Cargo Cult Church

On the Island of Tanna, in the South Pacific paradise of Vanuatu, we find the John Frum movement. Fifty years ago today, the American Flag was first raised over the villages of Tanna. Large airstrips were built by the natives. They had bamboo control towers, complete with wooden antennas and coconut headsets. The natives painted USA on their bodies and marched in mock drills. All in hopes of receiving a shipment of cargo from a plane that has never come. You see, this is the last living example of the Cargo Cults that sprung up all over the Pacific during World War II. The natives were overwhelmed by the prosperity that came with U.S. occupation. The "cargo", as they called all Western goods and equipment, made the Allied forces invincible and the locals who were lucky enough to be employed by them rich beyond their dreams.
Where did these magical guns and planes and radios and jeeps come from? When the foreigners explained that these were all manufactured by humans, this explanation was dismissed as an obvious lie. Only the gods could give such gifts. When the war was over and western troops were gone, the tribe missed the cargo greatly. So they decided to re-enact the Americans rituals in an effort to coax the gods into returning with more cargo.
Before you laugh too loudly, think of this: God has moved among His people throughout the centuries. These visitations have come with different signs and "rituals". Sunday school, the altar call, that special kind of music, that style of preaching, the dancing, or shaking, or silence....Yet when we ask, how did this begin? It is always, "Prayer, fasting, repentance, hungering after God and His Word..." This is too simplistic. Anyone could do that...there must be some special dispensation of divine grace, a mystical mysterious spiritual phenomenon.
Maybe if we just sing those songs again, and preach like that, and have this kind of service...We imitate revival in hopes that God will drop it on us. But only the real, personal, private burning of each individual heart can fan the flames of revival. God is not calling us to set the world on fire with yesterdays revival, but to come back to the cross, trusting that Christ alone can save not only this broken world, but our broken lives.
(From July 20, 2008)