This interview is between Michael Badriaki who is African, and Dr. Jim Harries, a Western missionary in Kenya. Michael has been working with missionaries from the West who seek to help and have done some positive things in Africa in God’s name. However, he finds that they tend to work from a place of power, assuming that the Western evangelical way of doing Christianity is paramount. Unfortunately, this life view encourages patronage, dependency, and undermines people’s dignity in Africa. It also displaces unity, compassion, humility and mutuality.
The interview explores Harries’ work of encouraging Western missionaries to do ministry from a position of vulnerability; along the way, it further demonstrates the profound need for any efforts toward global mission to be relational, and include the servant leadership, mutual participation, and listening to the voice of God’s people in Africa and the global church.