Several years ago, we hosted a pastor who was looking for a possible unreached people group for his church to sponsor. The following is the report he presented to the church leadership. I have done a bit of editing to protect the believers in certain locations by deleting names of people and places. Sadly (for us), the church voted against this proposal and instead chose to support a project in Haiti. Maybe some other church will read this long report and decide to take action in their place. This week, a medical team is ministering in the very area GK's church had hoped to help.
My Trip to Oaxaca Mexico
God blessed our team of “The Three Amigos” with health, safety, awesome weather, and meaningful experiences. In this report I will not tell you about our comfortable accommodations, interesting toilets, water supplies, ancient ruins, cosmopolitan dogs, road blockages, super heroes, Mexican wrestlers, fascinating foods, and clever scams. We will spare describing the taste of grasshoppers and pig brains. Instead, we will focus on the spiritual purposes of our trip.
This trip was safari-like in that we went hunting for a “strategic partnership ministry.” That is, a missionary, a ministry, a pastor, or a focus with whom (our church) could form a long term partnership and make a difference elsewhere in the world.
Our search for such a place led us to Oaxaca (wuh-HAH-kah) Mexico. How so? We started to wonder which unreached peoples groups lived closest to our church. (Unreached peoples does not mean non-Christians. It means peoples who have no way to become Christians if they wanted to.) So we called the Adopt-A-Peoples Clearinghouse, were told about Oaxaca, and were instructed to make contact with a missionary named Jim Loker. What a find! Jim and Jamie have been working in the state of Oaxaca since 1994 and there is no one with a better grasp of the complex situation.
The State of Oaxaca is divided up into numerous districts. Each district represents different tribes of peoples. Even within tribes there are numerous subdivisions and dialects spoken. In all, there are about 120 different dialects spoken in Oaxaca and only limited Spanish.
Religiously the people appear to be Roman Catholics with beautiful churches prominently adorning every village. In reality they have a highly syncretistic brand of Catholicism, Meso-American deities, spirits, rituals, and practices are interwoven with their Catholicism. Prayers are offered to God and to the gods of the rain, sun, fertility, wildlife, and the hunt. These lesser gods must be appeased or (they believe) curses come upon crops and villages. Each village consists of people who are all of the same tribe, dialect, and culture. Each village has its own mix of Catholicism and patron deities.
No outsiders are welcome to live and operate within the villages without the blessing of the village fathers who serve as gatekeepers. A missionary cannot live among the people, establish good will, and share the Gospel. He or she would be perceived as a threat to the culture, crops, and welfare of that village. Depending on the village fathers, some are open to the Gospel, some are closed, and some persecute.
Jim knows the situation in each town. He knows where there are no known evangelical Christians, where there are secret believers meeting underground, where there are Bible study groups, and where there are churches. As we looked at maps and accessed the region, Jim said, “Some of the most unreached people groups of the world are the Mixe (MEE-hay) people. As far as I know, there is not a church or a mission that has adopted them as an unreached people group.”
From that point on, we focused on the Mixe. We spent the next five days together traveling through Mixe territory. We went up and down narrow mountain roads that had few guardrails. We felt no danger but if we went over the edge it would be all over. There would be no chance of survival and photographs of our dead faces would appear in the next day’s papers.
One day our travels took us down an 18 mile stretch of dirt road that took us 2 hours and 45 minutes to negotiate. This trip to Atitlan (find that on a map!) was the highlight of our travels. We went places that tourists do not go. Jim took us to the village of (name removed) where evangelical believers are presently free to propagate the Gospel. We spoke with Pastor L . He has a congregation of 200+ in a village of about 2000, and there are three other evangelical churches in that village. Pastor L wants to expand his facility and needs financial help.
Jim also took us to SJG. This village is completely closed to the Gospel. There are no known believers in this village. There we saw a huge mural that says it all. In the mural a mother is standing there with her infant in her left arm and a raised machete in the other. The caption reads, “In defense of culture . . .” That mural is saying that no outside cultures and religions are going to touch my baby without going first over my dead body. (Since this was written, there are now several families who profess to follow Christ in this language area.)
Jim took us to one village where five believers meet secretly. For security reasons, I will not disclose its name. He also showed us a town where the believers were abducted and taken outside of the town and told never to return. To assure they would not return, their homes were burned down. They probably had to make their way to the city of Oaxaca, begin homeless, and reestablish their lives. There is active persecution (not of the bloody sort) throughout the region. We were told several heart-wrenching stories of what it costs to follow Jesus in these parts.
You might be wondering what I was wondering: How can they call on the One they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone bringing the message to them? (Romans 10:14-15) And how can someone bring the message to them if their villages are closed? How DO these people become Christ-followers?
First ... there have been many showings of The Jesus Film and acceptance of oral Bibles even in closed villages. Wycliffe has done a lot of wonderful and necessary translation work in the region... But I saw some New Testaments that have been sitting dormant since 1971 and ‘76. No one in the village reads, and the people actually prefer to remain oral cultures.
Furthermore, the people in oral cultures do not mentally process information in terms of propositional statements as we do (e.g, all have sinned, the wages of sin is death, everyone needs to be saved. Christ died for us on the cross etc.). They only process information that is shared with them in story form! Now think of what that does to witnessing, discipling new believers, and training pastoral leadership. Making the Bible oral (cassettes, CDs, Mega-Voices, and DVDs) is a big part of what the Lokers do in the region.
Second, many people temporarily leave the villages to become migrant workers on farms and in factories in the U.S. There are wonderful ministries who target such workers. Some return to their villages as born again followers of Christ, discover other believers, and start to meet.
Third, some travel into the City of Oaxaca where life is very different than in the villages. In the city there are many churches that are sharing the Gospel with people. Tribal people sometimes become believers and the Gospel spreads down their network of relationships.
We did not return from our “safari” with a specific native ministry, church, or pastor with whom we could partner. Instead we have returned with a potential strategic partnership focus. We propose that (our church) work with and through Jim Loker and his associates to focus on the unreached and under-reached Mixe people in Oaxaca.
We would pray for the Mixe, assist the missionaries in their oral efforts among the Mixe, and send down short-term teams (construction, medical, water projects etc.) to work among the Mixe. Only God knows what we could do in the future but all of our efforts are guaranteed to be an adventure with the Lord. The Lokers host short-term missions groups each year who fill necessary niches to advance the work of God in the region.
Affectionately,
G.K
