Place

This is the second part of my series began yesterday. The following three posts (including this one) look at some aspects of the Welsh context.

I am very aware that the following is a mere gloss over a complex subject. But worse than offering a superficial analysis of the context is not to do so at all. I am especially conscious that I will say very little about Welsh language. This is not because it is not important but rather because I am poorly qualified to do so. Suffice it to say that we need to take Welsh language seriously. Our approach to the phenomenon of a minority indigenous language community actually gives us some helpful ways to model our approach with minority exogenous language groups, but I am not going to cover that today. 

What I shall offer here are a few general thoughts, not exactly random, but certainly not very carefully thought through. 

1.     Place

David Goodheart argues that the key fault line in Britain and elsewhere now separates those whom he labels ‘Anywheres’ – mobile, usually urban, socially liberal, university educated, status-achieved individuals – and ‘Somewheres’ – communally-rooted, usually in a small town or in the countryside, socially conservative, often less educated, status-ascribed (David Goodheart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics [London: Hurst, 2017]). Somewheres make up roughly half the population of the UK but must surely constitute a big majority of people who live in Wales.

Are we sufficiently aware of the sensitivities of Somewheres? The gospel liberates us from the tyranny of prejudice towards the outsider. But it doesn’t blot out our social and cultural and geographical rootedness. While we should always build a global awareness and concern in our churches, we must never be embarrassed at the localism and apparent narrow-mindedness of people who live their whole lives in the same place and have no desire to eat olives.

Somewheres voted almost overwhelmingly for Leave in the 2016 referendum. Whatever our views on Brexit, we must be attuned to the sense of disempowerment that has been experienced by Somewheres in the whole Brexit process. When I first wrote this I said, “We must be prepared to speak a message of hope in the disappointment.” Now Brexit is actually going ahead, that disappointment has probably replaced with at least a measure of optimism. But it is unlikely that all the expectations of the Somewheres will be realized. So we must expect at least some of that feeling of disappointment and disenfranchisement to return. Are we going to come alongside these people, who bear God’s likeness, and preach hope to them and live hope-filled lives in apparently hopeless situations?

If we are going to make any progress in reaching out to the Somewheres of Wales, we must help them see that the gospel and the church are for them. And that surely means we must get out of our comfort zones and get our hands dirty. (See also Peter Franklin, ‘The Post’ blog, by Unherd, 12 September 2019.)

Furthermore, as Francis Schaeffer wrote half a century ago, we are the church before the watching world. We may think people are ignoring us. And that may be true on a national level. But on a local level, people are indeed watching us. They want to see if our message is matched by our actions. Are we characterised by love, as we are supposed to be? If we are, we will shine all the brighter as society around us becomes all the darker.

In Defence of Strategy

Early last year I was invited to speak to the men of the Swansea ministers' fraternal. This was my brief: 

What mission strategy would an experienced missionary come up with for Wales?

I covered only half my material then so they invited me back in December to cover the rest. Since then a number of people have asked to read my paper. I am very conscious of its weaknesses but more might benefit in some way if I post it here. So I will start here with my introduction and, Lord willing, add more over the next few days.

The Collins Dictionary defines strategy as follows: 

1.     the art or science of the planning and conduct of a war;

2.     a particular long-term plan for success, esp. in politics, business, etc.

I suppose, in missions, strategy could imply either of those meanings (though a strategic approach to spiritual warfare has invariably resulted in bizarre and destructive activities). Strategic planning is not new in missions. It was assumed when the term ‘mission’ was first used, by the Jesuits led by Ignatius Loyola in the 16^thCentury. Like the word mission, strategy became a regular part of organised efforts to spread Christianity in subsequent centuries, becoming a particularly Protestant phenomenon with William Carey’s Enquiry in 1792.

As with the words and concepts of ‘mission’ and ‘missions’ in the 21^st Century, the idea of employing strategy in the pursuit of fulfilling the calling of the church, has rather dropped out of favour. It may be seen as a particularly modern idea, that owes more to the Enlightenment than to the Bible.

Since the 1960s, the modern missions movement, especially in its American form, has been marked by a strong emphasis on strategic planning. It has been a characteristic of the Church Growth Movement led by Donald McGavran and the US Center for World Mission of Ralph Winter (now called Frontier Ventures) and its spin offs. 

This approach, however, has come under some trenchant criticism. Samuel Escobar, for example, has criticised this ‘Californian’ approach as being guilty of making mission an exercise in management – ‘managerial missions’.

To a large degree I share the concerns of those who have voiced this criticism. But I am not wholly with the critics for two reasons:

1.     The criticism of McGavran – which you hear a lot in Reformed circles – is largely uninformed and crude. I have a hunch that very few have read him. It is true that he probably took some of his ideas too far. But his thinking, drawing on the work of Roland Allen, and heavily informed by his own many years of ministry in India, was very fruitful. There had been far too much waste of mission resources. Missionaries had been labouring in places for decades without any fruit. Many had been tied up in managing institutions. Among other things, he wanted missions to step back and ask serious questions about what they were doing.

2.     Planning is biblical. Paul did not wander around the Mediterranean Basin in a random manner. He and his companions “were kept by the HS from preaching the word in the province of Asia” (Acts 16:6). That would mean nothing if they hadn’t been prevented from carrying out a plan. In the next verse we read that they “tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to”. Clearly, they were seeking to evangelise according to a strategy.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans he tells them that he had “planned many times to come to you” (Rom 1:13). At the end of his letter, he outlines his modus operandi: “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation” (Rom 15:20). Then he tells them of his ‘plan’ to visit them on his way to Spain (24). Likewise, Paul discusses his plans to visit the Corinthians (2 Cor 1:15-17).

However, we must always resist the temptation to reduce the ministry that the Lord has given us to a management exercise, and that again for two reasons:

1.     Firstly, the work of ministry is a spiritual ministry. By that I mean that it is ultimately the work of the Spirit, who empowers us to join him in his work (Acts 1:8). So, he maintains the right to move where he wills (John 3:8). Thus, we must always be ready to change our plans at a moment’s notice. It is striking how, in all those passages, without exception, in which Luke and Paul mention plans, they are recounting how their plans have changed. There was one thing more important than planning and that was responding to the Spirit’s leading (not always the same as responding to the requests of people as Mark 1:35-39 demonstrate).

2.     Secondly, the work of ministry must never be reduced to numbers. Graphs, spreadsheets, people groups, and colour-coded maps all look great. But they give the impression of a scientific rigour about the research that is unwarranted. It is a positivistic approach to social and spiritual phenomena that, in reality, is unsuited to the material.

So, with that preamble, I would like to take a chastened approach to strategy for Wales. But before I proceed, I want to apologise because I haven’t done the necessary reading to interact with others who have had a go at this before me. I have not, for example, read David Ollerton’s book, A New Mission to Wales. I also suspect that much of what I have to proposed has already been suggested by others, and there are probably a number of men and women unbeknownst to me beavering away in just such ways away from the limelight. Really, they are the ones who need to be listened to rather than me.

So, if you were hoping for a grand strategy, I am afraid you will be disappointed. Rather, in this presentation I want to look firstly at our context and then address four strategic issues that come to mind as I consider a gospel response to this context. 

Caste and Community in Confusion

This is part 2 of a two-part interaction with Frontier Mission's May/June issue on India. See part 1 here.

I find the ongoing use of “caste” as the key sociological concept for the purposes of church planting deeply problematic, as I explained in some detail in a previous publication.[1] I am not sure whether people have ignored that article or simply don’t understand it, since nobody has interacted with that article. If that article is opaque, I hope I can have a chance here to remedy that.

The question of how we classify people clearly continues to excite imaginations, as we see in the recent Patidar reservation agitation in which a dominant caste in Gujarat has attempted to get legal recognition as a downtrodden people in order to be recipients of affirmative action. In this regard I find it naïve that the author identified as, A Passionate Indian Servant can say in “Why the Community/ Caste Focus is Needed in Support of Church Planting Movements” that, “There is too much of classifying people by who we think they are, rather than who they perceive themselves to be”. Identities, however, are always a product of negotiation between insiders and outsiders, so it does not make sense to try to classify everyone simply according to their self identifier. In South Asia, especially, these things are contested.

In the editorial, the significance of community is front and center: “Each of these communities will likely need a separate movement of disciple making and church planting – thereby making India the greatest challenge to world evangelization…today”.

If there are “thousands of different communities all separated by caste, language and religion,” as Rick Wood asserts in “The Only Way to Reach India Is through Movements,” then India does indeed look like the neediest country in the world in terms of church planting. But if India’s communities are not as fissiparous as it first appears, that argument collapses. It does not mean, necessarily, that India is not the greatest challenge, but it does mean that such an assertion would need to be justified on other grounds.

I wonder if part of the problem is that the research is partial and biased. Why, for instance, does A Passionate Indian Servant write that, “Typically, in an Indian city, 99% of those of Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe status are able to supply their community/caste/tribe name when asked.” What about other castes? In my research in Nepal, almost everyone knew their caste – to ask someone’s jati would seem rude but to ask someone’s thar invariably resulted in an immediate and clear answer.

Likewise, Victor John, in “The Bhojpuri Movement Transforming Social Dynamics,” reports that among Bhojpuri speakers “low caste or outcast Dalits and adivasi” make up 80% of the group and the “good news has tended to more quickly enter the low caste”. Nevertheless, he writes that, “If the high caste in our area are only two percent or 10 percent of the population, that same percentage is also reflected in the churches.” I can’t see how both can be true. More likely, it would seem that indeed the Bhojpuri phenomenon is an overwhelmingly Dalit movement, as indeed A Passionate Indian Servant suggests—both the Chamar and Balmiki people are Dalit castes. So John’s claim that the “focus on language rather than caste” results in the movement touching all castes, is not established.

What exactly is caste? The aforementioned author attempts to define caste in ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ ways. But what does he mean by formal and informal? Rather than clarifying the issue, such distinctions obfuscate. One would be hard put to find any scholar making such a distinction. The great need is to define caste as it is lived and experienced. It is only when real communities are understood that social data can be useful. And that only really happens with careful, in-depth, theoretically-sensitive ethnographic observation and interaction. There is little evidence that any such research has been attempted as little ethnographic data is presented.

Is caste the same thing as community? The same writer tells us that, “In south Asia, community largely means ‘caste,’ but is more innocent sounding term and preferable to many. A South Asian community is not a voluntary association, but an ethno-linguistic hereditary group with defined boundaries within which one must marry.”

Community can, of course, be defined in any number of ways, especially in today’s climate of identity politics. Caste, however, has been the subject of intense sociological and historical analysis. The writer quotes historian Sumit Guha: ‘…the bounded, status-ranked ethnic community or ‘caste’ is a social form that frequently appears in multiethnic societies… (pp. 2–3).” But Guha also argues that castes are “geographically bounded communities”.[2] It is this geographical, or territorial, element that is largely missing in so much writing on South Asian missiology. 

Allow me to return to the Badhai, whom I discussed in my previous article. According to the JP, the Badhai are a group of peoples traditionally involved in carpentry. The JP lists five groups in India with the name Badhai: 

·      Badhai (Hindu Traditions)

·      Badhai (Hindu Traditions)

·      Badhai Gandhar

·      Badhai Kharadi 

·      Badhai Konkani

The first group is located across much of north, central, and western India, the second mostly in Uttar Pradesh with many also in other Indian states as well as in Pakistan and Bangladesh, while each of the three latter groups turn out to be rather few in numbers and situated in geographically tightly circumscribed areas.

The Badhai (HT) are further divided into 25 ‘subgroups’, many of whom comprise tens of thousands of individuals, and by the look of their names seem to belong to particular places just as the latter three on the main list. We are told that these subgroups are designated as such because they constitute a “segment of a people group that probably does not need a unique church planting effort.” Why? Because “The Gospel can flow between subgroups without encountering significant barriers of understanding or acceptance.”

Although I know very little about the Badhai in India, I would hazard a guess, based on my detailed field work in Nepal, that people who identify as Badhai in India would indeed have a measure of affinity for one another. However, and this is the crucial point, I think it highly unlikely that they would intermarry at any great distance, nor have much social interaction at all, except in their own locality. My point is that they constitute a societalgroup (i.e. a mental category), not a social group, as there is little interaction between the members, except in their own localities.

If this is the case, one would surmise that the 25 subgroups of the Badhai (HT) are in the same category as the Badhai Gandhar, Badhai Kharadi, and Badhai Konkani, making 28 Badhai (HT) groups in all.[3]

Furthermore, Badhai (Muslim Traditions) are also scattered, suggesting that they too in fact constitute dozens of groups. I am speculating here but Hindu/Muslim relations being what they are in India, I would not expect any significant social interaction between the two religious groupings (though inter-religious social interaction and even marriage is not always out of the question, as my research in Nepal among Hindus and Buddhists demonstrates).

So that begs the question: Does each of these groups in every one of these locations need a distinct effort of church planting? I argue no, for the following reason: For the most part, a caste does not constitute a community. An exception to this might be Dalit castes in any particular locality, where all the people belong to a single, endogamous group. But many villages and all towns and cities are made up of dozens of castes that would rarely intermarry but, nevertheless, have cordial social and religious interaction on a daily basis. It is these villages that constitute a community. In towns and cities, the traditional community may be more on the level of neighbourhood, and it is typically multicaste. With recent rapid urbanization, caste distinctions are even less significant in daily life, as both Victor John and A Passionate Indian Servant recognise.

John does recognise the significance of the locality:

In addition, caste-focused work would be impractical [sic] in many cases. In some villages, there might be only one family from a particular caste. You can’t start a worshiping community with only one family, so you need a multicaste fellowship. We focus on reaching persons based upon their language, geography, and economic status, rather than caste, because that helps the good news to take root throughout the region, and spread.

In conclusion, I would suggest that much more attention be focussed on how various caste groups interact with each other in their villages, village clusters, town neighbourhoods, etc. It is in these interactions that true community is observed and in which gospel communication can readily proceed.

---

[1] Mark Pickett, “Ethnicity, Kinship, Religion and Territory: Identifying Communities in South Asia,” International Journal of Frontier Missiology 32:1 (Spring 2015): 23-36. Cited 28 May 2019. Online: https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/32_1_PDFs/IJFM_32_1-Pickett.pdf. 

[2] Sumit Guha, Beyond Caste: Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2016), 71. I sense some tension in Guha’s work between the ‘tribal’ nature of caste and its territorial expression. See my review of this important book here: https://markpickett.blogspot.com/2019/06/beyond-caste-identity-and-power-in.html.

[3] Having said that, it would seem that modern politics and technology are leading to the closer integration of some such groups. See, for example, the matrimonial service TeriMeriChoice.com. Online: https://www.terimerichoice.com/badhai-matrimony. I am not aware of any research to determine how significant these changes are.

Frontier Missiology Goes POP

Back in the summer I wrote a response to the May-June 2019 issue of Mission Frontiers, which was titled “India: The Greatest Challenge to World Evangelization.” That didn't go anywhere so I thought it would be good to post it here in the hope that a few people at least would read it.

I rejoice that in recent decades many in India, especially from lower status groups, have come to be followers of Jesus. It is also moving to read of the persecution that many are experiencing (“Enduring Persecution in India”) and the disappointments and challenges with which Andy Walker and his co-workers are attempting to deal (“A Church Planting Movement Advancing through Barriers”). 

I hope, with the editor and authors, that this issue, along with the other work of Frontier Ventures, leads to concerted prayer and engagement in making Christ known in the country.

The arguments presented in the issue are compromised, however, by two major weaknesses, which I would like to address.

Before doing so, however, I would like to point out a glaring error in “Enduring Persecution in India,” in which the ‘Leader of a Church Planting Movement in India’ asserts that when the bamboo curtain came down in China there were 70 million churches! Operation World reports that in 2010 there were 75 million evangelicals in the country, so it is highly unlikely that there were so many churches decades before. How important it is that we check and recheck our figures for accuracy before we go to print. My main concerns, however, are theological and sociological.

In this post I will deal with the first: Frontier Missiology Goes POP.

The frontier mission movement is plagued by pragmatism. This is especially apparent in Anderson's, “Embracing an Audacious God-Sized Dream,” and Walker's “A Church Planting Movement Advancing through Barriers.”

While it is good to discuss practical methods of engaging people with the gospel, pragmatism is unbecoming of God’s people. Our approach must not be to borrow strategies and frameworks from the marketing world; our philosophy of ministry must be founded on much more solid ground than expediency. 

A number of the authors do indeed refer to Scripture. But there is a difference between an approach that references a few proof texts and a theologically robust missiology that takes the grand sweep of the storyline of the Bible seriously.

Pragmatism is not a new problem in missiology. Indeed, it has plagued much missiology for decades. Take the notion of the “Persons of Peace”: How is it that one element of one narrative from one Gospel (Matt 10:11— in Luke 9:4 Jesus talks about a ‘house’—) has been so over-extended to become the centre of a whole methodology? One text is having to do an awesome amount of work.

A balanced approach would surely be to establish a sounder theological base for the great task by deriving principles from a careful exegesis of all the key New Testament passages. That is not in evidence in this issue. Which brings me to John Ridgway’s article.

In “Key Insights in Enabling Movements among the Hindu and Muslim Peoples” Ridgway interprets the “way in the wilderness” (Isa 43:19) as “new pathways in the Scriptures.” On this basis he argues that, “…from a kingdom perspective, we view everything from a spiritual framework, not a physical framework.” Why does Ridgway contrast spiritual with physical? It certainly doesn’t emerge out of the verses quoted: In Romans 12:1-2, Paul explicitly urges the Romans to offer their bodies as living sacrifices. A few verses pulled out of context don’t make a good basis for building a missiology. 

The Lord Jesus himself taught his disciples not to set up a false dichotomy between the spiritual and the physical: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Jesus’ own incarnation is the glorious sign of the worth of the physical – a reality that continues with his resurrection and ascension in the body to the right hand of the Father. We can also be confident of the continuity not only of our personal physicality (1 Cor 15) but also that of the cosmos (Rom 8:22-25).

Though I appreciate Ridgway’s attempts to overcome the obstacles that many Hindus and Muslims find in their way, his “new pathways” seem to have led him right out of the Scriptures and down the garden path of the old gnostic heresy that dogged the early church. This will have far-reaching implications that are apparently not appreciated.

Later I will post my second concern.

Why TGC and IMB Must Try Harder

The other day, I was happily surprised to see that The Gospel Coalition had published an article on Hinduism. Although there are over a billion Hindus in the world they are largely misunderstood and ignored. And among followers of Christ that translates into a serious lack of prayerful interest. So to see an article on "9 Things You Should Know About Hinduism," by Joe Carter, was encouraging.

I was also pleasantly surprised that it wasn't complete rubbish. Sadly, when evangelicals write on Hinduism their articles and books are nearly always shot through with inaccuracy and naive interpretive miss-steps. 

So to read that, "Although Hinduism is often treated as a single religion, it is more accurate to describe it as a family of religions..." was refreshing.

But to read on that, those religions, "share common beliefs and characteristics" was a big let down.  Although there are certain similarities among many of the groups that make up this great 'family' there really is not one doctrine that one can say all Hindus believe. When an atheist can be a good Hindu, you know that something else provides the common factor. And that factor is that all these beliefs and practices share a common civilisational heritage. That's all.

The author makes further mistakes. I will list some of there here:

1. Carter asserts that, "The sacred texts of Hinduism outline four primary, though not mutually exclusive, paths to experience Brahman, or ultimate reality, and obtain Moksha" and lists these as Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Jnana Yoga, and Raja Yoga. As you can see for yourself if you click on the link you are not directed to the sacred texts themselves but to a pro-Hindu polemical web site - not exactly a reliable way to do research, as I would have thought a TGC writer would have figured. Scholarly writings on Hinduism invariably list three paths to experience the divine, not four, the last being in a different category of altogether. Raja yoga, also called samkhya, is an attempt to reverse the effects of evolution on the soul, not a path of liberation to moksha.
2. He also states that, "The postural yoga often used as a form of exercise in the West is derived from raja yoga." Again, this is just plain wrong, as has been pointed out on this blog before.
3. Again, "Hinduism has no concept of sin" is simply mistaken. Wrongdoing is well understood by Hindus. Let me quote an authority, K. K. Klostermeier: "Notions of guilt and sin play a great role in Hinduism, and devices for righting wrongs and atoning for sins occupy a large place in the life of many Hindus" (A Survey of Hinduism, p. 146). This idea that Hindus have no concept of sin is trotted out ad nauseam by Christians. The concept may not be the same as the concept we have but it does not mean there is no semantic overlap. Attempts at sharing Christ with Hindus are not so hampered that one cannot talk about failure, impurity, transgression. Indeed, as Paul tells us, "Indeed, when Gentiles who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law fro themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the righteous requirements of the law are written on their hearts..." (Romans 2:14-15). Listen to this poem of the seventeenth century Hindu Marathi poet, Tukaram:

I am a mass of sin;
Thou art all purity;
Yet thou must take me as I am
And bear my load for me.
Me Death has all consumed
In thee all power abides.
All else forsaking, at thy feet
Thy servant Tuka hides.

Carter's big problem is to rely on web sites, some of which are clearly second-rate, for his information. I hope that in future the TGC will represent the Hindu tradition as it really is, rather than as poorly-informed missionaries and polemicists would have us believe.

At school, my report always said that I 'must try harder'. And my assessment of TGC (and IMB for that matter, as their web site was one of the sources) is that they too must try harder. The eternal destiny of over a billion souls depends on it.