My Pilgrimage in Mission David A. Shank

come from a marginal Christian people. At least as far back in Civilian Public Service (CPS) units during three years of “pub- Ias the 1560s, my ancestors were a part of a Täufer (Ana- lic service of national importance.” Here I met other varieties of baptist) community of faith that had taken refuge at Eggiwil in , as well as Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, the mountainous Langnau district of . In 1717 Chris- Baptists, Pentecostals, and Catholics who were Christian consci- tian Shank, son Michael, and their families migrated to William entious objectors. This was grassroots ecumenicity. Penn’s Pennsylvania. In 1816 my mother’s great-grandfather John In 1945 I was invited to transfer to Mennonite Central Com- Neuhauser, an Alsatian Amish miller, immigrated to Canada to mittee’s headquarters, at Akron, Pennsylvania, to edit the C.P.S. avoid conscription into Napoleon’s army. I was born to Charles Bulletin for Mennonite CPS units. In mid-1946 Harold S. Bender and Crissie (Yoder) Shank on October 7, 1924. organized a conference on at which Franklin Littell presented a chapter of his Yale doctoral dissertation on the mis- Preparation sionary dynamics of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, adding a missional dimension to Bender’s earlier threefold “essence of At age eleven I was baptized in the Orrville (Ohio) Mennonite Anabaptism.”2 For Littell the church was (1) disciples of Jesus Church. I knew nothing of other churches except that they were responding to the Good News of God’s reign, (2) in a commu- said not to practice the “all things” that Jesus told his apostles nity of mutual support, (3) committed to God’s service through to teach to all nations (Matt. 28:20). I was the only Mennonite nonviolent love, and (4) engaged in the mission of sharing the in my class in school in North Canton, Ohio. We remained a Good News. I discussed my future with Bender, and he explained marginal people. While at Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana, my parents had been deeply influenced by the Student Volunteer Movement for Clearly, the fruits of our Foreign Missions and subsequently, from 1915 to 1919, had served as missionaries in Dhamtari, Central Province, India. My father work in Europe would taught industrial arts to male youths who had been orphaned by not resemble the sending the great famine of 1896–99, and my mother worked with Bible women engaged in grassroots colportage and evangelism. My Mennonite denomination parents buried their first child “under the mango tree,” and their in . mission was cut short when their second child developed life- threatening rheumatic fever. Thereafter my father lived under the burden of having abandoned the call because he was unwilling that, following relief ministries in Europe, the Mennonite Church to pay the price of staying. would need church workers with an Anabaptist vision who were In 1929, when I was five years old, my mother died giving well trained in Bible and theology. I returned to Goshen College birth to her eighth child. From the early 1920s until her death, to earn a B.A. in sociology and then enrolled in Goshen College she had been the literature secretary for the Mennonite Women’s Biblical Seminary. Missionary Association, and she was the first American Mennonite Between college and seminary, Wilma Hollopeter and I woman author.1 She often spoke about missions and India from were married. Wilma has been the mother and co-educator of the pulpit, at a time when Mennonite women did not speak in our four children, as well as my collaborator. With indepen- worship services. Her book with its pictures and my parents’ dent personal calls to India, we easily decided to go there to India photograph album and “India trunk” of exotic mementos work in my parents’ unfinished mission. J. D. Graber of the never ceased to provoke my wonder and curiosity. Former col- Mennonite Board of Missions, however, told us that because leagues from India who visited our family seemed to be another of the postcolonial climate in India, Western missionaries were breed of Mennonite. no longer welcome. He asked if we would be open to postwar My father lost his job as research engineer for the Hoover relief service in Belgium, serving as missionaries to Europe, the vacuum company because he could not in good conscience work historic heartland of Christianity. American Mennonites had on its contracts related to war matériel. He moved our family to entered Belgium immediately after World War II, aiding Ger- Goshen so we children could attend Goshen College from home. man prisoners of war and refugees from eastern Europe. Our Mission, peace, and education were intimately tied together in our assignment would be to build on those contacts to reestablish family. During my first year of college I met my future spouse, an Anabaptist witness among Belgians. Wilma Hollopeter. World War II interrupted college, and I served Mission I: Belgium, 1950–73 David A. Shank’s 2007 account of his pilgrimage was longer than the IBMR can accept. The full version In September 1950, Wilma, nine-month-old Michael, and I sailed appeared in a volume of his missiological writings, for Belgium. A year later, in October 1951, we were joined by Mission from the Margins, ed. James R. Krabill Orley and Jane Swartzentruber. We saw ourselves as servants of (Elkhart, Ind.: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2010), Jesus Christ, to whom we wished to introduce others. published three weeks before his death, in October 2010. His colleague Wilbert R. Shenk, a contributing editor, A Mennonite center. The relief team Bender had mentioned soon with the assistance of Wilma Shank, prepared this ver- left for the , and we were on our own. We continued sion of Shank’s account of his pilgrimage in mission. their assistance to Charles Grikman in his ministry to

98 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 37, No. 2 scattered refugee and immigrant Slavic congregations in Bel- experiences, gifts, and needs. The light reflected by one facet of gium, Germany, Austria, and Trieste, Italy, but in Belgium his that diamond can serve as an entry point to faith in Christ and refugee work served foreigners. We needed to orient ourselves enable a beginning appropriation of the fullness reflected by all more directly to the Belgian context. the facets. The challenge is to recognize and honor this diver- Belgium’s postwar recovery was slow. A dense and indus- sity of entry points to faith and personal itineraries in the Spirit trialized population of 9 million people was undergoing rapid toward faith-fullness.5 dechristianization and secularization. Class consciousness and permanent cultural/linguistic conflict between the Catholic The Bourgeois-Rixensart congregation. For some years we admin- Flemish and socialist Walloons roiled relations. Belgium was still istered a children’s home at Ohain. A board member had been a colonial power, and mission was understood as work among holding a Bible study in the nearby home of the Debroux family, the various tribes in the Belgian Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, who had Catholic origins but who during the war had become not as work among the Belgian people themselves. deeply involved in the Résistance through the Communist Party’s Orley Swartzentruber and I studied Belgian history and underground. I visited and then began participating and was literature at the Free University, in Brussels. Observing that there invited, as a pastor, to lead the studies. As others joined, the group was no Protestant student ministry, we grew. On Easter Sunday 1955 a second proposed to the Protestant Federation grassroots congregation began with eight that a student center be established. The . The flavor of the group was sea- proposal fell flat when it received the soned by Brethren piety and informality, response, “Why would this federation with the Lord’s Supper celebrated every of proper and respectable churches want Sunday. The members eventually erected Belgian to be represented at a temple, and the Église Évangélique the Free University by a sect such as the de Rixensart, as they called themselves, Mennonites—and American Mennonites attracted Christians of many denomina- at that?” We were pushed to the margins. tions living within a ten-kilometer radius. In January 1952, seven American Ursmer Lefebvre was ordained for the Mennonite men living in Europe—for- Bourgeois congregation while studying mer relief workers, missionaries, and at the Protestant Theological Faculty in university students—met in Amsterdam. Brussels, but later, when Ursmer and I made a presentation to them entitled “A Suzanne Lefebvre followed a missionary Missionary Approach to a Dechristian- call to Burundi, I again assumed pastoral ized Society.”3 Our conversation turned responsibilities for the congregation. A on the relevance of Bender’s Anabaptist biblical theology reflecting the fourfold vision for European Christianity in the Anabaptist thrust described above held postwar ecclesiastical and spiritual the group together. Overt Anabaptist or context, as well as for American Men- Mennonite references were exceptional. David and Wilma Shank, 1974 nonitism. Between 1954 and 1971 the for we were perceived locally to be the group published a series of pamphlets Protestant church. My own preoccupa- under the title Concern.4 tion no longer turned on being the true church of Christ, but Clearly, the fruits of our work in Europe would not resemble rather on truly being the church of Christ in this place. the sending Mennonite denomination in North America. Our As an addition to our existing French Mennonite affilia- ministry would be shaped by the four Anabaptist accents— tion, we asked for an associate relationship with the Belgian discipleship, fellowship, the service of nonviolent love, and Reformed Church. An Anabaptist/Reformed congregation was mission—but a local expression would emerge out of a grass- an ecclesiastical novelty, but the Reformed Church’s latest liturgy roots understanding that the Spirit works with people in their provided for an option for a service of presentation of a newborn own contexts, wherever Christ is present with two or three and a service of on confession of faith. I was invited to gathered in his name (Matt. 18:20). participate in the Reformed synod and held renewal meetings for Reformed consistories. Despite all the renewal, I felt I was The Brussels East congregation. Jules and Madeleine Lambotte getting involved in “churchianity” all over again. became our first members. Jules, a Flemish evangelist of the During those years I discovered Jacques Ellul’s False Presence national Protestant Union, had been converted during the street- of the Kingdom, which led me to his earlier work The Presence of preaching ministry of the Belgian Gospel Mission, renounced the Kingdom and ultimately to a shelf of some fifty of his books Nazism, and embraced pacifist convictions. He wanted a spiritual dealing with Christ, church, and world. These writings were home that recognized his pacifism. André Vandermensbrugghe, pivotal in maintaining my bearings. who came from traditional bourgeois Catholicism and was determined to refuse military service, also joined. We located Congo missions, Congolese, and Kimbanguists. We had not foreseen our congregation in East Brussels, creating the Foyer Fraternel our interaction with Mennonite missionaries from two North and ordaining Jules Lambotte as evangelist. Following the American agencies who were going to and coming from the public installation of Lambotte, Pierre Widmer, an influential Belgian Congo. Workers came to Belgium to study French, take French Mennonite leader, gave a series of Good News lectures. courses in the Belgian colonial school, and study at the School Observing the one-by-one character of congregational of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp. This relationship took on new growth, I was impressed that the singular Christ event, variously importance following Congolese independence in 1960 and the seized, trusted, appropriated, and believed, is like a diamond increased presence of Congolese people in Belgium. approached by individuals with their different personalities, In 1966 Jean Van Lierde of the Mouvement de Réconcili-

April 2013 99 ation contacted us about two Kimbanguist leaders who were Mission II: United States and Scotland, 1973–79 returning from a world gathering of pacifists in Copenhagen. Belgian Protestant would not receive them, and Van We returned to the United States in 1973. I taught at Goshen Col- Lierde asked us to give them hospitality. During dinner in our lege and then served as campus pastor for two years. Although I home we heard their story—with its echoes of the sixteenth- was asked to stay on as campus minister, Wilma and I were com- century Anabaptist story. Although I was aware of Edwin and mitted to the openings in Africa represented by those earlier calls. Irene Weaver’s experiences in Nigeria, this was my first contact In August 1976 we left for the University of Aberdeen, in with African Initiated Churches (AICs).6 This encounter led the Scotland. There Andrew Walls had established his Institute Mennonite Central Committee and Eirene, a Mennonite program for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, and Harold W. Turner had launched his New Religious Movements research and documentation program. In light of the invitation from John Ahui, I began an in-depth study of the Prophet Harris Unlike in Belgium thirty himself and discovered texts and manuscripts from his time that years earlier, we were opened up new perspectives and enlarged appreciation for his committed not to introduce self-understanding. In 1982 I completed a three-volume doctoral thesis that documented and reflected on these understandings, another denomination. their roots, their expressions, and their interrelationships. Walls generously referred to the published version of my thesis, Prophet Harris, the “Black Elijah” of West Africa, as a landmark volume.9 for European conscientious objectors, to place teachers and The Harrist Church was the fruit of a messianic movement, agriculturalists in Kimbanguist institutions. In 1971 the head which led me to a study of the phenomenon of messianism, of the church, Kuntima Diangienda, invited me to the fiftieth nearly universally dependent on the Judeo-Christian scriptures. anniversary of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ on My own Mennonite/Anabaptist story was one type of messianic Earth by his father, the Prophet Simon Kimbangu. Some 400,000 resurgence. There had been many similar movements before the Kimbanguists gathered at the holy city of Nkamba, but mis- sixteenth century, and the Kimbanguists, Harrists, and some sionaries and agencies in Kinshasa were largely unaware of the other AICs were also similar, existing in non-Western contexts event and its significance. I was impressed with what I heard four centuries later. I shared these insights with my colleague and saw, and a new dimension of mission opened up for us.7 Wilbert Shenk, who was committed to working on a messianic missiology. A collaborative volume to which I contributed two Transition. In 1973 Wilbert Shenk, director for overseas ministries chapters was published later, in 1993.10 for the Mennonite Board of Missions, invited Wilma and me to accompany Marlin Miller, later to become president of Associ- Mission III: French West Africa, 1979–89 ated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, across West Africa. (At the time Miller was director of the Mennonite We left for Abidjan in April 1979, anticipating a last decade of Student Center in Paris where he was involved especially in service under the Mennonite Board of Missions before retirement assisting African students, who experienced much racism.) We from ministry. I had a vision of what God was doing—and wanted would explore whether we were open to a ministry among AICs to do—for humanity and creation, but I still had a lot to learn. In like that of the Weavers in southeastern Nigeria and Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire we joined our younger American colleagues James where they emphasized reading and studying the Scriptures and Jeanette Krabill. Unlike in Belgium thirty years earlier, we with emerging AIC leaders and accessing the resources of the were committed not to introduce another denomination. When mainline Protestant seminaries. asked, we explained that we were Mennonite Christians sent to During this trip we received two direct and poignant calls. learn about African Christian life and understandings and to The first came from a dozen leaders of diverse AICs in Cotonou, share—through Bible study and making available the resources Benin, to develop a Bible-training program for their ministers. we had gathered on the Prophet Harris—and so to enable African We heard the second at Petit Bassam, near Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, churches in their various itineraries. We were disponibles (i.e., when John Ahui, aged spiritual head of the Harrist Church in available) through conversation, dialogue, hospitality, or pastoral that country, asked us, “Help me water the tree,” a responsi- ministry—or, as requested, by teaching Bible, Christian history, bility he had received from the Prophet Harris in 1928. At an or theology. Our special concern was to respond to the calls of earlier formal dinner, Harrist Head Preacher Cyril Abueya of the Harrist Church and the dozen AIC leaders in Cotonou. Abobo-té had explained that “God is white [in West Africa, the With the Krabills, we lived in the burgeoning Ebrié village color of spirit] and you are white, so you are the older brother, of Blokosso-Abidjan, a popular quarter of the city surrounded and you have received from our Father the patrimony to share by urban sprawl. For almost three years we shared space on the with your younger brothers. Not to do so would be a betrayal second floor of the residence of the village schoolmaster with the of our Father.” A politically prominent Ivorian Methodist told Krabills, with whom we ate our daily noon and evening meals. us that this Harrist overture was not only unique but scarcely Then Head Preacher N’Guessan Légré Benoît of the Dida Har- believable; he urged us to respond. Without internal renewal, rists requested that the Krabills move to the interior Dida village he argued, the largely coastal Harrists, simple monotheists, of Yocoboué to establish a Bible-study program for the church’s would in time be absorbed into Islam, which was descending preachers and youth. In Blokosso we set up a documentation and from the north. research center related to African religious phenomena, change, We were in transition, but at neither West African location and history, which Wilma managed. Word got around that we was the local context ready for us. We decided to use this time had valuable resources. Visitors came steadily, including many for further preparation in anticipation of accepting this compel- Harrists, who were particularly interested in the material I had ling invitation. We would not arrive in Abidjan until April 1979.8 collected about their prophet.

100 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 37, No. 2 From the beginning, Harrist Church Spiritual Head John possibility that the Harrist movement would embrace more Ahui welcomed us, and he blessed and supported the Krabills’ fully the vision of its founder. In 1998, less than ten years after biblical work among the Dida. However, some among the older, our departure from Côte d’Ivoire, the Harrist church formally largely illiterate Ebriés who controlled the Harrist National Com- affirmed that it was a Christ-confessing church and was accepted mittee disagreed with Ahui’s openness, although the Union of as a member of the World Council of Churches. Harrist Youth was receptive. In time, the conflict became more During our decade of ministry we visited some forty Harrist than intergenerational. congregations (always at their invitation) in ten different ethnic Within the larger Harrist community, two parallel interpreta- groups. Not once during that time was I asked to speak in a tions of the Prophet Harris were in competition. One tradition Harrist church. We always dressed in white, as do the Harrists, stemmed from the first Harrist catechism, published in 1956 to attend their churches. We accepted invitations to festivals, and based on oral tradition, which proclaimed that God loves where we would be received as honored guests and would dance all peoples of the earth. When a people in distress cry out, God through the village streets behind singing “honor women” as we sends them a prophet: Moses for the Jews, Jesus Christ for the were shown off to the village. We celebrated events with Har- whites, Muhammad for the Arabs, William Wadé Harris for the rists, visited occasionally in their homes, invited their leaders blacks. God sent the Prophet Harris to deliver black Africans for meals, all the while aware of behind-the-scenes resistance from their idols and fetishes and to teach them to live in peace to our presence. We observed and listened, asked questions, with one another. The other tradition affirmed that God loves all checked and rechecked answers, listened to stories, heard their understandings of problems, and listened to interpretations of their sermons and their life, generally valuing their experiences. As participant observers, we took copious notes. I began an in-depth study The Harrist movement saw itself involved in a spiritual of the Prophet Harris contest with “fetish,” like that of Elijah and the priests of Baal, or the spiritual conflicts that Harris himself had confronted and discovered texts and during his ministry. Nevertheless, in contrast to the dynamic, manuscripts from his time eschatological, kingdom-of-Christ orientation of Harris during that enlarged appreciation his original impact, the Harrist movement had become ritual- ized and hardened into an institution seeking recognition. Yet for his self-understanding. it was still winning people out of their traditional religions into a fetish-free, law-restrained (i.e., it’s “sin” only if caught) monotheistic faith, experienced as a break with and major peoples of the world, and when they cried out in their distress, advance over paganisme. God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to deliver them. But the whites Côte d’Ivoire’s mission-planted churches—Roman Catholic, killed him before he could reach Africa. Yet God did not give various Baptist, Methodist, Christian and Missionary Alliance, up on Africa. He sent the Prophet Harris to tell people about Adventist, various independent evangelical, Assemblies of God, Christ and do Christ’s work among Africans. Harris delivered and several Pentecostal—had all profited, largely unconsciously, from fetishes and idols, taught God’s law, and made peace from the remarkable and unique spiritual breakthrough of the between tribes. The Krabills learned that the Dida people largely followed the second tradition and were eager for biblical instruction, but the Ebrié and Attié peoples, to whom we related, followed the We were students of their first. Harris was their prophet, and Christ was the white man’s prophet, ready to share in prophet. While the Krabills were able to carry out a program of biblical teaching among the Dida people, our mission in Ebrié discussion and study of the and Attié territory was to share what we had learned about the Bible. This posture gave us Prophet Harris and his thought—a ministry of the Gospel through a variety of opportunities the work and understandings of the Prophet Harris himself. The documentation told us that the prophet had sought a for building relationships. universal, Christ-centered movement that would bring all the churches and missions under Christ’s reign. We shared this basic understanding through conversations in Harrist homes and in Prophet Harris in 1913–14. In providing a foundation for the our own home, at meals following our visits to Harrist churches, mission-planted churches, the Harrist Church is unique among to youth congresses, to preachers and other leaders who came to AICs, which typically form by splitting off from mission-planted our sun shelter up on the roof, and through Sunday afternoon churches in reaction to their Western character. Yet the mission- lectures for whole villages, organized by Harrist leaders under ary churches have viewed the Harrists as an illiterate, fetish- thatch-roofed apatams. In addition, I wrote a pamphlet that enspirited, marginal African sect, from which people need to was essentially a résumé of Harris’s Christian thought.11 More be converted. than 6,000 copies were sold—largely to Harrists—through local Christian bookstores, and the work was reprinted repeatedly. Interactions with Harrists. Although we were aware of their The pamphlet instructed thousands of Harrists in the newly reservations about any religious input from us, we remained literate generations, who reported that Christ-oriented apostles available to the Harrists—present as Christian whites, open to and preachers within the church were freed to proclaim Chris- learning about them, sympathetic to their situation, apprecia- tian accents more boldly. The pamphlet may well be the most tive of certain dimensions of their religion. We were students of efficacious piece I ever wrote, unwittingly contributing to the their prophet with documentation they had never seen, ready

April 2013 101 to share in discussion and study of the Bible. This posture gave all across Africa that ranged from traditional religion to Western us a wide variety of opportunities for building relationships. In mission churches, so also individual African Christians had their several of the secondary schools of the capital, Harrist youth itineraries. These spiritual journeys moved progressively toward came together at the same time as Methodist and Catholic youth fuller understandings of God, Christ, and the life of faith, as met for free-time religious study. At the request of the Harrist the Spirit gave more and more clarity to understandings of the youth and with the full approval of Pierre Anin, then president Gospel and the New Testament writings.14 of the Harrist National Committee, I gave a series of biblical and historical studies. During a typical week in Blokosso, there Call from Cotonou. Contacts with AIC leaders in Benin were was always a trickle of Harrists interested in the materials in the renewed in 1983. The Inter-Confessional Protestant Council Documentation and Resource Center. invited me to conduct a one-week Bible seminar entitled “The We asked ourselves about the appropriateness of our open Shepherd and His Flock.” At that first seminar we were told in availability to the Harrists. Indeed, on one occasion Wilma and I the open discussion that the leaders perceived their main prob- met the new president of the National Committee, accompanied lem to be “sheep-stealing” among them. We were also told that we fulfilled two conditions necessary for the seminar’s success: we were from outside that context, and we personally had no denominational ambitions for Benin. We were committed only Without missing a beat the to building up the churches that were already there, recognizing president responded, “It’s the kingdom of God, in some sense, as already present in their midst. Over time this goal evolved into the Institut Biblique de just like my secretary says, Benin, in Cotonou, which became the shared enterprise of four we need a historian; you unions of churches with their many and various congregations. can be very helpful to me. Wilma and I settled in Blokosso-Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, but during these years we were informed and enriched by various You should indeed stay.” visits, exchanges, and ministries in Liberia, Ghana, Benin, Zaire, Kenya, Central African Republic, South Africa, Transkei, Lesotho, and Botswana. by his secretary, and asked them frankly whether we should remain in Côte d’Ivoire for the Harrists. The secretary immedi- In Retirement (1989–) ately stated, “I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to remain; you are entirely free to leave at any time.” The president, Back in the United States in 1989, though officially retired, I however, without missing a beat, responded, “It’s just like my taught two semesters at Bluffton University, Bluffton, Ohio, and secretary says, we need a historian; you can be very helpful to me, we served the Indiana-Michigan Mennonite Conference both as particularly in these times when we lack clarity among us. You mobile ministers and overseers of three congregations in Elkhart, should indeed stay, and I will be grateful to you.” The president Indiana, and by participating for several years on its Commis- encouraged our work with the Harrist youth meetings. When sion for Spiritual Deliverance. We have been available to share the youth, however, ultimately joined the National Committee, about our ministry, lecturing, teaching, preaching, and speaking to gain the elders’ approval they had to make a clean break with wherever invited. Now, since 2003, in Greencroft Retirement us, even formally opposing the Krabills’ work that had been Community, Goshen, we keep in touch with what is going on thoroughly accepted by Dida Harrism and blessed by Ahui.12 in the world, for which we pray, even as we pray for different When we left Côte d’Ivoire in 1989, we went to the national dimensions of the missio Dei in the world. offices at Bingerville to officially turn over to the church a full In 1992 we visited Cotonou again. To our surprise, the copy of our collected documentation about the Prophet Harris. president of the National Committee of the Harris Church, An erstwhile friend, now National Committee president, pre- who three years earlier had rudely spurned us at the time of vented us from giving farewell greetings to Spiritual Head John our departure from Côte d’Ivoire, came to our door. Now he Ahui. It was the ultimate affront, a necessary political stance that was on an evangelistic mission, accompanied by a choir and enabled the president to maintain his authority. After we had church officials, including John Ahui, by then about 100 years lived for ten years in Côte d’Ivoire for and among the Harrist of age. The president was warm and friendly. It was the week Church, it was a peculiar au revoir for us. Yet we understood. before Easter, and we accompanied the dancing chorus through the streets of Cotonou, attending the president’s lectures and An African itinerary to New Testament faith. Through rich con- evening meetings, as well as the Easter Sunday service. For the tacts and relationships with the entire Christian community, I worship service, the president’s protocol placed Wilma with was able to get a feel for what was going on, not only among his own wife on the left front bench of the church and placed the Harrists, but also among the mission-planted churches. It me with several preachers on the right front row. Toward the was clear there were many Harrists whose personal itineraries end of the service, the president gave a special word of rec- had led them to a vital faith in Christ, and there were many in ognition, thanking us profusely for our presence with them the mission-planted churches who were struggling with faith during the week of witness and on the occasion of the Easter issues, even though they had learned all the proper language celebration and the meal to come, which he spoke of as a sort and practices of faith as members of recognized churches. These of communion meal. Christians did not yet have, in the words of Catholic missionary The president concluded with reference to “the Shank family, Jean-Paul Eschlimann, “the same confidence in Jesus that their who has given us unconditional support for twenty years.” At brothers have in the customs of their ancestors and the Koran.”13 the meal, he had us seated at the table of honor with Spiritual The study of many African Christian faith pilgrimages led Head John Ahui, with the president and me on the right, and me to understand that, just as there were religious movements the official with the title “first head preacher and cross carrier”

102 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 37, No. 2 The Jon and Jean Bonk International Fellowship Fund This June, Dr. Jonathan J. Bonk will retire as executive director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center and editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. With that leadership transition in view, the OMSC Board of Trustees has launched a substantial scholarship initiative—the Jon and Jean Bonk International Fellowship Fund.

OMSC executive director designate Dr. J. Nelson forged have deepened through visits from staff and Jennings says the initiative “will enable beleaguered friends, ongoing communication, and mutual prayer.” Christian leaders to come to OMSC from challenging Residency for a program year (September to May) situations. Currently we have to turn away many wor- “costs more money than most of these Christian lead- thy candidates due to lack of ers could ever imagine,” and funding.” the lack of funding most en- The fund will provide counter “obviously presents a friends of the Bonks, OMSC significant barrier,” Jennings alumni from around the world, comments. To permanently and others who have admired fund the endowed scholarships their ministries from afar, a will require $500,000 each. “concrete way of honoring These will include housing in Jon and Jean on the occa- an OMSC apartment, a stipend sion of their retirement,” adds for basic needs including food, Jennings. Jon and Jean have airfare to and from Connecti- wanted to find a way after they cut, health insurance required to retire and return to Canada live for even a few months in the to perpetuate their longtime United States, and administrative commitment to serving mar- support. ginalized church leaders and missionaries who live and R. Donald MacDougall, former OMSC board mem- minister in places where it is extraordinarily difficult and ber and treasurer, who is the fund’s honorary chairman, sometimes dangerous to be a follower of Christ. expresses appreciation for Jon and Jean for their service to “Christian leaders who face difficult sociopolitical OMSC, given “with such great energy and distinction.” He situations are at the heart of OMSC’s ministry,” com- acknowledges that the cost for many residents, “while mod- ments Jennings. “Many such leaders—including admin- est, is still beyond their means.” MacDougall retired as vice istrators, pastors, educators, academics, artists, develop- president of the Towers Perrin management consulting firm. ment workers, and missionaries—have come to OMSC The Bonks, Mennonites who were famine relief from throughout the world and found rest, perspective, and workers in Ethiopia (1974–76), moved to New Haven rejuvenation for reentering their challenging contexts.” from Canada in 1997, after then-director Gerald H. OMSC residents, he adds, “have inspired us to serve Anderson selected Jon as associate director. Jon was in our own contexts with newfound insight, wisdom, professor of global Christian studies at Providence and passion. Even after these leaders have complet- Theological Seminary, Otterburne, Manitoba, Canada, ed their OMSC residencies, friendships they have and has been executive director since June 2000.

Working alongside Jon and Jean Bonk has been such an honor and inspiration. Their leadership, vision, compassion, strength, and patience, a rare combination of traits, have served the Bonks and OMSC very well. The Jon and Jean Bonk International Fellowship Fund—www.omsc.org/bonkfellowship—is a crowning glory to their ministry. In keeping with their humble spirit, this fellowship is a benefit to others. It will enable those who serve the risen Christ in difficult, oppressive, and challenging circumstances to enjoy the unique opportunities for renewal offered by OMSC. I invite you to join many good people who are truly grateful for the Bonks by making this dream come true. —Dr. David Johnson Rowe, president, OMSC Board of Trustees

Read the Jon and Jean Bonk International Fellowship Fund newsletter and view the video online. For details, go to www.omsc.org/bonkfellowship or contact Dr. J. Nelson Jennings, Executive Director Designate.

OVERSEAS MINISTRIES STUDY CENTER www.omsc.org/bonkfellowship [email protected] (203) 624-6672, ext. 306 on the left with Wilma. During the solemn meal, conversation and witness in Belgium. Father Thaddé Barnas of the Catholic was typically absent, and it concluded with the aged Ahui’s National Office for Ecumenism delivered a written apology for ceremonial exit. Wilma approached him, extended her hand, Roman Catholic actions against Anabaptist-Mennonites carried and greeted him with “Bonjour, Papa.” He stopped and held her out four hundred years earlier. hand very warmly, and at length he smiled and repeated several times, “Ahh, Madame, Madame!” just as he had done on previ- Conclusion ous occasions when we visited him at his home in Petit Bassam. We were utterly astonished. From the beginning of our African The Good News of God’s word is fulfilling its purpose as people decade, we lived with the fundamental messianic hope that all meet Jesus Christ. The One Spirit-Creator of all things—by things will eventually be reconciled in Jesus Christ; but the way the covenant of grace and peace fulfilled through the life that happens, and is yet to happen, has not been fully disclosed. and teachings of Israel’s Messiah and his cross, resurrection, In 2000 Wilma and I were invited to Belgium for the cel- ascension, and reign—is reconciling alienated humans to their ebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of our work unique source, to various others, and to creation. I take this in there, and the twentieth anniversary of the current Brussels perception to be biblical, apostolic, Anabaptist, Mennonite, Mennonite Center. Catholic and Protestant representatives holistic, charismatic, ecumenical, catholic, missionary—and affirmed the importance of the ongoing Mennonite presence still marginal.

Notes 1. Crissie Y. Shank, Letters from Mary (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Pub- 10. Wilbert R. Shenk, ed., The Transfiguration of Mission: Biblical, Theologi- lishing House, 1924). cal, and Historical Foundations (Scottdale, Pa: Herald Press, 1993); my 2. See Harold S. Bender, “The Anabaptist Vision,” Church History 13 chapters are “Jesus the Messiah: Messianic Foundations of Mission,” (March 1944): 3–24 and Mennonite Quarterly Review 18 (April 1944): 37–82, and “Consummation of Messiah’s Mission,” 220–41. 67–88, www.mcusa-archives.org/library/anabaptistvision/anabap 11. David A. Shank, “Bref résumé de la pensée du prophète William tistvision.html. Wadé Harris,” Perspectives missionnaires 5 (1983): 34–54. 3. Published in Mennonite Quarterly Review 28 (January 1954): 39–55. 12. In addition to Bible instruction in six village centers, James Krabill 4. See J. Lawrence Burkholder, “Concern Pamphlets Movement,” in was also helping to save a rich heritage of Dida hymnody; see James Mennonite Encyclopedia, vol. 5 (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1990), R. Krabill, The Hymnody of the Harrist Church among the Dida of South 177–80. Central Ivory Coast, 1915–1949 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995). 5. See David A. Shank, “Toward an Understanding of Christian Con- 13. Jean-Paul Eschlimann made this assessment of the more than 11,500 version,” Mission Focus 5 (November 1976): 1–7. Catholics in his parish among the Agni people, as reported in Afrique 6. See Edwin and Irene Weaver, The Uyo Story (Elkhart, Ind.: Mennonite et Parole, Letter no. 10, ed. René Luneau (1984). Board of Missions, 1970). 14. See, for example, David A. Shank, “African Christian Religious Itin- 7. See David A. Shank, “An Indigenous Church Comes of Age: Kim- erary: Toward an Understanding of the Religious Itinerary from the banguism,” Mennonite Life 27 (June 1972): 53–55. Faith of African Traditional Religion(s) to That of the New Testament,” 8. At the Harrists’ request, Weaver and Miller arranged translation in Exploring New Religious Movements: Essays in Honour of Harold W. of Gordon Halliburton’s important historical volume The Prophet Turner, ed. A. F. Walls and Wilbert R. Shenk (Elkhart, Ind.: Mission Harris, abridged ed. (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973; French Focus Publications, 1990), 143–62; published in French as “Itinéraire ed., Le Prophète Harris, trans. Marie-Noelle Faure [Abidjan: Les religieux d’un chrétien africain,” Perspectives missionnaires 31 (1996): Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, 1984]). 30–52. 9. David A. Shank, Prophet Harris, the “Black Elijah” of West Africa, abridged by Jocelyn Murray (Leiden: Brill, 1994).

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