“Why should we trust you when you still view us as slaves?” asked the Cameroonian elder. The room—already stifling—now seemed stripped of oxygen. The crowd sat in tense silence. And I felt the question all the way down to my bones.
I stood encircled by a group of pastors. They had honored me by gathering to hear about my ministry. I had in turn honored them by asking about theirs. I wanted to know, “What has God’s mission looked like in and through your churches?”
As they told remarkable stories of both success and suffering, a sad theme began to surface. Feeling the safety of the moment, pastors opened up about deep wounds that had been left by foreign missionaries. They spoke of falsified numbers, unkept promises, and cultural superiority. The eldest of the room—shaking with Parkinson’s yet pulsing with communal authority—delivered the final indictment in a devastating rhetorical question—
“Why should we trust you?”
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After years of biblical study in preparation for ministering cross-culturally, I’m not sure that the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18) quite got through to my heart. Of course I understood the urgent need of Genesis 3—a world severed from life with God because of sin. I would go to faraway places to implore on Christ’s behalf: “Be reconciled to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
However, my evangelical pedigree was not as well versed in the full measure of God’s reconciling intent. In truth, I would not see it clearly until the pastor of an ethnic minority church pointed it out years later. Genesis 3 cannot be taken apart from Genesis 4—the breakdown of all human relationships.
This is likely why Paul’s famous description of the gospel in Ephesians 2 comes in two parts: 1) being made alive in Christ in verses 1-10 and 2) being reconciled (Jew and Gentile) through Christ in verses 11-22.
Paul’s gospel ministry as an aged apostle settled not merely for the salvation of souls (v. 8) but the formation of a new humanity altogether (v. 15). Mine as a young missionary was satisfied with little more than transactional evangelistic encounters. I was not ready for a room full of broken trust.
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In the complex dance of cross-cultural relationships, we all eventually find ourselves creating (or inheriting) ruptures—moments when meaningful connection is broken. I had not lied, betrayed, or reenacted colonialism in the meeting with the pastors (though I’ve made my share of mistakes in other settings). Nevertheless, the unresolved wounds remained, and my ethnic connection to their perpetrators clearly aggravated them. My flesh offered two quick options: “Exonerate yourself,” or more simply, “Change the subject.”
But something else came to mind, a lesson hard-learned since my days as a missionary. The environment felt similar to certain moments as a lead pastor in 2020 when my city, Louisville, was taut with the ruptured memory of racial injustice; Breonna Taylor had been killed only ten minutes from my church. In those days I learned to sit with minority brothers and sisters without excuse or redirection. Instead, I listened and wept. And said, “I’m sorry.”
The promise of Genesis 3–4 is that despite our best intentions we will inevitably cause ruptures (such as on my second to last day on the field when in a wave of cultural exhaustion I exploded on my closest friends because they asked for money). The aim of cross-cultural service is not solely to avoid such things, though it’s worth our best effort. It is to be sent as ambassadors of the entire Ephesians 2 gospel, true ministers of reconciliation who abide the often mortifying work of repair—the costly reweaving of trust.
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As the elder sat down, generations of mournful pain gazed at me from all sides of the room. The weight of it pressed me into my chair and squeezed me like a lemon. Tears soaked my shirt. I thought, “What am I doing here?”
The tension had peaked and then halted in disorienting suspense. My heart lurched with the nagging awareness that doing nothing might become another wound. Yet helped along by the Holy Spirit, by memories of 2020, and by the sheer necessity of doing something, I stood—tears unhidden—and spoke: “Brothers and sisters, only Christ can atone for the ways you’ve been hurt. But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Please forgive us.” Then I sat back down.
Never had I said so little, but been so completely poured out.
In time, the elder of the room rose again. This time he quoted from Isaiah 43:18: “The LORD says—Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. Behold, I am doing a new thing!”
Then he said, “We forgive you. And we see that you are different.”
In an instant, the breathless fog lifted. It was as if someone had thrown open a door and let spring rush in. I’ve experienced African hospitality before, but the welcome that met me afterward surpassed anything owed to a visitor. Pastors confessed their own shortcomings, invited mutual partnership, and held my hand. It was, in every sense, a new thing.
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Should brothers and sisters like these trust foreign missionaries? It is a hauntingly valid question. And it is wise for us to acknowledge that—in many instances—human experience says no.
All the more reason for us not to merely transact the gospel, but embody it. Indeed, we ourselves cannot atone; but Jesus already has, and he delights to minister healing through those he sends. Though it strikes at the heart of Western productivity, Ephesians 2 gospel ministry calls us to offer unhurried presence, to listen without defensiveness, to validate wounds we caused (and some we didn’t), and to stay in the room when everything inside us wants to move on. For ministers of reconciliation, gospel seeds are watered with tears (2 Corinthians 2:4).
Rupture will find us; repair must be chosen. Yet when it is chosen, and trust re-woven, God’s mission rushes in with the spring of a new humanity.
