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Edinburgh 1910:Roots and Fruits Retrieving Scotland’s Missionary heritage Why this Series? As the 2010 conference approaches one question that is being raised by people around the world is “why was the 1910 conference held in Scotland and why should the Conference to mark its Centenary come to the same location?” The organisers felt that part of the answer to this question might be found in studying Scotland’s own involvement in‘Foreign Mission’. Some preparatory conferences have looked at Foreign Mission activity in Scotland before 1910, and two, of which this is one, are this year looking for the ‘Fruits’ of 1910 in the period since. The April conference This Conference was planned to allow people who had gone overseas from Scotland in the service of God’s mission to reflect together on their experience. Those who wrote1000-word papers were asked not to offer a narrative of what transpired through missionary work in the countries where they served, but rather, to try to reveal the inner spirit and the guiding philosophy that inspired the effort.What was the aim of Scottish missionary work? What were the core values of Scottish missionary work? What were the work’s main spiritual and intellectual dimensions? Lest this seem too abstract an approach for some, an alternative approach suggested was that they might use the project to review their own personal involvement overseas, perhaps answering the following questions. In its turn this would contribute to the corporate reflection on the strategy itself. Expectations: What did I think I was going to do? What did those who sent me (Church, Board of Mission, Congregation etc) tell me I was going to do? What did those to whom I went see me as doing? How was God’s Spirit working in my life? The Reality: A brief factual exposition of what I was actually doing. How did this workout? What was going on around me? If I saw myself as a small cog in a much larger machine, how did the big picture impact on me and my corner? What did I find God doing with me? The Outcome: Have the original purposes been fulfilled? And if not why not? Looking back on it now,what was God up to? The Papers In the end 33 papers were received, and they span the last 60 years. 16 of them were written jointly or individually by women. They reflect the work of Scottish people who went to Argentina, Bhutan, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Israel/Palestine,Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Africa, and Zambia. Of course the papers are uneven, and sadly there are too few from denominations outside the Church of Scotland, but they offer fascinating glimpses of mission strategy and how this worked out in training and practice in the second half of the twentieth century. Themes In this brief conspectus of the papers four themes seem to keep recurring. The four are:
How the legacy of 1910 worked out in the Implementation of Mission Policy A stream of missionary co-operation flowed through Edinburgh 1910. In the mission ‘fields’ comity agreements among missionary organisations (mentioned by Norman Macrae as already existing in Nigeria), developed in almost all the areas where the Church of Scotland’s missionaries operated and led to individual countries being “divided up” among those seeking to do mission there: “You go to the left hand and I will go to the right”. This in turn reduced rivalry and led in time, first to cooperation through Missionary Associations and Christian Councils, and later, as trust developed, to united national churches. The United Church of Zambia, founded in 1965,was one of these. The mission board of the Church of Scotland wholeheartedly embraced this tradition. It was led in this by Dr. James Dougall who was massively influential in policy over many years, and later Bishop Lesslie Newbigin was its inspiration. (See the papers by Hulbert, MacKenzie and Wilkie). Sister Ann Gray in her paper on her work in Hong Kong gives us a glimpse of the effect of“Vatican II” on the policies and practices of the Roman Catholic Missionary Congregations. How Individual People obeyed and developed God’s Call to be a Missionary People responded to God’s Spirit in different ways. Some, like John and Muriel Berkeley took personal responsibility for their training, and personally negotiated their placements overseas. Some like Alastair Hulbert and Murdoch & Anne MacKenzie were guided by a personal ‘guru’ -- in their case Lesslie Newbigin. Most of the Church of Scotland members like me turned to their Church: “Here am I, I believe God is calling me to mission, please test my call, train me and work out with me where you believe God wants me to go.” For most of the period we are considering this last approach worked very well. Our initial training was given partly in Scotland at St. Colm’s Missionary College, and training - especially in the local language - continued ‘on the field’ under the supervision of senior missionaries. During this time the mission organisation that had run the mission stations, the schools and the medical work was integrated with the new churches that gradually had been established. This was not always an easy transition, as Laurie Campbell reports from Kenya, and Ian Moir from South Africa, but usually missionaries were glad to find themselves more and more under the authority of what the Church of Scotland now referred to as ‘Partner Churches’. Clarence Musgrave from Zambia spells all this out in most detail, and this concept of partnership features in many of the papers. From Jamaica Roy and Jane Dodman ask sharp questions about Partnership today: “What happens when we stretch the metaphor of roots and fruits and imagine that the fruit has dropped to the ground and the seed has sprouted and there is now a vigorous young tree growing beside the old tree? ... What happens when the young tree has become strong and vibrant and the old tree shows alarming signs of being in a state of possibly terminal decay? How do the two trees relate and how can both trees survive and produce good fruit?” At the same time ecumenical cooperation continued, often through local Council of Churches. Vernon Stone, Bill McKenzie and others were involved in Bible Translation. Alasdair Morton tells of heading up ecumenical teacher training, and Margaret MacGregor taught in a College that drew students from all over India. “Stuff Happens”: Mission in the midst of social change and the politics of the Real World These papers reflect the fact that for the most part Scots who saw themselves as foreign missionaries operated in areas where the British Raj provided access and some security. (Chaplains to expatriates of course were in a different situation). The breakup of the British Empire affected the politics of almost every area. However the insistence by mission boards that missionaries learned local languages meant that they were well placed to understand and identify with the aspirations of the local people. This often proved costly – as in Israel/Palestine (Colin Morton), Nigeria (Norman Macrae),Malawi (Anne Hepburn, Howard Taylor) and Bhutan(John & Muriel Berkeley), but also meant that many (as in Zambia, South Africa and perhaps Hong Kong) made the somewhat bumpy ride to Independent nationhood in warm supportive company. Seeking to serve God’s mission today Some who ‘went forth’ were afforded the wonderful privilege of being deeply involved in fruitful outreach while embedded in the partner church they were serving. I noticed Dorothy Wallace’s educational work in India, Margaret Millar’s remarkable story of the growth of the congregation in Kitwe, Zambia, Murdoch MacKenzie’s report of outreach in Madras, and the Berkeleys’ account of Bhutan. And Clare Alsharif’s account of her volunteer time in India shows that this can still happen today. But missionaries have often been awkward individualists, and over the years a number of these missionaries became frustrated. They believed that God’s mission demanded more from those who would be his agents of mission than the support of ‘partner churches’ and inter-church relations. This comes through in many papers, perhaps notably those of Ann Gray, Alastair Hulbert, Murdoch Mackenzie, Howard Taylor and Chris Wigglesworth. And this has also been a particular challenge for those who worked in former ‘chaplaincy’ charges that have imaginatively been seeking new roles for themselves. This is discussed by Robert Calvert, Charles Morrice, and Colin Morton. The challenge for now of course is to bring all this experience home to Scotland and to God’s Call to Mission here in the secular west. The papers of Chris Wigglesworth and Alastair Hulbert ask sharp questions both about what ecumenism is today and also about how we can practise mission in the secularized west, and in Scotland in particular. Jim Wilkie, April 2009
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age Last Updated: 24 February, 2004 12:02 PM |