Navajo Mission
What motivates a church to travel two days and 1,232 miles across the country to spend a few days sharing Bible stories with children, performing minor repairs on some homes and feeding a few hungry, homeless people? Let face it; the same work needs to be done right at home. And why are we going to the Native Americans in Gallup, New Mexico? There are Indian people groups closer to home that also need Christ’s love. Don’t Native Americans receive billions of dollars in tax money for housing and education? Why are we going there to do home repair with so much money available to them? And New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah have churches full of Christians to share the Gospel, so why do we need to go?
All good questions that need answers. Let’s explore a few answers. First of all South Walker Baptist Church already does at home everything we are going to do on the reservation. We share Jesus with children that have no church home; we do home repairs for people in need through SWAT; we feed people who do not have enough through our food pantry. You might say that our ministry at home is ongoing training for the kinds of ministry that are needed in Gallup, New Mexico and on the Navajo Reservation (Res).
What makes the need in Gallup and on the Res so urgent? For starters, poverty is out of control, due to many factors including the highest rate of alcoholism per capita in the country; under appreciation for formal learning; an effective unemployment rate among employment aged adults of 43%, most of those being males. Poverty is the result of hopelessness that is reflected in high alcohol use. Alcohol use stymies employment so employers stay away. Next comes high personal debt which always attracts loan sharks with interest rates as high as 30% a week. And of course, all of these factors lead to crime – all sorts of crime; dwi, dui, assaults, murder, robbery, domestic abuse – and the list goes on. Certainly everyone can agree that such a people need hope to break the downward spiral of this sort of life. We go to offer sucha hope found only in Jesus. And we want to give particular attention to the children –innocent children who are the hope of the future and the hope of breaking the spiraling cycle.
It is true that Native Americans receive a great deal of tax money from the Federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Many segments of our society receive government assistance and we have all seen the results. If you want an apt comparison of how tax money is used on the Res, we might look at housing projects in our own towns. Abused, run down, unsafe, lining the pockets of developers who build today, cash in, and our gone tomorrow. There is never enough money to maintain what is built because greed takes it all at the front end. Another comparison may be the food stamp program. Nearly 48 million Americans, 20% of households, are on the food stamp program – up from about 24 million in 2004. More household are food stamps and yet more children are identified as living in hunger and poverty. Feeding America says 1in 6 people are hungry at the same time saying that 1 in 5 children are hungry, up from 1 in 8 in 2004. They also claim that the same percentage of people on food stamps is the same number that are in poverty. So more resources are being used by more people and yet the problem addressed by all this money is increasing. It is the same on the reservation. Money comes in, it is misused and skimmed off of and the problem remains or is worse. The same system that creates need in our culture is the same one that creates need in theirs. And in both the Christian is called and sent to help the poor and show them the love of God in Christ Jesus. Read the following articles about Indian life:
The Navajo Religious values are described below:
Navajo Beliefs
The Navajo people, the Diné, passed through three different worlds before emerging into this world. The Fourth World, or Glittering World.
The Diné believe there are two classes of beings: the Earth People and the Holy People. The Holy People are believed to have the power to aid or harm the Earth People. Since Earth People of the Diné are an integral part of the universe, they must do everything they can to maintain harmony or balance on Mother Earth.
It is believed that centuries ago the Holy People taught the Diné how to live the right way and to conduct their many acts of everyday life. They were taught to live in harmony with Mother Earth, Father Sky and the many other elements such as man, animals, plants, and insects.
The Holy People put four sacred mountains in four different directions, Mt. Blanca to the east, Mt. Taylor to the south, San Francisco Peak to the west, and Mt. Hesperus to the north near Durango, Colorado, thus creating Navajo land. The four directions are represented by four colors: White Shell represents the east, Turquoise the south, Yellow Abalone the west, and Jet Black the north.
The number four permeates traditional Navajo philosophy. In the Navajo culture there are four directions, four seasons, the first four clans and four colors that are associated with the four sacred mountains. In most Navajo rituals there are four songs and multiples thereof, as well as many other symbolic uses of four.
When disorder evolves in a Navajo's life, such as an illness, medicine men use herbs, prayers, songs and ceremonies to help cure patients. Some tribal members choose to be cured at the many hospitals on the Navajo Nation. Some will seek the assistance of a traditional Navajo medicine man. A qualified medicine man is a unique individual bestowed with supernatural powers to diagnose a person's problem and to heal or cure an illness and restore harmony to the patient.
There are more than 50 different kinds of ceremonies that may be used in the Navajo culture--all performed at various times for a specific reason. Some ceremonies last several hours, while others may last as long as nine days.
These are deeply held beliefs by those Native Americans who are entrenched in their culture. A difficult belief system to overcome. But as equally as difficult are those residents who no longer believe in much of anything. They believe in their culture, as broken as it is. As it is in our society, overcoming such religious entrenchment or societal conditioning requires a good and steady dose of the Gospel.
There simply is not enough people heeding the call to these Native Americans. Every major protestant denomination has work ongoing within this people group and it is still not enough. Google “Navajo Christian missions” or “Navajo nation evangelism” and one finds non-profits and para-church organizations at work. You may find individual churches like ours doing event and some year-round ministry. But for the most part the ¾ million people living on the reservation are left without a regular, consistent impression of the Good News of Jesus.
So we are going to help this effort, to do our part to reach this people. Hopefully we will have the privilege to reap a harvest. Certainly we will have the opportunity to make use of our efforts to make us better ministers in our Livingston Parish home.
Begin praying now for the proud Native Americans living on this vast land, that they may embrace Christ as they have embraced their culture.