Spying on Lions with Elephant Poop

BreakPoint: One Atheist Who Gets It

A Real Head Turner
One Atheist Who Gets It
January 21, 2009
I’ve frequently said that our greatest witness as Christians is when we’re caring for the poor, visiting the prisoners, tending the sick. When we take these things seriously, others can’t help but see the power of the Gospel.

Recently, the faithful witness of some Christians in Malawi turned the head of a British journalist and atheist who traveled to Africa before Christmas. Writing in The Times of London online, Matthew Parris said that these Christians not only proved to him that Africa needs God, but also have challenged his atheistic convictions.

After visiting a charity that provides water pumps to rural communities, Parris noticed that many of the organization’s African leaders were strong Christians who gently demonstrated their faith in quiet conversation and action. They reminded him of the Christians he knew when he was a young boy living in Africa with his family.

These Christians, he recalls, were a “different” kind of people whose faith seemed to give them what he describes as a “liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world, [and] a directness in their dealings with others.”

If this isn’t a winsome demonstration of faith, I don’t know what is!

The Christian missionaries Parris met when he returned to Africa in his twenties had a similar impact on him. Wherever missionaries lived, he wrote, “something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to.” They had broken through what he calls “crushing tribal groupthink.” They see themselves as individuals who stand in direct relationship to God—not as subservient subordinates who must kowtow to tyrants like Robert Mugabe.

Parris is sure that Christian faith has something to do with this. And of course he’s right! He says he has, “become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone won't do it. Education and training alone will not do.”

“In Africa,” he writes, “Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. And the rebirth is real. The change is good.”

Parris says that what he’s observed among Christians in Africa “confounds [his] ideological beliefs” and has “embarrassed [his] growing belief that there is no God.”

He had this to say about the Christians he met who were providing water pumps: “Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.”

Here is an atheist who gets it: Worldview matters! How you see the world, what you believe about where we come from and where we are going, will affect how you live.

When you understand that every human being is made in God’s image, and that God Himself died on a cross for sinners, people will see you ministering to prisoners. They will see you feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.

Or, like Matthew Parris, they may even witness you bringing water pumps to rural villages in Africa. They will see Christ before their eyes.

BLOG: Afrigadget.com

http://www.afrigadget.com/

 

How short-term mission is becoming a two-way street.

Christian Vision Project
Unexpected Global Lessons
How short-term mission is becoming a two-way street.

Andy Crouch

posted 12/04/2007 08:46AM


In 2007 the Christian Vision Project asked, What must we learn, and unlearn, to be agents of God's mission in the world? CVP editorial director Andy Crouch has been exploring this question with mission leaders not just in the pages of Christianity Today and its sister magazines, but with the help of a documentary film crew, producing a curriculum on short-term missions that will be released in October 2008. Here he describes what some churches are learning, and unlearning, as they rethink the meaning of mission trips.



A few years ago I was in a church service where a team of energetic young adults was reporting on their short-term international mission trip. Like most such groups, this one had plenty of cross-cultural experiences to report. "The food was so spicy," one wide-eyed young woman said, drawing laughter from the congregation. "It was terribly hot and humid-we had such a hard time getting to sleep," another team member said. Amid much hilarity, the team leader described their consternation when they arrived at a remote village only to discover that the Christians there were expecting them to lead a worship service-on the spot.

They had been stretched, they said, way beyond their "comfort zones." They had also returned full of praise for God and love for one another and their new brothers and sisters. "We received so much more than we gave," one team member said. All wonderful, true sentiments that I had heard dozens of times from returning short-term missionaries.

The only difference was that I was in Nairobi, Kenya, every member of the team had been born and raised in Africa, and they had just returned from India.

That morning I had to unlearn several of my ideas about global mission. That this short-term team even existed (as part of their church's partnership with several churches in India) was dramatic evidence of the "multidirectional" nature of mission in the 21st century. The travelers' testimonies reminded me that North Americans are not the only ones making pilgrimages of mission around the world.

But the African students' report on the difficulties of serving cross-culturally also challenged a subtle assumption of mine: that crossing cultures was somehow uniquely difficult for Westerners. To be sure, these Africans had grown up in a society where tribal identities still shape daily life, and most of them spoke at least one language alongside English-so they were well ahead of most white American Christians in their cross-cultural awareness. Also, they would have arrived in India with none of the assumed privilege (and potential resentment) that clings to many Western visitors to a former colonial outpost. Still, in many ways crossing borders was as unfamiliar and difficult for them as it was, and is, for me.

If you define "mission" as crossing cultural boundaries for the sake of the gospel, the global church is engaged in mission on a scale that would have been unimaginable to previous Christian generations. Ever since the journeys of Paul and his friends, missionaries have hitched rides on the infrastructures of commerce and military power. What is different today is the sheer scale and speed of human mobility.

Travel and telecommunications have become less expensive and more efficient by several orders of magnitude. Globalized economies reward and demand travel. Millions buy one-way tickets to new lands with hopes of better lives, but an increasingly affluent slice of the world's population can afford to travel round trip. Likewise, Christian mission's center of gravity is shifting from the few who set off for a far country with no plans to return, to the many whose return tickets are tucked safely inside their knapsacks.

Is this round-trip mobility a good thing for the advance of the gospel? Perhaps. The African team came back with stories of new converts and strengthened believers in India, as well as the increased confidence that comes from taking real risks for faith. Many American teams can tell similar stories.

On the other hand, you don't have to listen long before you hear embarrassing tales of cultural insensitivity and mismatched expectations. Americans in particular tend to be activists, wanting to see concrete outcomes-which can lead to make-work projects, sometimes with comic results. (As Nairobi pastor Oscar Muriu told me in an interview for Leadership, "After you leave, we repaint many of the walls that you painted!") Many cultures value preserving warm relationships more than they value the kind of truth-telling that may lead to conflict; thus, short-term teams may come and go without ever realizing they have disappointed the receiving partners who seemed so welcoming.

Return tickets can lead to attenuated relationships. A friend's church recently sent a second short-term team to serve alongside Christians in a small, materially poor town in Central America they had visited the previous summer. They were overwhelmed, and taken aback, when their hosts tearfully told them on the last night of their visit, "We have had American Christians visit us before. But none of them ever returned. We thought that God had forgotten us."

Perhaps this is one thing we need to learn, and unlearn: Even the shortest cross-cultural mission trip is fraught with opportunities for God to make himself known-and with the real potential that we will unwittingly misrepresent him. The shorter the journey, in some ways, the greater the stakes, since we will all too easily ignore both the blessings and the blunders.

Nairobi wasn't the first place I heard one of the most well-worn clichés of short-term mission: "We went expecting to give"-to lead a Vacation Bible School, do door-to-door evangelism, or build a school-"but we received so much more than we gave." This is a truism whenever we visit another culture for a short time-we will usually be the guests, served with a graciousness we likely will not fully appreciate. Anyone who has been on the receiving end of a short-term group knows just how much work it takes to host well.

Yet we seem surprised every time, because the whole apparatus of preparation for short-term trips assumes that the reason Americans invest their time and treasure is to do something for others-to check off a list of activities that will supposedly help advance the gospel. In fact, it is the rare short-term team (with the notable, partial exception of medical and dental missions) that brings such unique skills and cross-cultural sensitivity that they can make a net contribution in their brief visit. Our counterparts in the developing world are more resourceful than we imagine-and we need them at least as much as they need us.

How different would our short-term trips be if the typical fundraising pitch went something like this? "Dear members of Bethel Community Church: This summer eight of us will be traveling to spend time with our fellow Christians in ___________, and to serve their neighbors who are not Christians through the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. Our purpose in going is to learn and to bring what we have learned back to this church. Frankly, we will benefit from this trip in more ways than will our gracious and generous hosts. Please support us in this endeavor to become the church God wants us to be."

Would we give to that kind of mission? Would we go the next logical step and welcome Christians from that far-off community into our world, inviting them to send teams of their own to help us serve our neighbors? Or are we too dependent on the satisfaction of having done something for them over there? Would it be too much of a blow to our pride to reexamine the assumptions built into these words?

Happily, more and more churches are changing the meaning of round-trip missions. In the course of researching this year's CVP emphasis on trends in global mission, filmmaker Nate Clarke and I discovered a number of churches pioneering a very different approach to missions. They were planning trips carefully to build long-term partnerships rather than just to provide one-off experiences. They were sending both junior high students and senior pastors. They were making it possible for their less affluent partners to make trips of their own to the United States, so that mission was no longer unidirectional but truly "round trip." The result in each case was more lasting results in both locations than short-term missions can usually hope for. Our documentary film and small group curriculum, Round Trip, will be released next fall, and we hope it will start many conversations about how to make short-term missions more fruitful for senders and receivers alike.

This year's CVP articles have responded to the question, "What must we learn, and unlearn, to be agents of God's mission in the world?" It's not just full-time missionaries who are becoming learners and unlearners. The more we learn to make short-term missions two-way experiences, the more we all will learn about God's work in the world-and in us.

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today.

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Could someone please fix the Mombasa-Malindi highway!

Could someone please fix the Mombasa-Malindi highway!

Story by RASNA WARAH
Publication Date: 9/10/2007

MUCH AS I SYMPATHISE with my fellow columnist Macharia Gaitho’s complaints about the poor state of roads in his neighbourhood of Nairobi West, I challenge him to take the Mombasa-Malindi highway to see what a bad road really looks like.

This 120-kilometre stretch of once-tarmacked road that links the rest of the nation to the northern coast of Kenya and beyond to Lamu and Somalia has more craters than the moon.

I started counting the potholes just after Mtwapa north of Mombasa when the car I was in began crawling at the leisurely pace of 20 kilometres an hour – but lost count when I reached 4,963. So I did a rough calculation in my head. There was at least one pothole, if not three, every 10 metres, so that makes at least 10,000 potholes in the 100,000-metre stretch from Mtwapa to Watamu, a record, I am sure, by any standard.

Somewhere near Vipingo, the road got smooth again, but this time, there was another hazard. The road was so unevenly and poorly constructed and was so high off the ground that any car that veered off the road was in danger of rolling over. No wonder Alfred Mutua is going around arresting contractors.

Coast Province hasn’t exactly been the priority of this or any other government. For centuries, the people of the coast have become used to being exploited, neglected and dispossessed of their land. Tourism is a major income earner for Kenya, but the people remain among the most impoverished in the country because most of the money generated from tourism goes to the national coffers without filtering back to the region.

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics reported last year that Malindi and Kwale districts had more than 70 per cent of their respective populations living in poverty, a figure that is comparable to poverty levels in the much-neglected districts of Mandera, Marsabit and Turkana.

Not surprisingly, all five regions are least accessible by road. Even if this or any other government has no intention of investing in the people of the Coast Province, it must, for its own sake, invest in the region’s infrastructure.

Tourists cannot enjoy our sunny seaside resorts if there is no road to get there or no airport on which to land. Malindi town, potentially a major tourist attraction, and one that already has a well-developed hospitality industry, plus fabulous Italian cuisine, could be a major tourist destination for those seeking a quiet holiday away from the more crowded destinations such as Mombasa.

But getting there is a major hassle. The road is virtually non-existent and the airport is too small to cater for large jumbos. So international tourists have to land at the Mombasa international airport and then take an uncomfortable three-hour bus ride (that should ideally take one hour) on the pot-holed Mombasa-Malindi highway.

RECARPETING THE MOMBASA-Malindi highway – and all highways in the country for that matter – is not a luxury that a poor country like Kenya cannot afford. There is a direct link between economic growth and transport infrastructure.

When people cannot access their markets or transport their goods, they become impoverished. They do not trade as the cost of buying and selling become prohibitive when there is no affordable or accessible transport network.

When people cannot travel to where the jobs or the schools are, they remain poor. Poor people do not pay taxes (not even VAT as they often live off the food they grow themselves). In other words, they do not contribute to national development.

Transport and communication infrastructure has an enormous economic multiplier effect. When you build a road or a railway network, you not only open up markets, you open up possibilities. Every shilling spent on transport infrastructure pays back dividends many times the original investment.

The British knew this when they decided to invest a staggering five million pounds to build the Uganda Railway in the latter part of the 19th century. They knew that the history of every conquering civilisation was intimately linked to whether or not it was able to access its territories via transport and communication networks.

The success of the British Empire lay in its ability to use its naval prowess to reach its colonies and then to build railway networks that could penetrate deep into the colonies in order to exploit their resources. The Empire’s investment in the railway paid off – not only did the British gain access to the much coveted Uganda, they got Kenya as a bonus.

Unfortunately, when the colonialists left, the Government made little effort to invest in the railway network they left behind. Creaking carriages and worn-out lines were never rehabilitated. Recent privatisation of the same railway has yet to see dividends.

If Kenya is to achieve its Vision 2030, it must invest heavily in transport and communication infrastructure, be it roads, ports, railway lines, airports or fibre optic cables. Without infrastructure, there is little hope of prosperity.

An authority on African animals was giving a lecture. When he finished, he asked for questions.

One man stood up and asked, "Is it true that the wild animals in Africa won't bother you if you carry a lighted torch?"

The speaker replied, "That depends on how fast you carry it."