Chupter l

lsn't there unother vuy:

Dear Bishop,
As you know, I have been in this mission of
Loliondo scarcely a year. It certainly is the most
interesting and exotic mission in the diocese,
located, as it is, deep in the heart of Masailand,
bordering the Serengeti plains, the big game
paradise of Tanzania, and of East Africa.
I wonder if I could make some comments on the
mission. ere are four well-run, well-looked-
aer, expensive, non-aided schools attached to
the mission. ere is a small chapel. ere
is a hospital, extremely well built, fairly well-
attended, bringing insome missionrevenue. e
hospital and the school take up an enormous
amount of time, especially the hospital. Many
of the Masai have been helped materially by the
mission. ere are many instances of strong
CHAl1LR l. lSN'1 1HLRL ANC1HLR \AY:
friendship-relationships between the Masai and
the priests in the mission.
Masai kraals are visited very oen. All the
important events in Masai life, such as circumci-
sion, are attended by the priests. Milk and honey
beer is drunk. e priests even sleep in Masai
kraals.
But never, or almost never, is religion mentioned
on any of these visits. e best way to describe
realistically the state of this Christian mission
is the number zero. As of this month, in the
seventh year of this mission's existence, there are
no adult practicing Christians from Loliondo
mission.
e relationship with the Masai, in my opinion,
is dismal, time-consuming, wearying, expensive
and materialistic. ere is no probability that
one can speak with the Masai, even with those
who are our friends, about God. And there is no
likelihood that one could actually interest them
to the point of their wanting to discuss or accept
Christianity. In other words, the relationship
with the Masai, except the schoolchildren, goes
into every area except that very one area which is
most dear to the heart of the missionary...
I suddenly feel the urgent need to cast aside all
theories and discussions, all eorts at strategy,
and simply go to these people and do the
work among them for which I came to Africa.
I would propose cutting myself o from the
schools and the hospital, as far as these people
2
are concerned-as well as the socializing with
them-and just go and talk to them about God
and the Christian message.
I know what most people say. It is impossible to
preach the gospel directly to Masai. ey are the
hardest of all pagans, the toughest of the tough.
In all their hundreds of years of existence, they
have never accepted anything from the outside.
You cannot bring themthe gospel without going
through several preparatory, preliminary stages.
But I would like to try. I want to go to Masai
daily safaris-unencumbered with the burden of
selling them our school system, or begging for
their children for our schools, or carrying their
sick, or giving them medicine.
Outside of this, I have no theory, no plan,
no strategy, no gimmicks-no idea of what will
come. I feel rather naked. I will start as soon as
possible.
With these words, Vince Donovan begins his book Chris-
tianity Rediscovered, a story of life as missionary amongst the
Masai people on the Kenya-Tanzania border. His experience
of going to the Masai naked" with nothing but the Gospel
causes him to rethink many of his preconceptions of the
Church, of baptism, of conversion, and of the Gospel itself.
It is a thrilling, exciting, and deeply moving story.
But it is also a signicant story inanother way. By deciding
to be concerned about nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and him crucied," (1 Corinthians 2:2), Donovan
3
CHAl1LR l. lSN'1 1HLRL ANC1HLR \AY:
began a movement sixty years ago which is challenging and
changing the church today. Missional church" has become
something of a buzzword and there are many dierent ways of
dening it, but the simplest is this: missional" simply means
sent out." Vincent Donovan saw clearly that his mission
strategy so far had been to CSJOH JO the Masai to the Church,
using the schools and hospitals as a way to attract people from
where they were to where he was. He also saw clearly that
this mission strategy did not work. Instead, he took a course
which was precisely the course that Jesus told his rst disciples
totake: togointoall the world, andpreachthe gospel toevery
creature." (Mark 16:15) To reach the Masai, he needed not to
bring them to the Church, but to bring the Gospel to them.
Musuund und }upun
Afriend of mine is a pastor in a rural church in Japan. He told
me once of a conversation with a neighbour. What do you
do in that church" his neighbour asked. I mean, obviously
I know you do English lessons, but what else" What did this
man, who had lived next to the church for many years but had
never been inside, know about what Christians do Not that
they worshiped or read the Bible, not that they loved God or
loved one another, but that they taught English! I wondered
what this said about our mission strategy.
ere are many dierences between the Masai and the
Japanese. e Masai are nomadic cattle herders living in
the deserts of Africa. eir lifestyle and culture has been
unchanged for thousands of years. e Japanese, on the other
hand, have undergone wave aer wave of change andupheaval.
Barely two hundred years ago, Japan was a country isolated
4
. \e beeve!
from the rest of the world, a feudal society where samurai
roamed; today, it is a country of robots and bullet trains, with
a seat at the UN security council!
But inother ways there are many similarities. e Japanese
has been just as picky as the Masai about what they would
accept from the outside world. e diculty of reaching
both groups for the Gospel has been equally legendary. And
the approach to evangelism of most missionaries to Japan
would resemble that of Vincent Donovan's mission. We have
become convinced that we cannot preach the Gospel directly
to them. We have tried to travel a long and winding road of
pre-evangelism; we have spent a large proportion of our time
running schools, hospitals-and English classes!-to bring
people in" to the church, and less and less of our time telling
them the Gospel. And despite all of this time supposedly
building bridges," very fewof themhave responded infaithto
the Jesus that we have preached. Our pre-evangelism strategy
has been dismal, time-consuming, wearying, expensive and
materialistic." And it has not worked.
\e beeve!
ere is another similarity between Japan and Masailand.
Both the Japanese and the Masai are communitarian cultures.
Many of the missionaries who have come both to Japan and
to Masailand have come from cultures which prioritize the
individual. Western culture and philosophy begins with the
individual and his or her own experience of the world. It takes
as its point of departure I think therefore I am." It should
not be a surprise that missionaries coming fromindividualistic
cultures have come with a theology which rotates around the
5
CHAl1LR l. lSN'1 1HLRL ANC1HLR \AY:
individual. We have taught anindividual understanding of the
Gospel, individual sin, and individual conversion. Our key
question has been do ZPV believe"
Althougha fewindividuals have come tobelieve, by asking
that question, we have oen done people a heinous disservice.
We have separated them, spiritually, from their husbands,
their families, their communities, and oen the culture of
their whole nation. And we have believed that this has been
a good and necessary thing to do! We have used verses like
Matthew 10:35-36 (For I have come to set a man against
his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-
law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be
the members of his household.") to justify this oen painful
breaking of community ties. Even though Jesus said that
he will bring division in families, very oen it has not been
Jesus but the missionaries and pastors who have caused these
tensions!
Worse, we have made it very dicult for newChristians to
be sent out." We have separating people o fromtheir natural
ties, and gathered them into a loving, safe, warm community
called 'the Church'. By the time they are saved, baptized,
discipled, trained and ready to evangelise, they have almost
become strangers to their own communities. By treating
people as isolated individuals, we have picked o one or
two individuals, but we have lost the ability to impact large
numbers of people. Jesus taught us to be shers of men, but
we have been using a line when we could have been using a
net!
Because there is no such thing as an isolated individual.
Everybody lives within networks of family, community and
society. And the Early Church knew well how to use these
6
. \e beeve!
networks to spread the Gospel. e phrase social network"
has become popular in the past fewyears, but the book of Acts
is the story of the Gospel spreading two thousand years ago
through social networks. In Acts 10, a man called Cornelius
sawa vision fromGod, and sent for Peter. While he is waiting
for Peter, he called together his relatives and close friends"
(v. 24) and the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the
message." (v. 44) Paul and Barnabas preached at the invitation
of synagogues (13:15) and their teaching brought together
the whole community. (v. 44) e apostles did not focus on
the isolated individual, but on the family, the synagogue, the
community, and the city. It is a lesson that the Early Church
knew, that we have lost, and have needed to regain.
Aer Vincent Donovan had preached the Gospel in one
village, he lethemto consider their response. When he came
back again, he was met by the elders of the village, who said,
We believe. Please baptize us." At rst he hesitated. is
person and that person and that person did not attend all of
the teaching sessions. I will not baptize them at this point,
but I will baptize everyone else." But the elders explained to
himthat while he had been away, those who understood more
of the Gospel had been teaching those who understood less,
and that the whole village had come to a decision that they
would all be baptized. We believe" did not mean that FWFSZ
JOEJWJEVBM believed in exactly the same way; it meant that UIF
WJMMBHF JUTFMG believed.
ese large-scale corporate decisions, where whole social
groups put their trust in Christ, are called QFPQMF NPWFNFOUT,
and we will see some more examples of them in the next
chapter. Right now all around the world, entire families,
villages, and tribes are experiencing this kind of corporate
7
CHAl1LR l. lSN'1 1HLRL ANC1HLR \AY:
conversion, and where it is happening the Gospel is spreading
like wildre. It is a far cry from the stories we are used to of a
housewife here or a pensioner there.
I am not going to set out a formula for 'how to start
a people movement', as some people have attempted to do.
I don't believe that is possible. People movements do not
happen when we have hit upon the perfect strategy and
followed all the right steps. ey happen when God moves
and people respond to Him. ey oen happen more in
spite of the missionary and evangelist rather than because of
them! And besides, we cannot simply copy, for example, the
approach of Vincent Donovan. It is not practical for us to, as
he did, call the whole of a Japanese village together and oer
to teach them the Gospel. We are not in his situation.
But if we are to see these kinds of people movement take
place inJapan, where we see the Gospel spread rapidly through
whole groups and social networks rather than through
occasional individuals, then we do need to do something.
Missionaries and evangelists will need to change the way that
they think, to change the way that they approach mission and
evangelism. ere will need to be a shi.
1he sht
When Jesus met the Samaritan woman at the well in John
4, she challenged him over where God should be worshiped:
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and ZPV QFPQMF say
that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem."
And of course, she was right. Jewish people believed that
Jerusalem was the home of God. Jeremiah 3:17 sums up the
8
. 1he sht
Old Testament's approach to mission: At that time the city
of Jerusalemwill be called the L's throne. All nations will
gather there in Jerusalem to honor the L's name." e
Temple in Jerusalem represented the seat of God, and God's
purpose in mission was to gather together all of the nations to
worship God there. Mission was about bringing those from
the 'outside' (the nations) into the 'center.' ( Jerusalem)
But Jesus responds quite dierently to Jeremiah: Believe
me, woman, a time is coming whenyouwill worshipthe Father
neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. .But a time
is coming-and now is here-when the true worshipers will
worshipthe Father inspirit andtruth, for the Father seeks such
people to be his worshipers." e NewTestament approach to
mission is quite dierent to the Old Testament. Where the
Old Testament saw the nations DPNJOH JO to Jerusalem, Jesus
TFOU PVU his disciples from Jerusalem to the nations: Judea,
Samaria and the ends of the earth. Wherever they went, they
established local communities of believers. Mission was no
longer about DFOUSBMJ[BUJPO; it become a matter of EJTQFSTJPO.
It was no longer about HBUIFSJOH but about TDBUUFSJOH. e
direction of mission had reversed 180 degrees.
In many ways, the concept of missional church" also
represents a 180 degree shi from the way that we have oen
done church in the past. It is a shi:
- From CSJOHJOH JO to HPJOH PVU.
- From JOWJUJOH QFPQMF UP DIVSDI to JOWJUJOH QFPQMF UP NFFU
+FTVT.
- From QSPWJEJOH B TFSWJDF to UBLJOH QBSU.
9
CHAl1LR l. lSN'1 1HLRL ANC1HLR \AY:
- From FWBOHFMJTUJD FWFOUT to FWBOHFMJTUJD SFMBUJPOTIJQT.
- From UFBDIJOH to MJTUFOJOH.
- From HSPXJOH UIF $IVSDI to HSPXJOH UIF ,JOHEPN.
We have been very used to an Old Testament" model: we
seek to gather those fromthe 'outside' into the 'temple'. Come
to church! We have great worship services, great community,
great teaching! is is the center, this is where the action
is! We have put a lot of energy and eort into making the
church a wonderful place that non-Christians can come to.
But I wonder if this is what the Church of the NewTestament
was like. When the Early Church met, none of the rest
dared to join them." (Acts 5:13) It was not an easy place for
non-Christians to come to! But it was a place from which
the early believers were sent into the world to preach and
to reach others. Philip, for example, was in charge of food
distribution within the Church, but went out fromthe church
into the main city of Samaria to preach the Gospel publicly
there. Every Christian was a missionary, and the Church was
a missionary sending base.
But at some point in history, the Church stopped being
the starting point and became the destination. We came to
believe that if only we can get people through the doors of the
church, they will keep coming back and become part of the
Christian community. e result of this is that the majority
of our evangelistic eort has nothing to do with the Gospel,
but is simply to make it easy for people to come into the
church building! If we instead prepared our people to be
evangelists within their community, within their local groups
andwithinsociety, if we insteadempoweredandsent themout
l0
. 1he sht
as missionaries amongst their own people, we would be able
to do more evangelism with more people, more easily and, of
course, more cheaply!
But of course there are some downsides and diculties to
a shilike this. We are very usedto bringing non-Christians to
where we are: to our events, into our churches, onto our home
ground. In other words, we are used to being in a situation
where we feel comfortable and the people we are trying to
reach feel uncomfortable. We like to be in charge and in
control of what will happen! Evangelism which is missional
takes place where they are, on their home ground, where we
are not in charge and where we are not in control of what will
happen. at can be scary! We do not like to be weak. We do
not like to look foolish.
But actually that is exactly what we are called to do. For
the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the
weakness of God is stronger than human strength.But God
chose what the world thinks foolish to shame the wise, and
God chose what the world thinks weak to shame the strong."
(1 Corinthians 1:25,27.) Kosuke Koyama, a missionary
to ailand, once wrote that Christianity has a teacher-
complex." He meant that because we have the truth of the
Gospel and others do not, we oen act like they have nothing
to tell us. Our communication is always one-way. Even
when we are wholeheartedly trying to serve others, it is the
Christians, with the power, the inuence, the knowledge and
the material means, bestowing our blessings on those who do
not have these things. If anyone treated us in this way, we
would probably nd them haughty and arrogant. It is no
surprise that people do not easily listen to what we have to say.
We have not oen gone to the eort of earning the right to
speak.
ll
CHAl1LR l. lSN'1 1HLRL ANC1HLR \AY:
Jesus, on the other hand, earned that right by getting
involved with the world. He came down to our level. He
did not sit in heaven calling us to join him there and to share
in what he was experiencing. Instead, he le his position of
privilege and authority, and emptied himself, by taking on
the form of a slave, by looking like other men, and by sharing
in human nature." (Philippians 2:7) In the ancient Middle
East, you could tell what sort of a person someone was by who
they ate with. Jesus looked weak and foolish in the eyes of the
Jewish religious leaders because he ate with tax collectors and
sinners". (Mark 2:16) He risked the criticism of the church"
of his day because he went out and reached those outside of
the church."
ere have been many stories recently of Christians in
Tohoku who have seen communities become much more
open to the Gospel as a result of their witness, and we will
hear some of these stories later. Many people came initially
as volunteers to oer help and charity-and that has been
completely necessary and appropriate-but what has really
opened the hearts of the people in Tohoku has been seeing
those Christians who have stayed on in the disaster area
months and now years aer the tsunami. ese Christians
have earned the right to speak to the society around them,
because they have shared inthe local peoples' experience. ey
have not simply handed down help from on high and then
le, but they have committed themselves to being involved
with the Tohoku region for the long haul. eir humble
identication and constant testimony has proved a more
signicant witness than a hundred evangelistic events.
is is what we mean by 'missional church': not just every
member ministry, but every member missionary! In a way, it
l2
. 1he sht
cannot be taught; it must be 'caught.' My prayer is that the
stories in this collection can help you catch that vision.
l3