Unfinished Agenda: The Complexity of Mission in 2022
Introduction
Concentric Circle Exercise
I asked you to do this exercise, because it is revealing and it shows something of our
own context, our own complexities and perhaps our own unfinished agendas. For
example, I wonder how many of you put woman or man in one of the inner circles?
Or white or black? Or able-bodied or differently abled? Or heterosexual or gay? I
borrowed this exercise from Anthony Reddie who has used it many times and I have
used it a few times. 1 We have both noticed that minority groups, or groups who
experience marginalisation or othering or even invisibility, usually DO name that in
one of their inner circles while those who are normalised do not. Recently I used this
with some students and not a single man noted that he was a man in any circle –
whereas all the women did. Anthony has noticed the same with those other realities
I mentioned – if you are able bodied, you probably neither notice nor note that down,
but if you are differently abled, you do. Or if you are white, you probably don’t write
that down, but if you are black you probably do. And so on.
The title of this lecture is a nod to Lesslie Newbigin’s autobiography, after whom this
lecture is named. 2 After his return to the UK in 1974, having spent many years
serving the church in various roles in India, he became painfully aware of needing to
tackle new and different issues in the UK context. He was keenly attuned to context
and to the wider issues in the world around him and so over the years, his “agenda”
for mission developed and changed – as must ours.
This exercise points to not only our own inner complexities, our own personal
realities and locatedness or context; the reality of our own human condition but also
it can alert us to the systemic and structural injustices in which we are embedded
and enmeshed, such as being a woman in a patriarchal world, or being a black
person in a world of white privilege or being gay in a cis-gendered world. These
unjust systems and structures can make it hard for us to notice, to be attentive, to
see clearly. Indeed, systems and structures WANT to blind us or make us indifferent
to injustice in its many forms – economic, racial, sexual, class, etc. For example, we
might not notice that if we are white, we benefit from centuries of white privilege. Or
if we are male, we benefit from being the norm, the default setting. Or if we are able-
bodied, we just do not even think about how we are going to navigate the world. Or
if we are straight, what that means for our gay friends to be in church which seems to
be the least loving and accepting place sometimes. Or if we are middle-class, just
how patronising and unaware we can come across.
Maybe it is easy to blame systems and structures. Principalities and powers we
blithely say, and nod wisely. I have done this myself! And I agree that there are
principalities and powers at work and that sometimes there seems to be a kind of evil
unleashed that is humanly incomprehensible and seems to take over – think of the
Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the ‘troubles’ in N Ireland, the Russian invasion
of Ukraine. Perhaps these are extreme examples. So then let’s think of the years
asylum seekers spend lost in our systems waiting for their case to be heard, or the
months and years it can take for people in the welfare system to get the benefits they
are entitled to, the unequal access to our education system, the postcode lottery for
our healthcare system, the lack of representation of women and people of colour in
leadership in any; in any institution. But who are these systems and institutions? To
a large extent, they are us! We are involved and we perpetuate the evil, the violence,
the injustice and the indifference. We are part of these systems, structures and
institutions that allow such injustices to be perpetuated.
Like many of you probably, I began to see this in stark relief during the pandemic.
We all know now how the pandemic has opened up the cracks and exposed the
inequalities and injustices that were already there. It has forced us to face the in
justices and inequalities of our world, of our systems and of our lives.
This also got me thinking about the unfinished agenda of mission and has been a
wake-up call for me, especially one particular area – that of racial injustice. I would
like to explore that with you now.
Whiteness and Racism
In some ways I have been thinking about race all my life. I come from Aotearoa/NZ
where 15% of our population is the indigenous people, Māori . We Pakeha (white
people) are the incomers, the guests, the manuhiri while Māori are the tangata
whenua – the people of the land. The Māori worldview has had an impact on how I
see myself in relation to land, indigenous cultures and other peoples. It has shaped
who I am and our culture in A/NZ. The emergence of #BLM raised my awareness
even further and then I started reading more intentionally around race – books,
blogs, podcasts, such as:
Reni Eddi-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race,
(London:Bloomsbury, 2018), George Yancy, (ed), Christology and Whiteness, What
Would Jesus Do? (Abingdon:Routledge, 2012) Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the
World and Me, (Melbourne:Text Publishing,2015), Ben Lindsay, We Need to Talk
about Race, Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches,
(London:SPCK, 2019), Anthony Reddie, Is God Colour-Blind? Insights from Black
Theology for Christian Ministry, (London:SPCK, 2010), , Robin DiAngelo, White
Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, (UK:Penguin,
2019) Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, But Where Are You Really From? On identity,
Humandhood and Hope, (London:SPCK, 2020), Chine McDonald, God is not a
White Man and Other Such Revelations, (London:Hodder & Stoughton, 2021),
Tarana Burke and Brene Brown (eds) You are Your best Thing, Vulnerability, Shame
Resilience and the Black Experience, (London:Vermilion, 2021), Christena Cleveland
(podcast)
Of course, I knew about the slave trade but it was only after reading Brit-ish by Afua
Hirsch in 2018 that I really started to think, what does that do to you to know that
your ancestors were slaves? 3 (It is such a great book – I gave it to all our kids for
Xmas and insisted that they read it!) And that if you are black and British, you suffer
a kind of double jeopardy because it was only in 2015, (2015!) that your taxes
stopped paying off the compensation offered to slave owners in the 19 th century!
How is this even possible? And how did I not know this before??
And then I thought, well I am a Kiwi – I am not part of this. This is the Brits’ problem
– the British Empire. But A/NZ is part of the British Empire. Some of our wealth and
development will be a direct result of the slave trade. Certainly, Māori have suffered
under colonialism. Much of their land was taken, their language was banned for a
period in the 1930s and their customs and culture were othered and exoticised.
Ironically perhaps, it was the first CMS missionaries who transliterated the language
and introduced the printing press and so made publications in Māori possible. It
was also the Anglican church, led by Bishop Selwyn at that time, who refused to
ordain Māori clergy until they could speak Greek and Hebrew.
Two further encounters challenged me during the Covid period. One was reading
After Whiteness and other works by Willie James Jennings and the other was daily
meet-ups with our neighbours during the various lockdowns.
Neighbours
Let me start with meeting our neighbours as that was my first encounter. Being
forced to stay at home and to stay local challenged me in unexpected ways as we
were only able to meet one-to-one or in very small groups. This smallnesss meant
that we experienced life and a level of intimacy that we did not know before. During
the first lockdown I met with my neighbours every day at 2pm. Our son marvelled at
this and asked what we talked about every day! We shared much of life together
–we were vulnerable, tearful, open, honest and hospitable even with the many
restrictions. We shared our struggles and joys together. We offered and received
hospitality, comfort and support. We know that hospitality is a wonderful metaphor
for mission with its ambiguity and fluidity of host and guest challenging many of our
understandings of power and gift. I discovered that I needed my neighbours. I
needed their human companionship and love as my husband was working long
hours at the medical centre most days. I discovered sharing, mutuality, the enriching
of community because we have been pushed into a place of seeing our need of the
other and the incompleteness of our own self-sufficiency. It felt like we were learning
what it means to be human together. These seem to be key principles of mission.
It has made me wonder why was it never like this before the pandemic? Well there
are some obvious reasons – I was travelling to work, I was travelling around the
world and I never took much effort to get to know my neighbours. I was polite but
distant – I was too busy to get involved. Until now I have never thought attentively
about Jesus’ second commandment – does he literally mean love your neighbour as
in the person next door? Probably yes – certainly in his context and day. So this
may be my first challenge; “the missionary frontier” (as John Taylor rather quaintly
calls it) is literally five steps away – the number of steps to my nearest neighbour’s
front door.
And neighbours are always there. In fact, you may see your neighbours more than
your own extended family. Neighbours can interrupt you – they can demand things
from you. You actually cannot avoid them, unless you choose to. Being with my
neighbours brought another challenge because of our own diversity. As a group of
neighbours we represent other ethnicities and nationalities as well as other faiths or
none. Diversity has many faces – cultural, racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality,
differently abled, age, class to name some. The pandemic unmasked and starkly
revealed these diversities. Precisely because of our diversity and the racism one of
our number had experienced, #BLM and racism became a key area for discussion.
Recent publications have also alerted us yet again to our lack of awareness with
respect to racial diversity, our institutional racism and our white fragility. 4 And I found
myself talking about some of these with my neighbours during our daily meet-ups.
After Whiteness
And then towards the end of the first lockdown, I read After Whiteness by African
American theologian, Willie James Jennings. I read this as part of a DTh reading
group with the UoR. I devoured everything I could by him – other articles, lectures,
podcasts, webinars. He used a metaphor which became a lightbulb moment for me
in seeing the world – “mastery, possession and control.” Suddenly the world and
how we have engaged in it made so much sense. Let me try to explain it.
In his book, After Whiteness, Jennings claims that the role and purpose of
theological education, in particular, is to cultivate belonging and he explains that
instead theological education has become an exercise in mastery. 5 Literally it was
the master training the master’s son to run the plantation efficiently, to maintain
order, to categorise, delimit, define and maximise the efficient use of slaves’ bodies.
However, he offers some hope by stating that theological education has the
resources within it to reframe Western education beyond this distortion. According to
Jennings, there are two things that form this distortion. The first is the image of an
educated person which is “a white self-sufficient man, his self-sufficiency defined by
possession, control and mastery.” 6 The second is that many respond to this
image by promoting a homogeneity “that aims toward a cultural nationalism.” 7 This
then results in hegemony and homogeneity, (big words – power or authority and
sameness) neither of which are Gospel values and can lead us towards an
individualised faith, a utilitarian education and away from diversity.
Furthermore, Jennings explains that white self-sufficient masculinity does not refer to
a particular person but rather it is a way of organising life that distorts our identity
and the possibility of a richer life together. Moreover, whiteness does not
necessarily refer to skin colour only but rather to a way of being in and operating in
the world; a way of seeing the world and inhabiting the world. Therefore when
theological education becomes an exercise in possession, control and mastery, it
sets out to maintain order, to categorise, delimit, define and maximise efficiency and
productivity.
Mission has played its part in this as it has so often been framed by or located in
white colonialism as this was how the colonial masters saw the world. We might call
this the pedagogy of plantation and I think we can see how this has influenced not
only our engagement in mission but also our language. Much of Western mission
reflects this in its drive for growth, expansion, efficiency, measurement, projects,
strategies and numbers. There are targets to meet, business plans and projects to
write, strategies to formulate, conversions to count, ever bigger and more expensive
conferences to attend. 8 Much of this language and worldview come from the worlds
of the military and management – worlds of war, measurement, efficiency,
productivity and victory. In fact there is even a term for this, “managerial missiology” 9
– a cold, reductionist term which dehumanises mission. Peruvian missiologist,
Samuel Escobar critiqued this way back in 2003, “What I am seeing in the
application of these concepts in the mission field is that missionaries ‘depersonalize’
people into ‘unreached targets’, making them objects of hit-and-run efforts to get
decisions that may be reported.” 10
Jennings explains how colonialism meant that whiteness was projected onto the rest
of the world. European Christians and missionaries projected a meaning onto the
world that was very different from many of the cultures they went to and were living
in. They challenged the worldview shared by many indigenous peoples about their
sense of identity, their sense of well-being and relationship with the land, creation
and the place, and even the indigenous languages.
These early Europeans in new places defined, they designated, they divided ancient
tribal groupings, they created borders with straight lines, they developed racial
categories. They challenged and destroyed the deeply held beliefs and practices of
indigenous peoples. For indigenous peoples the place is in them – they are the
place, the land, the creation. I know this from my own country Aotearoa/NZ where
Māori define themselves according to their place, their mountain, their river or sea
and their tribe. In the Māori language, the word for land and placenta, whenua, is
the same. Māori are the land. The land is them. Jennings explains that for the
early missionaries they brought a very different understanding of how to be in the
world:
This crucial educational hope was to disabuse Native peoples of any idea that
lands and animals, landscapes and seasons carried any communicative or
animate destiny, and therefore any ethical or moral direction in how to live in
the world. Instead they offered peoples a relationship with the world that was
basically one dimensional – we interpret and manipulate the world as we see
fit, taking from it what we need, and caring for it within the logics of making it
more productive for us; 11
Māori understanding of the land contrasts with a European worldview that has so
often reduced the land to an inert or utilitarian resource for our own use. This seems
to be an extraction or economic worldview whereas many indigenous cultures
practise more of a gift mentality. Māori theologian, Jay Mātenga writes that the
Māori worldview is of a sharing and gift economy but that when industrialisation was
imposed, it was “out of sync with our souls and like most indigenous people around
the world, it proved a fast track to poverty.” 12 Tongan Biblical scholar Jione Havea
explains how the land is gendered both male and female for island peoples in the
South Pacific. “As mother, the land is the primary carer of us… As father, the land
connects us to those who have passed, to one another, to those who are to come,
and to the circles of life around us.” 13 He asserts that the colonial project, again so
often linked with mission, has feminised the land to license its taking and
exploitation.
This plantation metaphor plays out in many ways. In the USA educational
institutions are literally built on former plantation land or with endowments from
slavery. We know that the same is true in Britain also. 14 This is more than just an
economic worldview. It relates to how we organise our world, how we inhabit our
world – a world of efficiency and control, measurement and production for the sake
of the master and the master’s sons. This, Jennings claims, is replicated in places
far removed from the history of the slaveholding USA because we have all been
formed in this way: “an ecclesial reality inside a white patriarchal domesticity, shaped
by an overwhelming white presence that always aims to build a national and global
future that we should all inhabit.” 15
The slave legacy of theological education is deeply embedded in our imaginations
and many of our institutions. If you think this is extreme or just a North American
problem, then think again. It is easy to think how this might apply to Oxbridge or to
theological colleges with their traditions of Empire embedded in their architecture,
customs and hidden curriculum. But what about us and our pioneering instincts and
practices? Let’s just stop and pause for a moment and ask ourselves a few
uncomfortable questions.
Are we very white and middle class? Do we sometimes have a kind of Saviour
complex with our activist approaches and our entrepreneurial mindsets? How
diverse are our communities? How different from us are our communities and who is
given leadership in our contexts? Who is invisible, whose voices are not heard, who
is not present at the table? Sometimes, even in a strong example of great
pioneering, there are still issues. I can think of one community where a member told
me that he longed for the pioneer leader to be more open and vulnerable. This
person would have loved to be able to help the leader. Or good coffee and craft
beers may appeal to certain groups, but we know that is only one sector or our
society. Maybe it is all about jerk chicken and dhal? Do we hang out with the like-
minded and sweep people along with us with our own ideas of a “future that we
should all inhabit” as Jennings refers to.
In my own ecclesial context, black British Anglican priest A.D.A. France-Williams
offers a searing critique of institutional racism in the Church of England. 16 His book is
a kind of theology from below – prophetic, story-telling, poetic, full of stories,
metaphor, anecdote and imagination. Perhaps our missiology could look more like
that! He offers some imaginative re-readings of Biblical texts using the lens of black
theology. He also imagines some new ways forward. He suggests a Truth and
Reparations Commission which could be “a sharing of stories followed by
recompense and maybe relationship.” 17 But he also wonders if that would be
enough? What would that relationship be based on? He concludes, rather bleakly,
that the Church of England or the Cross and Crown Club, as he calls it, was not
designed for people of colour. “If you are ignored for long enough, the social death,
the isolation, and the futility of your efforts for change silence you and sentence you
to a form of living exile.” 18
Things are changing with the advent of movements such as #BLM, Rhodes Must
Fall, #MeToo, Extinction Rebellion, the momentum around decolonising the
curriculum, the discussion about private property 19 and public statues brought to a
head with former slave trader, Edward Colston being unceremoniously dumped in
Bristol Harbour. We are slowly becoming aware how white privilege and white
supremacy have skewed and distorted theological education and our engagement in
mission for so long. My colleague, Malawian missiologist Harvey Kwiyani claims,
“Many white Christians’ Jesus do not know how to relate with black and brown
people apart from oppressing them – 600 years of church history can testify.” 20 He
maintains that mission, as we understand and practise it today is a European
creation and that we need to learn to engage in mission without an attitude of
superiority.
One of our students challenged us recently,
The interesting thing to me then is just how much this module [Theologies in
Global Perspective] is making me question everything. One of the questions I
have repeatedly asked in the sessions is why amazing people continue to
work towards improving an institution so clearly steeped in colonialism,
patriarchy and a whole manner of other issues when they could create
something new (a contrast community as Jennings puts it). All of the speakers
have had examples or given glimpses of alternative systems that seem to
work better than the time honoured traditional way of doing things and yet
they continue to seek to be part of and change the system. 21
For this student the most exciting alternative they had heard of was The Circle of
Concerned African Women Theologians which has been such an important space for
women to do theology together communally in Africa. It draws on women from all
backgrounds, culture and religions, is diverse and is a loose and flat collective.
After Whiteness – Ways Forward?
So are there any ways forward? African American scholar and social activist bell
hooks (who died last year) and Jennings both offer ways forward – again with two
arresting metaphors or ideas – “eros” and “the crowd”.
hooks writes about a passion for learning which she names as “eros.” This is not
meant in a sexual sense but rather in terms of an energy or passion that propels us
towards learning as an adventure. She tells us that eros can be a powerfully
motivating force and “that it can provide an epistemological grounding informing, how
we know what we know… and to use such ways …to invigorate discussion and
excite the critical imagination.” 22 It is an energy that drives us towards discovery and
wholeness as well as towards co- learning and co-creation of knowledge. One
student told me recently that she thinks people no longer seek out experts who
impart information to them (a master-slave model perhaps?) but rather people prefer
to join in learning together. Jennings believes that theological education “has as its
fundamental resource erotic power, and that power finds its home in the divine
ecstasy in which God relentlessly gives Godself to us, joyfully opening the divine life
as our habitation.” 23 However, this is power that we can enter only through
participation. And here is the promise and the challenge. With whom do we
participate?
Jennings also offers the metaphor of “the crowd” and this is an intriguing one. He
says that Jesus attracted crowds and that He often gathered people who preferred
not to be together. He reminds us of God’s power to end hostility and to draw us and
all of creation into reconciliation – one that we do not control but one that will
recreate and reform us. This starts with community, the crowd.
For this to happen we need to be in shared spaces so we can share life together. It
means gathering together those who may even prefer not to be together. So what
might this mean for our unfinished agenda in mission – if we could gather together
people who would prefer not to be together? Jennings insists that we must be willing
to live toward a different formation of place and space. “We fight against… the
segregation that shapes our worlds, and we work to weave lives together.” He goes
on to explore the concept of forming a contrast community. These communities
“must be formed on the actual ground in neighbourhoods and living spaces.” 24 It is in
our shared living spaces, in our friendships, in being together in the same space and
in conversations that learning and change can happen. Imagine a learning
community who welcomes all, across all the lines that might divide us – a contrast
community that is formed on the actual ground, in neighbourhoods and learning
spaces – so that we experience the gifts and challenges that we can offer one
another.
‘After Whiteness’ (as an idea or concept) means that we need a new discourse and a
new posture when it comes to mission. In his book, Multicultural Kingdom, Ethnic
Diversity, Mission and the Church, Harvey Kwiyani asserts that, in our current
context in the UK “diversity is the new normal” and that our discourse “be it the
missional church conversation, the emerging church, missionary congregations, or
fresh expressions of church, must reflect cultural diversity.” 25
Let me tell you about Ibribina. Former CMS General Secretary, Simon Barrington-
Ward narrates a moving story of Ibribina, a prophetic woman leader and trader, in
the 1880s in Niger. She had been filled with the Holy Spirit in a mission church and
she learned how to read from the local CMS missionary so that she could read,
translate and teach the Gospel.
She saw in ‘Jesu’ Krisi’ a new love, a new all-pervasive Spirit power, the
possibility of a new people, a fellowship of the unlike, bonding together all
tribes, all ethnic groups, both black and white, into a new society. Here the
rich would care for the poor and the strong for the weak in what was to be a
new heaven and a new earth. 26
The movement grew enormously not only drawing in young people of all ethnic
groups but also creating conflicts with the elders until after WW1. Barrington-Ward
describes how the CMS missionaries came in to tidy things up to conform to a tidier,
colonial mindset, “The CMS shaped and trained the new church to fit in with the
wider colonial world.” 27
Ibribina’s story gives me hope to embody a new discourse, a new posture, and new
action. She came to Christ in a mission context and she lived out her faith in a way
appropriate to her own place, space and time – her own context. Yes it was shut
down by the missionaries and a colonial mindset but it shows that it is possible to live
out and rejoice in diversity; to become “a fellowship of the unlike.” She was also
then, as is perhaps still the case now sadly, an unlikely leader – an illiterate woman
who led people into “a fellowship of the unlike.” Where are those leaders among us?
Are they even among us and would we recognise them if they were? And how are
we part of developing fellowships of the unlike of the unlike in our contexts; how are
we intentionally encouraging interaction with difference?
One final story to encourage us to take action. Recently Dr Lisa Adjei of Christian
Aid spoke at our PG Research Day on racial justice. She asked us please to stop
touching her toes! What did she mean? She explained to us that, as a black woman
of Ghanaian descent, she is sick and tired of white people offering to or actually
washing the feet of people of colour and wanting to repent. What she wants to see
is repentance followed by action and changed behaviour. She exhorted white
people to stop touching her feet! I found this to be a powerful and memorable image
and a clarion cry to action. Lisa is one of the co-founders of the Sankofa collective, a
community of Christians committed to racial justice. 28 Lisa told us about the four
pillars of their collective: telling the whole truth about our history, repentance, lament
and action. Harvey Kwiyani then led us in a time of reflection and asked us to write
down one action we could take as a result of repenting. One student wrote that he
repented of not being angry enough.
I don’t think that we can engage in mission today without an awareness of the impact
of colonialism and of the wider context of racism in our own society and in the world.
We then need a willingness to take action. African American activist and theologian
James Cone alerts us to white Christianity’s ability to talk abstractly about the love of
God, whilst simultaneously allowing racism, colonialism and empire to flourish. 29
Black British theologian Anthony Reddie does not mince his words, “in critiquing
Whiteness, I am talking about a thorough deconstruction of the toxic relationship
between Christianity, Empire and notions of White-British superiority.” 30 Perhaps this
is our unfinished agenda; an agenda that my neighbours and I are still confronting in
our meet-ups; and an agenda that we need to pursue in our own contexts.
I believe that we cannot reflect on nor engage in mission today without pursuing this
unfinished agenda.
Take up your circles again and look at them. Do you look at them differently now
that you have heard this? I’ll give you a minute to create a final outer circle in which
you can write down one action.
Then I will close in prayer.
1 Anthony Reddie, Is God Colour Blind, Insights from Black Theology for Faith and Ministry,
(London:SPCK, 2009), see chapter 3.
2 Lesslie Newbigin, Unfinished Agenda, An Updated Autobiography, \9edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press,
1993)
3 Afua Hirsch, Brit(ish), On Race, Identity and Belonging (London:Penguin, 2018)
4 Reni Eddi-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, (London:Bloomsbury,
2018), George Yancy, (ed), Christology and Whiteness, What Would Jesus Do?
(Abingdon:Routledge, 2012), Afua Hirsch, Brit(ish), On Race, Identity and Belonging
(London:Penguin, 2018), Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, (Melbourne:Text
Publishing,2015), Ben Lindsay, We Need to Talk about Race, Understanding the Black Experience in
White Majority Churches, (London:SPCK, 2019), Anthony Reddie, Is God Colour-Blind? Insights from
Black Theology for Christian Ministry, (London:SPCK, 2010), A.D.A. France-Williams, Ghost Ship,
Institutional Racism and the Church of England, (London:SCM, 2020), Robin DiAngelo, White
Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, (UK:Penguin, 2019) Willie James
Jennings, After Whiteness, An Education in Belonging, (Eerdmans:Grand Rapids, 2020), Ta-Nehisi
Coates, Between the World and Me, (Melbourne:Text Publishing,2015), Amanda Khozi Mukwashi,
But Where Are You Really From? On identity, Humandhood and Hope, (London:SPCK, 2020), Chine
McDonald, God is not a White Man and Other Revelations, (London:Hodder & Stoughton, 2021),
Tarana Burke and Brene Brown (eds) You are Your best Thing, Vulnerability, Shmae Resilience and
the Black Experience, (London:Vermilion, 2021)
5 Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness, An Education in Belonging, (Eerdmans:Grand Rapids,
2020)
6 Ibid., p.6
7 ibid
8 The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, held in South Africa in 2010, is one
example. While the talk was of cooperation and representation, the language used by most speakers
was gender-exclusive, only 13 of 43 main speakers were women, no women were on the Lausanne
executive tasked with organising the congress and Hwa Yung later estimated women made up only
27% of the total attendees. Meanwhile, Oceania was never given a voice from the main platform, nor
were indigenous/aboriginal groups, Korea (a significant evangelical missionary-sending country),
Pentecostals or the disabled. English was the dominant language used from the front. The congress
itself, which 4500 delegates attended, cost $US17 million and has generated subsequent country,
regional and international meetings, forums and gatherings. One wonders if the money could be
better spent. See, Tim Stafford, “Who Got Invited to Cape Town and Why,”
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2010/10/representing_th.html, (cited 12 March,
2011) and Allen Yeh, “Four Conferences on Four Continents: Cape Town 2010 (Epilogue),”
http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2010/10/26/four-conferences-on-four-continents-cape-town-2010-
epilogue/, (cited 12 March, 2011).
9 “the belief that missions can be approached like a business problem. With the right inputs, the
thinking goes, the right outcomes can be assured. Any number of approaches have been haled as
the ‘key’ to world evangelization or to reaching particular groups — everything from contextualization to
saturation evangelization. Most while successful up to a point, also have been shown to have limits.”
http://www.missiology.org/missionsdictionary.htm#M, accessed 8.1.10
10 S Escobar, The New Global Mission, The Gospel from Everywhere to Everywhere, (Downers
Grove:IVP, 2003), 167.
11 Willie James Jennings, in Love Sechrest, Johnny Ramirez-Johnson and Amos Yong, (eds) Can
“White” People be Saved? “Can White People be Saved? Reflections on the Relationship of Missions
and Whiteness”, p. 33.
12 Jay Mātenga, Indigenous Relationship Ecologies Space, Spirituality and Sharing,
https://jaymatenga.com/pdfs/MatengaJ_IndigenousEcologies.pdf, p 4
13 Jione Havea, Losing Ground, Reading Ruth in the Pacific, (London:SCM, 2021), p.6
14 https://www.uncomfortableoxford.co.uk/
The Uncomfortable Oxford Tour is an excellent way of learning about Oxford’s uncomfortable history
including its links with the slave trade. One of the stops on the Uncomfortable Walking Tour is All
Souls College where its connection to wealth generated from slave plantations in the Caribbean is
explained. The College’s Codrington library is named after a plantation owner. The online tour shows
a photo of a young black man outside the college with the words “All Slaves College” painted on his body. To address the legacy, the college recently created an annual scholarship for students from
Caribbean nations. They also mounted a plaque outside the library that reads “In memory of those
who worked in slavery on the Codrington Plantations in the West Indies.” The plaque is not visible to
most people as it sits behind a door closed to the public.
15 Jennings, After, p.82
16 A .D.A. France-Williams, Ghost Ship, Institutional Racism and the Church of England,
(London:SCM, 2020
17 Ibid., 193
18 Ibid., 196
19 See Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass, Crossing the Lines that Divide Us, (London:Bloomsbury,
2020)
20 Harvey Kwiyani, “Mission after George Floyd: On White Supremacy, Colonialism and World
Christianity, ANVIL, Faultlines in Mission,: Reflections on Race and Colonialism, Vol 36, Issue 3,
2020
https://churchmissionsociety.org/anvil-journal-theology-and-mission/anvil-journal-of-theology-and-
mission-volume-36-issue-3/
21 Used with permission.
22 bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, Education as the Practice of Freedom, (New York:Routledge,
1994), 195.
23 Jennings, After, p. 151
24 Willie James Jennings, in Love Sechrest, Johnny Ramirez-Johnson and Amos Yong, (eds) Can
“White” People be Saved? “Can White People be Saved? Reflections on the Relationship of Missions
and Whiteness”p.43
25 Harvey Kwiyani, Multicultural Kingdom, Ethnic Diversity, Mission and the Church,,(London:SCM,
2020), p.11 and p.14
26 Simon Barrington-Ward, My Pilgrimage in Mission”, International Bulletin of Missionary Research,
April, 1999, p. 61
27 ibid
28 https://sankofacollective.org/
29 James Cone, “Theology’s Great Sin, Silence in the Face of White Supremacy”, Black Theology,
2:2, 2004, 139-152,
Unfinished Agenda: The Complexity of Mission in 2022 by Dr Cathy Ross
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