Joy and challenges of introducing Christmas to the unreached

There are many Christians who have been celebrating Christmas for many years and there are some who just got the opportunity to celebrate the birth of Jesus for the first time this year. According Soho Mande, a village head in Nigeria whose community embraced Christ in the month of March this year:  "We do not know anything about Christmas before now but since you introduced the God of the Christians to us we have come to embrace the white man culture. I have instructed my subjects to bring out the drums which we have been using to worship our god (Maijero) to play music for Jesus on Christmas day".

Contextualizing Christmas is unavoidable when reaching the unreached with the Gospel and love of Christ. A sharp departure from what they know had not worked for us in many communities in the past and we have found it extremely difficult to disciple some converts because they want to serve Jesus in their cultural ways. Contextualization approach has helped us to carry their culture along and we have succeeded in filtering idolatry practices from cultural practices and blend Christianity with the way of life of the people.  We have set all idols and charms ablaze in our churches, but they prefer to sit on the ground even when we have provided them with seats.

The converts were surprised when we told them that there will be Church service on Friday. This is the first time that they will attend church on a day other than Sunday. Many of them agreed not to go to farm on the 25th of December but some expressed their discontent. A man stood up in our meeting and said, "Since you people brought this strange God to us, you have been trying to control our lives through your instructions". We had to explain a lot to let them know why their characters should change after embracing Christ and why they should sacrifice a day in a year to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Explaining what Christmas is to our converts who had not heard about Jesus before this year was interesting. Some of them were very inquisitive and asked intelligent questions. In one of our meetings, a woman who recently joined the congregation asked, "Our pastor told us that Jesus is God.  How come we are going to celebrate His birth.  Did anyone give birth to God?"  Many of them were excited to hear about Jesus being God that came down to earth as a man for the redemption of humanity.

Our target groups are very engrossed with their culture and find it difficult to accept anything that does not agree with their practices. We really appreciate the Holy Spirit for His conviction and conversion power upon them, but it is very difficult to disciple them. Those who do not wear clothes and are naked have refused to accept the English clothes that we purchased for them for their Christmas celebration. Anything that is not a wrapper wear is not acceptable by the women, and men do not accept anything other than kaftan.

Food and clothes for Christmas have been distributed and the whole community is waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus. A man approached our missionary and asked him to permit them to drink alcohol on Christmas day. He promised the missionary that they will stop after Christmas.  According to him, “Celebration is not complete without alcohol."  Many of them are finding it difficult to depart from their old way of life and tradition but we are trusting God for absolute sanctification. The introduction of Christmas is entirely a new concept to them, which will replace the powerful "Maijero" festival, which is accompanied with many idolatry worship, drunkenness and sexual immorality.

The village is in very high spirit anticipating celebrating the birth of the king of kings.  The knowledge of Christ has been extended to reach this community and God is glorified. There are hundreds of thousands of communities in Nigeria with a population of 64,336,000 (Joshua Project estimated population figure of the unreached in Nigeria) where Christmas needs to be introduced.

As we celebrate and share in the blessing of Christmas, it is important to note that there are millions of communities and billions of persons around the world who are not joining in this celebration because no one has told them that Jesus was born and He died to save humanity. Let this celebration reminds us that we have a responsibility to share the Good News of the joy that came to the world.

We hope that next year more communities who are not privileged to celebrate Christmas this year will have the opportunity to do so through the efforts of mission-minded believers who will realize that it is criminal negligence to hear the Gospel regularly without giving others opportunity to hear it even once. Let us increase the number of those that will celebrate Christmas exponentially on an annual basis, for the harvest is plenteous but the laborers are few.