Tanna Missions Trip Pt 1 - Written by Dr. Joe Mulvihill
I have just returned from, quite frankly, an epic mission trip to the country of Vanuatu. Vanuatu is an archipelago/chain of Islands in the south pacific to the northwest of Australia. I have friends that are missionaries and ministers literally on the other side of the world that asked for me to come out and see if I could offer any help to them in person.
After asking God to provide for the steepest cost, which was the airfare, I had a brother in Christ approach me about covering ALL of the travel expenses and so the trip was coordinated and set for the first 2.5 weeks of February 2025. I had other disparate brothers in Christ insist on covering all the other costs of a trip of this distance and length of time. That kind of literal support and encouragement to go by those who also love Jesus and have walked years with you in the faith is supernatural and hence, extremely humbling.
Vanuatu is a country with approximately 300k people it is an archipelago or Island chain just northeast of Australia. Each island is in a different phase of modernizing with their capital city, Port Vila, being on the island with the most consumerist expansion and the majority of Western production. The smaller island of Tanna to the south has the highest population of tribal Ni-Vans and the least amount of modern transcultural tech. The island of Santo to the north of Port Vila is also rife with what they refer to as “custom” (customary / traditional) tribal communities, who still live very close to their more distant relatives in their tribes, deeper in the jungle on the discreet islands.
The AG missionary for the last decade in Tanna has been a missionary named Sam Paris. Sam is one of longest committed missionaries in the region. Sam and his family lived in Tanna and did remarkable Holy Spirit-empowered work making strong relationships living with the local Ni-Vans, building churches, starting the Tanna missions center, forming strong liaisons with other ministers & ministry officials there on the island.
The Paris family and the support of the Kleindls
Sam has now moved his family to the capital city of Port Vila and was asked to take over for a retiring pastor of the International Christian Church which has about a third Ni-Vans who attend and about two-thirds ex pats from all over the denominational and belief spectrum living there in Port Vila. After the pastor asked Sam publicly, he unfortunately died suddenly and then the timeline for Sam to take over the church moved up. The former older pastor’s
sudden demise caused the still superstitious Ni-Vans to begin to wonder if the church was cursed. Then after some months of slowly building the church back, Port Vila tragically made international news, not from what has become commonplace, which are occasionally destructive cyclones, but rather a sustained 7.1 earthquake. This earthquake took most of the walls of the church out and made the ICC building as well as other buildings either rubble or not safe for human inhabitants. Then ICC pivoted again and put up the only available circus-sized tent to hold Sunday services outside in the heat. Two days after I arrived a weak storm wet the ground and knocked the tent over, ripping it & giving the church another setback, and more speculation about alleged divine decrees against this church. Part of the work of teaching and training is instilling confidence that Word can still be preached and setbacks like these build resilience rather than occasion ultimate defeat and withdrawal. Missionaries Nathan and Brooke Kleindl have joined the Paris family & utilize their vast array of skills to help them with the International church as well as strategically pushing the Tanna initiatives to completion.
Ba’hai structure - We were able to visit multiple families on the coast of Tanna as well as venture deep into the bush to visit custom tribal communities, referred to as . We were also taken up to one of the largest ashram’s to Ba’hai contemplation and meditation on one of the highest lookouts in Tanna. The structure was built with significant investment from the proponents of the Ba’Hai faith of whom the residents had nothing but contempt.
Ministry work - Part of the trip was doing whatever was needed to help ICC church continue and minister to its people, which was not restricted to only Sunday preaching. The other part of the trip was going and seeing the progress in Tanna and reestablishing relationships with the Ni-Vans there. We had dozens of discipling moments from those who were already Christ-followers or those merely interested in Jesus. Everywhere we went, Sam’s long Holy Spirit obedience and relational sacrifice in the direction of the Ni-Vans canvassed & sustained our interactions and provided the very possibility of our efforts. Sam stayed at his former modest home and Nathan, Brooke and myself stayed in huts while in Tanna – disease carrying bugs, remarkable heat and dirt and rats and large bats were ubiquitous issues for the beach near which we lodged.
We got to visit multiple nakamals or custom communities who greeted us with song and dance and welcome necklaces. Sam was able to bring them gifts and news and introduce myself as well as Brooke & Nathan to the tribal chiefs. He shared a story out of Exodus and verified that we were all followers of Jesus and served the true God of heaven. We were able to avoid the expectation by the tribal leaders that we men would purchase some of the chieftain's daughters and pay a dowry for them. We also visited a popular black sand beach with massive waves. We almost got to go up to the mouth of the live volcano there in Tanna, but the rain made the seven-foot-deep ash fields around the base of the volcano impassable. We also saw a foreigner-placed sign that said U.S.A.I.D. at a custom community when the normally naked lower school kids came out to see our rare truck with us in it, we saw about a half dozen with “Barak Obama Hope and Change” (circa 2015) tee-shirts on - sigh - more great modern “aid” for the Ni-Vans derived from our US tax dollars.
It was deeply interesting to see two related & remote island civilizations at different stages of modernization and development. When one looks at the work of scholars TuSalem, Woodberry, Mantovenelli, Witte and Woessmann/Becker, et al - their collective analyses of sustained Christian Protestant missionary effort and development. it seems abundantly clear that the Ni-Vans that have converted are now at the point of engaging the Bible deeply and literacy advancement to start the documented pattern of positive civilizational force-multiplication.
Mantovenelli, Frederico. The Protestant Legacy; Missions and Literacy in India (2014)
TuSalem, Rollin F. (Arkansas State Univ.) “The Role of Protestantism in Democratic Consolidation Among Transitional States.” Comparative Religious Studies Vol 42, No. 7 (2009) http://cps.sagepub.com
Woodberry, Robert D. “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.” The American Political Science Review. 106(2). 244-274 www.jsto.org/stable/41495078. 251.(2012)
Woodberry, Robert D. “The Shadow of the Empire; Christian Missions, Colonial Policies and Democracy in post-Colonial Societies.” (2004)
Trejo, Guillermo. (Duke) “Religious Competition and Ethnic Mobilization in Latin America; Why the Catholic church Promotes Indigenous Movements in Mexico.” American Political Science Review. Vol 103, No. 3 (August 2009)
Bai, Ying (Hong Kong Univ), Kung James Kai-sing. “Diffusing Knowledge While Spreading God’s Message: Protestantism and Economic Prosperity in China”
Witte, John and Frank S. Alexander. Christianity and Human Rights – An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. “The Bible is filled with critical passages that have long inspired the theological insights into the nature of rights…” (p. 15)
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