Malick Wanted To, But I Wouldn't Let Him

Malick walked right up to me in Senegal and asked to become a Christian. I told him no.

I had met Malick because of his job in low-level government. Several days later he sought me out. Malick explained that he had been born a Muslim but had never actually practiced Islam. A young seeker for truth, he had been exposed to animism, to the Roman Catholic veneer that is thinly-veiled animism in that part of the world, and to several different sects of Islam. Throughout all of his journey, he had never encountered anything that interested him. He had never practiced anything. He had never been an actual adherent of any faith.

And so, he walked up to me that evening and declared, "I've found what I'm looking for. I want to be a follower of this new religion of yours."

But then I asked Malick what new religion that was. He didn't know. I asked him what we were teaching. He didn't know. I asked him what was the difference between us and the Roman Catholics in town—between us and Islam. Malick didn't know.

What Malick knew was this: Americans were in town preaching something, and he wanted in on it.

So, I told Malick about Jesus' parable of counting the cost. I told him the story of the Philippian Jailer. I told him that following Jesus would necessarily mean abandoning Islam, animism, and any other system of belief that is contrary to the gospel in order to follow Jesus alone. I told him that we weren't proclaiming a new religion at all, but that we were simply people reading the Word of God and trying to obey it.

Malick pondered over these things for a while, and then he left.

A couple of days later, I gave Malick a Bible as my last action before leaving the village. He eagerly accepted it, promising to study the scriptures.

I thought about the rich young ruler. I thought about the way that Jesus was comfortable in confronting people who aren't ready to make a real commitment and turning them away. I'm praying for Malick, thankful that I haven't lulled his questions to sleep by indulging him in some knee-jerk, unconsidered, rash action. Next time, he should be ready to say yes or no. Next time, if all goes as I expect, I won't need to hold him back. Next time, maybe we'll kneel together on that little porch and Malick will not only find something new, but will himself be found.

Returning to Senegal

In August a deacon and I made first contact with our Unengaged Unreached People Group in Senegal. Much to our surprise and delight, a few people there trusted Christ for salvation on our very first journey. Thursday morning I begin the journey to return there with the same deacon plus two others.

This entire experience has awakened in me emotions that I didn't know I could have. The strongest follower of Christ whom we left behind was a young man named Marcellin. How I've prayed for him! How I've feared for him! With so much against him, so little given to him, so much riding on him, and absolutely no contact with him, all I can think about is to wonder how I will find him on Saturday (it will take that long to get all of the way there).

Our experience with the Embrace project of the IMB has affected my understanding of the New Testament in ways that no survey class could ever accomplish. I knew that Paul tried to write back to the churches that he had planted and tried to return for visits whenever he could do so, but now I find myself wondering whether Paul felt the same emotions with regard to the converts he left behind that I've been feeling about those I've left behind. I can't help but imagine that he did. Was his letter-writing and step-retracing strategic or compulsive?

I can't help but feel that my personal experience as a cross-cultural evangelist and a planter of churches in untilled land have given me stronger insights into parts of the New Testament than I had before.

The whole experience makes me wonder: How understandable is the Bible to those who are not actually trying to live the life of a disciple? Every time I obey more carefully what God has commanded in scripture, I come to understand scripture better. Does God really even care to communicate with armchair quarterbacks, other than to challenge us to rise up and get to work when we're in that category? Are our primary vehicles of Bible study (Sunday School, small groups, discipleship classes, etc.) places where we ought to invest more in praxis not as an alternative to propositional study but as a facilitator for it?

These are unstrung thoughts, needing much more time in the pot before the soup is ready to serve. The point of this post is not really to feed anyone, anyway, but rather to give me the opportunity to express my gratitude for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention and the life-changing experience that their Embrace project has been for me and for our church—and, I trust, will be.

More Thoughts About Heart-Language

In January I posted on this blog asking the question "Is Insistence Upon Heart Languages Biblical?" Today, in the midst of a week spent mostly in the research of a short list of 9 UUPGs while we at FBC Farmersville attempt to locate the group we plan to adopt, I have a further question along the same lines.

One of the UUPGs that we're researching is in Mexico. The IMB lists it as a GSEC 0 people group. This means that they know of no gospel resources—no Bibles, no tracts, no Jesus film…nothing—available in that indigenous language. To present the gospel in that language would require starting from scratch. It would be a herculean task.

Performing further research on other web sites, I discovered that the native tongue in question has been classified as an endangered language. Linguists fear that this tongue will soon pass entirely out of use unless something happens to preserve it. The major reason why this language is endangered is the domineering pressure of the Spanish language within the community.

With all of this in mind, and in light of my previous post (which you should read if you haven't), I ask these questions:

1. Shouldn't we be rooting for this endangered language to become an extinct, dead language?
2. If language is the primary boundary separating this people group from others, is that a legitimate boundary if the language is dying and is almost dead? Why should missionaries make more of the linguistic boundary than do the people of the people group themselves?

3. Since there is an untold wealth of gospel material available in Spanish, absolutely no gospel materials available in this target language, and such near hegemony of the Spanish language among this group, wouldn't it be a criminal waste of time and resources to expend any money or time on the development of native-language materials for this group if that money and time could be used to bring the gospel to them in Spanish?

Is an Insistence upon Heart-Languages Biblical?

The New Testament was written in Greek. You've probably read some speculation that one or two New Testament books may have been written first in Aramaic, but it is clear that the preponderance of New Testament books were written originally in Greek and that all of them existed almost exclusively in the Greek language relatively quickly in the history of Christianity. Although it was, at that time, the ROMAN Empire, the apostles did not, as far as I can tell, make any effort to write in Latin. Although Asia Minor was polyglot and the gospel was spreading into Africa and across all of the diversity of the Mediterranean Basin, the apostles were entirely content to evangelize and disciple in Greek.

Greek was the "heart-language" of Thessalonica and Corinth, but apart from them, I'm not sure that it could be considered the "heart-language" of any of the recipients of the other New Testament epistles or books.

I'm presuming that we've all heard sermons and lectures extolling this attribute of the Greco-Roman world—the availability of Greek as a common language throughout the empire—as one attribute of the "fulness of time" that God exploited in revealing the gospel at just the time that He did. And yet, people who affirm that idea and preach that kind of sermon, we will turn right around and say with regard to this day and time that the gospel has not been proclaimed somewhere and the Great Commission has not been obeyed somewhere until we have proclaimed it in the "heart-language" of that people-group. Is it OK for me to wonder aloud whether that insistence is biblical?

Let me make some things clear:

First, I'm not saying that I'm AGAINST the translation of the Bible and the propagation of the gospel into every language known to man. I'm IN FAVOR of that. I'm contributing to make it happen. I'm a fan and a supporter. I'm in favor of a lot of things that are advantageous to the Great Commission. The question is whether translation into "heart-language" is ESSENTIAL to the Great Commission—that until you've done that, you cannot have fulfilled the Great Commission among a people-group.

Second, I'm not denying that there are people in the world who speak and understand no language whatsoever in which the gospel is available. There are people like that. For them, we must provide gospel resources in their languages or we have not obeyed the Great Commission until we do so.

So, what I'm asking is none of those questions, but this: Suppose there is a tribe of people in Central America somewhere, living in a country for which the official language is Spanish. They also have a tribal language that is, compared to Spanish, obscure. The preponderance of people in that tribe speak BOTH their tribal language AND Spanish. One might accurately describe the tribal language as their "heart-language," but they are entirely functional in Spanish, conducting their lives and business in it with regularity. About such a people-group, I ask:

1. If Spanish Bibles are available for this people-group, is it accurate to say that they have no Christian literature available to reach them?
2. If a Spanish-speaking evangelical congregation is in their vicinity, is it accurate to say that they have no Christian churches?
3. If Christians have carried the gospel to these people in Spanish, has the Great Commission been carried out and has the gospel been proclaimed to them?
4. How are they different from, for example, the Galatians, whom the apostles were content to evangelize and disciple in Greek?
5. How are they different from, for example, a tribe of Sioux in North Dakota who might have received English Bibles, may have professed faith in Christ in English, and might attend English-speaking churches?

I'm not shooting at ANYBODY with this post. It's just that, our church having embarked upon this Embrace initiative, I as a pastor am in a position to need to have thought more carefully and to greater depth about my own understandings of Biblical missiology. I'm trying to work that out, and I'd appreciate constructive dialogue.