I recently sat in a room with eight men from East Africa. They had come to Norway for the summer to sell books to cover their college tuition. As we finished our lively discussion about culture and worldview, the guys started talking about what we had discussed. “That was a good game,” said one.

Another commented, “We need somebody to come to Kenya to show us these things.”

“If the pastors graduating from university could see this, many of them would want to go as missionaries to other places in Africa where there are still unreached tribes,” said one man who had given much input during the discussion.

The game the first man mentioned was a worldview analysis tool that Dale Goodson shared with us last summer. We compared the East African culture to a soccer game and looked at who the different players would be and what the ball would be. Then we did the same with the early church from the book of Acts and finished by comparing the two “soccer games.”

It was obvious that lights were going on in the minds of these men. They were seeing their own culture afresh and identifying where it falls short of the Biblical standard. They were gaining an understanding of what syncretism is, when culture and religion are mixed, and they wanted to share what they had learned with others.

This experience was a reminder for me that our work in Benin will be mainly training Africans to be missionaries, not just doing missionary work ourselves. Our hope is to help start a church-planting movement among national workers. We want to do what Paul instructed Timothy to do when he wrote; “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).

As I left my African friends that evening, my heart was soaring as I thought of what had happened in that little room. I dreamed of seeing other African faces light up with the joy of seeing their culture in the light of the Bible.

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