Keep Your Money but Bring the Mojo

It's June 2005, and I’m in Zambia bouncing along in a jeep about three hours west of Ndola. Davis Chipoya is driving – he’s a Zambian pastor and Jesus Film staffer. Davis takes sick delight in driving as fast as he can through twisty bush trails just to see the expressions of terror on my face. We are heading out into the middle of nowhere to train rural pastors on how to study the Bible and prepare sermons. The trails get progressively worse until we roll into the village of Mputu and stop at a mud-walled church. It’s like going back in time to 17th century North America; there’s no electricity, no running water, just mud huts, subsistence farming, and a tribal culture. The whole western world could collapse and they wouldn’t even know about it (or care). I’m a big hit with the younger kids because I’m the first white boy some them have ever seen. Spiritually, it’s about 37 A.D. – right out of the book of Acts. The gospel has taken root, but the roots don’t go too deep yet. The pastors in rural Zambia are starving, but not for food. They are ravenous for biblical training. Even though they are incredibly intelligent, they have never had the opportunity to get the spiritual goods they need to take care of their churches. They are already thanking me for coming, and I haven’t even said a word yet. As we walk around, a couple of thoughts go through my head. First, I’m wondering, “What’s a schmuck like me doing training Zambian pastors...God must be desperate.” Next, I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I’m not watching somebody on Discovery Channel do this. I’m not reading this in a book…I’m really here in the middle of Africa!” It’s like that quote from Fight Club, “After a night in fight club [or Zambia], everything in the real world gets the volume turned down.”
‘Incarnation’ is a funky word. It means the act of giving bodily form and substance to something that is unseen. We don’t use it much unless we’re talking theology, but we need to get it back into our vocabulary. In the last 50 years the western church has fallen into a very, very bad pattern of missions professionalism. Missions professionalism is the philosophy that missions is best left to highly trained, highly called, special-force type Christians who will go out there and save the world. For the rest of us, our role is to stay home, send money, stick magnetic prayer cards on our refrigerators, and listen to Sara Groves sing about her missionary great-aunt. We think that unless we have a seminary education and hear the audible voice of God telling us to go that we should stay put. Of course, this is completely ridiculous. When Jesus said “Go and make disciples of all nations” he was speaking to an unsophisticated, rag-tag group. He was calling them to incarnational ministry. He wanted them to make disciples in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and to give, through their (unsophisticated, but Spirit-filled) presence, substance to the triune God who is invisible but real. He didn’t tell them to merely send people to the nations; he told them to go personally to the nations. And they did! In describing the first disciples, Justin Martyr said, “They were uneducated and of no ability in speaking. But by the power of God, they proclaimed to every race of men that they were sent by Christ to teach the word of God to everyone.” Two centuries later, the early church still knew nothing of ‘missions professionals.’ About 197 A.D. Tertullian wrote “We are but of yesterday, and we have filled every place among you – cities, islands, fortresses, towns, market places, senate, forum – we have left nothing to you but the temples of your gods.” It seems like everybody in the early church was explosively focused on missions.
Pastors are walking and riding (bicycles) in from all over the bush. The church isn’t big enough, so we meet in a sort of natural amphitheater that has these Stonehenge-like rocks sticking out of the ground. For the first fifteen minutes of our ‘conference’ they just sit and stare at me. When I ask the interpreter (they speak lamba) what’s up, he laughs and tells me that they just can’t believe that this white guy is actually standing in front of them! We spend the days talking about the meaning of 2nd Timothy and practicing sermons. I sleep on the ground with them, eat shima (the Zambian staple made of maize) and play my guitar along with their worship songs. Zambian worship has these beautiful, heartbreaking melodies with 9-part harmony and complex rhythms. In defiance of circumstances, Zambian worship is full of joy and hope. They bless me way more than I could ever bless them.
The progress of these pastors is amazing. Many of them do not have Bibles, so they have to memorize scripture (can you imagine trying to be a pastor without a bible?). In a couple of days, their interpretation skills have improved dramatically, and the practice sermons show it. They tell me this is the first training they’ve ever had, and that white folks come to the cities sometimes, but they’ve never seen a white man come out into the bush and live with them. As I get ready to leave, some have tears in their eyes and say that my presence is evidence that God loves them and has heard their cries. Whoa. But that’s what incarnational ministry does. When we go to a hard place, humble ourselves, and live with the people we want to minister to, it echoes the nature of Jesus who did the same for us. We don’t have to have a master’s degree in theology – we just have to be committed to the truth and in love with our Lord. So stop just sending money, and go bring your mojo! Our mojo is the Spirit of God ministering through us (not someone else but US) with all of our weaknesses and inadequacies. Pick a place, a people and glorify the triune God, who is invisible but powerfully present, by being there.