Sometimes everything falls apart and chaos ensues. How bad was it? Well, as we might say in the West, it was every man for himself. Perhaps this proverb could be used to describe the general result of Paul’s cry in Acts 23:6, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees! It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial!” The outcome? Pandemonium in the Sanhedrin. It was so bad, a dog couldn’t even recognize his own master.
He hasn’t yet bought a donkey, but he’s sewn a saddle.
Local Oral Tradition
The donkey-themed proverbs continue. Our equivalent? Don’t put the cart before the horse. Doing things in the right order matters. A man who has not yet bought a donkey doesn’t know what size saddle he needs. I’m tucking this proverb away in my mental collection to be pulled out the next time we need to discourage a friend from taking the Lord’s Supper prematurely. First saving faith, then you go under the water, then you take the Lord’s Supper. The right order matters to God, so it matters to us. Yet the importance of doing things in the right order has been surprisingly hard to communicate effectively. I’m hoping this proverb will help.
While walking in a park yesterday, a friend and I spotted a bird with a long blue/black fan tail. My friend wasn’t sure what it was called in the local language. Apparently, it doesn’t show itself very often in the city. I shared with him that it reminded me of a bird we had in Melanesia called the Willy Wagtail. As I explained to him what wag means in English, and how we use it for the tail of a dog, he exclaimed, “Oh! That’s what we call tail cracking! Like when you crack your knuckles. We use the same verb for both situations because it’s like the animal is cracking it’s tail.”
One of the great joys of language learning is stumbling onto new ways in which to describe reality and connect its different parts. I never would have seen a connection before between the wagging of a dog’s tail and a person cracking their neck or their knuckles. But my Central Asian friends have seen it and reflected it in their language. I guess when a happy dog is next to a door, there is a rhythmic crack crack crack as his tail repeatedly hits the surface. Perhaps this is where it came from. Or just the swaying action looks similar to a human trying to stretch back and forth in search of a refreshing series of pops. This crack/pop verb is also the same one used for the firing of a gun and related to the word used for the explosion of a bomb. Indeed, the more you chew on it, the more you can see the common thread tying these things together.
Later in the afternoon we had a language lesson. As we studied a regional folktale together, our tutor pointed out the phrase used when a character suddenly fell in love – her heart was roasted. The same verb used to roast something in the oven, which is also used in adjective form for a rotisserie chicken. Not too distant from certain poetic ways the English language speaks of love, such as being inflamed or burning with desire. But roasted? What an interesting way to conceptualize having a serious crush on someone. It carries with it a certain completeness in the effect of the emotion upon the heart, deeper than you might get from the mere idea of a flickering flame.
As we discussed folktales and oral tradition, we learned that the phrase used to describe how a story is passed from father to son is that it has come from chest to chest. This is because the historic understanding here was that memory was located in the chest, the core of the person. So, naturally, something which is memorized by one generation and then passed on to be memorized by the next is understood as passing from chest to chest. I really like this one. It reminds me of 2nd Timothy 2:2, “and what you have heard from me, entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Pass it on from chest to chest, dear Timothy.
Speaking of entrusted, the very name of this blog comes from discovering a new way to speak of death in our local language, that a person is entrusted to the dirt. A dear friend told me last week that the name of this blog sounds to him like Lamentations, like a “face in the dust.” While my title does certainly reference death and its connection to the dirt, I actually chose it because of the subtle hint of resurrection implied by the word entrusted. When something is entrusted, it has not been lost or abandoned. There is a certain stewardship implied, a certain aim, perhaps even a return. Like 2 Tim 2:2, that aim might be faithful preservation and multiplication of a body of teaching. In the case of believers’ bodies and the soil, it is a trust given anticipating a glorious return. “What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:42-44). We entrust our dear ones to the soil and we eventually entrust ourselves, knowing by faith that glory and resurrection will be the sure and unstoppable outcome. It’s still dirt, it is still death, it’s still not the way things are supposed to be. But that’s not the end of the story. The dirt holds a mighty secret. All of creation whispers that resurrection is coming. And so our tears are mingled with a certain flicker of joy.
Each language is like a unique form of poetry, all of them attempting to describe creation as God has allowed us to experience it. As such, there is fascination and even delight to be found in the ways other tongues speak of things like tails wagging, hearts burning, stories passed on – and even of death itself. Take heart, weary language learners out there. There is more wonder in the end than there is drudgery. One of the things I’m looking forward to in the New Heavens and New Earth? Being with believers speaking thousands of complex and poetic languages – and all the time we need to learn each and every one of them.
Plus a resurrected brain with which to learn them. Let’s not forget about that part.
This local proverb points out two life situations which tend to reveal someone else’s character – making long journeys together and doing business together. It’s near-impossible to keep up appearances forever in either of these situations. Sooner or later the real person is going to show up – whether good or bad. Sometimes that experience can forge two strangers into the fastest of friends.
Locals tend to tell me that they never come to trust anyone who isn’t part of their inner family and friendship circle – their oikos, in missiology terms. Yes, we have massive trust issues in this part of the world, which does not bode well for church planting. So I push back with this proverb from their own culture, which usually means they end up conceding the point with a surprised laugh and nod. Such is the power of known proverbs in Central Asia! (If only the heart could be fully convinced so quickly). Then, if they are believers, I modify it and tell them that for true believers it’s through repentance that a friend is revealed. Trust between naturally-disconnected believers can and will be built, despite the protestations of the most jaded Central Asian or missionary. But it will be built not primarily by travel or business, but by the hard work of ongoing repentance.
Our region of Central Asia was, until recently, quite isolated. Middle-aged men can still remember clearly the first time they ever saw a banana, for example. One of our close believing friends grew up in a rural village outside of our previous city. He told us a story once of the first ever radio to come to the village, probably in his grandfather’s time.
A man from the village who worked in the city returned one day, bearing an amazing gift. He had bought a radio in the big city and now proudly presented it to the village.
“Now you can listen to news from all over the world!” he proudly announced as the village elderly and children crowded around the radio, listening in amazement.
The villagers listened to the radio all day, exclaiming to one another how amazing it was that there was a small man inside that little box who was able to so enthusiastically read out the world news to them. “What will those city people think of next?” The man who had brought the radio had to return to the city, so he left the radio in the care of a village elder, the power still turned on and the box chattering away.
When night came, the village elder was faced with a dilemma. He did not know how to get the little man in the radio box to be quiet and go to sleep. He tried to tell the man it was time to sleep. No luck. He tried shouting into the box. Still no response. He tried putting the radio under a blanket. Nothing. Eventually the elder rounded up others from the village and presented them with his dilemma. What was to be done? The little man in the radio box showed no sign of getting sleepy or of stopping talking any time soon. None of them would be able to get any sleep if they could not convince the little man to shut up.
Finally, one villager had an idea. “I know what we should try!” And he promptly took the small radio to a barrel full of water and immersed it. Sure enough, when he pulled the radio out of the water, the man inside had stopped talking.
The villagers congratulated themselves. “Our clever relative who works in the city neglected to tell us this important piece of information. How embarrassing for him! Won’t he be impressed when he sees that all on our own we figured out the trick of putting the little man to sleep!”
And with grateful congratulations all around, the villagers happily settled into a quiet night of sleep.
I’ve written previously about the myriad ways in which non-verbal communication takes place among our adopted people group. Alongside of this, literacy and orality also represent a crucial spectrum for understanding communication in a culture. This spectrum is fertile ground on which to sit and ponder for those who want to understand our people group – and how their communication relates to gospel ministry.
Turns out that over over 90% of Christian workers present the gospel in highly literate forms – and most are not aware that they are doing so. Those who are highly literate (like me) simply tend to assume that the highly literate way of thinking and communicating is the norm. However, it is actually far from the norm for the locals we are seeking to reach in Central Asia. It’s also far from the norm for thousands of other groups around the world.
Our people group’s culture can be represented as confoundingly semi-literate, with both minorities that are illiterate and also minorities that are highly literate. Being semi-literate means that the majority of locals have attended more than 10 years of school and are able to read and write, but they continue to learn primarily by oral means. This is evidenced by the fact that most locals do not read for pleasure and many do not read books at all. It’s also evidenced by the ongoing power and use of proverbs in local culture – even in the most progressive cities. Locals generally prefer to get their news from radio, television, and increasingly, social media. Even for university graduates the ability to read a written text, understand it, and summarize it in their own words is a difficult exercise – yet this is the marker which distinguishes the highly literate. Songs are heavily relied upon in the early childhood education and rote memorization dominates the classroom as children progress through the school system. Some of my friends have memorized entire school textbooks in preparation for important exams. All of these are markers of a culture that largely prefers oral means of communication.
A highly literate minority does exist, however, complicating the picture. For our adopted people group in particular this highly literate group makes it difficult to get a clear sense of the true state of literacy. Publishing and print media in the local language have made great strides since the early nineties. Bookstores abound in the bazaars, poets and authors are celebrated and honored, and yet the general literacy rate remains woefully low. University graduates discuss translated copies of Nietzsche yet go home to mothers and aunts who are completely illiterate and learn their money’s value by the color of the bills, not by the numbers printed in the corners.
The causes of this situation are complex. It’s clear that the nearly constant warfare affecting the population over the last century has regularly undermined progress in literacy, as entire generations dropped out of regular schooling due to war, sanctions, and ethnic hostilities. Recent economic crises have also hit the local school system hard, with teachers’ salaries not being paid, public schools sometimes closed, hours reduced, or situations where teachers are present but not providing instruction. The future literacy of today’s school-age children is being once again undermined. Covid-19 lock-downs have only made this situation worse.
Given these realities, Christian workers among our people and similar groups must not rely solely on highly literate means of sharing the gospel and discipling, even though that is often our default. However, neither can purely oral methods be adopted due to the strong minority of literates. Rather, a middle road should be explored where highly literate means are used to engage the literate elite who stand in the ancient Central Asian tradition which values philosophy, poetry, and literature – while partially-oral means are simultaneously used for the majority. The highly literate are in need of solid intellectual content in areas like apologetics and theology. The vast amount of Islamic material and Western 20th century secularist or Marxist material available in print in the local language requires a corresponding body of Christian content. Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Orwell, Hemingway, and many others have been resonating strongly with highly literate locals for several decades without a Christian challenge – a concerning reality since the highly literates often influence the future trajectory of the population. Even in our most conservatively Islamic towns, it’s acceptable to be a Muslim or to be an atheistic communist, but not to be Christian. And yet as the intellectual elite go, so eventually goes the general populace.
However, for reaching and discipling the majority of locals, their semi-literate, illiterate, or pre-literate status needs to be acknowledged and somehow addressed. This is particularly important for reaching local women, who have much lower literacy rates than men. Narrative teaching, the creation of new proverbs and songs, the use of scripture memorization, and audio and video resources could be developed to serve and equip locals for learning and passing on spiritual truth. This at times may mean that the preferred group discussion format of Western workers, where locals are asked to engage the text critically on the spot, may need to be replaced or supplemented by the more traditional local religious lecture format, or by group discussion based on a narrative presented orally yet still clearly rooted in the written text of the Bible. Social media also presents a promising platform as a medium suited for visual and audio content and short bursts of written content. Over the past decade social media has been eagerly adopted and highly used by the typical local (They know way more about Snap Chat and Instagram than I ever will). While we develop strategies and tools to meet locals where they are on the orality-literacy spectrum, we also need those who will simply devote themselves to the life-changing work of literacy training – just like my mom used to do in Melanesian villages.
Our adopted people group are simply not uniform in the area of literacy and orality. This demands that multiple strategies be pursued at the same time. It’s a both/and. Oral means can supplement the church and its spread as it grows slowly toward greater literacy. This means we will need to get creative and include elements in our church gatherings that can edify both an illiterate grandmother as well as a Zorba-The-Greek-reading masters student. This is, frankly, quite complicated. And yet this is the reality of our people group. The future indigenous church here will need to reach the full spectrum – so we must also strive to do so.
Last night we had dinner with a new single gal on our team. In the course of our conversation, her previous service in SE Asia came up. While we talked about the typical rhythms of ministry in our Central Asian context, we also encouraged her to think about her experiences in SE Asia. It may be that some of the ministry tools that she learned there might be surprisingly effective here also – even if our team would never have thought of them. Our people group is a hard nut to crack. Within the spectrum biblically-faithful methods we simply have a lot of experimenting to do in order to find out what kinds of ministry methods are actually effective here. We’ve been quite surprised in the past as efforts that felt very traditional or cliched turned out to really resonate with locals – while some popular and novel methods turned out to be duds. Book clubs turned out to be much better than we thought they would be. But our locals didn’t really resonate with oral Bible storying – even though they’re a largely oral culture. No one saw that one coming.
There are several ways to fall off the proverbial donkey of methodology. The traditional or colonial missionary largely reproduced the traditional Western methodology that he learned in his home country – hymns, pews, collared shirts, catechisms, etc. In other words, he was not very strong in effective contextualization. Yet even though this traditional figure has become the whipping boy of popular missiology, he’s essentially died out on the actual mission field. Far more common now is the opposite error – contemporary workers who are allergic to any methodology or tools that feel traditional or old-fashioned to them. Before even studying their local context to find out what good contextualization might be, we have prematurely decided that we must not import any methods that we ourselves benefited from in our own discipleship back home – not to mention the methods that feel hackneyed or overused. Don’t you dare bring your puppet ministry to the mission field! In reality, until someone has tried it we really have no idea if puppet ministry might be effective or not (Though I admit, I don’t really want to try it!). Such is the distance still between most missionaries and the ability to predict how the local culture will respond to new and different forms. And yet in our fixation with novelty and cutting-edge methodology, it would be just like the Lord to use a “foolish” method to bring about a spiritual awakening.
I remember sharing the gospel one more time with my friend Hama’s wife, Tara, back in the fall of 2008. She kept insisting that she indeed loved Jesus and that she had always believed in him. But it was clear to both Hama and I that she was still on the fence and had not yet trusted in him as her only savior. On a whim, I pulled out an old preacher’s illustration about true faith being like sitting in a chair.
“See that chair over there?” I pointed and Tara nodded. “You might say that it’s a good chair, it’s a nice chair, you respect it and you believe that it will hold your weight.”
Tara waited to hear where this was going. I got up, walked across the room and sat in the chair, cross-legged.
“Well, dear wife-of-my-brother, this is me actually trusting in this chair to hold me, actually having real faith in it. If it breaks, I will be injured. Your faith in Jesus right now is like you sitting across the room saying that you like this chair, but you need to get up and actually sit in it, risk falling down by putting all your weight on it. You need to actually have faith in Jesus like that – risking all, life and death, on him – and until then, it’s not yet true faith.”
Simple and cliched as the example was, that night was the turning point for Tara. A full decade later we visited their family in their new country where they’ve been resettled as refugees. And Tara brought up that chair illustration once again as what God had used to push her over the line of saving faith. Really? Of all the things that Hama and I shared with her, it was a simple and very traditional concrete example that proved to be the breakthrough.
I’m not saying we need to bring over all the silly gimmicks that have made their way into Western evangelicalism. For the love of everything sacred, no fog machines, WWE wrestlers, or Jesus action figures are needed among the unreached people groups of the world. Yet straightforward contextualization is needed, the kind where the most important questions are whether something is biblical and whether it is clear and effective in the local culture. These questions need to trump asking whether something feels old-fashioned or novel to us or not. There may be abandoned methods in church history that prove to be mightily relevant in foreign contexts. The key is to not prematurely rule them out for the wrong reasons. Consider that certain methods were so powerful because of where a certain culture found itself at a given time – things like open air preaching. Is it possible that your adopted culture is in a different “place” than your home culture is is? It’s more than possible. It’s extremely likely.
Practically, this will mean giving our teams room to experiment – and room to fail. It will mean moving beyond a reactionary missiology and toward one that is simply and faithfully trying to find the best tools for the job, even if that turns out to be grandpa’s tools. It may be that we design the tools that lead to awakening among our focus people groups. Or it may be that we dig them up in the most unlikely corners of church history. Why should it matter? Tools are tools. And as long as they remain explicitly governed by biblical principles and emphases, then we should feel tremendous freedom to utilize them.
Last week a local believer surprised us, asking to spend a couple nights with us as he waited for his university dorm to open. We were heading into a needed slower weekend after a very busy week. So we had to take a minute to wrestle with whether our family could absorb the good cost of overnight hosting in the local fashion – where chai and conversation often last until well after midnight. In the end, my wife and I decided it would be the right kind of sacrificial call to make. We’ve learned the importance of making these kinds of calls together, even though it’s a little weird in local culture for me to tell a friend I’ll call him back rather than just immediately extending gushing invitations of welcome. But ministry can be quite costly to family, and unity between spouses is essential for navigating when and how to absorb those costs.
This particular young man has been a fun example of providence for me. Years ago I met him in a bookshop in our previous city. He shared with me that he and some of his high school buddies ran a philosophy discussion group in their very conservative Islamic city. I had felt keenly that this was the kind of group I should try to visit, but I had never followed up on the opportunity. Nevertheless, his number remained in my phone and his unique name in my mind. A few years later we had returned from six months in the US and had moved to a different city. At our first visit to the international church here, who should walk up to me at the end of the service? This very same young man – now a professing follower of Jesus. I don’t know how, but I knew I would run into you again, I thought to myself.
During my friend’s stay with us we talked a lot about his work with local radio stations – including our only local Christian radio station. He shared with me how our newly completed audio bible in the local language was recorded at their studio. This project is worthy of celebration since so many of the women in our adopted country are illiterate and much of the general population is only functionally literate – meaning they will never read a book for fun or personal interest. Having the whole Bible now freely available via radio or a free smartphone app means access to the word of God just increased exponentially.
“You know what really surprised me?” my friend said to me. “The project was funded by churches in Africa. How can that be?”
I was thrilled to learn about this aspect of the project. How amazing that African churches have just funded an audio bible for my Central Asian Muslim people group! I’ve never heard about this direction of partnership for the work here before, but it seems like an exciting preview of things to come. I proceeded to explain to my friend about the massive Christian presence in sub-Saharan Africa and how I have heard it is set to become a major force and sending base for global missions. This was brand new information for my friend and he leaned in as I explained how the Church in the global south is in many ways the future center of global Christianity. The Church in the West may be declining or plateauing, but God is raising up churches all around the world to fill the gap.
In our previous city we partnered closely with a Mexican family. Their unique strengths were key to our fledgling church plant getting up and off the ground. We were able to lean on them for the areas of working in the local culture where we as Westerners were weaker – and vice versa. When that term came to an end I took a couple seminary classes while in the US. In both of my classes was a student from the very same country in Melanesia where I had grown up. Turns out he had been discipled by a pastor my own dad had discipled before he passed away. Now this man had been sent to get further seminary-level training. His dream is to return and start the first seminary in the country in order to train future pastors and missionaries. I watch with gratitude on social media as Melanesian guys I played volleyball with at Easter Camp are already going out and planting churches locally and even ministering in neighboring nations. Back here in our Central Asian context, it’s not uncommon to hear of cross-cultural workers from Asia and Latin America who have come to also see the Church take root here.
What an exciting time to be a part of global missions. Many countries and people groups that used to receive missionary church planters and Bible translators are now organizing to themselves send workers to the unreached people groups of the world. It’s often messy. We learned some hard lessons about how difficult it can be to have to contextualize to two foreign cultures at once, trying to keep in mind both local Central Asian and partner Hispanic culture. I can only imagine the epic culture clash if someday my Melanesian friends come as workers to Central Asia. “My grandpa was a cannibal” meets “My grandpa was a terrorist.” Sparks will certainly fly at times. And yet the advantages far outweigh the costs. The picture alone which is painted for our local friends is spiritually powerful. I relished every opportunity I had to point to our former partners’ ethnicity and our ethnicity and the locals’ ethnicities, holding up the supra-cultural power of the gospel for every people group of the world. “They’re Mexican, we’re American, you’re Central Asian. Look at the power of Jesus to save us and make us into a new people!”
I don’t know yet which churches from which African country funded our local audio Bible. But I praise God for them. Only the proud feel threatened when new regions of the world get involved in the missionary task. Many of us simply rejoice. Blessed reinforcements with unique strengths and needed experience! The promises of God are coming true. If all the unreached people groups of the world are to be saturated with healthy churches, it will have to be through a combined effort of the global church sending workers to the areas of greatest need. No longer mainly the West to the rest. Instead, all nations to all nations.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
