did the Apostles really understand Jesus?

Too big a topic to be handled in a 200 word blog I know but I was intrigued when during the discussion session of one of the thesis proposals a questioner made the point that PNGns of her generation had had no experience of leadership because the missionaries came in to the villages and determined the spiritual leadership for the villagers on the missionaries terms and not on the traditional terms of the villagers. Thus what was recognised as leadership by the villagers was replaced by a new paradigm and model by the missionaries: for the missionaries, their leader was the one who would grow the Church. This seemed to be a different model to the one that Augustine of Canterbury took to the Anglo-Saxons in Kent. It seems to be more like the one that Paul took to Asia (Ephesus etc) and Greece. Jesus' overturning the tables of the moneychangers is oft quoted as the standard for Church's behaviour for reluctant and recalcitrant converts but he did this in his own Jewish culture. He behaved much more circumspectly with Samaritans and people outside his culture. Maybe Missionaries and Christians could take some pointers from this?