I have been blessed across my life to encounter people whose faithfulness both humbles and inspires me. Earlier this year, work took me and two colleagues to the West African country of Cote d’Ivoire for a series of meetings with United Methodist clergy and laity -- church leaders all -- whose faithfulness did just that. One of the conversations I had that has continued to work on my soul was with Bishop Benjamin Boni. As in the United Methodist church in the U.S., every Ivorian United Methodist clergyperson is eligible to move each year and every Ivorian church is open to receive new leadership, and it is the bishop and his cabinet’s responsibility to do this matchmaking.
In our conversation over dinner, the bishop was telling us about the years of the Ivorian civil war and how he and his colleagues had to decide which of their clergy would be assigned to serve in areas of the conference that were, at best, volatile and, at worst, life-threatening. Together, they had to decide which clergy would be asked to serve in places where clergy priests were regularly being beheaded and clergy families were being abducted and held for ransom. He told of going himself into these dangerous areas and meeting with his clergy and listening to their stories of ministry in settings which required almost unimaginable sacrifices.
I wondered out loud if the clergy had objected when they were told that they were being appointed to these regions, if they had asked the bishop to reconsider or change their church assignment. “No,” Bishop Boni said. “My clergy trusted that Jesus called them there.” I then asked how he could ask someone to serve in such a place. His response: “I trusted that Jesus had called them there because Jesus himself was there.”
While his answer didn’t altogether surprise me, it did remind me that I was asking the wrong questions. I was asking questions that emerge quite naturally in a culture which complains too easily and sacrifices too little. I was asking questions that presume that ministry best happens in predictable and protected places and that the church should always find itself in safe settings.
Bishop Boni’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of the Ivorian clergy make me wonder what my reaction would be if my bishop called me and asked me to move into a volatile -- even violent -- setting. Would I have the faith and the courage to say, “Jesus has called me here because he himself is here,” and start packing my boxes?
Their witness inspires me to hope that I would.
