Same Boy, New Name

“Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.” — 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ASV)

At Bathurst, Ajayi lived in the house of the missionary, Mr. Davey, and his wife, and went to the village school. He learned fast. “In about six months after my arrival at Sierra Leone,” he wrote, “I was able to read the New Testament with some degree of freedom; and was made a Monitor, for which I was rewarded with sevenpence-halfpenny per month.” A monitor taught the younger pupils. It was the first sign of what he would do all his life: learn something, then pass it on.

His conversion he described in one plain sentence: “The Lord was pleased to open my heart to hearken to those things which were spoken by His servants; and being convinced that I was a sinner, and desired to obtain pardon through Jesus Christ, I was baptized on the 11th of December 1825.” No vision, no lightning. He heard, he saw his need, and he wanted what Christ offered. And he gave God the credit even for the hearing.

At baptism he took a new name: Samuel Crowther, after a London vicar who had helped found the missionary society. Mrs. Davey had taught in that vicar’s Sunday school, and she chose the name. But here is the thing. He never stopped being Ajayi. For the rest of his life he signed himself Samuel Ajayi Crowther, using the old spelling Adjai. He spent decades studying the Yoruba language, proverbs and customs, and insisting the gospel should come to his people in their own tongue. What passed away was the slavery. What was made new was Ajayi.

In 1827 he became the very first student at a new college at Fourah Bay. He arrived with a mattress someone in England had given him on a short visit there. The principal, a strict German missionary named Haensel, banned it as “too great a luxury,” and made the students wash their own clothes and carry rice on their heads. Haensel worried that trips to England made Africans proud, which says more about Haensel than about Crowther. Crowther took the mattress away without complaint, and later spoke of Haensel with admiration.

His family remembered a story he loved to act out for his children. As a student monitor he was given heavy army boots to wear to church. He had never worn shoes. He couldn’t take a step. So he knelt in a corner, stood up holding the wall, and walked round and round the room until he could let go. For months he walked to church barefoot carrying the boots, and put them on at the door.

There was also a girl at Bathurst named Asano, baptised Susan Thompson, freed from a different slave ship six months after him. (Some retellings say they met on the slave ship. They didn’t.) In 1829 they married. It lasted fifty-one years.

Becoming a Christian does not mean becoming someone else. Some people think following Jesus means swapping their culture, personality or language for a churchier version. Paul says you are a “new creature,” not a different creature. God doesn’t erase the person he made. He frees them.

One thing to do this week: make a short list of three things about you that come from your family, culture or language: a food, a phrase, a tradition. For each one, ask: is this something Jesus wants to free me from, or something he wants to make new and use? Most things will be the second.