Christianity Rediscovered

This is 1 of those books that I've heard mentioned time and time again over the last couple of years as a 'must read', and kept intending to but had never quite got round to getting hold of a copy. Anyway, finally have and got to say I have not been disappointed. An amazingly challenging and thought provoking read.

The author Vincent J Donovan is an American Roman Catholic priest who went out as a missionary to the Masailand of Tanzania in the mid-60's to a mission compound that included schools, a chapel, a hospital etc. After a year there he writes a letter to his Bishop talking about how well run the mission is, the fact that there are good relationships between many of the priests and the Masai etc., but that even though the mission by then was into its 7th year there were no practising adult Masai Christians, that no Masai child on leaving the mission school had continued to practice Christianity and no indication that any would do so. He writes:

The relationship with the Masai, in my opinion, is dismal, time consuming, wearying, expensive, and materialistic. There 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....I have heard one missionary say that it may take one hundred years before the Masai are willing and ready to talk with us about God, but we must stay here so that we will be present when that day comes.

He then goes on to ask for permission to: simply go to these people and do the work among them for which I came to Africa. He proposes that he would cut himself off from the schools and the hospital and just go to the people, to their 'kraals' and talk with them about God and the Christian message:

I know what most people say. It is impossible to preach the gospel directly to the Masai. They are the hardest of all the 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 them the gospel without going through several preparatory, preliminary stages.

But I would like to try. I want to go to the Masai on 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 gimmick - no idea of what will come. I feel rather naked...

What follows is an amazing account of what happened when Father Donovan did just that. He went to these kraals approached their leaders to ask to share his message with them, he would visit a particular community once a week and tell them as a whole community (individualism was alien to these Masai) about Christianity - but stripped right back to its bare essentials and using examples from their life and culture to explain things. This led to whole communities of Masai accepting the Christian gospel and being baptised, and he'd then move on to other communities. I can't do justice to the amazingness of what God did through him here!

In the book he's critical of the way mission has been done in East Africa by the western church over the years. He's critical of how the word mission came to be used to refer to a group of static buildings (i.e. the 'mission compound'). He argues that by trying to build churches and staying their to run them, putting leadership and diocesan structures in place the western church is trying to import a 'westernised' church and Christianity into a culture that is completely alien to, completely at odds with, the western way of doing things. This doesn't fit with his understanding of what mission is, and he argues that it is not the understanding or practice of mission seen in the early days of the Christian faith. He talks of mission as being dynamic, as being about actively taking the gospel out and meeting the people where they are at with it - not about bringing people in to something that is static and at odds with their culture, somewhere that they are uncomfortable with and unable to relate to. He completely deconstructs what he sees as the western understanding of church, and takes it right back to what he sees as actually the basic, bare essentials of what church really is.

Like I say - it is an amzingly challenging and thought provoking read and I highly recommend it! As I've thought about what he writes one line of thought that has struck me is that he is writing about mission to the Masai in the mid-60's, but I'd love to know what he would make of the mission and work of the church actually in our own western culture today. I feel so much of what he says needs to be applied to the way Christians and the church need to be working and practising mission in the western world today as well as in other parts of the world. We need to be willing to deconstruct and change our understandings of what church is sometimes. We need to accept that there are many in this country for whom talking of God and the Christian message is completely alien. We need to learn to accept that many people will not come into our churches or be comfortable in them with the way 'things have always been done'. We need to be out there meeting people where they are at sharing the basic gospel message without all the 'extras' by word and action. I'm not advocating change for changes sake, but God guided change for the gospel's sake. Challenging stuff!

As he draws the book to a close Donovan returns to an original question of it, What is missionary work? and writes:

...that work undertaken by a gospel oriented community, of transcultural vision, with a special mandate, charism, and responsibility of spreading and carrying the gospel to the nations of the world, with a view of establishing the church of Christ.

Gospel oriented community - a community of public witness to evangelical values, formed by the gospel, dedicated to the gospel, understanding of the gospel, reflecting the gospel...

Transcultural vision - implying a stance and a view that seeks to break away from ethnocentric culture blindness. A wider vision, a freer vision, a humbler vision recognizing the richness of the human race...

Special mandate, charism, and responsibility - a unique and proper function and calling of certain members of the Christian community, discerned and authorised by that community, to a task beyond mere witness and holiness; a function to be distinguished from the general missionary obligation of the universal church, and from the apostolic responsibility of all Christians.

Spreading and carrying that gospel to the nations of the world - not a mere witness to the gospel in the palce where one is, but a reaching out with the gospel to where the nations are; a centrifugal motion outwards from the center, not static, not an inward, self-centered, self-salvation oriented movement...the urgency of forever reaching out with the gospel to the place where people truly exist, where they are and as they are.

Towards establishing the church of Christ - which is the sign of salvation and hope raised up for the nations, the light to the Gentiles, not the Ark of Salvation for those who dwell in it; the church for the 'non-church'...Missionary work should not envision the setting up of mission compounds or permanently dependent ecclesiastical colonies, but rather the coming into being of autonomous, adult, self-propagating, open-ended, unpredictable, Spirit-controlled, many-cultured responses to the gospel, which are the church of Christ...

Finally, the church described here should be seen as, itself, on the way to the kingdom, and as only part of the mission of God to the world, as only one step in the pursuit of him who is hunting down all of mankind.

I've said it a few times already, but I'll say it again - challenging, thought-provoking stuff! Go read.