The Revnd. Canon George Kovoor is the Director of Education for the Church Mission Society and also the Warden of Crowther Hall, Birmingham. Holding degrees in diverse disciplines and having worked as a minister in India and the United States before his move to England in 1990, Rev. Kovoor is considered an expert on the subject of the world church. At the recent missions congress in Bad Salzuflen, Germany, Rev. Kovoor led a series of seminars on the topic of "reverse missions."

Marco Klaue: You have been leading some seminars about what we could call „reverse missions“, where missionaries go from the 2/3rds world into Europe and North America. Traditionally it has been going the other direction. It seems that, while everyone would gain a lot from the new arrangement, there are difficulties that arise when the new sending nations are poorer and have a shorter history of Christian activity. How do you see the benefits of “reverse missions” outweighing these problems, and how can collaboration between countries conquer these difficulties?

George Kovoor: It is not always the case that the churches in Africa and Asia are younger churches. In fact, many of them are first and second century churches. Yes, they are poorer financially, but not in terms of experience, not in terms of knowledge, not in terms of people. In those three categories they may be very rich.

There are obvious reasons why the West is rich. If you look at the natural resources of the West, it cannot compare with the natural resources of Africa, Asia and South America. We have been exploited. The western churches have to recognize this: that your churches became rich by stealing the wealth of the two-thirds world. So what I ask Christians in the West is, what are you guys doing in your churches? You say the churches of the two-thirds world are poorer, financially – of course they’re poor. The corporate ways of international law are all created by the Western nations.

But now we’re looking at a totally new order. I predict that the superpowers of the 21st century are going to be China and India. In fact, even today America does not have the courage to disagree with China. China is a huge nation, with huge financial resources and a huge standing army, and with enough nuclear missiles that they can hit every city in the United States. India, too, is a nuclear power. In terms of the technological competence today, India is the largest provider every year of trained medical doctors and engineers – mechanical, civil, chemical, electronics – and has a huge reservoir of software scientists. With a population of 1.2 billion people we have a huge internal market. We have the natural resources, so we don’t need anything from the West. So that’s why countries like America can’t push India anymore – or China. You can push poor African countries around, but not these two countries.

So the question you really asked me was, what are some of the practical problems of bringing personell from Africa, South America and Asia? There are many practical problems. First of all, climate. Our people are not used to such extreme cold. Secondly, we don’t speak European languages. Then, there are problems in terms of our values and our culture.

What our strength is: we have a strong sense of community and family values. We have a strong sense of Gospel values, a great confidence in the Bible as the word of God, a tremendous confidence in the power of the Holy Spirit to change things. And we are committed to the spread of the Gospel. We genuinely want to share the faith. That is why many Christians in Africa, Asia and South America are martyrs and are persecuted for the faith. And this is something that the Africans, Asians and South Americans are teaching us: here are men, women and children who believe so passionately that they are being persecuted for their faith. And it is this faith -- that is infectious -- that leads to conversoin. We want to be able to bring this infectious disease of faith back into Europe, because what has happened is that the European mind completely took on the Enlightenment project, which means that you elevated reason above faith, and elevated logic beyond the supernatural, or the power of God. And as a result you have deprived yourself of a real awareness of the spiritual realities that are intrinsic in the gospel of Jesus.

MK: Now in America, the church situation and the missions situation is different again. What do you think America could stand to gain if more missionaries were sent there from the 2/3rds world?

GK: I think what the churches of Africa and Asia want to share with the Americans is that actually they have a lot of energy, a lot of creativity – the Americans have – but what they have not been able to engage with is difference: how you relate to people who think differently from you, who don’t accept the American dream, and who say that there are values that are beyond this. They also need to recognize that actually, if you are only a giver and not a receiver, you are a weak man. A truly strong man is someone who recognizes that he must both give and receive. And so a church that only receives is weak, and a church that only gives is also weak. We both need to recognize that we need each other, and that at the heart of the Ecclesial experience – of being the body of Christ – we need to develop an interest in the other and receive the sacrament of the gifts of the other, and offer ours as well, so that together we can grow in our knowledge and in our understanding of the things of God.

MK: How do you think the current political polarization will affect the church? The European church has usually tended more towards the left, tended to be more of a humanitarian work, where the North American church has gravitated towards right wing political views. And now the recent situation in Iraq has torn gaps into the Europe/America alliance that has governed the world for so long. How do you think this will affect Christianity and the global church?

GK: The interesting thing in Europe is that Europe has always had politically leftist leanings. Marx, of course, was a European. And socialists have prevailed in France and Italy, but what is frightening in Europe is now right-wing political parties coming to power, using the bogey of refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers as a way of coming to power. We need Christians to stand up to these and explain that these are false prophets of doom.

America has been tarnished unfairly with being a right-wing fundamentalist nation. Actually, some of the most profound theologians, who engage with diversity and difference, come from the United States. They have had to learn how to engage with difference through being an immigrant nation. Yes, the wealthy Bible belt has a disproportionate influence on American life, but now with the Latinos and the Hispanics coming from Cuba and Mexico into the United States, we are going to see even the United States changing a lot. There is a huge amount of poverty in the United States, a huge amount of illiteracy, a huge amount of crime, and a huge amount of anger. So it’s just a matter of time for these things to be dealt with.

MK: So if, as you predict, political and military power will shift from America to Asia within the next century, what about America’s role in missions? America has long been the main sending nation of missionaries…

GK: Today that’s over. They don’t have the largest number of missionaries in the world today. They have already been replaced by Brazil, South Korea and India. And as the Indian church becomes more and more prosperous financially, we will find even more Indian missionaries being sent by the Indian church at no cost to anyone else. I know for a fact that the fiscal resources of the Western church are in steep decline. They have been built on state tax, endowments, legacies… so with the steep decline in church attendance, the supply is cut off. The legacies have been dropping. It’s only a matter of time before the structures begin to crumble. So it will be up to the younger people to set up their own churches and mission agencies that are actually paid for by themselves, and not by the state tax or whatever. But Indians and Africans have had to learn to do this from the very beginning, and we’ve been supporting our ministries from the beginning. We don’t need help from anyone else. But if we were to come to the West, we certainly would want to collaborate with the churches of Europe in the whole area of identifying the mission, selecting the personell, orienting and training the personell, so that they would be effective in their work in the West.

MK: You say that missionaries should come by invitation.

GK: I prefer that. Whenever missionaries have come at the invitation of national churches, we have seen a framework where they are accountable to national leaders, and are prepared to learn from them.

MK: Can you give a specific example?

GK: India is an example. After England’s colonial rule ended, we asked the missionaries to go home. After we established ourselves we then invited missionaries to come. Often they were to come to train and learn in India. We invited them to work under our leaders. In certain technical areas of medicine, we invited some of them to come and teach our people in medicine.

I see this now in Egypt as well, where you can only go into Egypt at the invitation of either the Coptic Church or the Presbyterian Church or the Anglican Church. So when you go into a country and you know that there are Christians there already, it is only courtesy and respect for the body of Christ in that part of the world to find out whether your services are required, and then to explore together with the local church whether there is a purpose and a place for ministry.

MK: So in what capacity do you think the Europeans – and the Americans – should be inviting missionaries from other countries?

GK: First of all, simply in understanding theology. Start off with a theological enterprise. I think your theological system is inadequate. It bought into – as I told you earlier – the Enlightenment project. It’s clearly a logic-based system.
Secondly, engaging with religions.
Thirdly, engaging with cultures.
Fourthly, engaging with ethnicity.
Fifthtly, engaging with ethnic prejudice or racism.
Sixthly, community development, resources in helping build up the family, parenting… There are a number of areas that we can explore.

I would say that we have some experiences, but many of these things cannot automatically be transplanted, they have to be incarnated.

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