Kim Groop With the Gospel to Maasailand - Åbo Akademi

INTRODUCTION
“The Maasai are a redeemable part of God’s created universe. God has them as an
integral part of his mission of redeeming love. […] If we succeed in
communicating to the Maasai Christ’s love for all men, so that they confess Jesus
Christ as their Lord, we have laid a successful foundation in our communicational
efforts. For it is only from this foundation that men can possibly experience and
express the transforming Grace of God to others.” 1
Lutheran mission work among the Maa-speaking peoples in
Tanzania had been carried out for almost seventy years when Missionary
Stanley Benson wrote these hopeful words in 1971. Similar statements
had been made when mission work began among the Arusha at Mount
Meru in 1904 and amidst the Maasai on the surrounding plains in the late
1920s. The Lutheran mission did manage to wake an interest among the
Maasai-related Arusha as well as among the neighbouring non-Maasai.
The Maasai themselves, however, were markedly slow to accept
Christianity. For decades, missionaries and evangelists tried to attract
them to the Christian Gospel. Occasionally, they had some measure of
success, but on the whole they had to accept rather modest results. As
late as 1969, it was estimated that there were not more than 300
practising Maasai Christians in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
Tanzania (ELCT). 2
1
Benson 1971, 68 and 75.
2
Flatt 1969, 1. Many more had been baptised, but were for one reason or another not
participating in the Lutheran work.
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