Don't Pass the Baton

One of the most common expressions you will hear in global missions is: “It is time for Americans to pass the baton to national leaders.” This is a well-intended sentiment that recognizes that the leadership for kingdom expansion and development needs to be in the hands of national leaders as quickly as possible. That is good and true. But the “pass the baton” expression contains some serious problems that need to be examined and corrected.

First, the baton metaphor turns mission into a task instead of a relationship.

When you pass a baton, you stop running. You are done. The race belongs to others. But in God’s mission, we become family forever. People are not just raw material for building churches or ministries. Our brothers and sisters in Christ are not projects to be accomplished and then abandoned. God may call us to be his instruments to expand the kingdom in another part of the world. But when our initial roles are fulfilled, we are not done. Rather, we change roles in an ongoing multigenerational relationship which will deepen our discipleship as much as it does theirs if we remain appropriately engaged.

Our global family wants to remain connected to those who helped them come to know Jesus or who helped them grow in their understanding or capacity to serve him. They get hurt if we cut them off when our early role is fulfilled. This is true for missionaries and the churches who send them. Mission isn’t something we do to people or for people. Mission is something we do with people. Our roles may change over time. In fact, they should change if things are going well. However, our relationships should endure.

In 2018, I had a conversation with a national leader in a Central African country. Our current collaborative project was complete, and our brothers and sisters in that country didn’t need us to keep doing what we had been doing. When I asked the local leader what kind of relationship they would like to have with us moving forward, he told me, “Like adult cousins.” He went on to explain that in their culture, adult cousins are very close. They often get together to enjoy each other’s company. They check on each other. They also expect to help each other whenever one has a project too big to do alone. That help is peer-to-peer, not senior-to-junior. I loved that idea, and that is how we function now. We stay in touch. We check on each other and try to get together when we can. We continue to learn from each other and encourage each other. And we know we can ask each other for help with anything God has asked us to do.

Too often, people in other countries think Americans don’t have friends, we have projects. I don’t think Americans intend to communicate this at all. But our culture’s task orientation easily leaves that impression with people whose cultures have a relational orientation. So, passing the baton is the wrong metaphor because we never stop running when we become part of the life of God’s people anywhere in the world.

Second, the baton metaphor is dangerously arrogant.

It presumes superiority instead of mutuality. It assumes a white western norm. It perpetuates a colonial mentality of mission. It leaves space for assumptions of white primacy to hide. We presume that we know best. So, we teach and train from a place of authority. Then we watch and affirm that they are doing it “correctly.” Finally, we ride off like the Lone Ranger. Our work is done here.

What this doesn’t capture is that the mission experience involves learning and transformation on both sides. Just as Peter had to go through huge changes when he preached the gospel to Cornelius in Acts 10, we cannot enter another culture with the gospel and not have to go through our own transformations. In Acts 10, it’s not clear who experienced the more significant conversion: Cornelius or Peter. They both took a huge step forward in their understanding of God and the gospel. That is true everywhere the gospel crosses a cultural barrier.

Americans need to be involved in global missions not just for what we can give, but for what we can gain. Cross-cultural mission helps us differentiate the transcultural gospel from our particular culture’s experience. It helps us differentiate the Kingdom of God from our nation. Only when we cross cultures with the gospel are we in a place to see how much of our culture we have unknowingly wrapped around the gospel. Mission helps us discover our blind spots and need for ongoing transformation. We need this purging experience to avoid falling into myopic expressions of idolatry that conflate God’s people with “our people.”

We need to share what we know and have received from God. But we also need to learn and receive from what we see God doing in other places with other people. The most dynamic and fastest-growing parts of the Kingdom of God are outside of the western “Christian” countries. We need to go as learners and bring back what we gain to an American church badly in need of revival and renewal.

So, while leadership development is important and needs to be a key element in all global missions, we need to be careful with our metaphors. We don’t want to create dependency. We don’t want to reduce people to products. We don’t want to reinforce white primacy or colonial missions unintentionally. Rather, we want to be humble, relational, collaborative, and empowering learners who think and act like servants of an unbranded, God-led mission.