I have never spoken to this kind of group before. It is my first time doing it. I can feel the power of God vibrating from you within the days that we are here. I know you have made your peace with him. You have gone to bed with him, you have risen, and you have work every day of your life with him. And here we are. It is a burden I feel heavy on my shoulders.

Confidence and Expectation from God

I fear and tremble because I speak the word of God. I pray that God will speak in this time that we are here, so that what you would get would not be Wilfred’s words, but they would be the word of God to you and to me. Therefore, I am not lost in that here in the temple. But I have great confidence and expectation. I have great confidence and expectation because of prayer. I knew when Pastor John called me and asked me to speak here that he and Tom Steller had been in prayer a long time about this. As I received that phone call, my wife received it first and called me up and said, “You have a phone call Wilfred.” I picked it up and it was John. He said, “Wilfred, we want you to come and speak here at the conference.”

At the time I was reading Ezekiel 37. I was looking at that passage and I was saying, “What if I am Ezekiel? Or what if I’m the dead dry bones?” I said, “Well, I will come. I am honored to come.” Then he followed that up with the letter and I wrote back to him. I said, “I will come and I will speak to you to speak with you from Ezekiel 37,” because the thought that freed me was the thought, “You shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord.” I know it was not only John praying. It was not only my wife and I praying. My pastor in Philadelphia has been praying and our board of deacons have been praying about it. I knew since the time you got your handouts you have been praying that God will speak to you. So I do not doubt that I come here with your prayers. And I come with confidence and expectation finally, because of God.

God will give us food. We watch in season and out of season. I say this, because I consider myself to be out of season in an American context. But I know God was in season and out of season, because he’s the sovereign Lord.

The Valley of Dry Bones

Therefore, I invite you then to read with me Ezekiel 37:1–14. He says:

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army. Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord’” (Ezekiel 37:1–14; all Scripture references are taken from the NIV).

I like to read Scripture. When I read it I feel like I do not have to say any more. I met with friends here. Some of you have expressed how delighted you are to see me and looking forward to this time. I said, “Pray that I need to say something.” The reason I say that is because I am not an Old Testament scholar. I do not consider myself an exegete. I am simply a fellow pastor with you. But I think the reason why I was called to do this is because I have the privilege to grow up and minister in a context older than yours. For that matter, I think the people asked me to come forward. I could deliver a missions message, but I want to say I think I can deliver a pastoral message — a message for me and probably because you are my colleague and you are my fellow worker in the kingdom a message for you also.

Can These Bones Live?

As I have been reading this passage, the legitimate question that came to my mind was, “Missions to dead bones?” That was probably coming through to you as well. It seems like a mockery of the enterprise, doesn’t it? Or at best impossible. This passage portrays for me at least a lack of argument and logic at first sight. It is beyond imagination to be given a congregation of cubs let alone of dry bones.

The closest I had come to Ezekiel’s vision was in 1986 in Cameroon when one night, in August, a natural gas erupted from a lake and killed about 1,700 people in a valley. It wiped out the entire valley and the following day a few people woke up to their dismay to find out that the whole area had been wiped out. Now, if you can picture a situation like that and then see yourself as a pastor called to minister to the dead people rather than to the survivors you would’ve put yourself in the shoes of Ezekiel in his vision. From the point of view of Ezekiel the question came, “Son of man, now that you have seen this can they live? Can these bones?”

I think the right answer if I were there would’ve been “No way, Lord. No way they can’t.” We might have expected Ezekiel to say to them, “How could these dry bones live.” Or if you are very optimistic you might have expected him to say, “Sure they will live. They are your bones, Lord. You created them you know and because you know I can sound it out. Sure, they will live.” Ezekiel did not make that statement in that mode in that fashion. He said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know. Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” Ezekiel’s reply echoes the sentiment of Scripture. God says, “My ways are not your ways. Neither are my thoughts.” Or with the words of Christ, “With God nothing is impossible.” There are no impossibilities with our God.

No Human Way Forward

Where does this leave you and I? We are accustomed to salvation. Usually, when you go church planting you rely on some research from a researcher or from another church planter in terms of the location of the new church, in terms of the people you are targeting. You might say something like, “I’m going to reach middle class people that are either receptive or unreceptive. I have this core group of people to work with.” You might argue therefore for what is called a homogeneous unit or a bigger word unit, a tribal people.

I pick this tribal group and I identify their characteristics and therefore because I understand them I can therefore minister to them. Or you might pick an open area because God has called you to work in this urban area and you try to find out as much as you can. You may decide to pick a specific language group. If you were going to Cameroon and you decided that you were really going to speak the language of the people and touch their hearts, you would pick one out of over 260 of the languages.

But how do you do it if your congregation, the people you are called to minister to are dry bones. In Ezekiel’s vision there is practically no human way forward. Human reasoning and planning collapses in the face of the Almighty God who calls us to minister. In fact, no scientific or mythological theory is good enough when it comes to spiritual discernment. We may struggle with concepts like the indigenous church principle, the homogeneous unit principle, or the social gospel, raising the conscience of the people to know that they are oppressed and therefore they will rise up and be the liberated church. Yet when it comes, when the rubber really meets the road, the game is not playing on our turf. The game is played on Christ on turf.

I hope you will do what I would do. Take what I say here with a grain of salt. I know you, like me, are struggling with key issues, key concepts, probably things that touch your very commitment, your very life commitment as you look at the future of your ministry. They are indeed issues that pertain to life and death for a people that God has entrusted to us. Remember that as we walk the hard way of life here we bear the message of the sovereign king and we must be careful. We must be careful that that message does not become harsh but that it is indeed the message of the king for the king’s people.

The Privilege of Ministry

This lays a lot of burden up on us, doesn’t it? But I must back up here to say that we are a privileged class because in addition to our salvation we have been commissioned to have this responsibility which is to create in all this the possibility of Christ message, the declaration of the word of God. We are like Ezekiel, called and commissioned with a message unlike any other message in the whole world.

Therefore, I believe that our calling as believers and as ministers is that we must minister in such a way that we do it through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the people of God as they are daily living their lives here on earth within their own context, whatever that context may be, in a language that they can understand. You understand now why I’m trembling because I am not sure that you can understand my English but we are called to communicate with people in a language that they can understand, using thought forms that are familiar to them so that from within their community and throughout the next generations they would receive the word of God, even specifically.

I think that was the situation in which Ezekiel found himself. Why do I say so? I say so because Ezekiel 37:1 tells us immediately that the hand of the Lord was upon Ezekiel. When I came to Bethel I was given a psychological test that proved that I was insane. I could not function on the test. But one thing I know I can do is that I can tell the message of the Lord because it is not my senses that will tell me but it is the hand of the Lord that holds me. I hope it is also for you that you would reexamine your ministry in that light, that the hand of the Lord has been on you like it was on Ezekiel and that hand of the Lord had led you to where you are and is leading you where he would have you be. Notice what this verse meant for Ezekiel as he says it in Ezekiel 37:1–2.

It meant for him that the Lord brought him therefore out by his Spirit. It wasn’t himself that went out in that vision, just see it was the Lord’s hand that took him down to that valley to see how many dry bones there were.

Secondly, it meant that it was the Lord who set him in the valley. Isn’t this interesting? I might have pain and trouble upon trouble within the context of my ministry and I would want to get out of it, but if I take it as I am doing that I am placed there by the hand of the Lord, then he has sent me a message and that’s where I’m supposed to be. I’ll be on my feet where things are going just okay.

Thirdly, he said that the Lord not only took him by the Spirit and set him in this valley of dry bones but that he led him back and forth. I think here I want to bring a little Western thought and say this is insightful for me. God led Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones back and forth, up and down, around it so that Ezekiel could see it. It’s like taking my hand and moving me around the city of Philadelphia in and out of it so that I could know what Philadelphia really is.

Doing the Impossible

When God had done that to Ezekiel we are told, “I saw what God was showing me, a great many bones on the floor of the valley” (Ezekiel 37:1). A great many bones. If I were there I would run away. If I were Ezekiel I would say, “No Lord I cannot stand that.” I would like to think that Ezekiel withstood it because the hand of the Lord was upon him and the reason that hand was upon him as he was being led back and forth was that if God had led him to church he wou;dn’t run away.

It was not just a valley of great many bones, it was a valley of very dry. And then comes this point. The million dollar question: “Son of man, now that you’ve seen this great many bones, these very dry bones, can they live? Can they live?” The Lord has given you a task, you and me. The Lord has given you a congregation to serve a people to leave a message to preach, and as you look at your congregation you might be saying, “How in the world can these individuals be revitalized? Or at worst, how can this congregation come to life again?” I say “at worst” because of what I mentioned. Generally, we are a church with a whole group that is already existing or we are in a congregation wherein we have a core group. We know the people and they are sitting under the word of God and they are daily seeking to apply that word to their lives. They are in terms of Romans, obeying. This was not the case with Ezekiel. You would remember that he was in exile with the children of Israel in Babylon for about 22 years of his ministry.

You would remember that before Judah is taken to captivity in Babylon there is a series of kings of whom it is said, “They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to what their fathers had done.” So it was not just one generation that had withdrawn, that had failed God, but a series of generations that had failed God. And these people, we are told, were saying, “We have lost our hope. We are hopeless. Can these dry bones live?” Is that your question? Are you wondering whether your congregation can come to life again? If you are, do not forget that the answer is God’s. It is very easy and very tempting in our age to go off on tangent and rely on a conference like this as if it were a pep talk. I do hope and pray that it is more than a pep talk that it draws us back to the fountain of life from which we draw our lives and from which our congregations can live and from which world missions can grow and live.

Ezekiel was a wise man. He said, “Oh, Sovereign Lord, you alone (not you and I) know.” I wish I had time to spend with Dr. Fuller and ask him the implications of the word “alone” there as he just refers to it from knowing how to read a book. But what that does to me is that he says, when I stand to minister, I am not carrying that burden of fear anymore because God alone has that burden. It is his. It’s no longer mine. Can I walk through the valley of these bones and minister to them? Sure, I can do it because God alone is doing it. It’s not me. And when Ezekiel came to that conclusion, God gave him the message. He says, “Therefore prophesy to these bones. Prophesy to them and say to them they are dry bones. Hear.” Interesting. He says, “Dry bones, hear.”

Ezekiel said this. How could he say to the dry bones, “Hear”? And what should they hear? Hear the word of the Lord to you. I don’t know how you go about here preaching ministry but this one thing I know is that preaching is a mystery because it brings people from graves to life. It is the power of God if it is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we have a resource that has been given us and as Paul says we bear it in these earthen vessels that the glory may be God’s and not ours.

The Reassuring Word of God

What is that word of God? The word is very assuring. It’s not as bad as the picture of the bones. The word is, I will breathe into you and you will come to life. I will attach your tendons and make you have flesh so that in your living you will know that I am the Lord. I don’t know what the definition of life is for you but for me as I have been working with Ezekiel it is knowing that God is the Lord. In other words, it is that obedience which we are called to.

This passage is very interesting because it comes between two great passages of Scripture: Ezekiel 36:22–28 and Ezekiel 37:20–28 in which God promises: “It is not for your sake oh, house of Israel that I’m going to do these things, going to restore you, but it is for my own holy name sake which you profaned among the nations. When I shall have restored you, I would have shown my holy name. Then the nations of the earth will know that I am the Lord.” The restoration of Israel is so that the nations of the world may see and know that he is the Lord. He says in Ezekiel 36:24–27:

I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

As I heard from a great friend, a friend I hope to know more, here it calls for the obedience of faith again and you were questioning yesterday whether I disagreed or agreed with you at lunch to which I said that I had gone through the manuscript and I was glad to hear it from you face to face and to see you in person. I say so also in addition to what Tom Steller said that we went through two versions of your syllabus before the printed book. I never even knew that the book was already printed until I got here. So it’s a delight to have it and I look forward to digging into it more.

This passage brings what I think you tried to pass across to us, that we may be careful to obey, to observe the decrees and the laws of the Lord. I want to say that I am in the boat, rowing with you, but rowing from behind because you are an elder and I need to learn more about it. I hope we all will.

Do as God Commands

Then sandwiched between this passage then what comes next to it in 37 is also another declaration of God as the God of the universe, the God who will not tolerate idols or images or backsliding. This is the God who says, “Then will you Israel be my people and I will be your God and my servant David will be king over you forever” (Ezekiel 37:24). This is the God who says, “I will make an everlasting covenant with you and my dwelling place will be among you” (Ezekiel 37:26). And he says, “Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever” (Ezekiel 37:28).

When you receive a message of fire like Ezekiel’s message, I don’t know what to do with it. As for me, I burn and loan for an opportunity to declare, and so it was in Ezekiel’s case in verse seven of our chapter. He says, “So I prophesied. I prophesied, I did my job.” But notice how he did it. He said, “As I was commanded.” We might take stock of that and ask ourselves, “When I go about my ministry, do I do it as I have been commanded?”

And when he had prophesied as he was commanded, he said, “When I had done that, I looked.” I can picture him stepping back down and watching the valley of dry bones in amazement, wondering or praying, meditating and saying, “Lord, I have done your job. I have done what you have given me to do. I have proclaimed your word.” He said, “And I looked.” That was his job to prophesy and if that was done to watch it. And as he was looking he said another message came to him in Ezekiel 37:9. Then he said to him, “Prophesy again.” In Ezekiel 37:10, he says, “So I prophesied as I was commanded.” I prophesied as I was commanded. Not simply as I know how, not simply as I had read, not simply as I had thought, but as I was commanded. It comes to us in the ministry context to do as God commands. Here in Cameroon, in South America, or anywhere in the world that we are called to be, we are to do as the Lord has commanded.

Destruction Due to Idolatry

You will notice that his ministry is localized in Babylon and you may be asking the question, “Why Babylon? Why that picture of the valley of dry bones?” The answer is that Israel is suffering in exile. They had lost the temple. Everything had been destroyed. In fact, in 2 Kings the last two chapters tell us that everything was taken out of the temple. The gold and the silver were taken as gold and silver to the Babylonians. The alliances that were made between Israel and Babylon, Israel and Egypt, and all the nations were breaking down. And so Israel was in a sense in captivity. They were in slavery and the reason given for us in the history of Israel is that they had forgotten God and they had forsaken him — Ezekiel 2:3–4, Ezekiel 8:7–13, Ezekiel 13:1–10, Ezekiel 13:17, Ezekiel 13:20. Israel had turned their back on God.

Because I’m not an exegete, I do not distinguish between Israel and Judah. They are to me almost the same thing because at this time the northern kingdom is already destroyed. It’s no longer, so when I say “Israel” I mean Judah, the southern kingdom. And these people who are bearing the burden of this foreign nation who have lost touch with their God are now saying, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone.” To those people Ezekiel’s message came.

To Have Life

What is the implication of this? It seems to me that the significance of this passage is that the Israel of God will have life and that in living they will know that God is the almighty God. They will again be given the cultural identity that they had lost in their land. Their distinctives and their essence will be restored to them. As ministers and missionaries, we stand at a position to minister within various cultural backgrounds today and by cultural I mean here the integrated system of land, patterns of behavior, ideas, and products which are characteristic of a people living within society. It’s the sum total which is embodied in their custom and way of life and articulated in their language.

For our purpose then, as I use the word “culture,” our goal is to apply ourselves under the word of God in the context of an integrated system. That we can talk about systems that are already integrated is important. Even in your society you can talk about a system that is integrated to which you as a preacher are called to apply yourself and to apply the word of God. It’s important. Why? One is not to think of the cultural partners of any people as lacking integrity or as being incomplete, except insofar as Scripture critiques them. Because these systems have served the people for a very long time.

These systems have served the people for many, many years and the assimilation of other elements can only be made possible in two ways: through critique, reexamination, and reformulation. I distrust the second way because I feel that it leads to syncretism. It leads to a mixture so that the end result is neither contextual, neither American nor Christian, neither Cameroonian nor Christian, but a new animal in the block. I prefer the first one because it assumes therefore that this system is rooted in the religious and that underneath this system are presuppositions that are deeply religious, and therefore Scripture begins to critique those religious presuppositions behind the culture. It revamps that culture and sifts it so that we can build an authentic Christian world and life view.

Remember I said that these values and ideas are learned. They are not innate. You learn to be an American. If I live here long enough I can learn to behave and speak probably like an American, if I can go through the hazards of training. I have a friend who is a Canadian. When he is within my people, he can speak my language. He can speak my own hard language. And he can reason with me in my language better than I do and therefore better than most of my people do because he is given of himself to do that. Therefore, I do not believe that culture is a given. I think it is a learned factor and this is what Israel was faced with. Israel had assimilated the Babylonian culture and Israel was now feeling at home with the gods of the Babylonians, and as far as their God was concerned — those that God was raising and stimulating in them, a desire for himself — they saw themselves as dry bones, as a people without hope. And to this group, Ezekiel was called to minister.

Driven to God

Scripture must stand in judgment of culture and correct it in a transformational way. In other words, Scripture must take the dead dry bones and make them come alive. Therefore, if culture — American culture or Cameroonian culture — does not drive us to God, Scripture must critique it. The only way this is done is by the Holy Spirit working with the word in and through our hearts to produce life. We cannot just assume that we know a group of people and that we would better fit an upper class group or a middle class or an inner city or the poor. But we must be driven to our God.

Christianity in our time I think has not fully grasped the implication of the religious outlook of life, that life is lived in terms of the covenant with God so that people are either breaking that covenant as they live life here on earth or they are living in obedience to that covenant. Do you remember the passages I said our passage is sandwiched in between? They are a reassurance to the children of Israel that God is the covenant God. He would make his name holy. He would again redeem Israel so that he can do so for the sake of his name. I think Christianity today is losing that impact of our covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Why do I say so? I say so because we get on the tangent on ministries that are less important and less significant and we make arguments like, “How could you preach to them the gospel if they are hungry? How could you not talk to them about liberation if they are oppressed? How could you not raise their consciences if they are the subclass? How can you preach the gospel?”

The message in the academia now for us poor Africans is to let us know that we would no longer be under colonial powers and we can get out of them. We can assert ourselves and measure up with Europe, with the North Americans, and be our own people. We can take matters into our own hands. And the message for the inner cities, the black communities of America, the women of America, is that you can be like the men and not only just like the men, you can be like the upper class or the middle class or whatever. And if you are not able to deliver that kind of a message, how can you preach to them the gospel? In my convention the message is medical work. Those who have gone to Cameroon know the life abundance program. You must only go into the village because the people are in need of these medical facilities through a team of medical workers and maybe a pastor.

Or they need a school. If you do not train them to read, how will they know the word of God? So the gospel begins with the three R’s; reading, writing and arithmetic. I think those are tangent issues when it comes to gripping us as it gripped Ezekiel. The message wasn’t that. The message was God.

Inferences from Ezekiel

I will make a few inferences from what I have said from my dialogue with Ezekiel, from my meditation on it. Here at the conference I will make three inferences. First, in order for us to minister in such a way that the people will come to life — to know that the Lord is God almighty — we must see the essence of life as a relationship with the Sovereign Lord. Life means relating to God.

Secondly for me it means therefore that all of life is religious. This is simple. Culture is rooted in the religious. That as I look at culture I do not say, “Oh, where are the religious elements that are included in this culture?” I reverse the order. It is not that culture contains religion as much as religion contains culture. I look deep at the roots to see where the problem is. Israel’s problem was not that they did not have a culture, it was that they had lost touch with their God. They had lost hope and that is where the world is. In my opinion, any other attempt will lead us to hopelessness if we do not see life as rooted in the religious, if we do not see culture as rooted in the religious.

Finally, the other inference I make is that my ministry is important. It’s great. There could be no greater ministry than the preaching of the word of God and doing so as he has commanded. Therefore, I take caution and delight in discerning when he tells me to speak and when he tells me to shut up. And to you my friends, who I have asked that you pray that God will help me say something, I give the credit for what I have been able to say because it is through your prayers that he has brought it to us. I hope when you move out from here and get back to your congregations, to your little place of ministry, you are not going to say, “I’ve come here again in that hell to assume those problems,” but you are going to say, “The Lord’s hand is upon me and he has moved me into this place.” I hope as you look at missionaries and as you are praying for missionaries, as you think about the world, that you’ll be asking God to lead his people to the right places so that he can take them around and as they look up and down, move up and down and see what he wants them to see, that they would tell the people his message.

Question and Answer

Let’s take 10 or 15 minutes and see how you might want to carry on some conversation here with Wilfred.

If culture is rooted in the religious rather than the reverse, tell us from your perspective of being here, five or six years, what religion seems to lie behind the degeneracy of American culture?

This is why I said I fear because I talk to people in a context that is other than mine and now when I am put to task to critique that context which is foreign to me. I think the religion that I see coming out in you very clearly in your context is humanism. It’s human autonomous reason. Reason is not subjected to God. If I do it my way it’s right. In other words, it’s a religion that lives in denial of the Sovereign God and in place of that Sovereign God is humanity. Maybe science would be an expression of it to some extent, but I think it’s humanism.

Must the poor be made rich in order to hear the gospel? That’s a difficult question, but it is not difficult in my mind because I would say they must hear the gospel and know their God, whether they are rich or poor. God is the God of the rich people as well as the God of the poor. My people must hear the gospel even in the midst of their sickness. It’s not only when they are well that I will assume that they would hear the gospel. I think they should be hearing the gospel and if at all possible be healed. I think our people should get the gospel and if possible learn the three R’s. They should not be given the three R’s as a means of knowing the gospel. They should be given those three R’s in supplement as an asset. It should be made clear that this is an asset. It’s not the target. In other words, tent missions should be missions tents. I don’t know if I’m communicating at all. Does that clarify anything?

What about meeting people’s needs?

That’s the problem. When you say you are meeting their needs, I don’t think that we could target people and meet their needs. That was the problem we faced in our church in Philadelphia. Our congregation is a very small congregation in terms of size. We have about 140 members but not all of those 140 are there every day. It’s the second Baptist church of the North American Baptist in the country. It’s made up of very elderly people and we were thinking of outreach and various methods. We went out knocking on doors and talked to people. Part of the problem that we ran into was what do we give these people? What do we tell them that they would benefit from when they come to our church? I think that was the wrong question to ask. Because we went off on things like, “We will have good social groups that you can make. We have young family groups. We have youth groups, places where you can fellowship if you are looking for a community of caring people to come around you.”

Finally, I said, “Well this looks good to me, but pastor, I think we should say something more that if they are led by the Lord to drink from his fountain, they should come.” And I owe that to John Piper for sitting under him here. We do not come simply for social reasons, to gather for social reasons. Because when we do it just for social reasons, it becomes empty. You remember what I said about the religious. It’s man there rather than God.

Would you have preached this differently if I were in Cameroon?

Yes, I would have preached it differently if I were here on Sunday morning with the regular worshipers and if I were in Cameroon with the regular worshipers. In a church setting, I would preach it differently. Here I’m speaking to my colleagues and I’m speaking to myself. I’m telling you the burdens I see as a colleague. I would not stand in my congregation and tell the congregation, “Look now I have this insight. I am your Ezekiel and you are my dry bones.” That’s the difference I’m talking about.

Suppose you were speaking to a group of pastors in Cameroon, would it be any different?

In terms of language, yes, I would use my language. But in terms of content, I don’t know. Probably, because of the relationships. I might use better illustrations than I have done here because of my familiarity with the context. For want of those illustrations here I have fumbled and I hope that you would catch on to my thoughts. But I will be more down to earth there than I am here because I’m just floating here. I don’t know your context enough to be down to earth with you where you are.

What do you think we should do in regard to missions with God’s help?

Thank you for finishing the question “with God’s help.” I think with God’s help we should create a passion for the word of God in the people that go out into the missions field so that those people would maintain that passion to the point where they would resist the temptation to sit in offices to do management work and will be at the cutting edge of doing the work. That they would be out in the field where it matters. That they would be with the Africans as you have taken me as a brother, as a colleague, so that together they would search the scriptures, the Berean thought.

That’s what I would say. That’s what is important to me, that we get people who know that God is leading them to Africa. We get people who know God is leading them to Cameroon and is leading them for the purpose of the word of God, not mainly for the sake of making them industrious.

Should be careful in missions to not Americanize people in our ministry ot them?

I happen to think that we might be Christian enough even without having known the delight of the West. I’m saying that when you get out to Africa, you should be my colleague. To speak of Americanization, that’s a loaded concept. In my speaking here, am I Cameroonianizing you? Am I doing that to you in this process? When you teach in English in Cameroon, is that a foreign influence? I’ll say yes. Is it a necessary influence? Probably. But when I first went to Bible school, we were supposed to wear a certain attire every day to school and on Sunday we were supposed to wear a necktie. Last evening Tom asked me, “Wilfred, are you going to wear your Cameroonian attire when you preach tomorrow?” I said, yes. I meant it and I did, and I’m wearing my Cameroonian attire. This is my suit that I brought from Cameroon.

Now I know that was not what he was asking, but you see what I’m trying to say is if I must preach in Cameroon in this suit, then it poses a problem — if I must preach in it. I’m not saying I should not preach in it. I’m not saying I cannot preach in it. I’m not saying I must not preach in it, but if I must only preach it, then I have a problem with that kind of a concept.

There is also a thought of other people saying, “Well, we must be so African that anything Western is imperialistic.” That is foolish. Because there is no mixing of two people without an exchange of ideas and values. But I’m saying as those values are being exchanged, there must be this religious critique, this biblical critique and reexamination of those values, so that what we are transplanting is not an American culture but it’s Christianity. Even though it might have an American element, that element would’ve already been critiqued by the word of God and whatever that Christianity would pick up from Africa would be something that has already gone through the sifting of the word of God. That is my desire. My desire is not a full-flesh accommodation of my African culture to say, “Look how revered our culture is. All we need now is a little Christ,” or what some of you may call “the core of the gospel.”

That core cannot be planted in my culture because of the very nature of the core of my culture. If it is planted, it’s bound to dissipate and scattered in that core of my own culture and remold it in a different fashion. And I hope it is with you that as you handle the word of God, you are saying, “There is no way I can just hand this word of God to the American culture when it comes into it. It must shatter the religious roots of American culture and rebuild the Christian culture.”