Sent on August 6, 2007
Dear friends and family,
It was a rainy day down here in South Africa, causing us to abandon our plans to put up the walls of a church and rest a bit. So here I am writing to you!
Dear friends and family,
It was a rainy day down here in South Africa, causing us to abandon our plans to put up the walls of a church and rest a bit. So here I am writing to you!
After spending almost three weeks down here, I've managed to get a marginal idea of what is going on in African Leadership, the mission organization through which I and many other missionaries work here. Things have become normal! I did not suffer much culture shock, but only lately have my surroundings and daily routine seemed routine. As I wrote in my first letter on my way to Africa, I was looking forward to the blessing of being able to work for God's Kingdom without having to think and plan the details – the "busyness" of university life. Each day here, short term missionaries like me do what we are bid. It is busy in the sense that I work a good deal, but not busy in that I am always putting pressure on myself to keep up with a large number of self-imposed commitments. And it is great! It is easier here to serve just one master, the Lord.
In my prayer letter that I sent out in May, I listed what my activities here would be. Teaching children Bible stories, doing construction and door-to-door evangelism, traveling to a rural area for a week, and several other things. And all of these things for the Kingdom of God. This list ended up being pretty accurate. But as one might imagine, these ways are a small part of the ministry that African Leadership does, and give only the smallest idea of what the day-to-day concerns of the missionary are. They fit into a larger framework of guiding concepts and central ministries that, together, make up African Leadership.
Because of our history, the word "missionary" can carry an imperialistic tone. We may think that a missionary is a person that seeks to give other people something that they don't have, or prompts other people do something that they would not otherwise do. While some activities of African Leadership may look like this in part, what defines African Leadership is its mission to strengthen the local church in native communities all over Africa. I am most familiar with the ministry led by Pastor Ohm in Cape Town, so I'll describe what is happening here. In Cape Town, African Leadership's mission rests on two "pillars": pastoral training and children's ministry.
Pastoral training is a critical part raising up the local church because very basic knowledge necessary for leading a congregation is lacking among pastors in Khayelitsha. There are hundreds of churches, but most are house churches that are led by whomever arises as the best speaker. They may not even have bibles available. African Leadership seeks to give pastors basic biblical and pastoral training so that they can effectively make God's Kingdom real in their communities. To this end, it operates African Theological College within Khayelitsha. It encourages and provides initial support to its graduates whether they lead a church or serve in other worthy ways.
Because of our history, the word "missionary" can carry an imperialistic tone. We may think that a missionary is a person that seeks to give other people something that they don't have, or prompts other people do something that they would not otherwise do. While some activities of African Leadership may look like this in part, what defines African Leadership is its mission to strengthen the local church in native communities all over Africa. I am most familiar with the ministry led by Pastor Ohm in Cape Town, so I'll describe what is happening here. In Cape Town, African Leadership's mission rests on two "pillars": pastoral training and children's ministry.
Pastoral training is a critical part raising up the local church because very basic knowledge necessary for leading a congregation is lacking among pastors in Khayelitsha. There are hundreds of churches, but most are house churches that are led by whomever arises as the best speaker. They may not even have bibles available. African Leadership seeks to give pastors basic biblical and pastoral training so that they can effectively make God's Kingdom real in their communities. To this end, it operates African Theological College within Khayelitsha. It encourages and provides initial support to its graduates whether they lead a church or serve in other worthy ways.
Children's ministry is critical to extending God's Kingdom in Khayelitsha because most people that are Christians were exposed to the Christian message as a child. Thus African Leadership supports a great deal of preschools and Sunday School programs. Almost every day for our team includes some sort of singing, dancing, and bible teaching with children. We will also be participating in the high school ministry, which has brought us into high school classrooms to speak about some sort of concept of character from a Christian perspective.
As a short term missionary here, it quickly becomes apparent to me that the native leaders that African Leadership seeks to raise up are the center of the ministry. These kinds of leaders are the people that I work with most, at least ideally. Short term missionaries like me can serve in the ministries that these people are running; for example, our team is going to speak in high schools for the next two days. This is a ministry coordinated by both missionaries and a native guy.
Pastor Ohm told us about one missionary that worked for many years in a foreign land, left for a year, and found nothing of his work left. Thus when we say that we want to raise up leaders, we really mean it. Pastor Ohm notes that he wants to make sure that he chooses people to support that, for example, do not always listen to him. The missionary, in his words, is like a spare tire and African Leadership is a ministry of "indiginization." The key phrase in all of this is "for the Kingdom!" The Kingdom is God's, and so each missionary must not be trying to build his/her own Kingdom, but helping all brothers and sisters in Christ to build the Kingdom. This is how we as missionaries fulfill the command to love one's neighbor as one's self - we serve our neighbors by enabling them to serve others.
I suppose I've given a shot here at writing down what some of the big ideas on the missionary side of things are. Maybe once I'm back in the States I'll have time to write down some of the characteristics of the culture and situation here in Africa and in South Africa that influence what difficulties there are to overcome and what I have experienced.
Lately our work for the Kingdom has been in the form of speaking in high schools, constructing a church, playing with the children and doing Sunday school at the construction site, and doing evangelism in the area of that church. In all of this I've been blessed with a closer grasp of the Holy Spirit - otherwise, what words do I have to share with people? So you can pray in this my last week in South Africa for:
-The Spirit to be active in our ministries, for example, as we speak in high schools tomorrow;
-For my daily work to be always for God's Kingdom, and not can for my own (it's so easy to compete, etc).
For the Kingdom!
Carl
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