EMQ » October–December 2019 » Volume 55 Issue 4
By Evelyn and Richard Hibbert
When missionaries engage in the process of making disciples of people from cultures other than their own, they soon discover that new believers face challenges that they themselves have not experienced. They can easily feel overwhelmed or inadequate to help in these areas. Especially challenging for Western-educated missionaries is disciples’ experiences of unseen spiritual powers.
Westerners are generally taught to be skeptical about claims of unseen powers at work in this world. As a result, for many Western missionaries, the existence of spirits at work in this world is hard to accept. This blind spot is like a vacuum in the Western worldview—a vacuum that missiologist Paul Hiebert named “the excluded middle.”1
In order to deal with this blind spot, Western missionaries need to learn about the experiences, beliefs and assumptions of those they are discipling concerning unseen spirits and forces. Then they need to make connections between these and the Bible’s teaching about such unseen powers. Finally, they need to work with disciples to articulate a biblically faithful response.
The Challenge of Unseen Powers for Western Missionaries
People from non-Western cultures frequently engage with spiritual forces and beings that are unfamiliar to the Western missionary. They perceive a range of beings such as spirits and ghosts, and forces such as fate, karma, and the evil eye. Some wear amulets or chant certain mantras for protection from evil spirits and forces. Others seek blessing by going to pray at places of special power such as a saint’s tomb. Still others want to discern the unknown or what will happen in the future and so they try to interpret dreams or the pattern of coffee grounds left in a cup.
Supernatural powers often play a role in the conversion stories of people from other cultures. Many Muslims, for example, come to faith in Christ in response to dreams or miraculous healing. We worked in Bulgaria among the Millet, the Turkish-speaking Roma, for many years. Early on we discovered that they instinctively turn to spiritual powers to help them with the problems of everyday life. Fatme,2 one of the first Millet women who came to faith in Christ in the town we lived in, was oppressed by an evil spirit. She frequently wandered around the town at night, shouting and confused. Her husband took her to several spirit practitioners who tried using all kinds of remedies to help her. Eventually, he took her to a church in a nearby town where the believers prayed for her and she was freed.
Like Fatme, many believers’ stories of coming to faith in Christ are marked by encounters with spirits. Spiritual forces and beings, and the confusion, deception, and fear that they cause are a major hindrance to disciples’ growth towards maturity in Christ. Among believers from a Muslim background, for example, spiritual oppression has been identified as one of the most important hindrances to their growth.3 Some believers continue to trust in magical practices or objects for protection or blessing, instead of relying wholly on the Lord and his sovereign power. Others experience oppression from evil spirits that hinders their growth as a Christian.
Despite the significant obstacle to spiritual growth that unseen powers pose, Western disciplers sometimes ignore disciples’ ongoing encounters with them. They may even dismiss them as unimportant or misleading. Although we may acknowledge that these encounters with spirits are real, fear or feelings of inadequacy can prevent us from engaging with these spiritual realities. Steeped in a Western worldview, as Western missionaries we have a rationalistic faith that readily engages with analytical Bible study but tends to downplay spiritual dimensions and expressions of our faith. We are confident with words but not with power that is beyond our intellectual understanding.
To be effective in making disciples across cultures, intercultural disciplers need to learn about and engage with the spiritual realities faced by those they disciple. If we ignore this aspect of disciples’ lives or fail to help them with it, they will be left on their own to find solutions. If we do not actively help them with the spiritual opposition they face, they may feel they have no option except to develop a “split-level” Christianity in which they turn to God for eternal life, but resort to amulets, charms, and other spiritual forces for help with everyday issues such as sickness or misfortune.4 Disciples may conclude that God has nothing to say about this area and that Christianity is powerless to deal with problems caused by spiritual forces. In some cases, new Christians have returned to their former religion simply to find relief.
Three Steps to Helping Disciples Deal with Unseen Powers
How, then, can we help disciples respond to the challenge of unseen spiritual powers? We suggest three steps.5
Step 1: Listen to disciples
First, we must be open to what disciples tell us they are experiencing. This means being open to learning about things that are beyond our own experience. We also need to listen carefully to what disciples believe about what they are facing. These beliefs may or may not be correct, but it is vital that we learn what they are so that we can make relevant connections with biblical teaching.
We also need to be careful to listen carefully as we may be slow to discern when spiritual forces are at work. One Millet man, Adnan,6 who was attending a meeting to learn about Christianity, told us that a “young man” kept appearing to him. On one occasion this “young man” had put some money into Adnan’s bag. On another occasion, he had stopped Adnan falling off a bridge when he was drunk. At first, we thought this “young man” must be a particularly helpful person. Later we guessed he must be an angel. Finally, though, when Adnan told us that he could not follow Jesus because he was so attached to the young man, we realized that this “young man” was an evil spirit. We learned that Adnan had set aside a special room in his house for this being and left food out for him.
It took us several years to understand that, like Adnan, many Millet are bound to spirits like this. They leave food out for these spirits, set aside a place in their house for them, occasionally build shrines to them, and seek help from them. Becoming aware of this dimension of Millet life meant that we could be alert for signs of it in new believers’ lives and homes.
Step 2: Help disciples make connections between their experience and the Bible
Second, we must do our best to understand what disciples believe and do in relation to unseen powers. We need to see things from their perspective so that we can affirm what is consistent with the Bible and identify what needs to be challenged by Scripture. Our goal is to help new believers make concrete connections between biblical descriptions and their experience.
It is important to explore with disciples how people in their culture interact with and try to appease or manipulate both supernatural beings and forces. The folk Muslim Millet, for example, use charms for protection and healing. When they started following Jesus, some Millet began to treat the Bible like a magical charm. When they were sick, they would put the Bible over the place they felt pain and expect to be healed. It was important for us to learn their beliefs about charms in order to address this incorrect use of God’s word.
If we are not careful to both explore the meaning of disciples’ experiences and to examine what the Bible says about these experiences and their meanings, we run the risk of disciples making incorrect assumptions. For example, childless Millet women were used to seeking out spiritual power to help them conceive because of the great shame they endured when they did not bear a child in their early years of marriage. They observed that new Christian believers often had success in conceiving and they assumed that this was because believers had been baptised. They interpreted baptism as a ritual washing infused with spiritual power. Some women came to church seeking this power encounter through baptism but were quick to abandon God once he gave them a baby.
Step 3: Respond in a way that is biblically faithful and culturally appropriate
The third step for us to take as disciplers is to help those we disciple to respond to their experiences of and beliefs about unseen powers in a way that is both faithful to the Bible’s teaching and appropriate to the local culture.
Discover disciples’ needs and biblical responses. Sometimes we are too quick to assume we understand what drives people to seek the help of unseen spiritual powers. As a result, we end up identifying the wrong thing as being sin and fail to address the root problem. In order to discover the needs that drive local people to seek spiritual power, disciplers need to sensitively ask what people do when they feel like they are powerless, afraid, or have no control over their lives.
Disciples usually have some idea of the powers and practices that trouble them. We can raise examples of incidents from the Bible and ask disciples if they can think of anything that might be equivalent in their own experience. We can also discuss with them similar practices in other cultures or in their own history. This can lead to a rich discussion of similarities and differences and bring further clarity about what the Bible instructs. Sometimes, there are no clear answers. In these cases, we need to trust the Holy Spirit in his people to help them discern what is best.
Pray with disciples. Disciplers should also pray for disciples concerning their struggles with unseen spiritual powers (cf. Ephesians 6:18). Praying with and for disciples who are experiencing oppression from spiritual forces is vital. Through these prayers they will experience freedom from oppression as together with them we apply Jesus’ supremacy and his victory over Satan and every evil spirit to their lives. In this process we are also modeling to them how to pray when faced with oppression from an evil spirit in the future.
Some disciples say they feel an evil presence in their home and ask us for help. One of the most helpful things we can do for them is to go with them to their home, along with other believers. First, check whether there are any spiritual objects or dedicated spaces in the home. These will need to be acknowledged, repented of, and removed. Believers from the same culture will be aware of the kinds of things to ask about. Then, pray with disciples in each room of the house. Pray for any evil spirits to be cast out in Jesus’ name and for cleansing through the blood of Christ. There is no formula for how to do this. Prayers like this can be followed by asking the Lord to protect the house with his presence and his angels. Pray that he will fill those who come into the home with peace.7
Encourage disciples to renounce objects associated with other powers. People from many cultures attribute power to certain objects. If the object does have some power associated with it, then that power is likely to adversely affect those who hold on to or participate in it, whether or not they believe in it. Objects that the local people believe are associated with spiritual powers other than God should be removed and disposed of. If charms or other power objects are not removed they can continue to exert their power in the disciples’ lives. When God does bless disciples with healing or some other blessing, disciples who keep hold of these power objects may be tempted to attribute these blessings to the charm or object rather than to God.
It is important that new believers remove and dispose of the power object themselves. Just as in Ephesus it was the sorcerers and not the apostles who burnt their own scrolls, so it is disciples who should deal with their objects in a way that seems best to them (Acts 19:19). One of the reasons for this is that disciples will have to live with the consequences of removing what they once trusted in, so there must be no sense of coercion in what they do. They must own their decisions and actions.
Disciples who are truly born again can sometimes turn back to other powers for help. New Turkish believers, for example, sometimes continue or slip back into the widespread practice of placing blue beads on babies as a way of protecting them from evil. It can be helpful to work through with disciples lists of problematic practices as a way of checking whether they are inadvertently doing things that dishonor Jesus. They can then confess and repent from any they have been doing that may have given Satan a foothold in their life (cf. the footholds of Ephesians 4:25–29). It is also helpful to discuss with disciples what to do instead of their old practice. This will help them to avoid reverting to it. In the case of believers going back to using blue beads to protect their babies, a possible replacement might be to say a prayer for the baby’s protection and speak a blessing.
Mobilize the community of believers to help. When a discipler from an individualistic culture encounters a demonized person, they sometimes focus in purely on the individual and any sin that individual may have committed that might have given Satan a foothold. Doing these things is important, but it is also vital for us to recognize that demon-oppressed people do not exist in isolation from a community. Their deliverance and ongoing freedom must be secured and supported with the help of a community. The key role of the Christian community in helping believers live in continuing freedom from spiritual oppression is similar to the key role of the church in helping people find healing and forgiveness. This is explained in the last section of James chapter 5. Sick people are urged to call not for an individual but for the group of church elders so that they will pray for them and to hear their confession of any sins they have committed so that the sick person may be forgiven and healed (James 5:13–16).
Affirm Jesus’ victory. Disciplers should also help disciples grasp foundational truths that will help them stand against evil forces using God’s power (Ephesians 6:1–13). Three of these foundational truths relate to God’s supremacy, Satan’s continuing activity, and Jesus’ victory. Each has implications for believers, as outlined below:
- God is supreme over all spiritual powers including Satan and demons (Psalm 148; Ephesians 4:4–6). His power is far greater than the power of any other power or kingdom (1 Samuel 5:1–5; 1 Kings 20; Isaiah 40:12–31). This means that disciples can look to God for protection from evil powers, confident that he has the power to protect them (Psalm 27:1–6; 1 John 4:4).
- Satan and demons work against God by trying to deceive humans into joining their rebellion against him (Genesis 3:1–5; Mark 1:27; 1 Peter 5:8; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). This means that every believer is involved in a struggle with Satan and evil spirits and needs to learn how to stand firm against their schemes (Ephesians 6:10–13).
- Jesus has conquered Satan and every evil spirit through his life, death and resurrection. This means that Satan’s grip on anyone who has put their trust in Jesus has been broken. God has given followers of Jesus “incomparably great power” to live for him and serve him (Ephesians 1:19; cf. Matthew 28:18). This means that believers can pray for demonized people in the name and authority of Christ and can command demons to leave the person in Jesus’ name (e.g. Mark 1:25; Acts 16:18).
Cross-cultural missionaries play a vital role in helping new believers stand firm against and overcome oppression from unseen spiritual powers. To do this well, though, they must listen carefully to these disciples’ experiences, work to understand them in the light of the Bible’s teaching, and enable disciples to respond with the spiritual resources God the Almighty has given them.
Evelyn and Richard Hibbert were pioneer church planters among Turkish speakers in Bulgaria. They have been involved in discipling people from other cultures and training intercultural disciplers for more than thirty years. Richard is the Director of the School of Cross-Cultural Mission at the Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia.
1. Paul G. Hiebert, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” Missiology: An International Review 10 (1982).
2. This is a pseudonym to protect her identity.
3. Don Little, Effective Discipling in Muslim Communities: Scripture, History and Seasoned Practices (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2015), 178, 228.
4. Paul Hiebert and his co-authors describe the widespread problem of “split-level” Christianity in more depth and detail and suggest responses to it in Paul G. Hiebert, R. Daniel Shaw, and Tite Tienou, Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 1999).
5. The steps described here are based on the three steps of “critical contextualization” described by Paul Hiebert in Paul G. Hiebert, The Gospel in Human Contexts: Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2009), 44-51.
6. This is a pseudonym to protect his identity.
7. More detail on how to pray for buildings is found in chapter 1 of Vivienne Stacey, Christ Supreme over Satan: Spiritual Warfare, Folk Religion and the Occult, (n.d.), http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.506.6870&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
