The Mission of Good Samaritan

The Mission of Good Samaritan

 For the Installation of Crispin Ilombe Wilondja,
Pastor of Good Samaritan
Service at St John's Lutheran Church, Atlanta, GA
Sept 8, 2018

 Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. I have been with Good Samaritan from the beginning, in Swahili they have come to call me Ndugu. Indeed while Crispin was waiting a long time for First Call, I was one who nudged him saying, “Hey, Crispin, I think you need to call a new congregation for refugees.” I was delighted that the Synod had also been encouraging him in this direction. I would like to share a few words about Good Samaritan and how we can all share in this mission.

 What does missions mean to us today? I grew up in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination with a strong emphasis on mission. About once a month a different missionary would come to our church. As a child, I loved the slide shows in Sunday evening worship. We would see pictures of far off places like Brazil, Burma or Burundi. We'd see the little villages, the humble buildings, and the faces of other children, like us but maybe not blessed as we were. Perhaps their skin was a little more brown than ours and their clothes a little more worn than ours. And the missionaries would bring little objects to show us. I remember one missionary brought the long skin of an anaconda snake. He unrolled it for us. It must have be 40 or 50 feet long. Okay, maybe just 10 or 15 feet, but in my eyes it was big. At the end our families would be asked to make a pledge of $20, $30, even $50 dollars per month for the three year cycle of the mission. Above and beyond a full 10% tithe to our local church, my family would always support some half dozen missionaries with these pledges. Now, I'm not going to ask you to make a pledge like that today, but I just want to let you know where I come from. My parents gave to these missions because they believed it was important to share the gospel with people around the world. We could not go personally, but we could send our missionary families with our prayers and financial support. Our missionaries took with them our bibles, our songs, our beliefs and practices to places like Congo.

 A few weeks back I was speaking with Papa Celestine about this. I sang a little song, “Oh the blood of Jesus.” As I sang it, he sang along too. I asked him how did you know this song in English. He explained that he learned it in bible college when he was 17. This was just a few years before I was born. I learned that Celestine had become a Pentecostal pastor as a result of this brief training. This was exactly the kind of missionary work my church had been doing in places like central Africa, training young men to lead new churches.

And of course, it was not just the Assemblies of God who sent missionaries to Africa. Most American and European denominations did this. In fact, the Lutheran missionaries were so successful that presently there are six times as many Lutherans in Africa as there are in North America. No doubt all this missionary activity has left a lasting impression on the religious cultures of Africa. For us in the west, missions was about sending the gospel somewhere else. But what was it like to receive?

 You see before you the people of Good Samaritan. I need no slide show to show you their faces. These have come to us by way of fleeing war, spending decades in refugee camps, and finally coming to the United States as refugees seeking a new life. Many of the child have been born in the refugee camps, and this is there first chance to feel connected to a country. This was no easy passage. I suspect that Jonah had better accommodations in the belly of a whale. They have not come with much. But they have come with their songs, family members, their memories. Some have brought their bibles and their understanding of the gospel.

The first time I heard Pastor Crispin preach, I became clear to me, and I told him, “You are a missionary. God has sent you to us because in America we need missionaries to help us.”

Let's flip this around. Perhaps missions is not so much about where we send the gospel, but how we receive the gospel in those who have lived it out in cultures and under circumstances other than our own.

 As I started attending services with Good Samaritan, I just took it all in. At first my ears could not detect the difference between French and Swahili. I would just smile and greet people. One of the first Swahili word I learned was “Safi.” This was the name of young woman I had met and her name means, “clean”, good or beautiful. I would try to follow along in worship. The songs were mostly in Swahili, but there was something strangely familiar about the singing. The whole approach was much more like singing in the Pentecostal churches of my childhood. Call and response, poly-rhythmic. There was spontaneity in who would lead a song and how one would follow. In a little while as we commune, we will sing, “Damu ya Yesu, usafisha kabisa.”

You see, that song was sent around the world with our missionaries, but it was received in Africa. And so it comes back to us to day. That song carried the blood atonement theology that was common among evangelicals like my parents. How is it that this song was received in Africa and is now a living expression of this congregation refugees here in Atlanta? Whose mission is this? Where did it begin? Yes, we have just installed Pastor Crispin, but this mission is Christ's.

The blood of Christ makes us completely clean, safi, usafisha kabisa. But more than that, Damu ya Yesu makes us brother and sister, ndugu na familia.

 So I welcome you to share in this mission, the mission of Good Samaritan. Pray for us. Worship with us when you can. Participate in activities that help us connect to our new home in this country and within the ELCA. For the children, we want to form an club call Little Green Samaritans so that our kids can learn about the environment and have outing experiences in natural settings. You can help us with these trips. Remember our youth also for shared activities. For example, St John's and Good Sam will share a confirmation class, and they are right here with us for their first meeting. We aspire to have a dynamic women's ministry. As many of our families are headed by single mothers, being a refugee family makes this even more challenging. We would like to offer heath, finance and other practical living classes and support. We also work actively in cultivating English as a second language. We do this as preparation for worship each Sunday.

 Our vision for Good Samaritan is that we form a strong community of refugees and friends who are able to minister among wider community of refugees. We start small, where we can celebrate and cultivate our various gifts for ministry. The ways in which this congregation connects with other Lutherans in this synod is critical. So we invite you to participate with us. Ultimately, the mission is to discover who we are for each other in Christ, how damu ya Yesu makes us brother and sister. We do have financial needs. So give as you are led to, but more than that we covet your prayer, presence and participation.

Together we are Christ's mission. The offering this afternoon will be greater work of Good Samaritan Lutheran Ministries.

Please make checks payable to Good Samaritan Lutheran Ministries.