Beyond aid

His excellency the President of Ghana

Ghana elected a new president a few months back – Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. He has announced a new agenda for the government – Ghana Beyond Aid. Here’s what he said to business leaders in Ghana on March 20 of this year:

“We want to build a Ghana beyond aid; a Ghana which looks to the use of its own resources. We want to build an economy that is not dependent on charity and handouts, but an economy that will look at the proper management of its resources as the way to engineer social and economic growth in our country.”

Many African countries rely heavily on international aid. Right now, I have colleagues helping with a program to increase the quality of primary school education in Ghana financed by USAID.  Kenya just opened a new, 3.6 billion dollar railway 90% funded by China. The link between the words development and aid is so strong in Africa that that many Africans assume that all programs of economic, industrial or other development are funded by some other country. Front page or leading newspaper articles in Ghana newspapers regularly report that this or that country is granting Ghana a large sum of money for something. I have sometimes wondered if some Africans believe that their continent can only progress by the efforts and inputs of others.  So the idea that Ghana will get to a point where it will not depend on outside funding for its own development can rightly be called “a big idea.”

The president’s Ghana-beyond-aid mentality comes at a time when Ghanaian Christians had already been discussing the same thing for Bible translation. On the one hand, they are deeply grateful for the missionaries who left their homes and suffered deprivations to translate the Bible into their languages and for the Western missions who continue to send people and money. On the other hand, they believe that the time has come for Ghanaian Christians to supply the funds needed to translate the Bible into the languages of Ghana. The are a bit ashamed when they learn that a very small percentage of the funds for translation are coming from Ghana. This idea had been spreading among church leaders, Christian business people and others well before the President announced his Ghana Beyond Aid agenda. It might be the first time politics has imitated missions.

Piggybacking on the president’s phraseology, Christians are now talking about Bible Translation Beyond Aid, a phrase that captures the idea they already had; and which expresses their deepest motivations for both their Lord and their country. It looks like the President has, inadvertently, given a big  boost to the movement to have translation in Ghana funded from within Ghana. However inadvertent from a human standpoint, I believe that I see God’s hand in this turn of events.

Go north

When I go to missions events in Ghana, the mission speakers call for missionaries to “go north.”

The mission events are held in the South of Ghana because that is where the churches are. The southern half of Ghana is very different from the northern half. The south has many churches and Christians, the north has few. The south is much more prosperous; a much higher percentage of its people are educated; it has better health care, roads and schools. In addition, the north has had some highly-publicized ethnic conflicts, making some people from the south fearful of going there.

Because the northern areas are poorer and lack the roads, schools and other infrastructure of the southern areas, sending someone to the north is seen as a punishment. Indeed, it has been used that way. A government primary school teacher who does something wrong might be transferred to a school in the north as punishment. I read in a news paper article that a good percentage of government doctors assigned to clinics in the north never show up to take up their positions. I interviewed a job applicant in Ghana who said that in the past she had been offered a job in the north and was so afraid and unsure that she went to look without even packing a suitcase. But she liked it and stayed. Her family had to ship her things to her. “The north” has an undeserved aura of remote desolation.

West Africa

When we factor in the recent attacks in the countries just north of Ghana’s border, and the ongoing skirmishes in parts of Mali (a country north of Ghana), we add hostility and danger to the north’s aura. But “the north” is also a place where there are not that many churches or Christians. If we go far enough north we reach countries on the southern banks of the Mediterranean where Christians and churches are very far and few between. North is also where there are still languages without a translation of the Bible.

As in many cases for Christians in other places, Ghanaian Christians face an challenging missions call because going to where the Good News is scarce also means going to places less advantaged, less comfortable, less inviting and sometimes less safe than the places Christians already are.

Operation Cover the Land

The organization I work for in Ghana has adopted something they call Operation Cover the Land. The name is loosely based on Habakkuk 2:14

For the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14)

The “earth” in this case means the land of Ghana. Covering it means making sure that all the languages of Ghana have the Bible.

After all, it is difficult to imagine how a place can be filled with true knowledge of God’s glory without people having access to book that covers that topic in depth – the Bible.

Operation Cover the Land asks Ghanaian Christians to imagine what it would be like to be part of fulfilling Habakkuk’s 2,600-year-old prophesy and, even more, seeing that happen soon. And it could be very soon indeed because Operation Cover the Land envisages having translations ongoing in all the languages of Ghana without the Bible by 2020. After that, the scope  will increase to include all of Africa with Ghana providing resources for Bible translation across Africa. It is very ambitious, but then so is Habakkuk’s prophesy.

Outsider churches

I used to think that the meaning of “missions” was clear. I have learned that different people mean different things – very different things. Some months back, I asked someone who teaches missions in several Bible schools and a seminary in Africa, what new students thought of missions when they started the course. The answer did not surprise me even though it dismayed me. Those from one particular denomination often think that missions means going to a place where there is no church of that denomination but to which people who grew up in that denomination have moved, and starting a church of that denomination by gathering them together.

Let’s back up a bit. Some churches have been limited to some parts of some countries. The Southern Baptist Convention is a good example in the USA. The same thing happens in Africa, but there it causes something else. Africa has at least 1,800 languages and ethnic groups. So if a church is found only in one part of a country, it will necessarily be associated with the ethnic group(s) in that part of the country.

Let’s say that church CH has become associated with ethnic group EG because that church was started by CH missionaries in the EG area. It has church services in the EG’s language and its pastors necessarily come from EG. Now lets say that some people who are members of church CH and who are also part of the EG move out of the area. Perhaps they are government officials or teachers and they are assigned to another part of the country. Or maybe they move to another part of the country because of economic opportunities. Anyway several move to the same town where there are no Christians and no church. So, they ask church CH to send a pastor. The church does, and of course the pastor is from the EG. He unites the displaced members of EG into a CH church with services in the EG language.

This new congregation has been established by outsiders to resemble the churches in the place the outsiders came from. Services are conducted in the language of the outsiders. The church and its members have very little connection with local people. This kind of church has very little hope of bringing Christ to the community around it. It is quite good, on the other hand, at giving people from EG living far from family and friends a taste of home every Sunday.

Naturally, this new congregation becomes known in the community as something for people from another ethnic group. After all, only people from ethnic group EG are members and the services are conducted in their language. If this situation is repeated in several towns in one part of the country, and no churches are established that reach out to local people or use the local language, local people will eventually conclude that church and therefore Christianity are not for them.

Once that happens, it is very hard to reverse. The people have been inoculated against Christianity by a church that effectively excludes them. This the challenge of some places in Ghana. By translating the Bible into the language and working with national church offices wanting to plant churches that are part of the community, we are starting to see a breakdown in the misconception that Christianity is only for others.

Hidden peoples

When I speak in churches in the US, some people are often surprised that there are 7000 languages in the world and that some of them do not have the Bible. One of the reasons for this is that the people who speak those languages are hidden. Here’s one small illustration. This is a map of the percentage of people in Mexico who speak an indigenous language. Note that the percentages are quite low (under 5%) along the US border. In fact the rate is less than 1% in the parts of Mexico adjoining Texas.

The road to Baglo, Ghana

So if an American crosses the border by land everyone will seem to speak Spanish. The 0-5% who speak other languages will be hidden. Because they don’t speak Spanish, they can’t get a job dealing with customers, so of course all service people, cashiers, waitresses, etc you meet will speak Spanish. If a business does have an employee who does not speak Spanish, they will be in a role that does not come into contact with customers such as a dishwasher, nor night janitor. So the 1-5% are hidden to most people. You might have to travel to a rural area and even then you might have to be invited into a private home to meet them. You would never know that Mexico has 326 languages of which 133 are in danger of dying out, leaving 193 vibrant languages communities.

I find that many Ghanaians are surprised when they learn how many languages there are in their country. When I mention the name of a language, it is not unusual for people to say they have never heard of it. And this is their country! They often ask if it is really a Ghana language, if the source of my information is reliable, and so on. It may surprise you to learn that many Ghanaian government officials, even highly placed, do now know of all the languages in their country.

Nawuri chief

This obscurity is felt by the hidden peoples themselves. In 2012, I was there when chief of the Nawuri people stood before a crowd and was presented the newly-translated Nawuri New Testament. His response:

“We have now been counted among the people of God.”
“Politicians don’t know us, but God knows us.”

That last comment reflects the disconnect his people feel. They are hidden even from the people who are officially their representatives.

This Sunday is the International Day for the Unreached. It’s a good day to remember that you can’t find the people on the margins of our society – hidden peoples, bibleless peoples, peoples without the Gospel – without explicitly looking for them.

For the Son of Man came to find and restore the lost. (Luke 19:10)

Prayer for the start of translation in three smaller languages in Ghana’s Volta Region