The missionary as a mediator: a journey

The Missionary as a mediator: a journey

David F. D’Amico

Eminent missiologist Paul G. Hiebert contends that the rise of globalization during the 21^st century must elicit a new paradigm amid a tenuous consensus among evangelicals. “Increasingly, missionaries are bridge persons, culture mediators, who stand between different human worlds.”

He suggests some principles that are very helpful to understand the present situation.

• The globalization of the church has made us much more aware of the need to contextualize the message in our local cultures and the messenger and the church in local social systems.
• Missionaries are mediators between Christianity and non-Christian religions.
• Missionaries are mediators in global church-to-church relationships.
• Missionaries are mediators in the academy between theology and human studies.
• Missionaries must be mediators between missions as a movement and Missiology as an academic discipline.
• Missionaries as mediators are central to global theologizing.

Source:  “The missionary as mediator of global theologizing,” by Paul G. Hiebert. Globalizing Theology: Belief and Practice in an Era of World Christianity. Craig Ott and Harold A. Netland, eds. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), Chapter 14: pp. 288-308,

In my missionary experience I have attempted to practice the “spirit” of mediation guided more by instinct and intuition than by rationality and scientific data.

As one born in Argentina and living in Texas during the late 1950s, those different from the prevailing culture were mostly Mexican and Mexican-Americans. I learned to navigate the turbulent waters in which I was swimming because my Spanish accent connected me with my fellow Mexicans but my white skin unsettled those with whom I interacted.

In academia, I served as a mediator between the discipline of mission and the practice of mission. I was officially a missionary in two functions: once as executive director of the Metropolitan Baptist Association and then as a representative at the UN of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. In addition I taught evangelism and world mission in two Baptist seminaries. These ministries afforded me the joy of implementing some deeply believed missiological principles from the classroom and from the field. It also confronted me with the reality that on occasion, organization and bureaucracy tend to negate the best motivated and perhaps efficient missiological principles. As a person, scholar, and missionary, I consider this role as the most rewarding and fulfilling of my vocational career.