Recently I’ve been teaching a group of students about Tribal Church Planting. It is much more difficult than church planting in our own culture. One of our students gave a presentation on the obstacles to overcome in reaching an animistic culture (ie.the Quechua tribe) and he did such a good job that I asked if I could use it as an illustration. Here is a summary of his presentation:
"Imagine yourself dedicated to going overseas as a missionary to work with tribal people that have never heard the Gospel…Where do you start. …. hop on a plane, and fly down…But then what? Nobody speaks English. Suppose you took Spanish in High School… Great! That means we can buy bananas, describe living room furniture, or get directions to the mall…So we have to either learn Spanish better or hire an interpreter to live with us… Then we have to do the same thing with the Quechua language.
Suppose that we get over the language barrier. . .then what. . .?
We find some Quechua folks and start talking. . .
Where do you start? Give them the Four Spiritual Laws or read John 3:16? Show the Jesus film?
If you walk up to a traditional Quechua and read him John 3:16 out of the blue, this is what would probably be going through his head:
Inti (the sun god) loved Pachamama (Mother Earth) so much that he sent his son, (Manco Capac, the first Inca), to rule the earth. His descendants were worshipped as deity.
It makes complete sense to a Quechua (but it’s not what’s taught in God’s Word).
Most, if not all tribal societies in the world have a belief system is that is classified as animistic.
That just means that they believe that spirits (good, bad, or indifferent) possess objects and people and control the daily affairs of life. The people, therefore have to manipulate the spirits so they will be good to them.
They will do whatever it takes to gain the favor of the spirits. Before planting a field, they make a sacrifice to the earth. . .Quechua farmers often make sacrifices of a llama fetus and coca leaves and pour alcohol on the ground, among other things. Miners are even more reverent, often making offerings to statues of demons deep under ground several times a day. Even bus drivers and truckers made offerings of alcohol and coca, often partaking of each, before making a run.
How do you go about teaching about the One, True God of Scripture in this context? Unless presented accurately, they will merely add Him to their list of spirits and try to manipulate Him the same way they do the other spirits.
That is just what has happened with some religious groups in Bolivia. They do their sacrifices and go to Mass, Confession, etc. (Pachamama, Mother earth, has been connected to Mary.)
We did an in-depth study of Animism at the beginning of the training to help us understand the spiritual perspective of tribal people and avoid these types of problems.
The most important area to come to grips with is the spiritual world around us. Here in American churches we often pay lip service to the fact that there is a spirit realm and there is an unseen war being fought. Yet we don’t see evidence of it in our daily lives.
Animists live in fear of the spirit world every day. Everything that occurs in life is based on some act of the spirits. When someone gets sick, it’s because he broke a taboo, or someone worked sorcery, sending a spirit to make him ill. If a baby dies, it may be because the ancestors were unhappy about the way something was done, so they took the child to be with them. In each case, the spirits must be appeased or it will happen again and again. They typically use a shaman or witchdoctor to communicate with the spirit world so that they can manipulate the spirit responsible. Each practice varies from tribe to tribe, but each shares the same dark worldview characterized by fear and spirit-manipulation.
To give tribal people an accurate picture of the God of Scripture, we must present the Gospel in a way that goes head-to-head with the animistic beliefs.
One thing that I really appreciate about our classes is that many of the things we are learning can be applied to matter where we go." (Both here at home and also in the tribe.)
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