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EVEN SOME ATHEISTS SEE THE TRUTH WHEN CHRISTIANS FOLLOW JESUS

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St. Francis of Assisi said:

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless walking is our preaching.”

The following account was published in The Times on December 27, 2008. It is written by Matthew Parris, a self-avowed atheist. St. Francis of Assissi’s words could never be more relevant:
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve 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 will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation.
The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world – a directness in their dealings with others – that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi. We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission. Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers – in some ways less so – but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. 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.
There’s long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.
I don’t follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety – fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things – strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won’t take the initiative, won’t take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.
How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds – at the very moment of passing into the new – that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it’s there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It’s… well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary’s further explanation – that nobody else had climbed it
– would stand as a second reason for passivity.
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Posted by admin on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 8:40 pm 
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SERVING WITH THE POOR IN AFRICA

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I recently read a great book by Yamamori and Myers called Serving With The Poor In Africa, and I thought I would share what I learned. The more I am exposed to people that have been involved with 2/3 World Community Transformation, the more I realize how little I know and how much I have to learn. It also reminds me that: 1) with God all things are possible 2) without God, were are only foolin’ ourselves.

So here are eight things I learned from this great resource:
  1. Nehemiah is the classic OT example of facilitation and participation (read Visioneering by Andy Stanley). The NT also provides a vivid example of many of these concepts.

  2. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) asks two critical questions: 1) What in the particular setting, culture or community makes life possible? and 2) What are the possibilities that provide opportunities for more effective forms of organizing, facilitating and training?

  3. A Holistic Training Approach is important to build capacity. Materials and training are needed in all areas, such as health and agriculture, as well as in Christian education and spiritual maturity.

  4. Guidelines and principles for facilitating participation and sustainable community development: 1) community involvement in assessing needs and planning: people organize best around problems they consider most important 2) start small: a project should start small with simple activities that respond to the needs and capabilities of the local situation 3) resource contribution: no community is too poor to contribute something — voluntary local investment of labor, time, material and money is an indicator of participation and engagement 4) take a process approach: facilitating effective participation requires a process approach to project implementation and management 5) communication and project implementation: establish a two-way information flow between project implementers and potential beneficiaries at the start of the project 6) community organization: projects should try to work with and through local community organizations 7) local control over benefits: local control over the amount, quantity and distribution of benefits represents the ultimate confirmation of participation and directly related to becoming self-sustaining.

  5. Where projects begin with the ideas of the local people instead of those imposed by an outside agency, there is greater impact.

  6. Wihtout appropriate participation there will not be ownership. Without ownership there is little hope of achieving sustainability.

  7. On average, it takes $500 of investment to create one new job in the informal sector, as opposed to the $25,000 o finvestment it takes to create a job in the formal sector.

  8. Changed lifestyles are fundamental to defeat poverty. Commitment to Jesus as Lord changes lifestyles. God answers prayers.

Our hope and commitment is to implement all of these learnings as part of the Jubilee Village Project. We have a great start with the concept of organizing Team Kager and Team Indiana with eight sector leaders in each continent. Also, building a partnership with the local churches and local schools will be a critical success factor for the Project…we have a great start with the End Time Revival Mission / Kager Vision Centre and the Heartspring Academy.

May God bless you richly and reward your service to the poor.

Ned

Posted by admin on Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 1:53 am 
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DECEMBER PROJECT UPDATE FROM DAVID KAYANDO

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Below is a short report from David Kayando and the Kager Team. It is a great display of the leadership that David is providing the Project and demonstrates that the local leadership team he has built is embracing their role as their own community transformers:

“Greetings to you in Jesus most Holy Name. I hope you are well and the Lord is doing good to you, your family and the JVP Partners. Thank you for the HHI food and security workshop manual. I wanted to respond to you yesterday on the Kager JVP Champions meeting and updates but I was overwhelmed with much work, and was not able to do it.

I had Rhoda Nungo make a short visit to Kager yesterday and so I had to see her around and have some discussions with her. I will let you know about our discussions in another email.

The Champions met yesterday after the festivities of Christmass and new year celebrations. I saw shining faces of joy and briliance as they embrace the new year with a commitment to serve Kager Village under JVP. It is my prayer that the same spirit of unity in love wiil continue to drive our work and bring meaningful results.

Among the things we discussed are in Food and farming, Housing, education and on economic development. I also had Rhoda talk to the Champions and share some of her work experiences with the group.

The group agreed to have the model farms begin work on, and finally approved the four farmers to be involved in this. We had George and John on the Kager Center side of Kager Village and two other people on the other side of Kager. These are Maurice and Charles. The group had some crops to choose from e.g variety of vegetables, beans, maize corn, pepper, bulb onions tomatoes and others. It was identified that one of the farmers selected for model farms has been doing well in pinneapple growing and so this was also considered.

The four farmers are to meet with the Kager JVP Champions on the 20th this month for more discussions. The group embraced the idea of drip irrigation, use of good seeds, fertilizer farm equipments and inputs and other things that will be involved. They are waiting to get to know your budget for the model/demonstration farms so as to see how to adjust. I had informed them of the amount JVP received from the East91st Christian Church. I would request that you make a budget for this and this will help the team here know how best the model farms should be done.

They asked one question which I had no good answer and so I have to consult with you. Since JVP will be fully supporting this model farms, who are the beneficiaries of the Harvest? Should the farmers share their harvest with others or simply take the whole thing. Please your idea on this will be helpful. Meanwhile George is to visit the Agricultural office soon and discuss with the extension officers for more advise on the best practise.

The idea of sponsoring a boy and a girl who have performed well in Kager was a bright idea that all of us are seeing as a way of raising the education standard in the Village. In case you will find it possible, the Champions agreed that the criteria should be that in which only needy cases would be considered. That means a student who has perfomed well and is not able to join the school he or she has been called to join because the parents are not able to meet the fees cost for that particular school, and so may resort to a substandard school, which will eventually affect his or her peformance. They had three options for doing this. JVP could take a boy and a girl each year or take the two after every year or take the first two and see them through upto form four and then begin with another two, and so this all depends on the resources the Lord may make available for JVP under education and training.

The team came up with a team of 16 women carefully selected from every quarter of Kager and all the churches represented to be able to participate in the Joy Kitchens initiative. We will meet with these women on the 20th this month, to share with them about this and get their idea and willingness. And so the Housing Champion will be sharing with them about this and the whole team of champions will help in explaining more about what Jubilee would like to achieve through the Joy Kitchens iniatiative. The Kager JVP champion’s Secretary Dianne Ochuka, is already preparing letters to be sent out to these women this week.

With the Coming of Rhoda at such a time when the Champions were meeting, it gave us fresh ideas in regard to the Basket fireless cooker as an enterprise. She said that this should not only be for Women, but as well for Men who will be interested. The Champions are now considering the right people for this, and women like Rose Omanya the rope maker were fully identified as the people who can be effective. We will look for ten people for this group to begin this as an enteprise. Rhoda agreed to come and bring someone else with her, since the training would go even for a week, and being that she is busy, she cannot stay for that long, and so she would bring a co-trainer who would stay and the she comes back to supervise. Her time schedule is so tight and we are trying to fix this training somewher mid February, but this will depend on how the Lord has provided for this under economic development, and so as you discuss more with the Partners on the 12th, I hope you will give us directions.

Most importantly, I would love to know your budget for the model/demonstration farms and what you would love to see done and resources provided for.

The Kager Village has experience real drought throughout December upto now. All the small ponds and water tanks are all dry. The only source of water now is the Bore-hole. Famine continues to bite and the little harvest people are reaping now is for a very short relief, and the worst is expected of the month of March and April through to June, when the famine is seen to be scaling up, and the cost of a 2kg Maize corn may hit over Kshs. 100. We ask for your prayers that the Lord will help JVP in transforming the village so that food security is achieved. I believe with the meeting on 20th with various people in Kager, alot of awareness Campaign about JVP is going to begin flowing and spreading effectively in Kager, and it would be my wish that an action be felt soon.

I have not bought the Improved Jikos, as I wanted to get some input from Rhoda on this. I also realised that most women in Kager knows about the improved jikos, even though many do not have one. I therefore believe that good understanding of this is there on this kind of stoves for households. In regard to hood Chimney stoves, Rhoda advised that these are for institutions, and she can find us the best person to install one for us at the Jubilee Model Kitchen at Kager Center, and so I have not bought the Jikos yet, but considering this soon.

God’s blessings to you and the Indiana Partners team. We know the Lord has called us and we have reason to allow him use us to bring meaningful transformation to our Village. The Champions sent lovely greeting to everyone in Indiana Team, and are looking forward to your visit this year again.

Shalom,
David.

Posted by admin on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 4:16 am 
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