^ Jlie s^ ln ó ive r to ^ 4 f r ic a ó é^ uan^ efizu tion
By Rev. Douglas Percy of the Sudan Interior Mission
A Moving Description of Native Missionary Effort
most encouraging work on the African scene of missionary en- deavor at the present day is the intense, wholehearted, concerted eifort of the native Christians to evangelize their fellow countrymen. More than ever be fore, men are being trained for God— the African to reach Africans— in an effort to furnish a sure spiritual founda tion for a people who are slowly waking from their centuries-long sleep, and who are stirring under the after-effects of the war and the impact of western civili zation. Within the framework of many missions there is a growing native mis sionary movement that indicates a re vived land, a movement reaching even into the wild, unsettled hinterland of a heretofore backward people. This new effort is calling for two things: conse crated missionaries from the homeland who will train the native Christians for this servicd, and consecrated Africans who will accept the challenge of the open door amongst their own people, and will give themselves to be trained for sacrificial service for God. A GREAT deal has already been said about the lack of foreign workers. One cannot over-emphasize the crying need for men and women who will give themselves to a foreign tongue and a strange people, to live under trying con ditions, to strive under God to train workmen that need not to be ashamed. However, too little is said of those black skinned but white-hearted people of the tropics who, after accepting Jesus Christ
as personal Saviour, give themselves in unstinting missionary service amongst their own kind. T HESE are men who have known sin in all its virulent forms; men who almost without exception have broken nine, if not ten, of the commandments of God; men, washed in the blood o f the Lamb, who now must face and con demn those evils in which they once in dulged. S OMETIMES we cannot comprehend paganism in its true light. Our own temperate thinking, controlled by years of the Christian concept of living and a general environment of decency, forbids our fully understanding from what depths these souls have been saved, and to what, in order to preach the gospel, they return. E VERY town, every village, yes, every home without a single exception, is a sink-hole of iniquity, a miasma of evil. Prostitution, even amongst children, is not a hush-hush phase of native life. It is to them the natural order o f things, to be practiced openly. Great drunken orgies are not occasional lapses, but an integral part of pagan life; juju and an cestral worship, the blinding, deadening force in their animism, to be reveled in alike by toddling children and doddering old men. Marriage, the home, family units, chastity: these are so foreign to their thinking and life that they cannot
understand the missionaries’ repugnance to their promiscuous, disease-producing relationships. One would shrink to relate the full tale of evil and sin which is the rule rather than the exception of all the native life. Christians and Christian homes are indeed lights that spring up in these habitations of cruelty. T O this, then, the Bible-trained na tives return, taking the story of love, sacrifice and purity, of sin, judg ment and death, of Jesus Christ and His gospel o f redeeming love. Into these muck heaps, into these dregs o f life, only those can freely go whose tongue and color are similar. For, Phoenix-like, they have risen from the ashes of such lives and can tell their fellows o f the new life in Christ. T HESE native evangelists are not al ways welcomed with outstretched hands. One had his house burned around his ears; he saved only his school note books and Hausa Bible, before the grass roof collapsed. Others have been driven from their towns by irate chiefs, who could not bear the purity o f the gospel, or who took umbrage at the preaching of personal sin. On the other hand, some have been begged to stay and offered homes and granaries full o f guinea corn, if they would only continue to teach and preach in their villages. H ERE is a gateway for rich, fruitful service. Past these Bible Training Schools, where the native Christians are prepared for the evangelizing and pas- toring of their own people, flows a cross- section of native life symbolic o f the people to whom the students are minis tering the Word o f Life. H ERE travels the proud Mohamme dan, his flowing robes swishing as he walks, scattering dust as they drag the ground, or spread around him on the withers o f his pawing, prancing horse. There goes the nomadic cattle Fulani, with his distinctive fine fea tures, light skin and long, braided hair, sauntering by with his arms hooked over the long herding stick yoked across his shoulders, or his counterpart, the Fulani Udawa, rich in sheep and goats, driving his bawling, baa-ing herd to noisy, native market. Leaf-aproned women, in the fresh bloom of woman hood or parchment-skinned old age, la boriously climb past and up the never- (Continued on Page 20) T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
At left, Biliri Teachers’ Training School; at right, Bible Training School.
Page Eight
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker