The end

That concludes the trip reports and reflections. Thank you for reading these posts, and for your prayers.

If anyone is still reading, I’ll briefly mention my movements over the next few weeks. I’m just about to leave for Manchester to spend a week with my aunt, and after that I will be at a Pathfinder venture in Oswestry from 2nd-9th August. I would appreciate prayer for that – I have been asked to be what is called an “Overall dorm leader” with the responsibility to lead a group of leaders and teenagers. This is quite a daunting prospect and I feel quite young to be doing it, but please pray that God will provide the strength and wisdom to deal with the issues that will come up. We’ll be leading bible studies in Mark’s gospel – pray that these would be well-prepared and would help the teenagers to understand more about Jesus and how to live their whole lives following His footsteps.

And after that, I start work! More specifically I’m moving to Guildford to work for an IT consultancy. I’d appreciate prayer for meeting new people, getting adjusted to a full-time job and settling into a new town, church and lifestyle.

Thanks again for following this blog, and please do keep me updated on how you are getting on and how I can be praying for you this summer.

Greg

On…parachurch organisations in Sierra Leone

Here comes the final post in these reflections, starting with a photo from Kabala.

Students enjoying refreshments after our bible study on 2 Timothy

I am a big fan of parachurch organisations (that is, those that exist to serve the local church, examples in the UK being UCCF, Proclamation Trust etc) and it is evident that they bring the church many benefits. They are not without their problems, and the existence of such organisations that discriminate between people on the basis of their socio-economic status continues to trouble me, and causes quite a few problems in some churches.

One of these problems [with parachurch in general] can be lack of theological oversight, and the possibility for leadership of these organisations to pass into the hands of those who maybe stray a little from their evangelical roots in order to reflect the surrounding church culture and teaching.

If this all seems a little strange, I think it is in the UK. But it seems to be a problem with IFES in Sierra Leone. The movement is called SLEFES (Sierra Leone Fellowship of Evangelical Students – don’t know what the first ‘E’ stands for!) and was affiliated to IFES in 1983. It is a reminder of the problems there are in governing such large organisations, and the possibility of a national movement being slightly out-of-sync with the rest of the fellowship.

The movement seems to have been influenced by the church culture in the country, namely the extreme charismaticism and prosperity teachings described in the previous post. We were given quite a cold reception when we visited the General Secretary, and it might be that they are a little suspicious of Truth Mission and their aims at reforming the church back to a serious study of the Bible in context, and expositional preaching.

Notwithstanding these problems, IFES in Sierra Leone is surely useful and strategic, and perhaps more effort should be made at trying to reform it than labelling it in ways in which I, and others have done. I don’t think this contradicts what I said in my last post, as we are not talking about churches here but about organisations which serve the local church.

The other parachurch organisation we encountered is obviously Truth Mission. And, as I hope has been evident from my trip reports and conclusions, I think its work is vital. To think that the churches in the provinces of the country would be without the training and resources that have been provided by TM is a harrowing thought. So hands up to Chris Jonah and his team for the work that they do, and I hope you will join me in praying for them and thanking God for the opportunities they have. And perhaps their work in Sierra Leone will encourage the formation of similar projects in other African countries – there is already a TM offshoot in Liberia.

I hope to shortly start work on a website for them, and I will post a link when it is in an acceptable state.

On…the church in Sierra Leone

John giving one of the pastor training sessions

Today we come to the church. What is my experience of the church in SL and how can that affect my view of church here?

The answer to the first question is: limited. We were part of three church services, two at the same church (Grace Community Church in Freetown) and one at the Assemblies of God church in Koidu Town (the church I preached in).

And these couldn’t be more different. GCC is effectively a church run by Truth Mission – the staff preach and lead the services, with occasional help from others. They sing some of their songs from hymnbooks (“Trust and Obey” and “To God be the Glory” where done in both weeks) and other African choruses without. On the other hand, the AOG church was very African and lively, the men and women sat on opposite sides and the offering involved everyone standing up and filing past the collection box!

So it is hard for me to diagnose the church accurately, and much of what I say is based on what other people (mainly Chris Jonah – the head of TM) have said. Here goes: the church suffers from the following (not unrelated) problems:

• Prosperity gospel – this is when people are promised a life of good health, wealth and prosperity as a result of accepting Jesus. You can see how this would be an attractive thing for people living in difficult conditions and who are in need financially, but we didn’t find out what happens when these promises don’t come true. A consequence of this is the distortion of the NT teaching on discipleship being marked by suffering and persecution.
• Verses out-of-context – this is one of the issues we were trying to address in our training sessions. It is common for sermons to focus on perhaps just one verse and for the preacher to give mostly his thoughts with little or no reference to the immediate or broader context. An example of this is Paul’s suggestion to Timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach in 1 Timothy 5, and whether this wine is fermented or not, questions which seem to me to be irrelevant to the gist of the passage. The pastors in Kono were obsessed with this verse and did not stop asking questions about it!
• Lack of resources – most pastors outside of Freetownbg would probably not have access to commentaries, disturbingly one of the pastors did not bring a bible to the training! We hope to be able to send some books out on future trips that TM staff are making to Sierra Leone.

Not to say by any means these are all of the problems, nor that the UK does not suffer from the same problems (Hillsong probably being the closest to the USA/Nigerian prosperity influence).

Nevertheless I feel that the church in Sierra Leone has much to teach us. When we were training the pastors in Kabala and Kono, we saw that each town had a pastors council, led by a “chief” who, amongst other things, organises the training events and provides general oversight of the churches in the town. The unity between the pastors was very impressive – despite representing a plethora of denominations and no doubt very different practices and theology, they view being tied together with other local churches as extremely important.

This seems to me to be much closer to how the New Testament envisaged the church to be organised. Many of the towns/regions in the NT have such a figure (Timothy in Ephesus, Titus on Crete) and others are hinted at (1 Thess 5:12). And even if such a figure isn’t mentioned, I’m sure they met together, not least for the first readings of Paul’s letters!

Therefore I can’t help but be concerned about the UK church in two respects. Firstly, an obsession with institutions. The bible does not talk about churches in different towns, and indeed countries, being linked institutionally. Rather, the churches were linked by people, such as the apostles and their various disciples, and these links were less important than the links within a region or town.

Secondly then, it seems to me to be much more important to focus on being united with geographically local churches rather than churches within the same institution or denomination. I have yet to visit a town in the UK where this works well, but it seems to in Africa. As a passing remark, it is surely troubling that some Anglican ministers are giving so much time to sorting out splits within their institution, with little attempt to work on local links with churches across denominations. And in a day when pastors across the third world are crying out for resources and investment, can we afford this?

A snapshot into my ecclesiology! More to come in the next post.

On…living as a westerner in Sierra Leone

We start with the obligatory photo, this time of the people Robin, John and I were staying with. On the left is Matthew who works for Truth Mission.

Matthew, John, Aziz, Robin and Emmanuel

I should say also that I have edited yesterday’s post to add another concluding point!

This may feel like a strange topic to reflect upon, but I think it is important. The question I want to address is, on the basis of three weeks in the third world, is it much of a sacrifice to live there permanently? Not to say I have definite plans to do so, but something surely that any Christian should think about in relation to serving God overseas.

It should be said from the start that in a sense my experience is limited due to the (hopeful) certainty of my return to the UK. These reflections could have been different had someone left me there without a ticket home.

The conclusion then from the trip is that it is much less of a sacrifice than I thought. Indeed it could be said that it is no sacrifice at all, but I wouldn’t go that far. I think there are two areas in which things change: quality of life and adapting to culture and local practice.

Firstly, quality of life. What strikes me here is that the western life is one of great luxury. When you consider things that we actually need – warmth, shelter, food, clothing, water, and many other things, and compare them to what we have, the difference is huge. It is a reminder to be thankful for the things that we take for granted, but are actually provisions of God that not everybody has.

Things like hot water: in Sierra Leone you really don’t need it! Electricity: you can happily get by without it, and for a treat you can start a generator and watch a film. Bottled water is easily available and is little hassle to use. Cooking can be trying, and mosquitoes are certainly annoying. But overall African life is surprisingly manageable and rich in its simplicity and comfort.

Secondly then, local culture and practices. It can be hard for a Western person to negotiate the interactions in daily life, such as obtaining information, using public transport etc. This can be due to the language barrier (not everyone in SL speaks English; the main language is Krio which is a mixture of English and other West African languages), the prevalence of corruption and the exploitation of Western-looking people by the locals. I was often thankful for the presence of a local in our group, which on occasions probably stopped us from getting ripped off.

It is sad that this practice is so widespread. It has been known for Westerners to be charged several orders of magnitude more than the real price of an item. And however long you live in the country, you will always look like a tourist. In time you’d know what constitutes a ‘good price’ for things and be able to argue your way out of prices, hopefully without offending anyone.

The message therefore to anyone reading this who just assumes that they couldn’t deal with life outside of our Western bubble – it’s not as bad as you might think!

On…Sierra Leone and its rescue from poverty

The main road through Koidu Town

This is the most obvious topic to reflect upon on return from a poverty-stricken country. I hadn’t heard much about Sierra Leone before going, other than the recent civil war and the country’s position near the bottom of most poverty and development rankings. Indeed the country is bottom of the Human Development Index and seventh-lowest on the Human Poverty Index.

What type of poverty is it? I’d want to say, above other things, that it is a poverty of opportunity. I’m not denying that there are families who don’t have access to clean water and food, but most people, even in some of the poorest areas, seem to be healthy and well-nourished. Provision of food does depend on income, and we heard people say that they eat “when they can”. And you drink the water however unclean it may be.

The lack of opportunities strike you most when you meet the kids. We interacted with some of the children in Kabala and passed many on the road. It is easy to laugh at the endless shouting of “WHITE MAN” and necessary waving, but on further reflection, it is clear that there is very little for them in a small town or village. If male, they might take on their father’s trade, and sadly die very young. In 2000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a life expectancy (LE) of 25.9 years. It has probably increased since then, since that was right at the end of the war, and the LE is affected by a high Infant Mortality Rate (IMR).

No doubt previous governments of the country are much to blame. Lack of maintenance of infrastructure, mismanagement of resources (notably diamonds, which led to the civil war) and corruption are all part of the problem. You just have to look at the roads to see the lack of effort made to keep the country going. Potholes don’t get repaired and gradually the road turns into a dirt track.

In spite of all of this, it was encouraging to see signs of much progress in recent years. Keeping on the roads, some good routes have been rebuilt and the current president, who lives off the notorious Freetown-Oogo Farm road, has refused to move until the road is rebuilt. Corruption is still prevalent and it will be hard to measure its eradication. But development projects are having a real impact on the country, and you can’t really put a cost on their outcome. Everywhere you go you see signs of “Funded by Red Cross” or DFID or the EU.

It is precisely these development projects that create opportunities, not just jobs, but the reality of living in a better country where things are moving forward. In a way, I really hope that tourism does not take off in such a beautiful country unspoiled by large hotels and western facilities. But no doubt it will and it will be for the greater good of the economy and the country as a whole.

Returning to the people of the country, their contentment is admirable. But there seems to be a ladder for moving up – if you’re born in a small town you probably want to get out and move to Freetown. And once you’re in Freetown you’ve probably got your eye on the airport and the possibility of enjoying all of the things that the Western world brings to the country.

I close with four challenges. Firstly, being exposed to a country such as Sierra Leone naturally makes you feel extremely privileged to be in the situation you’re in – whatever it is. For me, I’m about to start a well-paid graduate job in a wealthy and prosperous Surrey town, in a field which revolves around something that few Africans own and may only use once a week to check e-mails. Speaking to people at my stage of life therefore exposed the large gap between our countries. Thank God for what you have and never take it for granted! It is a bit of a cliché, but we could have been one of those village children for whom the most exciting event of the month was a Jeep full of white people passing on the road.

Secondly, I think there is a big danger to resent paying taxes. Now I’m not claiming that everything that our taxes go towards is right by any means. But some of it goes to Sierra Leone! The locals there love the British, not least because of our involvement in ending the civil war. But DFID is a well known acronym and it has its stamp on many projects across the country. So I start life as a tax payer in a joyful mood (not sure how long this will last though).

Thirdly, and related to this, I come across many Christians who wouldn’t give on principle to NGOs and relief agencies – or any organisation that isn’t Christian or doesn’t spend its money on bringing the gospel to a lost world. Now I am not saying that the gospel isn’t important, vehemently not so, and I will have more to say about that later. Nor am I saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about how organisations use the money that we give them. But the reality is that most of the development projects that we saw, and let’s not forget that they achieve real results, are funded by non-Christian agencies.

This argument can be grounded biblically in several ways – the obvious ones being love thy neighbour, our duty to care for God’s creation and the numerous references to God’s heart for the poor, his hatred of injustice and so on. However I would also argue this on an eschatological level – God will renew and transform the creation and so our work at helping people out of poverty and hastening development in third-world countries is certainly not in vain. Tom Wright has some helpful material on this in “Surprised by Hope” which I would like to read soon.

Fourthly, and perhaps the climax of what I want to say (ironically this was only added the day after this post was published!), isn’t it about time the evangelical church started showing some real concern for the deprived parts of God’s creation? When was the last time you heard public prayers for development and relief from poverty? Don’t our prayers usually only focus on the Christians in a nation and their struggle to preach the gospel and endure persecutions? We must of course pray for those things, but we mustn’t neglect the material and humanitarian needs of the people as a whole.

It does frustrate me that seemingly the only issue that the church wants its voice to be heard on is abortion. I agree that we must pray and fight for moral transformation in our nation and speak out against the murder of helpless and vulnerable embryos. But people are dying in the world for other reasons too – malnutrition, AIDS etc, and suffering due to economic imbalance and political injustice and corruption. Where is the voice from the church on these issues?

I have heard one minister nearly justify this on the basis that speaking out against abortion is unpopular, but rallying behind anti-poverty campaigns is what everyone else is doing, and therefore without risk. This isn’t good enough – it isn’t right to invest in issues that are unpopular to the detriment of those that after all even non-Christians care about.

That’s all for today. Tomorrow I will examine life as a westerner in Sierra Leone.

Reflections

John, Greg and Robin

I am pleased to report that we are all safely back in the UK. It was a pleasant journey home despite our flight leaving at 02.15 GMT and leaving Freetown at 20.00 GMT – a long wait in the airport which was a joy once the sugary sweets and fun card games started!

Over the next few days I will post a series of reflections on different aspects of the trip. You may disagree with some of the conclusions I come to, and so please feel free to interact with the posts. The topics I will cover are:

1. Sierra Leone and its rescue from poverty
2. Living as a westerner in Sierra Leone
3. The church in Sierra Leone
4. Parachurch organisations in Sierra Leone

Once again, it leaves me to say thank you for your prayers and support, and I hope you are all well.

God bless,

Greg

Back in Freetown

We reach our last day in Sierra Leone. Have had some interesting experiences in the last few days, including a warm send-off from Grace Community Church, and a few adventures getting back home from the centre of Freetown.

The team and Truth Mission staff

The most notable of these adventures was on Saturday evening. We were in Freetown for a farewell party that included an opportunity for us to comment on our experiences and share thoughts for the future. It is amusing that parties are planned to the minute – we saw the schedule in advance that read something like “2.00 prayer 2.05 Chris Jonah to speak 2.15 ask team to feedback” etc.

Our journey home usually takes just over an hour, and involves a taxi journey followed by a run in the “Puda Puda” – minibuses that cram people in like sardines and charge about 20p per journey.

The change from the taxi to the Puda Puda happens at a suburb called Lumley, and the atmosphere there is like nothing else. Pedestrians line the streets in their hundreds, cars and motorcycles swerve in between and vehicles suddenly decide to reverse without any notice. Street vendors flash eggs and bread in front of your nose, and to top it off, the departure point for the Puda Puda seems to change all the time, and so we never quite know where to look for it.

After asking a few people and being misdirected, we eventually found a guy who was going to the same destination “Oogo Farm” and he made sure we waited in the right place. Then when the Puda Puda came, a crowd suddenly turned up from nowhere and bundled in. People were even going in through the windows! We did get on, but Robin was without a seat so we got off. The guy who was helping us kindly followed suit and we waited for the next one.

If we thought the adventure was over – it wasn’t. The road between Freetown and Oogo Farm has long since ceased to be a road and the word “bumpy” wouldn’t quite do justice to the journey experience. However, on this night, part of the road was blocked due to flooding, and so we diverted along tiny side streets where the vehicle had to narrowly miss running over pedestrians, traverse through puddles the size of a small pond and negogiate rocks that stick up from the road.

To top it off, the driver had a Westlife tape blaring out of the speakers! Only in Africa…

Coming to the end…

We have now finished all the pastors training, and today’s session went well. It is hard to measure progress in only three days, so please pray that the fruit will be shown in future sermons and bible studies.

Tomorrow the girls will be doing the Biblical Womanhood course. Please pray for them to be able to overcome literacy barriers and that the women of Koidu Town would be taught and changed from the Bible.

I’ll post more reflections later, but we please be assured we are having a great time! Life is very different in Africa as I’m sure you can imagine.

Hello from Koidu Town

A more personal post. We arrived safely here on Saturday after a long journey, and have settled in well. Koidu Town is very different to Kabala – it is much bigger for starters and it was affected greatly by the civil war, being in a diamond area.

Sunday was a very strange day. We got up at 6.00 to arrive at a radio studio for 7. We introduced ourselves on-air before John have an evangelistic talk from Acts 10. We then went back to our guest house briefly before going to church. The previous night we had been told that there were no sermons prepared at two churches, and therefore John spoke at one and I spoke at the other. Nothing had been prepared so I gave a sermon on Hosea 1 that I did in October. Standing in front of a large church of 250+ people in a very different country and culture was very wierd indeed, but wonderful to think that these are our brothers and sisters in the Lord.

We leave Koidu Town on Friday for Freetown where we stay until Monday evening. Please pray for a safe journey and a good time in Freetown to debrief and relax. Thanks for your prayers!

Pastor training

I think we are all feeling very out-of-our-depth training church pastors in how to understand the Bible! John has done some excellent training sessions and the rest of us have been leading small group discussions. The sessions have covered the basic skills of observation, interpretation and application, with an additional session on “What is Preaching?”. This has been supplemented by bible studies in 2 Timothy that we have modelled to them, and opportunities for them to practice by working on a part of the book and then giving a short 5 minute talk on it.

The discussion times have been difficult due to literacy problems and the fact that most people here will happily reel off what they know about Jesus etc, but have difficulty in bringing things out that are actually in the text. It seems though that the sessions have been fruitful – many of the pastors have said that it has helped them enormously. But it still is the case that the skills that we think are fundamental in the UK church are alien to most people here.

Please therefore pray for the remaining sessions. We have completed the sessions in Kabala and have two more days of training here in Koidu Town.