Oh give thanks unto the Lord; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing songs unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Psalms 105:1-3
Praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done excellent things: this is known in all the earth. Isaiah 12:4b-5
Greetings, dear brothers and sisters in the name of our exalted Lord! I trust that as you read these verses, your heart will ready itself to bring an offering of praise to our dear Saviour. May our hearts ever be “tuned to sing his praises”! As I meditated on what to write about this month, God impressed upon my heart the realization that the fulfillment of my responsibility in keeping you informed about the work here should not only take the form of a prayer list of the problems and difficulties we are facing, though that is also appropriate at times. I also have a God given mandate to ‘make known his deeds among the people’ and to ‘make mention of the ways and places in which his name is exalted’ so that ‘the hearts of those who seek the Lord can rejoice’! We all know ‘that he hath done excellent things’ but the only way that you are going to know the excellent things that he is doing here is if I tell you! Simple truths, indeed, but God brought them home to me in a new way in preparation for this article and it is this burden that motivates the direction of my writing. Our desire is definitely not to paint a fake or rosy picture of what is happening here, nor is it our heart to make this a list of our accomplishments. Rather, we hope that as you read these written snapshots of the Konkomba church your heart will swell with praise for what God is doing here, and that your heart will rejoice once again in the excellency of our Savior!
Snapshot #1
It is Sunday morning, and a hot dry wind is blowing across the fields kicking up a score of little whirlwinds as I sit waiting for church to begin in a village a couple of bush miles from where we live. It is time for the service to begin and from the many surrounding huts people are beginning to stream into the little church. I say into the church, but in fact there are no walls. Just a couple of trees (which don’t provide much shade since the leaves have fallen off in this dry winter period), and a few stick benches arranged in a square are the only elements of the church building. O yes, and the bell! The call to come to the morning service is aptly carried out by an old discarded disc blade which hangs from one of the nearby trees.
So that is the setting. A very simple one indeed, but one that becomes hallowed ground by the fact of the people who fill it every week. For you see, this is one of the newest villages in which we are working, and the people who gather here are hearing the stories of creation, etc. and eventually the gospel, many of them for the first time. The hunger created by having never heard the clear bible message is evident in their eyes as they sit in rapt attention listening to the story of creation. Particularly the old men sit with quizzical looks on their faces, every now and then nodding in agreement or turning to each other to explain some point more clearly. After about an hour of telling the creation story, part of it by me and part by others, we explain the application of this story to these idol worshippers. We tell them that the God who created everything (they already have a cultural belief in the creation) is above and more powerful than anything that he made and that he desires us to worship him directly instead of through animals or other created things. We go on to explain through a story that God feels insulted and angry when we worship the things he made instead of him. We close by encouraging them to keep coming to the classes to learn more, and give a special thank you to the older men who came and showed such interest, encouraging them to lead their people onto God’s path by their example.
The response to the teaching was not long in coming. As soon as I sat down, the old men began to ask questions relating to their own animistic practices which include the worship of idols, crocodiles, etc. Upon hearing my answer, they burst into a buzz of discussion, saying to each other, ‘If this is true, then in fact, we have been insulting God by the things we have been doing’. We thrill to hear their quick application of the truth to their own lives and pray for them to follow through with what they are saying. This is the Konkomba Church!
Snapshot #2
Let’s move now to another Sunday morning service, this time in Bilisinga which is at the center of our work. Once again I am perched on a simple log bench, and it is time for prayer. We do our services a bit different here and we have just finished singing and we are ready to have our prayer meeting. One of the men gets up and leads the prayers by stating what or whom we are going to pray for and then we all pray in unison on that subject for a minute or so before he goes on to give another item to pray for. Today the man who is leading the prayers forms a very quaint picture with his son who also came to the front with his father and is now standing holding onto his father’s trousers. The man leading prayers commonly comes to church in an old suit coat he bought somewhere, only he wears it without a shirt underneath, and today is no exception! To complete the picture, his little son is dressed in, well, exactly nothing, and I had to chuckle to myself as I gazed upon these two dear uninhibited Konkombas.
But there is more to it than just a cute mental image. My mind turned to the story behind what I was seeing, and my chuckle turned to sincere thankfulness for what God has done in this man’s life. I remembered the time when he told me about his life before Christ, the life of drunkenness and immorality, the sacrifices to idols and fear of the evil spirits. And now there he is, one of the budding leaders in the church, with a life testimony that becomes clearer everyday as he continues to follow God’s word. When he opens his mouth to preach, the words don’t come fast and when he reads it comes even slower, but his sermons are filled with meaning and experience and the younger believers around him are encouraged. Because of the work of God in his father’s heart, that little boy who clings to his daddy’s leg is growing up in a home where idols are not worshiped and daddy does not drink. Praise God! That little three year old recently turned down an offer from one of their neighbors to share in their meat feast, a rare treat that all of the children look forward to, because he knew that they had just offered it to idols. The change in his father is being reflected in the life of this innocent little boy who clings to his daddy’s knee during prayer time!! This is the Konkomba Church!
Snapshot #3
On Friday afternoons I often spend some time studying for the leadership training classes that we hold all day Saturday, and today was no exception. I was pouring over my topical bible when Christy announced that one of the church brothers was coming up the lane to the house. Upon going out meet him, I was surprised to find one of the leaders from Bilisinga—minus his bicycle. After inviting him onto the porch and getting him the customary, and evidently much needed, drink of water, we asked what brought him to see us. He very calmly reminded me that this is Friday, the day that he holds services in a couple of villages where we do not have a church yet but have some believers. When I asked about his bicycle, he simply stated that it was ‘spoiled’ this morning so he had to walk. A quick mental calculation of the distances between the villages he had already gone to came to a total of about 16 miles so far with 7 yet to go before he would be home!
I tried not to appear shocked as I did not want him to think that this kind of dedication to God’s work is anything unusual, but in my own heart I asked myself whether I was as dedicated as he was. After a few words of blessing and encouragement, he was on his way, ready to walk another 7 miles on his thin sandals! This man, and others like him, are regularly making these kinds of sacrifices in their effort to reach out to the many villages of their own people who do not have the gospel. Every week, on foot or bicycle, these men are preaching, not only in their own villages, but also in about 5 other villages who have asked them to come. Though young in the faith and still lacking understanding in many areas of Bible doctrine, the dedication of these young men is a constant source of both encouragement and challenge to me. This is the Konkomba Church!
Snapshot #4
It is not uncommon for me to arrive at a village for a service and have to wait awhile for the people to gather, especially if the night was ‘cold’, which is anything around 75 degrees!! This waiting is particularly true of the training classes we hold for leaders on Saturdays because the men who gather in Bilisinga for those classes come from 4 other villages some of which are 4-5 miles away. Trying to use this time wisely one recent Saturday, I looked around me and saw one of our church brothers sitting under a nearby tree tying handfuls of grass in the way that they do for roofing. I knew that he had been building a new compound (a series of rooms in a circle) so I walked over and told him I would like to help, though my grass weaving skills are about nil. He was anxious to show me his new house so we walked over and he pointed out where each family member would live, including the location of the hen and pig houses. It was a typical Konkomba house with about 1 square and 4 round rooms, so very similar to the many other houses I’d seen being built during this building season.
But this was not a typical Konkomba man and the reasons behind the building of this new house were anything but the common aspirations that many Konkombas have to build a new house. This brother’s original house stood just 100 meters from where we were standing, and that compound, though it was shared by 5 families, was large enough and nice enough that I thought he must have had a specific purpose in mind when he began building. It was not easy to communicate, but between his limited English and my very limited Likpakpaaln he explained what I knew to be the deepest motive of his heart. In the shared compound, 2 Christian families lived along side 3 families of idol worshippers, but this house would be different. He said to me, “That house no be my house, this house be my house, and my house nobody go make pito (local beer). My childs is no grow up to taste pito!” Hallelujah! His motive for this construction project was so that his children could grow up in a Christian environment, not surrounded daily by the things that had enslaved their parents! This is the Konkomba Church!
Snapshot #5
It is a typical Northern Ghanaian afternoon, and we are sitting on the porch trying to escape the sun’s searing rays. The ‘we’ is three of us: myself, my translator, and our leading Konkomba pastor. We are counseling together over the issues and problems facing the church. This dear man sitting in front of me is by far the most mature leader we have here, and his tireless dedication to the work of God among his people has been a joy to behold. Yet what is it that he is now saying? Can I believe my ears? “Daniel, God has been speaking into my heart that I should farm less and preach more.” It is true, during the farming season which just past, much of his time was taken up with farming, but I know that they must farm if they are going to eat, so I’ve tried not to put too high expectations on them. But it is clear from what follows that in the quiet of this brother’s heart, God has been speaking to him, asking him to let go of his desires to ‘get ahead’, and asking him to be willing to be just a poor farmer and preacher of the gospel. He continues by saying, “You know the business that I wanted to start, God showed me that I was making my choices by what would be good for the business instead of what would be good for the church. I want to turn away from these business thoughts and preach more.” I rejoiced to hear these words, not because the business was big (it was tiny), or because I had really sensed that it was taking his heart away, but rather I rejoiced in the fact that God was at work in this man’s life, calling him to the work of God, and he was responding to that voice. I rejoiced also because of the need that we constantly have for people to go to answer all of the crying voices around us. This is the Konkomba Church!
Snapshot #6
I am on the motorcycle riding double with Matthew, our dear friend, helper, and translator, and we are winding our way through a little bush trail that is the Bilisinga road. Matthew sometimes jokes to me that it is ‘Highway #1’ as we cross streams, dodge trees that are in our path, and fight to maintain that upright position which is most desirable when crossing a mud hole. Up ahead on the trail we see a man on a bicycle signaling to us to stop. The man is very happy to see us and has been hoping to meet us for awhile. But he stopped us to ask for something, and I will just record his words here, basically as they came to me through a translator. “I am coming to you from a nearby village, but I am not alone, many of my people sent me. We have seen that people who have received God’s book are very changed from the way that they used to be. We have seen the life of the people in Bilisinga, that it has changed since they heard God’s words, and we want to be like them. We, the young men and women (35 years and down) of my village, want to follow a new path, that is God’s path, and we are begging that you would come and begin teaching us from God’s book”. Then, as if to indicate to me the fact that they are really serious, he finished up with these words, “We have already built our church and are only waiting on you to come”! This is the Konkomba Church!
Dear brothers and sisters, I hope that as you have read these few written glimpses of the Konkomba church your heart has been drawn upward in praise to God as mine has as I’ve sat here writing them, and that you have a bit better understanding of the work that God is doing here among our people. These stories are real, and though I have clarified a few details to make it more understandable to you, each one actually occurred and there are real people behind each one of them. I hope that you can tell that we love these people very much! God has given us just a bit of his dying and yet still undying love for them, and as we pour our lives into them, our investment in them grows, and that love grows also. We continue to need your prayers, both for us as young and needy missionaries and for the young Konkomba church, and our desire would be that many of you would also ask for and receive a little of that love that we mentioned earlier. As you spend time in prayer for us and for the Konkombas, your investment and love will grow also, until you can truly say, “These are my people”! If we all stay faithful, you in praying there and us in working here, we will all one day stand around a group of ransomed Konkombas in the throne room of God, and Oh, can words ever describe the joy that will be ours to stand in that day and say along with our dear Saviour, “These are our people”! May this vision fill our hearts in such a way that it motivates us to prayer and action!
We are, committed with you to this end,
Daniel & Christy, and Abigail Kenaston
