It is five-thirty in the morning. A bell made from a gas cylinder is rung. In the darkness over 100 young men, aged between 18 and 35, wake up, get up from their mats and prepare for prayer. In the chapel they kneel in silence. The sun is rising and light streams through the window above the altar. The parrots arrive and bounce on the blossom outside. First Office begins and the whole community bursts into a rich roar of song. This is Tabalia, on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. It is the headquarters of the Melanesian Brotherhood, reckoned to be the largest male religious community in the Anglican Communion. The community works in the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Palawan in the Philippines. It numbers over 250 brothers under vows and more than 150 novices in training.
Anyone who has visited the Church of Melanesia in the Solomon Islands cannot fail to have noticed that religious life is flourishing. Today, when many religious communities are finding it hard to attract young vocations, the contrast one finds in Melanesia is remarkable.
There are four Anglican religious communities working in the Solomon Islands: the Melanesian Brotherhood, the Sisters of Melanesia, the Society of St. Francis and the Sisters of the Church. All these communities live under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and all these communities are full of young people with far more applications than they are able to accept. It is true that this is partly because the religious communities provide education and opportunities which will take young people outside their home village or island and but there is more to it than that. Those who seek to join one of the religious communities know that it is not an easy option: it will involve discipline, motivation and self-sacrifice This is a serious commitment both to prayer and service.
The fact is that many have been inspired by the life of other brothers and sisters and the stories they have heard about these communities. Each village will talk with pride about any relation who has joined. These young people have a grace, which is unmistakable. They are greatly respected and yet have a simplicity and humility that reaches the hearts of all age groups. Their life has a spontaneity and joy very close to the song of the beatitudes. People sense that this is what the Christian church should be like.
These are the real evangelists: the good news people. This is not paper evangelism; this is not about lists, aims and procedures, budgets, modules, offices, committees and endless administration or 'super' evangelists and experts flown in from overseas. This is real evangelism that goes on largely unsung, unfinanced, undocumented. These evangelists walk the roads with bare feet and no money. These are evangelists whom people can welcome in their homes like returning sons or daughters, who will share whatever food there is and who will sleep on a mat and help hoe the garden, catch the fish or repair the roof. These are the evangelists who will come whenever they are called to pray for the sick, solve a village dispute, calm down a husband who is drunk. And when they visit, they bring a sense of goodness, the sense that something better is possible.
The Melanesian Brotherhood was founded by a remarkable man named Ini Kopuria, a Solomon Islander on the Island of Guadalcanal in 1900. After being educated at the Anglican church schools of Pamua and later in Norfolk Island he joined the British Protectorate's native armed police force. But in 1924, when he was recovering in hospital from a leg injury, he received an experience of Christ, which was to change his life. He believed that Christ spoke to him and told him that he was not doing the work that Christ wanted him to do. He began, with the encouragement of Bishop John Manwaring Steward, to realize God was calling him to start a community of native Solomon Island men who would take the Gospel of Christ to all who had not received it.
Much of the population of the Solomon Islands lived on remote islands, villages high up in the hills and bush or coastal villages with no easy access either by sea or land. Ini Kopuria believed the Gospel was for all people and just as he had visited remote villages as a policeman, now he would visit as a missionary. On St. Simon and St. Jude's day, October 28, 1925, he made his promises renouncing possessions, marriage and freedom of action. He gave away all his property and a large area of his family's land to the Brotherhood. The following year the first six brothers joined him.
The purpose of the Brotherhood was evangelistic: "To declare the way of Jesus Christ among the heathen." But as a Melanesian, Kopuria would evangelize in a Melanesian way. He sought not to draw the people away from their villages and communities but to take Christ to them. It was a community approach. The coming of Christ should not go hand in hand with the invasion of a foreign culture and individualistic concept of personal salvation without consideration for ones people. This was the kind of mission the first bishop and martyr of Melanesia, John Coleridge Patteson, had envisioned when, 50 years before, he had written that his aim was not to make English Christians in white men's clothes but Melanesian Christians.
The Melanesian Brotherhood did and continues to do just that. Arriving in often-hostile villages, they aimed to share the life of people in all things. There would be no forced conversion. It was not long before their reputation began to grow. These brothers were prepared to come and stay. They were not frightened of devils and ancestral spirits. Their prayers could drive away fear. People began to speak of their miracles of healing and signs they had witnessed and to say that the brothers, or Tasiu, as they became known in Mota language, had mana and spiritual power. The brothers converted many villages, but there were not always priests available to follow up this work of primary evangelism.
Today this community of the Melanesian Brotherhood is still very much loved and respected by the people. In a very real sense it belongs to them, to Melanesia. Ini Kopuria was a Melanesian of whom Melanesians are proud and in many of the villages throughout the Solomons you will find men who have been brothers in their youth and whose children have now become brothers. They receive three years training as novices before they are selected by the brothers for admission. While in the Brotherhood, they must make a promise of poverty, chastity and obedience, but these are temporary vows, which can be renewed.
Kopuria believed that after five years of service a man should be free to return to his community and start a family if that was his calling. Release from the community, after a valuable period of service, was not a thing of shame but to be celebrated at the feast day. Groups were set up within each village called the Companions whose work it was to help the Brotherhood through prayer and material support and follow up their ministry after the brothers had moved on to the next village. Again this has made people feel that this community is theirs and depends on their support.
The Melanesian Brotherhood has established 27 households in all five provinces of the Solomon Islands. Most of these are small, leaf-roofed working households built in the more remote missionary areas, which will become the base for about four to six brothers for mission and touring. A lot of the brothers' work now involves secondary evangelism: helping to encourage and build up the faith of many who are still Christian but only in a very nominal way These bare-footed evangelists tour the remotest villages, lead Sunday Schools, youth groups and adult teaching, lead worship, and act dramas in the villages. Their households aim to become a parable of community life.
The Melanesian Brotherhood is the oldest and largest community within the Church of Melanesia. Yet each of the other religious communities shares in much of the same ministry while having its own charisma and gifts. The Sisters of Melanesia were founded by a woman from Guadalcanal, Nesta Tiboe, in 1979.
In 1967 Nesta received a vision in which she realized that Melanesian women were also called to serve God "without fear, shame and doubt." Nesta was a brave and determined woman and though facing much male opposition at first, established a community of women on the same lines as the Melanesian Brotherhood.
There are now 30 sisters, with no lack of vocations. The sisters' community is marked by its joy and simplicity of lifestyle. Although it has been more difficult for young women to tour the villages, they now have an active outreach program, a disciplined and devout prayer life and a deserved reputation for help and hospitality.
The ministry of the Sisters of the Church was extended to Melanesia in 1970. Mother Emily the founder born in England, 1836, was a woman of tireless energy whose vision combined both adoration and action: Both are very much in evidence in the Solomons today. Their households have become sanctuaries for mothers and their children escaping domestic violence and the sisters are frequently called upon to protect women and children from drunk and violent partners.
Recently the sisters addressed the problem of street children in Honiara, at one point providing accommodation for nine under 10-year-olds whom they had found living on the streets and fending for themselves.
The sisters have opened the eyes of many people and, by their example, have encouraged the church to become more socially aware. They have also won the respect of many people by showing the wonderful potential and gifts women have to offer within the church.
The Society of St. Francis Pacific Island Province is also growing more quickly than any other. It is an ecologically aware community, as one would expect, and, in a country where the rain forests are being devastated, their friary at Hautabu and Little Portion is a refreshing alternative with its tree planting, chickens, organic farm and cattle. Many of the Franciscan households are to be found in the towns.
The urban problems are growing and all the religious communities are increasingly called upon to minister to these needs. Modern "heathens" are often more difficult to convert for their world is no longer related to the world of the spirit but the modern gods of materialism.
At their best the religious communities are living the Gospel in a very direct way and that is their major contribution to the church. By living such a radical alternative to the values to which modern society has become addicted they open up to others the hope and the possibilities of the kingdom of which Christ spoke.
This article is adapted from A resource Book for the Training and Mission of the Melanesian Brotherhood, by Mr. Carter
