Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1081: Deconstructing the White Savior Mentality: Craig Greenfield

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Craig Greenfield is the founder of Alongsiders International, a grassroots youth discipleship movement that has now spread to more than 30 countries. He is the author of Subversive Jesus, and his latest book is titled Subversive Mission: Serving as Outsiders in a World of Need. Craig has served alongside the poor in Cambodia for 2 decades and has learned a ton about effective (an ineffective) cross-cultural ministry. In this podcast conversation, we talk about the shift approaches to orphan care, meaningful cross culuteral ministry, whether the terms missionary/missions are helpful, and the pros and cons of short term mission trips. Learn more about Craig from his website: https://www.craiggreenfield.com 

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Craig Greenfield, who is the founder of Alongsiders International, which is a grassroots youth discipleship movement that has now spread to more than 30 countries. He is the author of Subversive Jesus, and his latest book is titled Subversive Mission, Serving as Outsiders in a World of Need, which grows out of his more than 20 years of experience of ministering alongside, not two, but alongside fellow believers in Cambodia. And we had a wonderful conversation about kind of cross-cultural ministry, even the concept of missions and missionary, whether those concepts are helpful. We talked about orphanages versus orphan caring, other alternative ways of caring for orphans.

I do want to say that I recorded this podcast kind of early in the morning and I got in super late the night before. So I was running on very little sleep and I'm not much of a morning person. So even throughout the conversation, I think I had a couple brain farts. So I don't know, maybe that'll explain some of the glitches in my brain that just wasn't firing the way it normally does, which even then it's not too much to write home about. So anyway, love the conversation. You'll really enjoy getting to know the one and only Craig Greenfield. I'm here with Craig Greenfield, a person I just met, friend of a friend.

So thanks for responding to some random email, Craig, and coming on the podcast. Hey, thanks, Preston. It's good to be with you today. So when our mutual friend put us in touch, I immediately went on your website. And then the first blog post I saw was, you know, should we, let me just read it here. What is it? Is it time to ditch the word missionary? I was like, Oh, I like, I like this, you know? And I read it and it was so spot on, but I was like, I would imagine not everybody's going to like this article, even though I think logically it just makes so much sense. But anyway, that might be, we could probably put that off for a second. I want to get to know you and you've been on the mission field.

I didn't know, so mission field, let me just say. There's no wrong words here. You've been serving Jesus, not in your country of birth. Let's start there. What got you into wanting to serve Jesus in another country? Yeah, well, back in the late 90s, I took some time off uni and went and spent some time in Cambodia, which I'm actually here now in Cambodia. It's late at night, so it's a bit dark and murky, but really fell in love with the place. And so it took me a few years to get back to Cambodia. But beginning of the year 2000, my wife and I moved into an urban slum in Phnom Penh,

the capital city of Cambodia, and lived there for many, many years amongst the poor. We were evicted from two different slums along with our neighbors and really just began this long process of trying to discover what Jesus meant when he said, blessed are the poor. I've come to bring good news to the poor. What does this mean? Coming from a white affluent background of privilege, I had not grown up with a theology that really went into any depth around those kind of ideas and how central God's heart for the poor is. And so it's been a long journey, 23 years, mostly in Cambodia, but also in inner city Vancouver, Canada for seven years, where we started an intentional Christian community,

welcoming in folks from the streets. And yeah, all kinds of good things along the way, as long as a lot of pain and suffering as well. So going straight, I mean, I would imagine moving to Cambodia, that's a big shift and change. But going straight to the inner city, the slums, I mean, was that intentional? Like, do you see something? I mean, it wasn't just, I want to go to Cambodia. Like, I want to go to the poorest part of this country.

Yeah. And I think once you scratch the surface, you'll find there's not many missionaries who are that crazy to do those kind of things. But I guess, you know, we were coming from kind of a theology looking at how, you know, Jesus left the most exclusive gated community in the universe to live amongst us and said, follow me. And so we really wanted to follow Jesus into the slums and amongst the poor and kind of figure out what that would look like. And so, yeah, that was the direction we went. We went with an organization called Servants to Asia's Urban Poor, which is kind of one of the only groups out there that does that kind of thing. They helped us form a theology and an understanding and a practice around that. in that just pretty radical adjustment of both living and also ministering. I would imagine you're an outsider, right? And I know you talk a lot about that in your work.

Was that helpful for ministry? Did it hinder your ministry? What challenges did that bring to the ministry you were doing? Yeah, I mean, there's the obvious kind of challenges of just adjusting culturally, learning the language. We had a power pylon through the middle of our bathroom and people would be, you'd hear people clambering on our tin roof at night and they would be hooking

up illegal connections to this power pylon that's coming right through the middle of our bathroom. Just, you know, just complete change of going from New Zealand where I grew up to being in an urban slum. But then it's the other things around, you know, corruption and just noise and crowded space and that kind of thing that it's really tough. But over the years, you know, that's kind of been my challenge, my theological and practical challenge is what is the role of an outsider in these kind of settings? and practical challenges. What is the role of an outsider in these kind of settings?

And as, you know, as the years have unfolded, society has changed in the way we think about those things. Nobody wants to be a white saviour or a saviour of any colour. Thinking has changed. Everybody's red when helping hurts. And so, you know, we need new wineskins. Frankly, we need new wineskins. Frankly, we need new wineskins. I would say that we are at a time of deep paralysis about the role,

about our role in the world as Christians. And for many, that paralysis will lead to inaction or even apathy. But I don't believe that's the invitation of Jesus. I think he calls us not only to love our neighbors across the street, but our neighbors across the oceans as well. So we need to, we urgently need to reframe and rethink what our role is in the world. Can you expand on that? What was, well, you said you read When Helping Hurts.

I believe that came out after you went to. Yeah. You probably were there several years. So did you? Yeah. And I feel like in the last 20 years, there has been, it seems. I mean, you're the expert. But from my outsider to the outsider vantage point, it seems like there has been a pretty radical shift.

And I think among Westerners, how do we think about doing overseas missions? Is that even the right framework? So can you talk to us about your? I think among Westerners, how do we think about doing overseas missions? Is that even the right framework? So can you talk to us about your, I'm just going to assume you've had some progression and how you've thought through your role in the ministry? Oh, for sure. I mean, you know, there's the kind of classic story of, you know, how attractive it is to start an orphanage, for example. And we arrived smack bang in the middle of the HIV AIDS crisis.

So our neighbors were literally, you know, we nursed many of our neighbors to their death through HIV and AIDS and then saw their children being orphaned. So the kind of knee-jerk response, the unresearched response is to create an orphanage. As a, you know, once you start doing the research and looking into it, obviously there's major reasons why that is not a good idea.

And so we actually created one of the first community-based care programs for children being orphaned by AIDS in Cambodia. And I wrote a book in 2007 trying to really bring that message to the wider Christian community. Because amongst academics, amongst practitioners, development people on the ground, that's widely known. But still, amongst Christians, it's getting out there. Back in 2007, that was very new. That was a new message. So I've had a couple different people on the podcast talking about why orphanages are not the best way to care for orphans and a lot of the problems there.

But these podcasts, I think one was like six months ago. The other was like over a year ago. So I'm not going to assume that all the listeners are familiar with those two episodes. Can you give us maybe a tight summary of the shift in thinking regarding orphan care that has happened? I can't. I mean, the reality is that these children have lost their parents. Why would we then take them away from everyone else that they know and love? Why would we use our resources to take them from the community rather than using our resources to keep them in the community, where they can grow up in a normal kind of setting, in a community of extended family.

I did my post-grad research comparing the lives of children in orphanages who had been orphaned to the lives of children who'd been orphaned and were in the community. Oh, wow. And kind of stark difference. That lines up with decades of other research as well. What are some of the big differences that you saw in your research? Well, I mean, the first kind of finding is you realize, oh, all these children in orphanages, most of them are not double orphans,

you know. Many of them have lost one parent, but they're actually there for reasons of poverty. The reason they are in orphanages is because their family is too poor to look after them. And so then we use our money, which costs way more anyway, you know, just economically speaking, costs way more to take them out of the community, build an orphanage, hire staff, than to simply empower and strengthen those families economically to care for their own orphans and have the dignity to care for their own orphans.

So, you know, just on a number of fronts, you know, there's lists after lists of reasons why this is not a good idea. I mean, it's interesting you said that in the academic, the people who've done research in this, it's not really disputed anymore. It's like that has all shifted. But on the ground though, the opposite is true, it seems like. I mean, people were supporting orphanages all the time. Like that's just what we do as Christians.

And as Christians, I'm sad to say, Christians are on the forefront of the burgeoning orphanage movement. But there are also amazing Christians who are powerfully modeling other ways. I've personally seen a major shift. And, you know, being part of networks like World Without Orphans, who have been on the forefront of kind of helping people to change their mind around that and take the steps to move towards community-based care.

World Without Orphans. Okay. So I mean, I know, you know, obviously 1 million home and shoot, I'm looking at a couple, there's a couple other orgs I've come across. So. Yeah. Well, World Without Orphans is a network that brings together all of those individual NGOs, like 1 million homes that, and, and there's a lot that are doing community-based care. There's thousands around the world. So we need to work together. When you talk about this shift in paradigm to churches that maybe are supporting an orphanage,

do you face resistance? Or do you, are people, when you explain it and just say, this is what the data shows, are people like, oh my gosh, we need to revamp? Or do you still have churches that kind of hunker down and oh that you know we're gonna that's how invested they are in it you know if you if you're talking to an orphanage director or founder then you're going to get a lot more pushback but those who kind of have never thought

about it um you know you lay out a dozen reasons and they quickly see, oh, wow, okay, you're right. It's better for children to be in families than in an institution. I mean, I have two kids and it took every last ounce of my wife and I's energy to raise those two kids. I can't even imagine having 10 kids or 30 kids. And I'm only, you know, a staff who also has my own family to take care of. It's just not feasible that we can care for kids in a kind of a staff model. We need to have families and, you know, if there's no biological family, which is kind

of like the first knee-jerk response, well, there's nobody. Usually when we scratch the surface, usually when we're in relationship with people in the communities, we find actually there is. But even if there weren't, then foster families are a viable model for taking care of children in the community. So they can stay within a normal, organic, real kind of community structure what about uh like street kids i know they're called probably referred to with different terms i know if there's a good or bad term but like so about a buddy of mine went to i think it was a congo and he was like man you know in a real poor i think um a poor part of a poor town you know and he's like yeah you got these little kids just literally living on the streets you know and he's like, Hey, you got these little kids just literally living on the streets, you know? And he's like, I just want to grab them and, you know, take care of them.

Like, I don't, don't do that. Well, you know, we need to, we need to unpack the reasons of why they're on the streets. Often it is poverty. Again, it just often comes back to poverty. Other times if it's abuse, then yeah, an alternative family needs to be found and supported. But we start with the kind of central principle that God places the lonely in families, that God places children in families, that the family is the structure to take care of children, not an institution. And so, yeah, there might be a time of transition to a halfway house for a couple of months while the family's getting set up. But long term in an institution is not healthy for children. Well, let's go back to your role as an outsider. What have you learned to be the most effective

role for you to play as an outsider coming alongside people who are, you know, actually from and living in the country, you know, that you're ministering? Well, in my book, Subversive Mission, I really laid out a framework because I think that the critiques are out there. You know, there's been a lot of great critique and we've just done a critique of orphanages, right? There's plenty of critique. When helping her, it's good kind of orphanages, right? Right, right. There's plenty of critique. We're helping her.

It's good kind of critique 101 of how not to do it. But as I kind of said earlier, I think we're now at the point where we've critiqued so much we're at paralysis. And so we really need a framework, a hopeful framework and paradigm for moving forward. And this is something that I've kind of implemented and learned over, you know, 23 years of working cross-culturally. The discipleship movement that we started here in Cambodia is spread to 30 countries, over 20,000 involved in that discipleship movement. So this is stuff that is bearing fruit. I'm not an, I'm not an academic. I'm not speaking from the ivory tower.

I'm speaking to you right now from an urban poor community. And so these are things that others are also saying. But what I've tried to do is put them together in a way that we can kind of just get our heads around and say, okay, yeah, I'm not going to be the superhero. I'm going to be the sidekick. There is a difference between the role of an outsider and the role of an insider. And very often we haven't articulated that clearly enough. We've kind of said, I'm a pastor in San Diego. That's my gifting. And so when I go to Bangalore, I'm going to also be a pastor. Or I'm prophetic. I'm a prophetically gifted. I leave the, you know, the protest march or speak out for justice in Chicago. And now when I go to Cambodia,

I'm going to do the same thing. And so what I want to suggest is that we take that Ephesians four framework of the fivefold ministries, the-fold ministry types. And we just kind of slightly reframe it for the cross-cultural context and what I call the five-fold missional types. And they're not fundamentally different. They're still rooted in our giftedness, but they ask us to take a different posture because when we are outsiders and we hold more power, we hold more resources.

We're going to, we're going to really distort the situation in ways that are unhelpful. And so I've taken in my book by those five fold types, the pastor, the apostle, the evangelist, the teacher, et cetera, and reframed them with a different posture. So let me give you an example. One of my giftings is really in the area of the prophetic. I'm passionate about justice.

I think this is a generation that is passionate about justice. And it's one of the reasons why we're critiquing missions so hard, because it has, you know, for so long been yoked with colonialism. But when I come from my own context, whether it's Canada, where I was born, or New Zealand, where I grew up, yeah, I was trying to lead the way. I was right there in the thick of it, right? And using my prophetic gifts as well as I could to speak out for justice. But when I come to Cambodia, and as I mentioned, I've been evicted twice from two different slums, along with all my Cambodian neighbors.

And that affects me, but it doesn't affect me in the same way it affects them. And when I speak out, the consequences for me are going to be very different for when they speak out yeah so one of the young women that um was evicted around the same time as us young woman named debt bunny um she and four of her friends was just so desperate and so devastated that they dragged their bamboo beds into the middle of the busiest intersection in Cambodia. And they're just like, we have no place to lay our head. You know, so put up with us here, interrupting all of you, which is a classic, actually, you know, process, action is interruption. And you can just imagine, though, in the Cambodian context, all these, you know, big cars screeching to a halt, the dust flying, the horns,

the shouting, and then the sounds of the soldiers' boots just running towards them. And there are all these soldiers, quite classic Cambodian authoritarian regime. They're all wearing black helmets, motorcycle helmets with tinted, just to look more menacing like you know stormtroopers or something and they just bundle up these four young women into the van and take them off and throw them in prison so my role as an outsider is to come as an ally not as a prophet and so I reframed that I that that type yeah I was a maybe prophetic or prophet in the west but when I come to a place like Cambodia I come as an ally seeking to amplify the voices of local prophets seeking to amplify their stories coming onto a podcast and telling the story of Depp Vani and that's something I can do as an ally and tell her story and And I would suggest that, you know, just coming

back to this whole area of paralysis, actually there is a role for us in the world to use our networks, to use our connections, to use our English language to get the word out around those types of things. So that's what I want to do for each of those types is reframe from profit to ally and go through one by one. And it's a fun exercise. It's a challenging exercise. I bet. I bet. Is it hard? I would imagine. Well, I'll just maybe not imagine, just ask. I mean, when you go and you move to Cambodia, you're in the slums. And do people look to you? Do they want you to kind of lead and be the guy and we'll follow you? Or like when you come as an ally and say, no, no, I want to I want to help empower you not be the front front person, you know, is that received well or is or are the pushback from locals?

Well, you know, there is because at the moment they are kind of under the boot of malevolent forces. So, you know, corrupt local leaders, local authorities. And so they would rather exchange those for, what's the word, beneficial kind of patrons. They'd rather take those who are really treating them bad and, you know, exchange them for someone like me who's going to give them money and resources but that's not God's greatest plan for them it's not for them to look to me as a savior but for them to find Jesus as their savior and their

support and their comfort and wherever we have just kind of all we've done is exchange their the tyrants who are malevolent for tyrants who are hopefully supposed to be, you know, kind. But in actual fact, we're placing ourselves at the centre of the story rather than those who need to be at the centre. And so let me give you another example. During COVID, you know, there's a lot of talk in the West about the tyranny of governments during COVID. But it'd be very interesting to compare that to what it was like here in Cambodia, where we had literally an hour notice of lockdown. The soldiers rolled out barricades on the end of all our streets. There was razor wire on the top of these.

They were patrolling with, you know, large weapons. And we were not allowed to go off our blocks off our little kind of village patches and so you know I had enough food to feed my family I had a fridge but our neighbors came home my wife was sitting in their little shack eight of them living in that little shack and they came home with two cans of fish and a tiny bottle of oil this is what they could gather in an hour because they didn't have enough money. What they earned that day was what they would feed themselves with that night. So as you can imagine, like we're all barricaded in and about two weeks in, people are starting to get desperate. I mean, there was no way for the poor to earn the way that they could earn before.

And so people are hungry. We jump on a Zoom call with some of our Alongsiders leaders. Alongsiders is the name of the discipleship movement that we started. And we're throwing around ideas. And we're in this situation where a lot of Christians don't find themselves in. You know, like normally you're like people are poor and hungry. Let's write an email to our supporters, get a lot of money, buy some rice, buy some relief supplies and distribute it. But we're all behind razor wire.

There's nothing, nobody can move. And so we're kind of forced to become more creative. And we wouldn't have done that anyway just because of our ethos. But one of the young Cambodian women on the call says why don't we do what i saw some folks doing in the philippines we could put a table out the front of our homes and and put this this word if you if you have extra put it on the table and if you need um take it from the table and but it sounded way more pithy in cambodia we made it a hashtag and she said and then we could tag our friends on facebook tag three friends each and challenge them to do it as well and so that that's exactly what we did and um what was so beautiful was just

to see that movement go viral all around cambodia you know you could have had the benevolent helpers come and distribute relief supplies, and it wouldn't have been that same sense of the Spirit of God stirring up with hundreds of people all over Cambodia hashtagging and tagging their friends and challenging them to just share with your neighbours, just share, and having the dignity of being part of the solution instead of just being the recipient of the solution and so yeah i can't even remember the question but that's that's just kind of the the whole ethos of what we're trying to promote that's straight i feel like that's straight out

of when helping hurts right i mean we're so used to just relying on the white savior. And that's a very pejorative term. Yeah. Savior of any color. We don't have to be the savior of any color. Right, right, right, right. And I think the motivation is like, gosh, there's people in need. I just want to help. I can just tap into my bank account and give them.

We could fix this right now but like you said that steals away the the dignity of actually the person in need um realizing that they there is they can tap into communal power that is not any more sustainable but is more dignifying especially in the long run um but that wouldn't have happened that's interesting so you were squozing so entirely that you couldn't just say all right i'll make the call and get some you know rice you know wow rice. Wow. I think kind of recognizing that we need local solutions is kind of like cross-cultural service 101. Figuring out our role in that is 201. We've got to go, okay, we've got, we're helping

her. It's now we need the next step. We need a framework. And that's really what I'm trying to help with this subversive mission. I would imagine you made some mistakes along the way. And those are all part of the learning process. Do you have any off the top of your head that you're like, man, this thing that I did or whatever, I now know I would not do that again? I now know I would not do that again. Yeah, I think one of the things, like I said before, one of my primary passions is the prophetic,

just speaking out for justice. And I just hate anything that looks like bullying to me or just people who have power, people who have guns, lording it over the poor and the oppressed. And so I spent a lot of time in my early years learning Cambodian as fluently as I can. I speak well. But the problem is when you speak well and you see injustice in Cambodia and you open your massive mouth and just start, you know,

berating a local official who's taking a bribe or something um you know i've had death threats i've had um times when i just spoke out in ways that culturally were were not acceptable and not effective because you know us westerners we're so direct we just tell someone off we see someone doing something wrong and we're just going for it. And I've had to learn to zip my mouth and consult with local leaders and work together with them in ways that will advance the cause of justice rather than make it worse. I'll share a little story with you. We actually, for quite a while, were meeting on a monthly basis until COVID came along with a group of Cambodian Christian leaders who are passionate about issues of justice. And we decided to go for a retreat and we were like, having all these great discussions during the day, we wanted to

watch a movie at night. So I was like, no like oh you know we could watch this documentary but that's a bit too controversial like you can't do political stuff in cambodia right so just that that's the background you can't talk about politics at all so i was like why don't we watch um animal farm one of our team has just added cambodian subtitles to the movie animal farm and that's kind of got some cool themes and it's kind of metaphorical. So we're watching Animal Farm projected up. We're sitting up on a balcony outside projecting it on the wall. And Animal Farm's going, and like two minutes into it, I'm like, this is really revolutionary, man.

Like the sheep have pitchforks and they're like, overthrow Farmer Jones. You know, it's very very like politically revolutionary like a no-no for cambodia and um we're sitting there up in the balcony and then one of the cambodian leaders comes text me on the show and says there's three police here and they want to know what we're doing and they're like down below and I start to get up to go and you know I'm not afraid of the police I'm like I'll go and tell them what's what and and she just says no no Craig you just sit down and zip it and she goes down this young like early 20s young woman but

leader and she just talks to them and they're like, what are you doing? She says, we're just watching a children's movie. You see, you can see it up there. And miraculously, they are on such an angle that they can see the movie, but they can't see the subtitles. So they have no idea what's going on. And almost in a childlike way, they just stand there and watch the rest of the movie from the balcony. While we're all up on the balcony going, oh my goodness, we're about to get thrown in prison any moment now. No, it's just good times. You know, there's some strange things that happen

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get your application in before June 1st, put in the code PRESTON and get your application fee waived. Some restrictions may apply. Just visit www.viola.edu for more information. So when you moved into the slum, what did people think of that? Were they like, what are you, this person of privilege, this Westerner moving in? Did you come in as a supported missionary or did you get a job? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things we have to recognize is we're outsiders. We have access to resources. No matter how much I incarnate amongst the poor, I'll always have a passport to go home.

I'll always have access to health care. And I don't think that's a reason not to try to be in relationship with the poor as much as we can it's not a reason to feel guilty or beat ourselves up about it's just let's be clear I'm an outsider these people are insiders but maybe I can model something of that kind of those of us who are higher in the hierarchy which as an outsider I just naturally was considered that way. Maybe I can model the radical hospitality of Jesus, of welcoming my little neighbor with Down syndrome who is, you know, poorly treated or welcoming the widow or welcoming, you know, there was one time there was a young woman who'd been working in prostitution.

She was eight months pregnant and she was sleeping under a tree outside our house. And all the neighbors were like, oh, just stay away from that woman. She's trouble. And, you know, my wife and I just took her in and helped her to find somewhere else to stay eventually. But we can just model those ways of Jesus and learn from our neighbors as well. And many of them teach us more about the ways of Jesus than we teach them at times too. I would imagine the Christian community had a category for what you're doing, but non-Christians, do they look at you odd?

Like, what are you doing here? I think it's actually one of the most powerful things that we can possibly do. Jackie Pullinger says, if you want to witness to the rich, minister to the poor. And, you know, I don't have any particular calling towards those who are affluent. It's not my thing. And yet people who are affluent would often beat a pathway to our door to see what is this extremely kind of countercultural way of doing life. Certainly in Vancouver, one of the most affluent cities in the world,

but also one of the poorest, has the poorest postal code. And so, you know, I think there's many ways in which it's attractive as well. When people want to know, why are you doing this crazy thing? Why are you welcoming all these people in and having a party it looks awesome can i join oh it's awesome what what's the what is the state of christianity in cambodia like 1.8 christian really really small yeah what's the religious demographic so it's like 90 98 buddhist okay yeah it's a small muslim community so you know i think that's that's the kind of context where there's a strong argument to be made well we we need to come in and be planting churches we need to come in as foreigners and do evangelism and in my book you know both the

kind of the pastor and the evangelist what I want to suggest is those roles, even in that context where there is, you know, 1.7% sounds tiny, and yet there's tens of thousands of Christians here in Cambodia, gifted people. And so what I want to suggest is that those of us who are gifted as pastors, you know, you might leave Texas as a pastor. While you're on the plane to Cambodia, you take off the hat of a pastor and put on the hat of a midwife and help local Christians give birth to local expressions of the church. And that's so crucial because, first of all, we just don't have a clue. We're

coming from a, might as well be a different planet. You know, I've been here a long, long time and I'm still discovering culturally how different we think and do things. And we need to simply create churches that can be replicated by local people. So something as simply as, you know, a lot of missionaries come in and teach English. Now, I'm not knocking that. But first of all, how can that be replicated as a method of evangelism by local people? You know, can we only have people who speak English fluently as evangelists? You know, we need to use ways that are going to be able to be replicated. And so it's best to come alongside local people and allow them to find those ways.

Help them, ask them the questions as they the questions as they think through those ways. And that way, we'll have expressions of faith that are going to make sense and are going to spread beyond 1.7%, which is pretty sad after 100 years of the gospel being here in Cambodia. And what's the political climate like? I mean, you've referenced a couple of times, like the cops coming to the door and get thrown into prison and stuff. Like, is it pretty volatile? And also, is Christianity looked upon

with disdain from the populace? Or is it just kind of like, I would imagine a Buddhist culture would be rather peaceful, but sometimes that's not always... Yeah, they kind of have the philosophy that all religions are good. But underneath that, their religious and spiritual worldview

is very, very far removed from the Christian worldview. And so even though they're open, it doesn't take root. And I'll give you another example of that. Here in Cambodia, some of the first missionaries, when they saw that Cambodians worshipped their ancestors using incense, you know, they immediately kind of said, no, you can't do that when you follow Jesus, which is very sad because they took away, like,

one of the most biblical ways of worshipping God. And not only that, but one of the most central ways of worshipping in Cambodian culture. And in contrast, in Mongolia, the missionaries saw that local people, yak milk is very sacred. And so when they have yak milk, they would toss a glass into the air for the gods.

And in a more savvy way, the missionaries said, why don't you, when you toss you to the one true God, Jesus. And so the local Christians simply adapted their own kind of ways of worship into ways that would center Jesus. And as a result, those kind of forms of worship can really spread. Whereas in Cambodia, it's like a barrier. It's an obstacle to the gospel interesting oh wow oh talk to me about alongsiders i mean you were just saying offline that like this movement is spread without you kind of pushing it or you're just people involved that don't even

know who you are which i think is awesome um what what birthed that and and describe what yeah what what what it's all about yeah so I mentioned before, we were kind of working with children being orphaned in the early 2000s. And yeah, we were helping communities to care for their own orphans and they were staying in the communities. But we still kind of saw that the social, emotional, and spiritual needs of those children were not necessarily being well met. and spiritual needs of those children were not necessarily being well met.

And so we started to kind of look around and see, wow, the church is full of young people. Like the church in the non-Western world is very young, very, very young. And by that I mean like age-wise. And so we just saw there's this massive group of young Christians who are untapped. What if each of those young Christians was equipped to take on one child each as their little brother or sister and just walk alongside them to encourage, disciple over, you know, over the course of several years,

like a really deep transformational relationship. And so we started this in Cambodia in, you know, 20 years ago. And it just kind of steadily grew. And then about 10 years ago, I really sensed God kind of saying, this is for beyond Cambodia. Different groups around the world, different kind of youth movements, denominations began to kind of ask us, what would it look like if our youth were equipped, if our Christian youth

and young adults were equipped to make disciples? And, you know, they recognize that if people are not making disciples when they're young, they're not going to suddenly start when they're 40, 50, 60. Like, as a Cambodian proverb says, bend a tree while it's young. And so we just began to help them equip in their own heart languages and only through local leaders. So as few outsiders involved as possible. There's probably like three of us who are actually outsiders. But everyone else is just local leaders who are pioneering these discipleship movements.

And what's interesting enough just during covid we just it just started to explode so 2021 we we were at like 5 000 in like 16 countries 2022 which is a year ago we're at 10 000 in 21 countries and then by the end of 2022 like just beginning of this year uh we hit 30 countries more than 22 000 um as a part of this multi-year deep discipleship in their own heart language youth discipleship and what's your role do you do you uh supply resources to people involved or what does it take to to be part of this group yeah it's all volunteer it's all all the local people are volunteers no one's paid um but what we do is we create comic books um and so every month these young people get a comic a comic book in their own heart language and

you know drawn by local artists and that they read with their little brother and sister and that's not the sum total because it's much more than that, it's a whole relationship. But that gives them a little bit of a structure over three years that they are able, and we're able to take them through a fairly holistic kind of curriculum. So they're learning about, you know, God's love for them, but also creation care and how to study, integrity, all these kind of

biblical things, but the broader, it's a much broader discipleship than kind of what you might get in some churches. That's fascinating. I mean, it sounds like that wasn't like you planned this out. This just kind of grew out of the natural rhythm of just growing organically through word of mouth and like i said to you earlier like most of those 22 000 have no idea who the heck craig greenfield is um and i haven't even been to all the countries so it's not me kind of going from to each country it's more much more organically spreading through word of mouth yeah that's fascinating and the other thing is in places where how would I go anyway or how would an outsider go like Pakistan, Indonesia, Senegal,

countries that are 98%, 99% of a different group of people where there's a lot of religious tension, you need stuff that's going to be very grassroots and under the radar. And so that's, I think think partly why it's just taking off in places where there's often a lot of persecution so very much is indigenous led now right i mean that's yeah i mean there's no there's no else the outsider aspect is is me and a couple others behind the scenes working on some software stuff um encouraging some leaders um all that kind of stuff. All right.

So the term missionary, do you call yourself a missionary? If someone says, hey, Craig, what do you do? Do you say, I'm a missionary? I think that term has passed its use by date. All right. So those are provocative words. Can you give some reasons why? And also, missionary and missions, do you make a distinction between missions and missionary or is it all kind of, do you think problematic?

Yeah, I think, I think it's all kind of tied up and let's just be honest, this is a generational thing. I don't, I don't go around to, you know, when I go to missions committee, which is all white haired, older people, I don't say to them, well, I don't always say to them, get rid of the word missionary. But what's interesting to me, you know, I was actually travelling around in a couple of Western countries last year launching my book. And so one weekend I was speaking at the local mission conference and then next weekend I was speaking at the justice justice conference and just because i'm in two worlds right and uh very interesting how different those groups are that at those two different conferences um and yet we're all talking about the same kind of stuff we're all talking about

shalom we want to see god's shalom god's upside down kingdom come here on this earth. And we might use different language, but we're all passionate about the world and seeing transformation. And so I think that the word missionary is just a significant barrier for this generation who are so passionate about justice, that they're so hyper aware of the history of colonialism, et cetera, that that word just holds too much baggage. And it's not like it's plucked from the Bible. You know, it has some biblical roots.

And, of course, there is missionary activity in the Bible. I'm not saying get rid of missionary activity. I'm saying that word is just a label that is holding so many people back and is creating a paralysis in this generation. And so let's move on. You know, the whole idea that there's one word that could capture what we do cross-culturally. I mean, let's at least have five, you know, take the five missional types. At least we can then recognize there's different ways of being in the world

and different ways of serving rather than this kind of one concept of missionary that we've got stuck in our brains. What, uh, that's interesting. I mean, when I hear missions, even it just, it does have like just that, like when I say missions or someone's a missionary, I think, okay, so they probably flew over a body of saltwater. They're probably funded from like, they're not, they don't have a job where they're making money. You salt water they're probably funded from like they're not they don't have a a job where they're making money you know they're they're supported you know um and they're going to

help people that are kind of less fortunate or need help right and i i don't know like because i because i yeah i mean okay missions as the content of what we're talking like like i think i believe so passionately in just the global church, being the global church and serving one another and helping out others in need and our allegiance is to brothers and sisters all around the globe, more than to my neighbor next door who happens to be an I think is so central to the biblical storyline. And missions is the term, the category that we have kind of used to be the kind of glue to hold that thing together a little bit. But then, I don't know, it has... It's the missions industrial complex, you know. And, you know, I'll just take it even further and even more controversial, right? Like there are times when certain verses are used that kind of define a generation and how we're thinking in that generation.

And go into all the world and make disciples has been one of those verses. And it's a deeply beautiful biblical verse. I'm not saying take it away but we now read those that verse with a whole context and worldview of what it looks like to go into the world even the words go into the world just sound so kind of conquering and so kind of triumphalistic to this generation and that's not to say those words are wrong, but because of our worldview and the lens through which we read Scripture, and we always read Scripture through a lens, that verse just takes on way, way too many other connotations. And so I would say let's not lead with perhaps those types of passages. Let's lead with the call to love our neighbors, the call to, you know know say blessed are the poor and um for me you know i my calling

is to be in solidarity with those on the margins and not to live my life um ignoring them but somehow being with them and to me that's a beautiful thing and it doesn't necessarily look like all those other loaded kind of baggagey kind of mission stuff that I just don't think is helpful anymore. What's the negative? What if someone said, well, it's just a term. Like, okay, let's not be colonial. Let's not do. But is there something in the term itself and maybe the history of usage that does kind of conjure up kind of a, again, I hate using the using the phrase like a white savior or western savior or

like top down you're we're going to help these these people need our help our intelligence our teaching our whatever you know um you know all of that thinking is rooted in colonialism for sure and racism you know i mean the term itself was neutral i, it was giving me trace back to the word apostle, but I would just suggest meanings of words change. There's certain words, even if I was to say it now, you know, it was a word that 50 years ago, you know, people might say, you know, certain words, but now it's just like, no, the meaning's changed. Let's just move on.

And I just, I'm just like just like you know the word missionary it's kind of teetering even within churches let alone in the wider world um i'll give you an example you know jim elliott killed by a spear on a beach in ecuador 1956 he's kind of hailed as a hero and a martyr for the faith around the world he He was in Life magazine. Sixty years later, John Allen Chow is killed in a very, very similar way by a spear on the Andaman Islands off India by the people he's trying to reach with the gospel. And the New York Times kind of quotes the response from all around the world.

And I don't say this to be mean or controversial. I'm just quoting what the New York Times said. They called him a fool and a flag bearer for colonialism and so we just you know if we're unable to accept that times have changed then we ourselves are the fools you know it's time to accept that we need new wineskins i'm not at all saying we should not be loving our neighbors around the world or being in solidarity with them. I'm just saying there's some labels that are unhelpful. What's the alternative word? When people ask you, what do you do? And you don't say missionary or missions, what do you say? I think it's helpful to recognize that there's not one word because they're not all doing the same thing.

I personally kind of identify myself as a social entrepreneur. I'm interested in new initiatives that will benefit those on the margins. But that doesn't resonate with everybody. Everyone's doing different things. So let's maybe just accept that there's lots of ways of being a Christian in the world. But what about, okay, so if a church has a missions department, and say you came in to, or no, let's say you took over the department, like you got hired on, okay, you're the head of the missions department, would you change that terminology, and what would you change it to?

You know, I think I'd probably be wanting to talk with the church about what their vision is and what their gifting is and how they're already involved locally in ways that might also flow into some global involvement. So maybe you're working with, like, you know, a church that we partner with works with refugees from Afghanistan in Vancouver, Canada. And so, you know, working with those refugees there in Vancouver, a connection with Afghanistan, what kind of connections are there,

what can grow out of this organically and relationally. And so maybe their team will not be called the Missions Committee, but will be called the Refugee Support Team. You know, we don't need to all have one model, but let's start with the fact that we should all be engaged somehow. I'm curious. I mean, this is kind of, well, it's very related. Short-term missions. Yeah.

So I think it was like almost 15 years ago, I was a part of this kind of committee at a fairly large church in Southern California to kind of revamp their whole like short-term missions program. And I was already kind of just getting hunches about, like I talked to career missionaries and almost everyone would be like, had pretty jaded maybe or mixed feelings about short-term missions. And they'd tell me stories. I'm like, oh my gosh, are we oh my gosh are we like what are we what are we doing you know then so i didn't i did a bunch of research from like sociologists and stuff and just found a lot of like um again very well intended i mean it's when helping her right so it's well intended hearts and people wanted to go and help people but a lot of a lot really i mean i won't lie a lot of, a lot really, I mean, I won't lie, a lot of

kind of just negative, uh, effects on a local community. You know, the, the classic example is, you know, going into a poor area and like building, you know, building homes or something. It's like, gosh, what's, what's wrong with that? You know, well, when you're a local builder, all those Westerners fly in with all these power tools that you can never afford, throw up five houses. You're like the locals like, oh, thank you for coming. They're, you know, the honor shame. They're going to be nice and everything and hospitable.

But then they're like, well, that's a year's worth of work taken out of my, you know, like I could have done that. Or we think like, well, they don't know how to build buildings. We need to go in and do it for them. And they're just, I don't know. Like I started to see like all these, like, again, well-intended, but just for these problems, you know? So anyway, we ended up rewording it like instead of uh short-term missions it seemed to carry that kind of kind of that just that colonial kind of spirit I think we call it like a cross-cultural ministry experience or something like that like don't think you're gonna go in in two weeks and do a bunch. Like, you're coming alongside primarily the indigenous leaders.

And then if there are some missionaries there, I don't know what other term to use, you know, come alongside the ministry that they are actually doing and making sure you're helping them, not actually hindering their work. Anyway, so that was kind of a revolutionary shift in my mind like 15 years ago. But yeah, we'd love to hear what are your thoughts on short-term missions? Yeah. To me, that's an even more stark example of a label that is really problematic. To even label it missions, which is problematic, just ridiculous. And so if we can just get rid of the label, we're going to really move a long way towards a better practice. And I'm actually one who believes that we urgently do need to get

out of our home patch. And the reason for that is we urgently need to gain perspective. You know, after 23 years of living outside my country um and just i hadn't even been in the western world in five years until yeah last year and i was just like we urgently need some perspective like we urgently need it um you know like i mentioned the idea of set of talking about tyranny when we have no idea what tyranny looks like or poverty or all of those things and so we urgently do need you know someone said what our eye has not seen our heart cannot grieve and so I believe that we have to connect we need to be in solidarity we need to be in

relationship with our brothers and sisters around the world. I believe that. The term short-term missions is terrible. We should call it something that reflects what it needs to be, like a vision trip or a learning exchange. Those are two terms. And so we come not with the posture of we're going to all have our T-shirts on, so we're the ones who are serving. Actually, very often we will be served and that sits very very uncomfortably with us you know this very poor lady who's used up some of her

money to go and buy us a coke um to bless us do we even have the capacity to accept her blessing and for the dignity of being someone who serves. And so the opportunities for learning are massive, and I think that's why we've seen such poor results from short-term missions is because it's not framed as learning, except to learn to suck it up and serve well, rather than learn what God says to us about poverty and justice and how we should live our lives as a result of the fact that there are people who are hungry in this world. Learn what the gospels say about wealth and money and all of that.

Learn, learn, learn. And this is going to be an amazing opportunity to learn. And I'm all for that. I love that. I facilitate that. for that. I love that. I facilitate that. So a cross-cultural kind of exposure, learning experience where you're getting to know what God's doing in another part of the country or another part of the world. You're coming up. Okay. Is there healthy? Not in hurtful ways, of course. Not because you're painting an orphanage or something.

Still not allowed to do that crap. It's so funny. The disconnect between when I talk to career, again, I'll just use the term and, you know, career missionaries, right? Between that and the short term, it's like a huge, there's this huge like unspoken or sometimes spoken about tension almost like, I don't know. Like we need to get a big conference together and just work all this out because, yeah, I don't know if, yeah. We need models of how people can engage but again a lot of missionaries themselves have not really deeply um thought through systemic injustice um poverty the theology of suffering theology of poverty and all of that and so they're often they often are not able to guide a group through that kind of learning

experience that might actually have some kind of lifestyle impact when those people go back. Is there some kind of service that short-term trips can do that would, would are actually good? I mean, is it just coming with our notebooks and learning or is there something that they can actually do that would be healthy for the local ministry in the long run and the local community? There's little things, but I think that's like the 5%.

And the learning is the 95%. I don't think that serving or trying to make any kind of change should be central to those kind of trips. Okay. I don't believe that. You know, there might be ways to help out, but that's peripheral to what you're there for. Yeah, if you can be helpful a little bit without undermining what local people are doing. You know, like alongside us

we have alongside us all over cambodia we don't allow any short-term teams into their communities we would never do that we would never take them into a slum or a community because that puts a very unhelpful spotlight on the people being visited it creates unhelpful expectations by neighbors so even if you come into the slum and start cleaning up the trash that's also unhelpful expectations by neighbors. So even if you come into the slum and start cleaning up the trash, that's also unhelpful. Like, don't do that because you're just creating a spectacle. I would suggest there are ways to do it. One of the ways that we do it is we have camps,

and so they're in a neutral space that we built the first campground in Cambodia. And so the Alongsiders bring their little brothers and sisters to the camp. The Alongsiders run the camp. They lead every part of it. They even pay for themselves to go to the camp, even though it's supplemented. And the outside group comes, they can build relationships and they can speak English and maybe lead a couple of games. We might let them teach a song or something if they're lucky,

but it's about learning and relationships. It's not about, it's not about kind of ministry. Which I do like when, when churches, like the church I go to, they have like a partner church in, in Mexico that they have relationship, a deep relationship with to, they have, um, like a partner church in, in Mexico, um, that they have

relationship, a deep relationship with, like they'll, they'll fly up here and hang out. We'll fly down there and hang out. So there's, and I'm, you know, and so, you know, that we take, there's short-term trips to go down and everything. And, um, but it, I do like the fact that the foundation is this relationship with another partner in the gospel in a different country you know like that is the primary and people go down sometimes now and we'll just hang out just like i'm just gonna be there for a month and just hang out with them and and eat meals with them and you know continue that relationship so the reality is though it's just way less risky for us as outsiders we've got nothing to lose and everything's game but the the local

people have a lot to lose when um there's unhelpful expectations around money and all that kind of thing that are that they're left to deal with once you leave so we need to we need to be savvy about it and be clever and creative about finding neutral spaces to connect. And I think there's ways to do it. Yeah. Well, Craig, man, this has been super fun and interesting getting to know you. And man, the stuff you're doing there, man, that's not a lot of Christians are, I think, eager to do what you do. So thank you for, I don't know, you don't want a pat on the back, but I mean, it's, um, it's, it's admirable and it's encouraging and challenging to, to know, um, the kind of ministry

you're doing. And, uh, yeah, thank you for also like writing books and talking about it and getting the word out and stuff. So, um, yeah, man, appreciate that. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for being on Theology in a Round, man. We'll, we'll be in touch. Yeah. All right. We'll catch you later. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.