Africa: The Call of a Continent – Africa’s Missionaries Shine in Obscurity
Photo credit: FAO
This was published in the spring of 1977 in The Yale Standard.
They were slain in Rhodesia, victims of the racial strife that is burning up that country. They fled Zaire in 1964 when the Simba tribe rebelled and attempted to take over that country. They were held captive by Angolan troops invading Zaire in March.
They are targets of Idi Amin, Uganda’s president for life, and his blood-stained attempt to bend and break Uganda into his totalitarian mold.
This is only the prelude to the story that could be told.
At the same time, they founded 50 years ago what has grown to be a surprisingly advanced school system in African countries such as Uganda, Zaire, Nigeria and Kenya. They brought modern medicine to the African continent and have established hundreds of clinics that treat deadly tropical diseases, which in former decades claimed unhindered the lives of thousands of African children.
They have pursued the laborious task of putting scores of tribal languages into written form, paving the way for books, magazines, newspapers and especially the Bibles to appear in these rich exotic tongues. And at the same time these missionaries have led hundreds of thousands of Africans to a personal, saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Men and women respond to life’s calls on various levels. Some require the luxuries of a modern society; their own needs come first—the lucrative professions, living for the weekend entertainment and excitement, insisting on making this life as comfortable as possible. Others do not require such comforts; place the needs of others above their own; don’t seek to build up their bank accounts; find great joy and satisfaction in their daily work.
The world’s spotlight has focused on Africa recently, its struggles against racism, tyranny, Communism and mass murder. Yet for a century missionaries have been fighting another war on the continent: their historic and long-standing conflict against backwardness, illiteracy, disease and superstition. In the early days especially they often paid the price and many missionaries were laid into African graves, over which the years of their lifetimes were bracketed by a scant three decades.
Amid all the publicized stirrings of inter-tribal vengeance and bloodshed, men and women constrained by the love of Christ to serve others work quietly, effectively, daily, side-by-side with Africans to make life better—teaching, inoculating, performing surgery, irrigating, well-digging, building and preaching the Gospel.
Amid all the publicized stirrings of inter-tribal vengeance and bloodshed, men and women constrained by the love of Christ to serve others work quietly, effectively, daily, side-by-side with Africans to make life better—teaching, inoculating, performing surgery, irrigating, well-digging, building and preaching the Gospel.
The missionary commitment for these men and women is not for short terms of service—one or two years overseas, then back to Big Macs, Mustangs, first mortgages and other bounties of advanced civilization—but often for periods of 30, 40 or 50 years.
What makes the commitment so deep is the call—which comes to a particular man in a particular place at a particular time and draws him with a mysterious power to a particular distant region of the earth. Thus is it that a young woman, raised in Georgia, finds herself at 30 in a hot secluded village, deep in Africa, bathing the limbs of lepers. “The love of Christ constrains me…,” as the Scriptures tell.
If you have ever known missionaries, you well know that they are a special kind of people. To them the routine comforts and safety of life in the homeland cannot compare with the exhilarations of life on a continent like Africa, where the cry of the Sudanese, the Ethiopians, the Nigerians and others for help and God’s Word is so great that there could never be too many laboring in these lands.
Though awareness of this life and the impulse to go to the foreign field has almost entirely faded from the collegiate scene, this was not always so at Yale, from which missionaries have gone to many lands, especially to the Middle East, the Far East and China. Yet even today missionary work is among the most adventurous, fulfilling and at times dangerous careers a college graduate can pursue. Boredom has no place in lands where the people drink in every ounce of love and care given to them.
During the uprising in 1964 of the Simba tribes in Zaire, which was then the Belgian Congo, hundreds of missionaries found themselves caught in the middle of a bloody civil war. The Simbas, who has received Communist combat training and military supplies, rebelled against the central government and the Belgian presence in the Congo.
“The attack was not against the missionaries in particular, but because they were Westerners they were linked with the Belgians. Most were evacuated in time, but many were taken hostage by the Simbas,” recounted Sidney Langford, home director of the Africa Inland Mission in Pearl River, N.Y., which has over 700 missionaries working in Africa.
In 1965, as the civil strife still raged, Mr. Langford entered into parts of the rebel infested area for 11 days to seek out the surviving African pastors and believers.
“I wanted to get in to strengthen the pastor, encourage them and let them know that the missionaries would be returning as soon as possible. I heard stories that moved me profoundly—how miraculously believers had been saved, but also how some had lost their lives in the struggle,” he said.
How many people are needed in Africa?
“Opportunities for missions are greater than ever before,” commented Trevor Ardill, director of the Sudan Interior Mission in Cedar Grove, N.J., which has close to 1,200 people on the African continent. “Since 1950 the population of Nigeria alone has grown from 27 million to 80 million. We are always finding new unreached areas.
“We have been working in Nigeria since 1893, but a survey recently showed that after 83 years, 35 primitive tribes are yet unreached with the Gospel or with medical help and education. The future of missions is as great as the African population,” Mr. Ardill said.
One major barrier to progress in African nations is the multitude of tribal languages. These tonal systems of communication often require years of painful study and analysis by missionary translators before the beginnings of a written language can be formed. In Nigeria alone there are close to 250 different tribal tongues.
People need not fear or wonder if their talents and abilities can be used on the continent. Doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, linguists and agriculturalists are especially needed, as well as engineers, builders, mechanics, anthropologists, writers and radio operators. Just about anyone, with whatever skills he or she has, if truly called of God to enter an African country, can be used in significant ways.
Why are people willing to jeopardize their lives for a nation and its inhabitants who are completely alien to them? Why do individuals risk exposure to often deadly tropical diseases—malaria and yellow fever?
Why are people willing to leave the ease of a modern society and live, in many cases for decades, among primitive cultures where conveniences like running water are unheard of?
This compelling force in a young person’s life has its roots in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ—in knowing Him and loving Him as Lord and Savior. Answering God’s call to the mission field is answering one of life’s highest and greatest callings.
Why do they go? They go because Jesus said Go: “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature…. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.”
But before he said Go, Jesus said Come:
“Come unto me.” And He promised, “He who comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.”
You can come to Him now, this very day, if you will. He is living and loves you. By dying on the cross, He paid the price and became your sin-bearer and Savior. If you will believe and receive, He will give you power to become a son of God. It is Jesus who said:
“I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the father but by me.”