Gospel Seeds

July has been a busy month. Jodi spent the month with the Sicangu Lakota in South Dakota and then met up with 18 people from God's House for our second trip to the Wiconi Living Waters Family Camp and Pow Wow in Turner Oregon at the end of the month. Through out the month one question has been, why, after 500 years of missionary endeavors with the indiginous people of North America are there so few who would identify as following Jesus? And what, if anything, can be done now to rectify that? One Native elder who was asked this question responded, "The gospel was never planted as a seed in our cultures. A seed adapts to its environment, it takes on some of the characteristics of the life around it. The gospel was always brought to us as an already formed plant, a plant that had the characteristics of Western culture. Now we need to let the gospel be planted as a seed and see what will grow." It is interesting that when we first attended Wiconi Family Camp and Pow Wow, Allan, a Kwakwat'l man said that it was the first time he felt like he could be Native and Christian at the same time. Even though we use many indiginous forms in our ways of being church this was the first time he was seeing Native men and women worshipping Jesus in culturally appropriate ways. Not only historically, but even today I am amazed at how many Native people I meet who believe (because they have been told it over and over and over again) that they need to choose between being Native or following Jesus, they cannot do both. But this is a complete denial of the fact that culture bears some aspect of God's glory. That culture is an expression of our humanity and yes, our humanity is fallen, and something of its true nature is obscured by sin, but it is also an expression of the nature of God, we are made in God's image, and our cultures will also bear something of God's image. The gospel both brings out the "God light" in culture and corrects the lies of sin in culture. Missiological practice tells us though that it is the people in the culture who, by the Spirit of God are able to discern what is of God and what is not. However it is outsiders to Native culture who continue by and large to say what cultural practices are of the devil and what of God, without an insiders understanding of those practices, and the seed of the gospel continues to not be given space to take root.