By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
Church leaders lay their hands on John Roomes and his wife, Denise, during the official commissioning service as co-director of Wycliffe Bible Translators Caribbean. The service was held at Grace Missionary Church in St. Andrew in December 2002. - Contributed
Part 1 of this series appeared in last week's Mind & Spirit, January 20.
IN THE summer of the year 2000, John Roomes was introduced to a Jamaican couple who were working as missionaries in Asia for Wycliffe Bible Translators International.
The missionary couple, Jim and Carla Smith, spoke of the favourable effect the Bible had on individuals and communities when it was translated into the indigenous ethnic language - the heart language. John was fascinated by their amazing tales.
They invited him to a meeting of Wycliffe Jamaica to discuss the work of Bible translation. There he learnt that Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean were seen by many missiologists (persons who study cross-cultural evangelisation and evangelism) as a sleeping giant well poised to produce the calibre of missionaries most needed in distant lands. He learnt that there was a paradigm shift under way, as increasingly missionaries from the United States and Western Europe were being viewed with suspicion in the countries where Wycliffe most badly wanted to do work. However, Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, with a history of colonialism and about 300 years of having been evangelised, were ideally suited to send missionaries to these nations. Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean, he learnt were no longer to be regarded as a mission-field but a mission-force.
"This had an impact on me. The impact got more intense when it was pointed out that previous committees of Wycliffe Jamaica had not been
particularly successful at influencing people to go on the mission-field. I heard God saying to me 'Some experienced management is needed and you have got it'."
Before the meeting was over, the four-person group made this first-time visitor its chairman. Six months later the team grew to 12. Within a year, it had trained 30 persons in its Window On Wycliffe programme, which
teaches basic of missions-theology
and missions-strategy, linguistics,
partnership development with
churches and communication.
When his appointment to Wycliffe Jamaica came, John was at the time interim operations manager at the Jamaica Youth for Christ (JYFC).
It grew on him that God wanted him
to take up fulltime responsibilities
with one of these two para-church organisations. But which one?
At the official launch of Wycliffe Jamaica in December 2001, at the Phillippo Baptist Church in Spanish Town, St. Catherine, while giving a speech he got his answer.
"I felt like a flood of warm water was poured out over me -- my whole countenance changed and in the middle of the speech, I could hear God saying to me, 'This is it. This is where I want you'," John recounted.
When John, an elder at Grace Missionary Church in Kingston, ended his secular career as a financial manager to be remunerated as a faith-worker, he resolved, "If God could not be taken at his Word and be trusted to take care of me and my family, I ought not to stand up anywhere and declare Him to be God.
"For me it was all or nothing - I stepped out into thin air and I have
not fallen out of the sky - and I don't expect to! I gave up, when I worked
in the private sector: a big salary,
possibilities for new cars, a remodelled house, attractive vacations etc. But I do not feel I have missed out on anything. We are happy as a family. The children are doing well in school -- My wife Denise works as the administrator at our church and so she brings in some income."
John takes over the full reins of Wycliffe Caribbean in March. He now shares the job of co-director with Jack Popjes, a Canadian who served as a Bible translator to an indigenous ethnic group in Brazil. Since he became co-director of Wycliffe in 2002, he has experienced remarkably favourable feedback from Christians in Jamaica and the rest of the Caribbean for his invitation to them to be trained or to be supportive of cross-cultural missions.
"The Caribbean response to missions and Wycliffe so far has been great and miraculous! I have come to expect overwhelming responses, as there is a sense in which our people have been waiting with bated breath for this call to world missions. Our people know what it is to be colonised and a foreign culture superimposed upon us, and what that has meant in terms of language. We can relate to the experiences of the needy nations. So in Cayman we have churches making commitments to be involved. In one case a whole congregation was at the altar making commitments to go into fulltime missions. In Trinidad a pastor who only two weeks before insisted that he would never quit his full-time secular job to do ministry was seen running to the altar committing himself to full-time missions. In Spanish Town, Jamaica after issuing a call for believers who wish to become involved fulltime in missions group of seven young men came up to the altar in answer to that call. None of them was saved and all known to the community as hardened criminals. They committed their lives to Christ and to missions right there at the altar in front of a church full of praying believers."
He said that there are many Caribbean persons living in the United States who are eager to play a part in supporting world evangelisation. Just about everywhere his travels take him, he said, pastors are soliciting his assistance to get their respective churches to become more missions-focussed.
This request, he said, underlines the fact that missions' principles are inadequately taught in seminaries and Bible schools. Notwithstanding this reality, the Wycliffe executive disclosed that there are currently about 40 persons (mostly Jamaicans) contemplating or are at various stages of completing their applications for membership with Wycliffe as fulltime missionaries. Furthermore, "There are many more who have been impacted but need to be processed. We are literally short of hands to deal with the responses,"
Mr. Roomes said.
Though he has done various short-term courses on theology, John does not regard himself as a theologian. He has a degree in business, a Master's in Business Administration but no similar qualification in theology. But this lack often proves itself to be an asset, as he is viewed with less suspicion by
insecure pastors and church leaders.
It also facilitates a 'fresh approach'
to communicating missions-related information to congregations, he said. Nevertheless, he is open to the pursuit of the theological enterprise and is exploring that option as such can only redound to his benefit and ultimately the Caribbean Church.
NOTE: John Roomes may be reached at john_roomes@wycliffe.org.
Send feedback on story to mark.dawes@gleanerjm.com
