“Where art thou, Missionary?

”
MASS MOVEMENTS OF PEOPLES AND MISSION TODAY

The World Migration Report 2015 indicates that “the number of international migrants
worldwide has continued to grow rapidly over the past fifteen years reaching 244 million in 2015,
up from 222 million in 2010 and 173 million in 2000”. In 2014, the total number of refugees in the
world was estimated at 19.5 million. The Philippines is the 8th country of origin with the largest
diaspora population. These figures will dramatically increase if one includes local migration, the
movements of people within the territorial boundaries of a country particularly through rural to
urban migration and internal displacement of communities due to war or (un)natural calamities. Put
simply, “all the one hundred and ninety or so sovereign states of the worlds are now either points of
origin, transit, or destination for the migrants; often all three at once”.
As a result, many places are now teeming with inhabitants coming from different races and
‘life-worlds’. “Over 54 per cent of people across the globe were living in urban areas in 2014. The
number of people living in cities will almost double to some 6.4 billion by 2050, turning much of
the world into a global city.” Through physical and even mental migrations1, societies are
confronted with different cultures and world-views. “Double-belonging” or ‘hybrid’ existence
where individuals negotiate the terrains of ‘being both inside and outside’ a particular social fabric
is a common phenomenon.2
In this context, it is not without reason that the images of the migrants, exiles and displaced
take center stage. Wanderers and strangers, they live in in-between worlds, sometimes even as
mediators of two or more worlds. Perennially longing for home, homecoming is almost always a
possibility, yet never a surety. Neither denizens of their host country nor inhabitants of the land of
their birth, they continuously navigate the spaces of their past and present, unsure of where will
their future be. They reside in the indefinite; and shuttle back and forth between promise and
certainty.
As migrants, they have to invent their existence in a relatively more hostile environment
where accessible opportunities are less apparent. Embodying an exilic existence, they lack the
societal recognition needed to survive and live a decent life away from family and home. Displaced,
they have to negotiate their way into the social space where tolerance and acceptance are not offered
on a silver platter. In its stead, displacement and even discriminatory treatment are not mere distant
possibilities.
We must ask ourselves then, what is the shape of theology and spirituality borne out of
concrete experiences of the migrants, exiles and displaced? What does it mean to re-tell the Jesus
Christ story to “people on the move”? At the same time, what characterizes missionary discipleship
today? Who and where art thou, Missionaries?

1
Mental migration can refer to the global reach and power of communications media where the flow and
exchange of information is an integral part of society’s dynamics.
2
As Robin Cohen underscores, immigrants are “both inside and outside a particular national society. They are
outsiders as well as participants and, as spectators, are able to compare and learn from ‘how things are done’ in other
societies as well as in the one in which they find themselves”. Robin COHEN, Global Diasporas: An Introduction
(London: UCL Press, 1997) 172.