how to implement theory, or watched teams fracture over missiological subtleties, understands something about the limitations of theorizing. Nothing wrong with theory, but the work has to get done somehow. Like Andy Crouch put it, “North Americans’ experience of their own continent was changed not by clever treatises on geography or by protests against travel on dirt roads, but by people who envisioned, funded, and built an alternative.”

Maybe academia inevitably appeals to the intellect. Maybe C.S. Lewis’ insight in The Weight of Glory is pertinent here: “… we may come to love knowledge-our knowing-more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us. Every success in the scholar’s life increases this danger. If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work. The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived.”

Another likely reason for our drifting toward the abstract is the pressure to publish. Those of us outside the campus probably don’t appreciate the power of that expectation, especially in a society captivated by formal education. According to a recent item in WORLD, the number of Ph.D’s awarded in the US increased from 337 to 42,000 in one hundred years! Unfortunately, missionaries and missiologists are not immune to this trend.

Let me say again: education is important. Far from being anti-education, I am honored to serve as a trustee of two Christian colleges. Yes, theory is a necessary ingredient of education. But let’s not linger too long in the hypothetical. Let’s equip folks to be effective in the field. Let’s make sure that we train for the trenches.

September 26, 2002