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Published on: 8/19/2006
Last Visited: 7/26/2008
Maqsood Kamil, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan and a professor of systematic theology at Gujranwala Theological Seminary, said: "You have to be compassionate if you want to be a partner" - and that doesn't just mean having zeal for mission.
"The Western church does not know the meaning of suffering, which is so essential for Christian life," Kamil said.Jesus says in the Bible, "deny yourself, lift up your cross, follow me," but many Americans know prosperity, not suffering, and don't understand that "if one suffers, the whole body suffers."
Americans offer money, "but are you going to stand on the ground where we were hit?"Kamil asked.When a church in Pakistan burned, what mattered most, he said, was that Rafaat Zaki, then a regional coordinator with the PC(USA)'s Worldwide Ministries Division, came and stood on the ashes.
"That was so important to us, far more than the money," Kamil said, calling that "a partnership of suffering."
American missionaries in Pakistan and India eventually finish out their service and go home, Kamil said.But Muslim missionaries never leave, never go back - they are buried where they served, while some Christian missionaries "love mission but do not love the people to whom they have been sent.I'm telling you real truth."
The Pakistanis call these people "project-lovers," Kamil said, because they dislike the Pakistani people and "behave the way the American government behaves."Pakistani Christians need partners who think like servants, not colonialists, he said - people who say, "I am here to serve.