Through a different lens By Renita Barnes
M
ost people Renita Barnes participated in Council for World Mission’s Training in Mission (TIM) programme with could not locate on the map the Cayman Islands where she hailed from. But the journey across continents in 2017 was not just a lesson in exploring the world but one that helped learn many things in common personal, contextual and within their respective churches. “My family background and ancestry is similar to that of my country which is influenced and strongly tied to different areas of the Caribbean, Jamaica, Cuba, and Honduras,” says Barnes about Cayman Islands, one of the few British colonies within the Caribbean which is better known as a tax haven.
“Before the TIM programme my understanding of the church and its mission was influenced by the colonial understanding of it. Mission was meant to convert sinners and non-Christians and spread the gospel to everyone. But the TIM programme broke down these understandings and showed me that Christianity as a religion was so much more than that. When the colonial lens is stripped you see clearly how missional the religion can be,” says Barnes.
A member of the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands (UCJCI), Barnes travelled and lived for seven months with nine other persons from Samoa, South Korea, Myanmar, Zambia, Kiribati, Rwanda, South Africa, Taiwan and Guyana for the TIM programme. “Throughout the journey, I learned so many new things about myself and, more importantly, I realised how much I didn’t know about my country and the Caribbean region,” says Barnes. CWM has been equipping young people for the ministry and mission of its member churches since 1981 through the Training in Mission (Diploma in Mission Studies) programme. Ten to 12 participants from the member churches are brought together for about seven months of intensive mission training. In every church, TIM participants are seen as living expressions of CWM’s idea of partnership in mission. So far, over 350 young people have gotten a new practical and radical understanding of what witnessing to Christ means.
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For instance, many questions began to bother her. Who were the indigenous people of Cayman? Is the Caribbean beginning to suffer from climate change? Is the economic situation in Cayman ethical? Is patriarchy seen as ‘normal’ in the Caribbean rather than as oppressive to women?
