Around the Web: Missiology an International Review, African American Missionaries Serving Overseas

Photo by Dr. Josiah Sarpong

Research Summary:

From 2020-2021, a research project searched data from 600 missions agencies to compare African American cross-cultural engagement between the 21st and 22nd edition of the North American Mission Handbook.

Interesting Notes:

African Americans typically survey higher among those who practice spiritual disciplines among other ethnicities in the US.

Between 2008 and 2017, full time cross-cultural missionaries among US Protestants fell from 40,501 to 31,775 workers.

Of the 31,775, only 179 were US born African Americans lagging behind the percentage of general population and churchgoers.

The article triangulates data to make a strong case African Americans would make great cross-cultural workers; however, currently, the African American US church does not statistically have a strong vision for participating in cross-cultural missions.

Optimistically, organizational changes like dedicated recruiters and local pastor vision could greatly increase participation towards the Great Commission.

Thoughts:

This article is a great example of research seeking to understand a snapshot of reality. Using research instead of rhetoric helps avoid the pitfalls around topics that could be sensitive, in this case ethnicity and race in the missionary task. It makes great recommendations to help organizations recruit African American missionaries, and offers paradigm shifts for local church African American pastors to raise up new workers. Following up this article, qualitative research could help tell the stories of the 179 African American missionaries, filling out specifics to the theory about the difficulties of sending and going in African American Churches.