My Pilgrimage in Mission

Olav Guttorm Myklebust

I
have, in retrospect, sometimes thought that " be yond ness" has been a distinctive feature of my life. I was born and grew up in Bergen, Norway-for 900 years an im portant center of seafaring and contact with foreign countries. My earliest memory is of a huge crowd of people gathered to celebrate the opening of the Bergen-Oslo railway. At school my favorite subject was geography, more especially that part of it that dealt with the non-Western continents. The encounter, through reading and traveling, with peoples and cultures other than my own, has always fascinated me. However, the decisive factor in the shaping of my life was a beyondness of a different kind. I refer to the expanding horizons that are an integral part of the Christian message. In the home in which I was privileged to grow up I learned not only to look upon daily devotions, Bible reading, and church attendance as essential elements of the Christian life, but also to interpret that life in terms of a reality related to "the depth of the centuries and the breadth of the continents." My parents were committed Christians and sincere friends of mission. As a young woman my mother had wished to become a missionary. On my twenty-first birthday my father pre sented me with a cop y of that monumental piece of research, World Christian Atlas, to the study of which I immediately addressed myself. No less than to my parents lowe to my wife a debt of special gratitude. The quality of her Christian life and devotion has immensely enriched my pilgrimage in mission. I am a disciple of no one but a debtor to many. As a young student my Christian thinking was largely influenced by those distinguished churchmen Bishop Peter Hognestad of Bergen and Professor Olaf Moe of the Free Faculty of Theology, Oslo. Both of them were convinced Lutherans. Both of them were also pi oneers of the ecumenical movement in Norway. Bishop Eivind Berggrav, likewise, made a deep impact on my life. It has been my good fortune to have met and been inspired by not a few of the great missionary leaders and scholars of this century. When I was still at an earl y age, John R. Mott captured my mind . His vision of one world in Christ, his mastery of the facts and problems related to the task of the church in all six continents, his wide sympathy, resolute will, and intellectual in tegrity decidedly affected the course of my life. J. H . Oldham, too, I greatly admired . This remarkable per sonality-missionary statesman, ecumenical architect, and pioneer in the field of Chri stian social ethics-exerted upon my generation

an influence that it would be difficult to overestimate. Oldham wa s a fearless and farsighted thinker. In the Christian mission , in the words of his celebrated dictum, "we must dare in order to know." As editor of the International Review of Missions (of which already in my youth I became an enthusiastic reader), and through his books (of which Christianity and the Race Problem should be specifically mentioned), Oldham greatly helped to open my eyes to the magnitude and complexity of the problems with which the Christian world mission is wrestling, and, equally im portant, to understand that these problems can be solved only through sustained intellectual labor and by taking wide and com prehensive views. Other missionary thinkers upon whom I look back with pro found gratitude are, to mention only the names of some of those who are no longer amongst us, J. Merle Davis , Walter Freytag , Norman Goodall, Hendrik Kraemer, Kenneth Scott Latourette, Stephen Neill, D. T. Niles, and Max Warren . Participation in international conferences, organized by the International Missionary Council (IMC), the World Council of Churches (WCC), and the Lutheran World Federation respec tively, effectively contributed to my life being confined within no narrow horizons. I saw my own church from a new per spective and in a truer proportion, and I learned the important lesson that there is no form of Christian experience which alone is valid. My most vivid memories are of the IMC conference in 1926 at Le Zoute, Belgium (which I attended as a press corre spondent) on the subject of "The Relation of Christian Missions to the New Forces That Are Reshaping Africa" (to quote the title of J. H. Oldham's admirable address on that occasion) ; th e IMC confer ence in 1947 at Whitby, Ontario, Canada, the first po stwar gath ering and the first to interpret the Chri stian mission in terms of "partners in obedience" ; and the meetings of the WCC Di vision on World Mission and Evangelism in 1962 in Paris, the first to be held after the "integration," and in 1965 at Enugu, Ni geria, where the subject of the Christian response to the African revolution received special attention. To the universities, colleges, and institutes in Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, and South Africa at which I was able, for extensive periods, to pursue studies in missiology, ecumenics, and education, lowe a varied debt to which I would pay my tribute . However, the unique, and also the most creative, experience of my life was the eight years I had the privilege of serving at Umpumulo Institution, Natal, South Africa-at that time a mis sion-owned, government-aided training college for African teach ers . The intellectual achievements of the students as well as the genuineness of their Christian belief impressed me deeply. To know Africans is to respect and love them. Their heritage of social relationships, their infectious humor, their faculty for friendship, and their capacity for suffering (in a country dominated by the tragedy of racial separation) have forever put me in their debt. In particular, I learned to appreciate, in the words of Kenneth Kaunda, the African "gift for man enjoying the fellowship of man simply because he is a man." During my Umpumulo years
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Olav Guttorm Myklebust (born 1905) is Professor Emeritus of Missiology, Free Faculty of Theolo gy (Church of Norway), Oslo. From 1930-39 he served as an educational missionarywith the Cooperating Lutheran Missions in Natal, South Africa. His publications include An International Institute of Scientific Mis sionary Research (1951), The Study of Mission s in Theological Education (two volumes, 1955, 1957), the centenary history of the Norwe gian Missionary Soci ety in South Africa (1949), a presentation and assessment of the Lutheran World Federation (1970), a survey of the Christian task in Africa (1971), an introduction to missiolo gy (1976), and two major works on H. P. S. Schreuder, the Norwegian pioneer missionary to the Zulus of South Africa (1982, 1986).

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

there was born in me a conviction, increasingly strengthened by subsequent experiences, that the African as an African has an enormous contribution to make to the welfare and future of the world community.

II
My teaching, research, and writing have, directly or indirectly, centered about the issue of the place of the Christian world mis sion in (1) the study of theology, (2) the work of the church. In the theological curriculum of the 1920s, not only in Norway but almost everywhere, the subject of "mission" was con spicuous by its absence. Preparing, as I did, for missionary service in Africa I was permitted by the Free Faculty of Theology, Oslo, through a special arrangement, to add to the course in church history a course on the history of Christian missions in that con tinent. To secure for myself a thorough knowledge of the subject I spent a full term in 1927 at the University of Berlin, with Pro fessor Julius Richter, the great missiologist of his day and a rec ognized authority on Africa. The German " Missionswissen schafter" gave me generously of his learning and encouraged me in my studies. His lectures, however, were somewhat disappoint ing . Richter's genius was the capacity for absorbing, collecting, and presenting facts rather than the attempt to analyze, to com pare, and to place the events in their true context. His Geschichte derevangelischen Mission in Afrilal, a work of more than 800 pages, is an impressive achievement but lacking in cohesion and per spective (and to some extent also in objective approach) . Richter's treatise Weltmission und theologische Arbeit, on the other hand, I found stimulating and rewarding. It influenced in no small measure my thinking on that great subject. In 1939, in response to a call by my alma mater, I took up work as the first academic teacher for mission in Norway, and in 1946 I was given the title of "professor." As such I applied myself to the task of investigating, from an international and ecumenical perspective, the history of missiology, and its status in the mid-twentieth century, in Protestant Christendom. The result was the two-volume work, published in 1955 and 1957, The Study of Missions in Theological Education . The scheme, I admit, was an ambitious one, and of its value I am not the right person to judge. As an attempt, the first of its kind, to set forth in their full range the facts relating to the development of teaching and research in mission as an academic concern, the work undoubt edly had its weaknesses. It should be borne in mind, however, that the historical survey was to have been followed by an inquiry into the theoretical or systematic aspects of the subject, namely, a vindication of the claims of missiology to be treated as a subject in its own right, and a presentation of its principles, methods, divisions, and relationship to the other disciplines of the theo logical curriculum. Unfortunately, I was not able to accept Pro fessor R. Pierce Beaver's invitation to spend a full year at the Federated Theological Faculty, University of Chicago, to work exclusively on this project, because of other commitments. How ever, a full discussion of the question of the "autonomous status" of mission studies appeared in the symposium of essays in honor of Walter Freytag, entitled Basileia . As a teacher of theology in general, and as a missiologist in particular, I feel intensely that the radically new situation in which the church finds itself in the latter half of this century demands a rethinking of the traditional system of theological education. If the work of mission is to be supported, to use Hendrik Kraemer's great phrase, "with the real intelligence of real faith, " it is imperative that mission should be recognized as an important dimension of theology, and, conversely, that theology should be
January 1987

taught in the context of mission. In this process the churches of Africa and Asia, through their new insights and perspectives, have a unique contribution to make. So much for the interdependence of mission and theology. Of the relevance of the church for mission, and vice versa, I have been no less convinced. In Norway (overwhelmingly a Lutheran country), and on the continent of Europe generally, missionary work has traditionally been the concern of independent and un official organizations. This pattern, which still prevails, is in part accounted for by the fact of establishment. A state church, not unnaturally, is apt to interpret its task in national rather than worldwide terms. Missionary efforts, as a consequence, are de veloped as something additional to the normal work of the church. For many years I looked upon the mission " society" as the agency for fulfilling the Great Commission. Scotland, how ever, taught me "the best way of all." In that country, one for which through a long life I have had a great regard, I found a church that, from the beginning and on theological grounds, had discharged its missionary obligation as part of its regular activi ties. The work of mission, it was insisted, is not a voluntary affair but the inalienable duty of the entire church. This conception, of course, is not peculiar to Scotland. It is one of the authentic marks of the Reformed or Presbyterian form of Christian life and work. Also, it exists , irrespective of denom inational affiliation, in a number of countries, notably the United States of America. Nevertheless, it was through the reading of

"Mission is the very purpose for which the church was brought into being."
D. Mackichan's book The Missionary Ideal in the Scottish Churches and, in a very special sense, by pursuing studies in New College, Edinburgh, on Alexander Duff, the founder and first holder of the first chair of missions in Protestant Chri stendom (ins titu ted in that renowned seat of learning), that it became crystal clear to me that the church in its essence is the mission, or, to put it differently (or rather not differently), that mission is the very purpose for which the church was brought into being . As an outcome of, and as a complement to, the work at the academic level (strictl y so called) there was established in Oslo the Egede Institute. The name reflect s the wish , through this foun dation, to honor the name of Hans Egede, the first Norwegian missionary in modern times . The institute, which is an ecumenical venture, is devoted to the collection of resources and the pro motion of study and research, with the publication of the journal Norsk Tidsskrift for Misjon as one of its primary functions. The Egede Institute, as conceived and planned, was to be but one of a series of institutes of a similar nature, spread throughout the world and working together for the advancement of their common task. My long-cherished dream of " an international institute of scientific missionary research," I am sorry to say, never came true. However, one phase of the institute project, nam ely, the formation of a worldwide association of missiologi sts (and others engaged in the scholarly study of the Chri stian mission), did materialize. The story of that idea, how it originated and how it came to fruition in the International Association for Mission Stud ies, has been told in Mission Studies: Journal of the International Association for Mission Studies, no . 5 (vol. III-I), and there is, there fore, no need of enlarging upon it here .
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