The fundamental premise of the missionary movement from the West is that we have good news, and it is our responsibility to be good stewards of that deposit and spread that good news to all the nations and peoples of the world.

An Alongsider approach significantly shifts away from this premise and the actions and approaches that have developed from it. “Alongsider” has become a popular word and is used in local church contexts and everyday E0 evangelism contexts, but, missiologically, the term was developed in frontier E3 contexts where it marks a turning from colonial and traditional Christendom approaches to life and ministry.¹

This could sound like changing or adjusting the gospel, God’s “good news.” But it is rather a recognition of the profound nature, the multi-faceted reality of Jesus Christ and his work for our redemption. The central proclamation of the book of Acts was resurrection; in many other places in the New Testament the focus is on the cross. There is no universal gospel formula repeated in the Scriptures, rather many varying statements give slightly different emphases.² Indian theologian A.J. Appasamy made this point with an illustration:

Once a friend said to me, “two and two make four, whether in the East or in the West. We may illustrate this in England by counting apples and in India we may use mangoes. But the fundamental proposition is the same. In the same way the Christian Gospel is the same whether in the East or in the West.” This is by no means correct. The Christian Gospel is not as simple as an elementary arithmetical proposition; it is rich and varied in its nature and, therefore, calls forth different responses from different people.3

This basic understanding lies behind the focus on contextualization, making the gospel relevant to varying cultural contexts. But an alongsider approach is skeptical towards much contextualization. Contextualization is an attempt to de-westernize Christianity; to radically adjust the biblical message to resonate with local socio-cultural and religious contexts.

Yet contextualization too easily becomes the making of adjustments to a fixed (Western) package of religious information and practice. The “Alongsider” name comes from prioritizing insider understandings and interpretations of the good news of Jesus, so Alongsiders desire to see a more organic development of a vital synthesis of gospel realities within cultural contexts.⁴

Frontier Ventures prepared a definition/discussion paper on the meaning and usage of Alongsider terminology within the organization:

An insider is a person who has an inherent understanding of his/her culture because he or she has grown up “inside” that culture. An outsider is a person who enters another culture with little, and no intuitive, understanding of it. An Alongsider is a person who began as an outsider but has over time learned much about a second culture and developed deep relationships with insiders to that culture which enable continually deeper learning. An Alongsider is a person whose posture as a witness for Christ is to walk beside others as a listener, learner, discerner, influencer, and fellow traveler in cross-cultural and cross-religious contexts. Alongsider, thus, represents an approach to engagement with others, or a style of life based on a recognition of social and spiritual realities. It is rooted in an attitude of humility, servanthood, and a recognition of limitations and liabilities in engaging situations with which one is not adequately familiar. At least at some level, older cross-cultural (mission) practices generally assumed a leadership/ parental role for the outside missionary. This new (Alongsider) approach eliminates a presumption or practice of control and places the outside cross-cultural worker alongside (not in front of, certainly not over) people encountering Christ. Thus, an Alongsider works reciprocally, both learning and contributing, towards appropriate discipleship to Christ in the insiders’ complex socio-religious contexts. This posture of mutuality values the insights of both the Alongsider and the insider while leaving decision-making with the insider. Yet the Alongsider is most certainly a change agent, and particularly at the pioneering stage where no known believers are present, he or she uniquely (albeit inadequately and far from spotlessly) represents the kingdom of God. Therefore, the Alongsider needs to prayerfully discern to whom, how, when, where, and what to speak.5

These are not theoretical issues. There is no greater hindrance to the spread of the gospel than the sense that it is a foreign religion that does not fit with local sensibilities. There is no doubt that attrition, the turning away from Christ and his people after profession of faith by a person or group, is often related to personal identity crises due to cultural and social dislocation. The final goal of evangelism, the only goal worthy of Christ to be held by an Alongsider, needs to be holistic cultural and societal transformation.

Harvie Conn noted a shortcoming in engagements with Islam in his study of “The Muslim Convert and His Culture:”

Turning to Christ is not always seen as also a turning to culture, where the believer rediscovers his human origins and identity, and a turning to the world in acceptance of the mission on which Christ sends the believer in eschatological pilgrimage. In this process, conversion does not remake, it unmakes. The results of this are tragic for Muslim listeners.6

The transformation that the gospel brings is within families and cultures, not against or outside a person’s natural heritage. Evangelicalism has emphasized that conversion is an individual turning away from sin, but Andrew Walls has subtly shifted this emphasis, suggesting that conversion is the turning of everything in the life of a people and society to God.^7,8

Too easily conversion becomes turning away from a “non-Christan” people and society to join the Christian church and civilization. This is a subtle denial of the biblical emphasis that the gospel is for all peoples, and all peoples in their cultural and linguistic diversity will be present in glory.⁹ The fullness of this process of turning everything in the life of a people to God takes generations and cannot be casually measured by counting “converts.”¹⁰ And if “converts” are extracted from their familial and cultural contexts, they are not only to varying degrees “unmade,” but they hinder the deepest work of God which is the transformation of families and societies.

It should not need to be stated that participation in this process of the transformation of a person and people is deeply transforming for the Alongsider; at least as transformative for the Alongsider as it is for the “convert.” In this broader, Wallsian sense of conversion, the Alongsider and his or her own family and cultural/ civilizational context is also still being converted. Who has yet learned to “obey all that he commanded” (Matt 28:20) or brought “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5)? Alongsiders care about the process as well as the results of their cross-cultural work and will learn in the process how hard it is to die to self.

The high calling of the cross-cultural worker has long been recognized, but living out that role in Christ-like ways remains a momentous challenge. Dying to self and serving others is a challenge within one’s own family and society; the fears, uncertainties, and conundrums of representing Christ in foreign contexts compounds the importance and anguish of life as an Alongsider.¹¹ Churches and Christians that put missionaries on pedestals as heroes of faith need rather to listen, learn from, and even measure the anguish and accompanying glory that are evident in the cross-cultural transmission of the gospel by unworthy Alongsiders. “These are those who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes white in the blood of the lamb” (Rev 7:14).