Rev Ruwani Gunawardene, a second year MA student with CMS Pioneer Mission Training, narrates a personal journey into the Asian Satsang style expression of worship

Wherever you are reading this in the world, are you now ready to take a trip down to a historic tropical island in the Indian ocean, where my story began…?

Ayubowan!

My formative years were spent in the island of Sri Lanka which was then called Ceylon. My family worshipped in the original Anglican Cathedral community in the capital Colombo, where they still worship, now for nearly 70 years. It is no longer the cathedral as the bishop’s throne was moved to a more modern building some 50 years ago. The architecture of the new cathedral is significantly different from the original cathedral, bearing indigenous characteristics and looking less like a church from the Home Counties in England.

My parents belonged to the first young adult generation of the post-colonial era. We spoke Sinhala and English at home. Church was mainly Sung Eucharist accompanied by the English Hymnal and pipe organ, with the occasional chorus sung at Sunday School. Even musical training I received as a young girl was Western classical. However, school and learning Divinity as a subject was in Sinhala. From a very young age we were bi-lingual, easily dipping in and out of both languages and colloquially mixing the two and forming a hybrid which we call ‘Singlish’! 

But church was in English…

We kept our Christian identity neatly tucked away, culturally inhabiting Western practices, safe from the predominant Sinhala Buddhist culture which was all around us. If one was Sinhalese one was expected to be a Buddhist. To be something else was to be second class. Although there was general respect for each other’s religions, we were very much felt to be a minority.

Church was also a place that all culture groups of the island, namely, Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher communities congregated in one space. There are minority Muslim and Malay communities, descendants of the ancient travellers from the far East and beyond on the Silk Route. Sri Lanka was and is a melting pot of mini culture groups which have lived side by side for nearly 3,000 years.

Post-colonial pressures

Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was under European rule for nearly 350 years. Colonised by the Portuguese, Dutch and finally the British spanning over four centuries, Sinhalese culture was suppressed for most of this time. With the colonial practice of ‘divide and rule’ the minority Tamil citizens were educated and given prominent positions in government by the European invaders. 

It was not surprising therefore, that soon after Independence in 1948 the majority Sinhala speaking leaders made Sinhala the official language of the country, thus alienating the other communities in the island. Civil tensions that began as a result culminated in a full-blown civil war in 1983 and thus started one of the longest running civil wars in Asia of modern times – of nearly 30 years.

Scattered generation

It was during this time there was an exodus of my generation, and I settled in London after an arranged marriage to a Sinhalese Buddhist. Mixed faith marriages were commonplace in Sinhala Christian families.

Looking back, I could easily say that joining my local church and experiencing the love and acceptance of this small Baptist community helped me to integrate into the new culture I was in and grow deeper in my faith.

Our eldest son was born 10 years later, and we moved out of London to settle in the countryside in England to raise our family. Sadly, we did not feel very welcome in our new surroundings, and we moved back to the safety of multi-cultural London. Our second son was born a month after the move.

Plucking the heart strings

Church in the suburbs of London turned to be a refuge at first with a buzzing Sri Lankan Fellowship. The local Anglican church had a significant group of Tamil refugee worshippers who met separately to worship in their language. At first this was a welcome retreat from our experience in the countryside. Not long after I had a deep dissatisfaction that this was unhelpful. I remembered the welcome I received from my first church and being part of the bigger church community. But here we were segregated, and the main church was felt to be the real church. I felt my community was missing out on the richness of God’s kingdom, being separated in our own culture group.

I felt we were basically feeding into racism and by gathering in our culture group, perpetuating our own Sri Lankan culture on the one hand, and losing out on the vast richness of worshipping with the local people on the other.

Contemporary worship was really picking up pace around this time in Britain in the early 2000s. I grew up singing traditional Anglican hymns and now enjoyed the contemporary British worship scene. Graham Kendrick, Matt Redman, Tim Hughes…love them! All through this time, questions were rising within me as to how I could reconcile my culture with the worship culture in Britain. And the sounds that I had heard growing up, classical Asian sounds of sitar, violin, tabla and Sri Lankan drumming still pulled at my heart strings. I started to begin to feel that a part of me was missing and was crying out to be released.

I realised that even after decades of living among Western people, a deep part of me remained Sri Lankan. Something was stirring and it was not only within me – God was moving and shifting things all over, it seemed.

Worlds colliding

When God is doing something in his Kingdom, he brings people together you were most unlikely to meet in the normal discourse of life. Through my work at LST I came across Chris Hale and Pete Hicks’ group Aradhna. Two young white men personifying Desi culture! The sounds that Aradhna played were just exquisite. Chris and Pete had made a conscious effort to embrace the culture they were growing up in, in India and Nepal, and mastered the Hindi worship traditions of Bharat Mata or Mother India. This was a familiar sound, but not one I had EVER associated with Christianity. Wow! How our worlds collided.

With other like-minded folk, we formed the Imagine Multi Cultural Worship Forum and started learning Satsang songs which are called bhajans and played at Greenbelt festival and other venues. I made the video above after one such event.

Communal freedom

I love the communal nature of a Satsang style worship set. How any empty space could be used and decorated with colourful fabric and scattered flowers and incense. How all worshippers are at a level playing field in the presence of God, seated on the floor (no chairs or pews needed). There is a guru (a spiritual leader) in position but also a deep connection to one another when we take off our shoes and ‘feel’ the ground with our feet.

The music which is led communally will not be too tightly scripted; the Raga style singing can have micro-tones which may be unfamiliar to the Western ear. The ‘call and response’ style singing is easy for anyone to follow. Timing can be fluid… the sound of the manjira gently keeping rhythm as well as the tabla with its unique resonant bass tones. It is a gathering that is very understated and can also be part of a eucharistic service. It is also a multi-sensory experience.

How does a Christian dress?

Another reason I felt compelled to go deeper into exploring Satsang style worship came out of an encounter I had with my older son. I captured it in a poem which first heeds to my early days:

I drew that old suitcase out
With sarees left untouched
Pressed so flat that I could hear
Their cry to escape the rot!
The boys all dressed up tonight
Not a hoody in sight
The red and green saree it is
For mummy this Christmas night.

They were usually cheeky with their comments about my clothes. But what came forth that night by my then twelve-year-old, stopped me in my tracks…..

“Mummy it is not Diwali,
It is Christmas you know
Please change to a dress
So that we can go…”

It must be said at this point that we live in the borough that has the two largest Hindu temples in London and this was an innocent observation from a boy who was in a majority white school and church.

We talked much driving to church and afterwards whilst opening presents – the relationship between faith and dress.

But where does faith and culture meet and what part does geography play in it?

The story does not end here…
living bi-culturally evolves with time…
Until we learn to drape ourselves
in cloaks of yours and mine…

Empowering expression

One might ask why Christians in South Asia are not fully pursuing their cultural expressions of worship?

Mike Balonek, a US ethnomusicologist researched on Sinhala worship and found tensions or fear of change especially in the city churches, although in rural areas people created their own songs. While there is genuine fear of syncretism, I believe that as Christianity has not yet indigenised fully in the island, there is a huge proportion of nominalism which does not help develop praxis.

Peter Phan, a leading Asian ecclesiologist, suggests (and I agree with him) that “what looms large in an Asian theological mindset, is the question having to do with the church’s relation to the outside world rather than the church’s inner life”. Survival in a sea of other world religions and socio-political challenges mean the church is constantly on alert for issues raised from the outside. There is little time to delve into intellectual debate or cultivate new praxis. So, the worship practices adopted at the onset to avoid syncretism continue.

I sense the journey I have been on can help redress this imbalance to an extent. Highlighting the need to release our South Asian Christian family to embrace their art forms in worship can empower them to do so, if brothers and sisters in the West work together with us. It gives value, recognition, collaboration and helps to have a critical eye on things and can also be an effective missional tool in the West.

Taste and see

For an artform to last, it needs an audience and people who appreciate it. And I believe one of the reasons that Western worship has had a long shelf life is because there was a multi-national audience for it – a sort of a captive audience at some point(!) but an audience, nevertheless. So just as much as we loved the sounds of the Global North, I think it is right that we now invite our brothers and sisters to taste and see the sounds of the Global South.

London’s largest migrant community are South Asians from all world faiths. We have an Indian Hindu Prime Minister in the UK now. What would it be like to organise a Satsang at a Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast one day?

This is an edited version of a talk given at GCAMM 2023 (Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions). Ruwani blogs at interculturalru.com

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The post “Truth gathering” – an intercultural worship journey appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Politics and religion can and do mix. In fact, it’s not a question of if, but how, contends Paul Bickley of thinktank Theos, with whom CMS is partnering to host a new political theology module as part of our Pioneer Mission Training.

Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali recently wrote that she had become a Christian. This came after a de-conversion form politicised Islam to more than a decade as an atheist in the company of the New Atheists – people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett.

Religion and civilisation

Reading her account of her conversion, it is clear that she understands her first, second, and third religions (Islam, atheism, and Christianity) as the spiritual foundation not just of an individual’s private beliefs but of different civilizations. She has become a Christian not because she is convinced that it is true but because she is convinced that Christianity is useful, important, and necessary.

Many – Christian and non-Christian – would be troubled by these thoughts. We have been taught to think that religion should be kept well away from politics. To mix them is divisive, even oppressive.  

Unfortunately, a tidy separation between the two seems ever more hard to achieve. The United States is one of the most constitutionally secular states on earth, yet it is itself the home for a growing movement of Christian nationalism. What Ayaan Hirsi Ali sets up as the essential relationship between Christianity and western values, advocates for Christian nationalism argue for the relationship between Christianity and the USA.

Where are the boundary lines?

So as uneasy as we might be about Ali’s comments, or the very idea of Christian nationalism, it could be that they have a point. Religion and politics will mix. Understood as a universal human phenomena, religion is always and everywhere a social, collective and public thing, and therefore entwined with everything that is social.

“Should religion and politics mix?” is not the right question – they always will. A better question is “how should they mix?” Disciples of Jesus should try and answer in ways which carefully and authentically draw on our faith. The opposite danger of thinking that politics and religion can’t mix is thinking that they are the same thing. We need a theological map to find the boundary lines.   

Politics begins at home

These kinds of debates can seem distant from ordinary Christian life, but they’re not. Many churches get involved in their communities, wanting to respond to an immediate and apparently simple need. They will start a community supermarket or winter warm hub, or encourage people to volunteer at a night shelter. Spending time with the people these projects help, they find themselves drawn into questions around why these people ended up in dire need, and others didn’t. They will begin to ask if there is anything that could be done to prevent others from ending up in similar situations. They can see that people often don’t get the help or support that they need when times get tough.

Some might never go further than that – feeling it is inappropriate to get into political debate. Others will still feel stirred by the Spirit to ‘do something’, but they are no longer certain what the right thing to do is. Like Desmond Tutu, they may say to themselves, “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.”

They are becoming aware of their need of a theological map which covers both the sacred life of worship, prayer, teaching and evangelism and a ‘secular’ world of institutions, services, and political decision-making. In simple terms, they need a framework which holds together love of God and love of neighbour, in the context of the gospel which is consistently framed in what we would call ‘political’ language – king, kingdoms, citizenship, rulers and authorities.

If this post and at least some of these questions resonate with you, Theos and CMS have developed a new ‘Faith in Public’ course, running for the first time in Summer 2024.

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As we continue to seek the best ways to join in God’s mission, we welcomed two advocates of indigenous Christians to the CMS offices. They asked lots of thought provoking questions…

“I shall come as a stranger with everything to learn again.”

John V Taylor, former general secretary of CMS

For more than 150 years CMS and SAMS people in mission have walked alongside indigenous people groups in Latin America. As we continue to do so, we are getting valuable guidance from Jocabed Solano and Drew Jennings-Grisham of Memoria Indígena (Indigenous Memory).

During a recent session with them at CMS in Oxford, we were reminded how much we have to learn – and unlearn – when it comes to mission within indigenous communities.

Missing stories

Jocabed is from the Guna people in what is now Panama and is the director of Memoria Indígena. She also coordinates the Latin American Theological Fraternity’s “Identity, Indigeneity, Interculturality” group.

She is a second generation Christian and as a child she remembers hearing about missionaries: “During Sunday school, the teacher asked ‘Who wants to be a missionary?’ and all the children put their hands up.”

Yet as she got older she wondered, why is there no history recorded about indigenous missionaries? Or women? Why are the stories of indigenous Christianity missing?

She is now committed to creating space where these stories can be found and told – to “fertilise” the theology of the global church with indigenous insights.

“We want to create a space where indigenous people can say, yes my history is important. And encourage the writing and recording of the indigenous experience, not just writing but preserving our orality.

“Churches should be listening more to what God is doing in different contexts. It’s impossible to talk about mission and justice without hearing indigenous views.”

Expanding our vocabulary

Epistemicide is defined as the killing, silencing, annihilation, or devaluing of particular ways of knowing.

Indigenous peoples in Latin America are contending with epistemicide as western industries and influences erode their way of life.

Jocabed says, “The local education today is very much western, there is a loss of language, culture, identity, knowledge about plants and the land…. All of this comes from epistemicide.”

This is a double tragedy: not only for the indigenous people seeing so much knowledge and tradition disappear, but also because this knowledge could be vital and valuable for the rest of the world, particularly regarding issues such as climate change.

“We have 72 words for earth,” Jocabed points out, and yet few people in power turn to indigenous peoples for climate change remedies.

Indigenous communities can also offer a valid critique of capitalist systems and show another way.

“We are working to preserve indigenous identity. When you look at Revelation 7:9, which speaks of a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne…. You have to ask what does this mean when indigenous communities disappear?”

Listening hard

According to Jocabed and her colleague Drew, among indigenous peoples, “There is much respect for British missionary allies who have done incredible work over the years. But there is still more work to be done in decolonising these relationships.” However much westerners want to empower local leaders, they are still usually the ones with the financial power.

A good place to start is listening to stories, asking tough questions and listening to the responses together.

Drew shared one story of visiting a community in northern Bolivia in the Amazon, travelling several days up river in a canoe. There he met an indigenous pastor in his 70s, who had been one of the original members of a church founded by North American missionaries.

“I asked him to describe his church, and he started drawing in the dirt, a picture of a big canoe with a bunch of people in it and at the back, there was a man standing and steering with a motor. He said, ‘This canoe represents our church and our work is to navigate upstream against current of the world, and invite more people into the canoe.’ He then said, ‘The man in the back is the missionary.’

“He then drew another canoe, with a man in the back, paddling without a motor. He said, ‘When the missionary was here we were flying upstream and then one day the missionary left and took the motor with him. The motor is economic power, connections, education, resources…. When he left everyone had grown used to the motor and nobody knew how to paddle. Everyone sits in the boat and I am the man in the back and everyone expects me to paddle.’”

How does the church at large begin healing and reconciliation in the light of this story? How do we walk in a good and healthy way with indigenous communities?

Drew told another story from an indigenous group in Colombia. “One elder told my friend: ‘The missionaries came and said that God was everywhere, all powerful, all knowing… If this is true, God was already here before they got here and we already had a relationship with the Creator…. People came to our home and we offered them hospitality, as we are open to learning new ideas. But after all we listened to, they never showed any interest in what we had to say.’”

More tough questions

So the question, Drew said, is how can we make space for dialogue and the Holy Spirit to work?

How can we come alongside our indigenous friends with posture of humility?

How can we see the indigenous face of God? Not just to glean tidbits of culture to fit our Western models but to understand that God wants to show us more of Jesus through indigenous people?

Drew said, “Lots of mission organisations talk about partnership and interculturality and working side by side. We have change our discourse but we still need to do work in decolonising the logic in our theology and mission practices.”

Jocabed added: “I’m sure in your library we’ll see histories of CMS. What would it be like to rewrite those books from the perspective of communities who were objects of mission?”

That was just one of many deep questions that need to be asked as we journey together, such as:

• How free to indigenous communities feel to critique mission organisations?
• Are we really willing and able to listen to critique?
• Are we willing to let indigenous people set the parameters for our relationship?

Ultimately, are we really ready, in those famous words of John V Taylor, to be strangers, with everything to learn again?

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A man with a mission: Mark 1:40–45 and “mission with” disabled people

By Naomi Lawson Jacobs

Introduction

Nicki is a wheelchair user. She is also a former church planter, with experience of leading churches and a heart for those on the edge. For years, she has been seeking a church where she can use her gifts and be of service to others, in the church community and beyond. When I interviewed Nicki for my research on the experiences of disabled Christians, she remembered how one church had perceived her:

I told them that I worked full-time and that I did normal things, but it was like they didn’t hear it. It was so against what they assumed about me that they couldn’t take it on… Even when they knew that I didn’t need them to do it, it was almost like they felt like they had to be a good Christian and take care of me.¹

She shared a simple, powerful cry to participate in her church and reach out to others with God’s love:

When we get our new building, the first thing I want to do is join in and do normal – just basic, normal stuff in the service. I want to share communion. I want to take the offering. I want to just go and ask someone if it’s okay to pray with them or share something with somebody, just so that people realise that I’m not different.

Nicki cannot yet participate this fully in her church and its outreach. Church buildings and attitudes have disabled her, including the attitude that she is only in church to be looked after. When churches see disabled people solely as objects of mission, they cannot see us as fellow Christians with ministries of our own. They cannot see us as a blessing to their community – only as a burden.

But the Holy Spirit is at work beyond the church gates. Out here, on the edge, mission and ministry are happening among communities of disabled people, who have often found churches inaccessible, inhospitable or exclusive. In this article, I will reflect on one biblical model for disabled people’s mission to each other, and to churches. Then, reflecting briefly on the history of mission and its impact for disabled people, I will ask what it would take for churches no longer to reach out in mission to disabled people, but to share in a new vision of mission with us.

A resistant reading

The Bible and the Christian tradition have had a profound impact on disabled people.² In churches and theology, the Bible has long been interpreted using a “normate hermeneutic”.³ As we read the Bible, we read our own ableist cultural attitudes into the text. Instead of allowing the nuanced silences in the stories to speak, readers tend to centre our own perspectives. Non-disabled readers are unlikely to think about the disciples as disabled – even though the disciples worked in a dangerous industry and lived under occupation – because they imagine the Bible’s central characters as having bodies and minds like theirs, and only notice disabled characters who need help or healing.⁴ Churches rarely ask about the impact of their theology or biblical interpretation on their attitudes to disabled people’s access, participation and outreach. Reflected in the mirror of ableist readings of the Bible, disabled Christians are easily reduced to objects of pastoral care – and mission. As Fiona MacMillan puts it, “In a Church which professes the Gospel paradox of strength in weakness, [disabled people are] often objects for pastoral attention rather than agents of change.”⁵

And yet, many disabled Christians resist these marginalising interpretations of the Bible. We are looking for more authentic biblical models of our lives as disabled Christians, often inspired by disability liberation theology. “Biblical texts are living traditions,” says disability biblical scholar Holly Joan Toensing, “that are challenged and renewed by lived experience of ongoing generations of Christians.”⁶ By reading the Bible in ways that reflect disabled people’s experiential reality, we can all reflect more honestly about how the churches have responded to disability – through disempowering concepts of mission, for example.

In this first part of this article, I’m going to reflect on Mark 1:40–45, using the story as a “way in” to help us think about disabled people and mission. This will be a resistant reading,⁷ in which we allow the silences in the biblical text to speak, as we listen to the people it has silenced. The man with leprosy in Mark 1 has a new vision of mission to tell us about. Then it will be the turn of today’s disabled Christians to speak, as I share a few stories from my research. Disabled Christians are calling churches to a transformed vision of outreach and ministry. In a kingdom where Jesus rewrites the story, this vision could turn the churches’ approach to mission upside down.

The mission of a man with leprosy

In Mark 1, a man who has leprosy seeks out Jesus. No doubt the man has heard rumours of this teacher’s power and authority, even this early in Jesus’ ministry. But this man is no passive recipient of mission. He takes initiative, boldly telling Jesus, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”⁸ In some versions of this story, Jesus becomes “indignant” – angry. We are not told what he’s angry about. But we know that Jesus answers boldness with boldness. “I am willing,” he says, and touches this untouchable man, whose stigmatised skin disease would have led fearful people to keep him at arm’s length. Once the man is “made clean”, Jesus gives him instructions not to tell anyone, but to go and offer sacrifices to the priests, presumably at the Temple, who can declare that the man is clean. In double disobedience of Jesus’ order, the man does not go straight to the Temple to allow the priests to judge whether he is worthy or unworthy. Nor does he follow Jesus’ instructions not to tell anyone. Instead, he goes out to “talk freely, spreading the news” about Jesus. As a result of the man’s fruitful witness, Jesus is mobbed by so many people, he has to retreat to the wilderness – to the “lonely places”, as the NIV has it.

This man is marginalised by the text, and that can make it a challenge to listen to the silences in his story. He is unnamed – the ultimate sign of someone who is “only” a side character – which is unlikely to encourage readers to identify with him. We know almost nothing about him, and though we can infer quite a bit about his situation, that means drawing on some contested contexts. And, like all the disabled characters in the Gospels, after this man is healed, he seems to disappear from the story.⁹

To open up the silences in the story, we start not with the disabled man himself, but with Jesus. In that strange reference to Jesus feeling “indignant”, there is a key to the lived experience of the man with leprosy. Some manuscripts have Jesus feeling “compassion” for this man, but many biblical scholars think “indignant” is the earlier meaning.¹⁰ What did Jesus have to be angry about? Perhaps, as some scholars have argued, Jesus was angry at Satan for causing illness, or even angry at the leprosy itself.

But this is a resistant reading. We find new answers when we centre the perspective of the man with leprosy. This is a story about purity and impurity – all the language is about cleansing, not healing.¹¹ Here is a man who has been excluded from society, stigmatised as a result of his impairment, which led him to be perceived as impure.

The Jewish purity system, laid down in Leviticus and other texts, is likely to have kept many disabled people out of the Temple. It might have pushed them to the edges of community life, too. Even worse, this system kept them poor. If people with leprosy recovered, and hoped to be restored to religious and social community, they had to bring sacrifices to the Temple before they could be declared clean – and those sacrifices cost money. As Sam P. Mathew puts it: “The rich and the powerful always interpreted the purity laws to their advantage. Thus the purity system became instrumental in oppressing the poor and marginalising the people.… Those persons who were considered lepers were oppressed socially, religiously, economically and psychologically.”¹² I can hardly imagine Jesus’ indignant rage at this unjust system, which had kept this man isolated and destitute. The priests had the authority to do something about this – to declare the man clean. They did not.

For disabled people, Leviticus is another powerful representational text. There is lively debate among biblical scholars as to how the purity laws were followed, and there were probably diverse views about ritual impurity in first-century Judaism.¹³ But once an idea has been written down in the Bible, it has representational power in our culture. Disabled people are stigmatised in, and by, this passage of Scripture. Anthropologist Mary Douglas says that, in Leviticus, people and things that are irregular or out of place are represented as impure. As the place where God dwells, the Temple must be kept free of the pollution of impurity.¹⁴ Disabled people have “leaky bodies”, inspiring fears that we will contaminate nondisabled people, so we are shut out of the holiest places.¹⁵ Whatever the actual religious and social situation for people with leprosy in first-century Palestine, this Gospel story represents the exclusion of people with leprosy. For the man in Mark 1, exclusion from religious community and society is a lived reality. So it is for many disabled people today. Churches and society push to the edges those people who confront us with the reality that we all so often deny – our frailty, our mortality, our humanity.

Jesus is different. His mission has already taken him outside the Temple gates, to be with outcasts, poor people and disabled people – those on the edge. And, unlike the priests, Jesus is willing to do something about this man’s profound social oppression. As the Messiah, Jesus has the priestly authority to cleanse the man and restore him to community. But then Jesus does something unexpected. He tells the man to go to the priests at the Temple, and offer those expensive sacrifices required by the Mosaic law. We might be tempted to wonder why. But this is a resistant reading, and what the man does next is far more interesting.

Because the man who once had leprosy ignores Jesus. In a power move that speaks of resistance against unjust authority, the man refuses to go and show himself to the priests at the Temple. Why would he go back there, and pay to offer sacrifices, only to be judged and declared “in” or “out” of religious and social community by the same priests who have shunned him, stigmatised him and cast him out?

Today’s disabled people know all about this kind of exclusion from church and society. Like the Temple, many modern churches reject people whose bodies and minds do not fit their norms. When disabled people are pushed to the edge, churches do not need to change to make room for a more diverse range of bodies and minds. We call this system ableism – an oppressive structure in which normative bodies and minds are valuable, and different bodies and minds are disposable.¹⁶ This system keeps disabled people marginalised in many ways that resonate with Mark 1. Today’s disabled people might not be required to pay priests to declare us clean, but we are still an impoverished community. A third of disabled people in the UK live in poverty, and many of us face a dehumanising, humiliating fight for the benefits we need to survive.¹⁷ In Jesus’ words “show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices… as a testimony to them”,¹⁸ some disabled people will hear echoes of society’s constant demand that we prove that we are “disabled enough” – or human enough – to be treated with dignity.

That’s why I find it so powerful that this man does not go to the Temple. Instead, he does everything he has been told not to do. He goes out to “talk freely” about Jesus – κηρύσσειν, meaning to proclaim or preach. It’s a word sometimes used for Jesus’ own preaching, and for that of his disciples, proclaiming the kingdom of God. I imagine the man running to tell his own disabled community about Jesus first – all his friends with stigmatised illnesses, who have lived on the edge with him. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, I imagine him telling them, “Come and see a man who…” – a man who is angry at the way the community of people with leprosy has been treated by priests and Temple authorities. A man who is willing and able to restore the outcasts to society, without demanding a profit for the powerful. No wonder Jesus is mobbed by new followers. No wonder Jesus has to retreat to the “lonely places” – where, I imagine, he meets yet more lonely outsiders who have been pushed to the margins of society.

When we leave the man who once had leprosy, he’s a Man with a Mission. But this is not a mission of the priests or religious leaders. They are back at the Temple, waiting for people to come to them, to be judged as clean or unclean, valuable or disposable.

No, this is a mission of the marginalised, to the marginalised. Jesus is inspiring a movement of outsiders, who want to live in his upside-down kingdom,¹⁹ where the powerful are dethroned, and those who have been cast out are restored to a diverse community. Where all bodies and minds are valued by God. Where Jesus sees the way disabled people have been stigmatised and impoverished and pushed to the edge, and he gets angry. And then he does something about it. For the man who once had leprosy, the Man with a Mission, that foretaste of the kingdom changes his life. He has a gospel to proclaim.

The mission of the churches

When churches think about mission, they tend to think about mission to. This charitable, pastoral approach to mission has a long tradition in church history, as churches reached out to people who had been thrown on the rubbish heap of society. They set up schools for those whom society would not educate, hospitals for those whom society would not treat, and soup kitchens for those whom society had left destitute.²⁰ When the world considered people untouchable, churches reached out to touch them, sharing the gospel through words and hospitality alike.

But this history has a dark side. Christian pastoral care and mission have marginalised and disempowered disabled people. When the powerful reach out to those on the margins, it is easy for them to believe that they have everything to offer, while the objects of their charity only have need. What began as mission can easily become paternalism and colonialism.²¹ Postcolonial theorists have described the mission of western Christians to the majority world as “the politics of rescue” of the white saviour.²² Disabled people, too, have been used by Christian mission to motivate charity, as Christians imagine they are saving the “wretched of the earth”.²³ Thanks in part to this history of mission, a powerful “disability business” now defines and controls the lives of many disabled people.²⁴ Like the Temple priests waiting to judge the man who once had leprosy, these professional services decide whether disabled people are “deserving” enough for help, rather than working with us to create equity for all. A Christian model of outreach to the “needy” has shaped this disempowering system.

In my decade spent interviewing disabled Christians, I have heard many stories of people whose churches saw them as the object of ministry and mission, rather than people with ministry of their own – and even with a mission to the churches. Earlier, we talked about Nicki’s disempowering experiences in churches that wanted to serve her but could not imagine how she could serve them. Then there was Deirdre, who has a chronic illness and can rarely leave her bed. She longed to offer prayer ministry to the church where she remains a faithful member, at a distance. Deirdre not only had the gift of prayer, she had the rare gift of time to pray. But Deirdre’s offer to be part of the church prayer rota was never taken up. Her gifts went unused. There was Victor, a committed member of his church, who wanted to lead an Alpha group. His church leadership worried about how, as a blind man, he would serve dinner during the evening. In their failure to imagine a more inclusive, cooperative vision of Alpha, this church’s real failure of imagination lay in being unable to see Victor as a potential leader. For Nicki, Deirdre, Victor and many others, their churches could only see disabled people as objects of mission and ministry.

Instead, these disabled people longed to participate in their churches, through service, leadership and shared mission. Nicki knew she was a valued part of a church when she was able to serve her community through the youth group, connecting with young people in difficult situations. Another participant, Jane, believed that disabled people should be in church not just to receive outreach, but to play an active role in church life. Jane described this as mutual participation: “being helped and helping – reciprocal use of what skills we all have to crowdsource the desired result.”²⁵ Being church together means being part of an interdependent community, where we all minister to each other. As Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, we are all given unique gifts, and the parts of the body that “seem to be weaker” are indispensable. If the eye says to the hand, “I don’t need you,” the body is incomplete.²⁶

A mission for justice

But this vision of a missional kingdom is about more than inclusion. It’s about justice.

When we listen to the story of the Man with a Mission, we come to understand why inclusion is not enough. Too often, disabled people are invited to churches, but not truly welcomed there just as we are.²⁷ In mission to disabled people, when churches assume that disabled people are only here to receive, they may miss the ways disabled people are already being church together. “Come to the places from which you have been cast out,” churches say, “so that we can minister to you.” Why would disabled people respond enthusiastically to this invitation any more than the man healed from leprosy was willing to go to the Temple to be judged? The echoes of missional paternalism are evident. And when churches reach out in in mission to disabled people, they do not always ask why there are disabled people on the margins of society to reach out to at all. Like the priests in Mark 1, not enough churches are asking the uncomfortable questions about how they contribute to disabled people’s marginalisation, casting us out to the edge. That’s when we see how a sole focus on pastoral care can distract from questions of justice.

But this is a resistant reading; shift your perspective. There is church out here, in the wilderness. Disabled Christians are seeking communities where we are valued just as we are. When we can’t find that in the inaccessible buildings and inhospitable cultures of institutional churches, many of us are forming these communities for ourselves, ministering to one another and reaching out to the churches. In the UK, two examples are YouBelong and Disability and Jesus. Both have a mission to reach disabled people online, while working with churches to help them become more accessible. At the Living Edge conference on disability and churches,²⁸ we have spent the past decade reimagining a more just and inclusive church, through events uniquely led by disabled Christians for disabled Christians. In my research, I heard stories of prayer and fellowship groups where two or three disabled people gathered, and of disabled Christians ministering to each other in the corridors and kitchens of churches, when they could not get into the sanctuary. Here, on the edge, we call to each other: “Come and see a man who is angry about oppression and injustice, and wants to restore us to the church – through, and with, each other.” This is a mission to the churches as much as to those outside their gates. The Jesus of the upside-down kingdom is a Jesus that non-disabled members of churches might need to meet.

What does this mean for the institutional churches, and their tradition of mission to disabled people?

One of the great insights of liberation theology is that God is on the side of the oppressed. In the Mark 1 model, mission is about justice. Like Jesus, those in the churches may need to start by getting angry, asking why disabled people have been pushed to the margins – even if the answers are uncomfortably close to home. Just as Jesus often did, they may need to ask questions, and truly listen when disabled people share the gift and resource of our answers. Those willing to follow us to the “lonely places” may see that that God is already at work here, in mission by disabled people, to disabled people.

As churches learn to listen to our silenced stories, they may be confronted with some difficult questions. How can they empower disabled people’s mission and ministry where it is already happening, out on the edge? How can they enable the access, participation and leadership of disabled people, not just in our own communities, but in the churches where many of us have yet to be made welcome? This is mission, but it is not disempowering mission to disabled people. It does not position the outsiders as those who receive and the powerful as those who hold the keys to salvation. Instead, this is mission together with disabled people, in an upside-down kingdom of God.

Disabled people have a gospel to proclaim. If churches are willing to join us on the edge, they might learn to see disabled people not just as objects of ministry, but as fellow Christians with gifts and revelations to share with each other and the church. A blessing, not a burden. The church is renewed from the edge, Sam Wells tells us.²⁹ Together, we can be enriched by a new vision of mission with each other.

About the author

Dr Naomi Lawson Jacobs (they/them) is a disabled, neurodivergent social researcher, writer and trainer. Naomi completed a PhD on disabled people’s experiences of churches in 2019, and aims to use their research to support a growing disabled Christian movement, where a new thing is taking root on the edge of the church. Naomi’s book on disability, churches and social justice, cowritten with Emily Richardson, is due out in 2022. Naomi can be found on Twitter @naomi_jacobs, at home in Islington with spouse and cats, and sometimes even in church at St Luke’s, West Holloway.

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Notes

1 All participants cited in this study were interviewed for my primary research. Some of their stories are told in my thesis; others will be shared in a forthcoming book on disability and the church. Participants chose to use either their first names or pseudonyms, as approved by the SOAS University of London ethics committee. Naomi Lawson Jacobs, “The Upside-down Kingdom of God: A Disability Studies Perspective on Disabled People’s Experiences in Churches and Theologies of Disability” (PhD diss., SOAS University of London, 2019), https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32204/; Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson, At The Gates: Disability, Justice and the Churches [working title] (London: Darton, Longman & Todd: forthcoming).
2 It is always important to point out that “disability” is a modern category. The texts of the Bible, which speak to us from across ages and cultures, have different ways of categorising those we would now call disabled. Still, the Bible has helped to shape our modern category of disability. I have not attempted to define disability here, as it would derail the article, but I recommend reading disabled people’s own writing on disability oppression in society, e.g. Michael Oliver, The Politics of Disablement (Basingstoke & London: Macmillan Education, 1990); Sins Invalid, Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, 2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: Sins Invalid, 2019). For scholarship on the Hebrew Bible’s categories of disability, see Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature (London: T&T Clark, 2009).
3 Kerry H. Wynn, “The Normate Hermeneutic and Interpretations of Disability within the Yahwistic Narratives” in This Abled Body: Rethinking Disabilities in Biblical Studies, ed. Hector Avalos, Sarah J. Melcher and Jeremy Schipper (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 92.
4 Janet Lees, “Enabling the Body” in This Abled Body, ed. Avalos, Melcher and Schipper, 162.
5 Fiona MacMillan, “Calling from the Edge,” Thinking Anglicans, 9 February 2018, https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Calling-from-the-Edge-9-February-2018-Final.pdf.
6 Holly Joan Toensing, “‘Living Among the Tombs’: Society, Mental Illness, and Self-Destruction in Mark 5:1–20” in This Abled Body, ed. Avalos, Melcher and Schipper, 133.
7 Resistant readings centre the readings of marginalised groups, while acknowledging that interpretation is influenced by our social and historical perspectives. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992).
8 All quotations are from Mark 1:40–45 (NIV).
9 Sharon V. Betcher, “Saving the Wretched of the Earth,” Disability Studies Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2006).
10 Seth M. Ehorn, “Jesus and Ritual Impurity in Mark’s Gospel” in For Us, but Not To Us: Essays on Creation, Covenant, and Context in Honor of John H. Walton, ed. Adam E. Miglio et al (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2020), 223.
11 Ibid., 217–33.
12 Sam P. Mathew, “Jesus and Purity System in Mark’s Gospel: A Leper (Mk. 1:40–45),” Indian Journal of Theology 42, no. 2 (2000): 102–03.
13 Joel S. Baden and Candida R. Moss, “The Origin and Interpretation of ṡāraʿat in Leviticus 13–14,” Journal of Biblical Literature 130, no. 4 (2011): 643–62. Although some biblical scholars believe this purity system never existed, others think that, by the first-century Judaism of the Gospels, at least some disabled people were pushed to the margins of society by the stigma it created.
14 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 1966).
15 Margrit Shildrick, Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)Ethics (London: Routledge, 1997).
16 From a video conversation between disability activists Patty Berne and Stacey Milbern, “My Body Doesn’t Oppress Me, Society Does,” Barnard Center for Research on Women, 8 May 2017, https://bcrw.barnard.edu/videos/my-body-doesnt-oppress-me-society-does/.
17 “UK Poverty 2019/20,” Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 7 February 2020, https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/files-research/jrf_-_uk_poverty_2019-20_report_4.pdf, 8; Frances Ryan, Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People (London: Verso, 2019).
18 1 Mark:44 (NIV).
19 Some of my disabled research participants talked about the “upside-down kingdom of God”, in which society’s ableist values would be transformed and Jesus’ values would reign. Their theology was probably influenced by Donald B. Kraybill, The Upside-Down Kingdom, revised ed. (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2011).
20 Amanda Porterfield, Healing in the History of Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
21 These mixed impacts of church pastoral care and mission for disabled people have been written about by deaf and disability liberation theologians. See Hannah Lewis, Deaf Liberation Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007); Kathy Black, A Healing Homiletic: Preaching and Disability (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996).
22 Sherene H. Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela George,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 15, no. 2 (2000): 91–130.
23 Betcher, “Saving the Wretched of the Earth.”
24 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” Critical Inquiry 8, no. 4 (1982): 777–95. See also Gary L. Albrecht, The Disability Business: Rehabilitation in America (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1992).
25 Used with permission.
26 1 Cor. 12:21 (New International Version).
27 Lamar Hardwick, Disability and the Church: A Vision for Diversity and Inclusion (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021).
28 The Living Edge disability conferences are a partnership between Inclusive Church and St Martin-in-the-Fields church, now in their tenth year.
29 Samuel Wells, A Nazareth Manifesto: Being With God (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2015), 29.

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Video: If We Kept Silent the Stones Would Cry Out

by Ahmed Conteh

Gospel artist and praise and worship minister Ahmed Conteh reflects on the way that the distinctive gifts that African Christians bring to church life in Britain is particularly evident in the spirituality and vibrancy of worship and music.

Part of volume 37 issue 3 of ANVIL journal of theology and mission on the gift of African diaspora churches in the UK, published online in November 2021.

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The post Video: If We Kept Silent the Stones Would Cry Out appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

African millennial Christians in the diaspora and the identity question

by Joseph Ola

Introduction

This research-based article reflects on the implications of Christian young adults of African heritage – in the diaspora and on the continent – engaging with the question of their identity as they grow up in their multicultural contexts in an age when African Christianity is slowly taking the centre stage in world Christianity.

As an African living in the diaspora, a millennial and a Christian, the interplay of my experience of African life (growing up in Nigeria, the so-called “giant of Africa”), the unique world view I share with other (African) millennials and my core identity as a Christian has set the adventurous course of my journeys both in my migration to the UK, my exploration of pastoral ministry and my academic studies. The research upon which this article reflects, therefore, is a natural intersection of these convergent paths. Growing up in a Christian family in a semi-urban city in south-western Nigeria, I was exposed to African Christianity from a young age. By the time I was in my late teens, I began to take Christianity more personally (as opposed to it being “our family’s religion”). I was privileged to serve in various leadership positions in the Christian fellowship I was a part of while studying at Obafemi Awolowo University (between 2005 and 2010). I was a “hostel pastor” in my second year, the “Bible study coordinator” in my third year and the “fellowship pastor” in my final year. As a student who was saddled with pastoral responsibilities to fellow students, I had to stay spiritually nourished by reading Christian literature often recommended by senior colleagues to whom we looked up in the fellowship. Books by Kenneth E. Hagin, A. W. Tozer, John C. Maxwell, T. D. Jakes and Max Lucado were favourites in my growing library. By the time I began to pursue my pastoral calling more fully in the oldest classical Pentecostal denomination in Nigeria, the Apostolic Church, in 2012, the seminary of the said denomination no longer felt adequate to equip me for ministry to the younger generation I felt called to. I was convinced that an international exposure in my pastoral training would enable me to be more relevant in my ministry to the younger generation in Africa. This was the genesis of my migration to Europe in 2015 to study Pastoral Ministry in a Bible college in West Yorkshire.

My first disappointment was the realisation that the western world was not as “Christian” as I had imagined while reading books authored by westerners. (It suddenly made sense why my church in Nigeria refers to the UK as a mission field, when, in fact, the Apostolic Church itself originated in the UK in 1916.) Besides, after my one-year programme at the Bible college, I was no longer sure where I fitted in God’s mission. Indeed, I was no longer sure how to think of my identity. I had more questions than answers. I was co-opted into a new church plant that is a branch of my Nigerian church in the “UK Mission Field”. I found myself moving from a white-majority church in West Yorkshire to a Black-majority African-pioneered congregation in the north-west and began to pursue a master’s degree in Biblical and Pastoral Theology, which only seemed to amplify my identity crisis. It took a second master’s degree – this time, in African Christianity – to begin to find myself, embrace my heritage and appreciate the potential I hold to make a unique contribution to God’s mission.

Identity crisis in African Christianity

I began with my story to highlight an identity crisis that is not unique to me but rather intrinsic with the recent history of African Christianity. While the history of Christianity in Africa is almost as old as Christianity itself,¹ it was not until the nineteenth century that intentional missionary activity from the West to the rest of the world as well as evangelical revivals marked a new beginning for African Christianity as it is known today. Less than 250 years later, Africa prides itself as the continent with the highest number of Christians – about 685 million² – and arguably the continent with the most diverse expressions of Christianity.³ However, the efforts of the western missionaries that laboured on African soil in the nineteenth century became so intertwined with colonialism that describing them as “pathfinders for colonial boots”⁴ – as E. A. Ayandele did – became plausible. This jeopardised the preservation of the cultural identity of the Africans to whom they brought the gospel.⁵ The language used in describing the primal religions by the western missionaries (animism, heathenism, paganism, satanism, fetishism and so on) basically normalised the inferiority and primitiveness of the pre-Christian religious experience on the continent.⁶ This means that the growth and spread of Christianity in Africa in the last 120 years happened largely in the context of some “cultural disorientation” precipitated by the combination of western missionary efforts and colonialism, as many African theologians had inveighed against.⁷ Besides a colonial heritage, the advent of technology and globalisation continues to complicate the seeming cultural disorientation – more so for millennials who are coming to age in a world that is more connected than ever before. Globalisation continues to blur cultural lines as cross-pollination of ideas, world views and experiences continues to happen on the wheels of migration and the internet. The impact of the significant space occupied by African Christianity today, as the late British historian Andrew Walls had predicted, could be more than that of Martin Luther’s Reformation of the sixteenth century.⁸ It becomes important, therefore, to reassess the impact of the identity crisis that had trailed the growth and development of African Christianity in the past century, more so as it applies to millennials and the subsequent generations who will be the key players in the future of African Christianity. The research here presented attempts this.

Research overview: questions, aim, methodology and participants

Primarily, the research sought to explore the question of identity among young Nigerian Christians in the twentyfirst century by asking, “How do young Christians of Nigerian heritage (home and abroad) self-identify in light of their Christian faith and cultural heritage and what are the implications of this?” I wanted to know to what extent they stay in touch with their cultural heritage. What factors influence their Christian faith the most? To what extent is their Christian faith being influenced by western thought? How do they identify themselves with reference to their Christian faith? Do they see themselves as “African Christians” or describe themselves in other terms? I was persuaded that this line of enquiry would help me understand the peculiarities of their Christian experience both with respect to their cultural and religious heritage.

The research employed digital ethnography (using an online questionnaire) within the dual framework of both qualitative and quantitative research. The research recruited participants through an initial purposive sampling (from an online Christian mentorship platform made up predominantly of Nigerian young adults and led by the researcher), which then led to a snowballing (by asking interested participants to share the research announcement and survey link to those in their social media network who fitted the research population criteria).⁹

In total, 218 respondents gave consent to participate in the research,¹⁰ mostly females (64.2 per cent) with over a quarter of the 218 (26.6 per cent) living in the diaspora.¹¹ Of these, 62.1 per cent reside in Europe, 29.3 per cent in North America, 8.6 per cent in Asia and one elsewhere. The average age of participants is 28 and they represent 16 ethnicities,¹² live across 15 countries and represent at least 62 named church denominations. A typical participant is a Nigerian lady in her twenties who grew up in a religious family, currently lives in an urban town/city and is part of a Pentecostal church.

Key findings from the research

1. Findings on the African identity of the participants

In order to understand the extent to which the participants stay in touch with their cultural heritage, the questionnaire asks a few questions regarding language (fluency in spoken and written mother tongue), familiarity with indigenous proverbs and with what is considered a taboo in the respondent’s cultural background.

Table 1: Can you fluently speak your mother tongue?

Table 2: On a scale of 0 to 5, how well can you read works of literature written in your native language? (Showing results for 0 and 1 only)

From Tables 1 and 2 above, it is clear that the younger the participant, the less likely they will be fluent in their indigenous language. While only 5.5 per cent of participants aged 31–35 admit to not being fluent in their indigenous language, it rose to almost 4 in 10 (37.5 per cent) among participants aged 18–20. Likewise, while only 2.8 per cent of participants aged 31–35 could not read works of literature written in their native language, it rose to 1 in 4 participants (25 per cent) among those aged 18–20. Furthermore, as the last three rows of Table 2 show, the challenge of fluency and proficiency in native language is greatly increased for participants in the diaspora. The same trend was seen with familiarity with proverbs and with what is considered a taboo in the cultural heritage of each participant.

Figure 1: As an African Christian, how important is the “African identity” in your faith?

208 responses

It’s not important (11.5%)

It’s somewhat important (49%)

It’s so important that it defines my Christian faith (14.9%)

I don’t consider myself as an “African Christian” (24.5%)

Moreover, as Figure 1 reveals, while 36 per cent of all participants either do not consider themselves as an “African Christian” (24.5 per cent) or do not think their “African identity” is important to their Christian faith (11.5 per cent), the tendency is significantly higher among younger participants (57.1 per cent of 18 to 20-year-olds) as shown in Table 3.

Table 3: As an African Christian, how important is the “African identity” in your in your faith?

Furthermore, to probe the understanding of the participants on what “African identity” means, the questionnaire asks, “In what ways is your church ‘African’, if any?” to which a wide range of responses were received. The broad categories identified in the responses include mode of worship (the jubilant singing and dancing), leadership (the domination of male leaders), doctrine (beliefs and practices that are adaptations of African traditional religion), prayer style (loud and spirited), language (evidenced by the need for interpreters in certain denominations), dressing (especially regarding what is considered inappropriate – especially for women) and conformity to African culture and traditions (e.g. upholding the values of respect for elders, togetherness and honour for spiritual leaders as representatives of God). Generally, the tone with which many of the participants described what they considered African practices or beliefs in their church is with disdain. For example, R8, a 26-year-old male, says that in his church, their “dressing, type of songs sang, and our doctrine in the last 20 [years] has been skewed and infested” while R127, a 20-year-old female, says her church is African simply because the church is “too rigid and primitive”. Adding to the denunciations against African identity, R172 (a 21-year-old female in the diaspora) says of her African majority church:

My church denomination was founded by an African and has its headquarters in Africa. Traditions like respecting and obeying elders even when they are wrong, inability to explain myself because I am younger, [and how the pastor’s] personal conviction automatically becomes a doctrine are the African things about my church.

Such responses are not without exception, of course. Speaking proudly of her home church’s Africanness, R107 (a 35-year-old female in the diaspora) writes,

I would say my church back in Nigeria is very African in its mode of worship and leadership… [T]here are parts of the Yoruba culture reflected in the doctrines of the church [and] I do not consider this to be a disadvantage, rather, I consider it to be an expression of the diversity of the church of Christ.

In summary, while older African Millennial Christians (AMCs) can be said to be more in touch with their African heritage, younger AMCs in Nigeria are less likely and those in the diaspora even more less likely. Likewise, older AMCs significantly consider African identity as being at least somewhat important to their Christian faith while younger AMCs are less likely to do so. Finally, most AMCs are less likely to view their sense of African identity with pride; on the contrary, they are more likely to see it as being restrictive – more so for the females.

2. Findings on factors influencing the faith development of participants

It was found that the top three factors influencing the faith development of the participants are: their parents (47.5 per cent); a Christian fellowship in a school, college or tertiary institution (35 per cent); and a Christian mentor (20.7 per cent). It was interesting to find out that the aforementioned factors have more influence on these millennials than their church pastors or the pastors they follow online (17.5 per cent and 17.1 per cent respectively). “Christian literature” also appears to be a top influence (12.9 per cent), especially among those in the diaspora. Talking more about the books that had influenced their faith development (Figure 2), the first striking thing to note is that the highest ranking “book” (supposedly) on the chart is, in fact, not a book but a Christian movie ministry based in Nigeria called “The Mount Zion Faith Ministries International” (MZFMI). The fact that the question that generated these responses in the questionnaire was open-ended led to this finding,¹³ as many of the respondents believed that MZFMI deserved to be mentioned as a major influence on their faith development and, as an insider to the research population, I could not agree more. MZFMI is the most successful Christian movie industry in Africa and a worthy contender on the global stage. Within the last 20 years, the ministry has partnered with drama ministries in Canada, USA, Australia the UK and other western countries to shoot movies that were intended to reach out to diaspora African Christian communities as well as their ready audience in Africa. Indeed, the story of the impact of MZFMI is a research project waiting to be investigated.

Another striking finding in this top-12 resources list is that out of the 11 authors on that list, only one is an African (and Nigerian) – Gbile Akanni. All the others, apart from Benny Hinn, are American authors and all the books specifically mentioned were published between 1946 and 2003. My insider insight suggests that these books were often recommended reading from the older generation of adults or older “young adults” who are mentoring this generation of millennial Christians.

Figure 2: The top 12 most influential books and their authors

3. Findings on the impact of western thought on the participants

Besides the diminishing proficiency in indigenous languages alongside an increasing early mastery of English language and the dominance of western Christian authors in the faith formation of the population represented by the respondents, further findings confirm the high impact of western thought on the population. For example, participants were found to be impacted more by movies and podcasts from “whites/westerners/foreigners” than by the same resources produced by “Africans/Nigerians”. This confirms my findings in an independent research study I carried out in 2018 involving 100 African Christian youths from different church traditions between the ages of 18 and 25. I asked a few questions aimed at discovering the source of their spiritual nourishment among other variables. I found that:

Much more youths claimed to get their spiritual nourishment from engaging with books or other resources from “white foreigners” (70.5 per cent) and from online podcasts or videos (61.4 per cent) than from other African ministers (36.4 per cent) or from their pastor’s sermons or books (60.2 per cent).¹⁴

Moreover, some of the participants made remarks with undertones of the inferiority of African cultural heritage to the western world view. For example, R23 (a 26-year-old female) says, “I believe we took religion and aligned it with our culture – which is not so in the western world – and this has reduced our thinking faculty…” To R23, Africans, by virtue of their inherent religiosity, have a reasoning deficit, which, in her presumption, “is not so in the [superior] western world”. The same inclination is found in the remarks of R48 (a 22-year-old female), who says that in her church, they “pray aloud and fight against [spiritual] enemy [more] than they do abroad” – in which case, what “they do abroad” is supposed to be better – or worse, the standard. In summary, the West continues to have a dominant influence on the world view of AMCs, often to the detriment of the cultural heritage of the AMCs.

Figure 3: Where do you get your spiritual nourishment from?

Reflection on research findings and its implications

In a nutshell, the findings of this study are like a two-page letter with bad news on one page and good news on the other. The bad news is that African identity is gradually being eroded among AMCs, less gradually among those in the diaspora, and predictably more so among the upcoming generations after them. With the prevalence of the tendency to overvalue and embrace foreign (western) culture at the detriment of African traditional values, younger AMCs are further away from owning their Africanness than the older AMCs are. As AMCs are becoming parents, and soon, grandparents, one wonders how long before African identity becomes merely a label for those living in the continent so-named or a prefix to a new identity for those in the diaspora. The good news, however, is that AMCs are still very involved and interested in Christianity – unlike millennials in the West! In their research on American millennials, Thom and Jess Rainer found them to be “the least religious of any generation in modern American history”.¹⁵ Only a small portion of their over 1,000 respondents are Christians while a majority represented a post-Christian mindset – and their research is now 10 years old! By contrast, the research population for this study comprised of more than 200 Christian millennials, all of whom had committed to taking the Christian faith seriously – most of them beginning in their teenage years. The primary implication of this research finding, therefore, is a need to figure out a way to foster the discovery of a healthy selfawareness for these young Africans – a self-awareness that is rooted in their culture and heritage. An African proverb says, “If you do not know where you came from, you will not know where you are going.” In other words, as Harvey Kwiyani articulates it (quoting Marcus Garvey), “Any people who are not aware of their history and culture are like a tree that has no roots.”¹⁶ The exploration of creative means to reconnect AMCs to their heritage, thus fostering a healthy self-awareness and reclamation of their Africanness, will have implications for those influencing them, for their Christian faith and ultimately for missio Dei.

1. Implications for older AMCs

The research finding already points to a group of culturally intelligent AMCs (most of them between ages 31 and 35) who are still proficiently in touch with their African heritage and values both in Africa and in the diaspora. For example, R45 (a 31-year-old diaspora female) says:

We need to be “African Christians” not an African who is a Christian but trying to fit their Christianity into a western mould, thereby making our culture second place to our religion. One body. One flock. God placed us in our families for good reasons so we should not discard who we are in order to be who God is calling us to be.

Three out of every 10 participants in this study are in that 31–35 category. Those among them who are living in the African diaspora are already grappling with the challenges of living in the tensions of multiple cultures – me, too! This affords us more critical reflection that can potentially yield even more adeptness in our cultural intelligence and make us more suitable to pass on the legacy of a healthy self-awareness and rootedness in our African identity. Those in this category are the people with the greatest potential of ameliorating the slow death of African heritage among younger AMCs and Gen Z screenagers.¹⁷ This is so for a few reasons.

First, many of us are becoming parents and are coming to terms with the full weight of the parental responsibility coming upon us. We are in a vantage position to see the need to claim our cultural identities with their full riches so as to be able to pass them on. The finding in this research of our parents being the most influential faith development factor in our lives is striking (and consistent with the finding in similar studies).¹⁸ However, while it is almost too late for our parents to make any more significant contribution in orientating us towards a development of a healthy African identity, we now have that opportunity. In doing this, however, we must avoid making a common mistake our parents made. As an insider to the research population, I believe that part of the errors of the generation of our parents is in teaching us cultural values merely as tradition without making us see the “why”. When the true value of a cultural value is unknown, the motivation to pass it on is lost. As such, those of us who are culturally aware millennials will do well to pass on the baton with the willingness and readiness to answer the barrage of questions that our children will ask us.

Second, that millennials are looking for mentors is a known fact. “Three out of four Millennials would like a leader to come beside them and teach them leadership skills” because they “value a leader who is willing to take his or her time to teach skills that otherwise may not be learned”.¹⁹ In light of this, older AMCs – many of whom have benefitted from mentoring themselves – will do well to be more intentional in mentoring younger millennials and those coming behind them. As the pioneer of an online mentoring platform with a membership of over 3,000 AMCs located across over 60 countries, I have witnessed first-hand how desperately younger AMCs are looking for mentors and how mutually impactful, effective and transformative the experience can be for older AMCs who will be willing to take up this responsibility. Since AMCs are being influenced more by their mentors than their pastors, older AMCs will be perpetuating a good legacy by making themselves available, accessible and teachable in order for younger AMCs to learn from them in life-on-life contexts. To be effective at doing this, they will need to equip themselves with resources from around the world and, more intentionally, go after resources that can help them understand their Christian faith through the lens of their African heritage. For starters, in addition to the Kenneth Hagin books and Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life, they should have the Africa Study Bible and Africa Bible Commentary on their shelves or smartphones.^{20 21}

Third, those among the older AMCs who have (or will have) a call into pastoral ministry have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference in giving both roots and wings to the next generation of African youth. (After all, making a difference is the major definition of “success” and “achievement” among millennials.)²² They will need to pursue pastoral and theological training that will help them minister effectively in a way that prospers an African contribution to the mission of God through their ministries. One way to do this will be for them to develop proficiency in the understanding and use of African proverbs in their sermons and everyday speech. Indeed, one could ask, what will be African about the preaching of an African preacher who is neither familiar with nor appreciative of African proverbs? For the African, without proverbs, “speech flounders and falls short of its mark, whereas aided by them, communication is fleet and unerring”.²³ This necessarily calls for paying attention to the personality and wisdom of the elderly in their lives. These elderly people show the AMCs images of who they will also become in some years’ time, according to their time of life. Those among the older AMCs without a specific pastoral call will do well, in any case, to plug themselves into serving in their respective churches as ambassadors of Christ and role models of proper humanness (as conceptualised in Ubuntu or Ọmọlúàbí African philosophies).^{24 25} An example of what this could look like is the Ọmọlúàbí Podcast I launched in 2021, co-hosted with my wife. The focus of the podcast is to highlight the convergence between African proverbs and Biblical wisdom and its dual aim is both to showcase a rich collection of African proverbs and offer such indigenous wisdom to young adults of African descent on demand – and, indeed, to anyone.²⁶

2. Missiological implications for African churches in the diaspora and in Africa

With 70 per cent of Africans being under the age of 30 and the median age of African Christians being 19.5, there is tremendous potential locked up in the youthfulness of African Christianity.²⁷ However, unleashing this potential depends upon a mutual involvement of the young and the old coming sideby- side in God’s mission. Joel’s prophecy about God pouring out his Spirit “upon all flesh”²⁸ in the last days is already upon us – indeed since the day of Pentecost! – and it continues to have more pressing relevance with the passage of time. Andrew Walls’s submission of this current era of Christian history pointing to a justifiable “hope for greater things”²⁹ is arguably truer in Africa than elsewhere. (Indeed, the shift in missiological discourses from “Kingdom” to “Spirit” seems more “at home” in Africa’s enchanted cosmology than elsewhere.)³⁰ So while mission today excitedly looks like “finding out where the Holy Spirit is at work and joining in”,³¹ it is even more exciting that this Spirit is available to all flesh – young and old, male and female alike. The “spiritual experience and expertise of every member,” as Father Koshy reminded us at Edinburgh 2010 conference, “must be recognised and drawn into the common spirituality of the local congregations”.³²

The Yorubas (West Africa) have a couple of helpful sayings that put this in perspective. They say, “An elder cannot be in the market and permit a child’s head to rest askew (at the back of his mother).” In other words, to be an elder is to be capable of looking out for children and covering the oversights and blind spots that threaten their safety. In some other contexts, they will say, “The youth’s hand cannot reach the rafters, and the elder’s hand cannot enter the gourd” – that is, both the young and the old have unique contributions to make if only they will work together. These two sayings find definite intersection in a third saying: “A youth is wise, and the elder is wise: that is the principle by which people go about at Ifẹ̀” (Ifẹ̀ being the cradle of all Yorubas and, in this proverb, symbolising “all of life”). The wisdom in these sayings is that both the young and the old – and indeed, male and female – have something to offer in every area of life. The youths need the mentorship of those older than them and the older generation need the creativity and fresh expressions of the youths. African Christianity needs such mutuality that recognises the relevance of both the young and the old and makes both feel welcome in a church.

Specifically among diaspora African Christians, parents need to be more intentional in deepening the heritage consciousness of their children. They can do this, as Paul Ayokunle suggests, by “demonstrating genuine appreciation and regard for the beauty of their own culture”.³³ Besides, older millennials (especially those deepened their roots in Africa and are now flapping their wings in the multicultural West, having migrated there more recently) need to model their appreciation for their cultural heritage to younger folks. Likewise, African diaspora pastors will need to embrace and learn how to do church multiculturally and intergenerationally so that the younger generation will find their churches more relatable and the opportunity for expressing their heritage without inferiority will flourish. It is high time young people in their twenties were incorporated into the leadership of our churches – which, according to the research findings, must be multi-ethnic and multicultural for AMCs to belong therein. Moreover, in discipling AMCs and those coming behind them, African churches – on the continent and beyond – will need to figure out how to redeem the traditional rites of passage – especially initiation – that used to prepare young men and young women for adulthood in different African communities.³⁴ Western education cannot suffice for such preparation. The fact that there were unchristian practices in some of these traditional rites is not sufficient ground to throw the baby out with the bath water. If there is a message that can be translated into any context, it is the Christian message. In any case, the African (diaspora) church needs both the Bible and helpful cultural values to ready her youth for what lies ahead.

Conclusion

As the team at the Center for the Study of Global Christianity tells us, “A typical Christian today is a nonwhite woman living in the global South, with lowerthan- average levels of societal safety and proper health care.”³⁵ With Africa being home to most Christians across the world, that “non-white woman living in the global South” could very well be an African, and given Africa’s median age (18),³⁶ she would likely be a young adult. The obvious likelihood is that sooner than later, the leaders of world Christianity will be today’s AMCs. However, one cannot but wonder, when the time comes for Africa’s youth to take the lead in global Christianity, whether they will be faithful enough to deliver a uniquely African contribution that will advance the mission of God. As Andrew Walls has occasionally reiterated, the fullness of Christ – which is our Christian goal – can only be realised by bringing together the totality of cross-cultural translations of the gospel and the totality of the experiences of different generations of Christians. Consequently, the necessity for African Christians to be both African and Christian without apology or feeling of inferiority wherever they find themselves is underscored by the supreme weightiness of missio Dei. Anything short of this withdraws from the beauty of the mosaic of God’s unique revelation in Christ to different groups of people in different places at different eras. Indeed, Christians who give up their cultural identity in exchange for that of another sell themselves short on partaking of the true flavours of the fruit of Christianity among them – and worse, those who make them do so are standing in the way of the Light of the World. May a fire of intentionality come upon the church in Africa and its diaspora and birth deliberateness in her efforts to acknowledge the great gifts God has given to her youth and see to it that these gifts be delivered to the world at large for the sake of God’s mission. Amen.

About the author

Joseph Ola holds master’s degrees in African Christianity and in Biblical and Pastoral Theology from Liverpool Hope University. He is a pastor in the Apostolic Church Liverpool, a youth mentor, and the founder of Alive Mentorship Group – an online mentoring platform for thousands of young adults across over 60 nations. An alumnus of London Pioneer School, Joseph is the author of over 10 books and a trustee of Missio Africanus. He is happily married to Anu, with whom he co-hosts Not Alone Today Podcast and Omolúàbí Podcast. They are blessed with two boys.

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Notes

1 Scholars and historians like Andrew Walls and Thomas Oden have, in various works, chronicled the spread and impact of Christianity in Northern Africa in the first few centuries before the Islamic revolution. See Andrew F. Walls, “Africa in Christian History: Retrospect and Prospect,” Journal of African Christian Thought 1, no. 1 (1998): 2–15; Andrew F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002); Andrew F. Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2006); Thomas C. Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007); Andrew F. Walls, Crossing Cultural Frontiers: Studies in the History of World Christianity, ed. Mark R. Gornik (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2017).
2 The official figure as of January 2021 is 684,931,000. See Gina A. Zurlo, Todd M. Johnson and Peter F. Crossing, “World Christianity and Mission 2021: Questions about the Future,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 45, no. 1 (2020): 23, doi.org/10.1177/2396939320966220.
3 See John S. Mbiti, “Main Features of Twenty-First Century Christianity in Africa,” Missio Africanus Journal of African Missiology 1, no. 2 (2016):72–88.
4 E. A. Ayandele, The Missionary Impact on Modern Nigeria 1842–1914: A Political and Social Analysis (London: Longmans, 1966); cited in Ogbu U. Kalu, “Introduction: The Shape and Flow of African Church Historiography,” in African Christianity: An African Story, ed. Ogbu U. Kalu (Pretoria, South Africa: Dept. of Church History, University of Pretoria, 2005), 3.
5 Adiele Eberechukwu Afigbo, Ropes of Sand: Studies in Igbo History and Culture (Ibadan: Oxford University Press, 1981), 384.
6 Hence Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator’s satirical subtitle to his book Religion and Faith in Africa: Confessions of an Animist (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2018).
7 For example, in the Nigerian context, see Luke Mbefo, “Theology and Inculturation: The Nigerian Experience,” CrossCurrents 37, no. 4 (1987): 395, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24459367.
8 Harvey Kwiyani, “Moya Chronicles and the Storying of African Christianity,” CMS Pioneer Mission, 10 May 2021, https://pioneer. churchmissionsociety.org/2021/05/moya-chronicles-and-the-storying-of-african-christianity/.
9 No identifying information was asked of participants who completed the survey online except for general demographic questions, neither were they given any incentives for their participation.
10 200 was chosen as the benchmark for the sample size in agreement with the research supervisor as a reasonable size for the current research. While power analysis had been proposed as the statistical means of determining an appropriate sample size for research, it is an unrealistic calculation for this current research especially because there is no previous similar research that can inform the statistical variables needed to calculate the sample size. See Kjell Erik Rudestam and Rae R. Newton, Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2015), 119–20.
11 Diaspora respondents are from 14 countries: Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Northern Cyprus, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, the UK, the USA and the UAE.
12 Yorubas, Igbos and Edos constitute the majority (90.4 per cent). Others include: Hausa, Efik, Ijaw, Utugwang, Gbari, Idoma, Urhobo, Andoni, Oworo, Tiv, Ebira, Eleme, Itsekiri and Igala ethnicities.
13 The question says, “Apart from the Bible, what book has influenced your Christian faith the most?”
14 Joseph Ola, “A Missiology for a Youthful Continent,” in Africa Bears Witness: Mission Theology and Praxis in the 21st Century, ed. Harvey Kwiyani (Nairobi, Kenya: African Theological Network Press, 2021).
15 Thom S. Rainer and Jess W. Rainer, The Millennials: Connecting to America’s Largest Generation (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2011), 47.
16 Harvey C. Kwiyani, Our Children Need Roots and Wings: Equipping and Empowering Young Diaspora Africans for Life and Mission (Liverpool: Missio Africanus, 2019).
17 A term often used in reference to younger millennials or Gen Z kids because of their “affinity for electronic communication via computer, phone, television, etc. screens”. See Marie L. Radford and Lynn Silipigni Connaway, “‘Screenagers’ and Live Chat Reference: Living Up to the Promise,” Scan 26, no. 1 (2007): 31–39.
18 Thom and Jess Rainer found that “[m]ore than one-half (51 per cent) of the [American Millennial] generation says that their parents have a strongly positive influence on their lives.” See Rainer and Rainer, The Millennials.
19 Rainer and Rainer, The Millennials, 41.
20 Oasis International Limited, Africa Study Bible: New Living Translation, ed. Dr John Jusu (Tyndale House Publishers, 2016).
21 Africa Bible Commentary: A One-Volume Commentary Written by 70 African Scholars, ed. Tokunboh Adeyemo (Nairobi, Kenya: HippoBooks, 2010).
22 Rainer and Rainer, The Millennials.
23 Oyekan Owomoyela, Yoruba Proverbs (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 12.
24 Ubuntu is a philosophical concept of identity among the Ngunis of Southern Africa. It is often articulated through the dictum, “I am because we are, and since we are therefore I am” – highlighting interdependence as a common reality for all humans, such that one discovers the full import of one’s humanness through one’s interactions with others. See Barbara Nussbaum, “African Culture and Ubuntu: Reflections of a South African in America,” World Business Academy: Perspectives 17, no. 1 (2003): 2.
25 Ọmọlúàbí is to the Yorubas of West Africa what Ubuntu is to the Ngunis of Southern Africa – a conceptualisation of (noble) personhood and useful exemplification of African identity. See Olusola Victor Olanipekun, “Omoluabi: Re-thinking the Concept of Virtue in Yoruba Culture and Moral System,” Africology: The Journal of Pan African Studies 10, no. 9 (2017): 219.
26 Joseph Ola and Anu Ola, “001 – Introduction to Ọmọlúàbí Podcast”, podcast audio, Omoluabi Podcast, 25 January 2021, https://www. josephkolawole.org/omoluabi.
27 See Africa Study Bible, “Why We Should Value our Youth,” TGC Africa, 13 March 2020, https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/article/valueour- youth-africa-study-bible/; David E. Kiwuwa, “Africa is young. Why are its leaders so old?” CNN, 29 October 2015, https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/15/africa/africas-old-mens-club-op-ed-david-e-kiwuwa/index.html.
28 Acts 2:17, NRSV.
29 Faith & Leadership, “Andrew Walls: An exciting period in Christian history,” Faith and Leadership, 11 June 2011, https://www.faithandleadership.com/andrew-walls-exciting-period-christian-history.
30 For example, Edinburgh 1910 conference was tagged “Advancing the Kingdom of Christ” while Edinburgh 2010 conference was tagged “Joining in with the Spirit”.
31 Kirsteen Kim, “Edinburgh 1910 to 2010: From Kingdom to Spirit,” Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 30, no. 2 (2010): 16.
32 Fr Vineeth Koshy, Youth Envisioning Ecumenical Mission: Shifting Ecumenical Mission Paradigms for Witnessing Christ Today (Edinburgh, 2010): 1, http://www.wcc2006.info/fileadmin/files/edinburgh2010/files/conference_docs/Parallel1_Koshy_youth.pdf.
33 Paul Ayokunle, “African Christian Parents and the Task of Parenting in the West,” Moya Chronicles 2, no. 10 (2021): 2, https://missioafricanus.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Moya-Chronicles-13_compressed.pdf.
34 Some Christian communities in East Africa are already doing this. For example, see Godfrey Katumba, Solemn Communion: A Critical Examination of the Current Practices Surrounding the Completion of Christian Initiation in Masaka Diocese (Uganda, East Africa), African Theological Studies 15 (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2019).
35 Dr Gina A. Zurlo, “The World as 100 Christians,” Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary, 29 January 2020, https://www.gordonconwell.edu/blog/100christians/.
36 Jeff Desjardins, “Mapped: The Median Age of the Population on Every Continent,” Visual Capitalist, 15 February 2019, https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-the-median-age-of-every-continent/.

The post African millennial Christians in the diaspora and the identity question appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

A first-of-its-kind Master’s programme led by a renowned African academic is the first step towards a movement of post-colonial missionaries, where mutual learning across cultures is embedded from the start.

“I grew up in Africa, so I know what an empowered African church can do,” says Dr Harvey Kwiyani, who has been officially announced as programme lead for the MA in Theology, Mission and Ministry with a focus on African Christian Diaspora at Church Mission Society.

This new MA pathway, part of CMS’s Pioneer Mission Leadership Training, brings together the unique mission focus of CMS training with the fastest growing part of the church in Britain – the African diaspora. Ten students have joined the new African MA pathway, alongside 23 other starting new courses with CMS this year, from undergraduate-level study to doctoral research. Specialised modules will take these students on a journey through African church history, Pentecostalism and African traditional religions.

“I hope this Master’s will help empower and equip the African church in Britain,” says Dr Kwiyani, “and that will help in the re-evangelisation of Britain. But I’m also excited that we are creating an intentional space within CMS where African and British students can learn together and learn from each other.”

The widely recognised shift in the centre of gravity of world Christianity towards the global south has clear implications: “Fifty years ago, a typical missionary would be a white European working somewhere in Africa,” says Dr Kwiyani. “Now Africans have to engage in mission in ways they have not done before.”

Dr Kwiyani is himself an example of this: a Malawian missiologist and theologian who has lived, worked and studied in Europe and North America for the past 20 years. His new part-time role as programme lead at CMS goes alongside another new part-time role, as CEO of Global Connections, the UK network for world mission, cementing his place as a key figure in the global mission conversation.

Jonny Baker, director of mission education at CMS, said: “We’re really excited about this new programme of study and the mix of students it will bring. We hope and expect that it will change us, as well as equip a wider range of students for pioneering mission.

“We are dreaming that in the coming years we will be able to introduce similar pathways with an Asian and a Latin American focus, to create the broadest possible inter-cultural conversation about mission today.”

Dr Kwiyani underlines the ambition of the project: “The hope is that with this Master’s, putting together Africans and British Christians, we create a movement that will be able to articulate what’s going on for the wider body of Christ. We’re hoping to create a movement of post-colonial missionaries who will be able to work across cultures and races.”

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The Partnership for Missional Church journey is about setting churches free to join in God’s mission. Nigel Rooms, leader of PMC in the UK, shares a bit about one of the key spiritual practices in this process.

By Nigel Rooms, leader of Partnership for Missional Church in the UK

A minister who was new in his post began regularly attending the church’s men’s breakfast on Saturday mornings. Each week, he asked the same question: “What’s God been up to this past week?”

Generally the men told stories of their comings and goings or how they had participated in a church activity. One man kept quiet every week until one Saturday morning he burst out: “I knew that you’d ask this question for the umpteenth time! It’s made me really mad until this week when I began to really think about it…” And he proceeded to tell a story that began with God, not himself or the church.

“Practical atheism” vs “spiritual discernment”

Research in churches in many places around the globe has found that when people are asked about their beliefs, they will affirm the creeds and their faith in God’s care. However, when asked to describe God’s activity – what God’s up to, how God’s working – the responses tend to be about human or churchy activity. People, not God, become the subject of the sentence: “We’ve been running a children’s club”; “There’s a new cafe ministry happening.”

This is what we call “practical atheism”.

On the other hand, when churches journey through the PMC process, they stop talking about the church so much and start talking about God. This is the result of asking repeatedly and intentionally: “What is God up to here?” This question is the essence of what we call “spiritual discernment” – one of the six “holy habits” of the PMC journey.

We are inviting churches to develop a way of life that is attentive to the movement of the Spirit among them and in the world around them (as we see in the case of one Nottingham church). God is present and active, working for good at all times and in all circumstances – even on a cross. Our task is to “discover what God is up to and join in”.

Spiritual discernment: paying attention

To discover what God is up to, we must pay attention to three things.

1. The first is the Scriptures and our theological traditions. What do we know of God from the testimony of the Bible and the saints who have preceded us? We need to understand God as revealed in Jesus Christ and learn from those who have recognised the movement of the Spirit through the ages. This in turn can fuel our imaginations.
2. Second, we need to pay attention to our own experience. What are the emerging passions and concerns among the church? What gives us joy and makes us feel most alive? Who is coming to be part of our congregation and flourishing through our ministry? These questions go beyond evaluating our perceived effectiveness. They focus our attention on what is stirring in the hearts of our fellowship.
3. Third, we need to pay attention to what is happening among the people around us in our wider community and society. Who are our neighbours? What are the passions, interests and concerns that clamour for attention among them? What shapes their lives and how are these things changing? We can gain insights in this area from the media and social commentary and from observation and conversation.

Detectives of divinity

Having these three perspectives in mind, we ask the question, “What is God up to?” How does the God revealed in Scripture respond to the cries of people around us? Are we in tune with this and responding likewise? Or have we become so preoccupied with ourselves that we are oblivious to the needs around us? Perhaps we can find God at work among those who would never darken the doors of our church?

Again, the question is not, what is the church doing? Our aim is to discern what God is up to. Our response is to name this and to try to align ourselves with the Spirit.

Churches that have taken this practice seriously have created congregations full of detectives of divinity. We have noticed an enormous increase in encouragement, energy and enthusiasm when people create and articulate sentences with God as the subject of an active verb, for example: “God is bringing…”, “God is helping…”, “God is moving…”. They now sense that God is alive and active among them.

If you would like to find out more about spiritual discernment, one of the six “holy habits” in the Partnership for Missional Church process, contact Nigel Rooms, leader of PMC in the UK: nigel.rooms [at] churchmissionsociety.org

If you would like to read more about the six holy habits, purchase Forming the Missional Church: creating deep cultural change in congregations (P139) at grovebooks.co.uk

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At the Church Mission Society Conversations Day in November 2016, I gave a talk entitled Disabled Dreams: coping with change. This talk was the result of reflecting on my experience of dreaming with God, being disabled time and again, coping with this change and dreaming once more. As I shared my experiences and presented my model for coping with change, it became clear to me that the disablements themselves are all part of God’s calling on my life.

By Emma Major, lay pioneer minister at St Nicolas Earley

I’m a pioneer minister and feel most comfortable in the places less commonly inhabited by most ministers: walking alongside people as they dream of how their lives might be and introducing them to God as we journey. Over the last five years this has included crying with families whose babies have died, supporting women coping with post-natal depression, providing space for young mothers and their toddlers, creating new forms of church including Messy, cafe and forest churches and forming a missional community. Right now, I am developing an online prayer and discipling network for disabled people who, like me, have found themselves struggling to access society and church.

Each of these communities started as a dream, an idea planted by God in the situation where I found myself. They have evolved through experience and drawn on the gifts and skills God knew I had in my toolkit. But at the beginning they were all just an image in my mind at a time of disablement.

Dream

In the words of Martin Luther King Jr, “I have a dream.” I have many dreams, aims, ideas and plans; God is good at using my creativity and showing me what he would like me to do for him. Unfortunately, life has a habit of getting in the way of these dreams; life literally keeps disabling me. This disablement is frustrating, upsetting and often depressing. I don’t like change; it brings out my inner toddler and often results in a tantrum.

There have been a number of major change points in my life. I’m going through one right now as Multiple Sclerosis progresses through my body and causes mobility problems, pain and sight loss. It is this current disablement which has caused me to reflect on my dreams, what it means to be disabled, how we can cope with change as individuals, pioneers and communities and what light may shine through brokenness. Before this I endured a series of miscarriages which resulted in the dream of a support group for women in similar circumstances, the development of liturgy for a service of remembrance and the writing of books. Ten years before, intense depression left me on my knees and completely open to God; that was when I heard his call on my life. Through each disabled dream came a light of hope and a new dream. But first, we have to grieve…

Grieve

Jean Vanier, founder of the 130 L’Arche communities around the world, has written about disability and theology. In Community and Growth he says, “Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.” Jesus healed people: the blind man, the woman who touched his cloak, the dead, children and even tax collectors. Jesus knew that this was necessary to bring them into community with others and with God.

Most of us are not healed dramatically, but love, acceptance and companionship through grief can heal more than we appreciate in our fast-paced, success-driven society. We need time and care to mourn the changes in our lives and/or ministry, to acknowledge the pain, disappointment, loss or anger and come to a place of acceptance before we move on. But to do this we need to lean…

Lean

In Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John, Jean Vanier says, “The message of this gospel is simple. It is about being chosen to become a friend of Jesus. It is about mutual presence and learning from each other. To live as Jesus lived and to love as he loved.” This love rejoices in each and every one of us for who we are; a love which wants us to love ourselves and others despite our brokenness. We need to learn to lean, to reduce the value we place on standing strong and firm and instead embrace mutual dependence and the benefit of leaning on each other in times of trouble. And, of course, we can lean on God through prayer and Bible study, with communities and with spiritual directors or guides. Through this leaning we can move beyond our disappointment and pain and start to listen…

Listen

In Japan, broken objects are often repaired with gold – the art is called Kintsugi. The flaw is seen as a unique piece of the object’s history and adds to its beauty. Jean Vanier wrote, “Sharing weakness and difficulties is more nourishing for others than sharing our successes.”

This is what God wants of us within communities. It is what pioneers are called to create, what I feel called to in my disabling – to allow the light to break through the brokenness of life to heal others. But more importantly I am learning to listen to the experiences of others as they have journeyed through their disabled dreams and to learn from them. Through community, as well as individually, we can hear God’s still small voice as he shows us a new dream for our lives. And so we dream again.

Dreaming through change

I have always seen the disabling times in my life as problems to be solved, as hurdles to be overcome, but experience, reflection and prayer are teaching me that problems and hurdles are everywhere.

It is in these times of weakness that I find God with me and see his call on my life. It is in these times that God shines light into the brokenness and seals gaps with his gold. God wants us to focus on the opportunities to serve him. Life is not about merely coping with change but about leaning, trusting and embracing God’s call to be disciples in communities together.

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By Dr Harvey Kwiyani, head of Missio Africanus and part of the Church Mission Society Pioneer Mission Leadership Training course faculty

In August of 1861, David Livingstone led the first group of the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) to Magomero in the Shire Highlands in what later became southern Malawi. This was the beginning of British mission work in Malawi. It was also the beginning of Christianity in Malawi.

Bishop Charles Mackenzie and his team were sent to Magomero by the Church of England to work in God’s mission in Africa.

Magomero – which happens to be my home – continues to be recognised as the place “where it all started”. Since then, Christianity in Malawi has grown to become the religion of the majority – 13 million out of 15 million Malawians identify as Christian. Yes, the explosion of Christianity in Africa is a direct result of the great sacrificial service done by the mission workers across the continent especially in the years between 1800 and 1970. Church Mission Society is one of the leading mission organisations who made this happen. It is not possible to tell of the history of Christianity in West Africa without acknowledging the important role played by CMS. For this we are extremely grateful.

Christianity continues to grow in Africa with millions of new converts coming to the faith every year. To convert a person to the Christian faith is also to invite – or demand – them to participate in God’s mission.

Nothing less. Thus, the five-fold growth that Christianity has seen in Africa since 1970, from 100 million to 500 million, translates into an African mission movement characterised by: (1) a commitment to the ‘evangelist-hood’ of all believers, which means that most of them live evangelistically, diminishing the gap between the ordained ministers/mission workers and laypeople, (2) a firm belief in God’s direct involvement in human life through the Spirit and (3) migration and other forms of displacement both within the continent and to other continents.

All in all, this means that ‘sentness’ is embedded in the African understanding of Christianity. It is a well accepted fact today that Africa has been converted to Christianity by African evangelists. To be a follower of Christ is to be sent as a bearer of Christ’s good news to a world desperately in need of such news. And this world in need may be within one’s own village or thousands of miles across the seas.

It is fair, I presume, for me to say that this understanding of Christians being sent in mission is central to most of African Christianity. Some are sent to be the good news right in their own communities. Others are sent to countries far away. But all are sent to share the good news with everyone who needs to hear it. I remember one of the popular songs we sang in Malawi in the 1980s, “ndi ndani wantuma kuti nkalalike uthenga wabwino” meaning “who has sent me to preach the good news?” Of course, the answer to the question was “ndi Yesu wantuma” (it is Jesus who has sent me). What I found significant about that song and many others like it was that they were sung by everyone, especially during evangelistic meetings. The people believed that they were sent to preach the good news. For them, ordination and commissioning were only additions to the calling. They believed that they could – and should – preach the good news even without being ordained. The call that they received when they decided to follow Christ was also their ordination to preach the good news to their neighbours.

This concept of being sent, (kutumidwa or kutumizidwa in Chichewa, my mother tongue), is very important for many Africans even outside Christianity. Mtumwi (the one sent with a message) or mthenga (the messenger) can be a servant of the king, the chief, or the government.

But mtumwi also happens to be the vernacular for “apostle” (Ephesians 4:11). The messenger is the bearer of the good news of hope. As such, a hospitable audience is the least they can be given because, of course, if you have been sent with a message to deliver, you must deliver it. And if a message has been sent to you, it must be heard. The honour due the sender is to be given to the messenger. Thus, when we sung “ndi Yesu wantuma,” we claimed it was Jesus, the king of kings, who sent us. We had to deliver the message.

One hundred and fifty years after the arrival of the UMCA in Malawi, God has sent many Malawian Christian sons and daughters to other continents. The same has happened in many countries around Africa. For Malawians, what started at Magomero has eventually brought Malawian Christians to Britain. Thus, African Christians living in the West are a fruit of the labour of the Western mission organisations (whether those organisations recognise this is another issue). But African Christians bring their ‘sent-ness’ with them as they migrate. In most cases, they find neither audience nor support. But when they do, great things happen.

God sends, and where God sends us, we go.

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