Around the world, a quiet revolution is reshaping global missions. Increasingly, churches are shifting their focus toward empowering indigenous workers and near-culture missionaries—those who already know the language, culture, and heartbeat of their communities. It’s an inspiring shift and one of the most exciting movements in modern missions today. 

However, whenever the Church adopts a new strategy, there can be a tendency to swing the pendulum too far. This has led some churches to decrease or discontinue their sending of Western missionaries. While a re-evaluation of how Western missionaries are sent and for what purpose is essential, discontinuing the sending of Western missionaries would be an error of reductionistic thinking and swinging the pendulum too far. 

Keeping the conclusion of Part 1 in mind—that we should increase our focus on empowering the Global South—here are a few reasons to continue to send Western missionaries intelligently and intentionally. 

Why Send Western Missionaries?

1) It’s Biblical 

The Western church is especially in need of the perspective of missionaries. With our ethnocentrism, affluence, and pessimistic thinking about the state of Christianity, we need the perspective of missionaries to help us think beyond the here and now.  

We need what the missionary has learned about theology and the practice of God’s word in other cultures. We need to face the “deadly spiral of affluence” that easily distracts us from dependence on God through sacrificial giving and sending. We need the encouragement, admonition, and perspective of missionaries sent from our churches as church attendance drops and our society moves towards a post-Christian environment.  

God is on the move throughout the world.

We also need to remember that nowhere in the Bible does it say when not to send missionaries. Indeed, this doesn’t mean we throw caution to the wind and neglect our responsibilities as healthy stewards of our people and financial resources. But in wisdom, we need to remember the Bible speaks much more about the importance of sending than about not sending. 

2) The Kingdom Economy is not Just Dollars and Cents 

The argument to discontinue sending Western missionaries is often reduced to the relative cost and effectiveness of Western missionaries vs. indigenous believers in the Global South. As I mentioned in Part 1, the numbers are clear: Western missionaries are more expensive than missionaries from the Global South.  

However, are the finances of missionary sending the only “bottom line” that God cares about?  

Is it possible that God cares also about the unique impact a Western missionary might make on the indigenous movement of the gospel when done in a contextualized manner? How the Western missionary will, in turn, help the Western church. Or how the mission might impact the Western missionaries themselves, whom God has placed on the mission. 

I have seen churches make decisions to discontinue funding Western missionaries based on the financial “bottom line.” I believe this is an error in reductionist thinking and is swinging the pendulum too far. Additionally, it does not take into account that the Kingdom's economy is more than just dollars and cents. 

While our financial resources are valuable in sending near-culture missionaries, we will also need to make sure our funding doesn’t reinforce our historic paternalism. For the health of indigenous churches, they should also be involved in the joy and obedience of giving. Matching gifts of varying percentages, I have seen as a healthy way to call the church towards its involvement.  

It is wise to focus Western funding towards outward-facing ministries with a time limit. Funding church buildings, pastors’ salaries, or ongoing internal church ministries tends to create dependence and reinforce paternalism. Helping the church in areas that are outward-facing and on mission can help fight dependence.  

3) Open Doors for Foreigners 

In Part 1, I referenced the E-Scale, which determines the cultural and linguistic distance one must overcome to preach the gospel to another individual. E-0 being the closest; E-3 being the farthest. It is generally true that someone from the Global South will have the distance of E-1 or possibly E-2, and most Western missionaries will be E-2 or E-3.  

However, there are situations in which the distance between a believer from the Global South and an unbeliever they are trying to reach is closer to E-3 due to cultural or racial bias. In some of these situations, the Western missionary and the gospel message are more readily accepted than the missionary from the Global South. 

When I was a missionary in East Asia from 2009 to 2011, there was a great open door for Western missionaries. Government persecution of local believers made it difficult for them to share the gospel without consequence. For Western missionaries, at that time, the worst that would happen was that they would be removed from the country. While we always kept the safety and well-being of our East Asian brothers and sisters in mind, we had an open door for the gospel uniquely at that time and we took it! 

We also had the opportunity, while reaching out to college students, to host close to 100 college students during our two years. The interest in learning English and the cultural leveling that came with being a college student created a unique open door for the gospel. 

There are also situations where there are very few indigenous believers. A labor force of seed sowers for the gospel can be an asset in saturating the population with the gospel message. Western missionaries who have a heart for evangelism and empowering indigenous new believers to be trained and lead the church. 

These realities remind us that global missions cannot be reduced to a single strategy. While indigenous believers are essential to the advance of the gospel, there remain contexts where Western missionaries have a unique and valuable role. With this in mind, we can step back and consider how Western sending fits within a wise and balanced approach to the Great Commission. 

Sending Wisely & Boldly 

As we reflect on these truths, the path forward becomes clearer. When sent with humility, cultural intelligence, and strategic purpose, Western workers strengthen the global church, bring valuable perspective back home, and seize open doors uniquely available to them. 

The question, then, is not whether we should send, but how we should send: thoughtfully, collaboratively, and in step with the Spirit’s work around the world. 

In Part One, we focused on the growing importance of empowering indigenous believers as a part of our church’s mission force. In this part, we are reminded that we should not discontinue sending Westerners. In Part Three, we will focus on ways to send Westerners healthily in the 21st century.