What are Western missionaries to do with the highly pliable, contextually framed, but still deadly sin of greed—the insistence on personal entitlement to more than enough, in contexts where neighbors have less than enough—when by most prevailing standards of adequacy they bear conspicuous personal witness to the Good News of plenty? In this issue of the IBMR we explore this question and others, all arising from the complex interstices of mission and mammon. Can the good intentions of an end user sanctify or at least mitigate the moral taint of a benefactor’s ill-gotten gains? Can one generation be held accountable for the sins of its ancestors, from whose evils it is a direct beneficiary? And what is the relationship between material possessions and one’s personal, ecclesiastical, or cultural identity? There are no easy answers to such questions.

The relational, communicatory, and ethical dynamics of gross material inequity among persons in close social proximity have challenged and bedeviled Western missionaries from the beginning. According to estimates appearing in the January 2007 IBMR, since 1900 the income of foreign missions globally has grown from an estimated US$200 million to $22 billion, today financing the work of some 453,000 missionaries. This figure does not include the cost of sending the tens of thousands of North Americans who each year venture forth on short-term (two weeks or less) mission trips.

When a North American missionary family relocates to another country, it can seem as though they had suddenly inherited a peerage. The missionary vocation—being paid to be religious in someone else’s culture—can appear by local standards to be an extraordinarily lucrative way to make a secure and comfortable living. In 2005, for example, a typical support package for an American evangelical missionary couple serving in southern Africa was approximately $60,000 per year, exclusive of funds for travel and special projects. However reasonable $5,000 per month might be for sustaining minimal levels of American social and material entitlement for a family living abroad, it guarantees them a place among the privileged in their host country.

While per capita expenditures vary widely, data provided by North American Protestant agencies draw attention to the impressive economic power undergirding North American missionaries. The accompanying table, based on figures appearing on pages 22–23 of the Mission Handbook, 2007–2009: U.S. and Canadian Protestant Ministries Overseas (EMIS, 2007), shows the twenty-two mission agencies reporting annual incomes of $50 million or more for overseas ministries in 2005. Altogether, seventy-two organizations reported overseas-designated incomes of $10 million or more.

U.S. mission agencies with annual income of
at least $50 million (2005)

Agency,  Income for Overseas Ministries (US$)

 

World Vision, Inc. — $752,348,000

MAP International — 319,511,995

Southern Baptist Convention IMB — 242,140,000

Northwest Medical Teams International —  225,202,506

Christian Aid Ministries — 190,608,201

Assemblies of God World Missions — 181,178,453

Compassion International — 136,234,672

Samaritan’s Purse — 121,842,371

Christian Broadcasting Network — 115,104,000

Opportunity International — 112,064,000

Wycliffe Bible Translators — 103,425,000

Campus Crusade for Christ — 98,321,000

Habitat for Humanity International — 95,475,655

Food for the Hungry — 93,826,618

United Methodist Church,  GBGM — 91,200,000

Church World Service — 63,665,788

Blessings International — 61,002,351

Heifer International — 56,625,000

Church of the Nazarene, World Mission —  56,606,056

Seventh-day Adventists General Conference —  55,803,094

Christian Churches / Churches of Christ —  52,000,000

Gideons International — 50,000,000

The same source reports that the total reported budget for North American overseas ministries in 2005 was $5,241,632,384, reflecting an annual growth rate of 6.7 percent (adjusted for inflation) since 1992 (p. 22). While such numbers do not translate directly into missionary incomes, they do indicate the scale of assets to which missionaries have access and from which they both derive and offer benefits.

In American Mania: When More Is Not Enough (Norton, 2005), biobehavioral psychiatrist Peter C. Whybrow notes that "as America’s commercial hegemony has increased and our social networks have eroded, we have lost any meaningful reference as to how rich we really are, especially in comparison to other nations" (p. 38). For us North Americans, there is apparently no disembarking from the one-way consumer escalator that raises one generation’s luxuries to the level of the next generation’s basic entitlements. To insist that Western missionaries be impervious to the powerful influences of their cultures would be unrealistic. David Hesselgrave’s question, posed in Paradigms in Conflict: Ten Key Questions in Christian Missions Today (Kregel, 2005), is thus well worth pondering: Despite impressive growth in personal and institutional income, "most missions and missionaries continue to report a serious need for support. What are we to make of this state of affairs?" (p. 228).

When Jesus sent out twelve and later seventy-two of his disciples, he advised them against taking money or material provisions of any kind (Luke 9:1–6; 10:1–17). Yet in the early church, unfortunately, there were charlatans who would "peddle the word of God for profit" (2 Cor. 2:17 NIV). In contrast, Paul, the paradigmatic missionary, often insisted on supporting himself through his own hard work (Acts 20:34–35). While the articles in this issue do not pretend to answer all the questions raised by the awkward conjunction of the temporal and the eternal, they at least provide some "meaningful reference" that enables us to locate ourselves and to wend our way with integrity through the labyrinth of issues surrounding mammon and Christian mission.

—Jonathan J. Bonk