A friend wrote to me the other day with some genuine and searching questions about our incarnational approach to mission. He asked me whether living in a slum is just a niche calling for a few or is it actually a “higher way” of doing mission? He described other missionaries, working amongst the poor, who do not live in a slum but who live courageous lives of faith…

He is right to ask the hard questions. After all, living incarnationally amongst the urban poor usually comes at a high cost. Over the past six years I have been evicted twice from slums along with my poor neighbours to make way for “development”. I have been exposed to the most heart-breaking brutality and oppression and I have watched my friends and their children die of easily preventable diseases. Not only that, but my wife and I have chosen to bring up our kids in these places. We have asked ourselves these very questions. Is it really worth it? Isn’t there an easier way?

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking on these things the last few weeks, usually while swinging in my hammock in the early morning, watching my neighbours eke out a living. Across the lane a man with one leg lives in a corrugated iron shack. It is burnt black from the last slum fire. He begs for a living. Meanwhile, his wife deep-fries frogs on a stick to make a bit of extra money and lovingly keeps an eye on her obviously brain-damaged child (so many of our neighbour’s kids are stunted by malnutrition).

I’ve asked myself what difference am I really making in their lives (apart from the deep-fried frog-on-a-stick I bought the other day for 5 cents.) Couldn’t I help them just as easily from a more comfortable home? Do they really care where I live?

The words Jesus spoke about my purpose in life keep coming back to me, “As you have sent me into the world, so I also send them into the world. ” I wonder if he pictured the world we live in today, a world where one billion people live in the appalling squalor of urban slums .

If this is the world he is sending us into, what is to be our role there? Is there a role for foreigners? Are we wanted or even needed?

I still have more questions than answers, but I am more convinced than ever before that there are important roles that God is calling us to play in this global story we find ourselves in. The roles I will share are not the only roles we are called to, or even necessarily the most important ones . But they are roles that are often overlooked in our quest for outputs, quick results and ease of implementation.

1. The Prophetic Stranger: bringing an outsider’s viewpoint

Paradoxically for me, who sought to become an insider, one of the most significant roles I have played in the slum and in the Asian church is that of a stranger, a prophet who comes with an outsider’s alternative perspective. Throughout history God has called some to this role, because his people make a habit of being corrupted by the culture around them. For example, in our Western cultures the church has almost universally sold out to the dominant cultural values of getting ahead, accumulating wealth and pursuing comfort. It usually takes someone foreign to the culture, an outsider, to see the error clearly and when appropriate, challenge it.

Of course, I had to earn the right to be heard by first learning the culture and language, and also by experiencing something of what my poor neighbours experience. I had to first walk a mile in their shoes and try to see things from their perspective. This was very important. I learnt that when I spoke too soon or out of ignorance, I was easily dismissed, or I got it wrong.

So, the role of the Prophetic Stranger is to constantly bring a new perspective, new ideas from other places, to agitate against domesticity and to challenge cultural blind spots.

A few years ago, we became concerned about the number of children being orphaned by AIDS in our community. I got up in church one morning and after sharing a few verses about God’s heart for orphans and widows, asked whether there might be something that we could do as a church. The response mainly centred around approaching overseas donors to get funding to build an orphanage. I wondered aloud if there might be something that we could do ourselves, without needing foreign money. To cut a long story very short, out of that initial conversation has come the Big Brothers and Sisters of Cambodia movement which links up Christian youth volunteers with one orphan each for discipleship and encouragement.

However, it is not only the contribution of a prophetic stranger that counts, but how we make that contribution. So, there is a second role we play simultaneously…

2. The Alongsider: modelling the upside-down kingdom

People are quick to applaud my suggestion that in the long run local people do a better job. The locals can communicate the gospel more clearly and carry out community development more cheaply. The foreigner, it is then argued, should be merely a technical advisor, remaining in country for as short a time as possible with the sole aim of imparting the expertise necessary (and then leaving quickly so as not to waste more resources ).

But the idea that evangelists or community development workers can be trained and empowered in a vacuum, simply by a sterile skill transfer or “brain dump” is naïve in the extreme. If there is one thing I have learned to be true here, it is this: the medium is the message.

In reality, the locals pick up much more from us than just the technical knowledge they are being offered. If the trainer isolates himself from the poor by living apart, the trainee will see no reason to suffer alongside the poor when he is no longer forced to by material circumstance. He will follow our lead in placing comfort before relationship.

However, if the foreigner demonstrates the importance of living incarnationally amongst the poor, not isolating but embracing, then those who watch our whole lives (such as our co-workers) will pick up the same attitude .

In the development industry where the bias towards staying in the air-conditioned office (our modern day ivory tower), rarely venturing down to the poor community is the overwhelming norm, an incarnational lifestyle provides a radical alternative model.

This point was driven home to me when we did a review of the Servants “AIDS homecare ministry”, now reaching over 400 people living with HIV/AIDS in the slums surrounding our homes. Our Cambodian co-workers regularly wade through mud and flood waters to reach patients in the most inaccessible places. When the evaluator asked why they worked so hard and with such commitment to the poor they all spoke of the inspirational example of their advisor, an expatriate doctor on the Servants team who lived in one of the most notorious slums and showed the same incredible commitment to each and every one of her patients. The role of an Alongsider, modelling, not just talking about, the ways of Jesus in a prophetic “movement towards the poor’ is one of the most powerful and symbolic ways we can live.

Finally, the fruit of an incarnational approach is not just for the poor, it is also for the practitioner and especially those back home in the Western church who need to rediscover God’s heart for the poor.

3. The Informed Artist-Activist: speaking up with insight on behalf of the poor

Artists have generally been undervalued in mission (even more in community development). Yet poets, storytellers, writers and painters have historically played an essential role in activism and communication of God’s heart for the poor. Our God is a creative God and by allowing our senses, our imaginations, our minds and bodies to fulfil their God-given potential for creativity, we glorify God. Not only this, but he expects us to use these gifts for his greater Kingdom purposes.

 

An artist’s work is always informed by their experience. So, in order to speak up with credibility and insight on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves (Proverbs 31) the artist who feels called to communicate God’s heart for the poor must first learn the joys and struggles of the poor by living amongst them. As one critic remarked, “You say you care about the poor? Tell me their names.”

God has often called me to the role of bridge-maker between poor and rich. Though not much of an artist in the traditional sense, I have seen the power of writing, informed by experience, to move minds and hearts towards God’s agenda and I have tried to use this tool, albeit clumsily.

I remember the days after the Asian tsunami, when I was working down in Thailand in a makeshift morgue, helping the Thais carry the bodies of their drowned family members. It was an intense experience and I felt moved to write my thoughts in an email which later became a magazine article. People wrote to me from all over the world, impacted by my words and wanting to know how they could help. Servants now has a team working long term amongst tsunami survivors in Banda Aceh and great resources have been mobilised to make a difference in those communities.

I still don’t know whether the incarnational approach to mission is a niche calling for a few or a “higher way” of doing mission. But as serious doubts are raised about the effectiveness of the development industry and the missionary enterprise is no longer flavour of the month in our churches, I am convinced that it is something closer to the ideal we have been searching for.

In the words of Viv Grigg, “In the next few years, there needs to be an ever-growing stream, a new thrust to these dirt-and-plywood jungles. We need bands of people who, on fire with the message of Christ’s upside-down kingdom, will choose a lifestyle of simplicity to bring that kingdom amongst the poorest of the poor.”

[Craig Greenfield is the International Coordinator of Servants.]

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