The New Faces of Mission
by Donal Dorr
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New Beginnings, a new generation of Missionaries
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A few years ago I wrote a series of five articles for Africa under the general title The Changing Faces of Mission. I want now to add a kind of postscript to that series—one in which I describe some of the New Faces of Mission.
ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
By way of background, I would like to recall some of the points from the previous articles. In the first article I wrote about two of our missionaries from the early period, the 1930s to the 1950s. Bishop McGettrick, with the Medical Missionaries of Mary, set up several enormous leprosaria where thousands of patients were treated and cared for. Fr Pat Laffey used the Legion of Mary as the main instrument of his missionary work; at first in a rural area in the east of Nigeria and later in a sprawling urban slum on the outskirts of Lagos.
In the second article I spoke of the ‘new generation’ of missionaries who went out after the mid-1960s, people inspired by the new thinking associated with the Second Vatican Council. Those of our missionaries who came after the Council tended to have a different style and outlook from the previous generation. For instance, my good friend, the late Father Julian Connolly, was maybe not as busy as the early pioneers. His style of being missionary was more one of presence. He was happy just to be with the people. Not content to be a benefactor to the local people, he wanted to be a personal friend as well.
I went on in the next article to describe a key change that came in the 1970s; the coming into prominence of the word ‘spirituality’. I recalled how in those years our missionaries began to put a new emphasis on various ‘experiential’ spiritualities; charismatic renewal, Ignatian spirituality and basic Christian communities. Each of these, in their own way, helped us to appreciate the importance of religious experience, of spiritual feelings of joy and hope and of the love of God and to have a new awareness of the work of the Holy Spirit.
In the fourth article I wrote about the commitment of missionaries to all kinds of human development and about the emergence of liberation theology and how it affected our missionaries; at first in Brazil and later, as Training for Transformation, in the African countries where we work.
In the final article of the series I wrote about the importance of inter-religious dialogue—particularly about cultivating good relationships with Muslims—and about how reconciliation has come to the fore in our missionary work in recent years.
AN INTERNATIONAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY
Have things changed in the five years since these articles were published?
Yes and no. No, in the sense that all these issues are still very much alive today and some of them—especially reconciliation and inter-religious dialogue—have become more urgent than ever. But yes, there has been a great change. Until recently our members were mainly Irish, with several Scots and one member from England and one from the USA. Our new members are from a wide range of countries: Kenya, Brazil, Scotland, Nigeria, Zambia and Malawi. This is an exciting and challenging development.
We left it quite late to become an interracial Society. This was because we were working in areas where the church had a serious shortage of personnel; and our primary commitment was to build up the local church. But ten years ago we reached a stage in several of the countries where we had been ministering when we felt the time had come to put the missionary challenge before the local Christian communities.
The response has been prompt and generous. We have been able to make a careful selection among the many young people who came forward—and the result has been a group of outstanding students, of whom the first five are being ordained this year.
Back in the 1950s, when I was a seminarian, we saw the years of study as a long-drawn-out period when we were being prepared to be missionaries. Nowadays, in contrast, our students can feel that they are already in mission during their student days.
They come from widely different cultures. For instance, there is a huge difference between the exuberance of Nigerian culture and the rather restrained culture of East and Central Africa. And both of these are quite different from the culture of Brazil, as well as from the culture of those of us from Western countries. These cultural differences are reinforced by very different models of church in the different areas, and different conceptions of the role of the priest.
Because of these differences it is already a major missionary commitment for students from these different cultures to live together in harmony, respecting each other and appreciating the riches of each culture and religious experience. By living together in such a richly-variegated community the students and the formation team are modelling the kind of rich and harmonious world that Jesus calls us to preach and promote.
SAME INTENT, NEW BEGINNING
The role of the formation team is crucial in all of this. And the very notion of a formation team is itself rather new. In the past, the seminary had a quite hierarchical structure: a rector, a dean of discipline, a teaching staff and a spiritual director. Nowadays there is more emphasis on team-work. And the word ‘formation’ brings out the point that it is not just a question of teaching the students or of training and evaluating them, but above all of accompanying them on their journey to God and towards being fully-fledged bearers of the Good News in distant lands and areas of deprivation.
The formators live with the students and are constantly available to support and coach them. Much of this work is done on a one-to-one basis and some in free-flowing group work. This task of formation is a demanding one. It means that many of our most active and committed missionaries are asked to step back from their regular ‘on the ground’ missionary work and to devote several of their prime years to nurturing the new generation of missionaries.
The more obvious kind of formation work is being done by those who live with our students in our six houses of formation, spread over several countries. A less obvious but equally important work of formation is being done by those of our missionaries who welcome our students to live and work with them during the holidays and especially during the lengthy period when students do their ‘on the ground’ missionary training.
At the beginning of this article I said it was a postscript to those I had written about the changing faces of mission. But perhaps it would be better to call it a new beginning. For, though the faces of mission may change, the invitation to share the Good News remains ever new.
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