Failed Missionaries

[FlaviusAetius]

My question comes from thinking about the miniscule 1% population of Christians in Japan. How should we view missions that generally can be seen as failures? Did God want Christianity to fail in places like Japan as an example? How should the missionaries be viewed when all their effort lead to shriveled and weak fruit?

 

[LoAmmi]

My question comes from thinking about the miniscule 1% population of Christians in Japan. How should we view missions that generally can be seen as failures? Did God want Christianity to fail in places like Japan as an example? How should the missionaries be viewed when all their effort lead to shriveled and weak fruit?

Japan is a strange place for religion. The population there thinks nothing of praying at a Shinto shrine in the morning, attending a Buddhist thing in the afternoon, and then a Christian thing in the evening. They tend not to view things as exclusive. So, when you look at Japan, it's hard to mission to them.

 

[pdudgeon]

Japan is a strange place for religion. The population there thinks nothing of praying at a Shinto shrine in the morning, attending a Buddhist thing in the afternoon, and then a Christian thing in the evening. They tend not to view things as exclusive. So, when you look at Japan, it's hard to mission to them.

there are many places in the world that are difficult to mission for whatever reason.
but we've got to remember that while man looks at the numbers,
God looks at the hearts that are faithful to Him.

p.s. and if those missionaries saved even one soul, they aren't failures.

 

[Rhamiel]

we can not judge the souls of others

some missions take longer

what you can do is reach out to other people
be a good witness for Christ in how you live and act
give of your time money and talents to missionary work
and of course pray for the missions

 

[brinny]

Awwwww, God bless each of them...it's not their fault. Missions is like planting seeds and then trusting God to cultivate those seeds and to pray pray pray over those seeds and to keep planting them.

 

[mark46]

Early Jesuit missionaries did fine in Japan until 400 years ago when the shoguns came to power and Christianity was systematically eliminated, never to return.

BTW, the percentage is about 2%, similar to India and China. Of course, Christianity has been in India since the 1st Century.

IMHO, the issue is persecution, not the ability of missionaries. Obviously, some Asian countries have huge Christian populations.

 

[dzheremi]

Well, why did the missions fail? I know virtually nothing for the history of the RCC in Japan, so I briefly looked it up on wiki (I know, not the best source in the world, but it's not even my church) and saw that the initial contact in the 1500s was marred by misunderstandings (the Japanese apparently thought Christianity came from India) and suspicion (since converts were encouraged to adopt Western names and culture). I'm assuming that the situation is different nowadays, but fixing very basic things like that is a good idea if you're going to try to witness to any people. Most people in the world have heard of Christianity, but maybe have a similar set of presuppositions about what it means to be a Christian such that it becomes distasteful or a non-option for them. Most of the places where Christian mission has failed are those kinds of places: the missionaries came with a foreign culture to upend or replace the native one (it should be obvious why this doesn't work, right?), and/or were not responsive to native concerns, questions, or values. There is probably also a limit to what you can do to baptize the culture, anyway, as certain things (like the religious syncretism mentioned by LoAmmi) are probably not what you'd want to encourage in the name of gaining converts, but to the extent that you can, it is good to make the burden easy. Many cultures have analogues to preexisting Christian practices or beliefs, so doing your homework goes a long way.

I don't think God ever wants Christianity to fail anywhere. I think some of the people representing it kind of set themselves up for that, though. When I was a child I went to Mexico with my mother's (Presbyterian) church group which was intent on witnessing to the people there...despite the fact that I was the only one who spoke Spanish or knew anything about the culture, and I was decidedly not intent on that (my dad's side of the family is all Mexican and Irish Catholics, so I never had the idea that Catholics needed to be converted to Christianity in the first place). The "training" video they had us watch before going was seriously mostly about how it's not okay or funny to answer the border guard's questions in Spanish or make jokes to them about how you're smuggling illegal immigrants. So it's not surprise that when we went there the missionary aspect of the trip (as distinct from the building houses and setting up a health clinic aspect) was a total failure, since the majority of the people could not communicate with the locals, and the older kids (teenagers/early 20s; I was 12) mostly treated it like Spring Break vacation and were loud, obnoxious, and laughing at all the funny "stuff" they found in Mexico (how stupid does your whole team look when half of it is laughing about a brand of bread sold there called "Bimbo", and gathering to take pictures under advertisements for it? The Mexicans probably thought we had taken some mentally-defective people with us, for some reason).

From my own experiences, there are many more ways for a mission to fail then there are for it to succeed, so I think other people who have said that 1% is not failure are probably at least somewhat right.

 

[Rhamiel]

some people make the claim that "the church does best when it is persecuted, it is when the Church is too comfortable that things go bad"
sighting things like the history of Catholicism in Ireland where it was suppressed or the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire

but then we have examples like Japan and the Middle East where persecution has either almost totally destroyed the Church or kept it at an insignificant minority

 

[mark46]

some people make the claim that "the church does best when it is persecuted, it is when the Church is too comfortable that things go bad"
sighting things like the history of Catholicism in Ireland where it was suppressed or the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire

but then we have examples like Japan and the Middle East where persecution has either almost totally destroyed the Church or kept it at an insignificant minority

Hmm

Perhaps, the Church doesn't really do best where it is persecuted. We once had three parts of the Church, with the Latin being the smallest. The Oriental Church was almost completely (and systematically) wiped out by the Mongols and Muslims.

And how well does the persecuted Church do in Saudi Arabia and ISIS controlled areas?

 

[dzheremi]

As Tertullian once wrote, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. One of the most probably shocking things for Western Christians about my own church was when HH Pope Tawadros II was interviewed by 60 Minutes and told them that the church is unfazed by the recent troubles in Egypt, as it is the church's duty to produce martyrs. This kind of mentality is for the most part completely lost among Western Christians, but is still very much alive in the East. Speaking broadly, to be Christian in the West is a choice -- something to fill in your Facebook profile with. In many places outside of the West, it is not a choice, or at least not in the way that we think of religion as being a choice. Christianity outside of America is, after all, an intensely communal religion. When you are surrounded by Muhammads and Zaynabs and your parents name you Abanoub or Mary, people notice. And while the majority are born with people whispering Qur'anic verses into their ears, Coptic children are marked with crosses tattooed on their wrists as soon as they are old enough to hold still for them.

People are wrong to look at such things in terms of numbers. ISIS and Saudi can kill, imprison, or deport everyone eventually. What is significant is not what we can control or where we are a majority, but where we are living with some level of cohesion to our communities, set firmly in our churches and monasteries where people continue to learn and pass on our traditions. Perhaps when looked at from that perspective, it is the Western, "Christian-majority" nations that are the weak ones, and the Eastern, Christian-minority nations that are the strong ones.

 

[thecolorsblend]

My question comes from thinking about the miniscule 1% population of Christians in Japan. How should we view missions that generally can be seen as failures? Did God want Christianity to fail in places like Japan as an example? How should the missionaries be viewed when all their effort lead to shriveled and weak fruit?

How do you quantify success? Are we to preach the gospel to them? If that's our mandate, it looks to me like Japan is a success inasmuch as we are preaching there. We're not promised a certain number of converts. We just have the mission to share the faith with them. Whether or not they accept it is up to them.

 

[FlaviusAetius]

Thank you for the responses, it was bothering me seeing examples of Christianity successfully being suppressed through violent persecution and having to come up with a reason why it would be allowed to fail by God. Actually even now that violent persecution has ended completely it troubles me how slow the growth is for converts.

The answers here offer some relief, though it's still bothering me. after all of that 2% population only a fraction of that is even Catholic, despite Catholics being the ones getting martyr.

 

[MoonlessNight]

It is true that the early missions to Japan did not convert the entire country.

However, those who did convert were very strong converts. Christianity faced official persecution for centuries, and yet the Christian remnant persisted in secret, even without any outside support from the Church (since early on it was too distant to be sent aid, later it was difficult for any Westerners to enter Japan at all, and after many years it was assumed that Christianity must have been wiped out from Japan entirely, since conditions were so hostile to it). The fact that there were Christians still there to greet the incoming priests when the ports were finally opened is miraculous.

It is sad that now that the official persecution has ended that Christianity has not flourished there, I will agree. I think that the reasons why it has struggled are somewhat complicated and worthy of a discussion of their own. But I would not put the modern state of Japan as a fault of the original missionaries. They accomplished more than anyone could have hoped for.

 

[football5680]

If the message is made available to the people then the mission is a success. Whether they accept it or not is up to them but the Christian obligation has been fulfilled.

 

[topcare]

p.s. and if those missionaries saved even one soul, they aren't failures.

Exactly. If only one person out of the billions and billions only believed in Christ, His mission was still successful. We humans judge by numbers God judges by the heart

 

[Cos-play]

Maybe I'm wrong on this but:

I've always thought that the way Christianity is packaged (if you will) by Western thought is just incongruent with the way Asiatics generally view spirituality.

The concept of a single personal God (a Man in the sky) is just not how Asians view things. I think you have to present Christianity as a mystical religion with God as a universal force encompassing all things to be found everywhere and emphasize Christ as a sage and teacher and a conduit to connecting with God as the universal force.

I think that would work better. And I think it's not an incorrect way to present Catholic (specifically) theology.

Fundamentalism and even conservative protestant theologies with emphasis on "Personal relationship with Jesus" and the sort of individual person hood view of God is, imo, hopeless as a missionary tools in Asia.

 

[pdudgeon]

Maybe I'm wrong on this but:

I've always thought that the way Christianity is packaged (if you will) by Western thought is just incongruent with the way Asiatics generally view spirituality.

The concept of a single personal God (a Man in the sky) is just not how Asians view things. I think you have to present Christianity as a mystical religion with God as a universal force encompassing all things to be found everywhere and emphasize Christ as a sage and teacher and a conduit to connecting with God as the universal force.

I think that would work better. And I think it's not an incorrect way to present Catholic (specifically) theology.

Fundamentalism and even conservative protestant theologies with emphasis on "Personal relationship with Jesus" and the sort of individual person hood view of God is, imo, hopeless as a missionary tools in Asia.

where to start?
the reason that Christianity is (and always will be) different from any other religion, is that Christianity came from God, our Creator,
and the other religions originated with man's perception of a god; the creation trying to describe the Creator.

 

[MoonlessNight]

Maybe I'm wrong on this but:

I've always thought that the way Christianity is packaged (if you will) by Western thought is just incongruent with the way Asiatics generally view spirituality.

The concept of a single personal God (a Man in the sky) is just not how Asians view things. I think you have to present Christianity as a mystical religion with God as a universal force encompassing all things to be found everywhere and emphasize Christ as a sage and teacher and a conduit to connecting with God as the universal force.

I think that would work better. And I think it's not an incorrect way to present Catholic (specifically) theology.

Fundamentalism and even conservative protestant theologies with emphasis on "Personal relationship with Jesus" and the sort of individual person hood view of God is, imo, hopeless as a missionary tools in Asia.

Christianity seems to have done well enough in Korea. This is especially interesting considering that Christianity was first brought to Korea not by European missionaries but rather by a native Korean who had been converted to Catholicism while in China.

 

[Cos-play]

where to start?
the reason that Christianity is (and always will be) different from any other religion, is that Christianity came from God, our Creator,
and the other religions originated with man's perception of a god; the creation trying to describe the Creator.

This is, of course, a biased view. It's the way you see things and your projecting it on all of humanity.
A lifelong Buddhist or Taoist will see things differently.

This is the problem. You will never get converts from a culture that sees the mystical (which is a legit way to look at Christianity) as the primary source of religiosity leading with this attitude.

 

[MoonlessNight]

This is, of course, a biased view. It's the way you see things and your projecting it on all of humanity.
A lifelong Buddhist or Taoist will see things differently.

My freshmen mathematics students will generally think that (a+b)^2 = a^2+b^2 (in more than just a field of characteristic 2) and think that it is absurd that it could be any other thing.

But somehow, rather than just accepting that they have a different view of things, I explain to them why they are wrong.

Now on the topic of religions, if the claims that Catholics make are true, then it is also true that other religions are simply mistaken in some way or other and at some point in generalization this will have to be explained.

I will agree that the way that a message is best presented is different depending on the audience. You will start with what is common ground and expand from there. If this is all you mean in your posts than I agree. I don't disagree in principle with the evangelical style of people like Matteo Ricci.

But it is difficult to tell if you mean only that, or if you mean that which truths are revealed to different cultures in the total discussion of religion should change from culture to culture. That is, if you are saying that a missionary in Asia should not start by establishing God as a personal deity but certainly one should eventually get to that, then I have no issue. But if you are saying that we should not discuss God as a personal deity in Asia at all then I would disagree. I honestly can't tell which position you are advocating for, so I apologize if I seem to be misrepresenting you.