World Mission Seminary

Brgy. Inocencio, Trece Martires City, Cavite

In Partial Fulfilment

of Requirements in

Mission Anthropology

a Reaction Paper on

Cultural Implications of an Indigenous Church

and

The Missionary and Cultural Diffusion

Submitted to:
Rev. Renato Bernal
Professor

Submitted by:
Alfafara, Harley Sheen D.
M.Div.3

December 3, 2019
Reaction Paper on “Cultural Implication of an Indigenous Church by William Smalley”

I have been confined inside the boundaries of the concept that an indigenous church must

have the following characteristics: “Self-governing”, “Self-supporting”, and “Self-propagating”.

These three-self’s principle as introduced by Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson were ideal

principles when you are missionary bound to do mission at such a limited time. When we go to

mission fields, our goal has to be indigenization—to teach and train a local to lead the church.

However, in Smalley’s article I learned that the three-self’s are not necessarily the mark of

a true indigenous church. A church can be self-governing and yet non-indigenous if the pattern

used to govern the local church is foreign. In the same way a church can be dependent mission

support and still be indigenous. A wrong understanding of the concept of an indigenous church

may lead a missionary to misunderstand mission itself.

Its implications are simple. When a missionary goes into foreign, most especially tribal,

mission fields, s/he must strip himself of his culture and embrace the culture in the field. The

missionary must remember that s/he is not introducing his/her culture—s/he is introducing Christ.

The Bible must be the setting standard where the two cultures meet. No culture should be treated

as superior than the other.

Lastly, the local churches in our area best examples of indigenous churches. We have been

planted by foreign missions, but we continue to grow without their intervention. We have learned

to interlace our own culture in the furtherance of God’s work in our churches. And we shall

continue to do so with the blessing of our Lord. We thank our missionaries for their contributions

but now is the time for us to stand on our own. 

Reaction on “Missionary and Cultural Diffusion by William Reyburn”

The Western Missions have contributed greatly in the dissemination and transmission of

the gospel into different cultures in different nations. We cannot discredit the west for their part in

responding to the Great Commission of the Lord Jesus Christ. However, the western missions have

created a near negative impact in the surrounding community as recipients of the mission—the

churches built were not indigenized but stuck in the concept and ideologies learned from the

missionaries.

The Bible gives us evidence that God deals with people in their own culture. No culture is

superior to the other. God created us to be diverse in culture and he deals with us accordingly. The

western missions, perhaps unconsciously, have neglected this fact. Even Christ’s death was

supercultural—he died FOR THE WORLD—regardless of the culture. We are to present Christ as

the redeemer of all people in their culture because that is the fact the Bible offers. If, as a

missionary, we carefully take this into consideration, we can better communicate the Gospel into

our target people group. When we consider the culture of the respondents of the mission, we

become better missionaries. But then again, we need not go too far. We need only to meet with the

people in the middle, with the Bible as the standard, unifying our diverse cultures. We can be more

effective. The transmission of the Gospel is surely faster and more efficient than when we stay

ignorant of this fact.

I have learned a lot from this article. Rayburn wrote many great points which a future

missionary may learn from. I may not be given the chance to do mission on a foreign country but

doing mission in the Philippines is not far from the idea. Our cultures here are also diverse. The

lessons I learned from this study will be applied carefully in the local church where I currently

belong. 