Bible Mobility in West Africa

Eighty-five percent of those who call themselves American Christians are biblically illiterate. They do not engage with the Bible in a way that makes any difference in their lifestyle from those who are not Christians.

James and I at the most western point of Africa

As James Kanaganayagam, International Director for Back to the Bible (BTTB), made this statement, heads around the room nodded in agreement. “It’s the very same here in our own country,” said one  ministry leader. “We have good success in leading people to Christ, but very poor success in getting them to grow and be discipled in their faith.”

This past week, I have been hosting James on a whirlwind trip to the countries of Senegal and Gambia in West Africa, introducing him to key national ministry leaders in these two countries. This trip is an exploration by BTTB to find local ministries that could be partners in a new outreach that utilizes cell phones. Called MoBible (intended to sound like “mo-bile”), BTTB has already proven that sending people a daily phone and/or text message that meaningfully engages them with a passage of Scripture can have huge success. In two test cases since last summer, there are already 15,000 subscribers in the US and 20,000 in the country of Sri Lanka. (Check out  https://gotandem.com/ )

Meeting with Gambian ministry leaders

During this trip, we have learned just how far cell phones have penetrated the cultures of these two countries. Competing telecommunication companies have kept call prices low enough so that virtually anyone, even in remote villages, can afford to use them. As we discussed possibilities with church leaders on this trip, I was impressed with the timeliness of this ministry outreach. “This is truly an answer to prayer,” said David Jatta, director of a key youth ministry in the country of Gambia. “We were already trying to figure out how to do something like this, and now we can simply join hands with Back to the Bible to make it happen.” Before our meeting was over, he and his wife agreed to head up a national task force to make the partnership a reality.

Meeting with Senegalese ministry leaders

In Senegal, more than a dozen national leaders agreed that MoBible could have tremendous impact in their country. After hearing how non-Christians in Sri Lanka, including Muslims and Buddhists, had also signed up for MoBible simply to get a daily word of encouragement, these leaders expressed their belief that MoBible could impact evangelism in their country as well as be a discipleship tool for Christians. They, too, have now formed a group to dialogue with us about how to bring the MoBible concept to Senegal.

As I begin this consulting relationship with Back to the Bible, I’m pleased to see such success during our first exploration trip for MoBible.  I look forward to discovering what other key national ministries around the world could be potential partners with BTTB in this strategic ministry endeavor.

Worshiping with Muslim Background Believers

There’s a lot of discussion going around in mission circles about what is the appropriate inculturation of Muslim background believers into the Christian faith. What is called the “Insider Movement” that proposes it is OK for new Muslim Christians to remain inside their traditional Muslim culture even after professing faith in Christ is heralded by some and condemned by others. Certainly there are critical aspects of both theology and missiology that must be considered in this important dialog.

But, regardless of all that dialog, I experienced worship this Sunday morning in a way that I have never experienced it before. Being a guest at the House of Wisdom, here in Gambia, I felt privileged to participate in what appeared to me as an appropriate yet balanced expressions of worship for a small congregation comprised totally of Muslim-background believers.

The House of Wisdom is the vision of Pastor Modou Camara. Once an Islamic teacher himself, God transformed his life when he got a hold of a Christian Bible for purposes of proving it, once and for all, to be a book of lies. Instead, he gave his heart to Christ and has never turned back from his passion to show other Muslim friends the Truth he discovered.

Pastor Modou (center) in front of the House of Wisdom

Modou designed the House of Wisdom to be a place that would be comfortable to People of Muslim background without compromising anything essential about the Christian faith. The worship center itself is a small round room lined with woven mats on the floor. There were a few chairs for us visitors and some nursing mothers, but most sat cross-legged on the floor. There was no alter or pulpit or any front to the room at all. When we sang songs, they were all sung accapella in the people’s native Fulani. At least a half an hour was devoted to people sharing spontaneous testimonies. The sermon was done in a creative storytelling fashion that kept every single man, woman and child riveted to what was being said.

But what was most unusual of all, was the special prayer time at the end of the service when we all progressively knelt and bowed down in Muslim fashion. But, instead of some Islamic rote prayer, we recited the Apostles Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. Another significant difference was that the prayer time was shared equally between men and women and no one was concerned about being pointed toward Mecca.

I come away from this worship experience feeling both refreshed and inspired. I don’t know all the right answers about the “Insider Movement” but what I saw today seemed to be both spiritually appropriate and creatively contextual. I praise God for men like Pastor Modou who I believe are following the prompting of God’s Spirit to craft a means for many new Muslim background believers to learn the Truth about Christianity, accept the claim of Christ on their lives and become our brothers and sisters in the faith.

Godly Recklessness

“A godly recklessness!”

That is the way my good friend, Alex Araujo, described the type of boldness we are seeing these days coming from mission initiatives emanating  from the “Global South,” or the non-Western world.

And that is what I say is also a good description for Nigerian Christians, especially after spending the last five days there.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my venture to this amazing West African country which was focused on consulting with the Nigerian Bible Translation Trust, the one and only national entity occupying itself with the task of translating God’s word into the remaining 300 plus languages that still do not have a Bible. At first when you meet Sule Auta, Executive Director of the NBTT, you would not immediately guess he was in charge of such a major enterprise. But after a couple hours’ interview, learning of the complexities of staying on top of 40 different translation initiatives, managing a 20 acre property with all the headaches of providing power and water when the city services are notably unreliable, not to mention maintaining proper relationship with Wycliffe Bible Translators, Wycliffe Global Alliance, Summer Institute of Linguistics, The Seed Company and Wycliffe Associates, you have a new appreciation for the amazing number of balls in the air he is juggling at any one time. That’s not to say he’s able to do it all perfectly, of course. But Sule seems to model the typical Nigerian mix of God-given vision with a down-to-earth “Let’s-just-go-ahead-and-do-it” attitude. Which is why he said to me as I left, “Just come back in a  few months and teach us what you can about organizational development.”

I got another taste of this same spirit when I dropped into the House On The Rock church for their second Sunday service. Not only was that same Nigerian “can-do” spirit demonstrated throughout the lively service, which reminded me of a good ol’ Southern Gospel crusade, but the number of PowerPoint projectors, wireless mics, electronic keyboards and flat panel screens clearly indicated this was one group that wasn’t going to let their “developing world” status slow them down any.  Even the pastor was reading his notes off of his own iPad there on the pulpit!

Another connection I was pleased to make on this trip was with Timothy Olanade, someone I have probably had a cup of coffee with in more places around the world than any other African I know. Up until three months ago, Timothy was the head of NEMA—the Nigerian Evangelical Missions Association. As a result, he has attended every major global consultation the mission’s world has sponsored. So, I’ve run into him over the past fifteen years in such places as Singapore, Cape Town, Malaysia, South Korea and Denver. But this was the first time to visit him in his own home and finally meet his wife, Hanah. What was cool to hear from Timothy is how he is now turning down well-padded invitations to speak at more global events, not just so that he can spend more time mentoring younger leaders in Nigeria, but so that he can intentionally model that being an effective leader doesn’t require having impressive international credentials. You can’t believe how refreshing it is to hear of an African leaders who doesn’t feel he has to become a “big chief!”

Nigerians themselves know that they carry a certain reputation among other Africans as aggressive, dominant, self-serving  entrepreneurs.  But if the “godly recklessness” I saw demonstrated during the past week is any example of the new style of Nigerian ministry leader, all I can say is, “bring it on!”

You know you're back in Africa when. . .

OK – so after my first few days here in Nigeria, here’s my list of seven favorite ways to complete the sentence: “You know you’re back in Africa when. . .”

7. Your arriving flight descends below 10,000 feet, you immediately feel the bumps and turbulence of the hot thermals generated over the hot African plain.

6. You no longer can see the horizon because of the harmatan conditions in the lower atmosphere with all the fine airborne sand from the Sahara Desert.

5. Staying your first night at a very clean, well-scrubbed room at a Catholic Guesthouse, you are still greeted by a couple of cockroaches lying on their backs on the floor with little legs flaying in the air.

4. You lose all electric power during an evening meal in the dining room and everyone (including yourself) whips out a pocket flashlight and keeps right on eating their meal without giving it an extra thought.

3. Your morning shower consists of pouring water over yourself from a cutoff water bottle dipped into a bucket of water you filled at a hand-pump well 50 feet from your front door.

2. You experience the “Jos Revenge” just hours after eating dinner at a local restaurant.

And my favorite one of all…

1.   Your Lufthansa Airbus 330 airliner lands at the international airport of the capital city of the most populous country in Africa but the tower forgets to inform the pilot that construction is occurring on one of the taxiways so the plane gets stuck on the runway for 30 minutes until a tow truck can be rounded up to push the plane back down the runway to the next usable taxiway!

Back to Africa

Translated into English from Hausa, it means, “Western Education is Sinful.”  But the dreaded words, Boko Haram has come to mean something far more sinister to the local Christian populations of northern Nigeria. This radical Islamic faction has acknowledged their objective to attack police, military and Christian institutions in order to mandate complete Sharia law in that part of the country. As a result, they have openly admitted responsibility for most of the repeated bombings during the past year that have taken the lives of thousands of Christians in the region.

Reading all this in the March 10 issue of World Magazine (http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19236) on the first leg of a trip that is taking me to that very area of Nigeria might make you think I should simply turn around and go home again. But instead, I head out today with clear confidence that God is also strongly at work in that part of the country and despite the recent incidents, I can be no safer than in the center of His will.

This is my first overseas trip representing Wycliffe Associates (http://www.wycliffeassociates.org/ ) in my new capacity of promoting organizational development among national Bible translation agencies.  In this case, it will be the NBTT—Nigerian Bible Translation Trust. When I arrive in Jos on Friday, I will spend the next five days interviewing various NBTT leaders to learn what organizational barriers are keeping them from effectively tackling the huge job of Bible translation in their country.  With over 500 languages native to Nigeria, only 22 have completed Bibles and another 100 that have only begun a translation process.  That means there are still some 356 of languages left to be translated so that people might have God’s Good News in an understandable form—the largest number of any country in Africa.

I will do my best to share what I learn along the way—so keep posted on this blog for further updates.

Sample map showing which people groups have the Bible (green) or
the NT (yellow) or nothing at all (red)

As I board my United flight for Frankfurt and then Abuja, Nigeria, I must tell you about some of the “cool tools” I am carrying with me. Hopefully, these things will facilitate greater effectiveness for our national ministry friends. First, are a set of colorful maps provided for me by Global Mapping International (http://www.gmi.org/) that show each of the Nigerian language groups color coded according to their scale of evangelization as determined by the Joshua Project (http://www.joshuaproject.net). 

Taking it one step farther, my friend, Marv Bowers of ILS International (http://www.ilsinternational.net)   has spent the past 48 hours refining another set of fantastic maps of Nigeria just for me that not only show language sectors needing translation, but are also geo-coded so that I can display them on my iPad by means of a special app http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avenza-pdf-maps/id388424049?mt=8) that will also show my actual GPS position superimposed on the map. 

Finally, my briefcase has got several copies of a brand new Organizational Capacity Assessment Matrix that I will be trying out for the first time on this trip. Thanks to a neat partnership with Lisa Price, a student at Benedictine University getting her Masters Degree in organizational behavior and her advisor, Tiffany Yates, we’ve designed a new tool that should significantly aid in organizational capacity evaluation for any national ministry.

So, armed with all these “tools of the trade,” and most of all, with the faithful prayer support of a whole bunch of friends like you, I feel ready for this eight day trip and look forward to how I can add my little bit of encouragement to our Nigerian brothers and sisters who daily face such challenges as those of Boko Haram.

Sharp Contrasts

This past week, we have been shocked with the tragic news of two incidents in the Middle East that resulted in the unwarranted death of innocent people. The first, and most publicized, the massacre of 16 villagers in southern Afghanistan by U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. The second, happening just three days earlier in the Kurdish province of Iraq, was the execution-style shooting of American teacher, Jeremiah Small, by one of his students, eighteen-year-old Bayar Sarwar.

A shot of Yousiff & Alia Matty taken
during my visit to Iraq in 2006

This second incident happened in the city of Sulaymaniyah in a classroom of the Classical School of the Medes, a project of my good friends, Yousiff and Alia Matty. All of my eight years at Partners International involved helping to fundraise for their impressive vision of building three K-12 schools in northern Iraq utilizing the renowned international classical curriculum.

As I reflect about these two incidents, I see amazing similarities in the actions of the perpetrators.  For example, both…

-          Acted totally alone

-          Used guns firing at point-blank range

-          Obviously reached an emotional breaking point resulting in their violent actions

-          Acted out in the open in front of others, not secretively or clandestinely

-          Resigned themselves to their subsequent fate (Sgt. Bales gave himself up afterwards while Sarwar turned his gun on himself, taking his own life.)

But it is the sharp contrast of the victims’ families’ reactions that leaves me most impressed.

In Afghanistan, the cry is for revenge. Regardless of the just punishment Sgt Bales will receive, I will not be surprised to hear in the next few weeks that the spirit of revenge has spilled over into other incidents of Afghans wanting to get even by somehow hurting other innocent Americans.  Whether or not you blame local culture or Islamic religious tradition, the fact is that wanting to get even for such an act of unwarranted killing is simply built into our human spirit. It is tragic, but it is human, and we can sort of understand that.

In Iraq, however, the response by Jeremiah’s parents stuns both us as it did the local population. Instead of venting their anger on Sarwar’s family, they instead offered a public forgiveness. As World Magazine reports:

… most remarkable was the reconciliation evident between Small's family, who are Christians, and Sarwar's, who are Muslims. The shooter's father, Rashid Sarwar, apologized to the Smalls for the killing. The teacher's father, Dan Small, said, "We do not have any hatred for the family of the student who killed our son." At one point both men embraced. (http://www.worldmag.com/articles/19280)

The Smalls choose to have Jeremiah’s body buried there in Iraq announcing to all, “We give you our son.” This action speaks volumes to a Middle Eastern culture that understands it as a strong symbol of respect for their culture. Not only does it leave a bond between the Small family and the Kurds, but it will be remembered for years as an act of love and care.

What a shame this positive ending to such a tragic event has not been given more media exposure that portrays the sharp contrast to the other events in Afghanistan. I know our world could certainly benefit from this powerful example of the human reconciliation that is possible from God-reconciled and transformed hearts.

Meanwhile, Back On The Home Front. . .

I’ve been reminded this past week that not all of the impressive activities going on in the mission world these days are happening on the “front lines.” 

Since last Sunday, I’ve had the privilege of being the keynote speaker for a mission’s conference at a church celebrating its centennial anniversary. The Western Springs Baptist Church (WSBC) is located in the first tier of suburbs just west of downtown Chicago. I came prepared to impress folks with my latest PowerPoint presentation on the state of the mission world. I did not come prepared to become impressed instead by the amazing stories people have been sharing with me about the historic mission involvement of WSBC.

For example, I’ve learned that this church. . .

Some famous WSBC pastors including Lloyd Fesmire (left)
and Billy Graham (right)

• ·         Was the first place that Billy Graham pastored right after he graduated from Wheaton College back in 1943.
• ·         That his successor, Rev. Lloyd Fesmire, made the weekly, Sunday evening radio program “Songs in the Night” a huge success. It can still be heard today on Moody Radio.
• ·         That George Beverly Shea, who was the great baritone soloist for Billy Graham crusades, not only attended this church, but also dedicated the pulpit used for many years as a memorial to his father.
• ·         Among the many illustrious missionaries supported over the years was the Newman family who served in Irian Jaya and whose tragic death in a plane crash was made famous by Don Richardson’s book, Lords of the Earth.

If that isn’t enough, WSBC was also one of the first churches that supported my parents, Art and Helen Lewis, when they became missionaries to Portugal in 1951. (I was just one year old!) Years later, Anita and I came to this church in 1978 after joining Mission Aviation Fellowship and have been supported by these friends ever since—a total of 33 years!

But what is even more impressive than all of these great historical facts is the continued enthusiasm for missions at WSBC--something I have witnessed here this entire last week.  From Sunday morning services to Saturday evening banquets, and multiple meetings in between, it has been so refreshing to see an entire church body—children included—so engaged with the cause of building God’s Kingdom around the world.

What a great reminder that the exciting stuff happening out there on the front lines of missions simply does not happen without a home-base commitment like I have witnessed this week at WSBC!