Title: AVERAGE SALARY REACHES $131.OO IN 2002
"According to the XXXXXX Statistics Agency, average monthly salary in XXXXXX was about $131.00 in 2002. . . . People in finance earn the highest average salary, about $312.00. The minimum salary of $51.61 is paid to agricultural workers, which means a six-fold gap between the max and min salaries. Average salary in health care is $70.00 and $81.00 in education. Hotel and restaurant employees saw their salaries increased 47% in 2002 to reach $211.00. The highest average salary was registered in the oil producing regions of the country, $267.00, and the lowest in the southern regions, $78.00."
Similar information might be found in many "mission fields." Compare this information with what we understand is the average foreign mission worker's salary, around $3,500 a month, not counting other benefits such as airfare, health insurance, housing, utilities, transportation, and education allowance for children. (The average cost of keeping one foreign missionary in a foreign country was about $75,000 a year in 2000). A so-called "volunteer missionary" from the USA receives a stipend of $1,000 a month, plus housing, utilities, and transportation, according to our information sources. Your observer, a US citizen, lived comfortably in a foreign city (located in a "mission field") on about $400.00 a month, with an additional $250 paid for rent and $100 for utilities and transportation. Even this is beyond the imagination of many of the folks we know. They considered us "rich."
Our question is this: Does the economic gap between foreigner and local person interfere with the ability of the mission workers to identify with the people? Yes, of course it does. With cultural adaptation? Yes. Does the economic gap affect their ability to "reach" the person earning an average local salary? Very much so. The average retirement pension is $30 a month. What kind of model does the so-called "missionary pastor," a highly paid foreigner, give to the aspiring Kazakhstan student-pastor and seminary student?
Does the mission organization plan on paying the graduates from their seminary program the same salary which a US missionary receives? Of course not. And most mission organizations don't know what to do, if they recognize the problem. Local church workers are paid between $50 and $150 a month in most cases. Even if the mission organization does not want to continue the practice, the small local congregations cannot support the workers.
You say the economic difference shouldn't make any difference? Well, of course, it shouldn't, but it does. And it has for many years, as long as the present mission method has been in use. Many sources, preferring to remain anonymous, tell your observer that economic differences are a possible source of the rejection they feel over against the religion proposed by the highly paid foreign worker. People ask me: "Why would the United States send such highly paid agents? What are they up to? What is their purpose?"
This observation is not a new finding. Roland Allen wrote about the problem of highly paid foreign professionals in the early 1900s. A reprint of David Paton's Reform of the Ministry is available from Lutterworth Press or direct from Amazon. The book is a collection of Allen's letters and articles on the inability of the highly paid foreign worker to identify with what should have been his or her local replacement in the daily work of the church. Allen's solution is worth the consideration of those who might want to address this issue.