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September - October 1994 Editorial Comment
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Do “Native Missionaries” Exist? by Ralph D. Winter The word "native" is not welcome in many places. They say if you refer to a white man from South Africa as "a native of South Africa" you may pick a fight. However, I call myself "a native Californian,"-- scarce as such people are in California--and I was still a native of California even when I worked in Guatemala as a missionary. But I was not a native of Guatemala. If I try to reach other native Californians here in California, the best word, I feel, is evangelism. Here I am a native but not a missionary. In Guatemala I am a missionary but not a native. It seems clear that there is no such a thing as "a native missionary" unless it makes no difference whether someone is working with his own people or is working with people not his own. Paul, in Galatians, made quite a point out of the fact that while Peter worked with Jews, Paul (also a Jew) worked with Gentiles. Thus, we usually call Paul a missionary but not Peter, although both of them did both things part of the time. Today's missionaries also do both kinds of work: 1) they help "national" churches reach their own people--which I call evangelism, and 2) they may also be pioneering in an unreached group, or at least encouraging "national" Christians to reach out to other still- unreached groups. This #2 task promotes further, true-Pauline, classical missionary work! --RDW
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