2. Vincent Donovan was a Roman
Catholic priest from the U.S. who
served as a Spiritan missionary in
Tanzania for 17 years in the 1960s
and 1970s, evangelizing the Masai.
Christianity Rediscovered, his
memoir of ministry in Masailand is,
I think, one of the most important
mission-related books of the
twentieth century, a treasure that too
few have discovered.
3. “I was to learn that any theology or theory that
makes no reference to previous missionary
experience, which does not take that experience
into account, is a dead and useless thing…praxis
must be prior to theology…. In my work
[theology would have to proceed] from practice to
theory. If a theology did emerge from my work, it
would have to be a theology growing out of the
life and experience of the pagan peoples of the
savannahs of East Africa”
4. After some time among the Masai,
Donovan described, with some
disillusionment, the version of Christianity
he and other Western, Euro-American
missionaries had imported into Africa: “an
inward-turned, individual-salvation-
oriented, un-adapted Christianity” (8). He
became so disillusioned with this approach
that he felt the need to move away from the
term salvation altogether. One paragraph in
his book especially intrigues me:
5. “Preach the gospel to all creation,” Christ
said. Are we only now beginning to
understand what he meant? I believe the
unwritten melody that haunts this book ever
so faintly, the new song waiting to be sung
in place of the hymn of salvation, is simply
the song of creation. To move away from
the theology of salvation to the theology of
creation may be the task of our time”
6. “This is universalism in
the true sense…the
outward thrust of
Christianity from me to
my neighbor to stranger to
enemy to all the tribes and
nations of the earth.”
7. “‘…do not try to call them back to where
they were, and do not try to call them to
where you are, as beautiful as that place
might seem to you. You must have the
courage to go with them to a place that
neither you nor they have ever been
before.’ Good missionary advice, and a
beautiful description of the unpredictable
process of evangelization, a process
leading to that new place where none of
us has ever been before.” - Vincent Donovan
8. Never accept and be content with unanalyzed
assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the
people, about the church or Christianity. Never be
afraid to ask questions about the work we have
inherited or the work we are doing. There is no
question that should not be asked or that is
outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with
what we have been doing; the day we have found
the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the
perfect answer, never in need of being corrected
again, on that day we will know that we are wrong,
that we have made the greatest mistake of all.
(Christianity Rediscovered, 146)
9.
10. Lord, may we not try to call others back
to where they were, and may we not try
to call them to where we now are, as
beautiful as that place might seem to us.
Help us instead to develop the courage to
go with others to a place that neither we
nor they have ever been before. Guide us,
and go with us, and work through us, we
pray. For we depend on you, and on your
wisdom and your power and your
goodness, which are higher and deeper
and richer than our own.
