Africa and Afghanistan, Ethics and Unity

By LeRoy Lawson

Say You”re One of Them
Uwem Akpan
New York: Little Brown and Company, 2008

The Places in Between
Rory Stewart
Orlando: Harvest Original/Harcourt, 2004

Just Ministry: Professional Ethics for Pastoral Ministers
Richard M. Gula
Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2010

The History of the Open Forum on the Mission of the Church 1983″“2009
John Mills
Middleburg Heights: Open Forum/Southwest Christian Church, 2011

Oprah”s Book Club is not my usual source to find a good read. Not that good books aren”t there. It”s just that my interests and her recommendations haven”t often jibed.

That is, until now. Or until 2009, to be more precise (I”m behind). That”s the year Uwem Akpan”s Say You”re One of Them made the cut. The author, a Nigerian Jesuit, is a gifted storyteller, even when””or perhaps especially when””he depicts Africa”s recent horrors.

He depicts, but he doesn”t magnify, the atrocities. He minimizes them, which makes them seem even worse, worse because now we see through a child”s eye, worse because now we hear through a child”s understatement. These stories are not about the suffering of the thousands; they are the intimate, personal agonies of the one, the few.

Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nigeria: news accounts from here have riveted the attention of Western viewers for decades, but they are about people far away, people forgotten when the news hour is over and American Idol steals our attention.

Meet Akpan”s children and you can never forget them. In the direst of circumstances these charming, tough, heartbroken, and heartbreaking boys and girls fight to live, victims of slavery, religious conflicts, prostitution, genocides, drug trafficking, and poverty.

Have you ever wondered whether your church”s commitment to foreign missions is worthwhile? Read this book””which isn”t about missions””and your wondering is over.

 

Memoir from Afghanistan

In 2002 journalist Rory Stewart walked alone across Afghanistan and lived to tell about it in The Places in Between. He wasn”t always sure he would. He had previously trekked 20 to 25 miles a day across Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. The country”s politics slammed Afghanistan”s door shut. But when the Taliban fell, he grabbed his chance and took off on foot to the “places in between” Herat on the west to Kabul in the east.

He braved the mountain trails, though the normal route through Kandahar was flatter, easier, and without snow. It was also, however, still partially in the hands of the Taliban. The mountains were still treacherous, but safer.

A tough going he had of it, slogging through blinding snowstorms, bedding down wherever he could find shelter, depending for food on the uncertain hospitality of villagers, encountering unexpected friendliness and too much hostility. More than once he wondered whether he was finished, permanently.

Stewart delivers an up-close-and-personal look behind the headlines, replete with his insights into religion, culture, and human nature at its best and worst. Along the way you”ll fall in love with Babur, Stewart”s traveling companion, a retired fighting mastiff and his only abiding””if quite unmanageable””friend.

I have been to Afghanistan. I saw only the capital city and its immediate environs. Back then I would not have had the courage to venture farther out. I”m grateful Stewart did, though, and that he lived to tell about it.

 

Ethics for Ministers

Richard Gula”s Just Ministry is the book on ministerial ethics I”ve been trying to find for years. We don”t talk enough about this subject anymore, except when we observe moral lapses in other church groups. Everybody tsk-tsks about those Catholic priests and their abuse of young boys, of course. And then there”s Ted Haggard and before him Jimmy Swaggart, and we must not forget Jim and Tammy Baker. Oh yes, I forgot to mention . . . 

The truth is, “there is none righteous, no not one,” even among the clergy. We can still give thanks, though, that the majority of ministers deserve respect and not condemnation.

Another truth, unfortunately, is that the code of ethics young ministers in my generation were taught seems to be held more lightly today, matters such as keeping the confessional sacred, honoring other confidences, not stealing sheep, managing money with integrity, observing boundaries in relationships, respecting and not abusing the powers we are granted. Ministers are charged to act as authentic representatives of Christ and the church.

Gula is a professor of moral theology at the Franciscan School of Theology of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Scandals have rocked his church. He knows the problems of the priesthood. He locates the solution in character, not in codes of ethics, yet believes such codes are helpful in forming character. He appends a couple of “Statements of Ministerial Commitment” as recommended guides for ethical behavior.

I most appreciated the author”s take on the minister”s power. Early in my own experience, in a heated moment, I castigated a deacon for what I perceived was his mistreatment of a member of my family. My language was too harsh, my temper not fully in control. Later, contrite, I went to his workplace and sincerely apologized. It was too late; I had hurt him too much. He never returned to our church.

Since then I have observed many of my fellows in ministry who would never go astray sexually, never mishandle money, and never deliberately lie. But they, like me, have abused power. There ought to be a book for the likes of us.

There is. It”s called Just Ministry.

 

Unity for the Church

Finally, a word about Christian unity. It”s pretty apparent by now that the spiritual descendants of Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone haven”t done so well at it, whether in the a cappella churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, or Christian churches/churches of Christ. Each group believes itself the genuine inheritor of our 19th-century progenitors””and of the first-century church. Yet it seems pretty hard for us to talk to one another.

In recent decades several attempts have been made to facilitate conversations among us. John Mills documents the efforts of one of them in his self-published The History of the Open Forum on the Mission of the Church. The book contains his reviews of the many meetings held between 1983 and 2009 as he and a handful of others dreamed, schemed, and sacrificed to get representatives of the disparate branches to talk, just to talk. Here you”ll find the agendas, Mills”s correspondence, and several names once prominent in all three branches.

At one point, when these conversations were making little progress, an unexpected opportunity presented itself for dialogue with the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), a group that also views itself as a nondenominational movement to restore (“reform” is their word) New Testament Christianity. The goal of these talks, also, was not merger but the developing of a spirit of cooperation and fellowship between two similar movements.

The means to this end was once again a series of meetings for reading and discussing position papers and for building friendship. There was no money, or precious little, to pay expenses. It was always a project of volunteers. This effort also eventually lost steam.

I participated in a similar effort among “our” three branches in the 1960s and 1970s. We had a good time together. We chatted and debated and embraced and accomplished little. I dropped out. John Mills is made of sterner stuff. He and his colleagues persisted for more than a quarter of a century. Unfortunately, they, too, did not realize their hopes.

But they didn”t entirely fail, either. Some of the same participants (Doug Foster, Paul Blowers, and Robert Welch, to name a few) continue by other means to pursue the same ends, especially between the Christian churches/churches of Christ and the a cappella church of Christ. They are making gradual headway.

It”s an elusive goal, this unity we talk so much about. We aren”t good at achieving it, perhaps, but dare not stop trying. One of Jesus” prayers compels us: “That they may be one.”

 

LeRoy Lawson is international consultant with CMF International and professor of Christian ministries at Emmanuel Christian Seminary in Johnson City. Tennessee. He also serves as a CHRISTIAN STANDARD contributing editor and member of Standard Publishing”s Publishing Committee.