Youthworks College, which trains youth pastors, has joined the growing relationship between Sydney Anglicans and the church in Madagascar, the large island 250km east of Africa in the Indian Ocean. Andrew Spalding, the College’s Old Testament lecturer, went one better what than Bill Salier of the Gafcon (Global Anglian Future conference) Theological Educators Network suggested.
Responding to a request from St Patrick’s Theological College in Toliara in the south of Madagascar for a course in wisdom literature, Salier initially suggested Spalding teach it over Zoom but said, “If you can find funding, you can go over and teach in person.”
Spalding found the funding, went and taught in person. “I’m very glad I did because even the technology would have been an issue. There were power outages most days, so the dim projector that I was using was on and off and sometimes wouldn’t connect to the computer,” he says.
“So while it was not easy to get there, the teaching was much better because it was in person and a million times better relationally.”
It took 35 hours in the air to get from Sydney to the capital, Antantanarivo, via Bangkok and
Addis Ababa, then an internal flight to reach St Patrick’s Theological College in Toliara.
“Getting home from Madagascar was certainly the most memorable part of my trip,” Spading told The Other Cheek. The morning of my last day in Toliara, I received an email notifying me that my flight back to the capital had been cancelled. The airline was unsure when the next flight would be, so this meant that I had to take a 28 hour bus trip! The bus kept going day and night aside from 3 meal stops, a few side-of-the-road toilet stops, and a brief 2 am detour to rescue some people out of a ravine because their bus had gone off the road. The road was so bumpy that my watch recorded 20000 steps that day! Of course, this was all before 35 hours of international flights and stopovers to get back to Sydney.”
With fresh eyes Spalding encountered Madagascar an island of red soil as very different from h the red soil of Australia. “Coming from the comfortable suburbs of Sydney, I found the poverty of the country very confronting. Madagascar is one of the poorest countries on earth by just about every measure. Most Malagasy people are involved in agriculture, almost always by hand, and often in tough conditions. The people are hardworking but seem to have little to show for it. The economy has struggled to grow meaningfully since the country gained independence in 1960.
“Despite their poverty, I found Malagasy people to be very welcoming and generally happy. Even more encouraging is the rapid growth of the church. New parishes and congregations are springing up faster than their ministers can be trained. Two years ago, a small region in the southeast of the country had just five churches, today it has fifty! St Patrick’s Theological College, led by principal Reverend Berthier Lainirina has been rapidly expanding to meet this demand.”
During the trip Spalding came to understand how his teaching of Wisdom literature at St Patricks made sense for him to do as a Youthworks College lecturer. “I taught an introduction to the Old Testament Writings, focusing on the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Daniel. My students were training to be ministers and evangelists and my brief was to give students the skills to teach and deliver sermons from these books.
“At first glance, this might seem to have little to do with a ministry called ‘Youthworks’. But in my discussions with students, lecturers, and church leaders I realised this couldn’t be further from the truth. During a lively discussion over dinner, Toliara’s Bishop Samitiana shared with me his concern for the young people in his diocese. The country’s demographics mean that three-quarters of his church members are under 25. So almost all ministry in Madagascar is youth ministry!”
Spalding taught in French – the country’s second language after Malagasy building on the work of Alan Lukabyo*, a Sydney Minister, who has been making annual visits to St Patricks to teach the PTC course.
One feature of the Youthworks aid to Africa – which extends to other countries such as Zimbabwe, the Seychelles and Rwanda, is that it reflects a vision to see ‘an effective youth and children’s ministry in every church’. That deliberately does not mention, “Sydney,” “Anglican” or even “Australia.”
Spalding’s visit fits alongside Anglican Aid’s work to upgrading St Patrick’s facilities to cater for more students and funding scholarships.
* Declaration of interest: Lukabyo heads the Parish of Croydon, Burwood and Concord which I attend.