One World, One Mission - A North African Perspective
March 2010
North Africa is not far away. After a flight of less than three hours David Kerrigan and I arrived on the North African coast. We travelled there at the end of last month to explore aspects of our mission work there and do some filming for the Baptist Assembly in Plymouth on the challenging theme of One World, One Mission.
North Africa gave us a helpful way of focusing our thoughts on one specific area of mission. North Africa is firmly Muslim. In the early Christian period this was an area of immense strength for the church, but that has long since been rubbed out. How is it possible for us to express the mission of Christ to a part of the world that has so firmly rejected the Christian message? In the country we visited there is something like one Christian for every 30,000 people. Just imagine that. It is hard for the believers to meet together and their faith is continually under immense pressure. Islam embraces the whole life of the society and allows no room for those who want to take another view.
If you are looking for an easy place to serve the Lord this isn’t it! I was deeply inspired to meet our BMS team. They are all people from Baptist churches in the UK and they all have professional skills to offer. The government needs and gladly welcomes them. In this particular context they are mainly medics, social workers and teachers and their work is directed towards people in the at risk sector. This is truly the mission of Jesus in action.
What was most impressive to me was the way in which the team had immersed themselves in their new adopted society. They all spoke Arabic fluently and had learnt how to navigate around the very different cultural demands of the society. They had had to look at life and their ways of relating to others with new eyes. This could be seen as a really demanding technical exercise, but that would be arid and lifeless. These mission workers didn’t ever say it in so many words, but it was clear that they really loved the people with whom they lived and worked. And love is always the language of mission.
Every one of the team members we met spoke of the ways in which their presence had aroused curiosity in the Christian faith. Their immersion into North African life and their love for the people, had given them generous opportunities to speak of the Lord they love. And it struck me that our situation is profoundly the same. We all live and work with people whose world view is very different from our own. If we are to be a part of Christ’s mission then we need to learn their language and engage with their lives. But above all we need to learn more about the language of love. There is no doubt about it – there is One World and One Mission.
| Bible Gateway's Verse of the Day |
|