On the Road to Emmaus

Transcription

1 On the Road to Emmaus Together towards Life as Conversation Partner in Missiological Research Chammah J. Kaunda Chammah J. Kaunda is a minister for Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Zambia. He teaches missiology and Christian spirituality at the University of South Africa, Pretoria. Abstract This article argues that the Emmaus narrative in Luke 24:13-40 illustrates a messianic paradigmatic missiological approach to costly discipleship making. The central motif in this approach is critical emancipatory conversation, which is not merely the means to data gathering but an end in itself. Using Luke s story as a paradigmatic approach to missiological research, I demonstrate how Together towards Life as a research tool could creatively and innovatively engage with African theological education. The Emmaus narrative in Luke 24:13-40 seems to be a powerful illustration of missiological research with implications for transforming discipleship. 1 If the paramount concern of Jesus paradigmatic missiological imagination was conversation on the road, then why is conversation not also called the Lord s paradigmatic missiological approach to research for costly discipleship making the Lord s model of missiological analysis? The story begins with sharing a journey and sharing a story. It ends with shared meal, shared recognition, 2 and shared transformation. Besides being a story of resurrection faith, it is also a model of costly discipleship making, the Lord s model of missiological research. I have used this story as a paradigmatic approach to missiological research for understanding Together towards Life (TTL) as a research tool. The question is how do we make sense of missiological research in the paradigm of this story? 1 2 This paper was presented at the WCC-CWME Consultation on Missional Formation, Together towards Life: Implications for Mission Studies Curriculum, September 2016 in Mantazas, Cuba. Cathy Ross and Steve Bevans, Introduction: Mission as Prophetic Dialogue, in Mission on the Road to Emmaus: Constants, Context, and Prophetic Dialogue, eds. Cathy Ross and Steve Bevans (London: SCM Press, 2015), xii. 34 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

2 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus Dismantling Vampire Methodology In the social sciences, the main purpose of a conversation...in a research context, is to collect data of a subjective (but nevertheless factual) kind to get a true picture of, and then try to explain, subjective reality based on questions. 3 In other words, in the social sciences, conversation is considered a means to an end and not an end in itself. In this paradigm, the research is understood as a movement taking place from the centre to the periphery, and from the privileged to the marginalized of society. 4 This seems to be a capitalist research paradigm in which the researcher functions as the centre for the exploitation, production, distribution, and circulation of knowledge emerging from the margins, which is subsequently used by the powerful to reinforce global hegemony, and hence capitalist relations of exploitation. 5 Too often, knowledge contribution from the margins has only functioned to strengthen the centre. In short, it has worked against the margins. There has been an influx of Western scholars doing empirical research among the margins in most African countries. The knowledge that these scholars exploit from the margins has been used to earn postgraduate degrees and get academic tenure and promotions, but those who could be regarded as custodians of such knowledge have remained on the margins. As if that were not enough, such knowledge becomes copyrighted as intellectual property. How does TTL challenge this kind of exploitation in the production of missiological knowledge so that such knowledge could be at the service of the margins to aid their struggle against forces of death? TTL reminds us that Economic globalization has effectively supplanted the God of Life with mammon, the god of free-market capitalism that claims the power to save the world through the accumulation of undue wealth and prosperity. 6 In the knowledge production sector, the trend has been towards the commercialization of information and knowledge. The researcher s main activity today is to gather data for knowledge consumption by the powerful so they have the means to keep the marginalized on the margins. The data analysis is often a smaller component of this covert action. 7 Too often, the appropriation of such research only promotes the Bengt Gustavsson, ed., The Principles of Knowledge Creation: Research Methods in the Social Sciences (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007), 226. Jooseop Keum, ed., Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes (Geneva: WCC, 2013), 6. Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur, Freire, Marx, and the New Imperialism: Toward a Revolutionary Praxis, Counterpoints 209 (2002): 46. Keum, Together towards Life, 39. Zakaria Abd Hadi and Neil McBride, The Commercialisation of Public Sector Information within UK Government Departments, International Journal of Public Sector Management 13, 7 (2000): Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 35

3 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 interests of the researcher and sometimes functions to underdevelop participants who have to give the information for free to middle-class researchers. The power of exploitation To argue that there has been a shift in the relations of data gathering from objectifying research participants to treating them as subjects of their own experiences is to obscure the power relations of exploitation. There have been reports of retreat from standard ethical principles in some research done by Western scholars in Africa. Marcia Angell writes, Research in the Third World [sic] looks relatively attractive as it becomes better funded and regulations at home become more restrictive. Despite the existence of codes requiring that human subjects receive at least the same protection abroad as at home, they are still honored partly in the breach. The fact remains that many studies are done in the Third World that simply could not be done in the countries sponsoring the work. Clinical trials have become a big business, with many of the same imperatives. To survive, it is necessary to get the work done as quickly as possible, with a minimum of obstacles. When these considerations prevail, it seems as if we have not come very far from Tuskegee after all. 8 Angell is reflecting on two research projects conducted in Rakai, Uganda, in which the study population included subjects who were not on an antiretroviral treatment. In the case of discordant couples, the seropositive participants were not obliged to disclose their status to each other. In fact, some of the participants with sexually transmitted infections were left to look for their own treatment. The researchers contended that the research was cleared by the government and university ethical commitments, and that Uganda did not have the capacity to manage antiretroviral treatment. 9 Angell struggles with the fact that, depending on the context of the investigation, it appears that ethical standards which are intended to be universally upheld for the protection of the research subject may be relaxed. 10 This suggests that in certain contexts, such as Africa, these standards cannot be rigorously followed after all, African life does not matter. This is the type of inhumanity that TTL seeks to put to rest once and for all. The fact that the study has been approved by university authorities is not a reassurance that the researcher s Marcia Angell, The Ethics of Clinical Research in the Third World, New England Journal of Medicine 337 (1997): 849. Peter Kanyandago, Ethical and Pastoral Approaches to Dealing with AIDS in Africa, HIV & AIDS in Africa: Christian Reflection, Public Health, Social Transformation, ed. Jacquineau Azetsop (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2016), Marcia Angell, Investigators Responsibility for Human Subjects in Developing Countries, New England Journal of Medicine 342 (2003): Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

4 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus unethical behaviour and approach are approved. It does not means that whatever the investigator does after approval cannot result in disapproving the research. TTL stresses that the means to an end is more significant than the end. However, from the perspective of capital, a research project is considered a commodity, with calculable and assessable results in terms of money and power. 11 Is it surprising that some scholars who have studied some indigenous groups for a few months begin to regard themselves as experts on such groups? This is symbolic of capitalism and imposed hegemony on the margins. TTL takes seriously exploitative activities in research processes which exhibit capitalist tendencies. A capitalist research approach seeks to separate knowledge and intellectual elements from the local people and incorporate them in the means and methods of control to increase Western hegemony, thereby reinforcing an everwidening chasm of inequalities and knowledge injustice. Capitalism as a vampire research approach feeds on the ever-changing landscape of knowledge production, science, and technology, which has implications for the reconfiguration of social classes. 12 Since contact with Europeans, African people have been objectified through knowledge representation, which resulted in relegating them to the bottom rung on a metamorphic ladder of human development. 13 The argument is that research framed in a vampire world view only increases Western control and exploitation as the people who surrender information become more and more impoverished epistemologically, conceptually, and materially, and those who research them become more and more powerful and transform the means of making meaning and constructing reality. We live in a world where everything is commercialized, from human trafficking to traditional knowledge. There is an explosion of the marketization of documentary production on indigenous peoples around the world amid the commercialization of the media industry and publishers. Many documentaries on indigenous peoples have been made, and derogatory titles are sometimes used to describe them, such as the lost tribe, men of filth world, the 21st-century wild people. 14 The indigenous cultural heritage has been branded for tourist consumption McLaren and Farahmandpur, Freire, Marx, and the New Imperialism, 46. George Liodakis, Totalitarian Capitalism and Beyond (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 88. A. Hodge. The Training of Missionaries for Africa: The Church Missionary Society s Training College at Islington, , Journal of Religion in Africa 4, no. 2 ( ): 92. They are documented as lost tribes because they have resisted Western civilization, preferring to preserve their cultural heritage. Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 37

5 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 commodified for Western tourist consumers. It is interesting to see how these documentaries have been commercialized. A simple search of YouTube with the phrase indigenous people gave about 476,000 results. 15 A quick look at the number of viewers shows that the documentaries of undressed indigenous peoples are visited by more viewers than those focusing on indigenous peoples call for their rights, or indigenous people and climate change. This also demonstrates the sexualization of the world and the commercialization of the body that has taken place in today s world. It is much more difficult to do critical emancipatory missiological research in the world today than it is to do vampire missiological research. Affirming that the latter approach has not contributed to any authentic transformation of the communities and groups of people that have been researched, but rather has resulted in endless exploitation, how does missiological research become life-giving? Power Dynamics in Research The problem with informed consent when it comes to research in most African contexts of less-educated people (according to the Western system of thought) is that many do not understand the implications of informed consent even when it is explained in the local language. In fact, most African people may not feel able to reject signing a consent for a white person because of power dynamics and because they do not want to appear inhospitable. For instance, very few Zambians would refuse to sign the consent even if they were not comfortable with the research, because culturally, you do not disappoint the stranger that would be seen as inhospitable. But the colour white itself is power in the context of research. These dynamics have too often been used to take advantage of the ignorance of the marginalized and exploit their source of being : knowledge. Also, too often the gatekeepers have other interests that might be not immediately clear to both the researcher and the research population. The gatekeepers have power over those who belong in their domain and in some instances can be easily corrupted by cunning investigators. Thus, when a researcher states that he or she has been given permission by the group leadership to conduct interviews, the participants become powerless to refuse, due to fear of disappointing their leadership. It is double locking for the participants. These aspects must be taken into consideration in missiological research with implications for transforming discipleship. I realized when I was doing missiological research in Zambia on Pentecostalism and politics that some of the individuals, who initially agreed to participate in the interviews and signed consent forms when I spoke to them, later refused an 15 Indigenous people, 38 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

6 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus interview when I sent my research assistant, whom they knew. The basis for refusal was that they signed the consent because they did not want to disappoint me, but they did not feel comfortable participating. I realized that for these people, it is not their signature that binds the agreement, but their word. The Western world functions with written consent, which requires a signature to protect the research. This in itself has served as tool of oppression, in that African people without adequate Western education are too often forced to sign away communally held knowledge. Indigenous knowledge in Africa is not in the possession of an individual, and it is never invented by an individual; rather, it is in the possession of the whole community for the common good. Thus, it is wrong to get that which belongs to the whole community from an individual, without the consensus of key custodians. How do we find a balance in doing missiological research that embraces the whole community? It became important to seek participants consent using various approaches rather than only the written form. In my case, I allowed my research assistant to engage with potential participants about their comfort level in participating in the research. It became clear that many more who had agreed and signed consent forms did so because they did not want to disappoint me and their gatekeepers, but when they realized that they were protected from the gatekeeper, they became truthful about how they felt about participating. Research is about power, which is always at work in the research process. As noted above, some researchers who have done a year of research among a segment of an African ethnic group have declared themselves experts on the whole ethnic group. Their power is grounded in the claim that they have more knowledge of the whole ethnic group, and therefore have the power to intellectually represent, name, and describe such a group. Those who claim to have knowledge over others who know nothing about them can claim to have power over such groups. Thus, TTL functions as a lens to help name the evils of globalization and capitalism in research activities. 16 TTL also goes on to critique the wrong use of power and confronts vested interests in terms of research and values. TTL s fresh perspectives have the potential to challenge researchers to let go of many things that are precious or convenient to them, but in practice hamper authentic missiological research. TTL forces us to ask: Who is doing the research among the margins? Who benefits from the results? What is the purpose of the research? How does it 16 Report of the 2nd WCC-CWME Consultation on Missional Formation, Together towards Life: Implications for Mission Studies Curriculum, September 2016, Matanzas, Cuba. Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 39

7 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 contribute to the transformation of the research population? Beyond the authorizing institutions, who else is holding the researcher accountable to rigorously follow ethical standards? These are crucial questions to ask in the process of rethinking missiological research approaches. This also leads to the question of how TTL as a research tool is engaged in theological education. TTL as a Contextual Research Tool My intention here is to demonstrate how TTL can be used as a conversation partner in a contextual research project within the African theological education context. Specifically, I focus on student engagements with TTL at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). Student engagements with TTL are engendered by their experiences and their search for appropriate missiological approaches to inform missional praxis in their specific contexts. Church engagements in the mission of God are tied to specific contextual realities, and the church itself is at the service of the interests of such contexts. Thus, the methodology has been intentionally and explicitly contextual in nature. The students have sought to socially and contextually engage TTL with contextual realities in a collaborative and dialogical manner. Contextual experiences are seen as integral hermeneutical interpretative points of departure for engaging TTL. In this regard, TTL is perceived as grounded in the promotion of a culture of life 17 theoretical framework within theological studies. This sets a new benchmark for research praxis in a wide cross-section of disciplines. With numerous global and local anti-life forces that have marked our contemporary era, TTL transgresses against the culture of death and regards the fullness of life for all (John 10:10) as the operating principle for all creation that is putting up resistance against forces of darkness, evil, and death. Thus, within UKZN, TTL is used by research students at both the master s and doctoral level to explore threats to life in migration contexts and climate change; in the struggle against forces of xenophobia and injustice; in inter-religious contexts plagued by conflictive co-existence; in church and state relationships that compete for scarce resources in contexts plagued by corruption; and in response to contexts where migrants face threats of violence. The framework is used to postulate how the principles that undergird TTL can be used in a transformational way to help interpret the world rightly in order to imagine alternative ways of being human together in a world perverted by forces of death. For the purpose of this exercise, I focus briefly 17 Konrad Raiser, A Culture of Life: Reconsidering Peace and Justice (Geneva: WCC, 2002). 40 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

8 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus on four dissertations by students I assisted in mentoring as examples of how TTL is being used creatively and innovatively as a research tool. Case Studies: Theology Students Engagement with TTL The purpose of these case studies from three doctorates of philosophy is to show that TTL as a research tool proposes a critical missiological emancipatory approach that is biased toward transformation of the people on the margins. These dissertations emerge from various Christian contexts and reflect the author s own commitment to transformation from within the margins. It is this missiological commitment that made these authors pursue further studies so they have critical tools to help them and their communities in the struggle for alternative ways of interpreting reality. The Coconut Tree Missiological Imagination The Coconut Tree Missiological Imagination: The Challenge of Climate Change for Ministerial Formation in Kiribati Uniting Church at Tangintebu Theological College is a PhD-level study by Rev. Tioti Timon, a minister in the Kiribati Uniting Church in the South Pacific. Timon is a climate justice activist who is passionate about the Islands and his people, who are being threatened by climate change. He has been seeking a missiological paradigm that could help to rescue Kiribati from sinking. He chose the coconut tree as a conversation partner with TTL that argues the central characteristic and definition of what it means to be Kiribatians. According to Timon, to destroy the coconut trees is essentially to destroy the Kibatian people. The coconut embodies the culture, essence, and Kiribatian conception of God. Timon s coconut missiological imagination is based on the way Kiribatians conceived God s mission in the world, inspired by human bondedness with the coconut tree. He seeks to examine the ways in which climate change can be conceived not only as a threat to humanity and the coconut tree, but also to Kiribatian indigenous notions of God. He uses a missiological perspective underpinned by TTL to construct a relevant missiological model for ministerial formation for Kiribati Uniting Church at Tangintebu Theological College (TTHC) to equip ministerial students in the context of such a threat. Peace-Building in Nigeria This is a doctoral study by Benjamin Pokol, a Nigerian scholar and a minister in the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN). Pokol teaches theology of peace and church and state relations in the context of conflict at Gindiri Theological Seminary (GTS) Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 41

9 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 in Jos. The full title is Peace-Building in Nigeria: A Missio-Political Critique of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) Relationship with the Plateau State within the Context of Violent Conflict in Jos, Nigeria ( ). This research examines the nature of church state relations between COCIN and the Plateau State in Nigeria, with a view to assessing the extent to which this relationship influenced the experience of violent conflict within Jos between 2001 and He investigates the ways in which COCIN identified, harnessed, and used peacebuilding missional resources within the pluralistic community of Jos to facilitate the fullness of life. He engages TTL in dialogue with the philosophy and wisdom of the Kadung ethnic group called suum-ngi to propose religions state relations as an alternative model of relationship for religions and Plateau State that could promote a culture of life. Suum-ngi philosophy is similar to the Southern African notion of Ubuntu, which perceives humanness as the essence of being. Based on this philosophy, Pokol argues that religion becomes dysfunctional once it fails to promote human values, dignity, hospitality, community, and unconditional acceptance, which transcend religion and any human ideology. A Missiological Critique of the World Council of Churches Notion of Just Peace This is a doctoral study by Lesmore Ezekiel, a Nigerian and a minister in the Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria (LCCN). Ezekiel is a programme officer for the Programme for Christian Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA) of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) in Kenya. He is passionate about just inter-religious dialogue, which he sees as a critical means to overcome religiously orchestrated violence in West Africa. This led him to do research under the title A Missiological Critique of the World Council of Churches Notion of Just Peace: Its Implication and Contextual Relevance for Overcoming Violence and Peacebuilding in the Multi-Religious Community of Jos, Nigeria. Ezekiel uses a missiological framework to critique the notion of just peace, its implications, and its contextual relevance for the Nigerian Church s struggle to overcome violence and foster the culture of peace within a multi-religio-cultural Nigerian context. The research demonstrates that understanding TTL within the culture of life and peace framework has the potential to empower churches in their missional quest for peacebuilding in society. He concludes that the tool can help the community of faith to recognise that other religions other than theirs have potential to affirm life. Transforming the Transformers: Lessons from Case Studies These three dissertations demonstrate that TTL as a research tool is inevitably rooted in missiological commitments not only to sound theological scholarship and 42 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

10 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus scientific research, but also to authentic social transformation for the sake of the mission of God in a world filled with contradictions. This research demonstrates a shift from missiological research to the margins to missiological research from the margins, in which researchers within the margins are acquiring post-graduate degrees and creatively and innovatively beginning to engage in missiological research that could bring about transformation within the margins. With these scholars, the knowledge emerging from the margins is never lost, as they are socially engaged as one with the people on margins. This means that the future of missiological research would be essentially collaborative: as more and more people from the margins are acquiring academic degrees, outsiders will need to partner with them for collaborative transformational missiological research. The question is: How does missiological research transform discipleship? Critical Emancipatory Conversation: TTL and Epistemological Privilege of the Marginalized According to Gerald West, the epistemological privilege of the marginalized sector requires not only an ethical commitment to the margins but also privileging what this sector knows[,] how they know, 18 and why they know. West underlines that for this to materialize, the missiologist must either be summoned by this sector or must already be among them, working with them for social transformation, whether organic to or in solidarity with. The doing of prophetic missiology is a second phase; the first phase is actual social struggle. 19 The approach West is proposing has critical affinity with TTL s basis of missiology. TTL underlines that Marginalized, oppressed, and suffering people have a special gift to distinguish what news is good for them and what news is bad for their endangered life. In order to commit ourselves to God s life-giving mission, we have to listen to the voices from the margins to hear what is life-affirming and what is lifedestroying. 20 Understanding this through the lens of the three case studies, missiological research is conversation face-to-face encounters between people. The aim of conversation in missiological research is an end in itself for enabling the missiological imagination of the people from the margins to become prophetic missiological Gerald O. West, Towards an African Liberationist Queer Theological Pedagogy, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 155 (July 2016 Special Issue), 217. West, Towards an African Liberationist Queer Theological Pedagogy, 217. Keum, ed., Together towards Life, 39. Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 43

11 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 spirituality. 21 In the words of TTL, it is to enable the people at the margins to claim their key role as agents of mission and affirming mission as transformation. 22 This is a paradigm that Jesus followed in his encounter with the disciples, who were tempted to give in to despair because they felt Jesus had died for good. They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel from Roman domination, but now that he had died, their hopes were shattered. The journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus indicates the extent of their disappointment. This story relates well to contemporary African experiences. The hope that came with geopolitical decolonization, the hope for imagined post-colonial African society, was dashed into the abyss of neocolonialism as a problematic terrain of emptiness, illusions, myths and shadows of being free and decolonised. 23 Many Africans believed that their painful struggle for liberation, for independence, would pay off by having access to the resources that God has abundantly given to the continent. However, this exuberance was momentary, as each nation was quickly engulfed in an avalanche of postcolonial neo-colonialism. 24 They have become victims of liberation, and many of them have undertaken symbolic journeys on the road to despair. It has not taken an expert ear to hear the tales of despair and the groans of agony among African people on the margins, who have been forced to embark on the road to misery-land. It is in such a context that Jesus encountered the two disciples. He asked them what they were talking about and listened as they narrated their tale of pain and struggle. The story echoes numerous stories of Jesus encounter with the people and his engagement in critiquing dominant ideologies in the New Testament. It echoes the story of Philip s conversation with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26-40). That story unveils a character that could be regarded as divergent in a society that privileged heterosexuality in its laws, its visual images, and its values. The Ethiopian eunuch seems to embody multiple differences of class, race, and gender, and possibly of religion and sexuality as well West, Towards an African Liberationist Queer Theological Pedagogy, 217. Keum, ed., Together towards Life, 5. Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Coloniality of Power in Postcolonial Africa: Myths of Decolonization (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2013), 13. Chammah J. Kaunda, The Wilderness Wanderings: A Theo-Liminal Pedagogy for Mind Decolonisation in African Christianity, Acta Theologica 36, no. 1 (2016): For a detailed discussion of the Ethiopian eunuch s identity in ancient society, see F. Scott Spencer: Comprehensive examination of the Ethiopian traveller s place in ancient society in relation to standard categories of race, class, and gender uncovers a fascinating, multifaceted character who defies easy classification. (Spencer, Acts, Readings: A New Biblical Commentary [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997], 91.) 44 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

12 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus It also echoes Jesus conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1-44). 26 This is a cross-cultural conversation in which Jesus engages in critical emancipatory dialogue with a victim of marginalisation and exploitation of multiple forms of oppression as a woman, a Samaritan, a religious inferior, and ethnically charged. 27 Jesus approach required critical interrogation of his missiological ideas, his ethnicity as representation of oppressors of Samaritans, his identity as a male, his sexuality as a single male, and his willingness to look into the Samaritan woman s face and engage in respectful conversation. Thus, Jesus did not just cross over borders and cultures, he crossed over barriers of gender inequality, sexuality, religion, and so on. Missiological researchers are always crossing symbolic borders, even within their own contexts as part of the marginalized community. The approach taken by Together towards Life Thus, the missiological approach that TTL proposes is about crossing symbolic borders of negative representation of the other, such as meaning making, gender injustice, economic exploitation, political repression, racism, and xenophobia, persistent patterns of exclusion, religious identity, and questions of dominance and authority of Western epistemology. In this type of missiological research, it is not business as usual: it is not about data gathering, as in standard qualitative research in social science. Rather, it is a call to transforming discipleship. Our call as researchers is to lay out the cost of discipleship. It requires more than the transformation of our thinking it requires the transformation of our research approaches. TTL is not initiating this conversation but coming along to aid local conversations already taking placing in different ecclesiastical and cultural contexts in global Christianity. In the context of these conversations, TTL becomes a lens through which the community of faith can interpret the world in order to begin asking the right questions. In the past, mission meant giving solutions to the margins or fixing the problems of the poor; TTL as a conversation partner or research tool brings a paradigm shift, in that the research is to be done in partnership with those on the margins as subjects of their own experiences. Jesus engagement with the disciples demonstrates that missiological conversation is an interruption in the normative thought system of despair and resignation. It is meant to force those in the conversation to verbalize their experiences. The interruptive nature of missiological Ross and Bevans, Introduction: Mission as Prophetic Dialogue, xii. Surekha Nelavala, Liberation Beyond Borders: Dalit Feminist Hermeneutics and Four Gospel Women (PhD thesis, Drew University, Madison, NJ, 2008), 179. Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 45

13 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 research forces respondents to seek to clarify issues that were at once routine and uncritically normalized into verbalized responses to challenges, and make sense of these issues for themselves. Thus, a reorientation takes place: the pilgrimage to despair becomes the pilgrimage together towards Life. TTL as a research tool is designed to help researchers engage with the critical questions the people on the margins are asking about their current experiences in the world and to help find ways to ask these questions in different ways in the light of TTL. In other words, TTL should help the researcher ask the right questions that can help the marginalized interpret the world rightly from God s missional perspective. This is important if TTL is to help the church understand the signs of the times. This is important because as an agent of mission, the church has to affirm that mission is all about transformation. One of the key objectives of missiological research is to raise questions that can help the church rediscover its role as an agent in God s mission. This means that missiological research is not necessarily about giving answers to the church or prescribing how the people on the margins should respond to their challenges, but pointing both the church and the marginalized in the right direction. In this way, TTL as a theoretical framework for a missional culture of life invites conversation between missio Dei, other disciplines, and the marginalized to overcome threats to life. This approach not only acknowledges the contextual nature of human experiences, but gives TTL contextual undertone. This is in keeping with the spirit of TTL that people from the margins are claiming their key role as agents of mission and affirming mission as transformation. 28 What is useful about this approach is that it enables the researcher to focus on the signifiers that make up TTL and the specific context of missional engagement. This also means that the historical determination of both TTL and specific contextual issues are recognized and brought into critical dialogue that can result in constructing new insights of transformational possibility. The strength of TTL is embedded in the fact that it does not specifically define the margins, and does not subscribe to any specific church tradition; thus, the researcher is generally free to reflect on the statement from the standpoint of their confession, gender, or any other experiences. This seems to offer empowering potential for any researcher in any context to discern the ways in which the marginalized name their realities and to enable them move to prophetic analysis, allowing TTL to dialogue with the context, before developing a sustainable missional praxis. 28 Keum, ed., Together towards Life, Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

14 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus The question is who creates the conclusion for our research? For Jesus, it was the disciples. This demonstrates that missiological research is political, never neutral, and seeks to respond to questions that are too often not being asked by the rich and powerful. Jesus modelled a paradigm for missiological research that could result in transformation. He was revealed to the two disciples in the breaking of the bread at the meal table. Missiological research must help open the eyes of the people to a different reality that can transform their situation. After the encounter with Jesus, the disciples were transformed and empowered and were ready to face their fears in Jerusalem. Conclusion? I find it interesting to relate missiological research to the analogy of the story on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-40, as it suggests that the costly missiological research that TTL embodies is based on the conversations along the way. Doing missiological research of this nature is more than just an act of contextual dialogue: it is a call to costly solidarity, transforming discipleship, and costly discipleship. The research calls for conversational openness, prophetic fidelity, creativity, and authentic solidarity. The following are some of the contours emerging from Jesus conversational missiological approach from the margins. First, it is costly solidarity because it calls us to identity ourselves in radical ways with those on the margins. Our research emerges not only from the experiences of those we are in conversation with, but also from how their experiences have shaped the researchers. Such costly solidarity means we are willing to engage in the research, not because of the benefit but because we are called to follow Jesus Christ in discipleship making and being made disciples. It is costly because it is a choice on our part to lay down our comfort and embrace the struggles of those on the margins. This could result in sickness or even death for the sake of transformation of the marginalized. The best example of costly solidarity is Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese evangelist and social movement leader. Kagawa was born in Kobe. He studied theology at Meiji Gakuin in Tokyo and Kobe Theological Seminary and studied further in the United States, at Princeton Theological Seminary. During the period of study in Kobe, Kagawa chose to move into the Shinkawa slum to live with the marginalized people, and he never looked back. Kagawa was a prolific writer and used the money he earned from his publications to help the marginalized community. 29 Thomas John Hastings says, 29 Thomas John Hastings, Remembering Kagawa Toyohiko ( ): A Brief Biography, in Kagawa Toyohiko: A Few Words in the Dark, trans. and annotated by Thomas John Hastings (Princeton: Bridge of Peace Publication, 2015), Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 47

15 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 Had there been no WWII, [Kagawa] would today be considered one of the great prophetic converts of the worldwide missionary movement. Since he opted to stay in Japan during the Pacific War... the victors got to write post-war history, the Japanese people as a whole were vilified and stereotyped with broad, racially biased strokes. Add to this the fact that many Japanese Christians could not understand or appreciate Kagawa s desire to follow Jesus down the cruciform path less travelled. 30 For Kagawa, to follow Jesus down the cruciform path meant choosing to become one with the people on the margins. It was the marginalized who became the locus that shaped his missiological thinking. There is indeed a pressing task to engage marginalized prophetic figures such as Kagawa in the study of world Christianity to understand the demand for costly solidarity. 31 Second, it is costly discipleship because missiological research demands that we go beyond the social science research standard of data gathering. It demands incarnation and ethical consistency in life and thought so that the people we are in conversation with are transformed. The best example is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the man who embodied the very term costly discipleship. He refused to stay in the comfort of the United States as a guest lecturer while his people were suffering at the hands of Hitler s regime. His radical ethical commitment to costly solidarity with the marginalized people in his country forced him to return to Germany within months of his arrival in the US. His efforts for the resistance, which included rescuing Jews, were exposed, landing him in prison. He was later executed. 32 Much of what he wrote emerged in the confinement of the prison and, I suppose, in conversation with fellow prisoners. Third, it is accompaniment because within the global reality of relations of power, inequality, injustice, and domination, missio Dei demands the radical nurturing of interdependent relationships based on mutual trust and respect. There is a need to accompany the people on the margins in their re-search and search for life. Jesus accompanied the disciples as they tried to make sense of the tragedy of his death on the road to Emmaus. He encountered them in their despair and discouragement. Philip also accompanied the Ethiopian eunuch as he tried to make sense of the text Thomas John Hastings, Thanks for the New Year s Gift, communication with the author. Some scholars have begun to take an appreciative approach to the study of Kagawa s missiological imagination. See, for example, Hastings, Remembering Kagawa Toyohiko ( ). See Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995) and Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community (New York: HarperCollins, 1954) (about Christian community, based on his teaching at the underground seminary), which distils his personal beliefs. 48 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches

16 Chammah J. Kaunda On the Road to Emmaus in the book of Isaiah. In the process of accompaniment, the research allows the marginalized to name their realities discernment of what the Spirit is doing in their context. In the process, the missiological researcher could expose them to different ways of thinking about their situation. An example of the person who understands missiological research as accompaniment is Dietrich Werner, former director of the WCC s Ecumenical Theological Education Programme and senior theological advisor for Bread for the World Berlin. Over the years, Werner has accompanied global South scholars in enabling them to research, write, and publish scholarly books to promote theological resource justice. He has helped to fundraise for and edit over six major volumes on theological education, which were produced between 2010 and The chapters in these books are contributed mostly by scholars from various church traditions in the global South. They are ecumenical tools to promote scholars in the global South and consequently contextualization of theological education, which remains a top priority. These substantial collections have contributed to the global South s affirmation of mission as transformation, as they are a response to scarcity of contextual resources in that part of the world. They also demonstrate Werner s ability to listen to the prophetic groaning of global South scholars on the way to lecture rooms shaped by Western theological thought. Fourth, it is prophetic dialogue because it demands first and foremost that the research be done with openness and respect for the humanity of the people on the margins and for their cultures. It affirms their struggles for justice and transformation and underlines that we missiological researchers need to be researched by those we claim to be researching. Steven Bevan writes, If Mission is dialogical because God is dialogical both in God s deepest nature and in the way God acts in the world, mission is also prophetic because God s inner nature is also prophetic, and because God is prophetic in dealing with creation. 34 This means that If, then, God is a God of prophecy, and the church shares in God s mission, 35 missiological research must be approached as prophecy as well. Missiological research as dialogue includes being with the people, responding to their needs, with sensitiveness to the presence of God in cultures and other religious traditions, and witnessing to the values These include Dietrich Werner et al., eds., Handbook of Theological Education in World Christianity (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2010); Handbook on Theological Education in Africa (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013); Asian Handbook on Theological Education and Ecumenism (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013); Orthodox Handbook for Teaching Ecumenism (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2013); Anthology of African Christianity (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2016). Stephen Bevans, Mission as Prophetic Dialogue, SION_AS_PROPHETIC_DIALOGUE-final.pdf.pdf/ Ibid. Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches 49

17 International Review of Mission Volume 106 Number 1 June 2017 of God s Kingdom through presence, solidarity, and [conversation]. [Missiological research] mean[s] a dialogue with [the marginalized], with its local cultures, and with other religious traditions. 36 It is the task of any missiological researcher to engage in research through the power of the Holy Spirit, discernment, demonstration, embodiment of the reign of God, and the transformation of missiological spirituality. In accomplishing its prophetic task, missiological research must speak out against any form of injustice and any form of the culture of death. 37 The best example of a dialogical prophet is Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Emeritus of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa. He has tirelessly engaged in prophetic liberation missiology within the context of South Africa and Africa at large. Tutu was appointed chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which was set up to help deal with human rights violations and to heal past wounds of the apartheid era so the nation could move forward. Tutu would popularize the African notion of Ubuntu as a basis for forgiveness and reconciliation. Tutu confronts the powers that be in a dialogical manner, but stands firm against injustice and exploitation. He has engaged with issues of the human struggle in South Africa from poverty to the 2016 student campaign for fees must fall, from homophobia to gender injustice, from HIV/AIDS to gender-based violence, from the workers struggle to the protection of children, from ecological degradation to corruption and poor governance, and so on. Tutu is an honorary Elder in The Elders Organisation an international non-governmental organization of public figures who were brought together by Nelson Mandela, South Africa s first black president, in 2007 as independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights. 38 Tutu has been called upon in conflict-stricken African countries to help resolve problems. He is a prophetic dialogical missiologist par excellence, and every book he has written emerges from such experiences. This is not a research project, rather a re-search for abundant life for all! Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences, cited in Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder, We Were Gentle among You : Christian Mission as Dialogue, Australian ejournal of Theology 7 (June 2006), 8. Bevans, Mission as Prophetic Dialogue. The Elders, 50 Copyright VC (2017) World Council of Churches