In this post, we’ll talk about reasons why ethnocentrism can be extremely damaging to your vision to multiply, and practical ways to address ethnocentrism.

Do I Have to be the Main Character?

As we mentioned in the first post, many past and even current missionaries can possess an ethnocentric or paternalistic view when they go to the field, perhaps without realizing it. Paternalism is the assumption that missionaries have superior knowledge, experience, and skills than local Christians and exert control over the local church and ministries. This can lead to a variety of issues that keep the ministry from bearing fruit that we’ll explore further in this post.

Part of this paternalistic/ethnocentric view that we as Western missionaries carry is the belief that we should be the “main character” in the ministry. Westerners have a higher cultural value of individualism, which emphasizes their own goals, rights, and decisions. It’s a deeply personal thing to feel called to the mission field, and most missionaries are very aware of the lack of access to the gospel in the fields where they serve. So naturally, we feel and envision that we are the ones responsible for bringing the gospel to these needy people and lands of darkness. We buy into the myth of the “Western savior” that is the hope and light for the unreached.

It’s an awesome privilege to be called to serve among the unreached. We know missionaries sacrifice much to respond to this calling out of many good motivations.

But Jesus is the Savior of the world, not us.

We get to be his ambassadors and get to join with him in the great work of seeing all peoples worship Jesus. God is moving and working in the countries where we are sent, likely through local or near-culture believers in that country or in the region.

We believe the most effective role for the majority of cross-cultural missionaries is to play a Barnabas role – empowering, coaching, and supporting local believers to multiply. In our view, this applies even beyond CPM ministry but to many other types of ministries, whether orphan care, theological education, or justice ministries. Western paternalism in missions has almost always led to negative consequences or at least non-lasting ministries, and we believe it grieves the Lord to see these same mistakes repeated over and over again.

Being the “main character” or having a Western savior perspective is one of the main barriers that keeps missionaries from having their most effective role as a Barnabas, therefore sabotaging their opportunity to be a part of what God is doing.

Baptism Through Binoculars

When we were first learning about movements, we kept hearing about this outsider role of being a Barnabas. It was a difficult mental shift to go from, “I’m going to be the one sharing, leading, and baptizing,” to “I am going to support local believers from the background.”

It’s not that movement practitioners don’t share and disciple – we absolutely do. We must be in the harvest, both out of obedience and to have the credibility to train others.

But we have to understand that our main effectiveness will be in serving and coaching local believers. As we investigated movements, we looked at about 50 case studies of how they started across the world. In nearly all of them, the outsider was partnering with a local or near-culture believer to catalyze multiplication. It was hard to argue with the pattern: if we wanted to see multiplication, this was the role we needed to play.

One story we heard from a movement practitioner really drove home the simultaneous sacrifice and joy of being a Barnabas. This practitioner served in a Muslim context with high persecution. If local Muslims that were interested in learning about Jesus were seen meeting with this white, American, Christian missionary, it would draw the attention of local Muslims and result in significant persecution.

So the outsider practitioner met with a few local, near-culture believers in a more neutral context and cast vision for multiplication, trained them in Biblical principles and practical tools, and encouraged them to go into these local Muslim villages where they would draw much less attention than he did, while coaching them from afar.

As these local believers began sharing and starting groups, he heard the reports and rejoiced but never got to meet the new believers face to face that he had indirectly invested in, prayed for, and loved deeply.

When it came time to baptize many of the new believers in the ocean, his local partner shared with him the time and place but told him, “Please don’t come to the baptism or it will attract unnecessary attention.” Instead, he got a boat about a mile down from the location of the baptism, and through binoculars, wept as he witnessed the celebration of new life among an unreached people group that he would not meet personally until heaven.

Are we willing to make this sacrifice? To take a background role in order that more people would hear and receive the gospel? 

To not be the main character?

How Ethnocentrism Will Sabotage Your Vision To Multiply

We believe that ethnocentrism can directly undermine your vision to multiply. We specifically chose the word “sabotage” because ethnocentrism is often a blind spot for workers, unlike more obvious challenges like team conflict or lack of funding.

These are some ways that ethnocentrism and paternalism can be a major barrier in your ministry:

Judgmental and Bitter Hearts: If our understanding of right and wrong, better and worse is based on our cultural perspective, many things in our host country will feel difficult. Over time, this can result in bitterness and a critical, judgmental spirit. We start to see all the ways that things can’t work in our country, that the people cannot be trusted. Those that don’t address ethnocentrism and bitterness in their hearts will often leave the field early, or start to withdraw into a cloistered missionary community where they do not interact with local people at all. For those that manage to grit it out, they will fail to thrive and eventually run out of motivation to serve.

Lack of Contextualization → Lack of Efficacy: If we believe that our cultural interpretations and expressions of obeying the Word and making disciples are the correct ones, we won’t look for contextualized expressions that might be more effective where we serve. This can apply to every aspect of ministry, from interpreting the Word, sharing the gospel, and ways that we worship. Using non-contextualized tools may attract people who are interested in our culture, but it will be difficult for them to apply tools from our context and multiply with them. We repeatedly see outsider trainers try to use a Western-created, non-contextualized training who are then bewildered when nothing works in a new context because they haven’t consulted a single local believer.

We met with the leaders of a globally well-known ministry in Thailand and asked them about their evangelism method. They told us that they shared using their organization’s tool (developed in the West) over 10,000 times in a year! But at the end of the year, it resulted in 10-15 consistent disciples joining their church. Just 0.1% of those they shared with stuck! We commended their amazing faithfulness and boldness but lamented the lack of willingness to try a more contextualized tool that might be more effective. 

Not Releasing Authority to Local Leaders: Many people understand using contextualized tools for greater effectiveness in ministry, but they still apply their ethnocentric values in evaluating local leaders. Without releasing authority to local leaders, the ministry can never fully indigenize and multiply further.

For example, in the West we might prioritize cultural values of leadership like being well-spoken, direct, and assertive. In Asia, leadership might be expressed by being more reserved, slow to speak, and having the final word. Neither of these cultural lenses are wrong, and they make sense within their own culture.

The problem is when outside missionaries, with a paternalistic approach that exerts control over local churches and ministries, fail to release authority and leadership to local leaders because of their own cultural biases. Emerging leaders may not look the same as leaders in the West, and we assume that we know best and that local leaders cannot yet be trusted. Out of a desire to make sure things are done “correctly,” we miss the opportunity to trust the Holy Spirit, empower local believers to take ownership, and encourage them to apply biblical principles in their own culture.

Overdependence on Outside Leaders and Money: Through a paternalistic perspective, we can assume that Western theology, curriculum, and resources are needed to help the struggling church among the unreached. We inadvertently create dependencies on outside leaders and resources that limit the local church and leaders from indigenizing and multiplying. 

When Helping Hurts is a well-known example of how a good desire of helping the poor by giving financial resources is actually damaging to the local people by creating over-dependency on Western resources. This type of “helping” happens across many types of ministries all over the world.

In consulting with experienced movement coaches, overreliance on outside money is a major barrier in catalyzing the multiplication of churches and disciples. Money brings different motivations and commitments, and we’ve heard of repeated instances of local partners who are driven by a salary and not a calling to make disciples. This can result in misreporting ministry results, an unwillingness to confront bad decisions from outsiders, and sometimes even direct deception in order to receive money.

There can be integrous and truly helpful ways to support disciple-making efforts among the unreached, but outsider practitioners should be very careful, thoughtful, and prayerful about anything involving outside money.

Ethnocentrism on Multicultural Teams: Increasingly, missions teams have team members from multiple different cultures and countries. They will bring in different values, communication styles, and preferences as individuals and from their cultural background.

If team leaders and team members aren’t aware of the cultural differences and have an ethnocentric view, this can lead to major conflicts that distracts you from your vision and can lead to teams fracturing. One resource for this specific situation of multi-cultural teams is Teamwork Cross-Culturally.

Barnabas Role without a Barnabas Heart: Lastly, simply playing the role of a Barnabas to train and coach local believers as an outsider does not necessarily mean that practitioners understand their own ethnocentrism. They may be trainers and coaches, but still inherently mistrust or condescend to local believers. We believe a Barnabas heart is critical to playing an effective Barnabas role. Local believers can easily tell when we are looking down on them or just see them as a means to an end. Lack of true relationship with your local partners leads to a lack of buy-in and ownership in the vision.

How to Address Ethnocentrism

Addressing ethnocentrism doesn’t require perfect understanding of varying cultures. Our job is not to decide what in the culture is right and wrong. But what is necessary is to posture ourselves in ways that directly offset ethnocentric thinking – namely as a learner with a humble heart of love.

Have a Heart of Humility and Love 

The primary way to combat ethnocentrism is modeled for us by Jesus himself! Jesus left the culture of heaven to live among and serve sinful humanity. Here is what Philippians 2 says about his heart posture: 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,  not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
    even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name…

Philippians 2:3-9

Many times, we experience feelings of offense, fear, or superiority when confronted with other cultures. These reactions are mitigated when we try to embody Christ’s heart of love and humility that considers others higher than ourselves. We are one in Christ and equal in the Kingdom with our brothers and sisters across the world. And the same Holy Spirit that works in us is also working in them! 

When we remember these things and seek to serve out of Christ’s love and humility, it becomes easier to both love the lost and to trust local believers. From there, a Barnabas partnership becomes a natural outflow of our ministry rather than feeling like a sacrifice.

Understanding our Ethnic Boundaries

Learning about our own ethnocentrism can be an overwhelming experience, as our ethnic identity is also closely tied to our personal identity, and it can be difficult to know the difference.

Alvin Sanders describes ethnic borders as “cultural traits that define our ethnic identity for ourselves and others.” He points out that people who come from the majority culture in their home country often haven’t had to think much about these borders because they naturally fit within them.

Most missionaries understand they’ll need to learn a new culture when they arrive in another country. But often that learning stays at the surface level – food, customs, language, and etiquette. What many missionaries haven’t yet wrestled with is how deeply their own cultural values and ethnic borders shape the way they see right and wrong. Without realizing it, they continue interpreting the world through their own cultural framework instead of learning to understand the perspective of their host culture.

There’s grace for us even if we are at the beginning of our journey of learning our own ethnic borders and those of our host country! Our encouragement is to take things one step at a time, with a heart of openness and humility.

One culture is not better or worse than another. Every people group is created ultimately in God’s image. And there are aspects of every culture that are marred by sin. We need the Word and the Holy Spirit to help us in this process of learning to live and serve across cultures.Alvin Sanders’ book, Bridging the Diversity Gap gives an outline of addressing your own heart to align with the Bible, learning about cultural dynamics, and then applying practical changes.

Discovering Cultural Values

One way to learn is from studying cultural values across different countries and cultures, including our own. There are several different frameworks for this, many of which had their origins in Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory. A resource specific for missions leaders would be from Livermore’s Leading with Cultural Intelligence, where Chapter 5 lists out 10 different cultural value dimensions like individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, low and high context. Although it’s a broad estimation, this book also shows how different regions of the world align with different cultural values.

One of the most difficult cultural values to navigate for Westerners can be low and high context, or direct and indirect communication. We had encouraged our teammates in our first term to be willing to learn and be flexible in interacting with local believers, but hadn’t given them much training on direct and indirect communication. I asked one teammate how their weekend was, and they said, “Yeah it was good but crazy. I got invited to one thing after church, and I just kept saying yes, and 12 hours later I was in someone’s home in another province!” As he described what happened, I realized that my teammate did a great job in being flexible and willing to learn, but hadn’t recognized that many of the invitations were simply being polite and indirectly they were not actually inviting him to go! 

Learning about your own and the host culture’s values can be a good, basic introduction to the differences between what you are used to and what the norms are in your host country. It can also be illuminating that people around the world have very different perspectives than our own – a key step in unraveling our ethnocentrism!

Be a Learner

When our team first landed in Thailand, we spent time brainstorming questions that we wanted to ask local Thai people, Thai believers, and Thai pastors. We set goals to ask these questions regularly in our day-to-day conversations and we wrote down our learnings into weekly reports. Through these informal surveys, we were able to generally learn about Thai motivations, values, concerns, and stressors, and even things like types of humor! Almost every answer revealed to us a vastly different perspective from our Western cultural lens. (The more formal version of these would be ethnographic interviews, if you’d like to dive deeper.)

When asking questions, try to stay open-minded with zero assumptions about what someone might say. In the moment of conversation, do your best to downplay any immediate judgment or emotional responses that might stem from your own cultural biases; these responses may actually be indicators to press in and learn more. Strive to listen well and not just wait for your next turn to speak, and continually be curious. Instead of jumping to conclusions, build the habit of asking “why.” And write down what you learn!
Even with a basic understanding of ethnocentrism, we still struggled many times figuring out a different culture and not being judgmental! Many of our ethnocentric values are so deeply ingrained that sometimes we cannot help our reactions and judgments. Something we learned from our pre-field cross-cultural training was the phrase, “It’s not wrong, it’s just different.” That phrase has been invaluable, especially when it feels like we are at a cultural impasse that can never be crossed. God is the one who judges what’s right or wrong. But we can embrace that differences exist and seek to understand them.

We’d also encourage you to be a learner in many different ways. Try to take in content from authors, writers, creators from a different background. Read books, watch movies, take in art made by people from different cultures. Ask your friends if they can bring you to different cultural traditions and festivals like holiday celebrations, weddings, funerals, etc. Go to museums and learn about history, traditions, and art. 

One of the biggest cultural experiences is in food! We learned from an Asian pastor how critical it is to be willing to “eat what is set before you.” He told us, “Most cultures share food around the table. If you can’t enter the table because of unwillingness to try different and sometimes strange foods, you can’t enter into the culture. If you can’t enter into the culture, you can’t enter into relationships.” Try every food offered to you at least once!

Lastly, learn the language. Too many missionaries today are overly focused on quick results and bypass learning language to work through translators. Taking the time to learn the language forces you to humble yourself and greatly improves your understanding of the culture. Learn language!

Being a curious, respectful learner will take you 80% of the way there. It requires the humility to say, “My cultural experience is not the only way and is not always the right way.”

Every Tribe, Tongue, and Nation

Deconstructing our ethnocentrism and learning another culture’s values can feel like an insurmountable challenge. Our desire in these two blog posts is not to make missionaries feel guilty or helpless, but to bring to the surface a potentially crippling obstacle that many are not even aware of.

We can’t change overnight. But if we take small steps in humbling ourselves and trying to be a learner, those things will compound and help you pursue the vision that God has given you in a Christ-like, culturally intelligent way. Local friends will notice your willingness and heart to learn and will give you a lot of grace even when you do make cultural missteps.

I think about the practitioner that witnessed baptisms through binoculars often. It is a sacrifice to be sure. But imagine the joy, when we reach the throne of God with all the nations in Revelation 7, clothed in white robes, when we meet those that we have prayed for, that we have indirectly invested in, that we have wept for. To see the fruition of the small sacrifice we made to lay down our ethnocentrism, to not be the main character in order that many would receive new life. 

That joy will last for eternity.

After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.

Revelation 7:9