Hazardous Missions and Shifting Frameworks

Abstract

To address the issue of hazardous missions, this article uses the framework of shijts in missionary emphusis: from cross-cultural to intra-cultural mission, from first-generation to second-generation mission, and from humun-centered to Earthcentered mission. The helpful or harmful characteristics of missionaries are not just personal but also structural, that is, inherent in the culture from which the missionaries originate. This article suggests that the three related shijts in missionary emphasis noted above reduce the hazards of Christian mission, but in turn introduce some new hazurds.s Christian churches become more subject to critique from new cultures and newly formed nations, the hazards of their missionary activities become more A apparent and better articulated. We are used to the notion that missionary activity may be hazardous to the missionaries both physically and psychologically (Schwandt and Moriarty 2008). The focus of this article, however, is on the ways in which missionary activity may be hazardous to the recipients of that mission and indeed to the message itself. Traditionally, competing Christian denominations have regarded other denominational missions as hazardous or harmful on the basis of heterodoxy. The contemporary critique of missions is often asserted, however, not on the basis of heterodoxy but on the basis of ethnocentrism or anthropocentrism.This article seeks to examine the circumstances in which such critique might be justified and to suggest ways in which potential hazards might be overcome. It uses the framework of current shifts in missionary emphasis a) from cross-cultural to intracultural mission, b) from first-generation to second-generation mission, and c) from human-centered to Earth-centered mission to address the issue of hazardous missions. I use the term "mission" to refer to the activities of Christian churches (and individuals within them) in relation to the wider, non-Christian society, whether geographically near or far. Christian engagement in mission assumes an acceptance of a responsibility toward the wellbeing of the rest of the world. In this article, I do not Neil Darragh is currently engaged in theological research and community development. He is an adjunct lecturer and research supervisor in the School ofTheology, University ofAuckland, and at the Catholic Institute of Theology, Auckland, New Zealand. He has been involved for forty years in teaching and pastoral ministry in multi-cultural situations throughout New Zealand and the South Pacific. His most recent publication is a book that he edited,