Mid-Month news June 2025

Dear Friends,

Here’s an illustration of termite damage being done in my new house. One morning … suddenly termites have built with this mud behind a socket and higher up on the wall! (I am not yet back home, but this is a picture I was sent of in my home.)

Sharing in Poverty

To some, sharing in the poverty of the poor, is very virtuous. Others might find it inconvenient, and of no real value. ‘The poor’ themselves may see no point in an outsider who has access to more resources living at their level.

There are some basic reasons for me to see sharing with the poor in their poverty as desirable:

1. It saves making oneself responsible for elevating everyone else. People in many poor communities expect their patrons to give them some lift. A missionary who evidently has access to plentiful resources is quickly and easily seen in this way. Demands come thick and fast; someone needs a ride to town, someone else school fees, someone else food, someone else a hospital bill paid, someone else funds for a wedding, and so on. If one has resources and does not use them in these ways one can be seen as stingy or immoral. Using them in these ways absorbs time, energy and emotions! At the end of the day, a missionary following this model takes on the role of a bank making gifts and loans plus, typically, being a free taxi.
2. Sharing in the poverty of the poor anticipates hard times ahead, when one’s supporters are no longer so generous, as they no longer understand what you do and why. People in the West have a view of ‘how to help the poor’, in Africa and beyond. They like to see their donations being used to fulfil their own logic. Someone who spends a lot of time on the ground begins to see through that logic. Things make sense to them in a different way. This means that when a long-term missionary works in a way that makes sense locally, they may well gradually lose out on foreign support. If they do not allow their standard of living to drop, they will run out of funding.
3. Living at the level of ‘the poor’ facilitates drawing close to them, which is to say for at least some of one’s time, lining one’s own way of life up with theirs. This enables profound understanding of what is going on in a community. It is often the poor who use indigenous languages. Such understanding in turn brings the realization that – it is never as simple as ‘more money is needed’. Walking with the poor while sharing in their poverty eventually enables camaraderie that isn’t oriented to making money. It is wonderful to be with people while not being seen as the local bank! Then one can begin to contribute meaningfully into local contexts.
4. Fear of envy is the primary factor that keeps people stuck in poverty. Envy is a terrible inter-human force. It has billions in its grip! In a manner of speaking, it has us all in its grip. It is the reverse of good morals, yet it also is good morals, and this confuses people. That is to say, good morals say ‘share what you have’. Envy says ‘if you don’t share what you have, I will get you’! Good morals say ‘help one another’. Envy says ‘help me or else’! Thus envy seems to support and even represent good morals. The motivation differs – one does good either through fear of envy, or through love of God and man. The difference between envy and love being slim, can make it hard to distinguish the two, despite envy being of the devil and love the motivator of Godliness. Waning Godliness that results in lack of morality shifts individuals and a community towards envy as its driving force. Godliness can bring great prosperity to a community. Fear of envy ends in abstract poverty.
5. Having faith in God (i.e., the Christian God, the God of the Bible) is being less envious. African people often realise this more than Western people. Western people frequently conceptualise Christian faith as contradicting their understanding of a spiritual versus physical dualism, because it requires them to believe in something called God that is physical while not so. Prominence of this misconception having undermined a lot of Christianity in the West breeds atheism and agnosticism. In the latter fear of envy easily grows larger than love. Africans seek to demonstrate their faith in God, a means to overcoming envy, by displaying their wealth. Ironically, those who have benefitted from the prosperity arising from faith in Christ over history, Western people who are some of the most prosperous in the world, kick against this form of African understanding of prosperity. For Westerners, this self-enrichment, considered prosperity Gospel, is Africans loving the fruit of faith more than faith itself or God himself. (I’m not saying I don’t agree with the Westerners.)

Why My Determination to Stay On?

I have reflected a lot recently, on the frequency with which circumstances take Western missionaries away from the field they are on in Africa. I have seen many go! They often leave long before they have a deep, profound and fluent knowledge of an African language or culture. This has the unfortunate effect, that mission tends to go forward on the basis of relatively simplistic and not very profound comprehension of what is going on in Africa. That is, missionaries tend to do their work without very clearly comprehending how they are being understood, or how or why people are responding to them.

Perceiving this years ago, has contributed to my determination that I need to be that person who keeps on working on the field, no matter what! This has been an extraordinary journey, as ‘curve balls’ are sent in my direction from different people, typically from fellow missionaries of one stripe or another. That is, the person most likely to oppose your missionary work is not an African, but a fellow missionary (or a fellow European). Please pray for me for wisdom as I go forward with this practice, that is oriented to trying to crack some puzzles that are, I fear, contributing to a great deal of ineffectiveness in the missionary task in Africa (and globally) all told.

Stewardship

The Alliance for Vulnerable Mission, now a registered charity, are a grant partner with Stewardship services, so that people can give us donations while claiming back tax!

Moving Forwards

As I write, I am visiting a German missionary colleague in the capital of Tanzania, Dodoma. I am due to go back to Babati today, so that I can give and then mark my exam to the bible students tomorrow. Thursday I am to travel to Singida, then Friday to Musoma, all in Tanzania. My plan in Musoma is to walk alongside a Swiss missionary, to be an encouragement and help to him and his fellows as they meet ‘contextual issues’ by drawing on my own experience and perhaps helping them learn Swahili. This may be for a week. I then plan to visit a Mennonite bishop, then hopefully to attend the funeral of the wife of my home-church-bishop in Kenya. I am then to visit a new missionary to help him learning the Luo language, then finally to get home.

Yours,

Jim