Mid-month news January 2025

Click on this image for a short video of a church I reached out to earlier this month. The event, was this particular branch coming under a different denomination. Each denomination has its own flag, with its name on it. The congregation processed up and down the road dancing and singing, to publicise the fact that they were changing affiliation. Then the original flag was replaced by a new one.

A Broken Leg
A friend of mine broke his leg as a result of a motorbike accident. He went to have the bones ‘set’, then a plaster put onto his leg. Some days later, some people with indigenous knowledge of how to heal fractures, convinced him to have the heavy plaster removed, and instead to regularly rub the skin around the break with some indigenous-cream. (Presumably, made from herbs, animal fat, or something.) Meanwhile, sticks were used to support the leg, held on by a bandage, in between rubbing sessions. A ‘doctor’ would come to his home regularly to change the dressing and do the rubbing. I once found him there. He showed me pictures of various people with broken limbs, assuring me that all of them had been healed as a result of his treatment.
I am certainly not sure that my friend used wisdom in getting this treatment! The question to me though was – which is most important, to continue our friendship, or to try to force him to back-track and get ‘proper’ medical treatment? He had already made a decision, to receive ‘indigenous’ treatment. If I told him he had made a bad decision, and indeed he didn’t get better, it would be as if I had cursed him. He may well avoid me from there on, and despise me. I did not want to tell him he had made a good decision either. In a way though, my nodding as he explained what he was doing, was a bit like an affirmation – as if I indeed stood with him in his decision to reject medical treatment.

My policy in relating to African people, and I relate to many who are in comparable circumstances one way or another, is to not be a ‘I know better’ person, but instead to take them as they are. The benefits of this recently became clear. “I told him he was wrong,” another friend who I was talking to explained of my friend who had had the accident. “He should have kept the plaster on, and followed the hospital’s recommendations,” she emphasised. “He has not wanted to speak to me since,” she added!
Not that I don’t think we should have modern medical facilities. But rather, I am aware of the enormous draw that indigenous alternatives have for people. I do not want to spurn them because they follow their hearts – treating themselves in indigenous ways.
In some ways comparable to the above, are people who have not taken the advice of the Bible in their marriage relationships. For example, they decide to live together with their girlfriends, without first getting married or paying bride-wealth. Does one as a result mock such people when their ‘marriages’ fall apart?
This made me realise the importance of declaring the truth. In interhuman-relationships, the ‘truth’ can often get lost, due to pressures such as those I mention above. The job of a preacher in a church, is to ‘tell it as it is’. Hence one aspect of the importance of ‘going to church’, so that one can get the truth, ‘as it is’, and not trite versions of it proclaimed by people nursing their hurt pride and covering over personal responsibilities. The primary thing to be defended, is not the ‘truth’ of science, but of the Gospel. Modern-education is of course an outgrowth of the preaching of the Gospel.

Developments in the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission)
Please note – for the first time since 2007, I am no longer the chair of the exec. committee of the AVM. Give thanks for those who have taken over this responsibility. Pray that we continue to get the word out. (I don’t know what you, my reader think of what we do in the AVM. As someone living at grass-roots in Africa, I can tell you that in my humble opinion, what we promote is vital. It is very sad for me, to constantly come across instances where mission efforts ignore what we are advocating, as a result of which relationships are damaged and projects flounder and fail!) Please consider supporting, in whatever way you can, the new leadership of the AVM. For more details, go to this url.
Here is our new leadership structure:

No Secrets in Giving
Western Christians take Jesus’ words, ‘let not your right hand know what your left hand is doing’ (Matthew 26:3) very seriously, and apply it to their offerings to churches. In churches known to me in the UK, most congregation members do not know who is giving how much to church coffers.
Not so in Africa known to me! Instead, it is often impossible to give without everyone knowing just how much one has contributed. The names of people who give generously are likely to be proclaimed to the whole congregation. The same people are more honoured than are others in the church. Many want to listen to them. Nowadays, if there is a particular need, for someone who is sick, a funeral, to subsidise the youth conference, to buy a PA system, and so on, a whatsapp group is started, and how much every individual gives is listed for all to see. (Even should one try to be anonymous by leaving a large contribution in the offering bag, one will also be expected to give generously to the needs listed on whatsapp.)
Missionaries, by popular acclaim, at the same time, are supposed to be humble. Missionaries from the West generally have access to relatively vast amounts of resources. Should a missionary be very ‘generous’ to their local church, then everyone will know. Their voice will carry a lot of weight. Yet they understand the least about what is going on! This will make it difficult not to appear to be proud. (I personally am not seeking for recognition based on how much money I give to church coffers!)
While all this goes on, I am reminded of a request someone made of me a few years ago, with respect to a fundraising event. (In those days, giving was cash and not electronic.) “Please can you give us (say an equivalent to) £100. Then if yours is the first contribution at this event, the bar will be high, and others will be shamed into giving comparable amounts. Following the fundraising, we promise to give you your £100 back,” I was told. In other words – I always remain weary, that the figures published on whatsapp or elsewhere, are cooked in such a way as to pressure the gullible to be as generous as possible.

Grooming Gangs, and Ethnic Minorities in the UK
I do want to take advantage of the recent raising of the profile of ways hundreds of thousands of white girls in the UK have been sexually abused, to point to my 2021 book on ‘anti-racism’.
I consider this UK issue to be a tip of an enormous iceberg. I do NOT by that imply that outside of the white West, many many men are sex-fiends! I do not know in any detail what goes on sexually in my home communities in East Africa, or elsewhere.
My point is to say, that ignoring of differences between ethnicities for the sake of political correctness in the West, does us no favours outside of the West. Let us imagine, for example, that we have a problem in East Africa of people eating too much pig fat, that causes heart attacks. Because pointing out that high rates of eating of pig fat in the UK amongst certain ethnicities e.g., East Africans, can be taken as racist, there is likely to be a cover up of this ‘problem’. Because the issue is covered up in the West, and the West and its languages, media, economies, educational systems, legal systems, political thinking, and you name it, dominate globally, this covering up can PREVENT the addressing of abuses and problems outside of the West, for example in Africa.
In other words, if multiculturalism in the West requires the ignoring of ethnically related differences between peoples, this will result in a forced ignoring of what might be very important indigenous issues outside of the West. In the case of the grooming gangs, it would make it difficult to clamp down on sexual abuses amongst Pakistani men within Pakistan, if the very issue was being ignored within the UK. In Africa this is often related to development. Economic development can happen if certain basic understandings are in place. If those understandings are absent in African thinking, then this will not be known, as fo say so in the West would be considered racist.
The above does not mean that we need a police state in which people are constantly being observed by hidden cctv cameras. It means that we need to lift up ideals of moral and even intellectual behaviour that inform the UK, and by implication the global population, as to what is and is not appropriate. In the case of grooming, girls who know what is wrong and what is right would be helped to stand up to abusers. A general sexual leniency having obfuscated what should have been clear lines of distinction between good and bad behaviour has contributed to communities’ reluctance to condemn abusive behaviours.
When leniency to sexual abuses by certain ethnicities is practiced in the UK then, as suggested above, because the UKs media, legal systems, values and so on, are widely followed globally, the rest of the world may not be able to stand up to its own rogues. The same applies to almost any cultural feature of almost any non-Western minority that is living in the UK.

Safeguarding Regulations
The above is not to say that we need global-wide safeguarding. It is very ironic to me, that efforts are being made to ensure Brits are being safeguarded to UK-standard even when they are abroad, while evidently non-native-Brits are engaging in serious sexual abuses in UK itself, with impunity.
I believe this situation also needs attention. Insisting that Brits abroad are held strictly accountable in ways that locals are not, is only a slither away from implying that Brits are particularly liable to be engaging in sexual abuses. This, on a village grapevine, is only a slither away from the implication that sexual abuses have been committed. This can put Brits at risk in their host community, even should they commit no sexually-related offences at all. At risk, that is, of gossip that can destroy their reputations and Gospel ministry, even in certain communities, of being lynched.
I believe it is important for Western (and other) missionaries to intermingle with locals. If they cannot do that because they have to keep British safeguarding laws, that is disasters in the making. Freely ‘intermingling’ with communities of people will mean contact with children and ‘vulnerable’ women.
Resolving problems in one’s own community, in which one is in charge, is different from solving for people under someone else’s sovereign rule.

My Auntie
My Auntie Ruthie, who had been living in Corby, UK, passed away earlier this month. Anyone interested in attending the funeral:
Ruth Arnold Funeral
Ruth Arnold will be buried next to her husband, John, with a graveside service. Should you wish to attend this funeral, please inform Thomas Cromwell. Also please let Thomas know if you would like to share some words about Ruth at the funeral. If you are unable to attend in person but would anyway like to offer some departing words of appreciation for Ruth, please contact Thomas to arrange this. If you would like to offer flowers, they can be brought to the funeral site at the time of the funeral, or sent in advance to the Fords Funeral Directors, which is making the arrangements.

Date of Funeral: Thursday, January 16, 2025
Time: 2pm
Location: Tithe Green Natural Burial
Luffenham Road
Ketton
Stamford
PE9 3RN

Contact: Thomas Cromwell
thcromwell@aol.com
Mobile: +1-202-957-0865

Funeral Home: Caroline Flowers
Fords Funeral Directors
10 Church St, Oakham,
Rutland LE15 6AA
Tel: +44-1572-722-654
caroline@fordsfuneraldirectors.co.uk

Jim