Remembering Richard Twiss

My friend Richard Twiss just passed away from a massive heart attack. He was a great man, activist, thinker, a pioneer and spokesperson for First Nations people in general and Native Americans in particular. Cody L. has some good thoughts and links. 

I first met Richard 24 years ago in Vancouver, Washington when I was a very young associate pastor and Richard purchased our church building for his congregation.

The last time I saw him was in South Africa at the 2011 Cape Town Lausanne World Congress.

Very few people know this, and perhaps the story will never be fully released, but Richard and a few of his (our) activist mates felt the Lausanne Congress could have done better in addressing the needs of First Nations peoples as well as owning up to the past transgressions of apartheid, a subject they felt was conveniently ignored at the Cape Town meeting. They wrote a paper for the participants (I still have a copy) and for a while, there was the possibility of a kind of public disturbance that would bring these matters to the whole Congress. They decided on a different path, however, and nothing newsworthy happened. Which was good because Richard had actually roped me into video taping the proposed events, if and when they happened, and I was quite relieved that Richard and the others chose a more long term solution of tackling this blindness. 

What a guy. He refused to rest on his accomplishments but was still pushing for more justice. Once an activist, always an activist . . .

I once mentioned Richard in an article I wrote for Christianity Today.

“What do we go out to the desert to see? Do we see cheap fireworks, casinos, and tacky souvenirs? Or a special people called out by God for global missions in this new millennium? That’s what my friend Richard Twiss sees.

Richard is a member of the Rosebud Lakota/Sioux Tribe and President of Wiconi International. “No other people group is so uniquely positioned for global missions as First Nations people are today,” says Richard, whose mission sends out teams of “Native men and women who follow the Jesus Way and are skilled traditional drummers, singers, and dancers, to communicate the love of the Father with audiences worldwide.”

In the past three years teams from Richard’s mission have seen thousands come to know the Creator in outdoor events and house meetings in the country of Pakistan. It seems God is raising up a post-colonial mission force out of the margins of our own culture, out of a people who have felt the sting of colonialism themselves.

Andrew Jones, What did you go out to see?