A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

plication (establishing Mennonite Brethren churches). In soul-winning, the missionary goes to the peo- ple, learns their language and something of their culture, de- velops friendships and seeks to lead them to Christ. But un- less the converts have the potential to form a fellowship or a church, what is often created is a series of individual converts who remain an island: orphaned, detached from their own community, and targets of religious isms.2* Short-term min- 270 MISSIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGE istries of faith missions (this applies to Mennonite Brethren also) and mass meeting evangelism are especially prone to leave these regrettable results. "Soul-saving," leading people to Christ, remains at the heart of mission, but it is only the first pait of the assignment. The goal is to establish indigenous churches rooted in their own culture, and to train their own leaders to evangelize their own people. In other words, to be a catalyst. This latter strategy has been difficult for Mennonite Brethren to achieve. In India and Zaire, for example, national Mennonite Brethren leaders emerged only as political changes removed Western missionaries (in India after sixty-seven years, in Africa only after 1962). Japan is an exception. The Mennonite Brethren Church there is strong and assumes re- sponsibility for evangelism at home and beyond. The late Ruth Wiens Funk, returning from Japan after forry years as a missionary, said: "Our work in Japan is finished. God has raised up his own people in Japan.* Officially, Mennonite Brethren strategy in the post<olonial period has been to evangelize, establish the church, train na- tional leadership and leave the expansion to the native church and its leadership.™ But missiologist Hans Kasdorf suggests a slowness in the training of national leadership and transferring responsibility. There are countries where Mennonite Brethren missionaries have labored for decades and churches have been established, yet national leadership has not emerged. This phenomenon is difficult to reconcile with our mission theology. The gap between intention and accomplishment is probably best explained by a lack of basic understanding of what is required in authentic partnership. The rhetoric of "in- ternationalization" and "globalization" is easy; but it requires cultural understandings that are difficult to achieve. Part of the problem may lie with what Latin American Mis- sion director Horace L. Fenton called-"the myth of the un- qualified national": 271 A PILGRIMAGE OF FATTH The myth of the unqualified national is not usually e