34. K. Baage, Pioneers of Indigenous (Bangalore: CISRS, 1969), 36. Cf. note 23, above. pp. 50f£., 151ff. 37. Sundar Singh, Realityand Religion (London: Macmillan, 1924), p. 83. 35. Ibid., p. 70.

Selected Bibliography Material Written by Sundar Singh

1922 At the Master's Feet. Madras: CLS. 1926(2) Visions of the Spiritual World. London: Macmillan. 1924(1) Realityand Religion. London: Macmillan. 1929 With and Without Christ. London: Cassell. 1924(2) The Search after Reality. London: Macmillan. 1989 The Christian Witness of Sadhu Sundar Singh (collected works). 1926(1) on Various Aspects of the Spiritual Life. London: Madras: CLS. Macmillan. Material Written about Sundar Singh

(For the most complete bibliography of earlier literature, see Paul Gabler 1937, pp. 17~9) 1921 Streeter, B. H., and Appasamy, A. J. The Sadhu: A Study in 1976 Sharpe, E. J. "Sadhu Sundar Singh and His Critics: An Mysticism and Practical Religion. London: Macmillan. Episode in the Meeting of East and West." Religion 6, no. 1, 1923 Soderblom, Nathan. Sundar Singhs budskap utgivet och belyst. pp.48-66. Stockholm: Gebers. 1981 Sharpe, E. J. " in Theory and Practice: 1924 Heiler, Friedrich. Sadhu Sundar Singh: Ein Apostel des Ostens und Nathan Soderblom and Sundar Singh." Religious Traditions 4, Westens (4th edition). Miinchen: Reinhardt. no. 1, pp. 19-37. 1927 Parker, Mrs. Arthur (Rebecca). Sadhu Sundar Singh: Called of 1984 Sharpe, E. J. "Sadhu Sundar Singh and the New Church." God (6th edition). London: SCM. Studia Swedenborgiana 5, no. 2, pp. .5-28. 1934 Andrews, C. F. Sadhu Sundar Singh: A Personal Memoir. 1989 Francis, T. Dayanandan. Sadhu Sundar Singh: The Lover of the London: Hodder & Stoughton. Cross. Madras: CLS. 1937 Gabler, Paul. Sadhu Sundar Singh (dissertation). Leipzig: 1989 Goodwin, Alys. Sadhu Sundar Singh in Switzerland (His Sojourn Hartmann & Wolf. as Recorded by Alys Goodwin in Switzerland, March 1922). Madras: 1958 Appasamy, A. J. Sundar Singh: A Biography. London: CLS. Lutterworth (also Madras: CLS, 1966).

My Pilgrimage in Mission

T. A. Beetham

hen I was seven I had a Juvenile Collecting So I learned a sense of responsibility to share the with W Book, with a penny a week from parents, neighbors and people across the world, but it was in an "us" to "them" members of the church. A children's missionary magazine told relationship, a call to enlighten darkness in others, heightened me the money was for who preached, taught in by missionary biographies that spelled out the adventure and schools, or worked in hospitals in China, , and Africa. My sacrifice of those who went to serve in foreign lands. The money school geography and history only slowly caught up. The map in missionary boxes was often itself very sacrificial from very poor of India came to consist of place names like Dichpalli and Sarenga homes. There were occasional balances to a one-sided approach: where there were Methodist hospitals, and Hyderabad where in a missionary play depicting in later scenes a doctor in China there was a Mass Movement Area, and then Cawnpore, Luck­ and an open-air preacher in India, I had the part of Aidan sent now, and Delhi from the Indian Mutiny. Similarly I did not know as a missionary from lona to the heathen country of Northumbria. the names of Kano, Sokotu, Lagos until I went to West Africa, But the thrust in my youth was: "Can we to men benighted but I had collected bandages for a hospital in the Yoruba town the lamp of truth deny?" of llesha, the only name I could associate with the Nigerian stamps I expected to support Foreign Missions from my own pocket in my album. All this was linked to a Sunday School hymn: when I grew up, and my interest continued through the Meth­ "We've a story to tell to the nations that shall turn their hearts odist Laymen's Missionary Movement while I was reading math­ to the right." ematics at the university in preparation for the profession of accountancy. Halfway through my university course I went one Saturday evening to a Young Methodists' Missionary Meeting in Thomas Allan Beetham, a Methodist minister,now retired in Dorset, served with the Central Hall, Westminster. I slipped in late, taking one of the theMethodist Missionary Society in Gold Coast (Ghana) 1928-48, thenasAfrica few seats left under the gallery, in time to hear the Rev. W. J. Secretary for the Methodist Missionary Society, and Africa Secretary for the Platt from Dahomey in French West Africa (now Benin) telling of Conference of British Missionary Societies during 1950-1967. He was Warden a journey made a few months before through a number of Ivory of Kingsmead College, the missionary training college of the Methodist Church, Coast villages, where ten years earlier the Liberian prophet Wil­ at Selly Oak, Birmingham, until his retirement in 1970. liam Wade Harris had conducted a lightning preaching tour. Many

OCTOBER 1990 167 villages had built churches and were meeting regularly for wor­ It was only when I went to the Mission House in London in 1950 ship but they were still waiting for pastors to interpret the Bible as its Africa secretary that I realized through my contacts with to them. That night I knew I must respond to a call. After notifying Methodist churches in Kenya and the Rhodesias that among mis­ the Methodist board that I was available to serve overseas, I sionaries there the thought of full African leadership was still completed my mathematics degree, and went to read theology several generations away. I discovered, for example, that the head at Cambridge. of a college was referring for my approval in London matters I was then pitched at the age of 22 into, not the Ivory Coast which I in 1934 had not even referred to the head of my church as I had hoped, but its next-door neighbor the Gold Coast (Ghana). in Accra because no London money was involved. The more There I joined the staff of a Methodist Training College (Wesley definite movement in Ghana toward the conditions that made for College, Kumasi) where school teachers, a few village catechists, independence meant that when I was on leave speaking at mis­ and just one or two ministers were trained. As the secretary of sionary meetings, I found a widening gap between my view of my missionary society said to me: "You will not go as a village the overseas mission of the church and that held by the local pastor yourself, but as a trainer of local men to do that work; people through whose generous giving my own presence over­ that's our pattern now." In fact, since the local synod, ninety­ seas was made possible. five percent Ghanaian, felt its most urgent need was for better To return to Kumasi. After six years, at 28, I became principal trained school teachers, my call to a rural pastoral ministry was of the college. Very little had happened to break the buildup of fulfilled for the best part of twenty years in a teacher training the pattern of missionary leadership. In theory, decisions in the college. staff meeting on matters not reserved to the principal were made on a general agreement basis. However, the Europeans' greater "Not Leaders, But Servants" working knowledge of the college administration, of the thinking of government inspectors, of the level of possible central church I went to West Africa with no specific missionary training financial support, together with their known higher academic apart from a course on Eastern Religions (with nothing on African qualifications, created a barrier to fully equal participation in de­ traditional religion) and a ten-day crash course in phonetics. At cision making by Africans of which we missionaries were 'often Cambridge, at the breakfasts of the Student Volunteer Missionary only dimly aware. Union, I had contact with missionaries on leave and other over­ Here and there an incident challenged the status quo, but at seas visitors, people like Stephen Neill and J. S. Leakey; and I the time at a subliminal rather than consciously accepted level. read an important Student Christian Movement booklet by Jack During a brief spell away from the college in pastoral work in Winslow of , Not Leaders, but Servants and Saints. The village churches in Ashanti, I walked one day, with the catechist of the village where I lived, the four or five miles to the senior chief's village where the district commissioner had come to hold In those three years I was his magistrate's court. We went to give a character reference for one of the village lads facing a minor criminal charge. On the way cut down to size as the back, after I had accepted the D.C.'s verdict, the catechist, whose very junior third minister job in those days depended on my decision as employing min­ ister, had the courage to say to me: "You will always give the and no longer the college D.C. the benefit of the doubt." That suddenly linked back to the principal. cry of a youngster in a boys' club in a rough area of South London during my student days: "We always have to prove to the Bobby that we are innocent." My lower middle-class sense of the significant message of the latter was very much submerged on police as upholders of law and order took too long to develop a arriving in West Africa where higher education of the Western critical edge and this same sense made me slow in the early years type was still very much in the future. Of the ten or ~le~en s~aff to criticize the decisions of the colonial government. at Wesley College in 1928 the only graduates were rrussionanes, On the first Sunday of January 1936 I went at 5 A.M. to the and none of the African staff had been to a secondary school Annual Covenant Service in the Methodist church in Kumasi, the beyond school certificate level. So within six months, owing to only European in a congregation of many hundreds. I committed missionary leave patterns, I found myself responsible for checking the new year to my Lord, with my plans for the college, using the syllabi taught by Ghanaian colleagues, less qualified academ­ the familiar words: "Put me to what Thou wilt ..." That ically but more experienced as teachers and most of them senior afternoon as I wrote a letter home, I received a tsetse fly bite that in age. So I slipped all too easily into a "leadership" position. seemed particularly fierce. A week later I was hospitalized and This was tempered, though I was not aware of it at the time, trypanosomes of sleeping sickness were found in the blood slide. by two factors in the development of the church in Ghana. Unlike Three months in the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London in countries with European settlers, missionary colleagues and led to three years in a Methodist circuit in Yorkshire. In those people in government service said: "We are here to train Af­ three years I was cut down to size as the very junior third minister ricans to take over," but added, "It won't happen in our time of the circuit and no longer the college principal. I also had time, here." Then there was the relative prosperity of the country due the first in eight years of understaffed pressure in West Africa, to cocoa. As long ago as 1915the Methodist synod had sent word to take my theological reading beyond my student level. That to the Missionary Society that in view of the war conditions of supplied the food on the strength of which I went another stretch the home church, it would no longer ask for a grant from Britain of years back at Kumasi, where we faced wartime staffing short­ to support the local ministry. So when in 1928 the pastoral min­ ages, accentuated from 1944 by the sending of a succession of istry-as distinct from the educational-wasexercised by 30Ghan­ junior Ghanaian staff for further training abroad, with the con­ aian ministers and three European, the 30 were entirely locally sequent extra load on the rest of us. supported. This comparative financial independence carried with it a large degree of administrative independence from London.

168 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH '1 believe in our COURSES: MB520Z/620Z IN-SERVICE PROGRAM Anthropology ­ KRAIT because what it didfor MC520Z/620Z Foundations ofOJurch Growth - WAGNER me it can also do foryou. JJ

MT520Z/620Z In 1974 I was a member of a mission to Jamaica. Bfbliad Theology ofMission I wanted more training in missiology while being fully - GlASSER involved in ministry, so as to apply what I learned in my field situation. MH520Z/620Z Historical Development ofthe Omstian Movement lSI». WAS MY ANSWER! - PIERSON I completed the core courses and by 1981, after study on campus, received my Doctor of Missiology ML520Z/620Z degree. I believe this grass roots exposure and Foundations ofLeadership participation gives me the background to recommend - CUNTON ISPto you. Specially designed for missionaries, national church leaders, mission agency executives, professors of mission, pastors and evangelists serving MR520Z/620Z Phenomenology and overseas, the program offers the flexibility of Institutions of Folk Religion continuing missiological education while upholding - HIEBERT on-going responsibilities in local ministry.

Currently we have 340 students MR550Z/650Z --- --. involved in the program. They come lntroduction toIslam from 60 nations and minister in 76 - WOODBERRY different countries. In the 14 years since the program was established, nearly 1,400 students have taken MT521Z/621Z courses-significant testimony to the Pauline Theology andthe value of the In-Service Program. Mission OJurch - GILLIlAND While you are in service I encourage you to take a serious look at what we can offer to you and your ministry in the Kingdom of God.

" 0·.'-1 C.•I.... S'._"", THCOlO GY r ~Y ( H {)l O GY -­•• WO .tL O M I SS I O N ~.R...~ ii6iI ~~ The ~ ~~ o Director School of World Faculty: Eacb member of our[acuity isabands-on missionary, witbyears of Mission experience on the cutting edge of FULLERTHEOLOGICAL SEMINARY modern missiology. Togetber theyare Pasadena, California 91182 a team of experts,unitedbyacommon Cau /·800·235·2222 beliefin thecentrality ofChrist . body of Christians in the country concerned. A Changed Perspective One other aspect of the fifties and sixties brought a "po­ litical" dimension to the desk of a missionary secretary in London. I was not conscious of deliberate self-examination about my mis­ Missionaries in touch with grass-roots opinion in East and Central sionary service during the three years spent as a village pastor in Africa could confirm that the pressure for self-government was Britain, but I found I was looking at it from a changed perspective widespread and not limited to those whom colonial administra­ when I returned at the outbreak of war in 1939 to head up the tors all too easily wrote off as "upstart agitators." This knowl­ college for the second time. I found myself looking out imme­ edge had to be pressed with the responsible ministers of state in diately for new ways of involving African staff in administrative Whitehall, and that called for many hours studying the latest experience. By 1943 we were beginning to receive help from the government paper and for subsequent interviews with officials Colonial Development and Welfare Fund set up by the British and ministers. Keeping a balance of time between these different Government under an Act that passed through Parliament in May demands was one aspect of understanding mission in that period. 1940 (a brave gesture at that time). Scholarships for training in The future relationship to which these efforts of the fifties the U.K. were eagerly seized on; then followed building grants were directed came into being for me during the sixties when I for rapid expansion of teacher training, which made it possible served the Conference of British Missionary Societies as their among other schemes to plan new houses for the principal and Africa secretary. In my travels in Africa I was no longer the sec­ senior staff that were more suited to the needs of African family retary of one particular society with its one-to-one relation with life than the old "missionary bungalows." By 1947 we had the a daughter church in this country or that. I was now a liaison first Ghanaian vice-principal (later, after serving as principal for officer between society secretaries in Britain and at the same time twelve years, Mr. S. H. Amissah became general secretary of the with Christian council secretaries in Africa. This work often con­ All Africa Conference of Churches). This college appointment was cerned the joint funding of ecumenical projects whose initiation only achieved after a long fight with the director of education, was within the African churches. There was also opportunity for for my nominee, though acceptable both through experience and incidental cross-fertilization of ideas and experience. A Christian ability, was not a university graduate. council secretary would mention a problem he and his colleagues We knew when Ghanaian ex-servicemen returned home from were facing in their understanding and carrying out of the mission service in India that events in the country would quicken, but of the church. Something I had seen across the continent might we did not realize how fast. February 1948 saw the shooting by shed light on their problem. police of three men when an ex-servicemen's protest march about Again, this was the beginning of a new age; the staff of the economic conditions tried to reach the governor's residence in All Africa Conference of Churches were soon to take up this role. Accra. Kwame Nkrumah and five other members of the Conven­ It pointed forward to the need to find ways for the sharing of tion People's Party were detained without trial. Overnight that experience of world-wide mission which calls for participation in weekend the common thought of ordinary people across the country it by many separate autonomous churches. I also saw then and was expressed quite simply: "We've had enough of this non­ later the beginnings of two-way mission in what was happening sense; from now on we rule ourselves." Those of us foreigners to some of myoid Kumasi students: two on the staff of the All in the midst of it (though this was not yet true of all government Africa Conference of Churches; one, a woman, the scholarships officials) knew now that progress in state and church to self­ secretary in Geneva; one bringing his industrial chaplaincy ex­ government must move at once, away from a carefully planned perience to the service of faction-torn Northern Ireland; two oth­ progressive timetable to immediate action.. . ers circuit ministers in England; yet another teaching in a theological It was from this background, largely a movIng forward In college in Central Africa. understanding of mission in response to events rather than fore­ Now in retirement I look back and try to draw these expe­ sight, that I moved for ten years to be Africa secretary of my own riences together to see in what way they have altered my un­ Missionary Society with its need for a policy for mission for the derstanding of the mission of the church and how they helped 1950s. All the African churches needed acceleration in preparation it to grow. During my lifetime the whole pattern has changed for autonomy whether, as in West Africa, that was their felt im­ from the one-way sending from Britain to foreign lands and mediate goal, or, as in Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, it was "benighted" peoples, to the present giving-receiving relation­ not yet in the mind of missionaries or felt by the grass-roots church ship between the churches of Africa and Britain on an equal to be just over the horizon. During that decade the number of footing, apart from the factor of the greater wealth of Britain and missionaries sent from British Methodism to Africa was greatly therefore its carrying the greater share of the financial cost of this increased to provide the launching pad required. At the same two-way exchange. Congregations in Britain now have as their time an Overseas Training Fund was set up in Britain to give a pastors ministers sent for a number of years from India, Africa, period of wider experience to pastors, church administrators, youth and the Caribbean, and exchanges are taking place over a period workers, and others from Africa. The result of this policy was of months between groups of women or young people. seen fifteen to twenty years later in a drastic reduction in mis­ sionary staff because of the great expansion in the number of Invitation to Fulness of Life African ministers and lay workers, including a steady stream of university graduates in theology. How then is the worldwide mission of the church to be seen Parallel with this increase of trained personnel went two-way today? The motive of our forefathers, which drove them to heroic .correspondence between church leaders in Africa and church au­ sacrifice, was to save souls condemned to hell, as they sang in thorities in Britain on the form and means of transition to auton­ Charles Wesley's words: omous Methodist conferences in Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone, and later Kenya and Zimbabwe. This was backed up by behind­ The love of Christ doth me constrain the-scenes consultation with lawyers on both sides to ensure that To seek the wandering souls of men; buildings and plant (held in trust up to then in the name of the With cries, entreaties, tears to save, British Methodist church) were being transferred to an identifiable To snatch them from the gaping grave.

170 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH The task for us is no less insistent and urgent: "I have what lies to hand. We try to keep Jesus steadfastly in sight and come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (lohn 10:10). find outselves being moved forward on the path of mission, find­ We share this yearning with our Lord that men and women should ing too, in spite of our faltering, that something of his peace, his not pass through this life, this opportunity of living gloriously in sympathy, and love is somehow reaching others in the work we their Father's world, without that fullness of life which Christ do. For me it meant doing the things the Ghanaian church wanted died to make possible, that eternal life beginning now and reach­ done. I did not always find we had the same priorities; I could ing beyond death. For us, as for our grandparents, the unchang­ tryin synod discussions to share my sense of priority, but I then ing foundation of mission is the commission of Jesus: "Go into had to do what was commonly decided. every part of the world and proclaim the gospel." This is his commission to his world-wide church, not necessarily only to Christians in one particular country; all must try to cover the Those of us who are entire world. It is a commission laid on the whole church and one in which all must share. Today, as in the days of Acts, it has failing in our efforts to to begin "at Jerusalem"; those of us who are failing in our commend Christ in our efforts to commend our Lord to our near neighbors, the inhab­ itants of our "Jerusalem," welcome fellow Christians from II]erusalem" welcome other countries to witness alongside us. fellow Christians from Witness is strengthened by the "crossing of frontiers." Those whose Christian experience has developed within other other countries to witness cultures can bring valuable insights to the task of witness within alongside us. our culture. We in the West look with eager expectation to those African theologians, who have shed new light on African tradi­ tional religion, to bring us their commentaries on Mark's Gospel As I have shown when I was invalided out of West Africa, and Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians. This crossing of there is always the need for those involved in mission to have a frontiers may call for greater self-sacrifice from some than others. time for sitting back, for a break in the present task for a time; The old pattern of missionary service from Britain called for those we can as easily become settled in a groove in the Lord's business prepared to be "foot-loose." Mission still calls for this, both as in secular concerns. Similarly, the models the church chooses for those who cross national frontiers in either direction and for for its mission today must not be allowed to crystallize; though those who cross frontiers within their own country, for example still useful the mold may need to be broken. There is a narrow between areas of relative poverty and affluence or between those knife-edge between conserving the strength that comes from an of differing ethnic patterns. It may be that in place of the old established tradition and breaking the mold lest arteries harden. missionary societies, with their safeguarded base in the society I treasure my association with the old Wesleyan Methodist Mis­ headquarters, Protestant churches need a new form of fellowship sionary Society with its headquarters at 24, Bishopsgate, London, for these modern missionaries, or for commando groups within where it had been for a hundred years; it became the Methodist them, not unlike the traditional Catholic missionary orders-men Missionary Society and moved to Marylebone Road, then became and women recruited on a worldwide basis and free to go any­ the Methodist Church Overseas Division, and in a year or two is where in the world, including their own country, where they can likely to lose its "overseas" and "mission" particularly within identify with people in their lifestyle and bear their witness. They a proposed Department of World Affairs of the Methodist church. would offer fullness of life in Christ Jesus through healing, ed­ I realize that the old pattern with all that it achieved was limited ucation, leisure and industry, and the written and spoken word. and cannot meet the needs of today's world; but its spirit and all How the world church can organize itself to respond to God's that inspired it for dedicated action will be equally needed in the call to world mission without becoming tied up in leadership­ new pattern. We who treasure the best of the past need first to wasting bureaucracy must be sought through the guidance of the heed the words of the principal of a small Anglican diocesan Holy Spirit. My own experience would suggest that those who theological college that was closed down, to his own deep dis­ embark on this modem mission will not always be able to set out appointment: "It is surely sounder for an institution to serve with a clearly marked path in front of them. The point in the path its generation by the grace of God not without some glory than we have reached claims the particular kind of service and witness for it to outlive its age and its power of service." Then we go out it needs; then we find that in fulfilling it we have moved on to a into the unknown pledged only to a new fulfillment of the com­ new stretch of the path and, again, just there we have to take on mission "Go into all the world."

OcrOBER 1990 171