Having lived in a staunchly Islamic country for a few years, I was ecstatic to be discipling a local believer whom I’d led to Christ. One day, he reported to me uneasily, “I preached to a friend today.” I replied enthusiastically to his efforts at evangelism, encouraging him that it was a great step of faith.
His next question, though, surprised me: “Do I have permission to do that? Do I need to be approved or licensed?” I was immediately caught off guard. In response, I mumbled something about the priesthood of all believers. But I needed a more satisfactory answer.
Years later, his concern leads me to ask other questions: How are we to think about authority in missionary contexts? Who has it and how is it conferred? Is my perspective on authority the same as my local friends? And what implications does this have as I consider church planting in their culture? I’m convinced every missionary, particularly in frontier locations where there’s no local church, must wrestle with these questions of authority and the appropriate contextualization of biblical leadership.
Contextualizing Authority
Contextualization refers to how we take timeless biblical principles and apply them across cultures. For instance, we might consider what aspects of the indigenous culture could help people understand the unchanging message of the gospel (Acts 17:22–31) Or how the local culture shapes the way indigenous believers gather, sing, pray, and communicate God’s Word.
To contextualize their ministries, many frontier missionaries remove themselves as much as possible from leadership in a church plant, allowing new believers to initiate meeting together, reading Scripture, and developing church practices that fit their context. The assumption is that a local church will then develop without unhealthy or irrelevant patterns from the missionary’s home culture.
Here lies a conundrum for the missionary. Is the act of removing external authority itself an imposition of Western cultural values?
But here lies a conundrum for the missionary. Is the act of removing external authority itself an imposition of Western cultural values? Does it assume other cultures share a Western perspective on independence or self-governance?
I’ve observed in my years overseas that locals often expect strong leadership, and they’re not always comfortable operating as autonomous individuals. In the case of my friend, it’s clear he was a little uncomfortable speaking about Christ without the permission of a more experienced Christian. And I don’t think his perspective is unique.
Individual Autonomy and the Church
I’d suggest that removing external authority isn’t culturally neutral—and perhaps not even culturally acceptable in many contexts. Instead, it’s rooted in a deeply Western perspective on individual autonomy.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines individual autonomy as the “capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces, to be in this way independent.”
That’s a pretty good description of how I, as an American, prefer to operate. It’s also how I tend to want leaders to exercise authority over me.
This perspective makes sense if one believes the individual, as the most basic unit of society, determines how he or she can be treated by the community or should interact within the community. But this makes less sense for someone coming from a community-oriented culture, where the most basic unit of society is not the individual but the group.
When a new church forms in a collectivist culture, there must be a connection to a wider body of believers and normal mechanisms for determining authority. Otherwise, the new church culture will be disorienting and confusing for new believers.
Asking the Authority Question
The Bible clearly teaches that churches need leaders with authority who faithfully teach God’s Word (cf. 1 Tim. 3:1–6; 1 Pet. 5:1–4). We also see a preference for local leaders in the ministry of Paul (Acts 14:23). Such leadership is so important that he didn’t wait for the church in Crete to determine who had authority; he instructed Titus to appoint elders in the congregation (Titus 1:5).
When a new church forms in a collectivist culture, there must be a connection to a wider body of believers and normal mechanisms for determining authority.
But simply acknowledging that local church authority is necessary can’t answer all our questions about contextualization. For example, who exercises authority before indigenous leaders are raised up? If that person is the missionary, what does it look like for an outsider to be appropriately assertive while avoiding unhealthy dependence? And how should local leaders be selected and installed?
As missionaries seek wisdom in applying biblical principles, what we can’t do is assume that Western perspectives on authority will automatically translate into other cultures. While we might release new believers to establish their own authority, we shouldn’t do so in a way that leaves them feeling like fish out of water. We should also try to avoid installing leaders in a way that undermines their confidence or the community’s respect.
Establishing Leadership with Cultural Sensitivity
In the case of my friend, it was clear he was ready to take steps of obedience and responsibility in evangelism; that was wonderful. But he was still looking for external leadership. He wanted to know where his authority came from.
A similar desire for external authority can exist in a new church community. It can be helpful to have an outside body, such as another church or denomination, that officially recognizes a new local church and ordains its leaders. But in some frontier locations, that job may fall primarily to the missionary.
As servant leaders, the missionaries should teach about biblical church authority. They can then moderate conversations about how to apply biblical principles of leadership in the local context, listening carefully to the nationals’ perspectives. Eventually, capable and qualified locals should be mentored into leadership roles.
But as missionaries empower locals to take responsibility in the church, the ideal isn’t to treat them as autonomous individuals or their churches as isolated congregations. Instead, we should continually point them to their place in the wider church and under the authority of Scripture.
The Gospel Coalition