“I wouldn’t want to kick the Word of God!”

Years ago when I was leading Learning Tours with Mennonite Church Canada, one of the persistent questions I often had to answer for those who planned to travel with me was “what can we bring?” Often there was a request from a church asking if they could send colouring books and crayons, or maybe pencils and erasers, or even soccer balls…I realized the intention was well meant – we were visiting places that faced the challenge of poverty at an extreme greater than what we experience in Canada. And yet there is something curious about the desire to bring “gifts” that we feel might meet a need in the country we are visiting.

On Sunday I heard a story about one of these “gifts”…

I had the tremendous privilege of being invited to preach at the Tsega Adama Meserete Kristos Church – a six year old congregation of over 1,000 members. I met Pastor Demrew earlier last week when I had the chance to tour their impressive building project (and even climb up the wooden scaffolding to the second floor – wish I could share some pictures!). Although I understood little and Solomon (a New Testament professor who served as my translator) had to keep translation to summarizing (especially during the singing), the worship experience was powerful!

Sitting in Pastor Demrew’s office before the worship time, I noticed a soccer ball resting above his book shelf. I asked what I thought was an obvious question about his enjoyment of soccer…and then he shared this story…

Several years ago an American evangelism team came to the region to do several days of “evangelism training” – apparently it involved some techniques on how to engage community children and bring the gospel to the neighbourhood.

Demrew, didn’t elaborate much on how effective the training was, but told us that at the events completion the organizers gave each of the pastors a soccer ball covered in scripture – it included the 10 commandments and basically the “top 10” of evangelical texts one might expect to hear in an evangelism presentation.

Demrew couldn’t imagine ever using this soccer ball for street evangelism…

“Why would I want to kick the Word of God?”

I don’t intend to share this story as a discouragement for those of us who have plenty to share with those in need (I had the tremendous honour of presenting a special gift from our congregation – see the next post)…but I do intend to offer the challenge to make sure you understand the cultural context before deciding upon a gift!