“What sort of a god would make something that looks like this?”
Mission of Canadian Baptist Ministries
Encouraging passionate discipleship for local and global mission.
As partners in the Canadian Baptist family we exist to serve the local church in its grassroots mission. Together we impact our communities and beyond through the love of Christ.
Cover: Durga and her grandma. (See Durga’s story on pg. 19.)
Photos (cover and opposite page): Johnny Lam
That was what I heard in the midst of silence as I gazed, two summers ago, at a sunset framed by ocean and mountains. I was in the midst of a difficult time in my life, having faced much loss, and it had shaken my faith in the goodness of God. As I stared into the stunning vista in front of me, the question wafted into my consciousness: what sort of god would make something that looks like this? Something so beautiful, so lavish? And I realized that, even if I was someone who knew nothing about God, the sheer beauty of what I was seeing would lead me to believe that whoever made it was good.
I am inspired by beauty, especially by beauty in nature. Each of us is inspired in different ways, and it is important for us to discover them and nurture them so that we can be sustained in the work God calls us to do.
“Inspire” literally means to “breathe in.” It is about being filled with something from the outside that animates and enlivens us inside. Just as oxygen vitalizes our bodies, inspiration enlivens our souls. In the beginning, God breathed life into earthmatter and the first humans were created. Today, we can breathe in the Spirit and be filled. Body-soul inspiration ultimately comes from God. The deepest and longest-lasting inspiration comes from breathing in God himself, and breathing in the new things that God is doing in us and around us.
Some of the things that are currently “inspiring” us at CBM include:
• Entering new seasons of work with longstanding international partners. In Indonesia we are envisioning a new chapter; in the Congo, we are returning to a stronger level of partnership after the civil war.
• A new focus on “capacity building” with and for our partners, with the intention that we grow in our ability to minister effectively and strategically.
• A number of Field and office staff have moved into new chapters in their lives, and we have had some new staff join us. Visit our website at www.cbmin.org for news on these transitions.
Lots of change! And, we pray, lots of inspiration!
This issue of mosaic is filled with stories and ideas about inspiration. May you be refreshed, revived, and renewed as you read.
Grace and peace,
Rev. Sam Chaise General Secretary of CBM
Sam (right) gets a warm welcome at Katwa General Hospital in the DR Congo.
Visit Sam’s blog at cbminorg.wordpress.com Follow Sam on Twitter @samchaise_cbm
Purpose of mosaic
mosaic is a community forum of local and global voices united by a shared mission. mosaic will serve as a catalyst to stimulate and encourage passionate discipleship among Canadian Baptists and their partners.
Dear CBM Family,
What inspires you? That’s the question mosaic is asking for our summer issue. What person, book, idea, conversation, encounter, class… changed the way you see the world?
Sent you in a new direction? Helped you discover your calling? Strengthened your faith?
Here are excerpts from some of the responses we received from CBM Global Field Staff, office staff, Strategic Associates and staff from our global church partners.
Dallas Willard’s Renovation of the Heart has really inspired us to grow spiritually.
Elie
Haddad, Lebanon
I am inspired by the many micro-loan who, through entrepreneurial spirit and a deep faith in God, step out every day and work incredibly hard to support their families.
Duane Guthrie, Bolivia
I am touched by the determination and dedication of youth leaders of the European Baptist Federation. It costs to stand up and be counted as a believer in cultures that are dominated by intolerant state churches, poverty, apathy and sometimes raw antagonism. Yet they provide ongoing encouragement and Christian service despite these incredible odds… They are truly an inspiration to me to never give up hope… to press on in our task of reaching out for the cause of Christ.
Jeff Carter, Czech Republic
After I completed my nursing course, my nursing superintendent, Lucy Cooper, a Canadian missionary, inspired me to work in the community to help with people’s health needs. I realized that along with health, development in all aspects of life is also needed. So I chose to become a community health and development worker.
Jasmine Jonathan, India
Through his book A Testament of Hope, Martin Luther King Jr. gave me a new way of thinking about how to build peace and hope and to contribute to building sustainable peace in my country and in the world.
Right now nothing more than a text message I received from my wife Kelly tonight (I’m up in Dadaab with a short-term team). In July we head to Canada for a year and we’re trying to decide where to live, what to drive and what to do about the kids’ schooling, etc. We have options but way more opinions and the clock is ticking. Kelly’s text ended with: “It’ll be fun whatever and wherever because it will be with you.”
Gato Munyamasoko, Rwanda
After 21 years of marriage we’ve let each other down a few times. Yet she believes in me, cheers for me and inspires me to love her today more than I did yesterday… Nothing inspires like loving, respectful relationships. Makes a guy want to charge hell with a water pistol and even tackle a Canadian winter.
Paul Carline, Kenya
Sometime last year I was being led by the Holy Spirit to pursue spiritual disciplines, to discover ways to worship and spend time with God through lectio divina, listening prayer, and reading whole Bible passages or shorter books in the New Testament all the way through in one sitting.
One day I stumbled across the concept of keeping a gratitude journal on one of my favourite blogs: Ann Voskamp @ A Holy Experience. She was keeping an online journal of gratitude and found it was bringing her greater joy.
So I started keeping a gratitude journal of my own, then I started writing about it on our blog. Regardless of the struggles and stresses that were present in my life, I focused on looking for all the things God was doing in my life — on seeing, recording and dwelling on his blessings that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. I found that it was true; there was more joy! The responses that we received from the followers we have on our blog were wonderful. Some shared what was written with others and were inspired to count gratitude themselves. I am thankful to the Holy Spirit for taking me on such a great journey toward and into gratitude and humbled that others were inspired to do so as well.
Carin Guthrie, Bolivia
A few years ago, my friend Njoroge lost his home, his farm and nearly his life in a time of political violence. He is now living in a tent on a 50’ x 100’ plot in an arid region, and had every reason to despair. But when he adopted the principles of conservation agriculture — a creation-care approach inspired by Scripture that challenges us to think of the land as a gift we hold in trust — his little plot exploded with life.
I recently visited to bring him a gift of mango and papaya trees. He had just cultivated a rented one-acre plot. I was stunned at the difference between his and the surrounding gardens. Njoroge’s maize was chest high, and a deep, healthy green… Now his neighbours, initially scornful, are anxious to try this approach, and Njoroge is beginning to mentor them… This area is being transformed by biblical knowledge, holy effort, and inspirational people like Njoroge. I never thought that farming could inspire people like this, and I never thought that farming could be used as a means of discipling the nations, but I have discovered otherwise. Seeing Njoroge able to feed his family and hold his head high is inspiring me just now.
Tim Bannister, Kenya
In Mindy Caliguire’s session on Simplicity: Finding a Way of Life (www.soulcare.com) she talks about the duplicity we often engage in when we feel we need to act as though we are more or different than we are. Her simple question of “Who ARE you?” has challenged me to examine and rest in who God created me to be.
Sharlene Craig, Canada
I read The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder in university. It really changed the way that I imagined Jesus interacting with both the powerful and the powerless. Until reading that book, I hadn’t really thought about how God interacts with social, cultural, political and economic power in the world. Other authors continued to lead me in understanding the heart of God for the poor and powerless, and the delicate task of living as an ‘alternative community’ of Christ-followers rather than as someone who looks and sounds and spends like everyone else.
I particularly remember the challenge to me personally at that time to be a peacemaker in my own small world of relationships and interactions. As my world has gotten larger over the years, I see those same qualities that the Holy Spirit nurtured in my heart in those early years of my faith called upon constantly. For although the challenges of working for God amidst conflict, opposition, abuse and even violence in both Europe and Africa are more complicated than the tensions in my small network of university relationships, the desire of God remains the same for peace between both people and God. And the Christian disciplines of speaking the truth, holding my tongue, and sometimes accepting some personal discomfort when it serves God’s Kingdom are as valid to my role as a peacemaker however large or small my world becomes.
I was inspired by the biblical story of the Exodus. The Israelites asked God to help them leave Egypt because they were tired of being treated like slaves, but on their journey to the Promised Land they sinned against their God. But God did not forsake or destroy them; instead he continued to be with them. This shows how much love and kindness that God has for his people… Time came and I lost my parents and other relatives. This difficult period gave me much strength to now spend time with, and have conversations with, orphans, widows and other vulnerable people who have lost hope. Such discussions with different kinds of people have enabled me to find a real sense of my calling.
Berthe Uwizeramariya, Rwanda
Colin Godwin, Kenya
Visiting CBM partners in the DR Congo
I find myself continually inspired this year by my church community, which has been an outstanding support through the first year of our adoption adventure with our two children. We have been attending Eucharist, a new church plant. Kevin and Meaghan Makins lead by living an incredible and transparent embodiment of the love of Christ. This love has spilled over into the church community and subsequently into the local community in the east end of downtown Hamilton (Ontario) and manifested as a burning passion to serve those in the community, especially the poor, the hurting, the hungry and the broken.
Jon Williams, Canada
I love seeing people (youth especially) realize the potential they have in Christ… that moment when they know there’s something more to them and for them… it’s incredible! If you think of a rock or pebble being tossed into a lake and you watch the resulting ripples… that’s what comes to mind when I think of potential because when youth realize who they are and can be in Christ, it’s not only going to impact themselves but their family, friends, and community as well.
Rebecca Alward, Bolivia
I received Jesus just one year after the atrocities of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. I was 20 years old and still remember it all. After 17 years, I can see the change that is happening in my country. The main actors in this change are: God, good leadership and the people of Rwanda… This made me change my mindset, to see that wherever there is a good will, change is possible… As a local church leader and development worker, I always find overwhelming needs, therefore I feel glad that I can offer whatever I have to touch and change lives and not just leave the world as it is.
Martyrs of the early church, people who sacrificed their lives to rescue others in Rwanda, but specifically the image of Jesus Christ as suffering servant, who gave his life to save people from death, all inspire me to endure hardship and pain. My soul finds more satisfaction when I manage to meet somebody else’s need. I think this is my calling and my strength. If I do not respond, I would be selfish, my life would be meaningless, and I would be denying Jesus Christ.
Andre Sibomana, Rwanda
I am inspired by people. There is something special in the eyes of people — worth, value and God’s beauty and grace. I enjoy the diversity of people and love all regardless of their background, race, colour or religion. I am inspired when I help or rescue someone from his or her situation. I am inspired seeing how people work hard to improve life for themselves and others.
Yattani Gollo, Kenya
I am inspired by the strength and resilience of the women I have worked with in the Groups of Hope program over the past eight years. As I hear their stories and listen to the challenges and obstacles they have overcome, I feel humbled that they have invited me to be part of their journeys to wholeness… One of the women shared that she had sensed God’s love reaching out to her through our small group and although she had never opened up in a group before, she had shared her opinion and didn’t feel that anyone condemned or judged her.
Faith Holwyn, Canada
I was befriended by a retired missionary when I was at university. She saw something in me that I never could have dreamed of: to become a full-time missionary. Her gentle and wise counsel at a crucial career decision time pointed me to God with an eternal perspective that was extremely helpful… Despite strong f amily opposition, I was determined to pursue theological education after university. Who I am today in ministry is mainly because of the firm f oundation that Ferne Blair helped build twenty-some years ago. She was my spiritual mother; I visited her almost every year until she passed away in April 2010. I miss her dearly and am determined to model and nurture others to become more Kingdom-minded Christians.
Pak Loh, Asia
I always had a heart for disadvantaged people, be it elderly, disabled, impoverished, etc., but I was studying business and working in a bank. I didn’t know how I’d tie the two together until I went on a microfinance trip to Honduras with a group of classmates in 2006… When I got back, sitting in a chapel, I really felt a strong specific call to be involved in international development — it’s a very specific moment I remember where God tied the two together and sent me in a new direction/ helped me discover my calling. Business is so central to many of the projects going on in international development.
Shannon Brisco, Canada
I spent 14 months (1977-1978) backpacking around the world to explore missions and better understand what God was doing in the world and whether or not there might be a place for me to serve. It was a trip that changed my life goals and also gave me a wonderful foundation for my eventual career in missions.
Blair Clark, Canada
Over the last few months, I have found Dietrich Bonhoeffer — a pastor, theologian, spy and martyr in Germany during Hitler’s Third Reich — a wise and urgent voice. In a letter from prison, he wrote the following: “I discovered later, and am still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes, failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of God in the world... That, I think, is faith...” (Letter to Eberhard Bethge, 1944)
During Bonhoeffer’s lifetime, much of the church in Germany, Catholic and Protestant, was primarily concerned for their own “tribe’s” welfare and survival as the Third Reich made demands for the church’s subservience to the state. However, Bonhoeffer offered a word of strong warning to them and I believe to us today: that the Church is only the Church when it is a “Church for others,” not when we exist for our own benefit or self-interest.
Bob Jones, Hong Kong
Laurena Zondo, Canada
Visiting with orphans and vulnerable children inspires me! Their courage, perseverance and hope is contagious. So too those who work alongside them, offering love, prayers, care and dignity – the body of Christ in action. Truly inspiring!
I am inspired by every child, woman or man who tells us that their life has been transformed through the work of God’s Kingdom and his people. They show me what it means to live in constant appreciation of his grace. When deadlines are looming and stress is high, I am reminded of God’s goodness through the stories of the people we serve through our work.
Jennifer Lau, Canada connecting…
We’d love to hear from you. Post what inspires you at: Facebook.com/cbmin.org
The Gift of a Promise
Steve Simala-Grant, Lead Pastor at Laurier Heights Baptist Church in Edmonton, shares how God encouraged him through new friends in Bolivia.
I’d been a pastor for 16 years, but this particular Sunday morning I was really struggling. I felt like I just wanted to do something else with my life. Surely I could be more effective for building God’s Kingdom somewhere else…
I sat in my pew through our time of worship, asking if God wanted to release me from my call or this place of ministry. I imagined myself at the foot of the cross, on my knees, head bowed, feeling empty. Then, in a moment of what I believe to be sanctified imagination, I saw a hand reach down toward me, pulling me to my feet, and I looked into the face of a Bolivian man. He smiled and held me on my feet, and I felt a bit of hope and strength return. Though it didn’t make a lot of sense at that moment, and it certainly didn’t change anything around me, it seemed to be some kind of promise.
A few months later we signed our STEP agreement with Bolivia. STEP (Serving, Training, Energizing Partnerships) is a CBM Global Discipleship program that connects a Canadian church with a community of believers in another part of the world through a missional partnership based on mutual learning. We began our partnership by
sending a team to Bolivia to begin the relationship. Nothing much had changed in my church, and the experience of that Sunday morning was mostly a distant memory.
On our last day in Bolivia, we were invited for lunch to the home of Senor and Senora Gutierrez, parents of our host Ivan, CBM’s Short-Term Mission Coordinator in Bolivia. Two amazing weeks were coming to a close, and after lunch we all sat together in the living room. Out came a guitar and charango, and we casually began to sing together. At first just for fun, and then for a time of worship.
I closed my eyes and started to think about returning home, and all the problems and struggles that awaited me. Again I started to wonder if I should continue. Then the vision returned, and God spoke. He told me he would lift me up, and he would use my new friends and partners in Bolivia to do so. He spoke words of encouragement that were made real by the love in the Gutierrez home. He spoke words of affirmation through Ivan and his parents. He spoke words of community and mutuality through our singing and praying together. He spoke words of hope and
newness through the spontaneous gift of a charango — Ivan’s dad gave us the practice instrument he had purchased from a small boy some 30 years ago and then used to teach his own children to play. But above all, God spoke words of his Kingdom coming together all over the world — in Edmonton at my church and in Bolivia at Casa de la Amistad (Friendship House, a ministry of Bolivian Baptists among prison children).
...the vision returned, and God spoke. He told me he would lift me up and use my new friends and partners in Bolivia to do so.
Back at home, things actually became more difficult, but my heart was changed. My call was affirmed. My feet were firmly planted. My hand was now joined with the hand of a partner also seeking first the Kingdom of God, in another place and culture, but in the same Kingdom and with the same Lord. May his Kingdom come, his will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Senor Gutierrez shares his gift of music with visiting teams from Canada.
Photo credit: Johnny Lam
Life Changing
by Adrian Gardner Associate Pastor
Let me tell you about one of the most life-changing events that I have ever experienced.
We’ve all heard the statistics. According to the most recent United Nations report, 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day. While statistics are certainly useful for measuring global progress on poverty reduction, I think they can also serve to hide the truth. Confronted with these statistics, we can come to view poverty as a large, faceless problem and in the process miss the stories of individual women and men, boys and girls, who each bear the image of God and struggle with the harsh realities of poverty, hunger, and oppression. This is the disconnect that I think exists in the hearts and
minds of many in the church in North America and it is what CBM’s Praxis program helped to correct in my own life.
In May 2010, I and three other students were given the opportunity to travel to Bolivia to study and reflect on the topic of integral mission with CBM Global and National Field Staff, as well as with Dr. René Padilla of the Kairos Foundation. At the same time, we were invited to share our lives with the people of Bolivia and were able to observe theory being put into practice by the local church. As a team, we witnessed how Canadian Baptists
Grand Bay Baptist Church, new Brunswick
Photo credit:
Johnny Lam
One of the homes renovated in Bolivia to protect families from Chagas disease.
are partnering with the church in Bolivia to help local congregations live out integral mission in their own communities and contexts.
Looking back, I have come to see this trip as a life-changing experience for me — theologically and practically — and to some extent for the congregation I serve as Associate Pastor. Theologically, this experience has served to shape and reform my understanding of the integral mission of Jesus Christ through his Church. As the Church we are called to be an alternative community as we both proclaim and demonstrate the good news of the gospel message. In other words, our witness in this world must include both evangelism and social action, as one without the other represents an incomplete picture of the gospel. They are not two separate, isolated activities but rather together make up the mission of the Church in which we are called to participate.
As a team we had the opportunity to visit many projects, but the one that stood out to me was the Chagas project in the community of Premier de Mayo
about the size of a North American living room. We were told that when her family was tested, the results showed that all seven children had Chagas disease, a fatal virus transmitted by the bite of the vinchuca bug. Without treatment, they would have eventually died from the disease. However, because of this project all seven children have been treated and the house has been successfully renovated so they will not be re-infected while they sleep. It was an incredible feeling to walk the streets of the community and see rows of houses with white plaster along their roofs and know that in each house there was someone who could probably share with us a similar account. I was struck that this is what it means to demonstrate the gospel. This is a picture of what it means for the church to be a transformational presence in the community. This is what it means to follow Jesus. This is integral mission.
The past year has been a difficult one for me as I have had to reconcile this experience with the reality of my
As a team, we witnessed how Canadian Baptists are partnering with the church in Bolivia to help local congregations live out integral mission in their own communities and contexts.
project has been supported by our children at Vacation Bible School, by the broader congregation as a special Christmas project, and by our youth through their participation in a CBM youth event.
In April 2012, a team of 11 people from our church will travel to Bolivia to see the project first hand and actually put plaster on walls. The sum total of these efforts has been approximately $8,500 raised in support of the project. But this is just another statistic. The real result has been lives saved as people created and loved by God will now have the opportunity to live free from fear of this fatal disease. The real result has been a deeper discipleship as we grow in our relationship with Christ and our understanding of his mission through us as his Church.
outside of Cochabamba. During our visit we were able to meet a woman who benefited from the project. She was a widow with seven children and lived in a small adobe brick house
life here in Canada. It has also been an exciting one as the congregation that I serve continues to grow in our understanding and practice of mission. Over the past year, CBM’s Chagas
Praxis is a scholarship program available to students enrolled at an accredited theological school and pursuing graduate seminary studies at a Masters or Doctoral level.
The scholarship provides the opportunity for students to engage in missiological reflection on a significant issue related to gospel and culture in a developing world context. Each year, Praxis engages in a cross-cultural mission experience within a cohort learning environment.
CBM offers a wide variety of Global Discipleship programs for all ages, including unique educational opportunities like Praxis and short-term mission experiences. Learn more at www.cbmin.org.
The Inspiration Equation
God [ me +
+ you ] = ∞ *
*Infinite Possibilities
Gary and Norma Calderwood have been going to El Salvador on short-term mission trips for the last 12 years. They are members of Altadore Baptist Church in Calgary.
by John Prociuk
What was the initial experience or impact on each of you?
Norma: My first trip was in 1999 — I had prayed for a couple of months, and sensed the Holy Spirit telling me to go. I was struck by the culture — noise, busyness, limited privacy. The poverty was alarming. I was impacted by the way they observed Easter Week. The church was always open, except for Friday. We talked about this with other Christians — for the first time the solemnity of Christ’s death was enacted around betrayal. It made the resurrection so joyful.
Gary: I was going through a difficult time at work, and was reluctant to go on an STM, but in some ways God forced me there. Now I see it as gift from God to us as a couple. The first trip confused me — I remember asking: what’s this all about? I felt I had a good understanding of Christianity from our home and growing up — but when you see a bullet hole in someone’s chest (Archbishop Oscar Romero) it makes you ask: what kind of Christianity is this? Back in Canada after those first trips, I would spend a week in the basement trying
to sort it out. My heart was being opened to something, but I struggled.
How have you encountered or experienced God in your trips to El Salvador?
G: Over time, I learned what it meant to see God through the imagination of the poor. At first I read everything I could about El Salvador, and also poverty. Then I got angry — my heart boiled. I imagined becoming a rebel, trying to fix poverty with guns! By focusing on “fixing” I was limited. There is a deeper poverty that leads to wars, greed, selfishness. It’s not just El Salvador, it’s the human race. But the effects are so blatant in El Salvador.
N: Salvadorans teach me so much about trusting God and what it means to hope. Here in Canada, we support our children and save for retirement. In El Salvador, their daily realities are homelessness, illness, environmental disasters — yet they thank God for each day and remain hopeful! We often put our faith in our possessions — they put their hope
more directly in God. I remember a woman saying: I know there is a God because I have rice.
G: At first I did not understand that; it has taken years. When rich landowners would force workers to harvest coffee on the dangerous volcanic hillsides, Oscar Romero said: you will see the Lord’s face on the bags of coffee, in the face of the man who goes to work in the fields. It’s like Jesus — Jesus both walked on earth, and is also mysteriously present. When we walk in the dirt with Jesus, somehow there is a connection with the God who is mysterious.
N: When homeowners thank us for building homes, they first thank God. One woman said: The earthquake took away my house, but God gave me an even better house. God reveals himself to the homeowners, and then they reveal God to us. Teresa of Avila said: Christ has no body on earth but ours, no hands but ours…. It is so humbling, because we do so little.
How is God changing you as you live life and worship here in Canada?
N: When I came back, I wanted to help the homeless here in Calgary, which we started to do through In from the Cold Homelessness disrupts life in every way — children without a home suffer more sickness.
G: Because of our wealth in North America, we become self-reliant, focused on comfort. We also think we are experts, which spills over into our missionary activities; our motives aren’t bad, but we need to be corrected by reality.
N: I am amazed how often the Bible says that God is with the people who suffer through injustice and poverty. If we are truly Christians we have a responsibility not to ignore that — to
minister to those who are in need. I could always be doing a lot more — life is not about amassing wealth and comfort.
G: Henri Nouwen says: We need to recognize the poverty in every individual. I have to recognize the poverty in myself. I have to be humble. All of us are poor — it’s not just economic. Also, I understand generosity a bit differently now. Often in church we tell God that we give back a token of what he is giving us. Why just a token? I think we should give God everything back except the rice that we need. We need to live more simply in order to give more generously.
N: My time in El Salvador has taught me to “measure” differently. When I think of spending money on ourselves, I cannot help but think of what that money would buy in El Salvador. It comes down to loving God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself.
G: Part of the journey is recognizing how little we know of the Kingdom of God. This world as we know it is not God’s will — this world is not where we should feel comfortable. What is coming — the Kingdom of God — is real. I want to experience more of it.
What would you say to people who may be considering a short-term mission trip?
G: North Americans can be so worried about comfort on an STM — but it’s about the relationship.
N : The 19-year-old man we helped build a home for this year became like a son to us.
G: When you go, observe what God is doing. Open yourself.
Today is the day to start living differently. Start now. if you cannot go, make it possible for someone else to go.
Norma Calderwood
N: When our son and daughter were still at home, they preferred using holiday time to go with us to El Salvador rather than elsewhere. We would take extra jobs in order to make the money to go. So I would say to people: Today is the day to start living differently. Start now. If you cannot go, make it possible for someone else to go. Send your grandchildren.
john Prociuk has served as a pastor for 18 years. His last pastorate was as Senior Pastor at Altadore Baptist Church in Calgary.
Writing the Next Chapter
by Blair Clark CBM Associate General Secretary
After almost 40 years of partnership in Indonesia, what lies ahead?
Rev. Ronny Welong, President of the Convention of Baptist Churches of Indonesia (KGBI), describes the almost four decades of partnership between CBM and the KGBI as three distinct chapters, each with its own challenges and achievements, and each building on the previous chapter.
Chapter 1 (1972 – 1981) written in North Sulawesi, focused on the establishment of the Theological Seminary of Indonesia (STI), and involved primarily the Byrne and Card families as a CBM Task Force in teaching roles at STI. The seminary that was established continues to this day, primarily training pastors, evangelists, missionaries and lay leaders for the churches of the KGBI. It has also played an important role in establishing the KGBI as a mission-sending denomination.
Chapter 2 (1982 – 1996) written in West Kalimantan, involved evangelism, church planting and leadership development, and was called Joint Pioneer Outreach by CBM. Canadian Baptist missionary families worked alongside KGBI missionaries in establishing the Kalimantan Theological Seminary and in planting churches throughout the province. Core CBM personnel in this chapter included the Longhurst, Kirkley, Bonney, Clark and Thomson families.
Chapter 3 (1997 – 2011) saw the mandate expand to cover all four Indonesian provinces in Borneo, but continued with the same basic contributions from CBM personnel. This chapter was written during a particularly difficult period in Indonesian history that witnessed ethnic conflict in West Kalimantan, an environmental disaster in East Kalimantan, massive political change, economic recession and religious conflict fueled by Islamic radicals. Core CBM personnel during this chapter were Linda Carmichael and the Dyck, ByrneMamahit and Bustin families.
Chapter 4…Moving forward CBM has made two commitments to the KGBI. The first is to plan a celebration of 40 years of effective partnership in 2012. The second is to research together the challenges and opportunities for outreach and community development among the urban poor as part of CBM’s commitment to integral mission in the Muslim world. And, like the preceding three chapters, it brings both huge challenges and exciting possibilities.
Who: Durga and her grandma
Where: Pithapuram Hospital, India
When: Late afternoon, April 2011
What: Guardians of Hope interview
Ten-year-old Durga has lived with her grandma since her mom and dad died of AIDS. she is HIV positive.
At school, Durga faced severe stigma by students and even teachers. No one wanted to sit beside her or talk to her. A social worker on CBM Field Staff Jasmine Jonathan’s community development team visited the school and offered counsel and accurate information on HIV prevention and awareness. Today, Durga loves going to school and has four best friends who sit beside her in class, and sing and dance with her. She dreams of becoming a doctor so she can help those who are sick.
Go online at www.cbmin.org for a video clip of Durga and more inspiring photos from India.
Photo credit: Johnny Lam
your gifts in action
Nairobi
In Nairobi, Kenya, many Somali refugees live in the urban ghetto of Eastleigh. Zahra lives with her aunt, her cousin and her cousin’s four children. She joined the Iftin program at the Eastleigh Community Centre and began studying English, quickly progressing to the advanced class. She now works with Noor Creations and is a youth leader with the Happy Club.
Two years ago, Zahra received a water filter. Her family is very aware that they need to drink clean water to stay healthy and uses the water filter every day. “We always used to have stomachaches, but now it is better,” she says.
“Other people need clean water too. So many people drink from the tap and they get so sick.”
Waterborne diseases are a major cause of child mortality in Kenya and the developing world. A simple water filter is an inexpensive and effective means to protect vulnerable families in communities like Eastleigh. Through your support, CBM has provided 180 water filters so that refugees like Zahra and her family now have safe drinking water.
Good Works
Small business. Big change. Eighty percent of people have no access to credit. Most live in developing countries. They don’t want handouts — they simply want to be able to provide for their family. Participate in The Sharing Way’s Annual Appeal, Good Works, to provide small loans, business training, support and mentoring. It really works to bring big change.
Email communications@cbmin.org for more information.
