— Tim Cantrell
The audio version of this article is available here: YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
As if last October’s coup was not bad enough for impoverished Madagascar, now this month brings more disaster through two devastating cyclones. In recent weeks, our church also enjoyed a special visit from a Malagasy pastor bringing good news of all that the Lord is doing there in His Church and through their suffering. God has raised up Faly, his church (where he is an elder) and his ministry in the capital city, Antananarivo, to build a healthy church, to train up faithful pastors, and to plant and strengthen churches and serve believers across that island in a myriad of ways.
Through Faly and others, God has given our church in Johannesburg a twenty-year close friendship with beloved Malagasy believers, and a burden for the Lord’s work there. I have been there many times, and I always come away deeply encouraged. Here are some ways you too can rejoice and pray more intelligently for the cause of Christ’s kingdom on that beautiful-but-beleaguered island.
A Church Birthed in Prayer & Suffering
When William Carey went to India in 1793, he wrote this while sailing past Madagascar: “I hope… that the multitudes of heathen in the world may hear the glorious words of truth. Africa is but a little way from England; Madagascar but a little way farther…. A large field opens on every side, and millions of perishing heathens, tormented in this life by idolatry, superstition, and ignorance, and exposed to eternal miseries in the world to come, are pleading.” That plea was heard by an older Bible school teacher in Wales, who began praying and challenging his students to go there.
Two young Welshmen soon took up the challenge and, in 1818, arrived in Madagascar with the gospel. But only one of them, David Jones, survived—after losing his wife, family, and coworkers all to malaria. Yet by 1835, Jones and his team had finished translating the entire Bible, just before an outbreak of fierce persecution and expulsion of missionaries. The Malagasy Bible was the first African Bible translation of the modern missionary era.
An evil queen believed Christianity was a threat to her kingdom and to their animistic ways. If believers would not renounce their faith, they were hurled to their death from high cliffs in the capital city (where martyr monuments still stand today). Yet the Malagasy church now had God’s Word, so portions of Scripture were hidden and smuggled by believers from village to village. They stood firm during these fiery trials until religious freedom returned 30 years later. (See Triumph in Death, by F. Graeme Smith, a moving story.)
A Church Withstanding Liberalism & Pragmatism
Nearly 200 years later, the original missionary church plants have gone liberal, mostly, plus there is a large Roman Catholic presence (due especially to French colonisation from 1896 to 1960). Yet God’s faithful remnant can be found, such as in the FFBBM (Malagasy acronym for “Association of Biblical Baptist Churches in Madagascar”). They began when another Welsh missionary, Brinley Evans, came in the 1930s and established a faithful, Bible-teaching church in Antananarivo, the capital city. That is the very church where our dear friend, Faly, is now an elder and where his ministry is based.
Faly’s Sr. Pastor is Haja, another close friend of ours (who was our pastoral intern for four years in Joburg). Haja is only their third pastor in nearly 90 years! They have planted many churches and led a movement that now has well over 150 churches across the island. Their churches have been largely elder-led, Calvinistic, and non-charismatic. They practice closed Communion (for baptised members only) and still carry out biblical church discipline and restoration (Matt. 18:15-20).
On one of my mission trips there, another Malagasy pastor told me, “Our lengthy process of preparing people for baptism and membership has made us unpopular with some missionaries who want more results to report to donors. But we know the Malagasy people and the great cost for them to leave animism and the old ways to follow Christ, so we cannot rush it. We want quality over numbers.”
He also said, “The youth will not change our music; we do choir for all ages, we sing songs for the whole church. It must not sound like the world; we will not move our bodies like the world.” I have seen firsthand how their churches love to sing God’s praise together joyfully and beautifully – they are a very musical people. Not that these Baptists don’t face plenty of their own challenges, but clearly, some good biblical foundations have been laid.
A Church Growing Deeper & Wider
Over a decade ago, other South African pastors and I were travelling there annually to train pastors. But God has heard our prayers and raised up faithful expositors like Haja, Faly and others to shepherd their flocks and train up more pastors. Pray for them and the great task that is before them on that troubled island of over 33 million. Pray also for more Bible study tools to be translated into Malagasy and for good French books to be supplied to church leaders.
Pray for these brothers as they seek to obey Christ’s Great Commission in some of the least-reached and remote parts of the island. Due to decades of corrupt leaders, the country is extremely poor, with little infrastructure and few roads. Though the gospel came to their island nearly 200 years ago, there are still thousands of remote villages that have yet to hear the name of Christ. You can visit such places and ask, “Who is Jesus Christ?” They will answer, “He doesn’t live here. Maybe try the next village over.”
Here are some recent reports of exciting gospel breakthroughs as trailblazers for Christ penetrate unreached areas. For example, pray for the Antesaka people on the southeastern coast who have just recently heard the gospel and where the very first Christian church ever is being planted!
Tourism books rave about this fascinating country, about all its exotic plants and animal species. Yet it also makes me think of the Lord’s rebuke to Jonah for caring more about a plant than about lost people with eternal souls, for whom Christ died (Jonah 4:10-11).
Join me in rejoicing at how God’s Word is at work in Madagascar, and in praying for the spread of His Word in that needy place.