wfn.org | Mission veterans build faith

[BethAH@mbm.org]

January 24, 2001
Beth Hawn
Communications Coordinator
Mennonite Board of Missions
phone (219) 294-7523
fax (219) 294-8669
<www.MBM.org>

January 24, 2001

30-year veterans build faith on spirituality of indigenous people

ELKHART, Ind. (MBM/COM) – One afternoon last summer, Willis and
Byrdalene Horst left the home of an elderly Toba woman with four
eggs and several cassette tapes of oral history.  The eggs were
destined for a quick and final doom at the breakfast table.  The
recorded stories of evangelism and beginning churches during the
1950s and 1960s had already been far more fruitful.  They were
stories of the birthing of God’s plans for the evangelical church
in the Argentine Chaco region.

Willis and Byrdalene, working in Argentina with Mennonite Board
of Missions and with the Commission on Overseas Mission of the
General Conference Mennonite Church, serve the indigenous peoples
in the Chaco.

The Horsts have made their home in Argentina for almost 30 years,
nourishing the evangelical church begun more than 40 years ago
with the guidance of MBM missionaries.  They serve with an
international and interdenominational team that includes Germans
of the Evangelical Free Church tradition, North American
Mennonites, and Argentine Baptists.

“We share a common Anabaptist spirituality and common convictions
about the appropriate style of missionary presence among the Toba
indigenous people,” Willis Horst said.  “By including Argentines
in the team, we have been able to spread the particular
missionary vision more effectively among Argentina’s evangelical
tradition.”

This vision carried by the Horsts and their team does not fit the
classic stereotypes of missionaries announcing truth into the
unreached darkness of other humans.

“We come to share the good news that the life-giving Creator, who
has been with them and inspiring them in their culture since the
beginning, has now spoken a new word in Jesus, which is the true
fulfillment of all God’s previous acts in their favor,” he said.
The Horsts help the indigenous people recover the memory of how
God has worked in their past and share the new thing God has done
in Jesus Christ.

Willis explained, “The missionary is always a guest, never a
conqueror, after the tradition of the Apostle Paul, who went to
the Corinthians determined to preach nothing but Christ and the
way of the cross.”

The Horsts’ team acknowledges that “the gospel does not erase,
suppress or supplant previous culture and spirituality, but
rather enhances it, bringing possibilities for new life and
hope.”

“Jesus brings to completion their own Native Old Testament in
much the same way he fulfilled the best of the Jewish Tradition
and Sacred Memory (which we now call the Old Testament),” said
Willis.

Byrdalene’s ministry centers on helping women in the indigenous
churches discover their gifts and build a strong biblical
foundation for their faith.  She has held regular Bible-literacy
classes and “Bible Circles,” often focusing on a particular woman
from the Bible.

“I have become much more conscious of discrimination against
women, of the need for inclusive language, and the need to
encourage indigenous women to exercise their gifts in the church,
and for the men to give them space to do that,” she said.  “I’m
beginning to hear and see echoes and results.”

A powerful testimony to the understanding of these women is their
dramatizations of verse collections Byrdalene puts together for
Christmas and Easter.  “One Toba church planned a dramatization
[for Easter] and memorized the verses, but when they began the
practices, they were so moved by the story that the actors broke
down crying and could not continue,” she said.

Perhaps the North American church might benefit from a stronger
focus on the stories of Jesus’ birth, life and death, from
internalizing these scriptures to the point where their poignancy
brings awe and weeping.

The Horsts believe the indigenous church in the Chaco has further
words for the North American church – words speaking to
relationships within the Body of Christ and relationship with the
Creator and words that spring from relationship with the living
word:

? Don’t bring us handouts.  Come walk with us.
? Don’t teach us your solutions.  Read the Bible together with
us.
? Don’t come to help us.  Come to learn together with us how we
can help each other.
? Don’t lay up treasure on earth.  All the Creator’s gifts are
meant to be shared.  Stinginess is the worst sin of all.
? Accept each other as God accepts you.  Be inclusive; welcome
the outsider.  Be gracious and hospitable to all.  Don’t judge
others as unworthy.
? Have faith in Jesus.  Jesus is the most powerful of all powers.

? Watch and wait.  Jesus is coming.

“The indigenous believers have taught us that God is so much
greater than we could ever have imagined without our experiences
of being their guests for nearly 30 years,” Willis said.  “The
Creator calls us all to listen anew to the voice of Jesus, as he
calls to us through the poor, the marginalized, the weak, the
excluded and the oppressed, inviting us to follow him serving
them.  The way of the cross, of peace and justice, is the only
way to overcome evil.”

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Elizabeth Beachy for MBM news     PHOTO AVAILABLE