Source: Christian Aid Mission, September 9, 2021
Tribal factions in an area of the Philippines were hostile toward each other until native missionaries brought bananas, corn, and gospel seeds.
Members of the tribe lived in isolation from each other due to decades of conflict that at times flared into war. At first, native missionaries arrived not with a message of eternal life but with the suggestion of community farming.
For the local missionaries, the suggestion was based on the biblical tenets of inter-dependent community, fruitfulness, and creativity as people made in the image of a triune, fruitful, and creative God. For the tribal villagers, it was just a necessary evil; persuading the factions to work common lands was not easy, but the villagers knew they were in desperate need of income.
As they began to work toward the common goal of providing food that could be marketed with enough left over to feed themselves, they began to live together more closely and formed new hubs of community, the leader of the native ministry said.
“With the missionaries facilitating, they planted corn and bananas for sources of livelihood,” the leader said. “But coupled with this was the missionaries’ promise that they had a more important matter to share with them besides the development of their community.”
Having already experienced a measure of reconciliation, the villagers were primed to learn of the one God who reconciles wrongdoers to Himself by sacrificing the Holy One.
The workers began teaching villagers about Christ, and within a year most of them had put their faith in Him. A local church emerged, he said, and the community has also flourished; harvest profits have enabled people to meet the costs of the education for their children.