IN MEMORY OF DAVID JACOBUS BOSCH

TRANSFORMING MISSION: David Bosch- Some Personal Reflections by Willem Saaymann, Prof. Emeritus in Missiology at Unisa, Pretoria, South Africa, in Mission Studies, Brill, Leiden, Boston, 26 (2009) 214-228

Once you enter into the world of Missiology will have to come across this a man called David Jacobus Bosch. A man who has been quoted by many scholars who has had a real respect and homage because of his venture into mission land, who know didn’t look very professional in his attire but who showed a man on the move due his simple dressing, as in the words  Willen Saayman himself, he states:

 “I still remember the photo I saw of David Bosch, it has been something of 40 years ago, in a Dutch reformed mission magazine, and it was taken on one of his mission stations in then Transkei, (Today Eastern Cape) South Africa (S.A)… in contrast to the quite formal “Minister’s clothing” which the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) missionaries and ministers wore in those days, he was dressed in an ordinary farmer’s khaki shirt and trousers…and I immediately took a liking of this missionary, because in my mind he was dressed as a south African missionary “in the bush” should be dressed…but I had no idea to why he was considered extraordinary, just like his dress sense…Later I learnt that there were more similarities between us than a similar taste in clothes: like him, I grew up in a poor farming community, and both grew up in houses consisting in total of four rooms only, with an outside toilet (called a long drop in South Africa). And we both passionately loved and enjoyed doing missiology.”

David studied in the South Africa of the 1940s and did his studies and his master’s dissertation studies in Afrikaans literature. This shows at that time there was nothing called missiology, but he built a great theological love of his life in the passion for New Testament studies, he completed his first degree in theology and went to Basle in Switzerland, to study New Testament under Oscar Cullmann, for whom he had great love and respect. This completely made a great paradigm his of looking at reality and also interpreting it in light of his mission. He completely his doctoral thesis, on Jesus’s eschatological approach to Gentile mission in the synoptic gospels magnum cum laude before returning to South Africa in 1950s.

 

At that time South Africa was going through a complete turn of political dark pages, in the apartheid election of 1948. The whole study on the Bantu homelands and a grand launch and institution of apartheid in South Africa. This role was made public in 1954 and the role of mission societies and churches was very clear in this process. This created a great enthusiasm inside the DRC in S.A and a great increase in mission vocations among DRC theological students preparing for ministry.

 

David was one the young ministers caught in the upsurge, as was another well-known South African Missiologist, Nico Smith. David strongly emphasized the importance of studying indigenous language and culture, he was very much ecumenical minded, in an era where ecumenism played a very minor role in the national DRC, very active in the Transkei Council of Churches.

 

He was too outstanding that he was played in the black DRC Theological College at Decoligny in the Transkei, his star kept shining until he was appointed ad hominem to newly created post of professor in Missiology and Science of Religion at Unisa. He always held an ecumenical and contextual view of the church, and saw the need for Missiological development in SA, where most Missionaries at that time were foreigners, who had studied overseas.

 

He started an idea to start South African Missiologists, in 1968, convened the first conference which was to become Southern African Missiological Studies (SAMS) very alive and kick to date in SA. David was elected the first the first general secretary of SAMS, a position he would unopposed until his death. SAMS organizes annual congresses open to Protestants and Catholics, white and black, male and female, lay and ordained alike, Missiologists and other social scientists. Relevant Missiological topics were discussed by a wide variety of experts- sociologists, economists, anthropologists and medical specialists were always involved.

David had to make sure the information debated circulated to other parts of the world and he stared a journal called missionalia with is famous abstracts section. International Association of Mission Studies (IAMS) was started in the 1980, which catapulted David to an international figure, he played a major role in IAMS having had a great milestone success in SAMS, and it baked him into a system thinking fellow.

 

In 1992 IAMS had an international conference in Hawaii, just a few short months after David’s death, which created a sad moment in his colleagues, to have lost a whole library of missiology, just more than a year after the publication of Transforming Mission, Saaymann in his words could say “So many nights I was left with so desolate but unanswerable cry, Why Lord, why at this time? Yet we had to deal with the reality of life after David, for the department of missiology at Unisa was greatly given a great blow which represented seven years of hard work” as Seeymann quotes his colleague Klippies Kritzinger, would aptly say “Poor use of resources, but what a wonderful humanity!”

What can we continue to draw from this quite rich legacy of a man called David Bosch? Witnessing of people and their living faiths in Transforming Mission (Bosch 1991:489)…There is no place in authentic Christian mission for triumphalism, only humility, Christian missionaries are vulnerable, because they do not have all the answers, and are most likely to fail as anybody else. Yet this doesn’t incapacitate us, because we do know that we are witnesses, envoys and ambassadors of the servant Lord who sits on the throne. For David did not only talk the talk, but he also walked the walk. There was no disparity between Missiological teachings and his everyday life, word and deed existed in seamless whole.

David in in his book Transforming Mission, says the only adequate way in which we can define mission in many modes, and therefore as “mission as…” to talk, think and write about mission, a truly liberating experience, and underlying his concept of “mission as…” is the overriding reality that this mission could only be carried out in vulnerability, as “mission in bold humility” “We live in the abiding presence of the shades, those great forebears who have gone ahead, but who still with us. Thank you David, for the privilege of getting to know you, of working with you and still in your presence. Mooi loop, ou lang man!”