Kraaling. That’s a
cool verb. It sounds very much like an
activity I’d like to do. It’s somehow reminiscent
of mountain climbing or hiking (at least in the visual sense, I’m sure if it
were verbalized it would be more like a distorted “crawling,” which in no way
invokes adventure). But anyway, this
word is apparently what was used by Nazarene missionaries in Africa for their
evangelistic efforts in 1922.
Rev. J. F. Penn is the author of (you might even say he
penned!) the particular letter I’m focusing on today. Much of this issue of The Other Sheep focuses on reports from various district meetings,
which, quite honestly, doesn’t provide much in the way of interesting
material. Not that giving to missions
isn’t important, and I’m sure the Pittsburgh district really appreciated all
the shout-outs they got for outstanding missions giving, but this isn’t 1922
anymore! So, the focus fell on a
relatively short explanation of Penn’s daily ritual as a missionary in Africa.
Penn uses his letter to describe the work he does, which
seems to be a very simple meeting of people.
He, using his letter as a story narrative, visits nine kraals
(homesteads, houses) and discusses the “saving grace of Jesus” with 21 people-
all in one afternoon! That’s a lot of sharing Jesus’ love. But the question for me was of relationship. Obviously, he’s meeting all these people and
inviting them to church, but it seems that there is no interest in relationship
unless they decide they want to come.
This, as far as I understand it, is pretty far off from missionary
practices today. Instead of quickly
relating the way Jesus loves people, don’t most try to demonstrate that
love?
It seems pretty clear as to why that practice/view has
changed, but it is hard to understand the reasoning behind the old
practices. What were the unsaved viewed
as?
Yeah, so I guess those are my questions. This one made me think. But just so I'm not ending on a depressing note, there was a really nice little poem in this issue that I totally thought should be shared. Enjoy!
.JPG) |
| That's some good poetry right there. |
Your missionaries three,
Sailed across the blue sea,
From the land of the free
As happy as can be.
On pleasure not bent,
By the Lord we are sent,
On a mission bent
To help the heathen to repent.
By faith we go down,
With grace we abound,
Some day we'll wear a crown
When the trumpet shall sound.
Hold the ropes every day,
Never cease to pray
While we are far away
For we'll meet again some day.
Dora Carpenter
Myrtle Pelley
Maude Cretors
Rachel, I think your question is a fair one, although I think it begs for a little more context. One of the challenges of mission work in Swaziland was the dispersed nature of Swazi living arrangements; there were no "villages" in which a person could regularly encounter the same people on a routine basis. So kraal visitation was one of the few ways available to make contact with people. And, although you blurred the rest of the text, I think Penn does point out that the work often required multiple visits to the same kraal before anyone became interested in the church. Doesn't this imply that the purpose of those visits was to establish trust (or "relationship") with people? Or is it the fact that there's an ulterior motive behind the building of relationship that troubles you?
ReplyDeleteThe thing that really troubled me was the brevity of the visits themselves. He seemed almost to be playing a "numbers" game- how many people can I get to today? rather than what kind of relationships can I build today? Of course, it may take several visits even if the visits were longer/more in-depth, but it was a bit disappointing that he seems to describe his reaching several people briefly as more of a success than reaching few people deeply.
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