Liam Byrnes

One of the fine folks we get to interact with every now and again is Brandon Jones. He lives in Nairobi, Kenya and is from the US originally. He is a deep thinker, but also very much a practitioner in helping ignite movements of people to follow Jesus. One of the difficult dynamics of working in Africa as an outsider is that every action feels like it carrys the possibility of colonial or oppressive shadow sides. Brandon helps de-stigmatise and articulate the role of an outsider in a way that can contribute to kingdom activity while working in someone else’s native land – Liam

In our church planting work it’s not uncommon for people to question our role as outsiders, in terms of the important shift towards recognizing the great need to empower strong local leadership, particularly where sustainability and long term transformation is desired. Where this isn’t a priority you often see colonialism rehashed and projects that fall apart as soon as outsiders leave.

I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t just be better if people like us left the fields we work in; what if we just hoped that local people would establish and run with everything? This way it would look indigenous and hopefully would last. But – I’ve never been able to shake the sense that we are actually called into this church planting work – that we should be doing what we are doing (just making sure that what we are doing is responsible and sustainable).

To back this up, I once had the opportunity to hear a strong local African leader speak to this very point. Trying to be provocative, another American friend, asked this African leader if westerners should even be here or if we should just pack up and go home. His response was quite helpful and I thought I’d expand upon it here for those that might be wondering the same thing (whether you work in Asia, Europe, the Americas or Africa, as we do). He speaks out of the church planting context and is involved in many projects and partners with many groups in western Africa.

In his response, he pinpoints 7 clear ways that describe partnership. In these 7 points he details why we, as outsiders, shouldn’t just pack up and leave.

7 Ways Outsiders Can Help Fuel Movement & Transformation

1. By Providing Clear Vision.

When we partner through vision, we help to identify what local leaders are called to lead into. This doesn’t mean we necessarily provide the vision wholesale. Rather, it’s an identification process. It means we take time to listen and tease out the perceived needs and desired direction a particular community is moving in. Often we are able to aid in articulating and casting the particulars of vision. Often we are able to paint a picture of what could be and point others directly to it. Often as outsiders we might see the fuller picture just a bit more clearly. Vision is quite important, as you cannot gain what you cannot see. Further more, where vision is not clear human nature tends to dictate that we wander, mostly aimlessly, in directions that distract from what is actually important.

2. By Providing Necessary Training.

You can’t really understate the importance of training. With the right knowledge and training people can go much further than they could without it. Often an outside perspective is able to discern the type and depth of training needed to move a leader or community from point A to point B. Training also insures that we are working ourselves out of positions, particularly positions of power, as we train local leaders to fill said positions. It’s an important “high impact / low visibility” thing we can do. If we are doing our jobs well, we should be giving our best away so that we remain invisible and locals step into the forefront. If we are doing it exceedingly well, we are actively training ourselves out of jobs so that others might step into them.

3. By Providing Necessary Marketing.

It is important to let the world know what is going on. As an example, the Syrian refugee crisis started several years ago but is just now capturing the world’s attention. While we may have talked about it back then, not everyone did and many people across the globe were surprised at the magnitude of the problem. As outsiders we can help clue the rest of the world into what’s going on by capturing information and events in order to make them known to the world outside. This is however, a sensitive process and not always acceptable and permissible to share. It’s also a process where we need to be careful not to fall into slacktivism (activism from our lazy boys that doesn’t actually do anything, like simply changing a profile picture) or even worse, exploitation. We must always tell the story out of relationship and with permission and only where it will bring positive impact. Where we share the story for our own gain we are not helping but hurting, often tremendously. We can aid significantly through the marketing and awareness process but only where it’s done sensitively in partnership with local leadership.

4. By Providing Necessary Administration.

Developing the proper administrative efforts for supporting, empowering and encouraging work can be quite a challenge, specifically where it’s never been done before. It is definitely not a glamorous role (most people don’t want to be stuck in an office) but it is a vital role in many circumstances. This is something we can teach locals to do and succeed at easily as we do it alongside them. It’s important to keep in mind that, more often than not, administrative efforts do not have to be incredibly elaborate and complex: just simple structure to aid the effort.

5. By Identifying Emerging Leaders.

If we, as outsiders, are able to successful identify emerging local leaders it becomes a real gift to the community as we encourage and empower them to take an active role in the work at hand. Often we will see and encourage potential where many will ignore it, especially those within a community. Looking from the outside in we carry a different perspective that might be a boon in this area (connecting potential leaders with appropriate positions).

6. By Identifying What Matters.

It’s not about making people look like us. In the context of church planting work, it’s about focusing on the Gospel and not my preferred American version of church. In development work it’s about identifying solutions desired by indigenous culture rather than acting as colonial overseers. By separating our own culture (that means for me my “American-ness”) from the desired message itself, we enable the message to flourish locally. Where we don’t do that we create weird hybrid people that take on aspects of our culture that just aren’t reproducible and limit long-term sustainability. If we as outsiders can successfully model this ability to identify what matters, local leadership, as they seek to take the next step in helping neighboring communities as they’ve helped there own, will carry this notion with them.

7. By Identifying Resources Locally (And Afar).

We can help identify what a community already has that they might be overlooking. And where there might be lack – we can help find the necessary resources to compensate for it. Often through looking from the outside in we are able to see the hidden strengths that locals might overlook when examining their own community. The flip side of this might be true as well: we can perceive potential needs that locals might also miss. We should be helping them identify these things. An important note: this doesn’t mean we always bring in the money. Resource can mean a lot of different things and is very dependent on the community, project and task. When the focus is solely on money, particularly in the context of what can be brought in, we often hurt communities more than we help them (through creating dependency, creating false expectations, limiting sustainability and local reproducibility, etc).

These are the 7 important roles outsiders can play according to my friend from Western Africa. It’s his perspective on the importance of insiders partnering with outsiders like us. We’ve seen the strength in this in our work and it drives us to keep walking in this direction.

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At the beginning of the book of Colossians is this curious phrase;

The Son is the image of the invisible God – Col 1:15

It hit me in a new way as I read it last week. To a lot of people God really does seem like the invisible God. Especially for those of us raised to think through western-influenced education, we are materialists. What we can see and observe are the things that we are most prone to believe.

Believers in a divine creator point to signs of beauty, complexity and design all around us. Nay sayers rightly point to the existence of evil and pain all around us and surmise that who ever the originator of our existence is he has long since dawdled away from our troubled existence as a planet and people.

Indeed, even those of us who profess belief in God, when circumstances are not going our way are prone to feel like God is distant, un-interested and certainly quite invisible. This is what is so special about the Christian ability to point to a flesh and blood image of this invisible God in Jesus. Jesus shows us what God looks like.

Humanity’s call to bear the image of God

I began to think about this term image, and quickly realised there are a number of places it crops up throughout scriptural witness, and most significantly in the Genesis origins story.

“..in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

It seems like there is something pretty important about this idea of image. God is interested in being known, in having his character, his likeness known. He is interested is becoming un-invisible.

In genesis the account uses a familiar word to ancient hearers that we translate into the word ‘image’. In the ancient world this word was most commonly used in relation to the idols of god’s. Idols, statues or totems were seen, not as the God’s themselves but as the place where the god could be found. The place where something of their presence resided, something that physically manifest the unseen reign and authority of the god. Later on in history, empires worldwide, including the roman empire used this idea of statues to assert the authority (and in that sense, presence) of Caesars and rulers across their vast empires. Places that the caesars themselves maybe had never visited physically, but nevertheless their authority was represented and their presence felt by the subjects.

That is why the word ‘Image’ is so shocking to ancient ears when it is heard in Genesis. The hearers are used to a world where it is the humans that create idols that bear the image of gods, but here is a God who creates images of himself and those images are human image bearers.

So God creates humanity in the garden to image or show himself, just like those idle idols of the gods of the ancient world. But this time, it is his breath that gives these image bearers real life. These humans are the place where God’s rule and reign are made visible in the garden.

We all know how the beginning of the story ended in a catastrophic fall from grace, but that was not the end of story. As Paul remarks so famously in Roman, Jesus becomes a kind of second Adam, a second humanity, a reclaiming of the ancient vocation of humans to bear the image of God faithfully.

Stay Tuned for Part two next week. Be sure not to miss it by signing up for a weekly email;

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Over the past two years Isaac has been one of my favourite people to talk, drink, think and pray alongside. He recently completed an M.A. in Spiritual Formation with the University of the Nations and lives in South Africa with his family gathering people around discipleship and living out the ways of Jesus. Finally, He embodies a life long learner posture which continues to seek after truth, which is why I asked him to share these thoughts on a book He had just read. He previously wrote a post on this blog about the importance of mealtimes in Christian life you can read here. – Liam

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I recently picked up a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within. Reading the book proved to be a disturbing experience and I’m left to wrestle through some of his ideas and subsequent conclusions.

The premise of the book is that Jesus taught us to love all people, never repay evil with evil and to turn the other cheek even in the event of suffering personal violence. Tolstoy has a solidly christological¹ hermeneutic. He interprets everything in the Bible based on who God is as revealed in Christ, and everything else written about God, attributed to God, or said to be God must look, act, and sound like Jesus, or it isn’t God.

A second premise Tolstoy expresses is that mankind is moving through stages of growth;

1. We started out loving ourselves. He calls this the “animal” view of life.
2. We progress to loving society which would be our nation or tribe. He calls this the “pagan” view.
3. We will eventually come to love and embrace all mankind. He calls this the “divine” view.

Tolstoy believes that our governments, with the police and standing armies are there for one purpose only; to ensure those with wealth and privilege keep their status. He says the overwhelming source of violence in the world is “preemptive violence”. We do acts of actual violence to stop a potential violence.

I believe Tolstoy reads Ephesians chapter six and sees the “…principalities, powers and rulers of spiritual wickedness in high places” not as airy demons floating around causing mischief, but rather our structures, governments and institutions, that allow people to collectively cause massive damage and evil to others. Tolstoy explains how this becomes possible with this illustration: When I swear my allegiance to government or king and join an armed force, I feel justified in anything I do because I am “following orders”.

The responsibility gets passed off as I abdicate my responsibility to my commanding officer, who in turn passes it off as well. On the ground, I am allowed to shoot, kill, injure and abuse with impunity. Because my individual act is self defence, or in the defence of my country. I don’t feel the weight of my actions, even if I was to violently suppress my own countrymen.

Tolstoy says;

“How can men allow that murder is permissible while they preach principles of morality, and how can they allow of the existence in their midst of a military organisation of physical force which is a constant menace to public security? — It is only allowed by the upper classes, who profit by this organisation, because their privileges are maintained by it — The upper classes allow it, and the lower classes carry it into effect in spite of their consciousness of the Immorality of the deeds of violence, the more readily because through the arrangements of the government the moral responsibility for such deeds is divided among a great number of participants in it, and everyone throws the responsibility on someone else—moreover, the sense of moral responsibility is lost through the delusion of Inequality, and the consequent Intoxication of power on the part of superiors, and servility.”

Tolstoy also writes that in the time of Constantine the church joined the government along with their motivations. He says;

“Historically, Helchitsky attributes the degeneration of Christianity to the times of Constantine the Great, whom he, Pope Sylvester admitted into the Christian Church with all his heathen morals and life. Constantine, in his turn, endowed the Pope with worldly riches and power. From that time forward these two ruling powers were constantly aiding one another to strive for nothing but outward glory. Divines and ecclesiastical dignitaries began to concern themselves only about subduing the whole world to their authority, incited men against one another to murder and plunder, and in creed and life reduced Christianity to a nullity.”

Tolstoy would call anybody who professes to follow Jesus to practice the doctrine of “non-resistance to evil by force”. He acknowledges there will be martyrs but this is what Jesus taught, lived, (and died) but ultimately and inevitably, a peaceful world would emerge.

These are just a few of the ideas that Tolstoy writes about that are disturbing in the implication of how I should be living if they are true. If my privilege is obtained and maintained by threat or actual violence how do I live justly as one with privilege?

In very recent memory, I could hear the shots and taste the tear gas that floated across the valley as a people group desperate for justice in their community violently protested and were met with a greater violence to contain them. I would have to admit a certain security I felt in the fact that the people between me and those protesting had the “bigger guns.” This would prove Tolstoy correct as to why I would tolerate these standing armies. I will admit I like to buy my food at prices I could never produce for myself, and never question how this is possible and who is paying the difference. I like living in a home that would take me a lifetime to create if I used only my own labor, and not question how it came to be built.

I guess my conscience is comfortable with this arrangement because I assumed it was free market principles that made it so and everybody was choosing their lot.

What if it is only maintained because the guns on my side are bigger? I have to ask myself – where Jesus would be standing? I am afraid if Tolstoy is right, I am on the side of the guns aimed directly at Christ.

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