Christianity dominates many African nations, but this masks a troubling reality. Many African churches falter under the influence of the prosperity gospel, syncretism with traditional African religious practices, and nominal faith. Many professing Christians in Africa are inoculated with enough gospel to claim to be Christian but not enough to be genuinely converted from sin.
Western mission partnerships, often characterized by paternalistic relationships that promote financial dependency, have unintentionally contributed to these challenges.
One might think that what’s needed to combat these problems is less Western involvement, pulling back to avoid cultivating overreliance. What’s actually needed is a reformation in mission partnerships—deeper relationships of reciprocity—that will promote healthy churches and healthy leaders.
We Need More than Surface-Level Investment
Throughout modern missions history, there have been unhealthy relationships between Western missionaries and local gospel workers. These breakdowns rarely begin with bad intentions. More often, they grow out of limited transparency, insufficient investment, and unequal power dynamics.
Sometimes one or both parties seek an advantage over the other, creating an unhealthy one-way dependency that must be maintained by the Westerner. Due to the Western workers’ material wealth and greater knowledge, real or perceived, national workers can become subservient to their ideas and wishes. Over time, this imbalance fosters dependency rather than partnership, and a focus on appearances rather than honesty.
One might think that what’s needed to combat these problems is less Western involvement. What’s actually needed is a reformation in mission partnerships.
One example from a ministry in Zambia illustrates this pattern. A Western missionary planted a church and developed basic infrastructure, including a church building and a pastor’s home. He trained a national pastor, transferred leadership, and moved on to another ministry. While the leadership transition appeared healthy on the surface, the relational depth necessary for long-term accountability was largely absent.
Problems soon emerged. Shortly after the Western missionary left, the Zambian pastor applied to a Western mission organization and began receiving monthly support. The organization raised funds for a vehicle, but the pastor didn’t purchase it; instead, he used the funds for personal expenses. When a mission representative later visited Zambia, the pastor borrowed a friend’s vehicle and presented it as his own. Then, when the deception finally unraveled, the national worker attempted suicide.
In hindsight, the warning signs were there, and they weren’t primarily financial but relational. The Western church planter didn’t have a sufficiently deep relationship with the Zambian leader to discern that leader’s character deficiencies. The national pastor learned to say and do what pleased Western partners merely to gain trust and financial support. The absence of transparency and reciprocity created a context where deception could flourish, with devastating consequences for everyone involved.
We Need More than the West Holding the Purse Strings
A popular trend in post-colonial African missions is for Western Christians to directly support pastors and missionary church planters in the Global South. As Robert Reese observes, this strategy creates several hindrances:
1. It perpetuates the colonial mentality of wealthier Christians holding purse strings while national workers do the actual work. It’s often advertised this way in the West: “The local brother can do missions much cheaper than if we send our own.”
2. It removes the local accountability that’s better maintained when African churches identify, train, and send their own workers.
3. It creates dependency as African churches come to believe they can’t engage in church planting if “sponsors” don’t pay for it.
These factors result in paternalism, which Michael Pocock defines this way:
When missionaries and their sending churches and agencies assume, sometimes unconsciously, that they possess superior knowledge, experience, and skills. As a result of these assumptions, they exert control over local Christians and their leaders. This control almost always involves financial arrangements and the implicit authority of money.
But if these are the problems, what’s the solution?
Biblical and Church-Centered Framework for Healthy Partnerships
Third John shows us the secret to healthy relationships between cross-cultural workers (like John) and local ones (like Gaius): reciprocity. John says reciprocity involves mutual respect rooted in shared truth (vv. 1–4), two-way, caring hospitality (vv. 5–6), shared sacrifice for the mission (vv. 7–8), and transparent relationships built on trust and servanthood rather than control.
Such reciprocity isn’t optional. Gospel work advances best when cross-cultural missionaries and local workers relate as fellow laborers and practice giving, care, communication, and planning in humility, love, and truth, for the sake of the Name.
Both parties must be willing to be open and communicate their emotions, struggles, hopes, and temptations without fear of being wrongly judged by the other. Moreover, reciprocity is best cultivated when mission efforts center around local churches.
Paul was on a mission to reach the Roman Empire with the gospel. He preached in major urban centers such as Philippi, Ephesus, and Corinth—key centers of population, economy, and education. Because gospel influence, like water, flows downhill, often along channels of relationships, he was confident these churches would serve as powerful agents for spreading the gospel throughout the region. Paul’s plan was strategic and highly effective.
Moreover, the New Testament pattern of giving that Paul taught and lived was church-centered, whether it involved sending people or funds (Acts 13:1–5). Believers in Antioch, Thessalonica, and Philippi gave to their local churches from whom Paul received the offerings (2 Cor. 8–9). These funds were for the poor, not for the support of his missionary team. So Paul delivered the offerings to the church for distribution, because he knew that the authority Christ has invested in the church is lost when giving and receiving bypasses the church.
Implications for Today’s Mission Partnerships
What are some implications from Paul’s missions and support strategies for Western and African churches today?
For Western Churches
American friends, don’t lose your heart for the gospel nor your desire to invest in missions worldwide. Yet be aware that the strategies you adopt may compromise your goal of forming healthy, reproducing churches in Africa. There’s a better way! Cultivate reciprocity in various areas:
1. Accountability: Only support men sent and supervised by their local churches. Many “free agents” in Africa attempt to do ministry without a local church’s mandate, authority, or accountability. Investigate fully before committing support.
2. Responsibility: Local churches must own the mission task. Partner only through healthy church-to-church relationships. Supporting a missionary directly, rather than channeling your support through church partnerships, undermines biblical responsibility.
3. Communication: Missionaries must regularly visit and report to their sending church, and sending churches should communicate frequently with those partnering with them in the work.
4. Decision-Making: Avoid unilateral Western decisions about African ministry strategy. A discussion between Western and African ministry partners in the spirit of Acts 15 can leverage mutual discernment and result in shared decision-making.
For Local African Churches
Consider the biblical criteria for mission work: Initial evangelism must lead to planting new churches. These churches must provide a nurturing environment for Christians to grow and mature. The church should identify and train leaders who will be responsible for evangelizing and planting new churches (Acts 13–14), nurturing believers (1 Pet. 5:2), and training new leaders (2 Tim. 2:2).
Gospel influence, like water, flows downhill, often along channels of relationships.
Local churches in Africa must embrace the responsibility to raise and send missionaries. Reject the mindset that African believers can’t do missions because of a lack of resources. This thinking is a cancer that must be removed from assemblies by the scalpel of God’s unchanging Word.
The future of gospel advance in Africa requires a reformation in our partnership models. Western churches must abandon paternalistic approaches that have unintentionally fostered prosperity-gospel teaching and nominal Christianity. Instead, they must build interdependent partnerships founded on mutual respect, theological clarity, and shared gospel commitments. Only then will we see healthy, reproducing churches emerge that can carry the true gospel to every corner of the African continent.
The Gospel Coalition