In graduate school, one of those areas I felt I needed some attention was in the Church's Mission. So I took three courses with Dr Fred Norris: "Christian World Mission", "Theology and Mission", and "The Church and Human Cultures". I had already taken a course at Duke in ecumenism with Dr Theresa Berger. This week's selections highlight those courses, as well as a course I've taught several times in "World Religions". But I want to highlight one of the texts we used in "Christian World Mission" that probably hasn't seen as wide a readership: Bonk's Missions and Money.
The book is one of those that local churches should utilize regularly in their conversations about missionaries and how we support them. Chapter Six, which considers theological, ethical and biblical perspectives on missionary affluence, is the heart of Bonk's argument, and the vast majority of this chapter is spent examining the scriptures. Bonk looks at the Old and New Testaments and passages in each that the wealthy find reassuring, as well as those that they find troubling. The latter category of "troubling" passages in the Scriptures is, by far, the larger one. Concluding his biblical survey, Bonk notes: "It is clear that Christianity was never designed to make people comfortably at ease with wealth and power. Nor, predictably, has genuine discipleship ever been widely popular among the rich" (156).
Having spent the first five chapters looking at the current state of affluence in the lives of most missionaries, this chapter is also the most troubling precisely because it challenges us to "repent and be converted" (Bonk's phrase) in our attitudes towards wealth in the West.
Make sure you read the updated, second edition of the book, which contains the three essays by Christopher J.H. Wright and Justo Gonzalez, that have been appended to Bonk's work are a perfect compliment, and they provide some valuable insight into how the people of God have dealt with the problem of wealth in other times and places, in particular the Hebrew peoples in the era of the Old Testament, the era of Jesus and the New Testment church and the era of the early church that immediately followed the New Testament period.
In light of our great affluence in contrast to the rest of the world, how should we send messengers of Christ's Gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth? It seems to me that serious consideration of Bonk's work would radically change both the ways in which we send out foreign missionaries and indeed our own hearts as united by the Spirit with those who are going out into other parts of the world. More importantly, however, Missions and Money deserves the reflection of churches that see themselves as missional communities. Perhaps someday someone will write a book that reflects on Bonk's work from the perspective of missional church communities within the Western world. For example, one type of missional community is the "new monastic" community. One of the twelve marks of the new monasticism (see here for the full list) is "relocation to abandoned places of empire". To my knowledge, however, there has not been much in the way of reflection upon how new communities form and persist in these abandoned places, especially with regard to their shared economy. From my own experiences of relocation, there is a strong temptation to make a comfortable life in such places, instead of trying to live on a similar economic plane as our neighbors. Similarly, such communities would have much to learn from Bonk's ideal of "the righteous rich", and how that might shape their life together in urban or rural (or other sorts of) abandoned places.
This book really is a must read, but, sadly, in my experience, few ever even know of its existence.