October 01, 1989 by

What would happen if someone on your island decided to become a Christian?” The young man seated before me on the gently swaying deck laughed. I pressed it further: “What would the other islanders do to him?”

Gradually the smile faded from his face. “It would not be tolerated.”

“Has such a thing ever happened before?”

He replied, “No.”

It was my turn to be silent. My eyes met his momentarily, then shifted to the shadows of men, women and children asleep between piles of cargo all around us. Somewhere beyond, across the starlit Java Sea, the island awaited us.

Birth of a Vision

I had stumbled on the Island by accident one day while leafing through an Indonesian language magazine at a local bookstore. My wife and I serve as “tentmakers” among a major unreached group. In addition to fulfilling our own ministry responsibilities, we try always to be on the lookout for information concerning other needy peoples.

At home, we located the Island on our office map. In the Indonesian nation of nearly 14,000 islands, this Island would scarcely be noticed. It measures only about ten miles across and 30 miles around, and lies 80 miles off the northeast coast of Java.

Turning to the article once more, I searched for mention of the religion of its inhabitants. What little there was confirmed my suspicions. The Islanders were committed Muslims.

I paused to pray for the 70,000 inhabitants of the Island. Perhaps, one day, we ourselves would have an opportunity to contribute to their spiritual transformation.

Scarcely three weeks later, our World War II-vintage cargo ship drifted to its berth in the sunny harbor of the Island. The dock was crowded with islanders. We disembarked and headed down the kilometer-long causeway toward shore.

A mission executive and my colleague Mark Gray accompanied me. The opportunity to visit the Island had come unexpectedly, and we were eager to see the situation for ourselves. One question in particular dominated our thoughts: Had these people any Gospel witness?

The Isle of Women

it is said, was originally settled by migrants from Madura (ma-DU-ra). Certainly their language is closely related to that of the Madurese. Also, the national Indonesian language is used in education and government and is spoken by virtually everyone. Malay and English influence is also evident.

Can it be that in this day 2,000 years after the Great Commission, places exist with no Christians, no churches, no Bibles, no singing of God’s grace?

On Java, the Island is known as “The Isle of Women,” because it has a surplus of women. The island is too small to offer a bright future for its young people, particularly young men. The promise of wealth and adventure beckons eternally from the horizon.

A rice farmer I encountered looked to be a simple man in his mid-forties, dressed in tattered shirt and shorts. Prodding his two oxen ahead of us, he told me that in his youth he had visited such faraway places as Italy and Russia!

His case is not exceptional. It seemed that nearly every family could claim a relative or two in Australia, the United States, or some other distant place.

The propensity to merantau (make one’s living in a foreign land) has its origin in countless centuries of inter-island travel. With the arrival of Islam, ese sought to work their way toward Mecca, by way of Singapore, Thailand or elsewhere. This resulted in small ese communities emerging in those places.

Island Paradise

Unspoiled beaches, villages nestled in valleys, rice terraces rippling down the mountain slopes all give credence to the idea that the Island is the closest thing to an island paradise one is likely to find. Certainly the people are quick to agree.

“We have no poor people,” they say. “Thievery is not a problem. We have no jail here.” Yet despite the evident self-reliance of the people, there are signs of a desire for something more, particularly among the youth. We attended an outdoor New Year’s Eve celebration, expecting to get our first taste of traditional music and dance. We were treated instead to an ill-organized but enthusiastically applauded pop-rock concert.

Young high school and college- age men gyrated back and forth across the stage. Girls were permitted to sing but not dance. Amid the commotion we were reminded that young people on this remote island, like millions of youth around the world, are in search of a new identity.

Islam Is Everything

Richard Weekes in Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey (Greenwood Press, 1984) writes: “The ese are a truly Muslim people, no other religion being followed.” His assessment was confirmed during our visit. Having lived in a part of Indonesia known for its adherence to Islam, I immediately sensed the even greater devotion of the ese.

First it was the little things that caught our attention—Arabic verses on the walls, camera-shy women wearing head-coverings. Calendars had pictures of families in Islamic dress reading the Koran, not scenery or attractive women.

Our clock was a half-hour off. We thought nothing of it until we found that the same thing was true of timepieces wherever we went. Our friend Effendi explained, “We set our clocks according to the times for prayer each day.”

Such signs were substantiated by statistics. The island boasted over a hundred mosques. One official stated that in his village, typical of the 30 villages around the island, there were five mosques, seven Islamic childrens’ schools and 17 musolahs or places for prayer.

All children from kindergarten through high school attend government school in the morning and Islamic school in the afternoon and evening. Islamic places of worship and educational institutions are well-financed by s overseas. Islam pervades virtually every aspect of the people’s thought and behavior. Animism, though present, is not so prevalent as in other officially Muslim areas of Indonesia.

Christian Witness

Among all the other impressions that have lingered with us, one stands out—the awesome sense of the pervasive power of Islam and the absence of any sign of Christianity. Can it be that in this day and age, 2,000 years after the giving of the Great Commission, such places still exist? No Christians, no churches, no Bibles, no one singing of God’s grace?

A half-hour of Christian programming is beamed into the island each week on national television. Each evening, 4,000 television sets come to life. But this is little consolation. The majority of government-sponsored broadcasts are culturally insensitive, theologically diluted and technically unappealing. Surely there could be no satisfactory substitute for a bodily Christian presence, the radiant testimony of a life lived among them.

Ministry Approaches

What must be done to reach these people with the Gospel? If there were an easy answer, it would have been done already. But several things seem clear.

• First, we need to know about the s. Only as believers everywhere learn of their existence and of their desperate spiritual need will we get a host of people burdened to pray.
• Second, we must have churches who will adopt the ese. This means collectively praying for them, researching their needs, seeking out ese wherever they might be around the world, giving monetarily where appropriate to see the ese church established.
• Third, we must pray that God will bring individuals who are vibrant with faith in Christ to live on the island. Such persons could be believers from other Indonesian islands, who have been converted overseas and are burdened to return to their own people with the Gospel or foreign experts assigned temporarily to secular positions on the island. Islam came to the island through migration. Might not the Gospel do the same? Whoever the emissary, whatever the time and method, we can be certain that God longs to reveal His truth and love. He has not forgotten these people!

For information on these people, contact Pioneers, P.O. Box 527, Sterling VA 22170 USA.

Names have been changed for security reasons.