The Holy Spirit and spirit worlds of Asia

I grew up in the culture of rural north-eastern Zimbabwe where the spirit world was real and everyday and affected people's lives in unpredictable ways.  Each family lived in a group of huts as a homestead, with fields surrounding them.  Homesteads of the extended family were clustered together.  Around each clan were the spirit guardians, the spirits of the dead ancestors who existed alongside the living, who needed care and appeasement but provided spiritual protection and guidance to the clan. 

The n'yanga, or traditional healer lived just across the valley from us.  Many saw the n'yanga as merely a herbalist but many n'yangas dealt with much more than physical illness.  For example, they would help those who claimed to be affected by ngozi, wandering spirits who were angry at the lack of ceremonies carried out at their death and who had been unable to join the clan spirits.  This was particularly relevant after the war of independence - many ex-combatants sought help, believing themselves haunted by the spirits of those they had killed.  There were also svikiros, or spirit mediums, those able to make contact with, become possessed by and effectively manipulate spirits - often for negative purposes.  My parents, as Pentecostals, were able to engage effectively with this world view, not to dismiss the world of the supernatural but to help transform it, not replacing it with Western rationalism but rather an authentic folk Christianity which took both the spirit world of rural Zimbabwe and the Holy Spirit seriously.


I am taking part in the OMF Mission Research Consultation here from 4th - 8th October. The theme of the consultation is "Aspects of Trinitarian Mission - the Holy Spirit and the spirit worlds of Asia".  I listen to Moe Moe Nyunt, a Burmese thinker and writer talk about the Burmese world-view.  She tells us that Burma is full of pagodas, temples and shrines, a leading country of Theravada Buddhism.  But in fact, Burmese spirituality is firmly rooted in the worship of spirits called nats.  She describes the elaborate categories that exist to help describe this spirit world and it's interaction with human beings.  Moe Moe Nyunt mentions the authentic spiritual thirst that Burmese people have - and how a Western enlightenment theology that emphasizes the rational and the scientific and downplays the supernatural may miss opportunities to introduce the Burmese to the power of the Holy Spirit to enable them to come to terms with and make sense of their world view as well as have it changed by the good news of Jesus.  Echos of my childhood come back to me as she talks.

With the People

Twenty years ago, John & Sue and his family were friends and colleagues of ours in Mozambique. They lived in a village on the edge of the Great Forest in the northern part of the country. Their house was mud block and thatch built with help from local villagers, and like their neighbours they lived without mains electricity or running water. Over years, John has worked to determine a way of writing the previously unwritten Makuwa-Meeto language. John and Sue trained a team of Makuwa translators who are now rendering the Bible into Makuwa-Meeto. In addition, literacy programmes are running and aspiring writers are encouraged to create books of folk tales, local history, health guides and children’s books.

John was attending a Wycliffe Bible Translators meeting here in Singapore and it was so good to catch up with him. He showed me his “Shoebox” software – over 3, 000 Makuwa-Meeto words recorded, with their meaning, their phonetic equivalent, their grammatical description and more. For hundreds of words, there were notes on cultural practices and world-view. The painstaking research and passionate interest in the Makuwa-Meeto language, culture and world view and the affection that John and Sue had for their many Makuwa friends and colleagues was deeply moving. It gives the lie to the often-repeated fallacy that Christian mission has undermined and destroyed culture. Rather there is a passion to see God speak in every language to every heart and see every culture redeemed.

We want to see God speak too - Lamentations 3 is not the easiest chapter in the Bible to understand or to talk about meaningfully. How can an ancient dirge, written over 2,500 years ago and 5,000 miles away in a vastly different culture and language speak to families in safe, secure Singapore? But the Griffiths family have been tasked to take on this chapter as the theme for the next Family Service at our church here in Singapore. We’ll need to understand it deeply but tell it simply, in ways that children and adults can understand. Please pray for all four of us as we put the service together in (hopefully) creative ways.

A life in the day of....

Our day starts before dawn with a pint of tea…each! Steve is currently reading through Ezekiel (with the help of Chris Wright) and Anna through Mark (with the help of Tom Wright. A sleepy Aimée wanders through for a hug. Josh needs to be woken up by a parental incursion into the sacrosanctity of his bedroom. Josh and Steve take Millie the dog and go running in the Botanic Gardens. We eat breakfast together, while discussing the plans for the day, mainly related to the children’s plans for socializing. We read and pray as a family. Anna and Steve cross the OMF compound to the office while Aim and Josh head for the bus stop – already dripping with sweat at 7:30 in the morning. Steve reviews the International Personnel System (IPS) helpdesk inbox, (the system that helps our team leaders look after their people) and begins to triage problems for the Personnel team to focus on during the day. Anna begins to respond to the 30 or so emails that have come in overnight.

The working day officially starts at 08:30. We join around 50 colleagues from the OMF Singapore office along with new OMFers on the Orientation Course for morning prayers. Hanneke from Holland shares the story of her coming to faith. Robert, a Canadian, with a dry sense of humour has us laughing as he outlines prayer needs for Canada and updates us on a recent conference for Asian mission organisations working in dangerous and marginal situations. After thirty minutes prayer together, we spread out through the complex to our work.

The Personnel team has its daily lively five minute meeting to report progress on issues, and assign tasks for the day. Sin Ee, working in Taiwan with the urban poor, back on leave in Singapore, pokes her head round the door to say hello. Steve spends several hours working through detailed plans for a missional business in Cambodia. Anna slips out for a medical follow-up with her neurologist. Emergency calls come in asking for input and advice from China and Cambodia. Anna meets with a colleague to discuss candidates wanting to join OMF from Chile, Finland and Mexico. We host a case conference involving medical, home school support and educationalist colleagues to discuss support plans for a child with learning difficulties whose family is heading for rural Laos – and then spend time praying for the family. Wei, a key member of the IPS technical team arrives in our office. She wants permission to release requested fixes and enhancements into the IPS system. We review them together, and plan and prepare communications about the changes to those that will be using the system. We authorise the release and she runs upstairs to get the technical team to start making the changes. They will work into the night. Around 120 emails came into our inbox during the working day.

Josh and Aimée crash through the door after nearly 12 hours at school. They are both filthy after games of rugby on a muddy pitch. We eat hotdogs for supper while uproariously practising some games that we want to play as ice-breakers on the Orientation Course fun night. Steve leads the jollities as we play silly games with the new group on Orientation Course from Holland, Philippines, the US, Korea, Myanmar/Spain and the UK. Hot but happy, we all eat icecream with the OCers to cool down! Before we go to bed we check that the changes to IPS have gone through and the system is working as it should. We debrief as a family and pray together. By 11:30, all is quiet and still in the Griffiths household….but not for long.