Mid-month news February 2025

Jim Harries, jimoharries@gmail.com

Dear Friends,

Transition Celebrations a new Director for the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission)
Two celebrations, both entirely on-line, were enjoyed by a total of about 70 people, many of them mission scholars, and others very concerned for spreading of the Gospel of Jesus to Africa, Asia, and beyond! The first one was in English, and included a lot of people from the USA and UK. The second was in German, with German people. Both were on 6th February, and both were organised to a high standard by the incoming administration of the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission). The programmes included music, questions and discussion, outgoing and incoming CEOs being interviewed, Bible sharing, prayer, and speeches by people who emphasised the key importance of the practice of vulnerable mission today. The video recordings of these events, simple introductions to vulnerable mission, presented in easy-to follow-sequence with a great variety of speakers and styles in active engagement, makes it highly recommended for inquirers about vulnerable mission!
Dr. Marcus Grohmann (Director), a German ministering in South Africa, has taken over CEO responsibilities from Dr. Jim Harries, a Brit living and working in mission in East Africa. Deborah Bernhard (Deputy Director, who has experience in Thailand) and Maria Richter together with Marcus form the new Executive committee. The AVM is now registered as a charity in Germany, and has a new website: vulnerablemission.org.

Emmanuel Becker, one of the speakers lauding the work of the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission).

Jim’s long-term colleague Jean Johnson, who was master of ceremonies for the English-language event.

My self (Jim) top left, incoming Director Marcus Grohmann (top right), and master of ceremonies for the German event Ute Paul (bottom).

You can see the videos yourself, one hour’s duration, for free!

Here is the you tube recording of the English-language event.

Here is the you tube recoding of the German-language event.

(The musical interludes were edited out for copyright reasons.)

I have been chairing the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission) since it was founded in 2007. The new team is very competent and capable of doing a much better job than could I. Some may be asking, now that I have handed over, what next for me? Firstly, I will continue to chair the Governing Board of the AVM. I remain totally committed to the work of the AVM, and continue to see myself putting in a lot of effort into its activities. Secondly, I am hoping that this will give me more time and energy to spend in on-the-ground mission work in Kenya and Tanzania. It is this kind of work, using indigenous languages and resources, that the AVM is promoting, that I want to focus on even more than before, having had to a certain extent an administrative load removed from me. It is my daily-engagement with African people who I am not funding, using their languages, that continues to inspire my writing and other engagements related to the AVM.

Ordination

7th February I attended an ordination event. Around 20 men were ordained, and two women as deacons. This was at a church with which I have long related closely. The event was led by a Black American, who is working a lot on the African continent, encouraging African Churches. This made for a mixed flavour, of ‘genuine Kenyan Luo’, and American African Pentecostalism! My role … was limited to a bit of translation, when the American used vocabulary unfamiliar to Kenyans. It was striking, to me, to see the newly ordained men bring their goats into the church at the end of the celebration (see photo).

Contemporary Christian ordinations are obviously a carry-on from traditional designations of men as elders. Many things demonstrate this. This, like many churches, at one time resisted any ‘clerical garb’ (including dog collars) and theological education, but now is increasingly investing in robes, sashes and means to identify as Christian leaders. For recordings of the event that I made go to: https://youtu.be/xnx2ZexxkUw (The singing is in English, as worship was mostly led by the African Americans.)

Safeguarding

British-led efforts at ‘safeguarding’ all their citizens wherever they are in the world, may well be impractical, and dangerous. I here outline some of the issues that I am raising with the British government, and safeguarding organisations in the UK.
From here in East Africa, it is very difficult, well, impossible, to get myself ‘properly safeguarded’ to UK standard, without hurting a lot of people.

• One reason for this, is simply that my life and work is out of sight to British people. I work, day-in-day-out for months, without ever meeting any Brits, and with only rare occasional time spent with any Western people at all. This frustrates the objective of safeguarding legislation; that every British citizen must be under supervision whenever they relate to children or vulnerable people.
• The second reason, is because I work in a ‘world’ in which the underlying thinking and logic is vastly different from that of the UK. This easily makes safeguarding appear strange, odd, foreign, incomprehensible, illogical, totally impractical, and totally at odds with everything else that is going on. Trying to implement safeguarding in this world is hazardous: overt efforts at preventing abuse of children could easily be misinterpreted as a confession that one has been abusing them.
• – My being under pressure to do UK-style safeguarding, is yet another outcome of the kinds of ignorance of cross-cultural work that the Alliance for Vulnerable Mission is (desperately!) trying to make Western people aware of. Pray for my colleagues in the AVM as they continue to endeavour to drive cross-cultural ignorance out of the powers that be in the West, be they missionaries, development workers, journalists, politicians, and so on.
  

I am aware that safeguarding is not unknown in Kenya (Tanzania?) amongst churches and in other contexts that draw on Western donors. Africa generally, is ready to take whatever the West requires them to do in order to continue receiving funding. Implementation may be another matter.
The above does not mean that I am not safeguarded. I have long been living in a fish bowl, where my every move is closely visible to many eyes in my hosting communities. I have long made many efforts to make myself as observable as possible (for example, my home has no security wall or fence, my home languages are local, my curtains remain open for all to see what goes on should they want to walk by my house at night, my children go to local schools and interact freely with many people, my home church watches closely what we do, visitors constantly walk in and out of my house, and so on and so on! Add to this, I live in many ways as an ‘African man’. ‘African men’ often keep a distance with their children, i.e., they are not involved in changing nappies, washing, feeding, hugging, etc. etc. of children. Add also that I do not invest money into my local community, over and above that which I use to look after orphan children. I do not pay anyone to help me, and so on. (The accusation against Western workers in the poor world is often that their donor status results in people they abuse covering their tracks so as to continue to get foreign money. One reason I try to do vulnerable mission, is to avoid this.)
It seems clear to me, that should a foreigner like myself abuse vulnerable local people, they will be at risk of being lynched, i.e., instant justice, killed on the spot. Was I to implement a UK-style safeguarding system, I would quickly be putting my own life in danger, exactly because ‘I need to be safeguarded to stop me hurting vulnerable children/people’ sounds very much like ‘I have been abusing vulnerable children/people’.
I can say, that I often do not relate to local people in ways that the British would find appropriate. I am more likely to relate as, in my estimation, do my African colleagues. When one is very close to a community, one cannot at the same time be the superman who does everything better and condemns locals (unless one has a lot of money). At the same time; this means that sometimes my behaviour could be condemned should British people know what I do and how.
Myself, and the Director of the AVM Dr. Marcus Grohmann, are engaged in publishing materials that point to the above kinds of difficulties with safeguarding. Our efforts have so far resulted in two published articles:

https://www.academia.edu/attachments/106978063/download_file?s=portfolio
https://journals.mf.no/ntm/article/view/5589

I am discussing my concerns with the British government, as well as with the safeguarding agency 31:8, and another safeguarding agency, to alert them to the dangers of what is going on. There is a serious risk that, should British people inform Kenyans about any lack of safeguarding on my part, this could lead to severe consequences perhaps including being harassed or killed, imprisonment, and a ruining of 37 years of mission work. Discourse about safeguarding refers to, and can by implication suggests, very dirty sinful ways of life. Translation of the safeguarding discourse into Kenyan languages (including Kenyan English) is very fraught.
The British government is determined to listen to any victim of sexual or other abuse by British citizens. I have not engaged such abuse. But, in Kenya there is a lot of incentive to wrongly accuse. A ‘typical’ Kenyan woman could potentially make a lot of money by bringing a false accusation against a British citizen.
Someone wanting to ask an African; ‘hey, is what Jim is saying here right?’ should be aware, that in today’s Africa, if you want to get anywhere, you have to agree with Western authorities. Hence, even should an African person understand a great deal of what is going on, that does not mean that they will be honest. People interpreting Africa to the West should be Westerners.
There is a sense in which some of my supporters have recently decided, not because of what I’ve done and said, but because of changes in the UK legal system, that I am not to be trusted. One’s supporters no longer trusting one when one is stretching out to reach people of a different culture, is very unhelpful.

Yours,

Jim

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