JOURNEYS
Discovering Unity:
Virginia Pastor Emphasizes Equality in Christian Empowerment through Jamaican Expeditions
- Michael Fariss with editing by Adam R. Cole // July 7, 2009
American missionaries pose on Jamaican beach. © 2009
When I first came here in the summer of 1994, the men here yelled from the side of the road, “Oppressor!” and gave blank stares, stares that seemed to express an unbounded hatred.
I had come to Jamaica then inspired to bring hope, but first had to realize that my ‘whiteness’ was a hindrance to my ability to reach others here, here where people had come to see the white American male as the reason for their struggle.
What I realized on that initial trip to Jamaica would transform my thinking on inner city and global evangelism—the process of sharing the “Good News” of Jesus Christ with others around the world—and would in turn transform the local ministry that God was building through me back in Norfolk, Va. Instead of seeing my role as the messenger of salvation, in a white man’s burden sort of way, I instead realized just how crucial it was to empower and equip black leaders to take on that role in order to better reach people of their similar race and ethnic background. In its most basic sense, I had to see the concept of the Great Commission—the power and authority Jesus Christ gave to all believers to share and impart His Good News—as something that was not a white thing, and not even a black and white thing, but a colorless thing. God’s vision was to transform the world, to bring every type of people to Himself; therefore, it would take everyone type of people to go out and do His work.
That theory and that vision evolved into what we called GLOBE, the George Liele Objective for Black Enterprise. Naming the organization after the first black ordained Baptist minister and first black foreign missionary—who was born as a slave in Virginia and who served in Jamaica--we set a path for training and equipping African Americans to minister overseas. We formed teams together for annual missions trips to Jamaica to give them global focus and touch the lives of the Jamaican people.
This year, our 12th trip to the island nation, held at the end of May and early June of this year, was equally successful. I was joined by four African American young adults— Val, Jeron, Courtney, and Shelly —who would join me in sharing the gospel to the Rastafarian people that once ostracized me from their villages.
The town that we had become most attached to over the years is called Buff Bay and it was here that we centered our endeavors on this most recent trip. Through the Buff Bay Baptist Church we have connection to 6 other smaller churches in other nearby villages, in the mountains and jungles, the hard to reach places were poverty is at its worst here. Together with the four African American missionaries from Norfolk, we went into one of those villages and simply talked, simply struck up conversations with people that we met. We wanted to show them human compassion and that they were indeed equal, even as the world made very clear that were intertwined in the matrix of haves and have nots. Within this environment of casual conversation to everyone that crossed our path, I saw the Spirit of God take over, in the way that these Rastas opened up their hearts.
The highlight of our trip was an ice cream social for one of the villages named Skibo. Just seeing the kids lick the bright orange creamy wonders was precious. Through our love to them, they had welcomed us into their hearts.
In the end, I could feel change, not only in the lives of the Jamaican people, but in the lives of the four young adults that I brought with me. I could sense a hope in them, to come here again for change, and to galvanize others in their community to believe in a dream where all people are empowered to spread God’s great message. They spoke of hosting a conference here based on that belief that would unite Americans and Jamaicans under that one vision. Only time will tell, and God’s working in all of us, in how that vision comes to life.
For me, I still get sentimental riding through the jungle byways, the raw essence of life passing in a fury as the bus of our hosts rampages along the mountain road. I know this is not my home, and I am so different from the people, but I feel attached here, as if just by being a ‘minority,’ I am in a place where I can be not myself, not regulated to the status quo. It is an incredibly liberating feeling.
I continue to see change in different ways each year. I pray for the harvest that is in Jamaica, one that is breeding a collective vision of unity everywhere.