About this item
Highlights
- Western mission often centers the senders, without as much understanding of the receivers' experiences.
- About the Author: Mekdes Haddis is the founder and executive coach of Just Missions, an online community for missionaries, mission professionals, and ministry leaders seeking a more just approach to global mission.
- 240 Pages
- Religion + Beliefs, Christian Ministry
Description
About the Book
Western mission often centers the senders, without as much understanding of the receivers' experiences. Weaving together theology and stories from diaspora groups, Ethiopian American mission practitioner Mekdes Haddis provides a postcolonial critique of Western mission, upending the white savior complex and arguing for a globally just approach.
Book Synopsis
Western mission often centers the senders, without as much understanding of the receivers' experiences. Weaving together theology and stories from diaspora groups, Ethiopian American mission practitioner Mekdes Haddis provides a postcolonial critique of Western mission, upending the white savior complex and arguing for a globally just approach.
Review Quotes
"'Wounds from a friend can be trusted, ' and Mekdes Abebe Haddis gives a direct yet loving rebuke to the Western approach to global missions. With clarity and conviction, this book helps readers see beyond biases and blind spots to embrace a mission that elevates and humanizes all people. Haddis calls for relationship and reciprocity, mutuality and mutual respect, and a move away from saviorism to better reflect the Savior. In this book you will discover the beauty of a justice-seeking, gospel-advancing global church."
"A Just Mission is a necessary read for white evangelical churches and organizations that continue to perpetuate colonialism and imperialism through overseas mission trips."
"In her book A Just Mission, the African missionary Mekdes Haddis has beautifully expressed what many African diaspora theologians and scholars have felt but failed to ink. Mekdes gently but firmly reminds readers about the unconscious and yet devastating practices of Western missionaries whose gospel was wrapped in colonial flags and cultural biases that did not value indigenous people as fully human or view their cultures as redeemable. Unfortunately, this sense of cultural and racial superiority continues to blind the Western church from seeing diaspora theologians and Bible scholars as cultural teachers and brokers as well as partners in reaching the post-Christian West and strengthening the growing church in the Global South."
"It is long past time for the church to learn about God's missional heart from African and non-Western sisters and brothers. Mekdes Abebe Haddis has given us a gift in A Just Mission. Through her personal story of faith as an Ethiopian woman, she tells the truth about harm that has been done in the missional endeavors of Western Christianity, and calls the church to a more faithful future of missions for the current age."
"Mekdes is the perfect person to talk about this complex subject in a restorative and redeeming manner. Her writing lifts up those who have been harmed but also creates a way forward for those who have done the harm to correct their mistakes. This book not only states the problem but provides the solutions that need to be considered to build a more inclusive missional movement. . . . A Just Mission is a much-needed book for the church to see the world through the lenses of reconciliation and justice."
"Mekdes Haddis's hope and love for the Western church shines through full words of critique, rebuke, and correction. Haddis holds in tension the real harm done by white saviorism and white nationalism in evangelical practice with the real transformation and repair Jesus offers. Church leaders and congregants alike would do well to read A Just Mission in community."
"Reading this powerful book reminded me that the forces upholding the existing missions model in America are strong and rooted in ideology, economics, and histories that are hundreds of years old. Mekdes Haddis gives us the gift of a rich resource to form our repentance and changed behavior as we work together to build a just mission."
"Western mission leaders must ask themselves, 'Will what got us here get us there?' It is time to consider new, just, alternative options to help us get to the next 'there.' We need a recalibration of pathways to get different laborers. If we learned anything from the woman's story at the well in John 4, it is that established leaders can at times miss the contribution of different people commissioned by God. I believe Mekdes Haddis calls us to open our eyes to embrace a just paradigm of different missionaries."
About the Author
Mekdes Haddis is the founder and executive coach of Just Missions, an online community for missionaries, mission professionals, and ministry leaders seeking a more just approach to global mission. She is also project director for an effort working on racial justice and reconciliation. She has been a consultant and on staff with churches and nonprofit organizations in discipleship and outreach. She and her family live in South Carolina.