On Anthony J. Gittins' Ministry at the Margins

March 18, 2004 – TM 815

A Reading on Anthony J. Gittins’ Ministry at the Margins: Strategy and Spirituality for Mission

I. Mission - from the Passing Over to the Coming Back: A Summary

Central to Gittins’ book, Ministry at the Margins, is his thesis that mission is “a movement from the center to the margin” (xi) that involves not only a “centrifugal movement”, but more basically the humane encounter. Such movement and encounter reveal a whole new understanding of mission as ministry, more specifically, ministry at the margins. This newly discovered context of mission refers to mission as a process of life. It is a process that takes place from the passing over to the coming back that requires a new mission spirituality, namely “… humble faithfulness to the example of Jesus [and] service in the style of Servant” (xi). It is a spirituality that is based on the missionary nature of Christian baptism.

The passing over refers predominantly to Gittins’ theological and historical characterizations of those who commit themselves to mission works outside their own (geographical) boundaries. It is interdependently defined by the coming back that makes the two characterize the continuity of Christian mission, and thus constitute holistically to the “missionary adventure” as “the greatest religious adventure of our time”(5). The continuity is taking place in the three parts of movement, namely: the homeland (the locus where one’s identity is forged and rooted culturally), the wonderland (“the world of others”), and the newfoundland (the rediscovery of one’s own land where the challenges of [one’s own] culture shock, discontinuity, and disjunction may emerge) (6-7). These movements require not only theological, but also anthropological understandings of mission as a cross-cultural adventure. Gittins primarily emphasizes the importance of the linguistic-anthropological approach. By referring to Sapir and Whorf’s hypothesis on the deterministic role of language in shaping the habitual thought and certain world-view of its speakers, he argues that “language study and practice are intrinsic to mission” (81).

Mission as ministry at the margins creates a new image of “Christlike missionaries” (154) that is based profoundly on the biblical reflection of stranger. By differentiating the two concepts of stranger (nokri and gêr), Gittins proposes his biblical analogy of gêr (143) as an authentic model of how to be a Christlike-missionary. A gêr defines the identity of a missionary as a liminal person, a person in-between, a person at the margin that shifts radically the missionary self-paradigm from self-centeredness to other-centeredness.

“Missionary as stranger” thus implies the potentiality of every Christian to be an incarnated servant that is called to repent and convert, as much as is demanded to call others to repentance and conversion (151). This call defines the viability and visibility of mission as ministry at the margins where the compassionate encounter with the poor and the needy remains relevant and authentic. The viability and visibility of this mission thus creates another way of communicating, of “good-news-ing” the gospel message through the use of the language of the margins. It is the language that is developed through the humane encounter between the strangers, between every baptized Christians and their own Matthew 25-neighbors, at the margins of life.

II. Reflection: The Language of the Margins

Joel C. Kuipers, an anthropologist, discovered the dominant role of Indonesian national language (Bahasa Indonesia) in the forming of a particular Sumbanese Christian identity in West Sumba. I use his story of Mbora Kenda, a local practitioner who converted to Christianity and then changed his name to Daud (Indonesian version of David), to reflect on Gittin’s presupposition about the intrinsic relation between language/culture and mission (89-94).

After his conversion, Mbora Kenda finds that his local and ritual language of Weyewa Highland cannot fully represent his ‘new identity’ as Christian. This is due to the fact that the use of Bahasa Indonesia determines his new (higher) social status in the predominantly Sumbanese Christian community, which uses it as as a way to distinctively define itself as an integral part of the Indonesian nation. This lies back to the history of Christianity in West Sumba in the late nineteenth century. This part of history reveals a particular relation between the communication of the Gospel message and the use of superior language. Whereas in the case of the Dutch missionaries Dutch is superior to local languages, in the postcolonial context of Indonesia in the late twentieth century, Indonesian national language, Bahasa Indonesia, marginalizes the local languages, such as Weyewan ( 1998, xii, 1-7).

In Mbora Kenda’s case, the shift in his use of language results in the shift of his respected role as a local practitioner. His demand in using Bahasa Indonesia in his ritual speech ignores the local world-view that can only be comprehended by his Weyewan language. For Mbora Kenda, therefore, even though the use of Bahasa Indonesia will affirm his new receptive identity and higher social status, but it will alienate him from his own cultural root, the root of his very own identity as a Sumbanese.

Mbora Kenda’s story posses critical questions to Gittins’ argument of mission as ministry at the margins: How can Mbora Kenda become an authentic and relevant missionary in his own cultural setting if his use of Bahasa Indonesia alienates him from his own cultural root? Yet, can he become a relevant missionary in using the Weyewan language if it will result in his coming back to his previous marginal status in the predominant Christian community? What then is the margin for him? How one can witness linguistically to a person like Mbora Kenda the meaning of mission as incarnational in the situation where he does not have to choose to be a stranger since he himself is already a stranger. Therefore, the central question for Gittins’ book from such a particular story is, should a real stranger become another (more) stranger in order to become a relevant Servant? And, in relation with Gittins’ ideal of preferential option for the poor, should the poor become poorer in order to become a humble witness of Christ?

Gittins’ concept of passing over and coming back also reminds me of my experiene with a muslim friend, Farha Ciciek. Early last year Farha Ciciek and I published an article, in a top leading news paper in Indonesia, based on the story of Hagar (Siti Hajar). We identified Hagar’s story, as it is revealed in our religious texts, as a simbolic story of women victims in our communities. We claimed that through this particular story, we could create an open space for the encounter of victims accross religious and ethnic boundaries. We used Hagar’s language, as a language of victim, to identify the experiences of the marginalized in our own religious traditions. Yet, it is the same language that provides us the possibility to see the seed of transformation in the life of the victim. From my theological point of view, Hagar’s naming of God as “God who sees” is the source of such a transformation. Such interreligious cooperation reflects our own process of passing over and coming back through the language of the margins without having to be “lost in translation” (61) of our own traditions.

The two stories above while affirming Gittins’ understanding of the both-ends of mission as

a life process, also recognize the different definitions of margins that depend on one’s own historical, socio-economic and cultural situation. Therefore, in reading Gittins’ book, one needs to be in constant dialogue with such differences. And, one of another good stories to begin with is also the story of missionaries themselves. One of them is the story of E. Stanley Jones in his book The Christ of the Indian Road, where he touchingly described his experience with an Indian student who presented him a lotus, as a symbol of respect and honor.

I had come there a stranger and a foreigner... I had come openly with another faith, and I wondered how I would be received, but when this student gave me this lotus flower before all, then I knew I was accepted as friend and brother – and teacher. To be accepted as teacher was the goal of my hopes. But I felt myself as much a learner as a teacher. I had come to India with everything to teach and nothing to learn. I stay to learn as well, and I believe I am a betterman for having come into contact with the gentle heart of the East (1925, 222)

He continued to say, that his task in India “... to trust India with the Christ and trust Christ with India. We can only go so far – he and India must go the rest of the way. India is beginning to walk with the Christ of the Indian Road. What a walk it will be” (1925, 223) Is not this story about the passing over and the coming back missionary?

The above stories reflect the meaning of “life in paradox” as it is shown by the way Jesus lives his life in the paradox of Matthew 25 and Luke 4. It is the life that creates it own language of margin, the language of the fellow-sufferer and transformer.

Reference:

Jones, E. Stanley. 1925. The Christ of the Indian Road. New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: The

Abingdon Press.

Gittins, Anthony J. 2002. Ministry at the Margins: Strategy and Spirituality for Missions.

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

______________. 1999. Reading the Clouds: Mission Spirituality for New Times.

Liguori, Missionary: Liguori.

Kuipers, Joel C. 1998. Language, Identity, and Marginality in Indonesia; The Changing

Nature of Ritual Speech on the Island of Sumba. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.