This brief post contains a bit of my journey in the last year. I’m trying to give a voice to the "politically homeless" and also to those who want to learn what God is doing beyond institutional ecclesiology. The prevailing American Church model (i.e. Protestant micro-Christendom) is often just uncritically imported into other contexts in the Majority World.
The term “managerial missiology” has been employed much in the past two decades as a blanket term to critique anything “Western” that looks at the results or status of mission.
Of course, there are indeed cases when “management” is misused in mission, and thus the critique becomes valid and prophetic. When Samual Escobar first coined the term “managerial missiology,” the context of his critique was “church marketing” programs in the Church Growth Movement and the Spiritual Warfare Movement which provided “maps and statistics of demons in cities and regions” (2000. “Evangelical Missiology: Peering into the Future at the Turn of the Century.” In Global Missiology for the 21st Century: The Iguassu Dialogue, edited by William D. Taylor, pg. 111.). In these instances, I completely agree with Escobar.
But most often, the “managerial” accusation is too broadly applied and straw men abound. Certain corners of mission today simply dismiss any attempt to be more “efficient” (i.e. fruitful) or to study the world quantitatively. This critique has been leveled at the broader CPM/DMM discourse as well.
The recent article by Chris Maynard is a helpful resource in this conversation: “Reimagining Mission: Honouring Data in Missions.” I’m very happy the WEA is addressing this issue. As the intro says:
“It is well beyond time to address the denigration of missions research, statistics, data and other information that has evolved in some missions circles.”
Read the whole thing.