n
yes May – August 2006 Church Mission Society
LIVING AS A STRANGER
n
Quotable Quotes The whole substance of religion is faith, hope and love... All things are possible to him who believes, they are less difficult to him who hopes, they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues Brother Lawrence
Community is not built on convenience... but on the conviction that I need it for spiritual health. If you want to cultivate real fellowship, it will mean meeting together even when you don’t feel like it, because you believe it is important Rick Warren
God is not seeking a display of my Christ-likeness, but a manifestation of His Christ
Mission, after all, is simply Mission is the overflow of our this: every heart delight in God because mission is the overflow of God’s delight with Christ is a in being God missionary, every heart without Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you are Christ is a alive, it isn’t mission field Watchman Nee
John Piper
Richard Bach
Count Zinzendorf
‘Agape’ love is...profound concern for the well-being of Let my heart be another, without any desire to broken with the control that other, to be thanked things that break by that other, or to enjoy the process God’s heart Bob Pierce
Madeleine L’Engle
n
Pentecost Edition
A
t the heart of mission is a determination to live on other people’s terms: living the life of a stranger in order to share the love of Jesus. In this issue of YES we explore what this involves. With a humorous touch our cover invites us to imagine what it might be like. We explore the process people go through when they engage with another culture. We share stories of people living this way.
8 living on other people’s terms
14 a tale of two cities
4 6 8 11 14 16 17 18 19 22 23
16 shifting bricks
Mission News From our correspondents Cover story: Living on other people’s terms Advocacy: The times, are they a-changin’? A tale of two cities Shifting bricks Getting Africans into mission Tim Dakin: It’s off to work we go People and events Jonny Baker Jane Williams
Jesus, of course, is the supreme model for mission across the cultural divide. In order to redeem us God in Christ took human flesh and shared our life. It required self-emptying and being confined by life as we experience it. With him Christians share the status of sojourner or pilgrim. Our faith tells us this world’s system will always leave us sensing we are outsiders. It’s a principle of faith that goes back to Abraham himself who had “no continuing city” because he looked for something better beyond. That will always challenge us to look beyond those manifestations of Christianity most familiar to us. Professor of mission studies Dana Robert has commented, “What at first glance appears to be the largest world religion is in fact the ultimate local religion. Indigenous words for God and for ancient forms of spirituality have all become part of Christianity. Flexibility at local level, combined with being part of an international network, is a major factor in Christianity’s self-understanding and success today. The strength of world Christianity lies in its creative interweaving of the warp of world religion and the woof of its local contexts.”
John Martin
Editor john.martin@cms-uk.org DIARY SPECIAL OFFER Order your CMS Diary before 1 September at a special price of £4.95 (usually £5.95) Order from CMS Shop. Online orders: www.cms-shop.co.uk Tel: 020 7803 3306
YES Magazine Pentecost Edition. Published by CMS. General Secretary: Canon Tim Dakin. Editor: John Martin. Staff writer: Jeremy Woodham. Designer: Gareth Powell. Printers: CPO. Printed on Arctic the Volume, a sustainable paper that has been accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council. Cover Shot by Gareth Powell. Views expressed in YES are not necessarily those of CMS. CMS is a community of mission service: living a mission lifestyle; equipping people in mission; sharing resources for mission work. CMS supports over 800 people in mission and works in over 60 countries with offices in Cape Coast, Kampala, London, Lusaka,Nairobi, Seoul and Singapore. Church Mission Society, Partnership House, 157 Waterloo Road, London SE1 8UU. Registered Charity Number 220297.
n
“Go forth into all the world...”
Mission News
has produced more mission workers than all the Anglican mission agencies in the UK. It was in the early 20th century that Welsh Presbyterians first sent missionaries to Mizoram in north-east India. They spread such zeal that the Presbyterian Church of Mizoram now sends its own mission workers to Wales, such as the Revd H Sanghuma who has been in Bridgend since 2002. Local Christians say they have never seen a depth of commitment like his. Under a new agreement, Mizoram’s board will get CMS’s help to keep up with applications for its 1,400 mission places.
Mission among Asia’s many faiths. Photo: CMS
Asian alliance
East meets West in a new alliance to boost mission in Asia. CMS has a new partnership with Singapore-based Action Love Limited, part of Asian Outreach International. CMS Regional Manager for South-East Asia Shin Yong Tang, who heads up Action Love Limited in Singapore, says, “We will develop programmes to share resources for mission right across the social spectrum of Christian communities in Asia. We want to enable Christian people to respond to God’s call to mission across cultural and geographical borders.” CMS Asia Director Chye Ann Soh is delighted at the new alliance. “Asian Outreach is one of the leading indigenous Asian mission agencies and has been faithfully serving in Asia for over 40 years,” he said.
Prized scribe Forget the £50,000 Booker prize, a youth worker from Glasgow has been awarded a CMS Encounter Team place for producing the winning entry in an online writing competition. Scott Paget won the CMS ‘blogging’ contest, run in association with the Greenbelt arts festival.
CMS Audiomission producer Trevor Smith. Photo: Jeremy Woodham/CMS
Mission partner in hostage drama
Make podcast history
A night-time torture ordeal ended only after a CMS mission partner in Nigeria fearlessly helped to free the wife of the Bishop of Jos from a gang of gunmen. Deaconess Susan Essam thanked God as she recounted the early hours of Saturday 18 February, when she opened her door to find robbers holding hostage a badly injured Gloria Kwashi. Driven purely by instinct, she stood up to the thugs by grabbing one of their guns. Surprised by the resistance, they left with what cash they could find. The drama appears unconnected to clashes between Muslims and Christians over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
Tsunami relief new phase
Welcomes in the hillsides A strange reversal of fortune has led to an alliance between CMS and a remote corner of India which
Britain’s first ever mission podcast arrived on the scene at the start of the year thanks to CMS. Called Audiomission, the launch edition was presented by Songs of Praise star Pam Rhodes. CMS producer Trevor Smith explains, “Podcast is simply a radio programme that you download from the Internet to listen to on your own portable player such as an iPod or MP3 player. We are proud to be the first people in the UK to pioneer this way of taking mission into a new dimension.” You can find it at www.cms-uk.org/audiomission
A schools-twinning programme in which an Anglican school offers support to a state one in a tsunami-affected area is part of the latest phase of the CMS-backed Church of Ceylon’s relief work.
The Church is supplying around 45 housing units to the north, east and south of Sri Lanka, targeting the poorest of the poor. Local fishermen are also being helped to recover their livelihoods with boats provided by the Diocese of Colombo. Carpenters, electricians, mechanics, masons and welders have also been given powertools and other equipment.
Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi of Burundi talks with president Pierre Nkurunziza. Photo: Miranda Bowen
Burundi’s pivotal EPOCH Burundi has reached a pivotal time in its history, say CMS people in mission Miranda and Roger Bowen. Returning from their second assignment there (their first was 1975-84), they reported that Burundians are full of hope and all around are signs that the country is recovering after 10 years of war. Last year was a landmark, bringing a peaceful transition to elected government led by Pierre Nkurunziza – a Christian who has called for continual prayer for the peace and growth of the nation. The people can now concentrate on rebuilding their nation and healing the wounds of the past and present. There are thousands of refugees to be resettled and reintegrated into society, the Bowens said.
Beauty and violence We’re caught between the beauty of the country and its simmering political violence,
“We will share resources for mission right across the social spectrum in Asia” say CMS people in Nepal. As totalitarian ruler King Gyanendra desperately tries to tighten his weakening grip on power, bomb blasts and renewed attacks have marked the end of the Maoist rebels’ ceasefire. Mission partner Simon Fagg, based in Kathmandu, reports a surge in demonstrations, growing in number and size but only sometimes violent. Bands of rebels frequently stop travellers entering Maoist-held areas, demanding an entry ‘tax’ to fund their insurgency. When Simon and his wife Zoe found themselves face-to-face with one such group, they saw another side of the uprising. “When we explained that we lived here doing voluntary work they, thankfully, decided not to charge us – speaking Nepali most probably helped.”
More news updates every week at www.cms-uk.org/news
Toks Akinbadewa on the wards at Kagando Hospital, Uganda. Photo: Tim Sanders/CMS
n
from our correspondents CMS partners report from around the regions Toks Akinbadewa tells how the mobile phone has reached western Uganda There was much shouting and jumping in excitement in Kagando hospital recently. We could turn on our mobile phones! The reception indicator bars were full to the brim. After three months spent installing the mast and several false starts, there was contact. Now we enjoy the benefits of this modern mode of communication. Already it has opened up a realm of possibilities for the patients, staff, and the quality of care we can provide. Maureen’s mother phoned home to say they would both have to remain in hospital for a few more days and could the family please bring more food. Beatrice got specialist gynaecology advice without the need to travel to Kampala. Crises here are not dissimilar to the NHS in the UK, where many hospitals face mounting debt. These advances in technology help me see more clearly some of the differences between here and home. Salaries are up to two months in arrears here. Part of this is due to delays in getting the financial grants from the Government. There is a high turnover of registered nursing and midwifery staff, often due to the delays in salary payments. This places a huge burden on Pastor Benson, director of the Kagando Rural Development Programme of which our hospital is part. He and other management personnel as well as senior doctors have not been paid for the past four months.
Paul Watson, mission partner in Sri Lanka, receives a disturbing telephone call I have just put the telephone receiver down. The police have picked Namalie up. Nothing in the circumstances of her birth indicated that one day Namalie would end up as a police matter. Her family were relatively prosperous. She went to a good CMS girls’ school. Then her family fell on hard times. Gradually their land was sold. Namalie ended up alone in the family home deep in the forest, almost a mile from the nearest road. Then she had to sell even that, moving into a cramped shack at the back on the few remaining yards of the family plot, which she shares with dogs. Her bed now is a wooden platform. There is no electricity, water or toilet. The lock intended to protect her from intruders is a piece of string. In sub-human conditions, she somehow feeds herself and comes to church each Sunday, limping on the foot which was twisted in an accident but never treated, all the way to the road where she eventually boards a bus to town. She lives for the monthly healing service when I, to my shame, rest my hand only gingerly on her greasy and unwashed head as we pray for God to bring his power to her. She could move to a special home, but she refuses to leave her dogs. She will be okay for another year, she says. The phone call was to inform me that she’s in hospital after the police found her on the side of the road. Namalie is 76 years of age.
“People say the ethnic tensions and fighting have ended and they’re more united than since the outbreak of conflict over 20 years ago”
A Bangladeshi woman collects precious clean water. Photo: David Hall
James Pender warns of a global problem affecting more people than even HIV/AIDS I can’t find candles in the dark so I write this in the gloom, warming myself beside my wood-burning stove. Afghanistan, like Narnia, is always winter and never Christmas. You couldn’t get much further away from the consumerism and winter lights of Oxford Street. It’s business as usual at my local bazaar. The peak of winter was slow in coming, but now it’s definitely cold. Yet still a far cry from the snow needed to ensure good harvests in the coming year. The weather seems to have brought a hotting up of the violence, with an increase in bombs, including suicide attacks. Poor security complicates the establishment of our new project work. Time in rural villages encourages me and gives me hope. At a ‘beans day’, a whole village taught each other about nutrition and vaccinations over a beans and bread lunch. The girls used a real baby to illustrate. When it crawled off, a substitute was grabbed from the unsuspecting crowd and the drama continued to the sound of a screaming child. One village has formed development councils. People say the ethnic tensions and fighting have ended and they’re more united than since the outbreak of conflict over 20 years ago. It’s inspiring to see growing unity emerge and members of communities reconcile with each other. As Canon Andrew White says, “If the Church has nothing to say on reconciliation, it has nothing to say.”
The developing world is being poisoned by arsenic, and the silence surrounding this crisis is one of the biggest scandals of our time. Worldwide, more people are suffering from arsenic poisoning than are infected with HIV/AIDS. It’s a catastrophe on a scale worse than the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the Bhopal isothiocyanate leak or the Kuwait oil fires. Like global warming, it is a ‘natural disaster’ but one induced by humans. Until the 1970s and 1980s poor people used mainly pond and river water for drinking. Huge infant mortality figures from diarrhoea caused by contaminated water prompted governments such as Bangladesh, plus international aid agencies spearheaded by UNICEF, to bring bacteriologically safe water by sinking hundreds of thousands of pump tubewells. They achieved a remarkable success. It was then not known that many of these tubewells were tapping water contaminated by arsenic, which is located in a layer between about 50 to 150 metres below the surface of the ground. Now up to 80 million people in Bangladesh are at risk from dissolved arsenic in their drinking water. It breaks my heart to go to Alumpur where over 90 per cent of the tubewells contain water exceeding by up to 40 times the amount of dissolved arsenic considered safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO). I come back home to Meherpur and just want to cry.
n
Living on other people’s terms When Jesus said “I was a stranger”, was he advocating that we be kind to unfamiliar people? No, says Anthony Gittins, he had in mind something far more radical. Governments everywhere seem flummoxed by the challenge of what it takes for people of radically different cultures to understand one another and live together harmoniously. However, with over 200 years’ experience of dealing with that conundrum, CMS has a just claim to understanding what it takes. Such experience may prove very important for the world’s future.
CMS owes a lot to John V Taylor, General Secretary in the 1960s and ’70s. He taught theology during his early time in Africa, but later came to sense that he’d missed something vital. So he spent time living in African villages in an endeavour to better understand the African people and their particular response to the Gospel. In a famous passage in The Primal Vision, Taylor
observes how many Africans treated their Christianity like a school uniform. In the daytime they would fit into it, in order to get on in the ‘system’. At night they changed into African clothes and reverted to a mindset rarely penetrated by the missionaries. Taylor set the challenge for mission to start where people are, to live with them on their own terms. It echoed Paul’s determination to become one with the people to whom he preached in order to win some of them for Christ (1 Cor 9:19–23). The theological principle in play here is kenosis, a term used to speak of Christ’s self-emptying in order to become human. Anthony Gittins is perhaps the leading inheritor of Taylor’s legacy. A recent visitor to CMS, he has done mission work in Sierra Leone, followed by two decades working out its implications in ministry to homeless women in his adopted Chicago. He forthrightly asks, “Isn’t it time we stopped thinking of ourselves as the centre, and the rest of the world on the margin?” The task, he adds, is, “displacing ourselves and seeing ourselves as other.” Gittins cites two New Testament stories to back up his point. In Matthew 25, “Jesus says, ‘I was a stranger.’ But we haven’t tried to do as Jesus said.” Gittins believes missions and churches in general still assume that it’s a call to be kind to the stranger on the basis of viewing them as an ‘other’. Rather, Jesus’ message, Gittins believes, is to see “the stranger as self”. Then in the Emmaus story, Jesus comes on the scene as “an unknown, a marginal stranger who in the end helps the disciples make sense of their life. There’s so much that a stranger can give insiders that they can’t get for themselves.”
“The missionary, just by being present, can be catalytic in stirring up people who might be dispirited” Gittins is emphatic that there’s still an important place for the foreign missionary. “At least a stranger has the capacity to generate a conversation that will allow the insider to be reflective about the good and the bad. A stranger can give moral support. If the circumstances of the local people are less than ideal the missionary can be immensely encouraging. “I think it’s very important in the 21st century, when there are so many people living in cultures which do not seem to be developing materially in a way expected in the 1960s. The missionary, just by being present, can be catalytic in stirring up people who might be dispirited.” Gittins agrees there are many lessons from history. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a vast proportion of CMS missionaries were afflicted by mental illness and invalided home. What was going wrong?
Mission experience in West Africa led Gittins to discover the hard way that he was “the strangest of strange people” to the Africans whose life he shared. “I wanted to be acceptable and useful. Against this, the whole purpose of the Christian life – and Jesus himself is our model – is how to be a kenotic minister: I must be emptied out so I can be filled full with Christ.”
“One thing that epitomised it is the phrase ‘the white man’s burden’. There was the understanding that there were these poor, benighted people who could do little or nothing for themselves. Since the white man was so blessed he had the responsibility to pour out everything he had on behalf of these benighted people.
Here was the seed of a revolution of Copernican proportions. We go on mission as a pilgrim or sojourner. The guest, the outsider, has to be “open and willing to learn things that you do not know, to listen to other people, to be the disciple.”
“There was a certain kind of ‘missionary depression’ that accompanied the missionaries, adding to the already massive risk of sickness prevalent in many of the countries they went to and for which there were few antidotes. (cont...)
10 n
(cont...) “You put those two together and you come up with what I once called the ‘missionary mythmaking process’. Once missionaries set their hands to the plough or got on the boat, often taking their coffins with them, they might as well be dead. Stories of missionaries told people that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.’ There is evidence along the coast of West Africa in the mid-late 19th century of not explicitly a death wish but certainly a premature capitulation. “There are some very interesting statistics to suggest that missionaries died much quicker than civil servants from the British government, for example, and some people will say it’s because they were front line and quite exposed but some will say it’s because the missionaries thought of martyrdom.” Gittins suggests there are four phases involved in the process of living on other people’s terms: • A preliminary phase: you are warmly welcomed and immediately lionised but this will end very quickly. The host has many priorities to fulfil alongside accommodating a newcomer. • A liminal phase: a period of predictable unpredictability. People will watch the newcomer carefully. The wise newcomer will seek help on how to understand this new life. Where that doesn’t happen, the newcomer stands to take a fall. • An encorporation phase: A time when the newcomer is still an outsider but gradually mutuality sets in. • Assimilation: where the host community comes to terms with the newcomer and the person is assigned the status of either ‘outsider/non-participant’ or ‘outsider/participant’. So how does the person who wants to do mission in another culture – or simply make common ground with someone in the near neighbourhood – need to approach the task? “For me the key is willingness to enter into ‘mutual indebtedness’,” Gittins suggests. Then to work out the implications, “I could go to Ephesians 2 and talk about how Christ came where there were boundaries in order to erase them, to make sure that there are neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.” Interview by John Martin, February 2006.
11
11
advocacy
The times, are they a-changin’? Mission often means lobbying for causes and arguing for ideas, says Jamie Bird Usually when I tell people that I’m the advocacy co-ordinator for a mission agency they tend to take a step backwards and never look at me in an unguarded way again. People are wary of the idea of ‘mission’ and fazed by the term ‘advocacy’. So as a matter of social survival I have been driven to find some simple explanations. Advocacy is, at root, simply about influence. Each of us can influence those around us. It’s about recognising the influence we have and using it in constructive ways to inspire change. Mission, at its simplest, is also about influence. It’s about God using us to inspire change in others. Looked at in this way, it’s easier to see how advocacy and mission might fit together, but it leaves an important question unanswered: how are we to use our influence? The answer lies in how Jesus tried to influence those around him. Transformation Jesus had some shrewd ideas about how the world should be run. Yet not one of his parables addresses the issue of asylum; the Beatitudes pass neither a blessing nor a woe on economic migrants. There is no evidence of Jesus trying to force upon people his own social or political agenda. The parables, for example, hardly constitute a coherent programme of reform. Jesus sought to transform the whole person through a relationship in which they were challenged to rethink
their ideas, preconceptions and relationships. Advocacy should be similarly holistic. It’s often directed at the political level. Yet Christians are also called to challenge the beliefs of individuals whom we might see as opponents. At root, advocacy should aim not just for good policy but for nothing less than the restoration of just relationships between all parties. The stranger How does this work in practice? How, for example, can we be good advocates for the stranger among us? It means using our influence as voters to lobby the Government for a fair asylum system – a system that doesn’t intern people for administrative convenience, doesn’t forcibly separate families but does ensure a basic standard of living. It would be a hollow victory, though, to succeed in forcing these policies upon the public without them gaining popular support and understanding. Alongside political activism, therefore, we are called to demonstrate in our own lives the truth and effectiveness of the values we would like to see accepted more widely. This is a challenge. It is far easier to write a letter to our MP about asylum policy than it is to open up our own house to strangers. But how else can we witness convincingly to the idea that generosity and a willingness to be vulnerable can create a more cohesive and supportive community? Such attempts are neither without risk nor guaranteed to succeed – but was faith ever otherwise?
n
Living as strangers and pilgrims
13
Just a stone’s throw from this scene, rich Kenyans enjoy an immaculate golf course. Photo: CMS
n
A tale of two cities When he began learning the local language, Colin Smith didn’t realise he was taking the first step into the heart of Africa’s extreme poverty. By Julia Katorobo While we pick our way down a rubbish-strewn mud road, my conversation with Colin Smith is constantly interrupted as he stops to greet his numerous friends in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. A woman frying doughnuts outside a closet-sized shop calls out a cheerful greeting. Down the road, another looks up from her sewing machine and strikes up a brief conversation. Since its formation in 1912, Kibera has mushroomed to house 30 per cent of the Kenyan capital’s population. Most of the structures are shanties built from iron sheets or mud and wattle, sometimes timber. Viewed from a slope, the rooftops stretch as far as the eye can see, a striking collage of grey and brown iron sheets at different stages of rusting, with hundreds of TV antennas poking out at intervals. It’s a backdrop used to great effect in the recent hit film The Constant Gardener. This is a self-made community of about one million people, all illegal squatters on 630 acres of government land. It has evolved its own social and administrative systems – quite arbitrary, with selfappointed and often corrupt leaders and landlords. They can levy a fee on you for fixing your own roof. You cannot fail to notice the rhythm of life in this city within a city. At every corner there is a sign of enterprise: doughnuts on sale, hair braiding services, restaurants, a kerosene pump enclosed in a shanty. As if in a fast-paced African dance, the people go about their micro-business with a sense of purpose and pride. They are either defiant or oblivious of those living on the other side of the ever-increasing chasm between the rich and poor. Many go into the
15
larger city for work, but Nairobi’s other residents shun Kibera with fear. As Colin puts it, “The city is divided. You can be born in Nairobi and never step in the slum for 40 years. The slum is invisible. There’s a need to build bridges between marginalised areas of the city. Even churches a kilometre away from Kibera may have no contact with the slum at all.” This makes Colin, a white British national working in Kibera, a rarity. Those we meet on the road greet him as a brother. Some of them he met through St Jerome’s Anglican church where he is Assistant Vicar, and others through the Centre for Urban Mission where he serves as director. Colin’s initial assignment when he came to Kenya in 1999 was to organise in-service training for the clergy in Nairobi diocese. He came along with his wife, Anita, and two children, Sheila and Sandie. They live a short distance from Kibera but in almost every respect in an entirely different world. The children attend an international school and Anita is attached to All Saints Cathedral and has a ministry within the international community. “Sometimes our worlds seem so far apart and we struggle to make sense of what it means to work between what are often the social and economic extremes of life here and understand where we fit. To be all things to all people presents a distinct challenge when such great chasms exist between people living in the same city.” In the beginning Colin practised his limited Kiswahili on a local worker called Moses. “He told me about Kibera, the place where he lived while his family remained up country. One day we went together to his home. I remember my initial reaction was one of profound shock. I couldn’t believe how people lived or that they actually had to pay rent on a room that to my eyes seemed completely uninhabitable.” Colin’s least trained pastors were working in Nairobi’s 100 slums and so he began working with them to develop a mission strategy. After three years, he sought attachment to a church in a slum and was sent to St Jerome’s. He says living on Kibera’s terms required him to be ready to go back to square one and face the vulnerability of not quite knowing who he was, where he was, or what he was doing. “I began simply by visiting homes with members of the congregation. In some ways that presented
“To be all things to all people presents a distinct challenge when such great chasms exist between people living in the same city” Kibera to me in a new way as I began to connect a little more deeply with people living in the community.” He moved from an office-type environment, which was more focused on performing particular tasks, to a community environment where presence and relationships were more significant than getting specific things done. It meant relinquishing conveniences like telephone, electricity and office resources. The Centre for Urban Mission was initially located on the Carlile College campus, but was moved to Kibera to operate in an authentic context. It offers a three-year high diploma course in Urban Mission and various grassroots programmes run in Kibera and other slums across the city. “We realised that if we want to train people for ministry in the slums we need to place the college right in the heart of an environment from which we can learn and to which we can contribute,” says Colin, a living example of the famous adage that mission is to sit where people sit and let God happen.
n
Shifting bricks Earthquake despair in Balakot, Pakistan. Photo John Martin/CMS
On 8 October a massive earthquake in Kashmir devastated a region as big as The Netherlands. John Martin and Phil Simpson visited a few weeks later to report on the recovery operation. PS: The earthquake struck in the morning around about eight o’clock. In the rural areas most of the men were out in the fields. The women were at home and the children at school. So it was women and children who took the brunt, crushed and trapped. We saw men walking about looking totally lost. The towns of Balakot and Muzaffarabad were levelled like a war zone. It’s a very vulnerable region where these tectonic plates meet. The forecasts are for more big quakes over the next 50 years. JM: There was no advance warning. The only contingency planning possible is to install earthquake-proof foundations and steel-framed walls. But that assumes there are the resources for this. PS: We visited two Christian hospitals close to the epicentre. Bach Hospital where we met Dr Ruth Coggan who came out of retirement to assist. Closer still is Kunhar Hospital, set up by Dr Haroon Lal Din and run by Pakistani Christians. People there told us that during the acute stage the immediate need was rescue and medical relief. Then with the prospect of a severe winter, getting enough tents to shelter people. The main rebuilding would not start until the Spring. JM: I was very impressed with Dr Haroon’s work. He had not had a day off in six weeks and every day there were 200 people waiting in Accident and Emergency. PS: Kunhar is very strategically placed. There is the medical work (that happens in the hospital) but also the extension work in the community. I was encouraged by how the Church in Pakistan is responding to the disaster – collecting supplies, sending people to help. CMS’s partners have developed a coalition for co-ordinated action.
JM: CMS has got some great national partners in Pakistan. PS: Yes, indeed. Communication and co-ordination are absolutely vital. We have been able to establish two communication centres, in Bach and Kunhar. Then we’ve had staff go and help in the emergency: Nigel Bull (working in Quetta) joined the Tearfund team, Bilquist Din (a nurse from Coventry) went to work with Dr Haroon and Dr Ruth Coggan went back to Bach Hospital. A question for you John: This was your first visit to Pakistan, how did you respond personally to what you saw? JM: The activist in me wanted to get out there and start shifting bricks. Then I realised it’s important to focus and do one thing. I want to take an interest in the drug work CMS sponsors in Pakistan, even though it is not directly related to the earthquake. Phil Simpson is CMS Regional Director for Eurasia; John Martin is Head of Communications. You can hear the full discussion and an interview with Dr Ruth Coggan on the CMS AudioMission Podcast at www.cms-uk.org/audiomission
17
Getting Africans into mission This is the dream of Duncan Olumbe: “Africans building themselves and others up for the Kingdom.” For too long Africa has been seen as the place where non-Africans go when they want to carry out mission. The concept of the African missionary has largely been overlooked. Duncan Olumbe is a man with a vision to radically change that status quo. “Perhaps my greatest dream is to see the leadership of the African Church embrace mission but as an integral part of church calling and that to be worked out in the allocation of resources, of time, of training and mobilisation.” In February Christians in Africa launched Mission Together Africa (MTA), an initiative to up the pace of mission involvement throughout the African Church. Now the work of MTA is underway with a short-term mission to the Muslim north of Kenya. CMS is part of the new movement alongside Sheepfold Ministries, Church Army Africa; the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), FOCUS Kenya and churches including All Saints’ Cathedral, Kampala. Olumbe, director of MTA, told YES that the goal is, “to see a community of believers across Africa who are committed to Kingdom values and spreading of the Gospel wherever they’re located. We intend to major on cross-cultural mission and it’s a vision that extends to African Christians playing a full part in g lobal mission.” The launch in February brought together 50 leaders at an event in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital. “There’s been a lot of buzz created – many people are talking about MTA,” Olumbe said. “We felt it would be good to bring together leaders from churches, mission organisations and key African people. “One of MTA’s cutting-edge programmes is Mission Adventure Galore (MAG). Through it we are targeting
“Africa is a very youthful continent – young people in some countries like Kenya make up over seventy per cent of the population” the Christian youth across Africa, inviting young people to get involved in short-term, cross-cultural mission experiences. Africa is a very youthful continent – young people in some countries like Kenya make up over seventy per cent of the population.” The first MAG Team went to Garissa in north-eastern Kenya, a predominantly Muslim setting, in April. “We’ll be sending out a second team among Asians in Nairobi in August. We hope to send another to unreached people groups in the Kerio Valley in eastern Africa in November; and then a fourth into Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, in Nairobi during December 2006.” According to Olumbe CMS has played a very significant role from the very beginning in forming MTA. “The initial ‘dreaming together’ involved people like Bishop David Zac Niringiye, former CMS Africa Director, and the current Africa Director Dennis Tongoi. Beyond that, CMS has nurtured it through a seed grant. Looking to the future, Olumbe summed up, “Now we’re working on getting churches and local Christian professionals to commit themselves to giving to MTA. We want to give African Churches and individuals opportunities to support us. It’s coming along slowly. It’s important to have a cross-pollination of resources so our support is not overly Western. “I talked with a young couple of Christian professionals in Kenya and I was amazed that a day after I shared MTA’s vision with them, they called me to ask, ‘How can we be involved financially in this?’”
n
Heigh-hoe, it’s off to work we go!
Until a guest is given a hoe and asked to work, they do not become a member of the community, says CMS General Secretary Tim Dakin When I worked in East Africa I was inspired by the story of an African missionary who had gone to live on an island leper colony. His aim was to share the Gospel by serving the needs of those who were alienated from their communities because of their disease. After some years, the missionary also became a leper. Of course at the heart of our faith is the story of how Jesus entered into the reality of our world with its sinsickness and its complexities. Through Jesus’ unique and ultimate expression of God’s love, in his life, death and resurrection, we have known God’s vulnerability. Our mission service is to follow his example. Mission service is an invitation to enter another’s world and connect with the burdens and possibilities of another community. We can only do this as we risk living on other people’s terms. The danger that Western mission has faced for many decades is that its practitioners have been insulated by their wealth. The first step towards acknowledging the nature of mission relationships is to recognise our guest status. In many African cultures the guest is thought of as a blessing. A guest can bring healing, can encourage the rain and can point out where the roof leaks. But until the guest is given a hoe and asked to work, they do not become a member of the community. The second key aim of CMS is that it “equips people for mission service”. Our hope is to enable people to discover and use their gifts at the invitation of others from communities around the world. Mission service is not about the rich sharing with the poor; it is about the risk of becoming more than guests and entering another community. Mission service is therefore about sharing our gifts in another context. As we do this we engage with Christians and non-Christians who have different perspectives on life and faith. The vision is to create practical local expressions of a worldwide network of those who have found the ultimate significance of Jesus. In this edition of YES there are lots of stories about people’s mission service and what this means for them personally and those with whom they work. What unites all the stories is the way that Jesus’ love has transformed their lives.
19
People Diana Witts OBE
Tributes have been flooding in to YES for Diana Witts OBE, the former General Secretary of the Church Mission Society, who died during the night of 19 March 2006 at the age of 69. Diana was the first woman to hold the post of General Secretary and led CMS from 1995 to 2000. A person known for her remarkable commitment and determination, she was accustomed to being cast in pioneering roles. She made history when, as the first woman appointed to the staff of Gordonstoun, she enabled it to become the first major private school in Britain to be fully co-educational. On joining CMS, she spread her vision for breaking new ground by overseeing the opening up of new work in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was distinguished by being awarded the OBE in 1999 for her services to CMS. She was also honoured as a Canon of Salisbury Cathedral. Her memoir Springs of Hope, in which she reflected on her carefree childhood in Herefordshire in the 1930s, was published towards the end of last year. In the book she revealed how she had been first drawn to East Africa by its equatorial snow-capped mountains. Diana’s subsequent mission work led her to live with the Maasai in Kenya, among the poor of Zaire and with war-torn communities in Sudan. Lady Gill Brentford, President of CMS, said: “Diana led the way as the first woman to head up a leading mission agency. “She had a remarkable career as a long-term mission partner throughout East and Central Africa. “She was courageous in her leadership and always modest about her achievements. She has been an encouragement and inspiration to many gifted younger women.” Another former CMS General Secretary, Harry Moore, paid tribute to Diana’s faith: “It was in Africa that her churchgoing grew and crystallised into a passionate and committed Christian faith, which, thereafter, was expressed in a life of love and service.” A special service in thanksgiving for her life will be at 2.30pm on Wednesday 24th May at St Lukes Church, The Avenue, Kew.
WELCOME New Mission Partners Helen Brannam has been assigned to Bangladesh where she will be working as a doctor.
Jean and Paul Dobbing have been assigned to Nepal. Paul is an IT teacher, most recently with Transco. Jean is a secondary school teacher, most recently in Glasgow. Both have two years’ experience in Nepal. Eric and Sandra Read (with Peter and Atiyyah) have been assigned as mission partners to DRC. Eric has worked in project engineering and rural development, latterly in the Philippines and Uganda. Sandra has worked as a nurse in the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, East Africa and the UK. Eric will help strengthen the capacity of the diocesan development team and Sandra will work in community health. Jane Shaw will serve in Raiwind Diocese, Pakistan, as an ordained minister offering support in training and development of health workers. She has worked and lectured in health management, most recently as senior fellow in health and hospital management at the Nuffield Institute, and served as a health management adviser in both Uganda and Pakistan.
Staff Emily Platt, Asia Personnel Officer; Paul Read, People in Mission Funding Adviser; Gillian Wilcox, Relocation Manager.
Births Jason and Tracy Day, mission partners in Nepal, rejoice at the birth of Ruby Grace on 24 November 2005. Lizzie and Simon Guillebaud, Salt programme, Burundi, welcomed Zac on 17 December 2005.
RETURNING Mission Partners Joseph and Karin Ayok-Loewenberg (with Aluel and Ashol) have completed their second spell as mission partners. From 1992–95 they worked with Sudanese refugees in Uganda. In March 2002 they were accepted again as mission partners to serve in Egypt, again with Sudanese refugees, Joseph in a chaplaincy role and Karin in community health. Cathy and Steve Burgess and family have completed 18 years of service in Kenya. They are now based in Bristol and Steve is temporarily filling the post of Manager for the Mid-Africa region. Conrad and Elizabeth Foote (with Jonas and Leia) served for three years in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Both nurses, they have been working with people living with AIDS, initially with the Anglican Church and latterly with Servants. They have now returned to Liverpool.
n
People & Events Pat Gilmer retired at end of February after almost 40 years’ service in Uganda. She was originally with the Ruanda Mission doing leprosy work, virtually eradicating the disease in south-west Uganda. She stayed through the Amin era and for the last 15 years has been running the Growers, Orphans and Disabled Project in Rukungiri (SW Uganda) for which she was awarded an MBE. It enables AIDS orphans to support their families by growing chilli as a cash crop. Pat plans to return to Uganda as a Salt member. Pat Nickson has transferred to the Salt programme after 35 years as a mission partner in Bangladesh, Afghanistan and DRC. Pat has been an influential figure in the world development scene and was awarded the OBE in 2005. She now combines involvement with Aru Diocese, DRC, with curacy in Upton, Wirral. Barbara Williams, who served for two years in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in a teaching role, now returns to the UK.
Hussein medal for 32 years’ service at Ahliyyah Girls School, Amman, Jordan. Ethel Christine Turner, CMS staff 1975–86, died 10 Mar 2006.
FAREWELL Staff
June 17, Learning day on Christian formation at St Matthew’s, Westminster, London. 10am–4.30pm with John Drane, Andrew Roberts and Ben Edson.
Nick Fane, Mid-Africa Regional Representative; Barbara Shaw, Regional Manager Middle East.
Deaths of former mission partners… Cecily (known as Grace) Butt, Kashmir 1964–1982, died 8 Dec 2005. Hilda Kitchen, 39 years in India, died 1 Dec 2005. Margaret (known as Peggy) Taylor, Uganda 1944–1959, wife of the late Bishop John V Taylor (former CMS General Secretary), died 25 Jan 2006. Bishop RE Lyth, Sudan, 1938–1944, Uganda, 1959-74, died 18 Feb 2005. Ailsa May Lovell Pank, Uganda and Kenya 1949–70. Miss Rachel Hassan, Sudan 1944–1960 and London office, died 28 Nov 2005. Iris Swee Song Fong, Malaysia and Hong Kong, 1958–1987, died 3 Mar 2006. William Alfred James Wedderburn, CMS staff 1946–1976, died 28 Feb 2006. Alan Iles, Nepal 1981–1988, died Feb 2006. Margaret (known as Meg) Marion Stewart Scott, CMS medical dept. 1962–1982, died 30 Jan 2006. Rev John Guy Bookless, India 1953–1973, died 26 January 2006 (father of Dave, who is a mission partner with wife Anne, seconded to A Rocha UK). Betty Le Fevre, Uganda and Kenya 1965–1984, died 26 Jan 2006. Joan Hopkins, Sudan and Uganda. Carmencita Bailey, CMS staff 1985–1989, died 15 Jan 2006. Ina Morrison, CMS staff 1957–1986, died 13 Jan 2006. Margaret Kidd, received MBE and King
Events blah... A series of conversations hosted by CMS on mission, worship, church and Christianity in today’s culture. 29 April, Learning day on emerging leadership at St Matthew’s, Westminster, London. 10am–4.30pm with Kester Brewin, Maggi Dawn and Ana Draper. 2 May, An evening with John Drane on mission and contemporary spirituality, Manchester. Further details to be announced, see www.blahonline.net 10 May, An evening with John Drane on mission and contemporary spirituality, at Partnership House, London, 6.30pm–8.30pm. Further details to be announced, see www.blahonline.net
blah... Emerging Churches Tour with Ryan Bolger and Karen Ward: July 15, 10am–4pm Partnership House, London. July 17, 10am–4pm Methodist Central Hall, Manchester. July 18, 10am–4pm Birmingham Cathedral. For further details of all blah... events see www. blahonline.net, email blah@cms-uk.org or ring 020 7803 3304. 2 May, Spirited Exchanges, Partnership House, London, 12.30pm–2.00pm. Alan Jamieson, author of Churchless Faith and Journeying in Faith presents findings from new research. Spirited Exchanges UK present a vision networking and facilitating groups for church leavers. Email spiritedexchanges@btinternet.com. 10–15 May, Isle of Man visit by CMS Northern team and some mission partners in Britain. There will be a presentation to the diocesan synod and visits to schools. The team will spread the word on mission cells, fresh expressions of church, cross-cultural visits
21
and Bible training for lay people. 24–29 May, Mind, Body, Spirit Fair at Royal Horticultural Halls, London. Jonny Baker and Gareth Powell of CMS are running a stand. Email jonny.baker@cms-uk.org or ring 020 7803 3304 19–23 June, Releasing the Entrepreneur among the People of God. At Lee Abbey, Devon, with Chris Neal, Paul Thaxter and Jonny Baker of CMS. To book online, go to www.leeabbey.org/uk/devon/book/ bookingformtemp.php and select programme 15A, or freephone 0800 389 1189. July: The new mission community house in Oxford comes into CMS ownership from July. Decorating weeks and prayer/social gatherings will be open to those wanting to help. Email gill.pooleph@cms-uk.org or ring 01865 250688. 28–30 July, Jewels 2006 conference at Swanwick, Derbyshire. For people involved in ministries to Asians in Britain. Contact 0121 643 7771, or jewels@mabham.globalnet.co.uk CMS at New Wine 22–28 July, New Wine A; 30 July – 5 August, New Wine B. Bath and West Showground, Somerset. CMS at Soul Survivor 9–13 August, Soul Survivor A 14–18 August, Soul Survivor B 19–23 August, Soul Survivor Momentum Bath and West Showground, Somerset.
Applications for the above are invited, contact Abby Peggs on abigail.peggs@cms-uk.org or ring 020 7803 3347. 28 October, CMS Members’ Day in London. Enquiries: 020 7803 3304 Email: elizabeth.martin@cms-uk.org 24–26 November, Mid-Africa Conference at Swanwick. Enquiries: 020 7803 3309 Email: graham.atkins@cms-uk.org 30 November, Auckland Castle Concert, Durham Enquiries: pennyminney@onetel.com or 0191 3711295
CMS – Some Key Contacts Mission Partner Openings & Salt Enquiries Stuart Buchanan 020 7803 3348 stuart.buchanan@cms-uk.org Donations Information Louise Gibson 020 7803 3329 louise.gibson@cms-uk.org CMS Resources Richard Long 020 7803 3376 richard.long@cms-uk.org Short-term Individual Placements Alex Gough 020 7803 3357 alex.gough@cms-uk.org Short-term Team Experiences Debbie James 020 7803 3326 debbie.james@cms-uk.org
CMS at Greenbelt 25–28 August, Cheltenham.
Youth/Emerging Church Jonny Baker 020 7803 3343 jonny.baker@cms-uk.org
All festivals info: Cat Morgan 020 7803 3366 Email: cat.morgan@cms-uk.org
Enquiries & Prayer Linda Howell 020 7803 3332 linda.howell@cms-uk.org
Experience Visits ENCOUNTER (18–30s) Israel-Palestine France South Africa Tanzania
Speakers & Membership Enquiries Elizabeth Martin 020 7803 3304 action@cms-uk.org
PRAXIS (over 25s) Praxis Kenya Praxis Romania Praxis Rwanda
1–15 July 17–23 July 22 July – 12 August 26 July – 16 August
Mission Partner Links Julie Whitfield 020 7803 3339 julie.whitfield@cms-uk.org Northern Team Leader Ian Smith 01904 659 792 ian.smith@cms-uk.org
6–20 September 16–30 September October (dates tbc)
Southern Team Leader Richard Hovey 01249 712446 richard.hovey@cms-uk.org
n
jonny baker
Getting over my post-colonial guilt In India I had a conversation with a man from the north east of that country. He told me about a village where pre-war mission had great success. The whole village of about 1,500 people converted to Christ. Then in 1945 the mission people had to leave and gradually the converts returned to their Hindu faith. The man was part of a church sending people to the village to revive the Christian faith. When the villagers were asked why they had reverted to Hinduism, they replied that there was no one who could play the music and lead the hymns. And wasn’t Christianity a foreign religion anyway? We then had a great discussion about indigenous worship – music, sitting on the floor rather than pews, and building churches shaped like ashrams or mosques – an approach which is growing, especially in rural and tribal areas. He suggested there was no problem with the Western approach to worship in the early days of the missionaries because it was exotic and new. Years after, however, the legacy of this approach was that many other people outside the church just saw it as foreign. Issues of Gospel and culture in mission are nothing new. In his classic book of 1923 called Christ of the Indian Road, E Stanley Jones offers an approach:
anywhere near a church building. He preferred to get his discussion evenings hosted by Hindus and Muslims on their turf. • look for resonances and common ground with Hinduism as a starting point for relationship, rather than looking for differences and creating opposition. A surprised Hindu lawyer asked Jones, “Do you mean that your message is Christ [but] without any implication that we must accept Western civilization? I have hated Christianity, but if Christianity is [only] Christ, I do not see how Indians can hate it.” Excited about experiencing Indian worship, I attended a packed cathedral in Bangalore. If I had closed my eyes I could have been in England. We spoke English, sang hymns accompanied by an organ, followed a liturgy not very different to an Anglican one while the clergy wore robes and the Communion bread was wafers rather than roti or naan. Even the collection bags were the same as the ones at home. I wrote negatively about this experience on my return. In response, an Indian told me that families have been worshipping this way for decades, so who was I to say it was not an authentic Indian expression? He said I needed to get over my post-colonial guilt.
• separate the importance of Christ from Western culture to help Indians to think through what the Christ of the Indian road might mean, rather than feeling that to accept Christ is to become Western.
I’ve been involved in the alternative worship movement in the UK because I’m passionate about the need for worship to connect with culture. But what does that look like in India? Maybe it’s more complicated than it seems.
• keep a healthy distance between church culture and mission because it is easy for mission to be subverted by a church agenda. Jones would often not meet
For further stories and reflections on Jonny’s visit to India see http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/ india/index.html
23
jane williams
How can we begin to live on God’s terms? One of the things I have been most struck by in travelling across the Anglican Communion with my husband is how poverty takes away freedom of choice. Poor people live completely on other people’s terms. Nothing revolves around them, nobody consults them, they can be pushed around or ignored, but they have no redress at all.
I spoke to them about the trial and death of Jesus. From the moment of his arrest, Jesus was treated as someone with no rights; no say over his own life. He could have perhaps bought his freedom, but only at the price of betraying his mission by saying and doing things on other people’s terms. As it was, these people dictated the terms of his trial and death.
Poverty doesn’t just dictate terms to individuals but also to whole nations, which have to live as richer nations tell them, producing what the richer nations will buy and selling it at the low prices the rich are only prepared to pay.
The people who condemn Jesus to death believe that they have the power to decide how things will be. They believe they can tell history that Jesus is not important. They probably believe their action will ensure that history never hears of Jesus at all.
It is appallingly hard for a nation like Burundi or Sudan to decide its own national priorities and try to work, build and plan for the kind of nation it would like to be when its people are so much dictated to by economic need.
How wrong they are. Like it or not, we all live on someone else’s terms, and that someone is God. All our illusions about dictating terms to others, or about making the world respond to our will, are ultimately without substance.
In situations of great poverty, women and children, in particular, can be used and abused and disposed of as though they were commodities. On a visit to Pakistan last year, I met a group of Christian women working with women and children who have been forced to work in the sex trade. It was deeply ingrained into these people that their own feelings and needs were unimportant. If they wanted to live at all, it had to be on other people’s terms.
How will history – and God – judge those of us in the richer nations who, knowing that we could end poverty right now, don’t want to very much? Not if it means giving up some of our comforts and freedoms, not if it means allowing the desperate plight of the starving poor to dictate the terms on which we live. How might we begin to live on God’s terms, and see that the poor are given that chance too?
Just one more...
Addiction study pack £10.00 “The truth is, we’re all addicted to something. Only when we appreciate the nature of addiction will we be able to set its many, many captives free.” Jackie Pullinger. Based around research carried out in the former Soviet Union by CMS mission partner Alison Giblett, this pack aims to help you do just that; using Bible study, prayer and group reflection. The pack also contains worship materials and an introduction by Jackie Pullinger. Grab your copy now from the CMS shop, visit www.cms-shop.co.uk or call 020 7803 3376.
www.cms-shop.co.uk