A Gentle Boldness

Sharing the Peace of Jesus in a Multi-Faith World

David W. Shenk

• Publisher: Herald Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781513801360
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Biographies religieuses

A global citizen. A commitment to sharing the peace of Jesus. A witness to the difference that Jesus makes. The story David Shenk either begins in Shirati Village in Tanganyika, East Africa, or we might decide it begins among the orchards of Lancaster County, Pa., where farmers with their horses line up a mile for water as they rearrange their loads for their trek home on market day. In either reading, this is a story of mission—a story of people chattering along a roadside spring on the way to and from market. At age six, Shenk asked his parents, "What difference does Jesus make?" The answer to that question is the reason he became a Christian. Day by day, as he travels in the way of Jesus—living, serving, and ministering around the world—Shenk continues to unpack what difference Jesus makes.
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This is the story not just of Shenk and his remarkable work in Christian missions. It's the stories that David has heard within societies, cultures, and religions when he asks the question: What difference does Jesus make?

Part I

Tanzania: The Seeds of Faith (1933–1952)

1

The God Who Went Away

Eighty years ago, in an apple stand in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Central Market, on a market day that might have seemed like any other, a woman named Emma called over to her son, J. Clyde.

“There he is, Clyde,” Emma said. “Go and ask the preacher your question.”

Earlier that week, Clyde had confided to his parents that he believed God was calling him into missionary service in Africa. His father, David, openly wept as his only son described this inclination that God might be calling him to leave the family farm and move overseas. Emma had wisely encouraged her son to share the calling with their pastor, Jacob Hess, the next time they saw him.

The opportunity came in a busy farmer’s market stall. Clyde motioned for the pastor and led him into a side aisle.

“Pastor Jacob,” he asked earnestly. “Should I go to Africa as a missionary?”

What a question.

At that time, a small missionary team from Lancaster was blooming in Tanganyika, a sovereign state that made up the modern-day part of mainland Tanzania. In 1933, Eastern Mennonite Missions took action to seek an area in Africa where the gospel was not known. Several weeks before Clyde asked his pastor to confirm his calling, a train was chartered for 475 passengers to carry well-wishers from Lancaster to New York City, for a grand farewell at the dock, seeing off the first Mennonite missionaries to East Africa. Fervor for mission among Mennonites, essentially a peasant farming community, was a response to revivalism that swept through their congregations across North America at the end of the nineteenth century.

One of the seeds of these Mennonite revivals occurred in 1896, with a tragic train and buggy accident just north of Smoketown, Pennsylvania. Enos Barge and his fiancée were killed on a foggy evening after coming home from a party of young people, and their death spoke powerfully to the young people who, up until that time, were rarely baptized until after they were married. After that accident in Lancaster County many young people repented and were baptized, and for some of them this revival also meant a recommitment to the mission of the church.

But this conviction for mission didn’t begin in the nineteenth century. It was formed within the Mennonite movement in Germany, as well as the Swiss and Dutch wings of the early Anabaptist movement, as far back as 1525, when sixty Anabaptist leaders met in Augsburg to plan for the evangelization of the world as they knew it. Their favorite preaching text was the great commission of Matthew 28:18-20, yet most who met in that missions gathering were martyred within three years. Consequently they became known as “the quiet in the land.”

By the sixteenth century, European church life had become united with the political system. Christians who believed that following Jesus in a politically centered way went in directions that didn’t harmonize with Jesus and his teachings. The state system opposed practices such as adult baptism, a central practice of the burgeoning Anabaptist community, and that was the center of the persecution.

The freedoms of America opened the doors to rekindle the vision for mission that characterized the early Anabaptists in the sixteenth century. As a child I knew we were a people whose history included martyrs. That legacy ran deep within Mennonite spirituality.

However, it was only in my church history classes many years later that I learned about the sixteenth century refusal of Mennonites to participate in the wars against Muslims. It was in those classes that I learned of Michael Sattler, a man who would rather die as a martyr than join the European armies and kill Muslims for whom Christ had died. Many followed his example, a costly decision that led to martyrdom and being labeled traitors against Christendom.

Mission and peacemaking have always belonged together in Anabaptist missiology! For example, an eleven-year-old boy, John Mellinger, who later became president of Eastern Mennonite Missions, asked his father why Mennonite pastors seemed to ignore the great commission of Matthew 28. That question was used of the Holy Spirit to expand the stirrings of interest in missions. And on my desk is the Dordrecdcht Confession of Faith from the Dutch Mennonites, published in 1632. This seventeenth-century document calls on all believers to proclaim Jesus as Savior and Lord and to take the gospel to those who are not believers.

So it is that these Anabaptist traditions have made their way through the centuries. Four hundred years later, Sattler’s love for Muslims would reappear in my own heart.

The inquisitive conversation in the aisle at Central Market that Clyde had with his pastor was happening among Mennonites throughout North America as a response to the movements of the Holy Spirit at that time.

Revival meetings sometimes packed out the meetinghouses. One service was so filled with repentant believers that a young man’s only option was to walk atop the benches in order to come forward for the prayer of confession. The youth culture at the time was very much formed by revivalist preaching, since many young people attended church on Sunday evenings for the social and spiritual development. My grandfather was so affected by the revivals that he discontinued raising tobacco and turned his fields into orchards.

These revivals often grew, spilling over into tent meetings, such as the George Brunk tent meetings of the 1950s. Thousands attended, and when an invitation was given to accept Jesus, people flowed to the front of the assembly by the hundreds for prayer and confession.

Bishops sometimes fretted that the renewals were developing a new kind of Mennonite. Indeed mission and renewal were happening, sometimes in spite of objections from conservative bishops.

Jesus was calling, and people were responding with an unhesitating, “Yes!”

My father, deeply embedded in this culture of revival, leaned into Jesus’ call, but he experienced no such objections from his own Mennonite pastor, who with quiet command took in his lanky, six-foot frame, leaned in and said, “Young man, let the Lord have his way.” The simplicity of this response moves me, even to this day.

That young man, J. Clyde Shenk, the one earnestly seeking God’s call on his life, eventually became my father, and his “Yes” to the invitation of Christ shaped my life forever.

My father left that meeting with his Mennonite pastor in Lancaster’s Central Market and shared his growing conviction with his fiancée, Alta Barge, who was also experiencing a call for missionary work in Africa. The struggle to confirm this calling was intense, and it wore on my father as he engaged with God. He lost sleep, his appetite, and thirty pounds as the days passed. He didn’t want to leave his father alone to run the farm; yet he had heard the call. How could he say no?

He imagined entering this life of deprivation: there would be no tomato soup; he assumed he would have no John Deere tractor at his disposal, as he did on the home farm. Nevertheless, within two years my parents were in Tanganyika.

But my father’s conversation with his pastor didn’t happen in a vacuum, and unbeknownst to him, there were larger movements going on at that time that would support Jesus’ call on his life. Businessman Orie Miller, the general secretary of Eastern Mennonite Missions, along with the board, had taken action in 1930 to move forward in mission, in spite of strong resistance. During one board meeting, the treasurer cautioned the group: they could commit $9.62 to missions in Africa, obviously much less than what would be required.

Orie expressed his conviction that the funds always follow the vision.

A year later Orie Miller and farmer Elam Stauffer set out to explore where the Mennonites of Lancaster Conference would open their first mission. The Holy Spirit led them to London for consultation with missions leaders, then on to Berlin. Wherever they went their hosts prayed when they arrived in an office and prayed when they left—that much praying was quite strange to these Mennonites.

They traveled to the border of Sudan, but Orie’s international commitments meant they didn’t have time to enter the country, so they caught another boat south and arrived in Dar es Salaam—yes, the same Dar es Salaam where, decades later, Grace and I would be serenaded by a Mennonite customs official.

Wherever they asked for advice, locals consistently encouraged the Mennonites to consider the Musoma District on the shores of Lake Victoria. That region had some eighteen small language groups, and the larger mission agencies had remained focused on larger language groups. Here was a need the Mennonite missionaries could hope to address.

It is interesting to me to reflect on how all of these events happened almost simultaneously, how my father’s individual calling was confirmed by his pastor during the same general time period that Orie Miller was working to prepare the way for the arrival of missionaries in Tanganyika, and specifically the Musoma District. The serendipity of these events, taking place without corroboration between the various parties, serves as a reminder to me that I do not have to be overly concerned with how my calling will play out in the larger context of the world; my primary concern must simply be saying “Yes” and taking the next step laid out in front of me.

When Orie Miller and Elam Stauffer arrived in Mwanza on the lakeshore, they met a man called Praying Shoes. He was Emil Saiwalka, a member of the Defenseless Mennonite Church in Indiana, serving with the Africa Inland Mission. His name came from the fact that his shoes turned up at the front, for he invested many hours on his knees in prayer. Emil and Elam marveled at how the Lord had orchestrated these plans, bringing two Mennonite leaders from so far away. Knowing that Elam was in good hands, Orie departed for appointments in India. Emil and Elam rode bicycles for 150 miles across Musoma District, exploring the region, searching for an ideal place for the Mennonites to begin their East Africa mission.

When the two men arrived at Shirati on the lakeshore, Emil assured Elam they had found their place. Later, on the first Sunday, twelve people convened, and the local chief was even in attendance to welcome the guests. Yet Elam was concerned: there were a large variety of wild animals, and humans were few and far between. Emil assured Elam that those who were interested would carve out homesteads and begin clustering near the great tree on the hilltop, Katuru Hill. That is exactly what happened.

When the first permanent missionaries arrived at Katuru Hill, they were eager to get going. After all, they had come all this way to bear witness to Jesus. Even though the barriers were great, they tried to tell the story of Jesus with Swahili, Luo, Kuria, English, Arabic, Zanaki, and other languages. They explained to the native people that they were believers in God.

The Africans replied, “We are, too,” explaining patiently that each tribe had a different god.

One tribe worshiped the leopard. One night a leopard broke into the place where they were staying, causing much excitement among the Africans, who were quick to warn the missionaries that the leopard, as their god, would eat them when they died.

The missionaries showed the tribes people a copy of the Bible, pointing out the very first verse: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and “in the image of God he created them.” The missionaries said, “Look, God created the leopard and in fact God created everything. God is not a leopard, God is God.”

Now although each tribe had their own god and those gods could be very dangerous, there was one specific god all Africans knew about: the Creator of everything. But although the Africans believed in a creator God, they did not give him much attention because they believed the creator God had gone on a journey and would never come back again. In their minds, there were two kinds of gods: the tribal gods, who ruled mostly by fear and intimidation, and the god who had left.

The absent god.

There are at least six hundred stories across Africa about the creator God who goes away, never to return. One of my favorite stories comes from Ghana in West Africa, where God was nearby after he had created everything, and the women in the village were not happy because God was too close. So they whacked him in the face and in fury God went into the sky.

Well, this wasn’t what they had wanted, so the women and the children collected mortars and stood one on top of the other while a woman climbed to the top of the tower to reach God. She was so close, but she needed one more barrel to reach God. When there were no more barrels a naughty little boy pulled a barrel from the bottom of the pile and the barrels came crashing down on the village.

The point of the story was clear.

God had left.

God would never return.

But when the missionaries came, they told the villages about Jesus, who is God with us and who came to Earth to save us. This news, in stark relief with their previous belief, explains their joy upon hearing the gospel. God has not, in fact, gone away, and he will never go away. He will never leave you nor forsake you.

Sunday by Sunday a few more villagers ventured to Katuru Hill, joining the missionaries sitting under the great tree. The creation of a new church had begun. I suppose there has been no Sunday over the last eighty years when there was no cluster of believers in Jesus worshiping on Katuru Hill.

Likewise for me there has never been a Sunday when I have not joined in worship with believers wherever I might be, except for when I have been ill or on the road, although I try to avoid traveling on Sundays. I suppose my parents even took me to the gathering at Shirati on the Sunday after I was born. I am now over eighty years old, and continue to revel in the joy of meeting and greeting the church gathered usually on Sundays. The Christian passion to gather as a church is a preparation for the day all God’s people will gather and join in the heavenly choirs singing the joys of redemption. The core of the message that the mission...