Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | I | International Bulletin of Missionary Research

My pilgrimage in mission.

Article Excerpt
My paternal grandparents, descendants of British settlers in South Africa in 1820, were enthusiastic Christians and among the early Seventh-day Adventists in that country. My father, having decided to enter the ministry during his high school years, left the family farm and commenced studies at Union College in Cape Town. At the end of the First World War, he transferred to Avondale College, near Sydney in Australia. Upon graduation he entered the ministry, married my mother, and subsequently returned to South Africa as a pastor-evangelist. I was born in 1924 in a small town in the southern Cape Province, the second of five children.

One of the joys of my early childhood was our annual trip for the Christmas holidays to my grandparents' farm near Grahamstown, where the relatives converged. Some among my generation were children of missionaries; others were a pastor's children. Grandfather conducted morning and evening worship. We had Sabbath school together, even at the holiday cottage at the beach, where the "Missions Report" often sparked conversations about life in countries to the north. As I look back on those early days, I see that almost everything in our lives centered on being a Christian and on the church.

Seeing with New Eyes

Life proceeded in this manner, alternating between years at school and vacations at the farm and beach. Then in the middle of 1939 my mother took us to visit her mother and relatives in Sydney, Australia. There I first came to a clear realization of the privileged status of whites in South Africa. It was a shock to me to see white men doing work that would be assigned to Africans at home. Beyond this eye-opener, two experiences there caused me to think about life and reality as I never had before.

The first was a combined meeting of Adventists in the Sydney city hall to hear Elder W. A. Spicer, then field secretary of the General Conference. Elders Spicer and A. G. Daniels had shared the leadership of the Adventist church for some thirty years and fostered the world vision that set the church on its missionary course. The vast hall was crowded. Storm clouds of the Second World War were fast gathering, and excitement was heightened by a sense of eschatological fervor. Spicer led the congregation on a world tour in which he described the worldwide expansion of Christianity. He interpreted this development as a fulfillment of the promises of God and preparation for the events of Matthew 24:14. He also spoke of the spread of the Adventist church and the faithfulness of its members, of challenges faced and victories gained. Enthusiasm ran so high that when he seemed to be coming to a conclusion, many in the congregation rose, demanding, "More, morel" I had never heard anything quite like this nor experienced such overwhelming enthusiasm. It seemed as if the congregation was saying, "The war may come, but more important, the purposes of God in this world are being fulfilled." I pondered these things as we rode home in the train,...