by Milton Pierce
Let me jump in and add to the current narrative on the American race problem. I’ll give you a very simple illustration and it concerns white Americans in a black context. We need to go back to 1959 in West Africa. A generation of great American missionaries were coming toward the end of their careers. They came out of an America before Martin Luther King. They had given their lives for the people of Africa and done their best to lay the foundations for the planting of the church of Jesus. But it was in a very backward and undeveloped part of the world and life was not easy. Some had even died in their attempt.
Now comes along a new generation of white American missionaries with some radically new ideas.
My wife and I were assigned to live in an old mission house right close to one side of an ancient village composed of mud huts. We were to learn the language and continue the work of evangelizing outlying villages and starting churches.
That old house built of dried mud brick had a good foundation and a good roof but not much else. Just outside the front door and hanging from a tree was the church bell the missionary used to call the local believers for church and they would come. Now here is my illustration. Previous to our arrival the practice was that the missionary rang the bell when they considered it time to call the people for church. One of our first acts was to take that bell down and hang it in the church yard. We told the church people that now it was up to them to ring the bell when they were ready and we would come.
Do you see it? This was a whole new concept of the white missionary becoming the servant of the black man. Not all agreed but some of us chose to position ourselves not as overlords but as fellow workers striving side by side to accomplish something and that, on our part, for the good of the other. In the end, years later we all won, becoming brothers and sisters in Christ not just in a legal sense but in reality. Maybe if you think about it you can see an application to our American situation.”