Grandma and you, at “Edinburgh 2010”

How did your grandmother living around 1910 understand the word “mission”? And what did your great-grandfather think of the unity of the church? People in three countries have been gathering to share stories of early mission work and to compare those with their own witness today.

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	Members of a pilot group of the Mission Today project in Cordoba, Argentina prepare for Edinburgh 2010. (Photo: Julio Lopez)

by Jet den Hollander

This process of remembrance and reflection is part of the “Mission Today” intercultural pilot project developed with councils of churches in Argentina, Cameroon and The Netherlands. The results will be gathered as a contribution for “Edinburgh 2010”, the global gathering to be held in Scotland in 2010 to mark the centenary of the missionary conference in Edinburgh 1910 where the modern ecumenical movement was born.

Pastor Julio López, president of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Argentina, is delighted that the Federation signed up for this project. “Latin America was not invited to ‘Edinburgh 1910’. Mission in those days aimed at conversion to Christianity and by then the Roman Catholic Church was well established on our continent. So we were not seen as a mission field”. Pilot groups in Cordoba and Entre Rios, Chaco and Buenos Aires use the momentum of “Edinburgh 2010” to take stock of what their mission praxis (a cycle of action and reflection) and ecumenical relations look like today.

In Cameroon, Professor Priscille Djomhoué coordinated a group at the Yaoundé Faculty of Theology. Her grandpa was a contemporary of Jacob Modi Din, ordained in 1912 as one of the first Duala pastors of the Evangelical Church of Cameroon. Once, when asked for his passport at a colonial borderline, Modin Din is said to have held up his Bible saying: "Here is my passport!" Djomhoue's group analysed how frontiers of ethnicity, gender and denomination in their country are crossed today for the sake of the Gospel.

One of the pilot groups in the Netherlands is in Rotterdam. Around 1910, Dutch missionaries sailed from here to Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Today there are 90 migrant churches in Rotterdam, including many from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. Evangelist Fred Lachman represents the Full Gospel Church. His Hindu great-grandfather Lachman migrated from India to the Caribbean in 1874. Slavery had just been abolished so indentured labourers were brought in to work the plantations. In Surinam his son, Lachman’s grandfather Theodoor, heard Christ’s liberating message. As an evangelist and trainer of pastors he formed a whole generation of Surinamese Christians. When Fred Lachman told this family history, the group noted: “The faith of a single person can make a lot of difference.”

As López suggested, mission in 1910 mainly referred to the activities of white missionaries overseas. The one with whom the gospel was shared was often portrayed as a negation of oneself: non-white, non-Christian, “uncivilized”. Today there are churches in every land, but in the West the historical churches have become a minority and need to redefine their identity. The Pentecostal movement has grown from zero to 500 million in one century. And so mission — that preoccupation “of the West to the Rest”— has to be reinterpreted too. Comparison with the witness of our (great)-grandparents is important. Why?

The first reason is, to do justice to that witness. As the stories above show, many of our grandparents were witnessing to Christ, even if it was often not acknowledged as such. “Edinburgh 2010” is an opportunity to give thanks for all witness at home and abroad that was used by God to further God's reign.

Second, when we remember the mission work of our ancestors, we are inspired to do likewise. So stories like Fred Lachman’s challenge us: the faith of a single person does indeed make a difference.

A third reason for re-reading mission history is that much of the power dynamics of the past still exist today. With the benefit of hindsight, we have the obligation to assess whether our vision and resources are employed to liberate for the glory of God.

So grandma and we move to 2010 together. We cross old mission frontiers and stumble over new ones. And, to use a phrase of the hymn writer Fred Kaan mentioned elsewhere in this issue, it is while we are “practising God's future” together that we will gradually discover a new spirituality for authentic discipleship.

You are invited to consider participating in “Edinburgh 2010” events and prayer links. For information, see www.warc.ch "Mission / Edinburgh 2010" or www.edinburgh2010.org/