missions

Clothing the Gospel — The Arts in Missions

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Worship and evangelism are central to the Christian faith, but worshiping God is much more than attending church on Sunday, just as evangelism is much more than saying religious words to an unbeliever. As artists, our missionary strategy needs to employ every available means of communication—speaking, listening, playing music, storytelling, using parables and proverbs, dancing, drama, visual arts—as we seek to make men, women, and children worshipers of God.

When we plan effective evangelistic strategies, we often talk about homogenous groups, unreached peoples, and church growth. But in all this, mission agencies and churches must analyze regional and national cultures in the search for missing keys that will open communities to Christ. One vital key rarely considered is the role of artistic communication in reaching a culture and helping the church grow and reproduce itself within that culture.

Culturally Appropriate Worship

When believers worship God and express their faith in a familiar and culturally appropriate way, the unchurched take notice. Previously unreached people become more receptive to God’s Word and the worship of the true Creator when they see and hear and experience worship, not only in their own language, but also in their own music and story forms and artistic patterns.

Western missions have generally assumed that, to adequately understand the Bible, you must know how to read it. Translation efforts, combined with literacy training, have been valuable in many cultures. But experts estimate that up to 75 percent of the world’s people don’t know how to read. That means the literary approach to evangelism cannot do the whole job. We must in­tegrate artistic communication methods into our normal ministry thinking.

We need Christians with special sensitivity in the arts to find their way onto the mission field and into the development of mission strategy. We need to help missionaries and churches clothe the gospel in culturally appropriate forms and avoid the unconscious mistake of promoting only Western forms of communication and styles of worship. Maybe in this way we can break through cultural barriers that have been difficult to penetrate with traditional methods.

We must stimulate the use a wide range of indigenous communication forms such as music, drama, storytelling, painting, architecture, mime, pup­petry, crafts, festival, chant, movement, ritual, the arrangement of space, and body language, among others. In all these ways, the arts convey an important understanding of life, its problems, pos­sibilities, truths, fears, and mysteries.

Practical Implementation for Artists and Musicians:

  • Make yourself available, no strings attached, to church leadership so that they will be able to use your artistic gifts as they need them.
    • Be a servant, not a star.
    • Do a short-term mission assignment as soon as possible.
    • In conjunction with your local church, pursue some kind of street work, campus ministry, etc., as soon as possible.

Practical Implementation for Mission Agencies:

  • Focus on developing indigenous worship, encouraging churches to use forms of worship that are culturally appropriate.
  • Assign missionaries to take lessons in some craft or art form from a national.
    • Promote the development of new ethnic-Christian celebrations, honoring God and highlighting the gospel in the context of such important events as birth, parent-child dedication, conversion, baptism and marriage.

Jews for Jesus has done this by creating a new Jewish-Christian wedding ceremony, as well as a circumcision ceremony. These ceremonies have elements of both Jewish and Christian traditions, with an emphasis on biblical truth framed in familiar cultural forms. By doing this, the gospel is proclaimed quite strongly in the context of joyous celebration, and without denying—or in any way pulling one away from—neutral cultural norms.

Practical Implementation for Local Churches:

  • Artistic communication is not just for the mission field. Are your forms of worship and evangelism culturally appropriate to your community?
    • Spend as much time planning the worship service as the pastor spends preparing the sermon. Develop a worship team for better planning.
    • Make a point to develop methods of non-literary, non-academic communication for your worship times. This will create an environment where unchurched people will feel more comfortable. Direct the service to the believer, but don’t make it so “in-house” that you exclude visitors.
    • Emphasize the participation of the worshipers more than the performance of the choir, soloists, and preachers.

Practical Implementation for Colleges and Seminaries:

  • Develop interdisciplinary degree programs for train­ing specialists in artistic communication.
    • Arrange for faculty and students to be placed in domestic cross-cultural short-term ministry situations.

It’s time we let God use us in more creative ways to evangelize the world. When we do, many more will see and fear and trust in him (Psalm 40:2–3).

Ethnic Arts — A Key to Mission Strategy

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Missionaries today stand increasingly aware of the need to acculturate as much as possible their message and work. Dr. Leonard Rascher of Moody Bible Institute has stated that “the overriding objective (of missionary training) . . .is to sensitize . . . (those) from the majority culture with regard to (the nuances of cross-cultural communications) as it relates to those in minority cultures.” Moreover, it is obvious that those in mission work must continually press toward increasing their sensitivity to the dynamics of culture.  Only in this manner can we even attempt to avoid the mistakes of our past.

Also, according to Dr. Rascher, the very first principle related to cross-cultural communication is that “we must be informed.” The following brief comments move to raise a few considerations about the role of the ethnic arts in mission strategy. Hopefully, these comments, along with some notes on why we in conservative evangelical missions have developed our present oversight of the arts in general, will help us include a close look at ethnic art forms in the development of our pre-evangelism, evangelism, and church planting strategy on the field.

In addition to the written and spoken language, increasingly we see the importance of body language, the language of social interaction, the language of ritual, etc. all of these, at first foreign and unintelligible to the outsider.  Throughout the world, astute missionaries, are working (to check to give close attention to these ever so important cultural keys to understanding. An understanding of a people’s thought patterns and cultural norms will form the freeways that speed on a culturally relevant gospel so desperately needed by all.

I strongly believe there exists (at least) one major area of neglect by most conservative evangelical mission works — THE ETHNIC ARTS. A close evaluation of a people’s music and other art forms provides the major road maps to grasping their thought patterns, value structures, and communication norms. Though cross-cultural missionaries have for years attempted to become more sensitized to anthropological considerations, because of our generally low view (or inadequate view) of the role of the arts within our humanity or our Christianity, very few have an awareness of the need to take care to observe a people closely in these areas. 

In the semi-literate and illiterate people groups, tradition, religion, social values, etc., are often almost exclusively transmitted through various art forms. Remember that, though written language and translation work are central to any mission work, we must teach a given illiterate people the whole concept of learning via writing and reading, over and above simply teaching them to read and write. How ethnocentric! In fact, reading and writing simply happen to be our way, the western way–in many cases a very foreign way.

For example, according to Rev. David Penz, missionary pastor and pilot with Arctic Missions, Anchorage, Alaska, and formerly with Wycliffe, the native peoples of Alaska are a “show-and-tell” people. They have for centuries, communicated their heritage, their traditions, and their teaching through chant stories, dance, and other art forms. This is true in numerous other people groups as well.

My major point is this–mission work will accelerate if:
1. Missionaries will work through local indigenous leadership, and do that as much as possible behind the scenes;
2. Missions strategy will focus on using every medium of indigenous communications possible in transmitting the truth of the Scripture; and
3. Evaluation and utilization of various ethnic art forms used in conjunction with and simultaneous to the development of language and translation work.

It is a recognized fact that the truth of God and the establishment of Christ’s Church will only occur as that truth enters via cultural points of contact and can be seen by a people as their own; to be developed within culturally familiar norms. In saying this, I am not advocating using Shaman dances in Christian worship. I do believe that dance forms can be developed though, in ways that may be quite appropriate (if developed by those natives sensitive to proper theology, proper decorum and proper motives related to worship, teaching, encouragement and evangelism). In general we must, as quickly as possible, do away with introducing culturally foreign forms of expressions (e.g., our stayed hymns, our systems of homiletics, etc.) and allow them to develop their own appropriate forms of Christian expression and style.

Dr. George Patterson, director of the Honduran Extension Bible Institute in La Ceiba, Honduras (Conservative Baptist Home Mission Society) has demonstrated the above principles well. Over 12 years, he was been responsible for the planting of over 70 churches in a 600 square mile area of Northern Honduras. Yet, he has never pastored one of these churches. He has been the only missionary directly related to the project and therefore has had to work always with the adult male leaders of the churches throughout this area. He focused on working behind the scenes with one or two key lay leaders who in turn teach others within their village. During the course of the growth of these churches they have simply witnessed their own indigenous music sprout and grow. They have recently invited Artists in Christian Testimony to come in to help record, transcribe, and provide some ideas as to its broader and general use throughout the region. That is to say, Dr. Patterson has attempted to stay as much as possible out of the way of the natural flow of the culture.

Dr. Vida Chenoweth, a leading ethnomusicologist with Wycliffe and director of Wheaton’s Ethnomusicology degree program, strongly urged that whenever possible the missionary should not stop “the natural flow of the culture.” Where that flow has been interrupted by the introduction of foreign styles or forms of communication the confidence of the nationals in their own norms is undercut. Therefore she emphasized, “The people do not have confidence in their art forms until the missionary demonstrates the validity of their art forms.” She went on to say concerning some solutions to this problem, that “. . . throughout New Guinea, in trying to bridge the cultural gaps, the people start producing hymns as soon as they are certain it is approved by the missionaries and when some of the outsiders have some ability to participate.” This same phenomenon can happen in other cultures.

The well-known keys to any effective communication of the Gospel are RESPECT and RELATIONSHIP. And that respect and relationship must be built upon a culturally familiar foundation. We in missions want to build bridges. Since we are the outsiders the burden of responsibility for cultural adaptation is on us. Therefore, our main question in developing strategy must be, “How can I touch these people in terms they understand?” We must then use their dialect, their body language, and their art forms to do it.

I am opposed to animistic occult practices, but not to carving per se. I am opposed to immoral and frenzied music and song fests, but not to singing per se. I am opposed to the ritual of the Shaman, but not to dramatic presentation per se. I advocated augmenting literacy, but I do not believe that intelligence and literacy go hand-in-hand. Therefore let us continue to increase our investigation and then our affirmation to use ethnic art forms to:

1. Help establish positive relationship bridges (cultural points of contact) that will serve as roads on which the Gospel can travel;
2. Put across God’s truth in Christ (redemptive and cultural analogies) in familiar terms as a form of expression;
3. Work as much as possible with the indigenous leadership and do that behind the scenes; and
4. Leave room to allow God’s Spirit to impress upon the indigenous leadership the “forms” and “styles” of communication, worship, and church life familiar to them.

Wherever this has happened the indigenous church has grown. Wherever the Western missionary and his or her “forms” and “norms” have dominated, the growth of the believers and their churches have been held back.

My appeal is simple. Do nothing risky. Begin with the national music leadership which has already surfaced. Encourage them to use their own familiar expressions, while at the same time trying not to introduce them to “foreign” expressions.

Perhaps some simple drama presentations based on passages of Scripture could be developed by natives for natives. Generally, God gives sensitive musicians who are strongly committed Christians. Capitalize on these national leaders as a windfall in helping teach the Scripture and instruct about problems in terms the nationals understand, and through those with whom they best relate, their own people. Couple the above move with an increased emphasis on working through local proven leadership, trained in their own villages behind the scenes (out of sight of most) through extension teachers.

All of this then should point to establishing village churches under the direction of village leadership who will be sensitive to guiding, in specific terms, forms of worship and teaching that are familiar to the local people.

American foreign missions

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The missionary undertakings in Great Britain attracted the attention of Americans, and soon they were contributing to the expenses of the English stations. Yet it wasn’t until the nineteenth century that any national foreign society was organized. A group of Williams College students in 1806 formed the Haystack Band of volunteers. This group helped form the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, officially organized by the Congregationalists in 1810. Adoniram Judson and Luther Rice were the first missionaries sent by this society, sailing to India in 1812; although Judson and Rice soon transferred their allegiance to the Baptists over a dispute over baptism with their mission board. Judson and his wife Anne moved to Burma where they lived in the English Baptist mission home. He began an earnest study of the Burmese language, although it took him nearly six years to gain the necessary linguistic skills to preach in the native tongue. It was another six years before he led the first person to Christ. In 1824 the Anglo-Burmese war broke out and Judson was imprisoned for two years. Shortly after his release Anne died. Judson continued his work and in 1833 he completed a translation of the Bible into Burmese. During this time he married Sarah Hall Boardman, returning to America in 1845 due to her failing health. Sadly she died on the voyage. He went back to Burma in 1846 and spent the rest of his life working on a Burmese dictionary. Like his second wife, he also died at sea while sailing to Martinique where he hoped to recuperate from an illness.

Impact: For nearly thirty years Presbyterians and other Reformed churches contributed to the American Board, but at the end of that period denominational organization seemed to each group a better arrangement. Both Methodists and Episcopalians followed the example of the rest. Smaller denominations carried on independent operations in various regions.

English and Scottish foreign missions

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William Carey, called “the father of modern missions,” was born in Paulersbury, England to a poor weaver. As a young man, he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker but spent his spare time studying for the ministry. Amazingly, while still a teenager, he was able to read the Bible in six languages. This gift for languages would serve him well as a missionary. In 1787 he became pastor of a Baptist church where, in 1792, he preached a sermon with the famous line, “Expect Great Things from God, Attempt Great Things for God.” He helped organize the Baptist Missionary Society and became one of the group’s first members to go abroad when he went to India in 1793. He suffered greatly during the early years of his ministry due to financial setbacks, the death of his children, and the mental illness of his wife. In 1799 he was able to purchase a small indigo plantation and it was from here that he started his first successful mission. Opposition from the East India Company forced him to shut down his operation, however, so in 1800 he moved to Serampore where he and other missionaries preached, taught, and started Serampore Press to distribute Christian literature. In 1831 Carey was appointed professor of Oriental languages at Fort William College in Calcutta, a position he held for 30 years until his death. During this time he was largely responsible for translating the Bible into 36 dialects, making the Scriptures available to over 300 million people. In addition to Carey, the London Missionary Society sent its first missionaries into the islands of the Pacific Ocean, where they had remarkable success among the islanders, though they had to contend with cruel and greedy traders and sailors. The Wesleyan Missionary Society brought Christianity to the Pacific islands, Africa, and the Far East. The Scotch Presbyterians sent out pioneer missionaries to West Africa as early as 1796. Both the Established Church and the Free Church organized foreign mission committees. Among well-known Scotch missionaries were Alexander Duff, who established Presbyterian schools in India; John Paton, who spent the bulk of his life working in the New Hebrides; Robert Moffat, who started a mission station in South Africa in about 1820; and David Livingstone, who explored the Zambesi and the great lakes of the interior and who helped to destroy the African slave trade in the mid-nineteenth century.

Impact: English and Scottish missions in the late eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth centuries not only brought the Gospel message, they were also instrumental in fomenting social reforms, bringing medical care, and ending pagan practices that destroyed the lives of women and children.

Early missions to Scandinavia

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As the Germans had swarmed southward years earlier, so Norsemen from the Scandinavian peninsula made piratical excursions up the French rivers, seized the district in the north afterward called Normandy, and wrested eastern England from the Saxon king, Alfred. Other adventurers pushed southeast from Sweden and into Russia where they founded a royal line in the ninth century. The monk Ansgar went to Denmark and Sweden as a missionary and from his diocesan headquarters at Hamburg, he was apostolic vicar of the pope over all Scandinavia. But the progress of Christianity was slow. In Norway, King Olaf Trigvason was baptized by a hermit, did his best through a short reign to convert his people, and sent missionaries to Iceland and to Greenland. Greenland had a bishop in the tenth century. In the twelfth century, Swedish missionaries went into Finland, and each of the three Scandinavian countries eventually had its own bishop.

Impact: In becoming Christians the Norsemen did not lose all of their adventurous spirits, but they came into peaceful relations with continental Europe. Subsequently, they formed part of the trading system of the Hanseatic League.