Considering “Challenges in Mission and Outreach”

Rev. Paul McCain over at Cyberbrethren has a provocative and helpful post on “Challenges in Mission and Outreach.” In this post he uses the Frankenmuth mission colony as an example of a mission model’s deficiencies. In a “comment” to the post I offered what basically amounts to an addendum. In the case that it’s not published I offer below. Please read Rev. McCain’s post (click link above) and then return to my comment.

I have a keen interest in this issue. If I can carve out the time at my new mission station in Chicago, it would be interesting to make it my doctoral dissertation…

 

My reply to Rev. McCain:

Good summary: repent, expand your world-view, be ever-learning from the Scriptures (Bereans). You’re missing the spelling of Frankenmuth, for one, but I suspect you have a reason for that. Your post seems to suggest that the Frankenmuth mission failed (though you didn’t use that word). Though it was wrapped in its cultural mid-19th century dress, we should note that the mission-colony concept under which Frankenmuth was organized was one of the most unique efforts in the history of Christian missions. Frankenmuth remains a thriving mission colony to this day, keeping its heritage and supporting missions world-wide, and (self-disclosure) this former pagan was converted and learned the basics of the faith there. It’s rather simplistic to suggest that the new-found faith of the Chippewa “didn’t hold” because the missionaries were Germans and didn’t know any other way to be Christians. The missionary pastor spent a good deal of time with the Indians, learned Chippewa, and baptized a goodly number of them. The government then moved the Chippewa. We didn’t get to see what might have happened as the bi-cultural Christian Chippewa moved back and forth between two cultures. This is to say, the more “incarnational” model (#2 in your post) wasn’t widely known at the time, but it was being learned, and your post is a reflection of that. It would be fascinating to see a 21st century mission-colony, having learned from the mono-cultural model, that goes into frontier mission territory according to the incarnational model .

Thanks for your post.