Keeping Up with the Joneses (Part II)

A village church worshiping outside when the visitors
become to large for their normal shelter.

Earlier I introduced the hard conversations that I’ve been having with some local pastors from our partner church. One theme was the sense that Western Christians should be helping build church buildings here. And also give pastors resources that they can use to be seen as important people in the community, who can help others out of their generosity with the resources they have. The central example is that Middle Eastern money is pouring in to build mosques on every street corner or path intersection, and so it is hard for Christians to get people to take them seriously when they show up to a village empty handed and needing to rely on others for handouts. I will offer one more objection and counter-point from these sticky conversations. 

My feeling is that the Middle Eastern countries are behaving in a very similar way to the European colonial period in their sense that giving people in Africa money and building things for them is going to convert them to their ways and solidify their loyalty. Yes, that works for a time, but in the end the Western powers found that they created many problems and didn’t bring about lasting or real progress/transformation/healthy change through their money and power grabbing methods. When the money lessens or the people begin to react against outside control, then most of the direction is reversed and the gains are lost. So, I’ve shared with the pastors that I don’t think Western churches are consciously ready to repeat the dependency and backlash that was created in colonial times, hence reacting to Middle Eastern actions in kind doesn’t seem like a viable expectation. (Although many of the things we do may still be unconsciously repeating these mistakes.)

Finally, a lot of this talk is based on high ideals and theoretical arguments. The really bleak and ugly reality is more difficult to navigate. When rich people from the community come to a pastor in dire straits and tell him that instead of him needing to continue to shamefully borrow food from them, they are willing to provide more than enough for his family, clothing, schooling, fields, vehicles, if he will simply leave off preaching and adopt their Muslim customs. When other Christians see someone succumb to this temptation and are given similar offers themselves, it is very difficult to continue to scrape by and endure so much scarcity… The thought is, if only Christians who had the means would come along side their brothers and sisters who are struggling and enable them to remain and thrive in the church… If only it was as easy as giving money… but in reality life is more complicated than that.

What I do appreciate is these pastors realize the problems that have been brought in the past through the giving of so many handouts. But they also don’t want to feel that their brothers and sisters in the West are sitting by and letting the money from the Middle East run over their country and close people to the Gospel when there are things we can do in partnership while the society is still open. May God grant us all more vision to see what we can do to be faithful in our time.

-- El Padre