Spirit in Action
Listening for Light in Rwanda
David Thomas has a passion for discerning God's will, and he's shared that drive with the Friends Church in Rwanda. Ending up in Rwanda is a result of his practical encounter with discernment as he and his wife, Debby, sought clearness on where they were called in mission - could they really be called to genocide-torn Rwanda?
- Broadcast on:
- 27 Dec 2009
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be visiting with David Thomas, a Quaker missionary who I met in Rwanda in the course of the three-plus weeks I spent touring there with the friendly folk dancers recently. Both David Thomas and his wife Debbie have been doing wonderful spirit-led work in Rwanda for the past ten years. I think their different personalities lead them to focus on different aspects of service to Rwanda. So, my interview with Debbie talked a fair amount about her efforts to empower Rwandans to emerge from the crushing poverty so common in that country. It's my perception that David is, first and foremost, a deep spiritual seeker, that his soul thirst constantly for new ways to open doors to God's work in our lives. As I visited with him, in the course of my sojourn in Rwanda, I was struck by the very practical fruit of David's faithful listening to spirit. And let me start with a little confession. Before I met Debbie and David, I know that I carried with me some prejudices about missionaries. In fact, I had just finished reading the Poisonwood Bible, which does not favorably portray missionaries. But I knew that my prejudice would likely be unfair and unreal, and getting to know both David and Debbie dramatically conquered my prejudices. Please join me as I visit with David Thomas during my visit there a month ago, learning more of the work of a true spirit in action. David, thanks so much for joining me for spirit in action. Thank you for coming here and having me talk. I came all the way to Rwanda specifically to talk to you. Actually, of course, I'm here as part of the friendly folk dancer tour, and I'm so happy to meet you and your wife, Debbie, and find the amazing work that you're doing here in Kigali in Rwanda. What is the work that you are doing here as you see it now, as you understand it now? My work as I understand it now is as missionaries, we're here to support the Friends Church here, the Rwandan Friends Church, and we've been in a role of, can I say, parents or the planters, the beginners of the work here, and now our role is very much more stepping back and letting the Rwandans lead. I thought that when people go as missionaries to another country, they're going in order to tell the people the way they're doing it is wrong and that actually we've got the right way, so do it our way, and then your soul will be saved. Is that how you see it? Now, of course, I'm being facetious as I'm asking this, right? How do you see it? Because a lot of people do understand missionaries as having done that in the past. Right, there is the danger as a missionary that we can take our own culture and transplant our own culture in a place, and that's not the essence of what it means to be a missionary. Basically, we would say there's the timeless gospel or the gospel, the good news that goes past all cultures is something that can be expressed in many different ways in many cultures. So we come realizing our own weakness over our own culture. We're in a sense stuck to our own culture. But as we come and we share the good news about Jesus with people that we're with, they find that, they see that, and they begin to express that in their own ways. How do you understand your role as a missionary as any different than missionary of, say, a Methodist missionary, Catholic missionary coming here? Since your Quaker, I think, raised and practiced in Quaker, how do you understand your role as different than what maybe other missionaries come bearing? Well, if I could explain it this way, the way I see the universe, the center of the universe is a relationship. It's the idea that God is love, and in that there's the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. As we come to bring the good news, or the news of the three, if I can say that, of the Trinity, of God coming to earth and through the person of Jesus, setting in motion a process of people being gathered together through the Book of Acts. We can study that and look at this movement just starting to spread out. And then throughout history, and then we as friends have a special part in that. It was a time in Great Britain when things needed changing, when people were not listening to God, and when George Fox came in, listened to Christ, listened to the inner light, the voice within, and found, through setting the Scripture, found that it wasn't something he could find through traditional religion at that time. He couldn't find it in the Anglican Church at that time. They were missing the point, and his point was that Jesus Christ is here now to teach his people himself. That's a unique thing that we have as friends, as Quakers. And then taking that and applying it to all of life. Christianity is not just tied up in a building or a steeple house, as he called it back then. It's not a Sunday morning thing, but it's an all-of-life thing. It's a listening in all-of-life. And as he was on top of Pendle Hill, and I got to go to Great Britain when we lived in Belgium. I spent just a weekend, and my main sightseeing opportunity was to go and see Pendle Hill. And I walked up there just wondering, "Well, I see some sort of a vision." It was foggy and cloudy, and I did have a strong sense that there still is a great people to be gathered and that we as friends have a unique role in that. And that's not saying other Christian organizations also have a role they do. And you can see that drive or the desire, like what Jesus said in Matthew 28, 18 through 20, to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. That means all people groups, all cultures, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And that means especially immersing them in the person of the Trinity, in God, the Spirit, Jesus, and teaching them to do what I've commanded. So I see a lot of different groups have that as a goal, and I see them doing that. As far as what is unique about us as friends, we have various things. The whole idea of being led by the Spirit as not just individuals, but as a group. That is really key, and a danger I see in other groups, although God works with other groups, is hierarchy. It's having a person at the top with the assumption that they can hear better than the rest of the group what God wants to do. And our assumption is friends, we have leaders, and we have very good leaders. But a leader's job is to help the group discern what God is doing. Our belief is that the Holy Spirit can speak, God can speak to each one of the group. And as we're facing a tough decision, we can discern his word together. And so that's a very unique thing the friends have. Another unique thing from our tradition is the friends have been able to see injustices in the world. They've been able to see different problems and have been able to tackle those problems, bring light into dark areas. I see in friends, we've had a split, we've had kind of evangelical side, and then there's more of the social action. I'm not sure what the right word is, social action-based side. And both are important, and I think it's really important that, like for our influence of other churches, that that be brought together. Although now as I listen to wider Christianity in general, I see a lot of movement towards social action than I ever saw before. And I see it within evangelical circles, and I think it's a process of renewal or a process of change that needs to happen, because evangelical Christianity has its weakness, and its weakness, especially as this division that we see, even within friends' circles, that there's some that are focused on social action, and some that are focused on a Christ-centered sharing the gospel, sharing the good news. If I can use the word "saving souls," helping people so they have eternal life. But the truth is, like Jesus said, the kingdom has come now, and it's a kingdom that bears on life now and on eternity. It's not just eternity, but it's also now. As I look across the board at different churches, I see like Bono, the singer with U2, has been working with Bill Heibels, one is kind of a megachurch leader, especially trying to speak into evangelical Christianity saying, "Look, you've got to be concerned about AIDS and various other issues." As I look at another megachurch guy, Rick Warren, I see him also really concerned about trying to bring the social aspect back, so I think that's a very positive thing that I see throughout Christianity, but I think it's also a very unique thing that we as friends have, that in the wider context of what's happening in the world, we can be a light and point people in this direction. In the areas of violence, in the areas of people going to war, I see others in Christianity not being so concerned about that as friends are, and I think we have a special testimony that we need to keep giving to the world in that area. I guess I want to make sure for our listeners here that they understand you and I are both Quakers and the people here that I've been visiting in Rwanda are Quakers, and yet we're part of different strains of Quakerism, the evangelical friends, the group that I'm associated with, I usually refer to as unprogrammed or silent friends or liberal friends, and yet the things you've talked about, we do have in common, so it's rich hearing what you have as an experience here. So why did you come here? Are you a missionary-driven person from day one? Why come to Rwanda, which we all know had the horrible genocide, what brought you here? For myself, I've grown up in the Friends Church, and my dad and his family were born a part of the Friends Church in the Northwest Yearland Meeting. Northwest Yearland Meeting planted churches in Bolivia, or began churches in Bolivia and Peru, so my parents went as missionaries in '71, and so I grew up from year one to year eighteen in Bolivia as a missionary kid, I loved it. I remember sensing a strong call towards missions, two missions as a four-year-old, it's kind of early, but I remember my dad and another missionary Ron Stansell were sitting in a, we had like a weekly Bible study, and they were, before the meeting, they were sitting there talking, all the rest of the kids were running around outside, but I just so strongly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit right there in that conversation. I sat on the floor and just listened, and they were describing how a new community out in an area called Sorata had decided to come to Christ, and they were deciding to not commit their houses and their lives to the spirits in that area, and it was fascinating just listening to that, listening to the different stories of how people's lives were changing, what they were doing, and as I sat there, I just strongly felt the presence of the Holy Spirit, and strongly felt that this, I want to be there. I want my life to be where I can be with people whose lives are being changed. Why I came here specifically to Rwanda, when I went to George Fox College or university now, I was fascinated by the idea of unreached people groups. It means cultures in parts of the world that have never heard the good news of Jesus, and so there's a specific verse that excites me a lot. Matthew 2414, it says, "This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a message to all nations, and then the end will come." This idea of the good news going to all cultures or people groups is if you look throughout the Bible, it's from Genesis, it's from Abraham's call that God would bless all nations through him. Clear through the people of Israel were supposed to be a blessing for all nations, and clear through the time of Jesus, and then Jesus himself saying, "Go, make disciples of all nations." So within this strain, I've had a strong desire to go, especially to the area of India, Bangladesh, in those areas. There's many cultures there that have never had a testimony of Jesus. But then specifically, why do we come to Rwanda? We thought we were supposed to go to India, and so we wrote to our mission, evangelical friends' mission, asking them permission to go there, but they kept asking us, "Would you consider Rwanda?" And we, of course, would not consider Rwanda because we were married in May of '94. The genocide started in April. It was right in the middle. And we had missionaries here, the Ferguson's, and so we had constant reports, and we saw things on TV. Our first baby, Brianna, was born a year after we were married, and so as we were expecting a baby, you know, and knew about Rwanda, we were not interested in Rwanda, and yet they kept saying what we need is a young couple for Rwanda. Eventually, on the same weekend, both Debbie and I separately started thinking, "Well, maybe God does want us to go, and we should start thinking about that." And we talked together, and very surprised that the other was thinking that, and then went through a whole decision-making process of listening to God. We had meetings for clearness, where we gathered together some other missionaries that knew us well. So, yeah, we had a meeting for clearness, and we met, I think, three different times over a period of four months. And it was really good, as they asked us questions and listened with us, and we spent time in silence and prayer and just discerning. And so, all along, they were positive that we should go. And we went to board meetings soon after Brianna was born, she was about two weeks old, and we had a great time sharing who we are with the board, and they said, "You know what? We feel you are the perfect match for Rwanda." But they also said that, "We don't want you to go until you have a strong sense that that's where God is sending you." So, we're leaving you with that, and it's up to you to discern if you're going or not. And so, after that, I remember I took Oregon as a camp, Tillicum, and I went out to camp Tillicum, and they have a place called the Quiet Place, and I spent a number of days fasting and praying there, and I'd come home in the evenings and Deb would ask, "Okay, are we going?" And I would say, "Well, God really didn't show me that, but He did show me areas in my own life that I need to grow in." And eventually, I mean, He showed me that the most important thing is my relationship with Him, is growing in that relationship, deepening that. It really doesn't matter where we go as much. We went on through the rest of the summer, and my parents were concerned, they were concerned that maybe the mission wouldn't give us the educational opportunities that they felt we needed. And Debbie's parents were just really concerned. I mean, how could they send their daughter to Rwanda, of all places? So we decided we'd put out a fleece, like Gideon did, in the Bible, and just say, "Okay, God, if this is what you want, show us if this is right." We said we'd like to go with Evangelical Friends' mission, and we'd like nine months in Brussels, learning French, and then we'd like another six months with an organization called Youth with Emission, YWAM, in a French and English language, doing a discipleship training school that they have. And we thought, "Oh, the mission board probably won't be for that," because YWAM is a non-denominational group that works with all kinds of different people. And so we were thought some people on the mission board might be a little more conservative and not want us to go with YWAM. So our deal was if everybody is positive, including our parents, our meeting for clearness, and the mission board, everybody is 100% positive, and we'll see that as a go-ahead. Because at that point, there was nothing that said no all along. And that's how it was. Everybody was completely positive, and we started in the process of getting ready to go. And before that, missionaries did not have to raise funds with EFM, but we were the first ones that had to raise funds. So for my wife, that was very hard for Debbie. We almost had to stop at that point. But we didn't. We trusted. God had a plan. And we decided, "You know what? This is your thing, God. If you don't want to bring in the finances, then we'll know we're not supposed to go." So we're not going to even talk about finances when we go to churches and visit people. We're just going to share of who we are and what's happening already in Rwanda. That's what we'll share. And that's what we did. And within four months, all the funds came in. And most missionaries, it takes two to three years to raise the funds to be able to go. And that was another confirmation that this is where we were supposed to come. And when we got to Rwanda, well, Rwanda has had a lot of violence and still had at the time we were here in '97, '98, '99. There were people being killed. There were lots of people in the north of the country being killed, and we couldn't talk about it. It was a very hard time. There were a number of expatriates killed just through robberies in town. We were robbed at gunpoint ten days after we got here in our home with a soldier and a civilian with him. And just as I listened to the stories that people had and just started feeling the pain that they have, I'm an empathetic person. And as I felt that, it was just too much. And I just felt extremely vulnerable. And I had to just build walls around myself to protect myself. It was just overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming. And it seemed like as I was writing in my journal, I keep a journal on especially how I'm feeling and my emotions and how that kind of looks at what's happening in my life. At the time of that, when we were robbed at gunpoint, I started writing about depression. And why am I feeling so low and what's happening? As I look at it backwards or in retrospect, I can see that I went through a really hard time, about a year and a half of depression. And I sought God, but I really didn't hear very much for a long time. It was a very hard time. And up to that point, it was the hardest time I'd experienced in my life. But it was also a very good time where God just was working in me. I had a sense of pride, a sense of, you know, I'm going to make a great missionary. I grew up as a missionary kid. I just can't wait to get out there. I had that sense, like from Pendle Hill, that there is still a great people to be gathered and that we as friends have a role in that. But then God had put me completely flat on the ground with the depression. And just realizing it's nothing, there's nothing in me that can make this happen. And it was at that time, it was the turn of the year about January of '99. I just put that all before God and I said, you know, I don't have anything to offer. I'm here, you wanted me to be here, so I'm here. But you can see the struggles I've been through, the depression. I don't have it, but you do. And just spending time just listening to God. I love just listening. So I had a number of days during vacation time there where I could just listen, just spend time in silence and allow him to speak into me. And he gave me four specific things I could do that next year. That was a point of starting to really, it was the start of coming out of the depression, was listening and doing something specific that he showed me I could do. Two of the things were to prepare teaching on, I could use the word spiritual warfare or the idea and Ephesians have put on the full armor of God, the sword of the Spirit, the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith. What does that mean? So just taking apart those ideas and putting that together in a teaching. And so it's a teaching that helped me and was a benefit for some other people. The most important thing of what God had told me was to help our leaders as a church spend time listening to God with the question, what is your purpose for the French church in Rwanda? As a French church, we were going in all kinds of directions. We were doing what a church is supposed to do or a missionary planted church. And it just didn't seem to me like we had any sense of really what are we about, who are we. So I talked to the leaders about my concerns and they said, yes, we would like you to lead a retreat for listening to God for his purpose for the church. And that was incredible, a gift from them. And this retreat was what Deb and I would describe as the first time that our hearts were really united with our Rwandan brothers and sisters. We had a great time of looking at our history, one, we always look at our history. And then second was asking that question to God, what is your purpose for us as a French church in Rwanda? And then spending time in silence here in Rwanda, we don't use a lot of silence. It's a very vocal culture, lots of activity that way. And so it was different, but it was really, really good. And the first time was a full 30 minutes of silence and just listening. And then we came together and if people felt that they should share something, they shared it. And some people saw a picture, a number of people, I think three people saw a picture of a building that was just shining light. And some other people saw a path, and other people saw a hill or a mountain. And we started putting all these parts together. And well, at first, we didn't understand. We had these different ideas. Some people had a specific verse. I remember it was Isaiah 26 is what Rochelle Butruta's wife had. And so we just opened it up and looked at it and tried to figure out what does this mean? What is it saying to us? And then at that point, we had more questions than we had at the very beginning. And so we went and get back to God and said, "Okay, can you further clarify? What does this mean? What are you trying to say?" And we had some more insight. But then by the end of the day, it was late in the evening. People were ready to go to bed. Dev and I, though, were not ready. We felt that we needed to stay up. And it's fascinating. Debbie, the whole day, had nothing to say in the various times that we spoke together. And yet that night, as it was just Debbie and I alone with all these ideas God had given us, Debbie had a picture come to mind that brought together all the different ideas. So the next morning, we shared this picture with the group and said, "Let's go into some time of silence again and just discern, is this a way to bring it together? And if you all sense that this is right, then let's move forward." And everybody unanimously just said, "Yes, this is exactly right." And what it was is a picture of a hill with a building on the top shining Christ's light throughout the country and up the hill is a path. And as we lead people through what we call discipleship, which is teaching and training, bringing them through this path of personal transformation, up to a place where we have another value as intercession. For me, one of my favorite pictures, I'm an artistic person, and one of my pictures is the picture of the throne room of God in heaven. You can find it in Isaiah in the book of Revelation where John talks about that. It's a place where I can come where God is on the throne, Jesus beside him, and it's a place where through the Holy Spirit we can pray, we can intercede. The way I understand the world or see the world is there's a physical and there's a spiritual, it's very much intertwined, but it's not just physical, it's not a materialistic, just a physical world, there's definitely a spiritual element to it. And through intercession we can pray, we can intercede, we can influence the spiritual and the physical. I love to come before the throne and just ask God, would you please bless this person that I'm praying for or this group of people? Just give them grace, let them see the truth, let them get past the lies. I can fight off the enemy at that point and just say you don't have a right to mess with these people. These are people that Christ died for, that He bought, in that way we can just pray God's blessing on these people and that they would see the truth. So discipleship, intercession, the other one is holiness. Now within friend's tradition, I'm not sure exactly where it comes. If it's all the way back, I'd say it's all the way back from the beginning, probably, as I'm thinking of William Penn, no cross, no crown. The idea that as somebody is transformed is they come to Christ and they have that center that is just the center of the Holy Spirit, we'd say the light within, as they have that, that it transforms their whole life. That it's evident in what they do and the way they live, that they live holy lives, lives that are exemplary, lives that shine Christ's light. You were listening there to David Thomas, a Quaker missionary in Rwanda for the past ten years, a prime example of spirit in action. I'm Mark Helpsmeet and this program is available at my site, northernspiritradio.org. Among other interviews available there is a visit with Debbie Thomas, David's wife, a leading force in some very practical and inspirational programs to reduce poverty in Rwanda. Let's return to my talk with David Thomas in early March as I toured Rwanda. And so what you're saying is in this discernment process, this picture, this image came clear to you, you had this, and everyone united at this? Yeah, it was an incredible time as this image of who we are as a church, that we're to bring people up through discipleship, we're to intercede for people, and not just people, but country. We're to intercede for hard areas like poverty, like injustice, like Amachakubidi, like division between the Tutsis and the Hutus. We're supposed to intercede, pray into those areas, and then we're supposed to shine his light throughout the whole country, in these areas that he's leading us into. Yeah, it's a very exciting picture and it was amazing, all of us together. We're just at the end of a time where you as a group have discerned God's voice together and really clearly seen where he wants to lead us. It's an incredibly energizing experience and an incredibly unifying experience. And that was already, you'd been around for two, three years, I mean, this wasn't just, you arrived on the ground and a year later, okay, we've made all the changes that we need to make here. Right, no, it was in '99, November of '99, Thanksgiving Day is when we drove home from it, and we came in July of '97, so, and you know at the same time, that was '99, so I was 29 years old, and it's really crazy to have a 29 year old, and my wife a 27 year old, helping lead a group of leaders that are older than us, or some are the same age. But, you know, at that age, we really don't have the wisdom or the experience, and yet they allowed us to lead that, and God was gracious, and let us bless that group with that. Okay, so two years into your ministry here, you've got this picture, but where does this go from there? Well, after that time, people were so excited about this idea of listening to God as a group to discern his direction, his will, that they asked me if I would please teach the women's group, and the group in charge of education, and people in charge of youth ministry. So, I was able to take these ideas and go to various yearly meeting committees, and help them in the discerning process. It was very fun, because it was teaching it, and teaching discerning God's voice, but it was very much, it came from within, it came from them. And later on, the teaching I'd done on what I'll call spiritual warfare, or what George Fox would call the Lamb's War, the idea of fighting in the heavenlies, for people, for truth, for God's ways to be known. I taught some lessons on that, and that was really a good process that year. And we went back to the States in 2000, we went back wanting to come back to Rwanda, and that's the best way to leave. If we had gone back when I was still in that depression, it would have been very hard to come back to Rwanda. But as we went back to the States, before going back, God just opened my eyes to something else. Let me see that the church had a problem with dependency, the idea that, well, this is a mission-planted church, and it belongs to the Americans that planted it, evangelical friends' mission. People wouldn't say that outright, but it was an underlying assumption, meaning that when they would go and start a new church, the mission would, through a sister church program, a church, a friend's church in the States, would help with purchasing land or building, the building. Other parts of the yearly meeting budget were pretty much about 99% funded from the US. And so, in that example of church planting, or education, or various other areas, it was like, it was the mission that was supposed to do it. And for me, I was very startled to see that. I didn't expect that. I didn't feel it was right. It was something that was just working at me. And when I went back to the States, I was able to study under a friend's professor, Mary Kate Morse, at George Fox, Evangelical Seminary. And she was able to help me work on a project, a self-study project, on the issues of dependency in mission-established institutions. And specifically, in our case, a yearly meeting that we've started here. And I wrote a whole paper on the idea of how do we help the friend's church move out of dependency, because I realized they've got this incredible vision to shine Christ's light throughout the country. But I realized they're never going to reach that vision, because they're dependent on us. They're dependent on the Americans to make it happen. And that's not how it should be, because if the vision comes from God, it doesn't matter how poor, how rich, it doesn't matter where you are, we can do all things through Him, through Christ who strengthens us. And I knew that if they could catch that, and they realized that this is from Him, it's not just us, that they could do anything. And, okay, U.S. money is exciting, it might look big, but when I think about it, I think of it as just a shoebox. And if we limit our vision to the shoebox, we're extremely limited. But if the Rwandan church, if they could see beyond that and see that they're this body of Christ, God's people, in this area, they can do whatever He calls them to. And it is so much greater than a simple dollar budget. So I studied these ideas, I presented them to the mission in the states, which they were new ideas that began changing the mission. Now it's important, and that's a part of all of our EFM mission fields. But as I came back, I naively thought, this is it. This is the thing that people will just love this idea that we need to move off, depending on foreign missions, and we need to figure out how to become self-supporting. We need to change our structures, were they're too expensive, or were our structures are imported, because we have Western structures. I mean, we've started a friend's church with a yearly meeting and quarterly meetings, and the different positions that work with that. And that's good, but how much of it is imported and Western needs to change and be theirs? So they were going to be all excited about this idea that would really give wings to our church. I naively thought this, and I didn't realize that it wouldn't be so great. And I came back in August right before 9/11 happened in 2001. And after that, the mission, giving to the mission dropped drastically, and the churches here took about a 40% cut in the money they were receiving. So right away, people said, "Ah, we do need to become more self-supporting." We realized there's some problems here. So my Rwandan friends could see that, yes, we do need to become self-supporting. It is important, but the Rwandan is a very poor country. In fact, it's 10th from the bottom of all countries worldwide on a Wikipedia list of gross national product, just as a measurement. But what we discovered is that the fear of poverty was very deep. And in a sense, Rwandan saw themselves as, "We're too poor. Problems would come. You know, how do we send our kids through high school or through grade school? How do we do it? We're just too poor. We can't do that. How do we fix, repair our church buildings that need repair? We can't do it. I would call it a poverty mentality. I would call this as one of the strongholds that the enemy puts in, or a fog, or a, what do I say, the blinder that the enemy puts. Because this isn't true. I just didn't believe these ideas, and I'll call them lies. They're not truth. The idea that we're too poor, that you as an American have everything, and you can do all kinds of things. And you have something, and you have budgets, and money, and all this kind of stuff. But we can't do anything. And we have all these problems, but there's nothing we can do. And I just did not believe that. And I see people in a much different light that they can do everything. Everything that God calls them to do. But when I brought these ideas up, this major change away from a dependent culture to a culture that is, I don't like independent, but you almost have to move through independence before you can move to mutual interdependence. I was aiming for this point, which I'll call the psychological moment of ownership. And I studied it when my dad talked to me about Bolivia, and they said that in Bolivia, the mission didn't recognize the moment of ownership. When the national church, the Bolivians were ready to take it, and they kept supporting strongly and kept giving too strong of leadership at that point. And they missed it. They missed a whole point, which put it off for another 10 years. And I did not, for everything I am, I did not want to miss the psychological moment of ownership. Let me describe that for you. What I see is three kinds of ownership that I've learned about. One is legal ownership, where the national church is legally in the hands of the Rwandans. And not in the hands of the North American mission. Functional ownership says that the functions or the positions of the church are in the position are Rwandan. Who is the superintendent of the church? Who is the treasurer? Who are these different positions? Are they missionaries? Are they foreigners? Or are they Rwandans? And it must move towards being Rwandans. And the other thing is psychological ownership, which is the idea that they say this is our church, our organization. It will succeed or fail according to what we do. And that kind of an idea is exactly what I was aiming for. 2001 is when I brought those ideas, and at first there was lots of excitement. Yes, but as we moved past that, we realized that, man, there was a lot of resistance. And I went through what I'll call leadership backlash. People just saying, "Oh, you are terrible missionaries, and please, please get rid of the Thomases and get rid of their mission director. We need somebody who can just give us what we want." And it was a really, it was a hard time. And yet as I talked with different people, I know that underground people are hearing, they're listening. A number of people were really for this change. But it was a very, very hard time. In various leadership meetings, Debbie and I felt like we fulfilled the role of the punching bag in the meeting. Or I had a pastor from the States come out from Southwest Yearly Meeting. And he said, "David, to lead a change of this magnitude." This was in 2003. He said, "Delete a change of this magnitude. There's going to have to be a scapegoat." Most of models of leading chains show that there's a scapegoat that people just put the blame on him and that guy's gone. And he says, "You're probably going to be that scapegoat." So very encouraging words. And I just did not want that. I wanted to be a part of the change. In 2003, when after this team had come out, I spent the next 40 days just specifically praying for God help me know what to do. And God showed me some specific things. I could take these ideas of muttering out of dependency and teach them at the Great Lakes School of Theology in Bhujungbura at that time. And so I got to do that powerful. I did that twice. And then I also took the ideas and taught them to different groups of leaders here. And I'm a person who enjoys creative expression. And so I taught these ideas to a group of leaders up here in our Yearly Meeting. And I tried in all kinds of ways to express what does dependency look like. And the meeting at that point just blew up. It was, "You're trying to take away our livelihood. You're trying to take away the way we do things you're trying to kill the church." It was amazing. These ideas of freedom and the way they were viewed were so different. As we started realizing the depth of fear of poverty that is underneath the tension that we were feeling. And in 2004, with my wife, we're busy people. We said we're dedicating an hour a morning just to pray about this issue of poverty. One of our pastors came. His name is Jonathan. He said, "I can hardly buy a bag of charcoal." And we thought, "Okay, well, let's start there. God, what do we do about this issue of charcoal?" We didn't have answers. And we just went into time of silence, just waiting. We started having ideas. Well, what if you could cook with solar cooking? That was the idea Debbie had. And so she went online and did internet research and found out solar cookers that you could make for under $2. And that led us to finding the rocket stove, which is fuel efficient cooking. Again, you can make it for under $2. That's essential. We discovered other ideas. The Moringa tree, farming God's way, an idea from South Africa that uses mulch gardening. We discovered all kinds of intensive gardening, all kinds of things. It was a ripe time, even up to the present. That whole prayer of how do we move out of poverty has, we've seen many answers to that that God has been leading us in. That tie into our vision to shine his light throughout the country. And the big area of darkness, if I could say that, is poverty. How do we change that? How do we challenge that? Did they see it your way and start thinking independently? Yes, they did. In fact, various meetings, even back then in 2003, when that meeting just blew up in our faces, my dad said, "David, this is very positive." And I needed that. I needed to hear the positive side of the conflict. And he said, "When people are strongly disagreeing with you, it means they are expressing their opinions." And that's an idea of independence that is absolutely necessary. Because you can have a situation in a missionary context where you have this rich white American. And he's like the patron, the patron, or the father, and they're the subservient person. And whatever the patron says, "Yes, yes, yes." And that happens. I've seen that with different missionaries even out here in Rwanda. So everybody disagreeing was a very good process. And the whole process of conflict was absolutely necessary realizing that we're changing a deep foundational core belief of the organization in moving out of dependency. In March of 2006, the leaders organized another meeting and brought in lots of people, a special retreat to basically listen to God again for, "What is your purpose for us? Where are we going?" And it was similar to what we had done in '99. The difference was, in '99, we as a mission paid 100% for it, and I did about 90% of the work. In 2006, they asked that we participate, we helped with about 15% of the funds, and I did maybe 5% of the work. And I prepared just a simple devotional that I gave at the last part of the week. This week was a fascinating process of God working in me. Because if you're going to bring a deep change to a culture, to an organization, the deepest change must happen within yourself. And I went into this whole process knowing that God has to change me. This whole time, God was working on us. What are the paternalism issues that we have in ourselves that we've been blind to? God started bringing that kind of stuff up. My mom is one of my main intercessors, and she told me, "David, as you go into these meetings, please be quiet. That's what she sensed. Be quiet. Don't talk." And then she gave me a verse, Isaiah 30, 15, "In repentance and rest is your salvation, and quietness and trust is your strength." As I went to these meetings, the first part of them was history, looking back at where we've come from. And we haven't planted new churches or started new churches since. It's been about seven years at that point. And I'll call him my key antagonist was sharing the history at that point. He said, "We haven't grown because of David Thomas. It's because he brought these ideas of moving out of dependency. It's because he brought some ideas of planting churches using just small groups, not even using church buildings. Because of all these things, we have not grown. And I'm sitting there, and I want to defend myself. I want to say, "No, that's not true." And yet, I couldn't. I was supposed to be silent, and repentance and rest is your salvation, and quietness and trust is your strength. And it took about two days of going through these meetings, lots of attack, but very good. And you could just see the dynamic of wrestling with tough issues in the meeting. At that point, God showed me, "This is it. This is the psychological moment of ownership that you've been waiting for. It was incredible for me. This is it." In a sense, this is why I've come to Rwanda, is to move them away from being an American friend's church and let them become their own. I mean, they're their own. Filled with the Spirit, they go where the Spirit leads them. And I got to lead a devotional on the last day and share with them just that I saw that they are fully capable. And in a sense, transfer psychological ownership from the mission to the national church. And so that day I shared from Numbers 13 and 14 where Moses takes the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and he sends in the twelve spies, and they come back and they give a report. And Joshua and Caleb say, "Yes, we can go in. We can take the Promised Land because God is with us." But the 10 spies, the other 10, they say, "There's giants in the land. They're huge. And we're the size of grasshoppers in their eyes. There's no way we can go in." And they started spreading a bad report among the whole people of Israel that whole night, until you have the entire, I forget how many it is, million, couple million, crying out saying, "Why did you lead us here to kill us?" And they just complained and griped, and those people didn't enter the Promised Land. They wandered in the wilderness for 40 years after that. And after those 40 years, when it was time to go back in, the only two people left were Joshua and Caleb who had the faith to go in. And so we looked at the idea of this huge valley of doubt that we can't make it. We can't do it. There's a faith, this mountain of faith, of what it takes to go after the vision that God has given us. And in a sense, our becoming, this people of light that shine his light throughout Rwanda, that's our Promised Land. And we can get there, but it takes Rwandan leaders leading it. It does not take the white foreigner leading it. I was able to say to them, "Okay, I've been in the driver's seat. I'm not the superintendent, but I've been a part of the leadership team of this church. I've loved it. I've learned a lot. But it's very clear to me that I need to get out. I need to sit in the back seat. And you, you as Rwandan leaders, are fully ready and capable to take it. At the very end of that session, I said, "Look, I want you to see, right here, this man, Augustine, our superintendent, he's a Joshua. Follow him. This man over here, Jonathan, he's a Caleb. Follow him. This man over here sees Eddie. He's another Joshua. Follow him." And I just pointed out a number of leaders that fully have what it takes to lead. And I was able to just step back. Now, looking at the whole process two years from that time, I can see that, "Wow, they have done an incredible job. In fact, I talked to some friends, some of the leaders, and asked them, "Would you go back to the way it was before?" And they said, "No." In fact, just as an example, different churches that were built, church buildings that were built in the past, that were never finished, and they always waited, "Well, when is the money going to come in from the states to finish them?" When it wasn't agreed that that would happen. This last year, people started doing finish work. They started just fundraising in their own church with, I mean, the national income is $260 per year. So, it's not a lot of money, but they raised substantial amounts of money in the thousands to do repairs and to do different things that help them in their community. They said, "No, we've done more now than we ever did with a mission. We'll never go back to the way it was before." And one of the motto that we have is what we say, "Nithquittu bikora. We can do it. We do it." And basically, what I see now is we have the chance to reach God's vision that He's given us to shine His light in the areas of poverty, in areas we're already shining in the areas of education. You've seen our schools shine in the areas of peace and reconciliation, bringing together people that have a lot of bitterness, bring healing to people. We can do that. And Deb and I, as missionaries, were so excited to be here and walk alongside them, but we're not the leaders. This is their church completely now. And so, as far as my work, that's been the most important thing, is stepping out of the driver's seat and sitting in the back seat. Has it been hard for you not to want to control how they do their worship and so on? For instance, at one point, when I, with the friendly folk dancers, was traveling in the area of Northwest Yearling Meeting, contacted one of the churches there and said, "Would you like the friendly folk dancers to come to your site?" The minister said, "Well, I'd love you to come visit and love to connect with you, but we actually discourage dancing, so we don't want you to come here." And so, here we come to Rwanda, and I was told that they love dancing, and so they were very eager to hear Quaker dancers come here. Who is that a struggle for you? Are there elements of the way that you think worship should be done properly that they're not matching up with you? That's an interesting question. Our former director, Norville Hadley, of EFM Director, he said, "When you are comfortable with the worship in the culture you're in, something's wrong, because you've planted your own style that you've grown up with and what you're comfortable with. But when you're very uncomfortable and everybody else is fully free and really experiencing worship, then you know that you're probably in the right place. So, as far as Rwandan dance, I don't know if I've ever been uncomfortable with it. I guess maybe at the beginning, when it was first coming in the churches, sometimes that would be so much the focus I was concerned about that. But now I love it, and it's just a part of me even, even though I'm not talented at dancing. I've seen some, I don't know how to describe it, some new kind of dancing that people have seen on MTV, and one of our churches, the pastors, just let it be apart, and there's some young people that are high school age that have just bring that, so they get a song or two every service, and they do just this very different, strange kind of dancing. And it makes me uncomfortable, but I also see that God's working in these guys, and I see their excitement. I listen to the words that they're singing, and I know that God's working in them. So, I'm not going to stand in a way and say no, even though it's different in what I'm not comfortable with. What about synthesizers? With synthesizers, I don't like synthesizers. Rwandans are very musical, and in the past, when we first came here, the drum was just crucial in a worship service, and I just loved hearing the different beats, and a person could have one arm doing one beat, and the other arm doing a completely different beat at the same time, and it just came out so beautifully. Now, the synthesizers come in because, well, that's modern. The country has a very strong move from a traditional culture to a modern culture. I see it from the government's vision 2020, all throughout the culture, and so I don't necessarily like the synthesizer. It's more modern. It brings in western beats, which take the place of Rwandan beats, and I don't want the special unique Rwandan music to be lost, but I'm not going to stand in the way either of the synthesizer, even though, I mean, in the past, people said the mission must be synthesizers, because if we have synthesizers, then we can do evangelism, and people will come to our churches. I have no idea, no desire to do that. We're not about attracting people by the way we do a service. It's about the way we live our lives as transformed people. People will be attracted to Christ within us, the light within us, but it's not through a synthesizer. So we never as a mission synthesizers. I have had to help when they give fundraising times, and I as another person among many participate in that. But I know that, and I hope, that it will cycle back to the point where people will really want to bring in the traditional instruments again, and I'm sure it will. I've watched in Bolivia, where it's cycled back, and the traditional instruments were an important part of worship service, so I'm trusting that it'll come back again. One more question. I just thought I'd leave you with a really terribly difficult one. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, in Togo, and in Togo, there were perhaps 10, or maybe it was 20% of the population, was Christian. Another 10 or 20% was Muslim, and the most were animists. They never had a genocide there, but this country, which I believe had more than 50%, maybe 80% Christian, had genocide. I don't know if that speaks well for Christianity, or what it could mean. Can you offer me some reflection on that? That is an excellent, excellent question, and it really is a telling story on evangelical Christianity, and the weaknesses that it has. Because the country was, I've heard 80, I've heard 90, I've heard even higher percent Christian. A major portion of that are people that say they're Catholic, and when the Catholics first came in, I forget which year exactly, in the 30s, there was a major switch, and the king said, "Okay, I'm going to go for being Catholic." And because he switched, everybody in leadership switched. Just overnight, there was huge, if I could say conversion to Christianity, Catholicism. But there wasn't really any change within. It was a political move to be in favor with the Belgian colonial government. When that kind of thing happens, and people become Christian because of the benefits they can get, and that happens not just in a political sense, but it can happen in our churches, it can happen in. And it's happened in Africa that many people became Christian because they got good medical help, or they got a good education, or it was a potential for social advancement. When that happens, the Christianity will not. It won't go deep. In the center of people, they won't be deeply changed. In their worldview, the center of who they are will still be trusting in other things. In this country, it's an animistic country, which means they believe in spirits that rule various things, and animism breeds kind of a spirit of fear. The way you handle that, because you never know what's going to happen, and it's all the spirits that cause it, the way you handle that is to manipulate the spirit world through various sacrifices, through rituals, various things. For example, if we're having better fertility, young girls would engage in all kinds of promiscuous acts in order that they could, when they're married, later on, bear children. Anyway, when Christianity came, it was more a social thing. It was a politically correct thing to do. Now, that's not true of everybody. I mean, in the 30s, there was what they call the East African Revival, which is the longest recorded revival in Christian history worldwide. And that touched all various countries around here. It started in Rwanda, in Gahini, and there was incredible, incredible change. It was especially an evangelical gospel, and people were genuinely changed, but it was very much focused on eternal life. And people were changed. I mean, there were definite, you know, people that really struggled with alcoholism or different things were able to move out of that. But it didn't go deeply into social change. It didn't apply across the board to all areas of life. The critique that I've heard a lot of people say is that the Christianity here wasn't deep enough. It didn't profoundly change people. Even when I first came, and I remember hearing the songs and the services, and I was just so struck by the theme of the singing. It was all about, we don't know if we'll see each other next week, but we will see each other in eternity. So it was all these songs about eternity. And it wasn't really about now, and life is hard now. There's poverty, there's AIDS, there's ethnic division. We need to talk about that. You know, Jesus has a word, he says, and Matthew, I'm sorry, John 10-10, "The thief has come to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come that they might have life and have it to the full, abundant life." And that includes eternal life, but it's not limited to eternal life. And so my critique would be that evangelical Christianity has been focused on saving souls for eternal life, bringing people into the Kingdom of God in that sense. But what they've been lacking is the social side, the narrow side of the Kingdom of God. When we look at Jesus' ministry, when we look at other people, we see that, yes, there is the eternal life. I mean, Jesus had all kinds of messages that he said about that. So that aspect is important, but the other aspect that needs to be brought together with it is that life here should be changed. That there's ways to change the poverty. There's ways to change the people that are in prison because of false accusation. There's got to be changed for those kind of things. When it first coming, I could see that the church was not reaching out. It wasn't making a difference in its community. People were coming to church for what they could get from church, not realizing that they are the church. One of our professors, Chuck Van Ingen, at Fuller's seminary, he said, "Church is not for the people, but church is the people, and they are for God's purpose in the world." That's a huge, huge paradigm shift. And at first I thought, it's because of dependency, and just depending on the outside, the West, that's why we can't reach out. And it's definitely a part of it. But then I began to realize that it's also a failure of evangelical Christianity, that it just kind of focuses on the spiritual, not realizing that life is integral. It includes everything. I've been, if I could say, my next passion, or my next thing that's starting to drive within me. I mean, it's been two years since the dependency thing has done, and it's no longer my burden. But what I see now is I want this church to become that light that God showed us in '99, and I want it with a passion. And I want to see areas of poverty deeply transformed, because the pain that people live through in that, I mean, you can't describe it unless you actually are out here. I can show you a video, I can show you those kind of things, but you can't, I can't even barely understand it, and I've lived here for ten years, but that needs to change. If Christ has come, that we might have life and have it abundantly, then there needs to be a change there. Yeah, and it's not a prosperity gospel like you hear in the States. I'm totally against that, I don't want that. So that's a danger on the other side, but there should be change here and now. And I want to see our believers reaching out to people in their community. One lady, she's a lady that tends up here at Kagorama, she's a cripple named Maggie, but she can walk. She sells at the market down here, just I forget vegetables or something that she buys and sells. And she had a friend that she shared with that was, another lady was, I don't know what the lady's problems were issues besides alcoholism. I know she was struggling with that, but Maggie just loved her, just was a blessing to her, a friend to her, and that lady has since then been able to leave alcoholism. I don't know the issues in her family, but I can see that there's things changing, and that's what I want to see happen. I want to see every one of our believers, people whose lives are changed. I want to see them being the ministers, being the people that reach out, that go into the community, that with their relationships with neighbors that are of a different tribe, bringing reconciliation there, I want to see them changing their own poverty and changing the poverty of their community. That will be the power behind this church. I mean, that's a whole paradigm that has to change from evangelical Christianity too. It's not the pastors that are to do the ministry. But all the gifts that are given, pastors, teachers, evangelists, prophets, all the different gifts that are given are for the building up of the body. It's for releasing others. If I can help people to realize that being a Christian isn't about going to church on Sunday, I mean, that's fine, and that's like a car going to a gas station. But the purpose of a car is not to stay at the gas station, it's to go, it's to go out and drive, and our purpose is to get out. It's like our churches are salt shakers, and in evangelical Christianity, we've just put all the salt in the salt shaker and separated it from the rest of society, and that's not what it's about. We need to get that salt out into the food and make the whole culture just taste good. Wow, there's so much more I would like to ask you, but I think we're going to have to cut it off, let you have lunch, and maybe we'll even get lunch. David, thank you for the beautiful work. Across our different branches of Quakerism, I sense that exact same turning to the Lord. Going into the silence and listening there is so resonates with me. I feel like you have so much to teach Quakers of my ilk, and I thank you for your witness here in Rwanda. Yeah, thank you very much. That was a Spirit and Action interview with David Thomas in Rwanda for ten years now as a Quaker missionary, a great addition to the visible work of divine healing on our planet. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)