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| The remnants after Jungle's "dinner" |
The other night, Tiffany and I returned home from dinner
with friends to find that Jungle had eaten The
Rainmaker. I guess I wasn’t
supposed to be reading that book right now after all. So, I picked up a small book I received in Ethiopia called An Indigenous Church in Action, by
Alfred G. Roke. Not really the
most compelling title, but after reading the first three pages, I’m
hooked. Below are a few excerpts
from the book, along with a comment or two from me. Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts!
“This was, and is, a
truly indigenous church, where the principles of self-support, self-government,
and self-propagation were adopted, by the Spirit’s leading, right from the
outset. There is a world of
difference between this method of working, and the usual method of waiting to
hand over responsibility to the native church, until in the opinion of the
foreign missionary it is sufficiently mature for this to be done. An unbiased reading of the New
Testament will convince that the former method, the truly indigenous method, is
God’s way of evangelizing the world.”
~A.L. Harris, in his
foreword dated January 1st, 1938
So, what about when this opportunity for planting an
indigenous church from the start is already long gone? Like, 100 years gone?
The book itself begins:
“The objective of all
true missionary effort is the world-wide propagation of the Christian faith;
not the Christianizing of the whole world, but its evangelization.”
~p. 7
In other words, the primary objective is spreading the
Gospel, NOT Christian religion in its various forms and practices.
“We aim not at
bringing the whole world to Christ, but at the bringing of Christ to the whole
world. The universal objective therefore must be the evangelization of every
people. The local objective, and result of the former, is the planting of a
church. Neither objective is
possible without God, but both are with Him.”
~p. 7
Again, evangelism is paramount, and the natural outworking
of evangelism is the planting of a church. This church, however, need not look, sound, or feel like the
missionary’s concept of church, but rather reflect how the indigenous believers
come to express their faith in their Savior.
Okay, last one for now:
“Any activity, by
whatever name it may be called, if it does not soundly contribute towards the
missionary objective, must sooner or later be acknowledged as
unsatisfactory. Much work has
begun in all sincerity, and those who today are called upon to carry it on,
feel it is in vain. In many cases
the younger missionary is faced with the possible surrender of the vision that
carried him to the field, and is in danger of settling down into an old
established rut which cannot bring him or his coworkers any nearer the great
objective. A candid examination of
the facts regarding a great deal of present day missionary work will quickly
prove that all is not right.”
Two quick thoughts.
First, this was written in 1937, yet we still face these same issues
today. Second, and I will conclude
with this, the writer is NOT saying that community aide programs such as schools and hospitals are bad. The
preceding paragraph actually describes them as outworkings of ministry. But, if these programs, no matter how
sincere they are, stand in the missionary’s way of sharing the Gospel, then
there is a problem. If this
problem is allowed to persist for many years, and gets passed from one
generation of missionary to the next so that the new missionaries to the field
are forced to push aside the goal of evangelization in order to maintain the
tradition of help over the Gospel, something has gone terribly wrong. This issue cannot be allowed to
continue. Change must take place. So I ask,
WHEN DID MY WORK
BECOME MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHRIST’S WORK?
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