The Transformation of Missions in the Twenty-First Century

Drawing on interviews with founders of independent missions, field work in Africa, India, and Haiti, and her experience as director of an independent mission, Carrie A. Miles explores the challenges and strengths of missions built on interpersonal relationships and spiritual capital.

This book examines the rise of a new movement within Global Christianity: the independent mission. Once death-defying, residential, lifelong commitments, undertaken and supported by career professionals, a growing number of international missions are now small agencies operating without institutional support, and undertaken by volunteers who travel occasionally to the mission field but who live and work at home. Focusing on the importance of culturally respectful collaborations with national partners, this book also deals with the harm caused by missionaries who do not share that orientation. In a compelling example, Miles recounts her discovery that early missionaries to East Africa taught that God cursed humankind in Creation. Making no attempt to understand the meaning of curses in traditional religions, however, the missionaries created a devastating syncretism that persists to this day. The Transformation of Missions in the Twenty-First Century: Cross-Cultural Partnership without Syncretism argues that, in requiring cross-cultural awareness to operate, the constraints of working independently are also its strengths.