Missionaries and Missions

Before my recent trip to Kasai, I had a better understanding of, and frankly a deeper interest in, the influence of William Sheppard in fields other than religion. I am most interested in his literary, artistic, and political impact in the US, and have a relatively good handle on these aspects of his career. I have always known this was ironic--Sheppard came to Congo as a missionary to evangelize, but his greatest successes lay elsewhere.

When Sheppard arrived at Luebo in 1891, he, unlike many of his peers, found needs he considered far more pressing than Christianity. He began to help people hunt food, and importantly intervened on behalf of the Congolese during a period when they were under attack by the Belgian Force Publique. In response to his support for the Congolese during the early 20th century, the mission station at Ibaanc was destroyed. The folks he helped during this time period were, interestingly, not even nominally Christians. Yet Sheppard continued to work with them. About a decade later, many of these folks did convert to Christianity, which demonstrates that Sheppard was an effective evangelist even though the Presbyterians did not give him much credit at the time since, during his term, he wasn’t producing the number of expected converts. He had a much broader, more inclusive, and longer-range vision of his work in Congo.

To the best that I can tell, Sheppard was one of the first missionaries to articulate a version of Christian mission that prioritized social justice and stood against the colonial State. Unfortunately, later history is far less heroic given the troubling extent of the APCM’s collaboration with the Belgian State. However, there is some evidence of Sheppard’s continuing legacy. One of the folks in the group that I was traveling with had raised money from his church to buy Tshiluba bibles and hymnbooks for the congregation at Lubondaie. After raising $2,000, he learned that the town’s hospital did not have clean water. A well had been dug, but the hospital needed to buy a pump. He went to his church in Georgia and they agreed to take this money, raise some additional funds, and buy a water pump for the hospital rather than the bibles. Current Presbyterian missionaries are involved in public health and some innovative agricultural initiatives, along with evangelism.

There was some debate among the other travelers as to whether or not their group constituted a mission trip or if its aims were more modest--folks coming primarily as tourists to visit their childhood homes. Most of the group was in the more honest, latter category, maturely recognizing the limits to what the group could accomplish during their two weeks here while nevertheless remaining receptive to developing partnerships with communities and organizations here in DR Congo. This rift was the topic of several dinner conversations and debates, and I challenged them to articulate a clear definition of missionary work, which proved surprisingly difficult and even contentious. It lies somewhere between community service, empowerment, evangelization, and cross-cultural exchange. I was encouraged by everyone’s willingness to have these conversations among themselves and with a decided outsider like me.

Whereas my allegiance lies with the water pump approach, the old-fashioned idea of missionary work is alive. At the meeting at UPRECO in Ndesha, representatives of the university were sharing some of their material needs and someone, condescendingly I thought given the context, encouraged them to pray and said that she would pray for them. One of the others in our group whispered to me that he thinks that the Congolese people we were with knew a lot more about prayer than any of us did. Amen.