end-month news June 2026
End-month news June 2026
jimoharries@gmail.com
Dear Friends,
Being in UK has given me opportunity to spend time with friends, especially those living near my mother’s nursing home:
Mum in Deep Trouble
Mum’s clearly in deep trouble. She very rarely talks, doesn’t understand what’s going on around her, in a world of her own, spending her time moving between chairs and her bed, somewhat like a small child. Pray with me for her, that in all of that she has peace, to continue to know Jesus in her life. Give thanks for times I am having with her, that are close, as mother and son, in their own way, although obviously limited in another.
Podcast
The podcast I drew people’s attention to back in February is now published, see here:
The Challenge of Language with Jim Harries
“In this episode Andy Bettincourt interviews Jim Harries about the importance of using local languages and resources in mission, education, and theology. We discuss the challenges of communicating with and serving people from very different worlds/cultures and how often foreigners misunderstand or train Africans out of their local contexts and practices.”
School-burning in Kenya
Pray for what has become a very widespread problem in Kenya. Students are burning their schools. Not being there, it’s hard to know in detail what their issue has been. Overtly, apparently it is because they do not want to do exams. The government policy seems to have been, that whenever any threat of burning a school is made, the headmaster must close the school. Hence many schools have been closed. Pray that all schools be re-opened.
‘What are you going to do all the time when visiting Mum?’
My father asked me that question a few weeks ago. I am in the UK to spend time with mum. Mum has dementia. She doesn’t talk. She doesn’t recognize or respond to anyone. She often needs help; feeding her, giving her a drink, supporting her as she walks around … but frankly the NHS has already paid people to do all that! It seemed wrong not to come to spend time with mum in her travails. But what am I ‘doing’?
The answer to dad’s question is, in part at least, that I am a permanent student. I spend time reading, writing, editing, corresponding with people, talking with people, learning from the inputs I get from around me, and so on.
I have been given a specific assignment for September. I need to prepare a series of lectures. Ideally, I will need to have 34 such lectures to fill my time in the 2026 to 2027 academic year. The lectures need to break new territory. They must articulate East African students’ ‘cultures’ in a way that will motivate the students to learn more and more. They must be African rooted. They must be Africanly presented. The lectures must be theological. They must be biblical. They are to declare the Lordship of Christ. Very few people give academic lectures using the Swahili language. This is what I am preparing to do.
This is an enormous challenge. I need to draw on all of my 38 years of living in Africa, and more. I need to be able to identify something that is ‘legitimate’, and that is genuinely African. To qualify, it must be something that cannot be translated into English. I value this challenge. I am preparing to face it. I am asking God to guide me into it.
Contemporary academia sees no room to maneuver for me in the above. Many believe, that everything that needs to be said, can be said using English, and will be of the nature that Western scholars will approve. If this is correct, then my best preparation to give these lectures, would have been to spend 38 years in libraries in Cambridge, instead of 38 years of living in a village in Africa. I must prove Western academics to be wrong.
One specific component of this challenge must be linguistic, and to do with translation. I must be able to explain how this works: that translation, even if it happens, is impossible. That every language / culture nexus is unique, what it says cannot be correctly understood by others, and what others say can’t make correct sense to it. I am on full-throttle (reading, studying, meditating, looking to God, furiously in all my spare minutes) in preparing to make such a linguistic case, so as to pry open some space for legitimacy for lectures offered in Africa using Swahili. That is, in order to legitimize African ways of thinking in a world that tends simply to condemn them and consider reference to them to be ‘racist’.
Meeting Rev. Christopher Wickland
The Gospel of Jesus’ powerfully transforms the hearts of people who are rescued by faith in Jesus. Such-transformed people in the past devised means of government that was for God, which translates as ‘for the people’, rather than for the pleasure of a ‘worldly king’. Few seem to appreciate just how valuable that transformation has been in history. Without care, such outcome may be lost to the UK.
Some very good friends of mine very kindly arranged for a place to stay so that I could be near my mother and visit her every day while in England this June. It turns out, that my hosts worship at a church, that has recently come to be of some renown. Chris Wickland is the pastor of Living Word Church. This church is seeing great relevance of the Gospel of Jesus with respect to contemporary issues being faced in the UK. Chris is not afraid to speak out. So, for example, he comments on the recent case of the murder of Henry Nowak. In this video, he seems to set out his stall.
I asked Chris if I could meet him. He agreed. We sat and chatted for an hour. I expressed my amazement, over why Christians engaging immigration, the ‘Islamization of the UK’, and other issues, often fail to perceive many ‘global’ contexts that would clarify what they are saying. I mentioned issues like:
- As liberalism makes taboos here in the West, so does it ‘over there’ re. what Africa is like or what’s happening there. The West does not get to know what is ‘actually’ happening around the world.
- Africa is enormously dependent on the UK’s Christian charitable nature. The UK has a duty to maintain this Christian status for the sake of Africa and the rest of the world. A handing-over to Islam could easily amount to disasters in Africa.
- Dependency should be reduced. I believe it must be reduced ‘intelligently’, not just by dropping, as one might a hot potato. This requires other peoples to use their own tongues. To enable that requires a reduced emphasis on English. This difficult challenge requires a lot of dedication. I believe Western Christians should rise to this challenge.
‘You needed someone with the same vision’!
I explained to someone that I’m a single male missionary. They said, you needed to find someone (to be your wife) with the same vision. ‘No!’ I responded.
Many thinkers on mission don’t seem to realise the pressures a missionary comes under. There are many pressures that singles can withstand, that couples can’t. Perhaps Henry VIII was wrong to have destroyed the monasteries. Celibate missionaries should be playing an important role up to today. This needs reviving! (I won’t say they must be men, not women. But neither would I like to be known for encouraging women to go into ministry as singles.)
Ongoing
Pray for my last few days in UK. I am due to be here until 30th June.
1st July I am to arrive in Babati in Tanzania. I am to work with the pastoral training college there, until 27th July. (16th to 22nd July I am to be in Pretoria in S. Africa for an academic missions’ conference.) 27th July to end-month I am planning to be in Nairobi, meeting up with some of my (now adult) children who live in the city. First two weeks in August I am to do ministry in the Yala area of Kenya. The latter half of August to be back in Musoma in Tanzania to teach Old Testament Survey. Then in September I am to begin my teaching at Trellis College (once called Kima International School of Theology).
Your prayers values,
Jim