The blessing of diversity: Benefits of the emancipation of Indigenous theologies in light of the emergence of World Christianity

by Jay Mātenga

Introduction: clarifying the subject

“World Christianity” is the movement of Christianity as it takes form and shape in societies that previously were not Christian, societies that had no bureaucratic tradition with which to domesticate the gospel. In these societies Christianity was received and expressed through the cultures, customs, and traditions of the people affected. World Christianity… is not one thing, but a variety of indigenous responses through more or less effective local idioms, but in any case without necessarily the European Enlightenment frame.

Lamin Sanneh^[1]

Together with Professor Andrew Walls, Gambian scholar Professor Lamin Sanneh could be considered a godfather of World Christianity, a maturing academic discipline that is set to disrupt the trajectory of traditional Protestant theology, which I set among global theologies as the Eurocentric theological consensus.

As a hybrid Māori/European with deep roots in Aotearoa New Zealand, I am sensitive to the need for nuance in theological and missions debates. I am concerned more for harmony than dissonance. Therefore, I prefer to identify the theological and missiological concepts still dominant in missions discourse according to their ethno/geographic source: that is, the European context, in which I include the European diaspora in North America, Latin America, Africa, India, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Other commentators have started to favour the term “whiteness” to describe Eurocentric influences (including theological hegemony), whether inherited or adopted, but I find that it “otherises” the European schema in an unhelpful way.^[2] I do, however, appreciate and identify with activists’ need to call out the injustice of systems that privilege such schema and marginalise the communities for whom such authors seek equitability. There is a time to focus on systemic racial bias in the church’s ecclesiological, theological and missiological discourse and praxis, and I do not want to dismiss that, but the emotion associated with racial issues as the focus of a discussion can hijack the opportunity for fruitful dialogue when the subject is not specifically about race. For this essay I want to acknowledge that issues of outright prejudice and unconscious bias exist, but they are not at the centre of this paper. Rather, I will show how a growing appreciation of theological difference, resulting from a major shift in the demographic epicentre of global Christianity,^[3] has given new voices confidence to share their understanding and experience of God in Christ. Ironically, these voices are marginalised even as they are emerging from the new centre – or, more rightly, centres. The way for these voices to be better heard in the global Christian conversation has been paved by an emerging category of theological/missiological research called “World Christianity”. In terms of power differentials, I see a strengthening resistance to dominant and imposed Eurocentric theological assumptions from the burgeoning alternatives. As a result, in my lifetime I expect a greater balancing of influence between the dominant (but waning)^[4] Eurocentric theological consensus and the plethora of indigenous theological (re)thinking gaining acceptance out of the “Majority World”. This is of significant benefit for the global church, forming a healthy “creative tension”^[5] that will lead us to maturity in-Christ.^[6]

What we see: clarifying our lenses

Before I continue, I must locate myself in the conversation according to the custom of my father’s people…

Kō Takitimu te waka (my tribal canoe is the Takitimu). Kō Te Waka o Kupe me Tuhirangi ngā maunga (the mountains I belong to are known as the canoes of high chief Kupe and Tuhirangi, the sea serpent that Kupe chased along the Pacific in his discovery of Aotearoa New Zealand). Kō Ruamahanga te awa (my river is the Ruamahanga – it was in this river that I was baptised as a new believer in Christ in 1984). Kō Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, kō Ngāti Porou, kō Kai Tahu ōku iwi (I have direct genealogical connections to these three tribes, which span the east coast of both the main islands of Aotearoa New Zealand). Kō Ngāti Rākaiwhakairi tōku hapū (my primary clan or family group name means to lift or hang in adornment). Kō Kohunui tōku marae (my clan’s customary meeting place is called Kohunui – a physical piece of land on the outskirts of the village of Pirinoa, shared by our family group, with buildings for meeting/sleeping, cooking/eating, and keeping tools and supplies). Ko Jay Mātenga tōku ingoa (my name is Jay Mātenga), kō Aperahama Kuhukuhu Tui Mātenga tōku tupuna (descendent of Abraham Kuhukuhu Tui Mātenga). Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa (and so, three times respectful greetings to you all).

On my mother’s side I enjoy largely English heritage traced back to the first settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand, with an Aboriginal great-great-grandmother of the the Woi-wurrung (according to family oral history) from my maternal grandmother’s Australian line.

In spite of my English genetics (and Prussian via my paternal grandmother), I have come to identify as indigenous because the lens through which I see the world, understand myself and experience God is strongly influenced by an innate sensibility that resonates more with the indigenous world of Māori than the Pākehā (settler) context of my childhood upbringing with my English-heritage mother and stepfather. From my earliest memories I have lived with a dissonance of difference among my Pākehā family, friends and colleagues. Some African mentors I worked alongside in missions service were the ones God sent to help me quell the disquieting sense of being “other”. Over a decade ago, during the break time of an international missions leaders meeting, Ghanaian Dr Solomon Aryeetey turned to me and asked, “Jay! You have a white face… but you have an African heart! Why is this?” I could not answer on the spot, but I have concluded that my Moananui (Pacific Ocean) indigenous intuition resonates on a similar frequency to that of my African continent colleagues. We share a significant overlap of values and assumptions about reality. I can, to some degree, see the world as they see the world – which results in me often empathising with and defending “Majority World” perspectives to our Western colleagues in ways that seem to help. My darker-skinned brothers suggested that my pale features aid translation. One senior American missions leader likened me to a chameleon, but I suspect he expected me to act one way (as a white person) and was surprised when I understood and supported my Indigenous brothers and sisters’ perspectives in ways that our Euro-descendant, or Industrial, colleagues did not.^[7] While it remains hotly debated, I have become convinced that nature (genetics) is far more influential than nurture (upbringing, lived contexts) in determining how we interpret the world around us and, therefore, who we become.

In his book Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes, American author Brad Vaughan, writing under the pseudonym Jackson Wu, takes the opposite view. Overstating the effect of external influences on the shaping of our understanding of the world, he argues that “People are not born with cultural perspectives. They are learned and adjusted over a lifetime. Various experiences and relationships shape one’s view of the world.”^[8] He uses this as a central foundation to legitimise an interpretation of Romans based on his acquired understanding of East Asian ways of thinking. But at critical points it is obvious to someone from an Indigenous background that he remains constrained by his Industrial schema.

It is hubristic to suggest that you can clearly see through the cultural lens of another. You can seek to understand and appreciate, you can learn to mimic and approximate, your person can be shaped in significant ways through encounter and prolonged experience, leaving you hybridised to some degree, but you cannot become what they are and you will never see what they see because you do not have the generations of genetic coding that predisposes Indigenous people to view reality as they do (or the inverse for Indigenous in Industrial contexts). Jesus was incarnate precisely because he was born (and genetically coded) into a specific time and place. It is a grand myth of missions to think that trans-boundary ministers can do the same – known as an “incarnational” approach to ministry. It is impossible. Thinking you can or have, or expecting missionaries to do so, can lead to undue stress and significant psychosocial problems, not to mention unjust appropriation and exploitation.

What we know: clarifying theologies

The gospel can incarnate, missionaries cannot. Incarnational understandings and expressions of the faith (Christ-following covenantal communities) can, have and do emerge, but they cannot be imported, let alone imposed. A transplanted faith will not thrive for long in new soil. This is the tension emerging as Indigenous believers realise their freedom and gain confidence to express their unique values in their own voice, rooted in their assumptions about reality. The perspectives of expatriates/outsiders must submit to the right of insiders who follow “the Jesus way”^[9] to guard and articulate the gospel in their midst, and their relationship with the triune God they encounter within the gospel narrative, on their own terms – all the while remaining biblically faithful and in dialogue with the global church (historic and current). This is the process of centring the local, recognising Indigenous believers as guardians of the gospel for their context,^[10] and World Christianity studies are enabling this in unprecedented ways.

I deliberately ended my opening Sanneh quote where I did because he goes on to contrast World Christianity against “Global Christianity”, which (in 2003) he reserved for Western-influenced theological expressions. However, as Jehu Hanciles notes, such a conceptualisation fails “to recognize that Western Christianity is itself rooted in indigenous responses”.^[11] This observation agrees with Stephen Bevans, who maintains that “There is no such thing as ‘theology’; there is only contextual theology”.^[12] In other words, all (Christian) theology is rooted in and appropriate to the time and place it emerged, seeking to address questions relevant to that particular context, and crafted in a way that is best understood by and for its intended audience. The findings usually reveal universal realities, because theology done by Jesus followers is an exploration of the ways of a universal God. However, the conclusions may not necessarily be applicable in the same way for every context.

This principle can be difficult for Eurocentric believers to grasp, so accustomed they are to the privileges of dominance. Reformed theology is a contextual set of theological doctrines, rooted in a particular place and time, addressing particular issues. Systematic theology is a contextual theological method rooted in a particular place and time, addressing particular issues. Examples like these purport to be universal, but although many of theological findings can be adopted and adapted, others can be outright detrimental to the flourishing of the gospel in other contexts. The Eurocentric theological consensus has been privileged in most Protestant theological educational institutions around the world but when Indigenous Christians begin to decolonise their faith, such education can be found wanting.^[13] Doctrinal positions and theological propositions of the Eurocentric theological consensus might be appropriate for a certain Eurocentric audience,^[14] but there are myriad other ways to understand God’s purposes from Scripture that are more relevant to the pressing concerns of other contexts. Such is the dynamic of a living theology. We serve a living God who is present with us in every time and place revealing to us aspects of an unchangeable loving Supreme Being in surprisingly new ways. Missions, especially, need to understand this in the new era ahead of us.

David Bosch observed the dysfunction in transcultural gospel transmission three decades ago. He supported the view that:

We need an experimental theology in which an ongoing dialogue is taking place between text and context, a theology which, in the nature of the case, remains provisional and hypothetical.^[15]

He rightly cautioned that “This should not, however, lead to an uncritical celebration of an infinite number of contextual and often mutually exclusive theologies [theological relativism]”. But, he added, neither should it be restrained by an “absolutism of contextualism” where “theology, contextualised in the West, was in essence elevated to gospel status and exported to other continents as a package deal”.^[16] With Bosch, when I speak of the emancipation of indigenous theologies I am obviously not referring here to the dismissal of long-established tenets of our faith. Bosch maintained that we “have to affirm the universal and context-transcending dimensions of theology”.^[17] In other words, there are foundational axioms that are non-negotiable. There are boundaries to Christian orthodoxy, but there may not be as many non-negotiables as you might think.

I am not going to attempt to provide comparative examples here. Suffice it to say, the acknowledgement that we encounter God and understand God within certain contextual constraints, “gospel in dialogue with culture”^[18] if you will, liberates different perspectives to emerge from different contexts. As Andrew Walls attests, with reference to the cultural diversity of Christianity (and Christian thought), “The full-grown humanity of Christ requires all the Christian generations, just as it embodies all the cultural variety that six continents can bring.”^[19] As we hold to the integrated singularity (unity) of the diverse global body of Christ, we grow fully. We collectively mature in-Christ, manifesting “the full and complete standard of Christ” (Eph. 4:13 NLT), by learning to embrace the experience and interpretations of the biblical narrative from other contexts as gifts from above,^[20] allowing them to challenge – and enlarge – our way of understanding a barely comprehensible God.

What we become: clarifying maturity

The Apostle James expresses something like this at the beginning of his epistle. In his case, the differences within the believing community were defined by economic and societal status. His audience was predominantly Jewish, as he states in his initial greeting (Jas. 1:1). Even so, he recognised that faith in Christ was a powerfully reconciling faith, able to bring together disparate parts of a believing community, which, for James, were poor and rich Jews. Paul develops this further with his Jew/Gentile teaching, but in arguably the earliest epistle written after the Resurrection, James already understood the power of sitting in the tensions of difference to mature us in-Christ. To read this in James you need to appreciate that the epistle is written to address issues within the fellowship(s), not to provide comfort from outside persecutors such as Peter’s epistles do. Keep that in mind as you read…

Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

Jas. 1:2–4. NLT

The great joy to which James refers is a vision of maturity (perfect and complete) in-Christ. This maturity should be the highest aim for followers of the Jesus way. It is a process otherwise known as discipleship. Community is the crucible that forges it, eternal reward is promised as a result of it, and it comes from holding fast to the faith over time (patient endurance, perseverance), allowing troubles to work a transformative miracle in each of us. The faith is in Christ’s ability, by the power of the Spirit, to form a covenantal community that witnesses to the reality of the (now/not yet) shalom kingdom of God. Furthermore, the troubles/testing emerge from within “the fellowship of difference and differents”, as Scot McKnight calls it: “a mixture of people from all across the map and spectrum: men and women, rich and poor. It is a mix of races and ethnicities.”^[21] While James specifically addresses a monocultural expression of our faith at the time (diaspora Jews), they still had differences to address, hence the reason for his letter. He masterfully prefaces his address by highlighting the transformative action of the Spirit to mature us into Christ’s likeness,^[22] as individuals and as a group, as we are troubled by the expectations, preferences, privileges and behaviours of others within the fellowship, and as we trouble them in return.^[23] In my faith background, we used to call this “sandpaper ministry”.

Endurance is the New Living Translation version’s interpretation of patient steadfastness, not wavering in our trust in Jesus because of the differences we experience with one another. If we hold fast, James suggests that we are positively changed (matured/perfected) by those troubling differences. Paul indicates a similar thing in Rom. 12:1–2 where he encourages us to be transformed (metamorphosised) by the renewing of our mind. How? Through our quiet times, Bible studies, prayer and corporate liturgies? No. While good and healthy and important, they are not the acceptable worship to which Paul refers. In the wider context of Rom. 12 (and the entire arc of the epistle and elsewhere in Paul’s writing), being a living sacrifice is the “kenotic” self-giving of ourselves to one another in covenantal community as the body of Christ.^[24] It is through our interactions within the fellowship of male, female, eunuch, Jew, Greek, Barbarian, slave, free, rich, poor, young, old, etc. that we are transformed by our learning from one another, and making space for each other, empowered by the Spirit who is love. This kind of harmony-in-tension is non-conformance with the customs of this world, which loves to distinguish and separate “their kind” from “our kind”.

Modern science is providing us with confirmation of this ancient Christian assumption. Recent work in the area of interpersonal neurobiology is proving that we are who we are because of our social interactions.^[25] Our genetics determine how we process the data that our brains/psyche receives from interpersonal stimulus, but the stimulus itself prompts the creation of the very synaptic pathways that make us uniquely who we become in the world. The wider our interactions, the richer our understanding of reality. So, ipso facto, homogeneity or socialising only with those like us who like us ultimately stunts our growth. In my reading of Scripture, through an indigenous lens assisted by World Christian studies, homogenous fellowship develops immature Christians.^[26]

Returning to Rom. 12, only by dwelling together in the tensions of difference will we comprehend God’s good, pleasing and perfect will – which, as Jesus stated clearly in his John 17 prayer, is that we become an integrated singularity.^[27] One of the biggest hindrances on our pathway to the kind of maturity that should bring us great joy is our assumption that unity should be on our terms – if only everyone aligned with our view, the church will finally be unified. In my experience, that is the evangelical pipe dream. Meanwhile, myriad denominations and ministries wrestle for dominance of and acquiescence to their perspective as the benchmark for unity. That is not what Jesus prayed for, but neither did he pray for the “live and let live” kind. I see this particularly in the ecumenical movement, where everyone is free and encouraged to express their faith on their own terms, and indigenous communities can thrive in such a context. Yet there seems to be little serious dialogue on points of theological difference, let alone significant transformation from prolonged engagement in such tensions. Consensus can be gained on the core elements of orthodox Christian faith, and on certain social or political matters, but it is, by and large, each to their own doctrinally and theologically. While these generalisations are far too simplistic, in both the evangelical and ecumenical expressions, the Protestant Church remains largely buffered from difference. We pay little more than lip service to the kind of integrated singularity meant by Jesus when he asked the Holy Parent to make us one,^[28] so that the glory of God (the manifestation of the Spirit, by trinitarian interpretation) might be revealed and cause the world to believe (consider credible) and know (experience) that the Ancient of Days lovingly sent the unbegotten Son.

But there is an alternative to the seeking of dominance or live/let live options. It is expressed throughout the New Testament (for those with eyes to see) and it is to simply live in the tensions of difference, holding fast to God in faithful loving relationships, seeking to understand one another’s experience and understanding of God, as uncomfortable as those alternative perspectives might be to our current convictions and knowledge of God. Just as you cannot create harmony in nature without tension,^[29] the shalom harmony of the kingdom cannot emerge without tension – the new creation is co-created by us all, in creative tension.

How did I come to see Scripture in this way? I did not learn it from my theological and missions studies, although what I did learn there has given me language to articulate my findings. At one level I intuited them from my own reading and thinking over the years, in dialogue with missions colleagues from the Majority World, but the framework for understanding Scripture and the purpose of God as a pursuit of integrated relational harmony (relationship in tuned tension) comes from an exploration of my indigeneity, seeking to understand myself – and, in doing so, asking highly contextualised questions of God in dialogue with te ao Māori (the Māori reality).

What we believe: clarifying ultimate reality

Justice activist and pastor Tim Ahrens quotes theologian Robert McAfee Brown, who reminded his audience at Macalester College in 1980 that “1) where you stand will determine what you will see; 2) whom you stand with will determine what you hear; and 3) what you see and hear will determine what you say and how you act”.^[30] This reads like a truism but it is only when you are exposed to a perspective different from your own that you realise that what you considered to be common sense or patently obvious is not so common or obvious to others – and, in fact, your view is probably a blinkered one. Proximity to difference makes a difference. The rupturing of our core assumptions can lead to maturity if we allow it to, taking the time to understand another perspective.

In contrast to the deep assumptions of Industrial ways of knowing, which are rooted in cartesian dualism and the subsequent Enlightenment, a traditional Māori schema, or understanding of reality, is fully integrated or holistic, without any of the separation of spiritual and material assumed in the Industrial world.^[31] In te ao Māori, everything is interconnected, and the influence or action by one element is felt throughout the whole system. Nothing is autonomous and no aspect can be definitively examined without reference to the whole. New generations emerge from combinations formed by previous generations, like children from parents. They are not products but the latest iterations of a process. This is, in short, the paradigm of whakapapa (genealogy, heritage or lineage), which guides Māori in our understanding of the way the world is designed to work. Everything, everywhere, all at once,^[32] is woven together.

Māori tohunga (spiritual authority) and Anglican priest Revd Māori Marsden provides us with insight into the deep assumptions about reality from te ao Māori. The traditional Māori understanding of reality might best be described in English as a woven universe,

a fabric comprising of a fabulous mélange of energies.… It was the preoccupation of the whare wānanga [centre of Māori scholarship and learning] to view the world as a music, a singing, as “rhythmical patterns of pure energy” that are woven and move with cosmological purpose and design. Our concern, therefore, should be to pay attention to how this fabric is woven and the nature of our place within it… The universe itself is a process or event within the cosmic process by which Io orders creation.^[33]

Io in most Māori (and wider Moananui) traditions is legitimately associated with the God of the Bible, the Great Creator. Descriptions of Io’s character are biblically resonant, and our indigenous Io narrative adds a depth of understanding that Scripture omits in its brief accounts of creation. Anyone familiar with Tolkien’s creation narrative in The Silmarillion will recognise a similar concept of the universe being sung into being.^[34] John’s account is also wonderfully resonant in concert with Genesis, where together we see that the Divine Thought or Consciousness (Logos) uttered life and light into being and sustains it still. From Paul’s majestic hymn in Colossians (1:15ff) we understand that Jesus the Christ is that Divine Consciousness incarnate, and there we see that Jesus holds everything together still. Industrials conveniently sidestep this concept. They are not quite sure what to do with it. They have dismissed what Māori instinctively know to be true – the “energies” spoken of by Revd Marsden are the life-force of the Creator sustaining the world, and we who live in it.

Where you stand determines what you see. When I speak of this to Industrial believers, especially in missions, I am often confronted with accusations of animism (and, by implication, syncretism). Accusers usually have little understanding that the concept arose out of the early pursuit of evolutionary biology. It is a construct that imposed a hierarchy of religious order upon the world – with rational Western theology conveniently in the supreme position (but since dethroned by atheistic humanitarian secularism).^[35] Acknowledging life force, emanating from an immanent God, as the very fabric of the universe, need not mean worship of the force, as implied by those who would cry “animism!” Neither does an active relationship with the created order need to imply worship, any more than does a relationship with our pets. However, dismissing the life force that most of the world outside of Industrial influence accepts in various ways is a dangerous place to stand, and we are now reaping the whirlwind of sowing such a position because of the Industrial overreach that fails to recognise the gift that God has provided for us in creation, as an extension of God’s self.

Who you stand with will determine what you understand and do. When we join with those who recognise this gift of life, honouring the Source as revealed in Scripture, all manner of theological possibilities emerge with the potential to change the way we behave. The tohunga (Māori scholar priests) knew and understood “the power of relationships as the essential nature of all reality”.^[36] In te reo Māori (the Māori language), the art of crafting/weaving relationships is known as whakawhanaungatanga. All Māori social concepts develop from understanding reality as the flow of life force/energy through the processes of whanaungatanga (weaving relationships) and whakapapa (to create new generations of the eternal process). As a brief example, in te ao Māori, all things consist of mauri (the life-force principle). When mauri is animated or given active life (by the ha or breath of the Great Spirit) it becomes mauri ora (living energy, with certain agency). When mauri ora is recognised by humans, it is attributed as mana (the positive attributes of living things, although mana can also be attributed to inanimate objects as well). Mana is to Māori something akin to social currency. So, a key objective of an individual (if brought up well) is to increase their mana through the right application of their personality, gifts, skills, talents, etc. for the flourishing of the community and thereby add to the mana of their people. Mana cannot be claimed for oneself, only given by the community – usually in subtle ways according to the customs of the people. It can be leveraged to bring positive influence, and it can be lost if one acts in a way that diminishes the community, with social consequences for the person and those associated with him or her.^[37] Aside from death, excommunication would be one of the most extreme consequences because without community recognition you lose your mana, and risk becoming a non-person.

Therefore, similar to other Indigenous ways of knowing and practicing healthy community around the world, Māori strive for harmonious relationships, with high tolerance for tension in the process of forging and being forged by relationships with others. We are obligated to work for the flourishing of relationships, for in addition to the benefits for our groups it also works for the benefit of us as individuals, increasing our mana and therefore our influence in the community (but always for the community’s benefit, not our own) – not just for today but for future generations and the honour of our ancestors. As I exhibit in conclusion, the weaving of relationships, and repairing of torn weaves, is a spiritually charged process.

Conclusion: clarifying our future

My aim for this essay was to explain how studies in World Christianity have created freedom for Indigenous theologies to participate more effectively in global church conversations about our understanding of God, the Parent, Son and Spirit. It is not an essay about race, but it does recognise that Indigenous theologies have been silenced by the dominant Industrial voice in the global church conversation until recently. Researchers in the study of World Christianity (historic and current) have exposed this.

I located myself and explained why location is significant. It is important to humbly acknowledge who we are, where we come from and the limits of our ability to understand others. After all, Jesus did. It was only because he knew he was “in very nature God”^[38] that he could give of himself (kenosis) and become a servant, which resulted in his full status (ascendence to complete authority). So too, the Apostles teach us, our discipleship is a process of transformative kenosis in our relationships with one another in-Christ. This is for our great benefit, our joy, and embracing Indigenous theologies can increase that benefit if we choose to prioritise healthy relationship-making as God’s ultimate purpose for humanity. For Māori, the very act of perpetual reconciliation, required for enduring relationships, repairs tears in the woven universe, with every participant in the integrated whole seen and given honour for who/what God has made them to be and become – co-creating a new creation, the shalom Kingdom of God.

Māori see the universe as a weave resonating under constant tension, for only therein can we produce harmony – an equal influence of unique contributions added in appropriate measure, like ingredients in a recipe. Recalling a conversation that global Christianity demographer Todd Johnson had with a senior Ghanaian church leader, peacemaker Uchenna Anyanwu notes that Indigenous followers of the Jesus way deserve “an invitation to the kitchen of global Christianity, not just to its table”.^[39] Being entrusted with access to the kitchen, bringing theological ingredients harvested from their garden-walk with God, alongside ingredients contributed by followers from a diverse range of contexts, provides space for a wonderfully unique co-creation. Not autonomous creation in separate parts of the kitchen, not piecemeal selection of ingredients to subtly flavour an otherwise preset recipe, but an all-embracing fusion of full flavours – a meal of all peoples for all people. I can imagine this being served at the banquet Jesus hosts for us, who have been brought in from the highways and the byways.

Keeping with the cooking metaphor, I close with a reflection from Māori Christian elder and veteran missionary Arthur Baker,^[40] one of my doctoral research respondents, who reflected on the process of developing relationships and observed:

You know, (referring to [the stew] pot [on the stove]) all the components put together make the whole. Leave the doughboys [dumplings] out of the boil-up and you don’t know what you are talking about, it isn’t even a boil-up bro. Don’t pour that fat out of the water, I don’t care what the doctor said, you’ve got to let that meat cook in that oil, a bit of mutton brisket and whatever. Let that grease go through the puha (watercress) and have those Dakota Reds or Rua (potatoes) because they are firm, and they are good for the third or fourth boil-up. That’s the boil-up in its essence. You can’t take anything away from it otherwise its only in part. You can’t have it in part, this thing is the whole thing, you know? You have the action of the rewena (yeast, fermentation) amongst all those that are gathered here. And the whanau (relationship) thing begins to activate, and it permeates the whole. It’s a spiritual thing, you know? This principle, it’s spiritual.^[41]

When the heat comes on, rejoice! Stay in the pot and be transformed.

About the author

Jay Mātenga is the director of World Evangelical Alliance’s Global Witness department and executive director of the WEA’s Mission Commission, which sits within the Global Witness department. He also leads Missions Interlink in Aotearoa New Zealand, a missions association, equivalent to UK’s Global Connections. Jay is a graduate of All Nations Christian College’s MA programme and has a doctorate of Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. You can read more from Jay at his website: jaymatenga.com

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Notes

[1] Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 22.

[2] The term “whiteness” can be traced back to sociologist W.E.B Du Bois’ 1910 essay, “The Souls of White Folk” (see: https://loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com/static/pdf/ Du_Bois_White_Folk.pdf). Willie Jennings, among others, has adopted “whiteness” as preferred terminology, by which he means “not simply… a marker of the European but as the rarely spoken but always understood organising conceptual frame” (Willie Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), 25) and more recently, “‘whiteness’ does not refer to people of European descent but to a way of being in the world and seeing the world that forms cognitive and affective structures able to seduce people into its habitation and its meaning making” (Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 9). Where Jennings refers to a conceptual frame and cognitive/affective structures, I prefer the more dynamic concept of schema (I also prefer schema over “world view” to describe human assumptions about ultimate reality).

[3] This reality should need no defence, but if the reader remains unsure if the majority of the world’s Christian population resides outside of the West, they need only refer to the work of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. For example, see Gina Zurlo, Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2022).

[4] Scott Sunquist has also produced a very accessible overview of the shift of global Christianity and the associated decline of Western theological dominance during the twentieth century. See Scott W. Sunquist, The Unexpected Christian Century: The Reversal and Transformation of Global Christianity, 1900–2000 (Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2015).

[5] Creative tension is a concept also favoured by David Bosch as he comments on the missions implications of the New Testament. See David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011).

[6] I favour the hyphenated phrasing “in-Christ” as short-hand for the integrated singularity of covenantal community that Jesus established and the Apostles affirmed as the shalom kingdom of God, which the Holy Spirit manifests through allegiant followers of Jesus in the world.

[7] I hold to the United Nations’ definition of indigenous, with a lower case i, but I capitalise it when distinguishing between Indigenous and Industrial as two distinct, global, epistemic ecosystems intersecting and overlapping on a spectrum, similar to the Collectivist and Individualist value sets continuum developed by industrial psychology researchers like Geert Hofstede. I capitalise Indigenous when referring to people who have a dominant collectivist orientation (Majority World, Global South, Developing World, etc.), and upper-case Industrial refers to those more inclined to be Individualist (Western, Modern, First World, etc.). This is a simplified explanation, but properly understood these terms helpfully enable reference to large groups of people according to shared innate values, wherever they live, more than some arbitrary geographic or economic identity. For example, “Global South” makes no sense to us who live “down under”, and Majority World typically includes Latin America, which I would classify as Eurocentrically Industrial, but closer to the Indigenous end of the spectrum than, say, the English or Germans.

[8]  Jackson Wu, Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes: Honor and Shame in Paul’s Message and Mission (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019), 9.

[9] This way of describing “Christianity” was popularised by the North American indigenous Christian movement and has been adopted by indigenous believers in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere as preferred terminology, thanks to the influence of NAIITS (formerly the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies), a pioneer in world Christian thinking that centres indigenous perspectives, methods and forms of theological exploration and articulation.

[10] “Guardians of the gospel” is a phrase I coined and use frequently. The first published occurrence was in an online essay for the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission in August 2020: Jay Mātenga, “Leader’s Missions Forecast 2020” (21 August 2020),  https://weamc.global/lb2020-2/.

[11] Jehu J. Hanciles, ed., World Christianity: History, Methodologies, Horizons (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2021), 31 (Kindle Loc. 411).

[12] Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Faith and Culture) (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002), 3.

[13] For example, I taught a 12-session undergraduate paper called “Global Theologies” as an adjunct lecturer at New Zealand’s largest Bible college, whereas Systematic Theology was a much larger course in all degree programmes at all levels simply called “Theology”, with little awareness that it too was among many contextual global theologies.

[14] The new wave of former Evangelicals “deconstructing” their faith suggests that the Eurocentric theological consensus is breaking down even in the West, due to the lack of relevance to a rapidly changing context and rigid institutional commitments to increasingly outmoded theologies.

[15] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2011), 437.

[16] Ibid., 438.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Andrew F. Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1996), xvii. This is also the intent of Shoki Coe, who coined the term “contextualisation”. See Shoki Coe, “Contextualizing Theology” in Mission Trends No.3: Third World Theologies, eds. G.H. Anderson and T.F. Stransky (New York: Paulist, 1976).

[19] Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History, xvii.

[20] In keeping with the Ephesians passage, we could argue that these gifts are provided to the global church via apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherd-teachers from other contexts – elders from indigenous theological perspectives.

[21] Scot McKnight, A Fellowship of Differents: Showing the World God’s Design for Life Together (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 16.

[22] James does not specifically reference the Holy Spirit, but from the New Testament as a whole we can safely identify the necessary Agent of the transformative process.

[23] I extrapolate this from the rest of the letter, where James speaks specifically to the tension points in the fellowship: selfish desires, anger, judgementalism, hate speech, gossip, hypocrisy, prejudice (rich versus poor), laziness, jealousy and compromise, among other things!

[24] The best example of kenosis (self-emptying/giving up/giving way) is found in Phil. 2:3–11.

[25] If you wish to follow this “rabbit trail”, begin with Curt Thompson, Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2010). Then dive deeper into the work of Dan Siegel, for example: Daniel J. Siegel, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 2012).

[26] I do not speak here of cultural homogeneity, but of the tendency to fellowship only with those with whom we have a strong affinity. Obviously, within the same culture there are plenty of differences – as James attests.

[27] “… that they will all be one, just as you and I are one – as you are in me, Father, and I am in you” (John 17:21, NLT).

[28] Te reo Māori (the Māori language) does not typically have gendered pronouns for parents – matua can mean either father or mother. For example, the Lord’s prayer starts with E te matou Matua e te rangi (Our Parent in the highest place).

[29] I play guitar, so take for example an instrument string. You cannot strike a harmonic on an instrument string without it being under tension – and tuned tension at that. Similarly, our vocal cords need to be under tension for us to speak or sing. There is a resonant tension in all of creation. Even stones vibrate at different frequencies, which requires tension to create.

[30] Tim Ahrens, “Where You Stand Determines What You See” in Reflections: A Magazine of Theological and Ethical Inquiry from Yale Divinity School (Spring 2012), https://reflections.yale.edu/article/seize-day-vocation-calling-work/where-you-stand-determines-what-you-see (accessed 20 March 2023).

[31] The separation of spirit and matter is rooted in ancient Greek philosophies. Descartes’ philosophies were focused on the distinction between mind and matter, somewhat different. But he is credited with laying the foundations for what became Enlightenment rationalism, and subsequent “disenchantment” that relegated the spiritual realm to that of fantasy, which has dominated Western thought (and theologies) for over 400 years. For an introduction to Descartes, see: Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 188–91. For more on the disenchantment of Western reality see Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

[32] Here I obviously borrow the title of the popular 2023 Academy Award-winning movie with East Asian perspectives. For Indigenous, even past and future are perceived as belonging to the perpetual present. “Ka mua, ka muri” is a well-known proverb that means we walk confidently into the future while facing the past. Unfortunately, Andrew Walls appropriates this concept incorrectly in the “What of the Future” section of chapter 5 of Andrew F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Appropriation of Faith (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002).

[33] Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, The Woven Universe: Selected Writings of Rev. Māori Marsden (Masterton, NZ: The estate of Rev. Māori Marsden, 2003), xiii–xiv.

[34] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (London: Harper Collins, 1977).

[35] I develop this further, albeit briefly, in a blog post here: “Confronting Animism” (7 June 2019), https://jaymatenga.com/animism/.

[36] Royal, The Woven Universe, xiv.

[37] To widely read missions thinkers: beware that I am not talking about honour/shame here. Take care not to overlay trite and outdated Industrial concepts on the sacred reality of Indigenous people. It is a much deeper and more spiritual process than any outsider can comprehend. The artificial honour/shame et al. constructs in current missions thinking are not helpful in allowing Indigenous theologies to be articulated on their own terms (without having to reference borrowed concepts).

[38] Phil. 2:6, NIV.

[39] Uchenna D. Anyanwu, “Invitation to the Kitchen, Not Just to the Table: Todd M. Johnson’s Motif of Global Christianity,” in Portraits of Global Christianity: Research and Reflections in Honor of Todd M. Johnson, ed. Gina A. Zurlo (Littleton, CO: William Carey Publishing, 2023), 49.

[40] All of the respondents to my doctoral research permitted their names to be known. The knowledge I was gifted belongs to them and they deserve the honour of acknowledgement as the source of treasures such as the quote from kaumatua (elder) Arthur.

[41] Jay Mātenga, “Mutuality of Belonging: Toward Harmonizing Culturally Diverse Missions Groups” (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2017), 133.

The post The blessing of diversity appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Historical development of Black Pentecostal churches in Britain: A case study of the Apostolic Pastoral Congress

by Israel Olofinjana

Introduction¹

One of the relatively new phenomena in European Christianity and on the religious landscape is the emergence and development of Black Pentecostal churches. A century ago the face of European Christianity could have been labelled as white in terms of colour, but now it is increasingly becoming multicoloured, if one can call it that. This change in European Christianity is part of a larger shift taking place in world Christianity. Europe used to be the centre of world Christianity and as such was sending missionaries to Africa, Asia, South America and other parts of the world. Part of the current trend in global mission is that these former mission fields have developed their Christianities to the extent that they now see Europe as a mission field. In response to this new thinking, Africa, Asia and South America are now sending pastors and missionaries to Europe. An example is the 2014 South Korean mission to Britain, which saw the Kwangmyung Presbyterian Church in Korea sending about 450 South Korean missionaries on a one-week short-term mission to Britain. This intentional sending was in recognition of and gratitude for the fact that South Korea traces its Christian roots to the ministry of a Welsh missionary, Robert Jermain Thomas (1839–66). The one-week mission saw the 450 South Koreans participating in ministry, prayerwalking and praying for revival in the UK at 30 different locations all over Britain.²

Pentecostal Christianity is currently one of the fastest-growing expressions of Christianity in the world. David Barrett estimated that Pentecostalism is likely to rise to 1,140 million or 44 per cent of the total number of Christians by the middle of this decade.³ Allan Anderson, a Pentecostal historian and theologian, adds that Pentecostalism is fast becoming the dominant expression of Christianity and one of the most extraordinary religious phenomena in the world today.⁴

Pentecostalism as a global movement has large numbers of adherents in the Majority World. It is the expression of Christianity that is growing fastest in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It is Pentecostal missionaries and pastors from the Majority World who are taking the lead in planting churches in Europe. The continent of Europe, which used to have white classic Pentecostals and, later, the Charismatic movements of the 1960s as the major players within that expression, now have Black Pentecostals adding to the diversity, to the extent that the history of European Pentecostals will not be complete without paying attention to the emerging Black Pentecostals. How then did Black Pentecostalism in Europe begin? Is Black Pentecostalism a homogeneous group? What contributions does it make? These are some of the questions this article seeks to address, profiling the history and work of the Apostolic Pastoral Congress (APC) as a case study. There has been a considerable amount of research and attention given to Black Pentecostals in Britain, such as the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)⁵ and Kingsway International Christian Centre (KICC).⁶ While this is good, it is important to begin to document the stories of other Black Pentecostals and draw attention to their contributions.

In proceeding with this task, some clarification of terms is needed. What is meant by Pentecostals?

There is no general agreement among Pentecostal theologians as to a universal definition of Pentecostals because it depends on who is defining the word and what their theological persuasions are. For example, as an African who was born and raised in an Africaninstituted Church (AIC), I define some of the AICs as Pentecostals because of their emphasis on prayer, the use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, prophetic visions, healing, miracles, Spirit-led experiences and Spiritfilled experiences.⁷ However, I am equally aware of the scholarly debate that questions whether AICs can be regarded as Pentecostals, as some of them are regarded as syncretistic – making them appear more as a cult than a church.⁸ In this article, I have classified AICs as Pentecostals. For the purposes of a working definition, I have defined Pentecostals in this article as an expression of Christianity that has its origin in Acts 2:1–13 when the disciples of our Lord were filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. It is a modern church movement that is characterised by glossolalia (speaking in tongues), use of the gifts of the Spirit, Spirit-filled experiences, belief in miracles and healing, and free and ecstatic worship.

Origins of the Pentecostal movement in Britain

The year 1906 is very significant in modern Pentecostal history, as it was the year that the Pentecostal revival of Azusa Street in Los Angeles started, led by William J. Seymour. Some scholars and commentators see this event as the beginning of the Pentecostal movement, while others will argue that it was in 1900–01 at Topeka, Kansas with Charles Parham that modern Pentecostalism originated.⁹ A further debate associated with the history of Pentecostalism is whether Charles Parham (1873–1929) or William J. Seymour (1870– 1922) is the founder of the movement. Those who prefer Parham do so on the basis that he formulated the Pentecostal theology of speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. However, others prefer Seymour on the understanding that the Pentecostal missionary movement and ecumenical vision that transcends race started with Seymour’s movement in Azusa Street in 1906.

It is a historical error to assume that modern Pentecostalism originated in the United States with the events of 1906. The Azusa Street revival is very significant in the history of modern Pentecostalism partly because it later gave birth to classic Pentecostal churches such as the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), Apostolic Faith Church, the Pentecostal Holiness Church, the Assemblies of God, the Foursquare Gospel Church and many more.¹⁰ However, there were other streams of Pentecostals that emerged separately in other parts of the world, such as the Jamaican revival of 1860–61, the Mukti Mission in India from 1905–07, the Korean renewal movement from 1903 (Pyongyang 1907), and the AICs at the beginning of the twentieth century.¹¹ However, the origins of Pentecostalism in Britain are closely linked to the event in Azusa Street.

The Welsh revival, led by Evan Roberts in 1904, was the catalyst for the Pentecostal movement in Britain as it sowed the seeds and laid the foundation for the emergence of classic Pentecostal churches in Britain, such as the Elim Pentecostal Church, the Apostolic Church of Great Britain and the Assemblies of God Great Britain. The Welsh revival also inspired what later followed at the Azusa Street revival, as Frank Bartleman, the official historian of the Los Angeles revival, corresponded with Evan Roberts inquiring about the principles of revival and also asked Roberts to pray for revival in California.¹² However, it was the influence of the Azusa Street revival on T. B. Barratt from Norway, Cecil Polhill, Alexander Boddy and others like them that led to the start of Pentecostalism in Britain. Boddy and Polhill were the founders of the first Pentecostal missionary movement in Britain, known as the Pentecostal Missionary Union.

Alexander Boddy (1854–1930), an Anglican priest at All Saints in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, is considered the father of Pentecostalism in Britain because his church was a meeting point where different people came to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit, beginning in 1907.¹³ One of the people who was baptised in the Spirit through Boddy’s ministry was Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947), a true pioneer of the faith.¹⁴ Another person who was baptised in the Spirit at one of the revival meetings in Sunderland was the Revd Thomas Kwame Brem-Wilson, a Ghanaian businessman and schoolmaster.¹⁵

Brem-Wilson was born in Dixcove, Ghana in 1855 and came to Britain in 1901. In 1906, Brem-Wilson started Sumner Road Chapel in Peckham, south-east London. As a result of his attendance and contribution at the revival meetings in Sunderland in 1907, Brem- Wilson developed relationships with the founders of the Apostolic Church of Great Britain, D. P. Williams and W. J. Williams, as he hosted an Apostolic Church conference in London in 1923. These interracial relationships were very rare at that time when it was generally not socially acceptable among white Christians to associate with Black people. It reveals the Pentecostal significance of breaking down church traditions and racial barriers. In addition, it also demonstrates the ecumenical inclinations of early Pentecostalism in Britain. For instance, I find the relationship between Boddy, an Anglican minister, and Brem-Wilson, a Black Pentecostal, notable. This early relationship is quite significant and foreshadows some of the more recent Anglican–Pentecostal relationships that have been emerging – for example, that between Jesus House, led by Pastor Agu Irukwu, and Holy Trinity Brompton, led by Nicky Gumbel; the Anglican–Pentecostal Theological Consultations; the recent instalment of Bishop Tedroy Powell of the Church of God of Prophecy as the third Pentecostal President of Churches Together in England (CTE); and the partnership that exists between the Church of England and the APC. The latter example will be considered later under the ecumenical contributions of the APC.

The origins and diversity of Black Pentecostals in Britain

Thomas Kwame Brem-Wilson may be regarded as a pioneer of Black Pentecostalism in Britain, but the development of the full movement did not occur until the arrival of Caribbean migrants after 1948. In tracing the next phase in the development of Black Pentecostal churches in Britain, it is worth highlighting that Black Pentecostalism in Britain is not a homogeneous movement but is rather heterogeneous in culture, ethnicity, ecclesiology, mission and theology. For example, some of these churches are Unitarian (Oneness Pentecostals) while others are Trinitarian; some have embraced Black liberation theology while others preach a prosperity gospel; some have grown to become church denominations, such as the New Testament Church of God, the Church of God of Prophecy, the RCCG and the Church of Pentecost; while others are still independent churches, such as the New Wine Church in Woolwich, the Tab Church in Lewisham, Christian Life City and Ruach Ministries (now Ruach City Church). Some are church plants from their denominational churches back in the Caribbean or Africa, such as New Testament Assembly, the Church of the Lord (Aladura), the International Central Gospel Church and Forward in Faith Ministries International. Others are churches that have started here in Britain and have planted churches in other parts of the world, such as KICC, Christ Faith Tabernacle and Praise Christian Centre. It is within this latter group that we can locate and situate the history of the APC, although the APC is a congress of churches that broadly retain their independence and distinctiveness while adhering to the wider ethical, ecclesiological and theological framework of the congress.

The second thing to note is that Black Pentecostal churches in Britain are part of what is usually regarded as Black Majority Churches (BMCs), a term of which many Black church leaders are growing wary of. BMCs are independent Pentecostal and charismatic churches that have originated within the Black community and have a Black majority congregation and leadership. These are churches that have emerged from the African and Caribbean diaspora.¹⁶

When used in this sense, BMCs do not include those congregations that have emerged within historic Churches such as Catholics, Baptists, Anglicans and Methodists. Two problems arise with this definition. Firstly, not all BMCs or Black Pentecostal churches can be described as such since group identities are usually too complex to generalise; secondly many BMCs or Black Pentecostal churches are actually increasingly multicultural, multi-ethnic and intergenerational churches, so that while they appear Black to an outsider, to an insider they are truly many nations! This is why I have proposed that we understand the initialism BMC as Black Multicultural Churches.¹⁷

Caribbean Pentecostal churches

The 1940s and 1950s saw the influx of Caribbean families into the UK due to the invitation of the British government to come and help rebuild the country after the devastation of the Second World War. Many people from the Caribbean responded to this call but to their surprise and dismay, they were rejected by society and the church. This period is usually referred to as the Windrush generation, as the ship SS Empire Windrush brought about 493 people from the Caribbean on 22 June 1948 to Tilbury, London. The majority of the people from the Caribbean saw and regarded themselves as British citizens, being part of the Commonwealth, and therefore expected to be treated as such. Instead, they were faced with posters saying, “No Irish, No Blacks and No Dogs.” They soon realised that the idea of a commonwealth was an illusion; the wealth was not common and they were second-class citizens. Walter Hollenweger, in an introduction to a seminal book on the Black church in Britain written by Roswith Gerloff, comments that “Christians in Britain prayed for many years for revival, and when it came they did not recognise it because it was black”.¹⁸ This rejection, coupled with other factors, such as loyalty to church brands and the formality of British Christianity, led to the formation of Caribbean Pentecostal and Holiness Churches. The first Caribbean Pentecostal church founded in the UK was the Calvary Church of God in Christ, which started in London in 1948. The church became affiliated with the Church of God in Christ International in 1957, and they now have about 21 congregations in the UK. Others soon followed, such as the New Testament Church of God (1953), the Church of God of Prophecy (1953), the Wesleyan Holiness Church (1958) and the New Testament Assembly (1961),¹⁹ now with about 18 congregations in Britain.

Since the 1990s, a new generation Caribbean Pentecostal churches have emerged in Britain. These churches have a wider appeal to Caribbean British Christians who are second- and third-generation descendants of the original immigrants. Many of the leaders are second- or third-generation Caribbean British Christians as well. These churches are Pentecostal and as such have dynamic worship and worship teams; they make use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and have creative preaching styles. These churches are very proactive in terms of community and social engagement, providing services such as food banks, debt counselling, soup kitchens, prison ministries and many more. Examples of these churches are Ruach City Church (formerly Ruach Ministries), led by Bishop John Francis (1994); Rhema Christian Ministries, formerly known as Rhema Fellowship (1990), founded by Pastor Mark Goodridge and now led by Marva Scott; iCan Community Church, formerly Christian Life City (1996), led by Bishop Wayne Malcolm; Micah Community Church (1998), led by Pastor Denis Wade; the Tab Church (formerly called the Bible Way Church of the Lord Jesus Christ Apostolic), led by Pastor Michael White; Greater Faith Ministries, led by Bishop Lennox Hamilton, and host of other churches.²⁰

African Pentecostal churches

The independence of sub-Saharan African countries from 1957 onwards led to increasing numbers of African diplomats, students and tourists coming to Britain. When they discovered, as had those coming from the Caribbean before them, that they were rejected by the British churches and society at large, this led to the founding of African Instituted Churches (AICs) in London. The first of these churches to be planted was the Church of the Lord (Aladura), planted in 1964 by the late Apostle Oluwole Adejobi in South London. This church has its headquarters in Nigeria. Others soon followed, such as the Cherubim and Seraphim Church in 1965, the Celestial Church of Christ in 1968 and Aladura International Church in 1970. Others include Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) Mount Bethel, founded by Apostle Ayo Omideyi in 1974; Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) of Great Britain in 1976; and Born Again Christ Healing Church, founded by Bishop Fidelia Onyuku-Opukiri in 1979. All these churches were led from their headquarters in Nigeria. The first of the Ghanaian churches to arrive in England was the Musama Disco Christo Church (MDCC) in London in 1980.²¹

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed the rise of New Pentecostal Churches (NPC) from West Africa. For example, one of the largest churches in Western Europe is KICC, founded in 1992 by Matthew Ashimolowo (a Nigerian). Another of the fastest-growing churches in the UK is the RCCG, which was started in Nigeria in 1952 by the prophet Josiah Akindayomi. This church began in the UK in 1988–89 through the efforts of David Okunade and Ade Okerende and they now have more than 850 churches in the UK. They also have churches in Germany, Norway, Spain, Holland, Italy, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Portugal, Luxemburg and the Czech Republic. The current General Overseer is Pastor Enoch Adeboye, and the UK National Overseer is Pastor Leke Sanusi, senior pastor of RCCG Victory House in South London. Victory House is known as a house of prayer due to their love of prayer and their hosting of several prayer conferences and gatherings. RCCG UK also organises a Christian Festival called “Festival of Life” at the Docklands Excel Centre, which, before the pandemic, attracted around 40,000 people every year.²²

Apostolic Pastoral Congress

The historical development of the APC starts with its presiding archbishop, Doyé Teido Agama. Archbishop Agama was born in 1956 to Anglican Nigerian parents in Shirley in Southampton, England. His parents came to England in 1953 for further studies.²³ Agama was, however, fostered by a white family as a baby for some time to allow his parents time to complete their studies. This was fairly common in those days due to the lack of an African diaspora community to provide support to such student families. He later joined his biological parents in Nigeria in the 1960s. Agama became a Christian in 1968 at a Scripture Union event in Nigeria. In 1973, while still in Nigeria, Agama started work as a teaching assistant and from around 1975 was involved in community development projects as part of the efforts led by the Council of Churches to repair the damage of the Nigerian Civil War.

Agama had a spiritual experience in 1991 that transformed his life. He became a pastoral assistant in the RCCG, serving later as the regional secretary for evangelism in the east of Nigeria under Pastor Dave Okunade in 1992. He left to start an independent work, Strongtower Christian Ministries, in 1994, which later became the Christian Way of Life Churches. He also served in Elim Churches International and later joined the Apostolic Congress of Great Britain, led by the then Bishop Henry Kontor. As a result of these roles, he became further involved in the oversight and mentoring of other Christian ministers from around 1992. He was ordained in 1994 by the Apostolic Congress of Great Britain and was consecrated a bishop ten years later in 2004. In 2013, at an event held at Southwark Cathedral, Agama was consecrated archbishop.

Archbishop Agama began to wrestle with the issue of limitation in emerging Black Pentecostal churches. He saw part of this limitation as churches being confined to the four walls of their building and therefore having little or no recognition or relevance in the wider community. He also felt that there was a gap in ministerial training, licensing, representation and ecumenical relations of the BMCs. This led to a period of praying and seeking God for vision and direction. What became the APC began in an informal process of mentoring a number of church leaders to discover the areas of challenge in their ministry and to find adequate solutions. Most of these early mentees were members of the Upper-Room Ministers Forum in Manchester. There was also an earlier attempt to form a Black and Minority Ethnic Christian Association (BMECA), which, like many other groupings, did not last long. This vision and passion to reach the wider community beyond the walls of the church led to the formal beginnings of the APC in 2007 with the cooperation and encouragement of the Greater Manchester Churches Together and the Minority Ethnic Christian Affairs section of Churches Together in England (now known as Pentecostal, Charismatic and Multicultural Relations). The vision of the APC is to help close the gap in the provision of personal and professional development for independent (mainly Black Pentecostal) church ministers by encouraging and providing access to pathways for continuous improvement. This is through training and providing members with forms of certification, recognition and accountability. Part of the APC’s vision is also to enable networking among these ministers and also to assist them in networking with leaders of other churches and civic and community leaders. In addition, the APC also provides a measure of advocacy and representation on behalf of members at several levels. The APC also works to close the gap between the Pentecostals and the established denominations. In addition to being Pentecostal, the APC understands itself to be episcopal, historic, liturgical and sacramental. They have a general rule that sacraments should be accompanied by some liturgical form and function, but all other meetings and aspects of the church can be freely Pentecostal.²⁴ This fusion of historic church liturgy and Pentecostal elements such as glossolalia is one of the unique features of the APC. However, the APC is unique in seeking and finding a measure of acceptance among the Church of England and other established historic churches, including some Orthodox.

Today, the APC has roughly about 100 members representing congregations and community projects in 20 towns and cities across England, with a very small number of other affiliates. They also have members in the Americas, the Caribbean, Africa and India. In England, APC churches are engaged with the community in a variety of ways, from prison chaplaincy to enhancing trans-generational community cohesion through cottage industry skills in Manchester. The level of community engagement by member churches varies from one church to another. One of the differences between the APC and other Black Pentecostal churches or denominations is that they are not based in London; the APC is based in Manchester. This was a deliberate move as Archbishop Agama saw the need for Black Christian leadership outside London and the southeast of England, and a need to then link with existing southern leadership for more national leverage. He also intended to reach beyond mono-ethnic church lines in areas outside the south-east with its large Black and Asian populations. It must, however, be mentioned that the APC is not the only Black Pentecostal church or denomination outside London. Other examples are the New Testament Church of God, the Church of God of Prophecy and the Wesleyan Holiness Church, all of which have their headquarters in the Midlands. Nevertheless, this vision to intentionally not reside in London is commendable; it points to the important changes in the self-understanding of some Black Pentecostal churches’ identity and mission. In terms of identity, the APC argues that they are not an African organisation but a grouping of British churches.²⁵ One can understand this argument, given the fact that Archbishop Agama was born in the UK. Thus, he identifies with both Black British and African. This selfunderstanding reveals that we should not always look for clear-cut blanket solutions to the issues of identity. The APC training courses also place a great emphasis on cross-cultural missions and the contextualisation of ministry. As such, they strive to enable Christian ministers born outside the European or western context to reorient their ministry focus into the new environment.

This intentionality to do church in northern England also has implications for mission. The APC has the vision to be a church where Black and Asian British feel welcomed and are reached. In an interview with Archbishop Agama, he said, “The church [APC] is geared towards the needs of mainly Black and Asian British Christians, but also some white and other mixed-heritage church leaders who are committed to going beyond the existing stereotypes of ethnicity in expressions of church, both in terms of worship, but also in engaging with the community.”²⁶ The articulation of this vision for ethnic minorities who are British is, in my estimation, very significant, as it recognises that there are second- and third-generation migrants who were born in this country and who would firmly identify themselves as British. Many immigrant churches are struggling to reach these British of African, Caribbean or Asian heritage.

Another area to which the APC is contributing to mission is through the professional ministerial training that takes place at their St Hadrian’s College. This college offers internal certificate courses to ministers who seek to translate their experience of ministry in the southern hemisphere into a European urban setting. St Hadrian’s offers Pentecostal ministers training, accreditation and licensing. The training at St Hadrian’s College also enables African Pentecostal ministers to play a better role in community cohesion and development both in the West and in their nations of origin. In addition, the college equips Black and Asian Christian leaders to play a better part in the wider community, and also to enable their congregations to do so. The college encourages all the above in the context of sound biblical management and leadership principles, as well as supporting healthy homes and married life.

Another area in which the APC is contributing is through the development of ecumenical relationships between Black Pentecostal churches and historic churches. The APC is working towards increasing the unity of the global church by educating emerging Pentecostal leaders about aspects of the historic church and vice versa. In addition, the APC is also working to increase the unity between different branches of the Black Majority Christian diaspora. This ecumenical vision is being achieved through the relationships Archbishop Agama has built with the Church of England, the Coptic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Through some of its presiding bishops, APC is actively involved in the ecumenical scene through Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, the Evangelical Alliance and Churches Together in England. Bishop Moses Owusu-Sekyere, co-founder of Faith Forum and co-chair of Churches Together in England Racial Justice Working Group, is actively involved in the ecumenical scene, seeking to provide theological education to Black Pentecostals. He is now the presiding bishop of the APC. Another is Bishop Mike Royal, co-chair of Cinnamon Network UK, who is also actively involved in various ecumenical initiatives to tackle racial justice concerns. Mike Royal has recently become General Secretary of Churches Together in England. The APC has done very well in its ecumenical collaborations with the Church of England and, in spite of some fundamental differences, they have continued to use their cathedrals for ordinations and consecrations of Pentecostal ministers.

Conclusion

To conclude, this article has traced the historical development of Black Pentecostals in Britain by looking at the various phases in their formation at different periods. It has shown that Black Pentecostalism in Britain has its roots at the beginning of the Pentecostal movement in Britain and did not develop later as an offshoot of this. This significant beginning is important as it broke down the barriers of race and racism that were prevalent at the time. Black Pentecostalism in Britain is also far from being a homogeneous movement – it is rather a movement that encompasses different theologies, ecclesiologies, mission and cultural diversity. This leads to caution regarding terms such as BMC, which do not necessarily demonstrate the diversity that exists. Black Pentecostals are contributing to the church scene in Britain and this was argued by looking at the APC as a case study. The APC, as one of the Black Pentecostal church groups situated in Manchester, identifies itself as a British church agency and therefore sees part of its mission and identity as reaching out to Black and Asian British people. The APC also contributes through the professional and ministerial development of Pentecostal ministers; this is done through their college, St Hadrian’s. Lastly, through Archbishop Agama’s relationship with some of the historic church leaders and that of some of APC’s significant work in terms of ecumenical theological education and racial justice, the APC is able to negotiate the terrain of ecumenical relationships in Britain.

About the author

The Revd Dr Israel Oluwole Olofinjana is the director of the One People Commission of the Evangelical Alliance. He is an ordained and accredited Baptist minister and has led two multi-ethnic Baptist churches and an independent charismatic church. He is the founding director of the Centre for Missionaries from the Majority World, a mission network initiative that provides crosscultural training to reverse missionaries in Britain. Israel is an honorary research fellow at the Queen’s Foundation for Ecumenical Theological Education in Birmingham and on the advisory group on race and theology of society for the Society for the Study of Theology (SST). He is a consultant to the executive team of Lausanne Europe, advising them on matters related to diaspora ministries in Europe. He is on the Christian Aid working group of Black Majority Church leaders, exploring the intersection of climate justice and racial justice.

More from this issue

Notes

1 This article first appeared in Missio Africanus Journal of African Missiology Volume1 Issue 2 (January 2016): 59–71 https://missioafricanus.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Missio-Africanus-Journal-Vol-1.-Iss-2.pdf
2 The church that I used to pastor (2014 to February 2021), Woolwich Central Baptist Church, and 12 other churches in south-east London hosted 20 South Koreans.
3 David B. Barrett, “Annual Statistical Table on Global Mission: 1997,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 21, no. 1 (1997): 24–25.
4 Allan Anderson and Walter Hollenweger, eds., Pentecostals After a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 19.
5 See Richard Burgess, “African Pentecostal Growth: The Redeemed Christian Church of God in Britain,” in Church Growth in Britain: From 1980 to the Present, ed. David Goodhew (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012), 127–44; Richard Burgess, “African Pentecostal Churches in Britain: The Case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God,” in The African Christian Presence in the West: New Immigrant Congregations and Transnational Networks in North America and Europe, eds. Frieder Ludwig and J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu (Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2011), 253–72; Richard Burgess, Kim Knibbe and Anna Quaas, “Nigerian-initiated Pentecostal Churches as a Social Force in Europe: The Case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God,” PentecoStudies 9, no. 1 (2010): 97–121; and Richard Burgess, “African Pentecostal spirituality and civic engagement: the case of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Britain,” Journal of Beliefs and Values 30, no. 3 (2009): 255–73.
6 Israel Olofinjana, Reverse in Ministry and Missions: Africans in the Dark Continent of Europe (Milton Keynes: AuthorHouse, 2010) and Hugh Osgood, “African neo-Pentecostal churches and British Evangelicalism 1985–2005: balancing principles and practicalities” (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2006).
7 Israel Olofinjana, 20 Pentecostal Pioneers in Nigeria (Milton Keynes: Xlibris Publishers, 2011).
8 See Mark Sturge, Look What the Lord Has Done! An Exploration of Black Christian Faith in Britain (London: Scripture Union Publishing, 2005), 57–58. Also Ogbu Kalu, African Pentecostalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 68–69.
9 Anderson and Hollenweger, Pentecostals After a Century, 41–42.
10 Some of these churches started before 1906 but the events of the revival shaped their theology, ecclesiology and mission.
11 Some of the AICs developed as a result of praying for healing during the influenza that took place after the First World War and as a reaction against the colonial Christianity that the mission churches introduced into Africa. See Roswith Gerloff, “Churches of the Spirit: The Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement and Africa’s Contribution to the Renewal of Christianity,” in Christianity in Africa and the African Diaspora: The Appropriation of a Scattered Heritage, ed. Afe Adogame, Roswith Gerloff and Klaus Hock (London: Continuum, 2008), 209.
12 Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street: The Roots of Modern-Day Pentecost (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1980), 13–15; and Roberts Liardon, God’s Generals: Why They Succeeded and Why Some Failed (Tulsa, OK, Albury Publishing, 1998), 89–93.
13 Peter Hocken, Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Early Development of the Charismatic Movement in Great Britain (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1986), 145.
14 Lester Sumrall, Pioneers of Faith (South Bend IN: LeSEA Publishing, 1995), 171.
15 Babatunde Adedibu, Coat of Many Colours (London: Wisdom Summit, 2012), 26.
16 Israel Olofinjana, “Nigerian Pentecostals in Britain: Towards Prosperity or Consumerism?” in The Public Face of African New Religious Movements in Diaspora, ed. Afe Adogame (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2014), 234.
17 Israel Olofinjana, Partnership in Mission: A Black Majority Church Perspective on Mission and Church Unity (Watford: Instant Apostle, 2015).
18 Walter J. Hollenweger, “Foreword” to Roswith I. H. Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies: The Black Church Movement in Britain in its transatlantic cultural and theological Interaction with special reference to the Pentecostal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian Movements (Frankfurt: Peter Lang., 1992), ix.
19 Rev. Israel Oluwole Olofinjana, “The History of Black Majority Churches in London,” The Open University (2010), https://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/religion-in-london/resource-guides/black-majority-church.
20 Olofinjana, Reverse in Ministry and Missions, 41.
21 Ibid., 37.
22 Keep the Faith 47 (2009): 12.
23 His father was a prince who later became His Royal Highness Chief Frederick Abiye Agama, the Ogbotom Edede of the Epie-Atissa Clan in Bayelsa State of Nigeria. His maternal grandfather, Chief Nelson Kemeninabokide Porbeni, was the Etonkepua of Kabowei Kingdom, and the Ododomedo of Asideni in the Delta State of Nigeria. Bishop Agama’s mother was Her Royal Highness Chief Beatrice Agama (neé Porbeni). “Bishop Doyé Agama,” The Apostolic Pastoral Congress, https://apostolicpastors.info/bishop-doye-agama
24 I had the privilege of observing a combination of Pentecostal dynamics with historic church liturgy at one of the APCs ordination services where there was the sacrament of the Eucharist, as bishops and priests were ordained into ministry accompanied by speaking in tongues. I attended an Apostolic Pastoral Congress ordination service at Manchester Cathedral as a participant observer.
25 Questionnaire interview with Bishop Doyé Agama.
26 Ibid.

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Mission after George Floyd: on white supremacy, colonialism and world Christianity

by Harvey Kwiyani

This essay reflects my attempts to make sense of the possibilities of a missiology that reflects the current world Christianity in which only around a third of Christians are white westerners – in a world where both colonialism and white supremacy (which have for centuries been the two clutches on which mission stood) have become difficult to justify.

I spent the years between 2007 and 2013 in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota, USA. I went to seminary in Saint Paul but I lived right on the border between the two cities. Starting in the summer of 2009, I led a church plant in Saint Paul. Yes, I was too naive to understand the significance of race on American Christianity. The very people who commissioned me to plant the church discouraged people from helping me, saying, “How can you follow a black immigrant African international student?” Nevertheless, with the passage of time, I was lucky enough to lead a sizeable congregation with a significant group of young people from Minneapolis. Between 2009 and 2013, I spent a great deal of time in South Minneapolis, around the area where George Floyd was killed. Since 25 May 2020, when he was killed, I have had countless conversations with my friends in Minneapolis and Saint Paul – some of whom knew George Floyd – as they try to figure out how to be good followers of Christ in the chaos that has seized many American cities. Consequently, the Black Lives Matter phenomenon is something that, for me, feels personal.

Whether in America, in Britain, or in Germany, I have seen things that make me want to remind the world that non-white people are people too, and that black bodies are not expendable. From the six police stops that I survived in Saint Paul to the racism that I experienced among my Christian friends in Minneapolis – long before Donald Trump’s dog whistle revealed the hollow of American Evangelicalism and emboldened his white supremacist base to hijack US politics – I have been left wondering if there is hope for black and brown people in the world. Even more, I have struggled with this because, from where I stand, Christianity (and by this, I mean not all Christians but enough of them to justify a generalisation) seems to be entirely complicit in this sin of racism. Christianity has, for the past 600 years, trafficked in racism and preached – in deed, but also in word – the supremacy of the white race over all the others. [1] In doing so, Christianity became a servant of the white race. Even today, when white Christians form less than a third of world Christians, Christianity still privileges whiteness, and many white Christians still struggle to think any non-white Christian is their equal. The message of the church does not openly sanction this discrimination of non-white peoples, but most white Christians, doing their day-to-day jobs, continue to oppress black and brown people because, of course, they have been conditioned to privilege whiteness – and the gospel of Christ fails to adequately challenge them to think otherwise. It is hard to imagine world Christianity without white supremacy. The folly of this imperial Christianity that wants to evangelise the marginalised and yet keep them oppressed and confined to the margins as second-class Christians is beyond comprehension. Derek Chauvin nonchalantly keeping his knee on George Floyd’s neck is symbolic of the many centuries of white (Christian) oppression of Native Americans, Latin Americans, Africans, Indians and many other peoples, not only in America but also in the UK, Germany, China, Australia and many other countries in the world. (I have, so far, successfully resisted finding out which churches Chauvin and his friends attend – ignorance, in this manner, is bliss.)

The spread of Christianity from Europe to other parts of the world, starting in the fifteenth century and reaching its climax in the second half of the twentieth, was greatly enhanced by racist European ideologies – white people understood themselves to be better than everyone else – and theologies – God has destined them to dominate, civilise and Christianise the rest of the world, and the rest of the races were supposed to help Europeans do this, for their own good. Stephen Neill adds that, “The ideas of conquest and of conversion lay side by side in the consciousness of the Christians of the Western world.” [2] The ideology that, in the nineteenth century, became known as manifest destiny – grounded, essentially, in white supremacy, and stating that Europeans had been destined by God to dominate, civilise and Christianise the world – had been extensively used in Latin America right from the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the 1490s. It was used to justify the forceful displacement of Native Americans as the United States expanded westwards in the nineteenth century. This same ideology (with the help of a racist theology that undergirded it) was used to justify the transatlantic slave trade – the kidnapping of Africans from their homeland, the harsh overcrowded ships across the Atlantic, the slave markets in the West Indies and the inhumane working conditions on the plantations – that went on for 450 years. It also served to defend both colonising (and evangelising) of Africans, Asians and beyond. Where either colonialism or evangelism was not possible, extermination was always the next alternative.

For the past 600 years, this has been European Christianity’s posture to the world. The language used to describe people of the rest of the world was the same – uncivilised, primitive heathens, barbarians, pagans – whether it was in 1500, in 1800 or in 1950. One could read William Carey’s treatise, the Enquiry, which is replete of language that would be unacceptable today. [3] Yes, there were some missionaries who refused to trade in white supremacy, people like Bartolomé de las Casas, Matteo Ricci, Johannes Rebmann and Joseph Booth, but these were always the exception to the rule. The whole system of Europe’s relations to Africa, for instance, was to colonise (to extract resources) and Christianise (to make colonialism easier). Many of the missionaries participated in this system, most knowingly, but many more unknowingly. Colonialism, be it in Latin America, Asia or Africa, was believed to be fulfilling God’s agenda for humanity and was, therefore, part of God’s mission. The gospel of Christ became the gospel of European culture and its superiority to the world and was backed up by Europe’s and now America’s militarism. Jesus not only gained blue eyes and blonde hair along the way, he also got to use the help of American warplanes and British gunboats.

The most troubling thing in all this is that for most white Christians, Jesus is silent amid all these atrocities. If Jesus is not silent, he is invoked to sanction violence and encourage white supremacists to keep the suburbs white. Many white Christians’ Jesus does not know how to relate with black and brown people apart from oppressing them – 600 years of church history can testify. While I was writing this essay, another black man, Jacob Blake, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was shot seven times by police at a very close range. He miraculously survived, but he is paralysed from the waist down. When protestors went to the courthouse two days after his shooting, a young white supremacist man of 17, Kyle Rittenhouse, killed two people and wounded the third, and was later charged with double homicide (among several others); it was Christian communities that quickly raised funds for his legal fees. The faith of these Christians sees no contradiction in following Jesus and enabling white supremacists. The Jesus of these people is for white people only. This Jesus oppresses and enslaves non-white people. He sanctions the colonisation of Native Americans, Africans, Asians and many other people in the world. This Jesus would kneel on people’s necks if white supremacy were in danger. Needless to say, I refuse to follow this Jesus. This is not the Jesus who grew up in Nazareth in the Roman colony of Palestine who came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free. In his teaching, there is no room for white supremacy, and until racism is totally discredited, God’s mission in the world will depend on colonialism. Unfortunately, our theologies today fail to critique racism. Most of them have been shaped by people who either subconsciously hold racist views or do not have an understanding of racism because they have never been discriminated against based on their skin colour. Many of our theologians have benefitted from racism or white privilege and, as such, cannot write against it.

Christian mission and colonialism: a Malawian story

This story of mission and colonialism is personal to me. It is the story of my village, my people and my ancestors. My great-great-great-grandfather, Ntimawanzako Nacho, was among the first Malawians to come to Scotland for theological training at Stewarts College in 1885 as part of Blantyre Mission’s strategy for future leaders in what would later become Nyasaland, and even later, Malawi. Nacho later settled at a place in the Shire Highlands in Southern Malawi called Magomero, where my family still lives today. Back in 1861, Magomero was the first British mission station in Central Africa, but by the time Nacho came to Magomero, it had become a colonial estate belonging to David Livingstone’s descendants. It was the main location of an anti-colonial uprising in 1915. As such, Magomero is Ground Zero of both missionary activity and colonialism in Malawi. It is impossible to tell of either mission history or colonial history in Malawi (and, generally, Central Africa) without talking of my people at Magomero. It was, of course, made popular by Landeg White’s book Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, [4] which explores the biography of the village from 1850s to the late 1900s. To us Malawians, Magomero is the birthplace of both missionary work and colonialism in Malawi. The colonial government’s reaction to the 1915 uprising shaped the history of Christianity in Malawi for the next 50 years, until we attained our independence in 1964, and its implications still remain today, 55 years after independence.

Strike a blow and die

As the people gathered for their usual Sunday worship on 24 January 1915 at the Providence Industrial Mission at Nguludi in the Shire Highlands of Malawi, then the British colony of Nyasaland, everybody was aware that the service would not be business as usual. It was a strange era and the events of the day before, 23 January, had changed everything. A local (American-trained) Baptist minister, John Chilembwe, had just led a somewhat successful uprising against the colonial government and to prove it, he preached his sermon with William Jervis Livingstone’s severed head perched on a stick right next to the pulpit. The people celebrated – Chilembwe was their Moses, their messiah, the liberator who broke the yoke of Livingstone at Magomero. Most of Nyasaland was peaceful – the British colonial government had, for almost 25 years now, ruled the country with an iron fist. However, they all understood that John Chilembwe had essentially declared war on the colonial government – and that the British government would respond with full force. This was essentially a suicide mission; there was no way they could win. They understood that their mission was “strike a blow and die”. [5] That blow was struck on Saturday, 23 January, when Chilembwe sent groups of a badly organised militia to kill his neighbour, W. J. Livingstone, at Magomero. [6] This was the start of a Christian-based anti-colonial uprising wanting to free Nyasaland from British colonialism. Similar Christian struggles against colonialism would eventually help bring the entire colonial project to an end some 50 years later.

Long before John Chilembwe’s uprising, David Livingstone traversed the land that is now southern Malawi from 1859, dreaming of a possible British colony in that part of Africa. Livingstone’s time in southern Malawi followed a successful visit to England between 1856 and 1857 during which he published his instant best seller, Missionary Travels, [7] and gave lectures in several cities and universities; Dublin, Manchester, Glasgow, Oxford, Leeds, Liverpool, Dundee, Halifax and Birmingham and, of course, his home, Blantyre. The climax of the speaking tours was at Cambridge University on 4 December 1857, where he concluded his speech with a shout:

I beg to direct your attention to Africa. I know that in a few years I shall be cut off in that country, which is now open. Do not let it be shut again! I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity. Do you carry on the work which I have begun. I leave it with you! [8]

In immediate response, some students at Oxford and Cambridge Universities formed a mission association that they called Oxford and Cambridge Mission. Later, Durham and Dublin Universities joined and the association changed its name to simply Universities’ Mission to Central Africa, or in short, UMCA. Livingstone returned to Central Africa straight away, finding his way up the Shire River and seeing Lake Malawi for the first time in September 1859. His sense of mission in Africa was built on what he called the “Three Cs: Christianity, Civilisation and Commerce”. He believed that Britain would Christianise, civilise and bring a new form of commerce (to replace the slave trade) to Africa. In one letter to his friend, Professor Sedgwick, he stated, “All this [expedition’s] ostensible machinery has for its ostensible object the development of African trade and the promotion of civilisation, [but] I hope may result in an English colony in the healthy highlands of Central Africa.” [9] The outworking of Livingstone’s Three Cs led to a fourth “C” – colonialism – that would eventually overshadow the first three Cs. Livingstone himself was convinced that “it [was] the mission of England to colonise and to plant her Christianity with her sons [sic] on the broad earth which the Lord has given to the children of men [sic]”. [10] Indeed, it was Livingstone’s desire for Britain have a colony in Central Africa, and the Shire Highlands would be his Ground Zero. Between 1859 and 1860, he wrote extensively to his dear friends, Sir Thomas Maclear and Sir Roderick Murchison:

It is that the interior of this country ought to be colonised by our countrymen… I see more in that for the benefit of England and Africa than in any other plan… I am becoming everyday more convinced that we must have an English colony in the cotton-producing districts of Africa… Colonisation from a country such as ours ought to be one of hope, and not despair… the performance of an imperative duty to our blood, our country, our religion, and to humankind. [11]

He later added that if large numbers of the British urban poor emigrated to Africa they could begin new lives, no longer “crowded together in cities… in close ill-ventilated narrow lanes… But they [English colonists] can take a leading part in managing the land, improving the quality, increasing the quantity and extending the varieties of the production of the soil; and by taking a lead too in trade and in all public matters, the Englishman would be an unmixed advantage to every one below and around him, for he would fill a place which is now practically vacant.” [12]

In Livingstone’s defence, Tim Jeal suggests that Livingstone’s ideas of colonialism are quite different from what we understand to be colonialism today. He says:

His contemporaries, when they heard the words “The British Empire”, did not think of multiracial subject nations bowing to a central imperial power. Their pride in Empire was not the late-Victorian love of prestige and power, but more a pride in the idea that British men and women had settled in distant and previously thinly populated parts of the world, and were there reproducing all that was best in the British way of life – a free press, trial by jury and government by representative institutions. Most of Livingstone’s fellow-countrymen during the 1850s saw Empire as the link of common nationality that bound together, more by voluntary union than by power, a mother country and her white settled, and soon to be self-governing, colonies overseas. In this family, the West Indies and, above all, India were seen as strange anomalies simply because they, unlike for example Canada, Australia and New Zealand, had large “native” populations and were not predominantly “British” and white. [13]

I am not convinced Tim Jeal is right. We know that the British Raj in India started in 1858, long before the European colonisation of Africa, and that the Raj was not about “reproducing all that was best in the British way of life”. Thirty years after Livingstone brought the UMCA to my home, Malawi became a British Protectorate. In the following year, Livingstone’s family – his daughter Agnes, and her husband, Alexander Low Bruce – acquired the land that had been given to the UMCA plus 70,000 acres around it and turned it into a colonial estate. This estate was the centre of the events of 23 January 1915. My ancestor, Mtimawanzako Nacho, died by suicide in 1945 after years of conflict with his neighbours of the A. L. Bruce Estates.

Bishop Colenso is dead

Chilembwe’s mentor, a Derbyshire man by the name Joseph Booth, was a missionary in Malawi in the 1890s. [14] He arrived in Malawi in 1891 and was deported from the country by the British colonial government in 1907. He, however, visited South Africa in 1896 to promote African agency in mission especially among the Zulu Christians. As a white man, though, he was met with extreme suspicion. In the 1890s, the Zulus had a reminder for anyone wanting to deal with white people: “Bishop Colenso is dead.” [15] That was to say the only white man they could trust, Bishop Colenso, was dead. It was of no use trusting any white man because white men – both missionaries and colonial farmers – were all violent “men of guns”. Bishop John William Colenso (born in Cornwall in 1814 and died in Durban in 1883) was the first Bishop of Natal and as his biographies say, a fervent defender of the Zulu against both the Boer and British aggressions, including the Anglo–Zulu War of 1879. [16] He also defended other African tribes, gaining a title Sobantu in the process – the father of the people. His death at a time when the Scramble for Africa was brewing made it difficult for the Africans to trust Europeans. In 1897, Booth published a fiery anticolonialist manifesto entitled Africa for the Africans, which planted seeds that would lead to Chilembwe’s uprising in 1915.

Magomero is just one example of what happens when mission and colonialism become one. That David Livingstone’s mission station became his daughter’s colonial estate and that its managers then persecuted local Christians, burning their houses and schools and forcing them to work on the estate for free, reveals the problem of attaching mission to colonialism. After the murder of W. J. Livingstone, the British government killed many Malawian Christians, jailed many more, including several British missionaries who sympathised with the Africans, especially of the smaller denominations like the Churches of Christ. Laws were passed that required all the major churches to have white leaders. Any new churches that required registration had to have Europeans as leaders. All blackled churches were closely monitored to make sure there would be no repeat of Chilembwe’s uprising.

As a Malawian Christian from Magomero, my family has lived the story that proves that mission and colonialism were, for most Africans, two sides of the same coin of imperialism. Magomero shows why missionaries have been called the “religious arm of the colonial empires”, “the ideological shock troops for the colonial invasion whose zealotry had blinded them”, [17] “the spiritual wing of secular imperialism”, [18] or even “imperialism at prayer”. [19] In a nutshell, for many of us in the non-western world, mission and colonialism were strange bedfellows. I do not have space to rehash the history. I do not have problems with the historicity of the relationship between mission and colonialism. This leads me to the wider problem at the centre of this essay. Mission, as we speak of it today, is a European creation. (Of course, the same can be said of both its ecclesiology and theology.) The word “mission” itself did not mean the sending of Christians from Christian lands to non-Christian lands to convert the “heathens” or “pagans” until after the Reformation. It was the Jesuits (and the Society of Jesus was formed in 1540) who first used mission the way we do today. Contemporary mission is a European creation of a particular era when Europeans were becoming aware of the wider world beyond the bounds of Western Europe. That world, in the minds of the Europeans, needed to be Christianised and civilised by Europeans who were lucky to have been chosen to be both Christians and civilised people of that time. Beginning in the West Indies, moving down to Latin America, then up to North America, Asia and then Africa, Europeans worked hard to Christianise and civilise the world. At the centre of that effort was the belief that Europeans were destined to be superior to all the other peoples of the world. In a nutshell then, the very concept of mission as we understand it today has racism and white supremacy in its DNA. Mission, understood in this Eurocentric sense, could be easily used to serve European interests around the world. It is for this reason that the discipline of missiology continues to be a white-dominated subject even though white Christians form less than a third of world Christians. It is again for this reason that our very definitions in missiology, for instance that of a missionary, are still shaped by Eurocentric ideas – British Christians teaching English in Uganda are missionaries while Ugandan Christian nurses in Britain are migrants. It is also for this reason that when we talk about mission, we always generally speak in terms of sending European missionaries to other parts of the world like Africa even though Africa is more Christian than Europe. The “heathen” – to use the European language of the last century – is now in Europe, yet mission organisations are still focused on converting the Africans. Of course, Roland Allen and others have shown us that mission, as we practise it today, looks quite different from what we see in the New Testament. [20] Our missionary methods would, strictly speaking, be unrecognisable to Paul.

Essentially, we need to rethink mission for a world where images of a blue-eyed blond-haired Jesus are questionable. We need to learn how to engage in mission when all that the missionary brings is the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ minus a superior culture that seeks to civilise. Of course, empires colonise. That is what they do. Effective colonisation of a people must involve a changing of the people’s life philosophy, self-identification and culture. Christianity has been an integral part of the expansion of European empires since the fifeenth century. The world Christianity that we celebrate today has emerged because of the past 600 years of western domination of other parts of the world. There has been the Spanish/ Iberian Empire that colonised Latin America while the Portuguese Empire colonised Brazil and parts of Africa and India. At its peak, the British Empire stretched across all time zones. The era of European colonisation of Africa was short, largely running from the 1880s to the 1960s, but it has had drastic effects of the continent, many of which are yet to be resolved. At some point in the twentieth century, 6,000 British farmers owned the fertile 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s land, leaving millions of indigenous Zimbabweans to live on the remaining 40 per cent. [21] Of course, in the nineteenth century alone, a quarter of Europe’s population migrated to the Americas, Africa, Australia, colonising and Christianising as they went. We are now living through the age of the American Empire, but the tides are changing. Samuel Huntington suggested in his 1996 book The Clash of Civilisations that the western civilisation now faces competition from other civilisations. [22] Today, it is evident that both Russia and China have become even more influential players on the global political scene. This will, without a doubt, have an impact on western missions. As long as we keep attaching this beautiful and life-giving missio Dei to empires, it will always be used to marginalise, dominate and colonise others.

Non-western Christianity (which forms almost 70 per cent of world Christianity) is a religion without imperial powers. In many aspects, it is a religion pushing back against empires and in this sense, it is closer to pre-Constantine Christianity. Of course, it helps to remember that Jesus Christ was executed in his home country by a colonial power. The challenge for all of us as followers of Christ in the world is to put into practice the words of Paul that we are one in Christ – that in him, there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, and neither free nor slave. Our baptism into the body of Christ makes us all equal, and that is the most important thing. But the call is not only to treat those of our faith as equals, as if it gives us a warrant to treat those outside the faith as less than us. All humanity is God’s humanity, made in God’s image. It is God who made us different and equal, and I am certain that God did not mean the differences to negate the equality. White supremacy is a lie invented by humans. It has benefitted many white people for generations going back 600 years when it has been ferociously enforced in parts of the world. It has created a world order in which to be white is normal; everyone else is a person of colour. This black skin is God’s work, God’s gift to the world through me. Unfortunately, it is not a gift that is easily received – it covers me in a colour that many find unacceptable. If anyone really believes that their skin colour makes them individually better or superior (without the privileges that come with being white and living in a world shaped by white people for other white people), they have to encounter Christ again. God’s Spirit will not let the sin of racism in all its forms – including both white supremacy and black supremacy and every colour in between – go unrevealed.

Mission after George Floyd

The death of George Floyd has made it possible for us to talk about race in ways that were not possible before. It is possible for us to actually have an audience and a conversation about the plight of black people. George Floyd’s death has made it difficult to ignore or deny the existence of racism and white supremacy. Many white people finally agree that black people are often treated inhumanely by systems designed to protect and preserve whiteness, that black people are often treated as if they are a threat to whiteness – to white lives, white bodies, white properties, white everything. Black people have, for ages, complained about racism in this world and have always been told to shut up and move on. Four hundred and fifty years of the European slave trade – we are not even talking about the Arabic slave trade, which went on for much longer – was followed by 80 years of colonialism and another 60 years of neocolonialism, yet, when black people complain, they have often been told “all that happened in the past”. My hope is that this anti-racism momentum that has galvanised many to stand with the Black Lives Matter movement leads to real changes in our societies. Of course, I am not entirely optimistic about this – black oppression has been around for 600 years. It only changes strategies – the slave trade, the Jim Crow laws in the US and colonialism in Africa, and then mass incarceration in the US and economic colonialism in Africa. European Christianity has been complicit in all this, and it will be complicit in whatever new strategy of oppressing black people will emerge. At least for now, we can name racism and white supremacy for the evil they are. I hope that both mission agencies and the discipline of missiology will be transformed.

For mission agencies, engaging in mission in a world where racism and white supremacy are discredited will be a new adventure for most of us, but I am certain it will take us closer to mission as it was intended to be. Many mission agencies will have to find new ways to exist with diminishing help from western empires due to growing secularism on the one hand (which has weakened western Christianity) and the rise of non-western empires on the other. Current western dominance in mission does not reflect the true picture of world Christianity, and the only way we can justify it is by pointing back to the colonial era – this is how it has always been. The very methods of western mission in the world are questionable today, and yet many of them cannot afford to let others lead. In a world without racism or white supremacy, most of the mission agencies in the West would be led by Latin Americans, Africans or Asians, to a greater success and better faithfulness to God’s mission. Any European or North American (we can include Australian and New Zealander) mission organisation that sends missionaries to other parts of the world and has more than half their leadership and personnel as white is part of the problem. This is a gross incongruency in a world where, potentially, most missionaries will come from Latin America, Africa and Asia.

For missiology – the teachers, their pedagogy and the resources they use – must reflect the very fact that mission is no longer a western phenomenon. The very fact that black and brown people form less that 5 per cent of theology and missiology lecturers in the UK is symptomatic of the problem. Black and brown people form 14 per cent of the population in the UK, yet they comprise a significantly large percentage of theology and missiology students across the country. It should not be possible to teach mission in any of our cities with an all-white team. Yet this is common, and generally speaking, most theology and missiology syllabi across UK institutions will have no less than 100 per cent white-authored books for students to read. Our church planting courses seem to ignore the fact that African movements are planting the most churches and are growing their churches the fastest, and the possibility that they know a thing or two to teach.

Conclusion

“Black Lives Matter” makes a critique of a system that Christianity helped create. The church must listen. It must reflect. Having done that, it must make practical steps to correct itself. I sincerely hope that changes will happen in these few months that will make us a more perfect bride for Christ and partner for God’s mission. May the Lord help us.

About the author

Harvey Kwiyani is a recovering missiologist from Malawi and currently teaching theology at Liverpool Hope University.

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Notes

[1] Stephen Neill’s Colonialism and Christian Missions is a lame attempt to convince us that western Christian missions did not benefit from colonialism. What it does well, instead, is to show us exactly how European Christians used both their sense of white superiority and the conviction that they had been destined to civilise, even by force, the world. See, for instance, his report on the Requiremento in Colonialism and Christian Missions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), 43–44.
[2] Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions, 39.
[3] William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1961).
[4] Landeg White, Magomero: Portrait of an African Village (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
[5] This was the actual title of George Mwase’s book on the events surrounding John Chilembwe’s uprising in 1915. See George Simeon Mwase, Strike a Blow and Die: The Classic Story of the Chilembwe Rising (London: Heinemann Educational, 1975).
[6] William J. Livingstone was cousin to Alexander Livingstone Bruce, who was son to Agnes Livingstone and, therefore, a direct descendant of David Livingstone. William was stationed at Magomero while Alexander L. Bruce was manager at the Luwelezi Estate, a few hours away in Mulanje. In January of 1915, A. L. Bruce was up in northern Malawi, fighting for the Crown in the First World War.
[7] David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (New York: Harper & Bros., 1858).
[8] Meriel Buxton, David Livingstone (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 106.
[9] Oliver Ransford, David Livingstone: The Dark Interior (London: John Murray, 1978), 159.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 160.
[12] Tim Jeal, Livingstone (New York: Dell, 1973), 224.
[13] Ibid., 188.
[14] For more on Joseph Booth, please see Harry W. Langworthy, “Africa for the African”: The Life of Joseph Booth (Blantyre, Malawi: Christian Literature Association in Malawi, 1996). Also Harry W. Langworthy, “Joseph Booth, Prophet of Radical Change in Central and South Africa, 1891–1915,” Journal of Religion in Africa 16, no. 1 (1986).
[15] George Shepperson and Thomas Price, Independent African: John Chilembwe and the Origins, Setting, and Significance of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1958).
[16] He seems to have been a passionate defender of all things African, especially against British colonialism. See George William Cox, The Life of John William Colenso, D.D.: Bishop of Natal, vol. 1 (London: W. Ridgway, 1888).
[17] See, for instance, Edward E. Andrews, “Christian Missions and Colonial Empires Reconsidered: A Black Evangelist in West Africa, 1766–1816,” Journal of Church and State 51, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 663–64.
[18] John D. Omer-Cooper et al., The Making of Modern Africa: The Growth of African Civilization, vol. 2 (New York: Longman, 1968).
[19] Lamin O. Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989), 88.
[20] Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1962).
[21] Sam Moyo and Walter Chambati, eds., Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe: Beyond White-Settler Capitalism (Dakar: CODESRIA African Institute for Agrarian Studies, 2013), 42.
[22] Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997).

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Pioneering Mission is…a spectrum

by Tina Hodgett and Paul Bradbury

This article has grown out of recent conversations surrounding the use of the term of ‘Pioneer Minister’. Initially an overview of the terminology is given before the ‘pioneer spectrum’ is offered. The pioneer spectrum invites a broader means of understanding pioneer ministry and in particular encourages a deeper appreciation for those pioneer ministers working in innovative ways to see ‘the future emerging in the present’.

Pioneer definitions

The search for a definition of the word ‘pioneer’ in a Church of England vocational context began over 10 years ago. I (Tina) remember a debate at theological college over a draft proposal made by Dave Male, now National Adviser for Pioneer Development. It has taken much of the intervening period to arrive at the current definition, approved by the Ministry Council:

Pioneers are people called by God who are the first to see and creatively respond to the Holy Spirit’s initiatives with those outside the church; gathering others around them as they seek to establish new contextual Christian community. [1]

Meanwhile other definitions have gained currency in other contexts. Jonny Baker’s succinct description of pioneers as people with ‘the gift of not fitting in’ [2] grew out of his contact with pioneers on the CMS Pioneer Mission Leadership Training course. The apparently paradoxical term ‘loyal radicals’ [3] used to describe those who were totally committed both to the inherited church and to missional change, was welcomed as a defence against the accusation that pioneer work was superficial and uninformed by theology and tradition. George Lings develops a typology of pioneer ministers that identifies the differences in individual charism and character which led some to be serial initiators and others to sustain what has already been started, and helpfully addresses the frequently-posed question, ‘Isn’t everyone a pioneer?’ [4] Most recently Dave Male has made the distinction between parish-based pioneers and fresh start pioneers. [5]

It seemed presumptuous to begin work on an additional typology for defining the pioneer vocation, but fresh in post in a diocese which had put pioneer work at the centre of its new diocesan strategy, I was regularly involved in conversations where participants were working with their own personal interpretation of the word ‘pioneer’ with all the risk of miscommunication that entailed. In a situation where policy depended on engaging everyone to move together towards a shared destination, it seemed vital that all participants were sharing the same interpretative framework when they spoke of pioneers. I began to sketch out a diagram I could use with colleagues to give context to our discussions, developing it in dialogue with representatives of different constituencies.

Toward a spectrum of pioneer vocations

The roots of the Pioneer Spectrum (see Figure 1) lie in a conversation I (Tina) had with a member of a diocesan committee. A fellow pioneer minister who specialised in a form of church planting he endearingly called ‘bish-bash-bosh-bouncy-castle’ [6] asked me and a colleague (also pioneer ministers, engaged in what I would call ‘exploring spirituality on the edge’) how we saw our call and ministry. It was clear he didn’t fully understand what we were about, and was, I suspect, concerned about our orthodoxy.

The generosity of his question allowed us to explain, and he was reassured and subsequently encouraging of our work. However, the conversation made me realise that even within the ranks of people who self-identify as pioneers there is potential for significant misunderstanding, and for insecurity and suspicion to creep in and undermine what God is doing.

Sometime later through contact with the CMS pioneer community I was given a document entitled Best Guess Typology of Current Approaches to Church by Richard Passmore. [7] This typology spanned a range of ecclesiologies from traditional through modal/sodal[8] to what Passmore terms ‘missional sodal’, or ‘sobornostic’ (from the Orthodox Russian concept of sobornost). This latter category describes an approach to church which foresees the possibility of venturing off the edges of the existing ecclesial map into unchartered territory. This may appear threatening to the more orthodox mind, but it may also represent the route the church has to take into the future in order to be the most contextually appropriate means of gospel transmission for subsequent generations, and to be the deeply enculturated expression of church needed in the coming world.

Innovators, adaptors and other pioneers

Independently I (Paul) was reading Gerald Arbuckle’s Refounding the Church and finding it a rich resource to help clarify the particular vocations of pioneers. Arbuckle makes the distinction between innovators and adaptors:

Both are creative persons and needed, especially the innovative and refounding type; both threaten the group because they dissent from the acceptable ways of doing things, but it is the innovator that particularly endangers the group’s security… [9]

What we term ‘pioneer innovators’ are therefore these deeply committed sodal or ‘sobornistic’ pioneer leaders who with their teams venture out beyond the edges of the church’s structures to explore the creation of faithful expressions of Christian life among people of a new context. Their innovations, which provide an initially disturbing influence on the inherited church, in some cases become welcomed by the broader church in time. It is important to affirm, however, that the length of ‘time’ may well be unknown, certainly significant, a time in which the church needs to protect the vocation of these pioneers, trusting that the fruit of their ministry may be a generation or more in the making.

It is ‘pioneer adaptors’ who have the creative gift to adapt these innovations to their own contexts. In addition, ‘pioneer adaptors’ are also skilled in adapting in the other direction, as it were, taking tropes of the established church’s ritual and rhythm and adapting them into new environments.

These distinctions map closely onto a growing experience in the pioneer ministry community: that a number of innovative pioneer projects have now been adopted, adapted and applied by others. Messy Church, as one example, was an innovative piece of pioneer ministry when it was first created by Lucy Moore in Portsmouth, and continues to innovate in new areas such as among the elderly and armed forces. Those who have applied the model may be ‘pioneer adaptors’, faithfully listening to context and shaping the model to fit their own context. Meanwhile the many iterations of cafe church are a good example of ‘adaptors’ working in the other direction.

There are also contexts in which replication is applicable, where a context is seen to be sufficiently comparable so that a successful model of church can simply be repeated. There is a risk in replication without sufficient reflection on context, or openness to the innovative influence of local culture. Some models by their very nature leave little room for adaptation. They are freighted heavily with the culture of those leading it and may struggle to engage deeply in cultures disconnected from inherited forms of church. We term the leaders of such initiatives ‘church replicators’.

There are also those we call ‘pioneer activists’, whose gift and vocation is to shape place in ways that seek to align a community, network or industry with the values of the Kingdom. Seeing themselves as missionaries, but without the express intention of planting a church, these pioneers are nevertheless creating highly innovative Kingdom responses to the pressing issues of our communities. Theirs is an important vocation which deserves recognition and support.

Cultural distance

The spectrum has helped positively identify the particular charism of a variety of pioneers and church planters. Furthermore, we began to realise that it did so in ways that mapped onto a spectrum of ‘cultural distance’. Cultural distance is a concept that tries to assess how far from any meaningful engagement with the gospel a subculture or people group is. [10] It visualises the reality of our post-Christendom context where issues of race, language, history, religion/worldview create a complex and diverse cultural landscape in which mission takes place. The cultural distance from, for example, a rural village in Wiltshire to an urban housing estate in London is immense. Culture is also no longer purely about place, as neighbourhoods become increasingly diverse and people identify with networks more than neighbourhoods, as well as form significant strands of identity on the internet. Hence at one end of the spectrum is a culture similar in character to that of the missional team; at the other end is a culture with significant barriers of language, worldview and attitude to those engaging with it.

Conclusions

In the confusion around our use of language for pioneers and with the competition for resources that is the reality in many denominations (and certainly in our own Anglican structures) we believe the pioneer spectrum is helpful. It says to the pioneer innovator who is working slowly in an incarnational mode among, say, poor urban young adults, that their vocation and ministry is very different and yet equally as valid as the resource church [11] leader up the road. These two pioneer leaders may be only a mile apart, but they are ministering in very different worlds, something this spectrum makes visible. Mapping these vocations onto an axis of cultural distance also lends weight to the argument that the particularly precious vocation of many pioneer innovators must be given space and time. Our cultural context has not settled into some kind of post-Christendom consensus. The only given is that of continuous change. The experience and learnings of our innovators, in failure as well as success, are the seeds of a significant element of the future of the church.

As well as ensuring an understanding of the range of pioneer vocations that the Holy Spirit has conceived, the pioneer spectrum protects the possibility of a broader range of ways of being church than those we have already imagined and begun to see emerging. In particular it is vital to draw the attention of all those concerned with the future of the church to the concept that there may be more radical, exploratory, imaginative ecclesial communities than we have yet seen, and to give space within our structures and systems for these embryonic churches to be implanted and take shape.

The pioneers who carry the responsibility of bringing these God-ideas into the world will need understanding, encouragement and support as they work in a prophetic way to make them visible, a sign of the future emerging in the present.

About the authors

Tina Hodgett is Evangelism Team Leader in the Diocese of Bath and Wells and Paul Bradbury is co-ordinator of the South Central RTP Pioneer Hub.

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Notes

[1] What is a Pioneer? Church of England Pioneer Ministry website, https://www.cofepioneer.org/pioneermeaning/ (since updated to https:// churchofengland.org/pioneering)
[2] Baker, J. and Ross, C. (eds) The Pioneer Gift: Explorations in mission (Canterbury Press Norwich, 2014)
[3] Loyal Radicals, Anglican Church Planting Initiatives website
[4] Lings G, Looking in the Mirror; what makes a pioneer? in Male, D. ‘Pioneers 4 Life’ (BRF, Abingdon, 2011) p30-47.
[5] What are the types of Pioneers? Church of England Pioneer Ministry website, https://www.cofepioneer.org/types/ (since updated to https:// churchofengland.org/pioneering)
[6] This refers to the process of gathering people through community events with the aim of building bridges with unchurched people and having opportunities to share the gospel
[7] Richard Passmore’s typology is adapted from Gerald Arbuckle, Refounding the Church, (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993)
[8] Winter, R.D. The Two Structures of Redemptive Mission, based on a paper given at the All-Asia Mission Consultation in Seoul, Korea, in August 1973
[9] Arbuckle G, Refounding the Church, (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1993),109
[10] For an explanation and exploration of cultural distance see Hirsch A, The Forgotten Ways, (Baker, Grand Rapids, 2006), 56-63
[11] ‘Resource church’ is an increasingly common term in the Church of England for church plants that tend to replicate a Sunday service and program-based congregational model of church. They have emerged as a concept from the Holy Trinity Brompton network of churches and are rapidly becoming a significant element of the church planting and mission strategy of many dioceses.

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Lament and Hope

by Cathy Ross

“There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.”

++ Christophe Munzihirwa, Archbishop of Bukavu, 1994-1996. [1]

Introduction

Recently, I have been thinking about lament and how this seems to be such a common theme – both in world events as well as in our own lives. Some reading that has begun to open this up for me has been the work of a Roman Catholic Ugandan theologian, Emmanuel Katongole. His latest book is entitled Born from Lament, The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa. [2] This is a book that looks squarely at the truly terrible, evil, cruel violence and tragic suffering in Congo recently and reflects on how and why this has happened. He details the trauma and the depth of loss experienced – the loss of community, the loss of humanity and more tragically, the loss of future. I am sure you know some of the horror and suffering – children taken from their villages and told to kill their relatives. A 2011 study indicated that 1,152 women were raped every day during the recent conflict – a rate of 48 per hour. An American study shows that 12 per cent of all Congolese women have been raped at least once. [3] I won’t elaborate further – the stories are truly chilling. So Katongole asks, how does one live with this? Can there be a future and if so, what kind? And, where is God? He finds the clue to the future in the power and hope of lament.

Katongole believes that in the face of such pain and trauma, the church in Africa (and everywhere!) needs to learn how to lament. He suggests that the African church tends to focus on a powerful God, a God who performs miracles, who is mighty to save and who reigns supreme – all of which is true of course, but that we also need to know how to lament in the face of suffering, trauma and pain. And that the counterpoint to our almighty God is the crucified God, seen in Jesus Christ on the cross, who continues to suffer with and among us – as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:23 “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles”.

So with his insights and an example from Burundi, I would like us to consider lament in three ways: lament as complaint, lament as resistance, justice and innovation and lament as newness and hope.

Lament

Katongole reminds us that for Israel, their safety and security are not found in military might and strength, nor in wealth or cyber-security that we might want today, but in their covenant relationship with Yahweh. Yes, the Israelites praised God but they also protested at God, railed against injustice and pressed God for deliverance. We see this especially in the psalms. Of the 150 psalms, 60 of them, or 40 per cent, are known as psalms of lament. There are psalms of praise, psalms of thanksgiving and royal psalms but the largest category is lament. This meant that the core of Israel’s life – social, religious and community was framed by lament.

There is a generally recognised structure to these psalms of lament with five elements. Let us take Psalm 13 as an example:

Psalm 13

1 How long, O Lord? [ADDRESS – prayer directed to God]
Will you forget me forever? [COMPLAINT – description of the problem]
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I bear pain in my soul,
and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God! [REQUEST – they ask for a specific response from God]
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, [MOTIVATION – articulates the reason God should help]
4 and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”;
my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

5 But I trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
6 I will sing to the Lord, [CONFIDENCE – confession of trust in God’s help]
because he has dealt bountifully with me.

These elements of address, complaint, request, motivation and confidence do vary, as they are not all found in all psalms of lament, but they do signify a kind of turning to God which reflects a deep intimacy with God. A relationship of trust, intimacy and love is a necessary precondition for genuine lament. When the biblical writers lament, they do so from within the context of a foundational relationship that binds together the individual with members of the community of faith and that community with their God. [4]

Katongole states that biblical lament is not a kind of unrestrained whining at God, nor a kind of angry venting, but rather it is a structured and complex language of complaint, protest and appeal directed to God. [5] So this makes it a distinct faith language with its own vocabulary and grammar for those intimate and difficult conversations with God when we are hurting.

Another important facet we notice is that lament often moves into praise – the laments and songs of thanksgiving belong together in Israel’s worship. They have the confidence to express the entire range of human emotions before God – doubt/faith, sorrow/joy, fear/trust, life/death – such is the confidence born out of the covenant relationship and a sign of the depth of this relationship with their loving God. What kind of relationship is it if we can only express our joy and faith but not our need, our sorrow, our pain, our trauma, our complaints even?

Lament as complaint

When Father Gerry Arbuckle spoke at Church Mission Society in 2014, he had some pertinent things to say about lament, mourning and grief. You can hear them here.

Complaint is also a key component of lament. Expressions of complaint in the psalms range from concern, to utter desperation in the face of illness or before one’s enemies, to protestations of innocence.

To complain seems risky and almost improper. However, I think it shows that the relationship with God is alive, dynamic and open. To complain is to refuse to accept things the way they are; it protests God’s silence and presses God for deliverance. One requires courage to protest in this way against God – but we see it again and again in the psalms and in the prophets such as Jeremiah. It may also be a way forward into newness. In the psalms of lament, while the writers draw on memories of God’s saving actions in the past, there are always the risk and possibility that God will act in totally new ways as a result of this present suffering, so we may see and learn something totally new and unexpected about God. This suggests that Israel understood complaint as an essential part of their covenant relationship with God. “It is not those who lack faith who complain, but those recognised for strong faith who bring their most honest and passionate feelings to God.” [6] It ensures that the relationship is alive, dynamic, negotiated, contested.

It is risky – because complaint is a form of protest. It challenges God – “How long, O God?”, “Why do you hide your face?” It puts God on the spot. The psalmists say some outrageous things such as “you are the one who has done this, Remove your scourge from me; I am overcome by the blow of your hand” (Psalm 39:10). And what kind of God remains silent to his people’s pleas? Perhaps God is silent not because God is unmoved – but because God himself laments and suffers with us. Jesus’ incarnation and his cry of dereliction on the cross – based on Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” – testify to this.

African-American gospel songs, the slave spirituals, are a powerful expression of their belief that God was with them in their suffering, even while they were living in their whirling vortex of God-forsakenness. The slave songs are drenched in pain and sadness but they also express a spirit of resistance, confidence and hope. What gave them this confidence was the Exodus story – that ultimately God would save or rescue them, and also their identification of their own suffering with that of Christ’s forsakenness on the cross. I am told that during the apartheid years in South Africa, the most popular services were Good Friday services because they could identify with Jesus in his pain, suffering and desolation.

Jesus understood the slaves, the oppressed, the anguish of apartheid, because he too knew misery, anguish and forsakenness – this resonance gave them the ability to endure and to hope. And ultimately it was these spirituals that gave birth to the freedom songs of the American civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr commented: “The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle. They give the people new courage and a sense of unity. I think they keep alive a faith, a radiant hope, in the future, particularly in our most trying hours.” [7]

What about us? How do we engage with lament? Walter Brueggemann and others have highlighted the absence of lament in our churches. Brueggemann connects it with the inability to face suffering or to embrace negativity in our Western world. Glenn Pemberton suggests that the church, as a middle-class institution, has become increasingly embarrassed by the earthy and gritty language of lament. He writes,

… we have chosen to live protected lives in insulated communities, whether our community is a middle-to-upper class neighbourhood or a church with a fortress mentality. Our lack of solidarity with those in need is what causes us to wonder why these prayers are in the Bible and question who would ever need them.” [8]

Another writer comments that it is because of our increased prosperity and identification with the mainstream. Lament sounds dreary and negative to those who do not wish to be reminded either of their own vulnerability and suffering or that of those around them.

Ellen Davis offers some hard-hitting and challenging insights. She suggests that when we read Psalm 109 we need to turn it 180 degrees so that it is directed towards us and ask ourselves: “Is there anyone in the community of God’s people who might want to say this to God about me/us?” We are active participants in a rapacious industrial economy, regularly consuming far more than we need of the world’s goods. She then projects this idea onto our great grandchildren’s generation – to say nothing of the present majority world – who might cry out and lament to God:

Let their memory be cut off from the earth
because they did not remember to act in covenant faith
but hounded a person poor and needy,
crushed in heart, even to death (Psalm 109:14-16). [9]

Brueggemann concludes:

A community of faith which negates lament soon concludes that the hard issues of justice are improper questions to pose at the throne, because the throne seems only to be a place of praise. I believe it thus follows that if justice questions are improper questions at the throne… they soon appear to be improper questions in public places, in schools, in hospitals, with the government, and eventually even in the courts. Justice questions disappear into civility and docility. [10]

A loss of lament signifies a loss of passion for social justice.

Lament as resistance, justice and innovation

So we forget that lament can be a form of resistance and can ultimately bring about newness and hope. We have already noted the African-American slave spirituals are a form of resistance. Lament is also a form of agency. A cry of anguish is not only a way of naming and mourning what is lost but is also a way of standing in the midst of the suffering. And so lament deepens our engagement with the world of suffering and invites us into more active social and political engagement.

Let me offer you a dramatic example of this now by telling you Maggy Barankitse’s story. Maggy is a Tutsi and was caught up in the ethnic massacres in Burundi in 1993. In October 1993, she hid in the local bishop’s residence as soldiers attacked, stripped Maggy, tied her to a chair and then massacred 72 people, including one of her best friends. Amazingly, her seven children all survived the massacre by hiding in the sacristy. Katongole narrates her story:

After the massacre, Maggy crawled into the chapel. She prayed as she cried, “My mother taught me you are a God of love. She lied to me. You are not love… God, why was I not killed? Why am I here? Why O God? As she prayed and cried, she heard Chloe… The children had escaped by hiding. Bribing the militia with money, she managed to save another twenty-five children from the burning and building…and as night fell she sought refuge at the home of a German development worker. [11]

Maggy set up Maison Shalom – houses for children, farms, businesses, a swimming pool, a cinema, a hospital, a nursing school, a micro-credit finance union and even a university. You can see a short clip of Maggy’s story on the Opus Prize YouTube channel.

In 2016 Maggy won the Aurora Prize. The Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity is a new global award that is given annually to individuals who put themselves at risk to enable others to survive. It is a pioneering global initiative seeking to express gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to save Armenians from the genocide one hundred years ago. [12]

There are some important things to note about Maggy in the context of lament. After the massacre she experienced an incredible energy, determination and anger – all of which she turned into setting up Maison Shalom. But the key driver for her was love – she operates out of an excess of love which is a basic theological principle for her. It was love that made her an innovator. In her words, “Love made me an inventor”. In the face of all this trauma she improvised and innovated so the children could survive, and not only survive but flourish. She invented a new community – not solely Tutsi or Hutu, but a community beyond tribalism. She came up with very practical ideas for the children. Her love was deepened through her grief and lament.

There is something about pain and suffering that are at the heart of love. “There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried,” said Archbishop Christophe Muzihirwa, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bukavu from 1994-1996. In the midst of civil war in Eastern Congo he worked for peace and to build structures of justice, forgiveness and love. He experienced the war, the ethnic violence, the refugee crisis and the destruction of Bukavu. He was a prophet for a new vision of society but after two years as archbishop, he was assassinated – shot dead at a checkpoint.

“There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.” Out of pain, intense suffering and anger, Maggy found the courage to take risks and to innovate. She was determined that death and evil would never have the last word because she innovated something which offered newness and hope. Because love wins.

It is vital to remember this; that love wins because I need to offer a sad postscript. In 2015 President Pierre Nkurunziza decided to run for a third term. This plunged the country into crisis; thousands fled, hundreds were arrested and many were killed. Maggy had spoken out strongly against the third term, was targeted and she fled into exile where she still is, living and working in Rwanda. The government has shut down all the Maison Shalom programmes, including the schools and hospital in Ruyigi, closed their bank accounts and confiscated all their assets. They have also killed some of the children. These events have obviously deepened Maggy’s lament.

This is not a “they lived happily-ever-after” story yet somehow, this makes Maggy’s story more poignant for me. We do what we can with the resources we have, the knowledge and energy we have and we act according to what we know.

Katongole states that these events call for “a closer exploration of the interconnection between lament and martyrdom in order to highlight the (strange) hope that the death of the innocent…offers to Christians in their struggle for peace in Africa.” [13]

Maggy’s story is also an example of someone who resists the scarcity narrative. We need to resist this culture of fatalism. We need to reignite creativity and innovation, have honest conversations about vulnerability and fear of failure, be attentive to the resources we do have and draw on those. Perhaps we just need to look again, or look in new places for the resources that are already available in our communities and passionately resist the myth that we don’t have enough, aren’t good enough, don’t know enough.

One way to resist this culture of scarcity is to practise gratitude and generosity. In her research on shame and vulnerability, Professor Brene Brown discovered that her participants consistently described both joy and gratitude “as spiritual practices that were bound to a belief in human connectedness and a power greater than us.” [14] This should not surprise us. Practising gratitude is how we tangibly acknowledge that there is enough, that we are enough. This is a deeply Christian insight but also profoundly counter-cultural in our society that preys on our desires to want more, to consume more and therefore to waste more. Gratitude restores our perspective, enables us to be content with what we have and ensures that we remember our generous Creator God.

In the West, we have grown up in a transactional culture which encourages constant accumulation of goods or, when applied to leadership, encourages managerial, command and control-type approaches. What if we lived with more of a gift-culture mentality where we gifted our time, talents, services for the delight of doing so and for the good of the wider community? Surely this is what Sabbath and the Old Testament Jubilee were all about – ensuring that rest, sustainability and ‘enough’ were key values in society. We, however, experience growth as one of our culture’s highest values: greater production, greater consumption, greater commodification and a trust in progress and technology that things will always get bigger and better. What if we thought in terms of stewardship, trusteeship, sustainability, sufficiency and volunteering? We know that volunteering has as many benefits for the person volunteering as for the project In a 2012 report commissioned to review the benefits for volunteers, researcher Dr Rachel Casiday said, “Volunteering can yield as many benefits, if not more, for the volunteers themselves.” [15]

Gift culture fosters generosity and ensures that everyone has enough. Gifting and generous communities support one another, share with one another, want to know “how can I serve?” Just as Jesus claimed that he did not come to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45), so a gift culture delights in service. Gifting sets in motion a cycle of generosity where one gift prompts another and so it becomes a kind of virtuous circle: wanting to serve, wanting to give and desiring to bring out the best in one another.

Lament as newness and hope

We have already noted that lament can have a surprising turn to praise. However, lament and praise are not simply juxtaposed. Rather there can be an unexpected movement which brings about a fresh perspective and new language. So this possibility of lament turning into praise “reflects a transformation and innovation, a novelty that is only possible with the articulation of both pain and belief.” [16] Biblical lament has the potential to bring us to a new place, to a new depth, to a new song of praise which is qualitatively different from the praise that has gone before. It is a new kind of depth of knowledge and experience, only made possible by the experience of suffering and pain. It is a new kind of seeing: “There are things that can be seen only with eyes that have cried.” This is an important insight for pastoral ministry – that there is newness and hope after pain – but it will be different and we will only arrive there because of the pain.

Perhaps Pope Francis’s metaphor of the church as “field hospital” is appropriate here – repairing the brokenness and healing the wounds – not that we are the sole actors in this regard. But we do offer a theological grammar of hope. By standing alongside those who are suffering, by being with (not doing for or to) we participate in the mystery of God’s own suffering, death and resurrection. It is this participation that mysteriously releases hope. Katongole claims that the African church is a unique gift to world Christianity as a laboratory of hope which “provides a living witness of what hope looks like in the context of violence and war.” [17]

Are we able, in our own contexts, to be a field hospital that heals and binds the wounds, stands in solidarity with the afflicted and traumatised, challenges injustice and innovates to offer hope and bring about newness?

Let me conclude with some words from a poem by Denise Levertov:

Beginners

How could we tire of hope?
—so much is in bud.

there is too much broken
that must be mended,
too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,
so much is in bud. [18]

About the author

Dr Cathy Ross leads the MA for Pioneer Mission Leadership Training at Church Mission Society and is tutor in contextual theology at Ripon College Cuddesdon.

More from this issue

Notes

[1] A version of this was first presented as a keynote address at the Leicester Diocesan Conference, Wed 20 Sep 2017.
[2] Emmanuel Katongole, Born from Lament, The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017)
[3] Ibid., 14.
[4] Ibid, 107.
[5] Ibid., 107.
[6] Ibid., 110.
[7] Ibid., 115.
[8] Glenn Pemberton in Katongole, Born from Lament, 180.
[9] Ellen F Davis, in Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament, (Boston: Cowley,2001), 28-29.
[10] W Brueggemann, “The Costly Loss of Lament” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 11, no 36 (1986), 64.
[11] Katongole, Born from Lament, 229.
[12] The Aurora Prize Finalists, auroraprize.com, accessed 10 August, 2017.
[13] Katongole, Born from Lament, 242.
[14] Brene Brown, Daring Greatly, How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent and Lead, (Penguin: USA, 2012), 123.
[15] Should I volunteer?, NHS website, accessed 18.08.2017.
[16] Ellington in Katongole, Born from Lament, 109.
[17] Ibid., 264-5.
[18] Denise Levertov, ‘Beginners’ in New Selected Poems, (Northumberland: Bloodaxe, 2003), 137-8.

The post Lament and Hope appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Mission is not Western: Kenyan perspectives on identity, church planting, social transformation, and bold mission initiatives

by Kyama Mugambi

The nature of the gospel is to permeate every culture. In the words of Andrew Walls this gospel is “infinitely translatable”. [1] As it enters different cultures it “creates a place to feel at home”. [2] This infinite translatability challenges the notion that mission, which is essential to the gospel, could be defined by any one culture. The growth of the gospel around the world in the last hundred years invites us to consider this. In 1968 Kwesi Dickson and Paul Ellingworth insightfully observed that Africa could only gain selfhood in terms of its expression of Christianity, and be adequate for her mission if she had first, internalized her knowledge of the Lord of the church, and secondly she could express that knowledge of the Lord in clear accents through her own reflection and thinking. [3] Such expression and reflection can be seen in some of the new ways mission is characterized in Africa, as a microcosm of the non-western world. Taking examples from Kenya, I argue that the church worldwide benefits from this broader expression of mission that encompasses non-western elements.

Mission as a concept is difficult to define given the wide variety of perspectives on it throughout history and the large number of unique contexts in which it has been carried out and studied. But it is helpful to map some contours and salient points in the context of this discussion. For this, I find David J. Bosch’s reflections particularly useful. Mission, he said, refers “to Missio Dei, God’s mission,” and missions are “the particular forms, related to specific times, places, or needs of participation in the Missio Dei.” [4] To this end mission is about the dynamic relationship between God, his people and his world. With reference to the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20, mission is a response to a “sending” by the “sent ones.” Mission is sanctioned by, and missions are carried out in obedient response to biblical witness. To be Christian is to be a “sent one,” a missionary, in an enterprise that progresses outwards from one context, moving beyond it into all the world. Mission is in this way an enactment of the command in Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” All Christian witness is therefore missionary, in so far as it relates to the human condition. Bosch articulated this well, saying that missionary activity is as “coherent, broad and deep as the need and exigencies of human life.” [5]

Mission sees continuity between belief and action, orthodoxy and orthopraxis. As such, mission integrates worship and evangelism with social action that transforms individuals and communities. Vinay Samuel expounds on this transformative nature of mission. When mission is carried out in context, it needs to permeate the very fabric of the community demonstrating the translatability of Christian faith. [6] It does not stop there but continues by engaging the world through its commitment to praxis. This praxis manifests, for example, through commitment to provide freedom and power to those who need it most – the poor. It will also become evident through providing reconciliation and solidarity. [7] Mission builds transformative communities of change. [8] Taken together these highlight the contours we will use in this discussion when we refer to mission, missions and missionaries.

Identity and community in mission

We begin by reflecting on two Kenyan voices from different eras who spoke on mission with authority from their pastoral convictions and who remained committed to engaging these perspectives and their implications for the church. John Gatu, a Presbyterian minister in 1971, famously proposed the voluntary suspension of missionary activity in Africa for five years. [9] His argument was that such a moratorium would enable Africans to learn to rely on themselves and to develop authentic self expression. Gatu made this call at a missionary conference in Wisconsin and repeated it three years later before the third assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches in Lusaka in May 1974. [10] Gatu challenged the very notion that mission, in perception and practice, was Western. In his view, space should have been availed to allow a redefinition of this concept.

A clean break was necessary in Gatu’s mind, to provide for a rethink about the relationship between the West and the Global South. He said, “The answer to our present problems can only be solved if all missionaries can be withdrawn in order to allow a period of not less than five years for each side to rethink and formulate what is going to be the future relationship.” [11] Thus, the continued presence of foreign missionaries hindered reflection on the issue of missionaries, prevented a reformulation of missions practice and obstructed the development of a new paradigm for missions. [12] In practical terms, for example, Africans could not grow in their leadership and ability to handle ministry with an ongoing presence of foreign missionaries. [13]

Missions activities, as formulated then, were dependent on foreign funds, preventing local missions from developing unique solutions for African problems. In this way, the presence of foreign missionaries was a hindrance to the sustainability of local African missions. [14] On the question of selfhood, Gatu was concerned that the strings attached to foreign resources had implications on the local missions. These strings inadvertently hindered the development of the African church in becoming all God meant it to be. Gatu proposed a hiatus in missionary activity to reflect on responses to these issues which he felt were a threat to the African church. If there is anything Gatu accomplished in his call, it was to highlight the close relationship between selfhood and mission. As the gospel entered the life of the African, the conviction developed to be an active participant in mission from within the context. [15] To give some historical and political context here, Gatu’s call resonated with the continent at the conclusion of the decade of independence. It also came at a time when Christianity grew exponentially on the continent. By the 1980s, the debate had largely subsided, though the pertinent issues that the moratorium proposal raised had not resolved. [16]

The secretary general of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) in the 1970s predicted that when the church in Africa was able to discover itself, then we would see renewed expressions that would relate better with the church global. While making a case for the moratorium, the Rev Canon Burgess Carr said,

“Leave us alone for a while, so that we may be able to discover ourselves, and you, in Jesus Christ. When this has happened you will be able to come to Africa and see churches renewed and empowered by the Holy Spirit to a new consciousness of what Christ means to them and their mission to others; Genuinely self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating churches making their full contribution to the whole church in the world; Churches that have found a new freedom to see unity among themselves, and; Churches whose relationships with other churches are based upon equality under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.” [17]

The moratorium did not happen as envisioned by Gatu, but Carr’s thoughts were nevertheless realised. African churches were renewed, empowered and grew tremendously. In the intervening period between 1970 and 2000 the number of Christians in Africa tripled from 115 million to 361 million. [18] Champions of this renewed African church began to emerge.

One of these champions is Oscar Muriu, a Kenyan pastor of the Nairobi Chapel, an evangelical independent church. Speaking to 20,000 young people at a missions conference in Urbana, Muriu raised concerns that resonated with what Gatu raised 30 years before. Muriu, however, proposed a different approach. [19] He argued that Christianity in the non-Western world is fundamentally different and that new paradigms for missionaries must be developed because of this. He suggested that this paradigm for missionary engagement endorsed interdependence, created a new paradigm missionary, and was marked by reciprocity along with respect and humility for other cultures. [20]

In his passionate speech, Muriu drew a model of the relationship between the different parts of the global church. Using the passage from 1 Corinthians 12 about the body of Christ, Muriu crafted a powerful picture of what he saw as the future of global missions. He paraphrased this message thus: “If the American church should say because I’m not an African I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason cease to be a part of the body…” [21] Using the passage he proposed that partnerships modelled after the body of Christ as presented in Corinthians would the a new paradigm for global missions. [22]

Muriu further pointed out that the ultimate display of maturity in the body of Christ is interdependence. As such, global missions should be marked by this type of maturity which presupposes the inadequacy of each component part to fulfil its own needs. [23] Each church from each region of the world needs input from the church in other parts of the world. He went on to make a case for reciprocity as an essential component of global missions. He suggested that the old model of missions “from the west to the rest” was outdated and inconsistent with a scriptural understanding of the body of Christ. Missions of the future should be reciprocal. Such missions will facilitate missions from the West into the two-thirds world and facilitate reverse missions back into the West. In this way global missions will not be one-sided but reciprocal. Such reciprocity, he suggested, is the antidote to unhealthy dependence. [24] Muriu was agreeing with Gatu that missions, especially cross-cultural ones are not the preserve of the West.

Muriu also appealed for respect and humility among the different regions of the world. He pointed out that the weaknesses and the failings of the churches from the different parts of the world are not an affront to their dignity. [25] Instead he argued that the parts that were unimpressive could well be the most important. Those parts of the body that are unrefined and are perceived to be undignified should be approached with respect and humility. It is through respect and humility that all parts can then contribute to the well-being of the entire body of Christ. Such respect and humility for all cultures does away with patronisation which is inconsistent with what is required from the body of Christ. [26] Here Muriu was offering an inclusive, ecumenical, proposal of how the mission conversation could be carried out.

Looking into the future, Muriu suggested that Christians from the two-thirds world would have much to offer Christianity globally. This Christianity, for example, provides a new starting point for the development of a theology which gives insight into such issues as liberation from oppression, health, and healing, powerlessness, survival, suffering, and hope. This theology has in the past been dismissed by some Western theologians as shallow. [27] If Gatu’s contribution connected mission with identity, Muriu highlighted the interface between mission and the global Christian community.

Both of these perspectives are essential in framing the conversation on mission in a global context where Christianity is more demographically dominant in the Global South. In many ways, Christianity in Africa is representative of Christianity in the world today. [28] Allan Effa states it in stark terms saying “it is fair to say that the very heart of the Anglican community has been transplanted to Africa.” [29] Taking the example of the Anglican church he says, “the Church of Nigeria’s average church attendance is greater than that of the combined Church of England, Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA), and Anglican Church of Canada.” [30] It therefore follows that going forward, the mission will likely be expressed through the identity of the dominant Christian expressions across the globe. Mission is no longer just Western. We now consider some ways in which mission is not Western, citing some examples from Kenya.

Church planting and missions

Church planting is one important trend that shapes missions today going into the future. In the 1800s, the number of congregations worldwide were estimated to have been 150,000. That number increased to 400,000 at the turn of the century in 1900, eventually growing to 3.4 million congregations by mid-2000. [31] That represents a staggering growth average of over 80 congregations per day over 100 years. It is expected that the number of congregations in the world will rise to the region of 7.5 million in 2025. [32] This would represent a growth rate over the course of 25 years of over 300 congregations a day. Most of this growth is in the non-Western World: in Africa and Latin America. In Kenya for example there were over 6,000 churches awaiting registration in 2007. [33] Comparatively, between 2000 and 2025 it is expected the number of sending mission agencies will grow but at the rate of about one mission agency every five days. [34]

These numbers, while estimates, paint a picture of what missions may look like in the future. We cannot expect that every church planted in Africa over the next 10 years will be a bona fide missionary sending church. Many churches planted will be small and will not be able to marshal the resources necessary to send individuals or teams to other countries. We also cannot peg our evaluation of the effectiveness of missions by the number of foreign mission sending agencies formed each day or year for that matter. In truth, the presence of a missionary agency does not necessarily mean that they are active or effective in any given area of missions. The quality of the personnel and the efficacy of the service a missionary agency provides may not meet the needs of the target communities. [35]

What we can see however, from the exponential growth of church congregation numbers and the slower growth of mission agencies, is that the local church will increasingly become a crucial actor in missions, in a local-church driven missionary era. This echoes much of what we see in the New Testament, and the Book of Acts in particular. If we take seriously what we see in such movements as the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Winners Chapel and other African movements, we conclude that the church in Africa includes many church planting movements. The “church-planting church” will replace the foreign mission sending agency as the primary agent of growth for Christianity, at least in Africa.

In Newer Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (NPCCs) the pneuma-centric commitment to spiritual gifting presupposes that every believer plays an active part in worship, evangelism and discipleship within the community. [36] Bosch outlines this as one of the emerging mission paradigms where mission is “ministry by the whole people of God.” [37] We should expect to see a shift away from mission in Africa as carried out by foreign missionaries a century ago, exemplified by David Livingstone and others, to the current church-oriented approach of mission by such communities as the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) from Nigeria. [38] Take, for instance, Prince and Esther Obasi-Ike, Nigerians who moved into Kenya in 1995. All they had was their sense of call to mission, confirmed by their general overseer, and the contact of a Kenyan who they met at their church in Nigeria. They moved their family into Nairobi, without much by way of resources, and presented themselves to the relatives of their Kenyan contact. They were accommodated on the strength of their contact’s recommendation. Their church plant went on to plant dozens of other churches locally and internationally, often using the same model of relationships and connections from the congregation. The local church became both a missionary sending agency and a church planting hub. The Obasi-Ikes refer to themselves as “pioneer missionaries” sent by the movement’s “visionaries.” The “visionaries” are RCCG’s general overseer and his wife. “Pioneer missionaries” is a term that was once the preserve of missionaries of Western extraction. [39]

Christianity has slowly been gaining recognition as an integral part of African cultural consciousness. Indeed the study of Christianity in Africa is now also the study of an African religion. [40] The PEW forum report on the global size and distribution of Christianity shows that the 10 countries with the highest population of Christians in tropical Africa account for 17 per cent of the Christians in the world. [41] Seven of these countries are at least three-quarters Christian. From an ontological perspective, missions, and in this case church planting, is already becoming an expression of African identity. One part of being African could well be, being a Christian! The world view from which future mission initiatives will take place is inherently African and Christian at the same time. [42] Increasingly, we will find that African churches are asserting their identity through mission where church planting therefore becomes a way to engage in mission while expressing at least one or more aspects of African-ness.

One church in Berlin is known by a Kenyan name. Mavuno Church Berlin was launched in 2011 as a German-led, German-speaking church for Germans. [43] A German couple, Daniel and Nancy Flechsig, were commissioned to go back to Germany to plant a church under Mavuno Church from Nairobi where they trained and caught the vision. This couple had attended a three-year cross-cultural training exchange programme with an African church. The elder board of the declining 100-year old EFG Lichterfelde church approached the Flechsigs to lead it. The EFG Lichterfelde submitted itself to Mavuno church’s leadership and vision and was re-launched as Mavuno Berlin under the leadership of the Flechsigs. [44] Its mother-church, Mavuno Church in Nairobi, has launched congregations in five countries in Africa. [45] The church has also sent teams to start church planting work in an additional five countries. [46] Mavuno Church Berlin went on to engage in their social context, specifically among refugees during the German refugee crisis of 2015-2016. [47] Non-western mission in Africa grows through planting new churches. In this process, it also becomes an avenue for the expression of an African identity.

Social transformation and political engagement as mission

African theologians like JNK Mugambi in the early 1990s and more recently, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, pointed to an emerging African Christianity that moves beyond passive piety to social reconstruction. Many emerging churches strive for health and wholeness in society. [48] The pulpit remains their primary communication avenue for these ideals. The theology forged in the mind of the preacher, and informed by their context, is prophetically proclaimed to provoke, stir up and otherwise challenge the status quo. Several large and influential NPCCs have chosen to use their sermons to articulate a cogent theology of personal responsibility for the listener to institute change in their political and social context. [49] In the past, some leaders of mainline denominations in Kenya engaged in provocative and adversarial exchanges with the national leadership in the push for democratic change. [50] Sermons in many African NPCCs are more focussed on urging the individual to act to bring about social transformation. The sermons will hold national authorities accountable; the underlying assumption is the congregation’s greater ability to influence change. Going back to Mavuno church as an example, one of the themes emerging in the sermons is the notion that justice is instituted by individuals within a social system. In his sermon “Restore Justice,” Muriithi Wanjau urged his congregation to, “move away from seeing justice as the government’s or civil society’s responsibility.” He told them to understand that God holds his people accountable for the practice of justice in our nation, and in God’s eyes, justice in day-to-day dealings is even more important than worship and prayers on Sunday. [51] He taught his congregation that one way to effect this justice is to eradicate poverty, not through handouts but by a commitment to economic empowerment. The answer to eradicating poverty in the Kenyan society, said Muriithi, was “to break people out of poverty into a place where they own their means of production – which is what we call the ‘middle-class.’” [52]

These churches also promote social transformation through an economically and intellectually empowered laity who gather in Christian professional forums. Christians for a Just Society (CFJS), was founded in 1998 by a group of Christians who “believed that there was a role for Christians to play in the political, economic, and social affairs of our country and aimed at sensitising and mobilising Christians to get involved.” [53] Their mission is to “mobilize and equip Christians for political engagement.” Their church leaders programme provides information and resources for leaders in churches to use when vetting and engaging with political leaders. They also run training programmes for practicing Christians for women who are aspiring to political office. [54] CFJS hosts town hall meetings for the middle class to interrogate the visions and objectives of political aspirants. These consultative forums encourage and affirm a consensus approach to political issues.

Social media, electronic media and the internet – the new “Roman roads” of mission

The growth of social media, blogging and other internet-based platforms through ICT development in Africa provides unique new opportunities for churches to carry out mission. The internet for example has been used to broadcast the gospel directly to an audience that would not otherwise attend the church. NPCCs maintain websites where they advertise their churches, often presenting profiles of their leaders. [55] Many of these churches also stream their sermons online as part of their evangelistic efforts. Their pastors have large followings in social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Muriithi Wanjau, the senior pastor of the Mavuno family of churches, has over 10,000 Facebook followers, and over 16,000 Twitter followers. [56]

Some churches have launched TV and radio stations to reach beyond their Sunday congregations. Christ is the Answer Ministries for example runs Hope FM, which carries music programming, talk shows and sermons from within the church and outside. [57] Other separate entities have launched Christian radio stations to advance an evangelistic agenda through media and the arts. Kubamba Radio is one such entity. [58] Kubamba Radio was started by young leaders such as Moses Kimathi, with a passion for missions in high schools. After over a dozen years of engaging in high school ministry, and leading Bible studies for gospel music artists, they began presenting large concerts to bring together young people for end of year vigils. The group then launched a radio station focussing on music and topical discussions aimed at teenagers and young adults. The radio station is based in Nairobi. Radio hosts come from several NPCCs in the city.

NPCCs also use other means to present their message as they engage with society. David Oginde, the CITAM bishop, maintains a blog known as the Bishop’s Blog. On the blog he offers a commentary on current affairs giving his considered position on key issues. Oginde’s articles offer a sober critique with none of the provocation and adversarial language common in activist blogs. The arguments are articulate and forceful and he boldly addresses some of the political issues touching on national scandals [59]. Some laity also use the social media platform for activism. Some of them see it as their Christian calling to engage the powers that be. Njonjo Mue for example is a human rights lawyer with graduate theological training. Mue often uses Facebook as his preferred blogging medium, though his articles can be found on other blogging sites. [60] Mue represents a group of laity that has taken activism to the internet, reaching large audiences on a platform that also allows feedback.

Bold mission initiatives

Mission in non-Western contexts has seen the emergence of bold evangelism initiatives meant to take the gospel beyond what was initially done before. One such initiative is a nonpartisan and interdenominational missionary organisation, Sheepfold, founded and run by an Anglican clergyman, Canon Francis Omondi, in 1988. It sent out its first missionaries in 1989. The ministry works in Eastern Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Sahel among the unreached tribes and people groups where there has been little or no impact by the churches. Aside from evangelism the agency mobilises churches, trains missionaries and develops partnerships and networks for mission. Sheepfold combines evangelism and social work. In their own words, their approach to ministry “is with both hands extended – one hand invites individuals to repentance, faith, and eternal reconciliation with God through Christ Jesus. The other embraces the lost’s physical and emotional well-being. This is the hand of social justice, mercy, and compassion which embody the goodness of God’s Kingdom on earth. One is not a means to the other but both are equally significant to life in the eternal Kingdom.” [61] Their initiatives include missionary training, education, medical services, agricultural model farming and entrepreneurship.

Much of their work is in the arid areas, among people who have had very little or no contact with Christians and Christian missionary work. Their centre is in an area with a Muslim majority, facing frequent attacks from Al Shabaab, an extremist Islamic group based in neighbouring Somalia. Sheepfold aims to be relevant in a geographical region that faces frequent, highly unpredictable attacks on Christians. Omondi publishes his reflections on a blog about what it means to be a Christian in his particular context, and in Kenya at large. [62] One of the most tragic challenges to their witness was on Maundy Thursday in 2015 when 147, mostly Christian, students were killed in an Al Shabaab attack on Garissa University. A week after this incident Omondi wrote,

Will the pressure of persecution on Christians curtail their witness? It is the will of God that all the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the water cover the sea. In his prayers, Jesus says, ‘Yet not as I will, but as you will.’(Matthew 26:39, 42) He completely trusted God’s plan, and He knew God’s will would be done. Trusting God doesn’t mean that I will always understand suffering or the reason behind it. But I’ve learned that because Jesus trusted God, my life is forever changed. [63]

Omondi writes with authenticity and authority on these matters while living with constant threats on his life and the lives of those he works with. Sheepfold retains its ministry in a hostile context, where its effective witness is acknowledged by Christians and non-Christians alike.

There are other unique missionary initiatives of different kinds. Some of these initiatives involve reverse mission where Africans move into the West, either for work, or as Christian workers. Cyprian Yobera for example is ordained in the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK). Before traveling with his family to be a missionary in the UK in 2002, Yobera was a minister in a large church. He had led an effective ministry among the youth in Kenya for years as the director of Youth for Christ. After moving to the UK as a missionary, Yobera began work with the Eden project in inner city Manchester as a full-time CMS mission partner in this area of need. [64] Steve Maina is another Anglican minister who left Kenya in 2009 as a missionary to New Zealand, where he coordinates missions activities with CMS. These bold initiatives in mission by African missionaries challenge past models and stereotypes of missions, while affirming the catholicity of the global church as a mission-oriented community.

Conclusion

The continued growth of the church in Africa challenges the past notions of mission whose reference point has been the West. The prominence of the church in places outside the West is a boon for global Christianity, as the expression of mission encompasses non-Western elements. As we considered Christianity in Kenya, we saw how Gatu’s moratorium proposal highlighted the relationship between selfhood and mission. The establishment of the gospel in the African Christian developed a conviction that they too could be active participants in mission. Muriu’s perspective of a mature Christianity that features interdependence and reciprocity highlighted the role of mission in promoting the interconnectedness of the church globally.

In Africa, the church has emerged as the primary agent of growth for Christianity as well as the primary sending agency for missionaries. The missionary activity of the church has also become an avenue through which an African Christian identity is expressed both locally and internationally. This Christianity is concerned about praxis as much as it is concerned about orthodoxy. It strives for mission into its society by pushing beyond passive piety into social transformation that aims for health and wholeness for all. The church is also actively seeking new ways to engage in mission. Technological advances such as social media, electronic media and the internet have become opportunities for mission to society. Through different kinds of bold initiatives both locally and internationally African missionaries affirm the catholicity of the church and its historical commitment to missions. In these ways then, in responding to the Great Commission, the African church is demonstrating that mission is no longer just western, it is in fact, not western – it is global.

About the author

Kyama Mugambi researches New Pentecostal Charismatic churches, at the Centre for World Christianity in the Africa International University, Nairobi Kenya. He served as a pastor for 17 years, with several of those as a church planter. Until 2016 was the director of mission through church planting initiatives at Mavuno Church, working with teams in 10 countries mostly in Africa. His current research project is the compilation of a short history of the Urban Charismatic-Pentecostal church in Kenya.

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Notes

[1] Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, 1st edition (Maryknoll, NY; Edinburgh: Orbis Bks; T & T Clark, 1996), 25.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Kwesi A Dickson and Paul Ellingworth, eds., Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs. (London: Lutterworth Press, 1968), 9.
[4] For a more in depth discussion see David Jacobus Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1991), 9–10.
[5 Ibid., 10.
[6] Vinay Samuel, “Mission as Transformation,” in Mission as Transformation: A Theology of the Whole Gospel, ed. Vinay Samuel and Chris Sugden, Reprint edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2009), 229.
[7] Bosch, Transforming Mission, 229.
[8] Samuel, “Mission as Transformation.”
[9] John Gatu considered himself a Revivalist, a member of the revitalization movement that began among Anglicans, sweeping through the Presbyterians, Methodists among others in the East African region from the 1930’s into the 1970’s. Rev. Dr Gatu would later on become the moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA). John G. Gatũ, Joyfully Christian. Truly African. (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 2006), 163–68; John G. Gatũ, “Jesus Christ the ‘Truthful Mirror’: My Finding Jesus Christ in the Ministry of the East African Revival Movement,” in The East African Revival: History and Legacies, ed. Kevin Ward and Emma Wild-Wood (Kampala, Uganda: Fountain Publishers, 2010), 47–59.
[10] Gatũ, Joyfully Christian. Truly African, 169–76.
[11] Gatũ, Joyfully Christian. Truly African., 167.
[12] Ibid., 166–68.
[13] Gatu cites examples in administration, theological education and medical missions. See Ibid., 172–73.
[14] Ibid., 166–68.
[15] Gatu, points out that unbeknown to him at the time, there were others making the call around the world. On such example was the outspoken Catholic priest Daniel Barrigan, speaking out of Latin America.See John G. Gatũ, Fan into Flame (Moran Publishers and Worldreader, 2017), 130–31.
[16] Mugambi, Christian Theology and Social Reconstruction, 207–8, 213.
[17] Carr, “The Mission of the Moratorium.” [PDF] Published as an occasional bulletin of the Missionary Research Library NY.
[18] Todd Johnson and Peter F. Crossing, “Christianity 2013: Renewalists and Faith and Migration,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 37, no. 1 (2013): 32–33.
[19] Oscar Muriu was raised an Anglican in Nairobi in the 1970s. He became the pastor of Nairobi Chapel, a non-denominational church in 1989. In the course of his leadership, the church grew tremendously from 6 members to several thousand in a decade. During that time the church shifted from the Plymouth Brethren inspired worship expression of its original British founders, to a Charismatic African expression. Oscar Muriu, Urbana Missions Conference 2006: Interdependence Model of Missions, 2006 [Vimeo].
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 17:17-18:31.
[23] Ibid., 18:30–20:30.
[24] Ibid., 24:13.
[25] Ibid., 26:11–32.
[26] Muriu, Urbana Missions Conference 2006: Interdependence Model of Missions.
[27] Ibid., 5:30–9:09.
[28] Andrew F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History : Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 116–19.
[29] Allan L. Effa, “Releasing the Trigger: The Nigerian Factor in Global Christianity,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 37, no. 4 (2013): 214–18.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Johnson and Crossing, “Christianity 2013: Renewalists and Faith and Migration.”
[32] Todd Johnson, “The Global Demographics of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal,” Symposium: Global Perspectives on Pentecostalism 46, no. 6 (November 2009): 479–83, doi:10.1007/s12115-009-9255-0.
[33] Stephen Makabilia, “NCCK Asks for Vetting of Churches,” The Standard, September 7, 2007.
[34] Johnson and Crossing, “Christianity 2013: Renewalists and Faith and Migration.”
[35] Gatũ, Joyfully Christian. Truly African., 170–73. These were pertinent issues even at the time of Gatu’s moratorium proposal.
[36] NPCCs are a category of the fastest growing church movements in Africa. They are evangelical churches for whom the power and work of the Holy Spirit remains central to their expression. See Allan H. Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the 21st Century (Trenton, N.J.; London: Africa World ; Turnaround, 2001), 167; Johnson, “The Global Demographics of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal.”
[37] Bosch, Transforming Mission, 368–510.
[38] Prince Obasi-Ike and Esther Obasi-Ike, Purpose and Promise-Driven Life (Nairobi: Mustard Seed Publications, 2012).
[39] “RCCG Pioneer Missionaries – Solution Centre,” http://www.rccgsolutioncentre.org/index.php/about-us/pioneer-misionaries, accessed August 17, 2017.
[40] Andrew Walls makes this case forcefully in his writing. See Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, 117–19.
[41] Pew Research Center, “Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian Population,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, December 2011, 54.
[42] Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, 116–35.
[43] Mavuno is Swahili for “Harvest.” The church opted to use the Swahili word instead of the German equivalent, as a way to maintain ties and link its identity to the African church whose vision and mission it subscribes to.
[44] “Mavuno Berlin Launch,” Mavuno Berlin Launch: Facebook Post, accessed January 1, 2016.
[45] These are Nairobi in Kenya, Kampala in Uganda, Lusaka in Zambia, Blantyre in Malawi, and Kigali in Rwanda. See “Mavuno Church Website,” n.d.
[46] These are Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Johannesburg in South Africa, Gaberone in Botswana, Bujumbura in Burundi and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
[47] Kyama Mugambi, “The Refugee Crisis in Europe: The Role of the African Church in a Global Conversation,” in ASET 2016 (ASET 2016, Nairobi, Kenya: Africa Society for Evangelical Theology, 2016).
[48] J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, “We Are Here to Heal: Revitalisation Movements as Charismatic Communities in Africa,” in Interpretive Trends in Christian Revitalization for the Early Twenty First Century, ed. J. Steven O’Malley (Lexington, KY: Emeth Press, 2011), 272.
[49] I discuss some of these approaches in more detail in my article. Kyama Mugambi, “Elements of Political Engagement in Emerging Urban Pentecostal Movements in Kenya,” 2017.
[50] John Karanja, Paul Gifford and others discuss the role of such clergy-activists as David Gitari, the outspoken Anglican Archbishop, Anglican Bishop Alexander Muge, and the Presbyterian priest, Timothy Njoya. See Stephen Muoki Joshua and Stephen Asol Kapinde, “‘Pulpit Power’ and the Unrelenting Voice of Archbishop David Gitari in the Democratisation of Kenya, 1986 to 1991,” Historia 61, no. 2 (2016): 79–100, doi:10.17159/2309-8392/2016/v61n2a4; Paul Gifford, Christianity, Politics and Public Life in Kenya (London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2009); John Karanja, “Evangelical Attitudes toward Democracy in Kenya,” in Evangelical Christianity and Democracy in Africa, ed. Terence O. Ranger (Oxford University Press, USA, 2008), 67–94.
[51] Muriithi Wanjau, “Restore Justice,” Blog.Mavuno, February 17, 2013.
[52] Ibid.
[53] “Welcome to Christians For a Just Society (CFJS),” accessed February 21, 2017, http://cfjsafrica.org/welcome-to-christians-for-a-just-society-cfjs [no longer accessible].
[54] Ibid.
[55] “Allan Kiuna The House of Restoration,” accessed November 18, 2016, http://www.jcckenya.net/rev%20allan.htm [no longer accessible]; “RCCG Pioneer Missionaries – Solution Centre”; “Bishop J.B Masinde,” Deliverance Church Umoja, accessed January 6, 2016, http://www.dcumoja.org/bishop-jb/ [no longer accessible].
[56] Pastor M, “Muriithi Wanjau: While Calling for Justice & Official Response, Let’s Also Verify and Avoid Spreading Fake News.,” Tweet, @muriithiw, (August 12, 2017); “Muriithi Wanjau Facebook,” accessed August 19, 2017.
[57] “Hope FM | Listen and Live,” accessed September 1, 2015.
[58] “Kubamba Krew (K-Krew),” Kubamba Krew (K-Krew), n.d..
[59] David A. Oginde, “Bishop’s Blog – CITAMBlog,” accessed March 18, 2016.
[60] “Njonjo Mue,” accessed February 22, 2017.
[61] “The Sheepfold Ministries,” Faith2Share, n.d.
[62] His blog is called “Waanglicana” Swahili for “the Anglicans” Francis Omondi, Waanglicana, n.d.
[63] Francis Omondi, “Let This Cup Pass….,” Waanglicana, April 6, 2015.
[64] “Veritas :: Rev. Cyprian Yobera,” accessed August 7, 2017; “Out of Africa: A Kenyan Missionary Sets His Sights on Manchester: Cyprian Yobera,” The Independent, August 10, 2008.

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