Decolonizing Mission Partnerships

We all know that healthy partnerships are essential to fruitful boundary-crossing ministries, but how exactly do we create them? What barriers must be overcome, and what self-examination must we do? How do the legacies of colonialism, racism, and unhealed trauma impact missional collaborations today? In this doctoral thesis, Denyer reflects on these questions as she examines the history of relational dynamics between American and Congolese United Methodists in the North Katanga Conference (DR Congo). By surveying memoirs, magazines, and journals, and conducting in-depth interviews, Denyer presents a complex and multifaceted example of a partnership that is in the process of decolonizing. More than just a history lesson, Decolonizing Mission Partnerships presents the questions, hard truths, pitfalls, and toxic assumptions we must face when attempting to be in mission together.

We all know that healthy partnerships are essential to fruitful boundary-crossing ministries, but how exactly do we create them? What barriers must be overcome, and what self-examination must we do? How do the legacies of colonialism, racism, and unhealed trauma impact missional collaborations today? In this doctoral thesis, Denyer reflects on these questions as she examines the history of relational dynamics between American and Congolese United Methodists in the North Katanga Conference (DR Congo). By surveying memoirs, magazines, and journals, and conducting in-depth interviews, Denyer presents a complex and multifaceted example of a partnership that is in the process of decolonizing. More than just a history lesson, Decolonizing Mission Partnerships presents the questions, hard truths, pitfalls, and toxic assumptions we must face when attempting to be in mission together.

Decolonizing Wealth is a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance. Award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva draws from the traditions from the Native way to prescribe the medicine for restoring balance and healing our divides. Though it seems counterintuitive, the philanthropic industry has evolved to mirror colonial structures and reproduces hierarchy, ultimately doing more harm than good. After 14 years in philanthropy, Edgar Villanueva has seen past the field's glamorous, altruistic façade, and into its shadows: the old boy networks, the savior complexes, and the internalized oppression among the “house slaves,” and those select few people of color who gain access. All these funders reflect and perpetuate the same underlying dynamics that divide Us from Them and the haves from have-nots. In equal measure, he denounces the reproduction of systems of oppression while also advocating for an orientation towards justice to open the floodgates for a rising tide that lifts all boats. In the third and final section, Villanueva offers radical provocations to funders and outlines his Seven Steps for Healing. With great compassion—because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of healing—Villanueva is able to both diagnose the fatal flaws in philanthropy and provide thoughtful solutions to these systemic imbalances. Decolonizing Wealth is a timely and critical book that preaches for mutually assured liberation in which we are all inter-connected.

This book brings together Methodist scholars and reflective practitioners from around the world to consider how emerging practices of mission and evangelism shape contemporary theologies of mission. Engaging contemporary issues including migration, nationalism, climate change, postcolonial contexts, and the growth of the Methodist church in the Global South, this book examines multiple forms of mission, including evangelism, education, health, and ministries of compassion. A global group of contributors discusses mission as no longer primarily a Western activity but an enterprise of the entire church throughout the world. This volume will be of interest to researchers studying missiology, evangelism, global Christianity, and Methodism and to students of Methodism and mission.

Living into a less colonial way of being together. Methodism and American Empire investigates historical trajectories and theological developments that connect American imperialism since World War II to the Methodist tradition as a global movement. The volume asks: to what extent is United Methodists’ vision of the globe marred by American imperialism? Through historical analyses and theological reflections, this volume chronicles the formation of an understanding of The United Methodist Church since the mid-20th century that is both global and at the same time dominated by American interests and concerns. Methodism and American Empire provides a historical and theological perspective to understand the current context of The United Methodist Church while also raising ecclesiological questions about the impact of imperialism on how Methodists have understood the nature and mission of the church over the last century. Gathering voices and perspectives from around the world, this volume suggests that the project of global Methodism and the tensions one witnesses therein ought to be understood in the context of American imperialism and that such an understanding is critical to the task of continuing to be a global denomination. The volume tells a tale of complex negotiations happening between United Methodists across different national, cultural, and ecclesial contexts and sets up the historical backdrop for the imminent schism of The United Methodist Church.

The Last Missionary is a bicycle adventure story set in remote districts in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bob Walters travels with a team of Congolese colleagues discovering the state of the villages run over by the Pan-African war that devastated the region’s people through the terror of rape and the killing of millions. Along the way, Bob offers the reader a number of short tutorials and reflections on missiology, the study of mission systems. He ponders patronage and cargo cults, and asks the question, “Is Jesus the answer?” But this is not an answer book, it is a book in search of better questions. The Last Missionary is a challenge to both evangelicals and progressives in the church, missionaries and mission volunteers, and even non-religious aid workers.

The increasing interest in postcolonial theologies has initiated a vital conversation within and outside the academy in recent decades, turning many “standard theologies” on their head. This book introduces seminary students, ministry leaders, and others to key aspects, prevailing mentalities, and some major figures to consider when coming to understand postcolonial theologies. Woodley and Sanders provide a unique combination of indigenous theology and other academic theory to point readers toward the way of Jesus. Decolonizing Evangelicalism is a starting point for those who hope to change the conversation and see that the world could be lived in a different way.

This study examines an indigenous phenomenon of the Hindu devotees of Jesus Christ and their response to the gospel through an empirical case study conducted in Varanasi, India. It analyzes their religious beliefs and social belonging and addresses the ensuing questions from a historical, theological, and missiological perspective. The data reveals that the respondents profess faith in Jesus Christ; however, most remain unbaptized and insist on their Hindu identity. Hence, a heuristic model for a contextualized baptism as Guru-diksha is proposed. The emergent church among Hindu devotees should be considered, from the perspective of world Christianity, as a disparate form of belonging while remaining within one's community of birth. The insistence on a visible church and a distinct community of Christ's followers is contested because the devotees should construct their contextual ecclesiology, since it is an indigenous discovery of the Christian faith. Thus, the "Christian" label for the adherents is dispensable while retaining their socio-ethnic Hindu identity. Christian mission should discontinue extraction and assimilation; instead, missional praxis should be within the given sociocultural structures, recognizing their idiosyncrasies as legitimate in God's eyes and in need of transformation, like any human culture.