All Ethnē to All Ethnē

The enslavement of Africans, the Antebellum and Jim Crow eras, persistent racism, the perpetually unchecked injustices toward African-Americans in the Global West, and the lack of financial resources have resulted in what Christianity Today calls a historic shortage of African-American missionaries serving abroad. The world’s largest sending agency, the International Mission Board, has only thirteen African-American career missionaries on its roster (Roach 2020), which amounts to less than 1% sent from the US serving and reaching the world for Christ globally (Hopkins 2021, Dec 13).

Per the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, the US sent out 127K of the world’s estimated 400K missionaries abroad in 2010 (Lovering 2012). Pairing the IMB’s numbers with the data from CSGC, these numbers reflect a significant disparity.

Since research shows that avertable factors contribute to the lack of African-American missionaries serving abroad, this essay explores methods for churches and sending organizations to increase African-American representation among the nations.

Data confirms that world history, particularly as it relates to the African Slave Trade and segregation in the United States, has played a specific role in the African-American church community’s underlying indifference to being actively engaged in global missions. As far back as the 17th century, Europeans used Christianity to justify the enslavement of African people and those of the African diaspora (Hunter 2018, 37-39).

Large numbers of enslaved Africans and African-Americans converted to Christianity at the behest of their slaveholders and planters, inextricably characterizing Christianity as the oppressor’s religion. For some, propagating this belief system would be more injurious than beneficial.

As a result, research reflects that seventy-five percent of African-American Protestants polled in a recent study believe that opposing racism is essential to being a Christian (Mohamed 2021). Eighty percent of African-Americans in non-Protestant and non-Christian belief systems report opposing racism as necessary to their religious identity (Mohamed 2021). On the other hand, many enslaved people and their descendants double-downed on Christianity, finding liberation in their identity in the truth of Scripture contrary to the behavior of their owners and planters (Stewart). An even more recent study indicates that sixty-one percent of African-American Christians between 18 and 35 say that they could become a missionary (Barna Group 2020).

Considering the varied lived experiences and perspectives of the complex African-American Christians’ relationship with Christianity, a resurgence of motivation toward global missions and increasing representation lies first in the Global Church holistically owning the ills of the past. Denouncing the malignment of Scripture by enslavers to justify slavery, rendering such acts antithetical to the character of the God of the Bible, becomes paramount. Further, churches and sending organizations would do well to aid in the reclamation of the African-American Christian’s rightful place in God’s redemptive story as outlined in the Great Commission.

Jesus’ charge to His followers in Matthew 28:16-20 was not given on the basis of their ethnic makeup but squarely on their belief in and lifelong submission to Himself.

The making of disciples of all nations and the witnesses that Jesus speaks of in Acts 1:8 implies that the task of making His Gospel known to the ends of the earth will require the representation of all of His followers from the nations on the earth. Thus, as an example, establishing short-term trips with international ministry partners, targeting and prioritizing the placement of African-American Christians on short-term teams, equipping them, then sending them into the mission field increases representation among the nations and is the visible proclamation of the need for the African-American Christian presence in God’s mission.

In moving toward a modern and narrowed take on African-American participation in global missions, the obstacles and responsibilities of African-American churches prove noteworthy.

As far back as the 18th century, homogeneous African-American churches, more widely known as the Black Church, became a pillar and communal priority for African-Americans seeking affirmation, refuge, and resources unavailable elsewhere (Gates 2021).

In its earliest days, the Black Church was not merely a religious institution with its unique methods of worship and teaching but a place for organizing, political advocacy, education, economic development, and more (Weisenfeld 2015). The function of today’s Black Church remains essentially unchanged as it continues to prioritize the holistic well-being of its African-American congregants and the communities in which they reside.

In a recent Christianity Today article, Dr. Doug Logan, the president of Grimké Seminary, expounded on this singular internal focus. According to Logan, African-American churches that existed after the Emancipation struggled with merely being a church in their communities in the face of segregation and racism, which caused missions on a global front to be less of a priority paled to reaching the people in their community.

While the singular internal focus of African-American churches is commendable given Acts 2:44-45, in considering the entire scope of the Great Commission, prioritizing Jerusalem over Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth is not only disobedient but problematic.

Generations of African-Americans continue to be reared in the Black Church. Without intentional discipleship efforts prioritizing their place in the work of the Great Commission, especially where Christ has not been named (Romans 15:20), scores of African-American Christians will continue to view global missions as optional and secondary to the needs of their communities.

However, by taking an honest look at the physical and emotional balm the Black Church continues to be for its congregants in an era of wealth inequality (Shapiro, Meschede, Osoro 2013), George Floyd, racial discrimination in healthcare (James 2017), Covid-19 (CDC 2022), the Black Church continues to justify its existence. And while its presence is integral, it is not a competitor to the Great Commission.

The salve lies in the missional mandate in Acts 1:8, which provides a both-and, not an either-or framework in terms of priority. Every region and every person in each region matters to God; therefore, each region and person therein must matter to His followers.

The role of history and the internally focused posture of the Black Church are worth considering, given the lack of funding for African-American missionaries serving or those who desire to serve abroad.

From chattel slavery, the Freedman’s Savings Bank debacle, the Black Wall Street Massacre in 1921, the “Black Codes” of the Jim Crow era, redlining, and the educational and employment inequalities of today, there remains pervasive wealth disparities (McIntosh, Moss, Shambaugh 2022 ) impacting the daily livelihood of the African-American believer, their ability to contribute consistently to their churches, and finally their ability to participate in the spread of the Gospel globally.

Black missionaries were involved in international missions long before mission-sending agencies were established; however, they were rarely commissioned by Protestant sending agencies until the early 19th century (Saunders 2020, 75-76).

In leading the charge to overcome such disparities, in 1815, Lott Cary formed the first African-American sending agency, The Richmond African Missionary Society, to equip and fund African missionaries for the work of the Great Commission in Africa (Saunders 2020, 79). While Cary’s formation of the RAMS proved beneficial, the racial barriers of Jim Crow laws, the Civil Rights movement, and the adaptation of Uplift Theology that kept the Black Church internally focused, dealt devastating blows to the global missions efforts of African-Americans.

Jim Crow laws affected the racial harmony of Christians, which led to White mission boards refusing to accept black missionary candidates (Saunders 2020, 86). However, in stark contrast, today, the International Mission Board, the Southern Baptist Convention’s missions sending agency, has created programs and scholarships to “grow international missions knowledge and experiences among Black and African-American SB churches.”

In addition to more widely known sending agencies like IMB and the North American Mission Board, organizations like the National African-American Missions Council and the Reconciliation Ministries Network exist to fund and equip African-Americans’ local and international missions efforts.

African-American pastors say their churches and members don’t have as much money to give. Many black families view mission work as a luxury they can’t afford (Hopkins 2021, Feb 1). There is not merely a funding problem but a connection problem. The Global Church has been connecting and sharing its resources since the 1st century (Acts 2:42-46).

Suppose anything is to be garnered from history’s unsavory chronology of the plight of the African-American missionary. In that case, with the harshest parts of racism and the lack of accessibility to resources in the past, today, the Church is more than capable of propelling a robust representation of African-Americans into the international mission field.

In Paul’s second letter to the church at Corinth, in chapter 5, verse 18, he reminds the believers that everything is from God, who has reconciled them to Himself through Christ and has given them the ministry of reconciliation. Further, he continues in verse 19 by emphasizing God has committed the message of reconciliation to them. The exhortation given at Corinth remains applicable to the global church today.

As ambassadors for Christ, who God has chosen to make His appeal through to the unbelieving world, the message of reconciliation is not merely evident and corroborated in the individual life of the believer but in the believer’s reconciled relationship with other believers. The Gospel, this message the church has been given, embodies the abolishment of all dividing walls of hostility. By way of the death of Jesus Christ, as Paul posits to the church at Ephesus, God brought together all ethnic groups to form a new humanity. Two chapters later, in the same letter, Paul would reaffirm the notion that followers of Christ “must make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” There is “one body and one Spirit,” in which believers are called in one hope to one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one Father in all. Reconciliation to God is unequivocally connected to His followers living reconciled to one another.

God reconciling humanity to Himself through Christ is the most remarkable display of love in the history of humankind, making the act of reconciliation an act of love. Following suit, in the Gospel of John, Jesus commands with an implication for His followers to love one another, stating by this love, everyone will know they are His followers.

In later chapters, Jesus is found praying to the Father for His followers to be completely unified as one so that the world would know that He was sent. The continual intentional acts of reconciliation within the Body of Christ or lack thereof are consequential to the witness of who Christ claims to be and the validity of the power of the Gospel. The Cross of Christ and His resurrection have proven to reconcile God to humanity. By the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, followers of Jesus Christ have the capacity to live out this reconciliation with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ across all ethnic groups lest the message of reconciliation is deemed hollow.

Corporate repentance within the Body of Christ is the only course of action that will course-correct a faith system whose task is missional in reconciling the unbelieving world to a Savior that is seemingly unable to reconcile His own followers.

In The Mission of God, Dr. Christopher Wright contends that the missionary stereotype must be exploded. He states, “the global church has generated a new reality that is hardly yet acknowledged in the churches of the West, let alone in the popular culture and media there. And that is the fact that much more than half of all the Christian missionaries serving in the world today are not white and Western (Wright 2006, 43).” Toward that end, African-American missionaries, especially in the West, need to see themselves in the gathering of global worshippers.

The more extensive scope of missional marketing communication in circulation purports a “West reaching the rest” narrative that disproportionately portrays persons of color in great spiritual and physical need and those of European descent as the predominant messengers with the Gospel and with the resources to mitigate poverty.

Stereotypes and illustrations of this nature are incorrect and potentially create chasms within the Body that pit brothers and sisters of white and black ethnic groups against one another. Additionally, it does not afford African-American missionaries a perspective that includes them in reaching the unbelieving world for Christ through the proclamation and demonstration of the Gospel. The church must live in view of the leveling that occurred at Golgotha when, as Paul would say to the believers in Galatia, all who are baptized into Christ are all one in Christ. Given this premise, the global church goes about her mission as those reached with the Gospel, made up of all people groups to those unreached.

The most prominent task given to followers of Jesus is to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to all creation. Taking this timeless truth at face value, and most importantly, considering the authority in Who the Great Commission was administered through, the multiethnic Global Church is squarely responsible for ensuring a multiethnic representation of Christ-followers, making the Lord known to the ends of the earth.

Church and missiological history has been recorded to the benefit of the Church so that she can move forward vibrantly in complete obedience to the work of her mission.

In facing the past, the continual reconciliation of and intentional partnership between predominantly white churches and sending agencies and African-American churches and sending agencies is critical to the success of the African-American missionary’s global gospel work. The Black Church’s holistic adherence to the entirety of the missional directive of Acts 1:8 is critical to the success of the African-American missionary’s global gospel work. The Global Church reflecting its earliest nature in the cross-pollination of resources is vital to the success of the African-American missionary’s global gospel work.

The endgame for the Church’s mission is a great multitude from every nation, tribe, and tongue, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb (Revelation 7:9). Working toward this end includes the affirmation, equipping, funding, and sending of the African-American missionary to reach the nations for Christ.

If the words of John’s vision are true, “all ethnē to all ethnē” (Logan 2019) is the only acceptable lived experience for the African-African in the Church, and history to come will most certainly praise or indict the Global Church respectively.

---

Works Cited