Ryan Kuja is a missiologist, counselor, spiritual director, writer, and global citizen with a background in international mission, relief, and development. He has lived on the front lines of shalom in fifteen cities and rural areas on five continents. Ryan writes and teaches on the integration of missional praxis, developing intercultural competency, spiritual formation, psychology, and the transformation of individuals and communities. His writing has been published in a variety of theological journals as well as at Sojourners, Red Letter Christians andMissio Alliance. His first book, From the Inside Out: Reimagining Mission, Recreating the World was released in 2018.
Posts By This Author
6 Harmful Consequences of the White Savior Complex
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
Though I was never a missionary in the standard sense of the word, never proselytized or attempted to save souls, the engine driving me was the white savior complex. I thought the dark bodies living in the developing world needed us white, Western, Christians. The other Westerners I worked with believed we had it all pretty much figured out. We had the right theology. We had the right answers. We had the expertise. We were the so called “whole” condescending to help the “broken.”
Can I Really Use My Wounds to Do Good?
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Rather than something that must be hidden, brokenness becomes a uniting essence. As different as we are, woundedness becomes the very catalyst for transformation, allowing the ladders of hierarchy and walls of division to naturally begin to decay into the common ground of suffering — a suffering that can, and will be, the very site of new life.