Rejoinder to Anderson and Burgess
Vulnerable Mission: An Interview with Jim Harries
This interview is between Michael Badriaki who is African, and Dr. Jim Harries, a Western missionary in Kenya. Michael has been working with missionaries from the West who seek to help and have done some positive things in Africa in God’s name. However, he finds that they tend to work from a place of power, assuming that the Western evangelical way of doing Christianity is paramount. Unfortunately, this life view encourages patronage, dependency, and undermines people’s dignity in Africa. It also displaces unity, compassion, humility and mutuality.
The interview explores Harries’ work of encouraging Western missionaries to do ministry from a position of vulnerability; along the way, it further demonstrates the profound need for any efforts toward global mission to be relational, and include the servant leadership, mutual participation, and listening to the voice of God’s people in Africa and the global church.
Some Distinctives of Black Preaching: From Whooping to Call and Response
In the African American tradition, preaching is central to the worship service, and black preaching distinguishes itself from other forms by using a style that is meant to move the listener to respond. Using techniques such as whooping and call and response, black preaching is about style, performance, and eliciting a feeling, and in its best form does more than entertain or use theatrics to conceal a lack of study. Though other groups may employ these techniques, they developed out of the African American contemporary experience and history and function as both calls of lament and cries for justice in light of the community’s struggles. The heritage and experience of black preaching calls for its continued and valuable use in the African American community.
It is Time to Remember
Drawing on God’s call throughout Scripture to remember, Massey gives the reader three ways to find security in God and faith during our country’s current unstable economic situation. First, he calls us to remember God our Creator, who is near to us. We must remember our Creator as an act of obedience and honor in both good and bad times. Second, we must remember the grand examples of faith who have gone before us. This legacy of faith from Scripture and our own communities strengthens us to face our current problems. Third and most importantly, we must remember Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection. In him we find our identity and share in his life despite our current situation. Remembering in these ways will sustain us in our faith.