“Don’t missionaries destroy cultures?” It is a fair question, and it deserves an honest answer — not a defensive one. History includes real examples of outsiders who arrived with flags, commerce, and coercion, and some of what traveled under the name of Christianity deserves the criticism it gets. I have spent my life in this work, and I will tell you plainly: I have my own criticisms of missions done badly. Papua New Guinea, where we served for decades, is on paper one of the most reached countries on earth — and it has become one of the most missionized and most syncretized places, where people in remote villages can sing worship songs in English without anyone ever having communicated who Jesus is in a language they understand. That is not success. So judge the work — but judge the actual work.

The outside world is coming to every remote people group — roads, mining, traders, phones, and diseases do not ask permission. The question is not whether these cultures will meet the modern world, but whether they will meet it with tools in their own hands.

What the work actually is

The missionaries described on this site move in and stay — often for decades. They spend years learning an unwritten language from people who must trust them enough to teach it, and studying the culture that gives its words meaning. They create an alphabet where none existed, and teach people to read their own language — which is very often the first time that language has ever been written down. Literacy and a written Scripture preserve a language for generations that would otherwise lose it; for many small languages, the translated Bible and the literacy primers are the largest body of written material in that language on earth. They translate rather than replace: the goal is God’s word in the people’s own language, taught in their own context — not English songs and borrowed forms. They provide medical care that saves lives and demonstrates love with no bill attached. And they present a message for a freely made, informed decision — the objective is to give people what they need to decide for themselves about God’s written word. No one can be coerced into faith; coerced “faith” is precisely the syncretism we criticize.

Who decides what their culture keeps?

They do. God’s word informs, shapes, and corrects cultures — including my own — but the people themselves read it, weigh it, and choose. When the Bisorio people believed, it was Bisorio believers who carried the message to every village of their own people, and Bisorio elders who led their churches; the missionaries worked themselves out of a job. The Mouk sent their own teachers to neighboring peoples. The Hewa, whose spirit-beliefs once required the deaths of women and children accused as witches, will tell you themselves what changed and whether they mourn it. That is the real test: not what critics or missionaries say, but what the people say. Listen to them — thirty people groups, in their own voices.

An honest ledger

Missionaries have made real mistakes, and the ones I work with study those mistakes so as not to repeat them — it is a large part of why the training takes years and why language and culture come before teaching. But weigh the whole ledger: languages written down for the first time, literacy where there were no schools, Scripture translation, medical care in places no clinic reaches, an end to cycles of killing that the people themselves longed to escape, and communities equipped to meet the encroaching outside world on their own terms — reading, writing, choosing. If that is destruction, it is a strange kind.

Go deeper

  • Testimonies — the people themselves, on video, in thirty languages.
  • The Bisorio Story — a people who reached their own villages, then sent to others.
  • The Hewa Story — “the spirits never loved us.”
  • Well Done — our own standard for the work, including where missions falls short.
  • Vision & Definitions — what we mean, precisely, by missions and missionary.