Reflection 20 September 2026

By Rev Dr Fei Taule’ale’ausumai

The hidden and dark Side of Mission

John 10:10 — “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.”
Talofa lava, kia ora and welcome to those joining us on live stream this morning. I want to tell some stories.  They are not necessarily comfortable stories. But they are stories stories that should not be forgotten.

As people of the Christian faith and of the Pacific we live with a complicated inheritance.  Christian missionaries brought the Bible. They established schools. They provided education and health care. They translated the Scriptures into Pacific languages. They introduced forms of literacy that became important within our communities.

And Pacific people themselves embraced Christianity, interpreted it, transformed it and made it their own.

So this is not a story in which everything associated with mission was bad.  But neither can we pretend that everything associated with mission was good.

Because sometimes Christianity travelled in the same ships as colonialism.  Sometimes the Bible travelled alongside exploitation.
Sometimes the language of salvation accompanied systems that took people’s land, labour, culture and freedom.

And if Jesus says:  “I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness,” then surely one of the questions we must ask of Christian mission is:  Did it bring fullness of life?  Or did it sometimes diminish life?

Nukulaelae. Take a look at the picture on your OOS

There is another story from our Pacific that we must not forget.  In 1863, the small island community of Nukulaelae, in what we now know as Tuvalu, experienced something devastating.  Historical accounts vary in their precise numbers, but the population appears to have been only around 300 people.  And some accounts tell us that as many as 250 people were taken away during what we now describe as the period of blackbirding.

Just imagine that.  A community of around 300 people.  Perhaps 250 taken away.  Think about what that means.  Parents.  Children  Grandparents.  Fishermen.  People who knew the currents of the ocean.
People who knew the stories of their ancestors.  People who knew where food could be grown.  People who carried the songs, language, genealogy and memory of their community.  Gone.

And what makes this story particularly painful for us as Christians is the way in which some of the people were deceived.

Historical accounts describe people being persuaded aboard ships through misrepresentation. Some accounts suggest that the language of Christian teaching and religious instruction was used as part of that deception.

People thought they were responding to something associated with Christian teaching or opportunity.  Were told to come on board and receive Holy Communion.  Instead, they were taken from their island and transported into the Peruvian labour trade.

The language of Christianity became part of the deception.  The language of God was used to gain trust.  And that is one of the dark sides of mission that we must be courageous enough to name.  Because mission was not always experienced as good news.

Sometimes those who spoke about salvation were connected with systems that brought suffering.  And it raises an uncomfortable question:
What kind of mission takes people away from the very life God has given them?
Yet here were Pacific people being removed from their families, their land and their communities.That is not fullness of life.  That is the diminishing of life.

Whenever mission says:  We know what is best for you.  Our culture is superior to yours.  Our way of understanding God must replace yours.

Our civilisation must become your civilisation.Then we have moved a long way from the Jesus who says:  “I have come that you might have life.”

The Island of Kiritimati not the same as Christmas Island in Australia.

In 2012 I attended a CWM Pacific Regional Assembly on Christmas Island — Kiritimati — in Kiribati.  There are families living there whose history is connected with the British nuclear testing programme in the Pacific.

During the period of nuclear testing, Pacific people were living on the island. They were not simply living somewhere far removed from what was happening. They were there when these enormously powerful weapons were being tested.

And one of the stories that has stayed with me is what people were told to do when the explosions took place.  They were told to turn their backs to the explosion and cover or shield their eyes.

Just imagine that.  A nuclear weapon is about to explode, and people are told:  Turn your back.  Cover your eyes.

There is something almost symbolic about that instruction.  Because for so long that is what powerful nations expected the Pacific to do.  Turn your back.  Cover your eyes.  Don’t ask too many questions.  Don’t look at what is happening.

Don’t question what is being done to your land, your ocean or your people.  But you cannot simply turn your back on a nuclear explosion.

You cannot cover your eyes and pretend that radiation disappears.  And generations later, communities continue to live with the consequences of decisions made by powerful nations far beyond their shores.

The Pacific was treated as though it were distant enough, empty enough, insignificant enough for these experiments to take place.

But our islands were never empty.  People lived there.
What does fullness of life mean when someone else decides that your island can become a testing ground?  In Tahiti the people of Maohi Nui experienced similar nuclear testing by the French.  A dear friend and Colleague of mine Celine Horore died this year from cancer as a result of the nuclear testing.

What does fullness of life mean when decisions affecting generations of your people are made thousands of kilometres away?  What does mission mean in a Pacific that carries these memories?

A Toothbrush

And then, during that same visit, I encountered another story.  It seems very small compared with a nuclear explosion.

One of the CWM missionaries working there was a dentist.

She decided to visit the schools, taking toothbrushes and toothpaste with her.  Such simple things.  A toothbrush.  A tube of toothpaste.
And she went around the schools giving the children toothbrushes and toothpaste and teaching them how to care for their teeth.

But she discovered something heartbreaking.  She told us that many of the children struggled to open their mouths fully.  She discovered that some had suffered injuries to their jaws through violence in their homes.
Imagine arriving with a toothbrush and discovering that the problem is much deeper than teeth. The majority of the children had broken jaws and could not open their mouths fully.  And I have carried that image with me ever since.

A missionary standing with a toothbrush in her hand, confronted by a wound much deeper than the problem she had come to solve.  And perhaps there is a connection between those two images.  A generation told to turn their backs and cover their eyes.  And another generation of children struggling to open their mouths.

I don’t want to suggest a simple cause and effect between the two. Life and history are much more complicated than that.  But both images ask us to look beneath the surface.

What has happened to this community?  What wounds are being carried?  What histories have never been adequately acknowledged?

And where is the church in all of this?  Perhaps that is an image for mission itself.
Pacific people were never empty vessels waiting for Christianity to arrive.  God was already here.  God was present in the Moana in our oceans, in our relationships, in our languages God in our stories in the wisdom of our ancestors in our care for fanua and the moana.

The missionary did not bring God to the Pacific.  God was already here.
Perhaps the missionary came to discover where God was already at work.  And that changes the whole meaning of mission.

“I have come that they may have life, and have it in all its fullness.” Perhaps this must become our test of mission.  Does our mission bring life?  Does it restore dignity?  Does it protect children?  Does it honour culture?  Does it allow communities to determine their own futures?

Does it listen before it speaks?  Does it stand beside people rather than over them?  Does it recognise God already present in the people we encounter?

Because if mission does not lead towards fullness of life, we have to ask whether it truly reflects the mission of Jesus.

And this is where the story of Nukulaelae remains so important.

The church must remember.  Not so that we remain imprisoned by the past. Not so that generations alive today carry personal guilt for everything done by previous generations.

But because reconciliation without memory becomes cheap reconciliation.  So I return to those images.

The people of Nukulaelae boarding ships in 1863, some perhaps believing the religious language used to gain their trust.  The people of Kiritimati Island being told:  Turn your backs. Cover your eyes.

And more than a century later, a dentist standing in a school with a toothbrush in her hand before a child who struggles to open their mouth.

Different stories.  Different generations.  Different wounds.  But they ask us the same question:  What does mission look like when we begin with the life of the person standing before us?

And with recognising that the people whom we once thought we were called to save may have something to teach us about God.  Amen.

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