Escobar

“The paradigm that is ending is the colonial paradigm of "important" missionaries as representatives of the highly civilized and developed world taking a downward mobility trip to civilize and evangelize poor natives in faraway places. That was mission from above, from a position of power, progress, and prestige. In many places now, willingly or unwillingly, mission has to be carried on "from below," from positions of vulnerability, lack of political protection, and scarcity of funds.” (88)1
“At the same time, howeverL from the religious margins of American society, a disorganized and unconventional missionary movement was taking place. Historians have had difficulty recording it or paying attention to it even though in more than one place it had a surprising success” (89)2

“At the same time, howeverL from the religious margins of American society, a disorganized and unconventional missionary movement was taking place. Historians have had difficulty recording it or paying attention to it even though in more than one place it had a surprising success” (89)1
“Having come from the hardships of marginality in Sweden and migration in Chicago, it was not difficult for Vingren and Berg to adopt a self-supporting missionary style, to mix with the common folk and to live with them. Historians now realize that this Swedish strand in the history of Brazilian pentecostals contrasts with the style of the American missionaries who came later when the Assemblies of God in the United States had reached a certain degree of institutionalization and respectability.
Their background as marginal migrants and heretics in Sweden was a definite element in the missionary style that Vingren and Berg adopted. Not having a long-established ecclesiastical tradition, they gave more freedom to the Brazilian converts to find organizational patterns and evangelistic methodologies that were contextual. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians in Brazil had educational efforts and intentional strategies to reach the upper classes and to form a middle class. Berg and Vingren reached the bottom of the social scale and allowed the birth of a church that could be wholly contextual in its social environment.” (90)2

S Escobar, “Mission from the Margins to the Margins: Two Case Studies from Latin America” Missiology 26:1 (1998), 87–95