MISSIONS: THE AFRICAN CHALLENGE By Peter Vumisa

Introduction

In her introduction to the article “Answering the Call” with a subtitle “African Americans Needed on the Mission field” in the World Christian Magazine (Volume 14, Number 4, published in December 2001), Carla D. Bastos, an African American herself serving in Angola said, “Africa cries out for help in its struggle against the ravages of spiritual darkness, war, corruption, the AIDS epidemic, drought, flooding and lack of health care. Thankfully, help is pouring in from Christians and humanitarian groups world-wide. But those who have answered the call of God to minister to the continent through evangelism and mercy ministry are often overwhelmed with the work, finding it difficult to keep up with increasing challenges and demands. Why? Because someone is missing from the team, leaving those on the field to do more than their share. The missing link in both African and world-wide missions is the African-American Christian.”

In as much as I agree on the fact of the issue of challenges Africa is facing, however the article takes the view which I do not agree with.

Firstly the article still takes the view that Africa is still a mission field and hence eliminating the African church as part of the missing link in the whole Mission enterprise

Secondly, the article paints a gloomy picture of the spiritual climate of Africa calling it “spiritual darkness.” And hence taking the view that Africa is still unevanglised, ravaged with spiritual darkness.

It is such views and comments by some foreign missionaries that give a misleading picture about the church in Africa. It is this distorted view of the African church that causes the Africans to think that they are still far away or still immature for them to participate in global missions.

In considering the spirituality and growth of Christianity in Africa, I have always wondered how other people look at Africa. Do they have facts and do they really understand Africa?

For the sake of this message we can still ask the following questions: (1) Is Africa still a mission field? (2) How old is the church in Africa? (3) Is the church still immature to do missions?

First and foremost I would like to state that it is a false assumption that the church in Africa is small and immature with no roots, no long history of experience and growth to reflect upon. The Coptic church in Egypt dates back to the early church fathers; the city of Alexandria in North Africa boasted of a prestigious seminary where scholars of the stature of Origen taught and wrote. Christianity was established in Ethiopia during the third century. By the sixth century, the church had spread though Europe, North Africa, Persia, China and India, though this church in many instances was weak or snuffed out due to persecution or the influence of Islam, in many places a flicker of life remained. Thus, the church in parts of the third world existed for hundreds of years before the Pilgrims landed in the New World, and is, in reality, historically much older.

Now if the Church in Africa is this old, what has made it to take so long to develop a vision for missions?

It is towards the end of the 20th Century that the church in Africa really began to seriously start talking about missions. A number of churches in different parts of the continent came up with mission programs. However there hasn't been a significant Cross Cultural mission effort numerically among the African Evangelical churches, but perhaps there has been numerous outstanding individual missionaries. Anyone familiar with the African church knows that Africans are almost incredibly underrepresented in cross-cultural Christian missions. While outstanding individual Evangelical missionaries have represented Africans, but the numerical depth has never been great.

Statistical Data on Missionaries from Some African Countries in West, East, Central and Southern Africa

* Nigeria: approximately 3, 700 in 110 agencies to 50 + countries: Nigeria 3,100, Benin 38, USA 30, Cote d' lvoire 24, Niger 21, Ghana, 19, and UK 18.
* Ghana: approximately 750 in 60 agencies to 32 countries, of which 144 are abroad
* South Africa: approximately 2622 in 126 agencies of which 1, 494 are in 100 other countries.
* Tanzania: 232 in 21 agencies, mainly within the country.
* Kenya: 673 in 53 agencies to 17 countries: Kenya 608, Tanzania 22, Uganda 21 (statistics I incomplete).
* Zambia: 228 in 22 agencies to 18 countries: Zambia 182
* Cameroon: 291 in 11 agencies to 35 countries

Source: Operation World: 21st Century Edition

Identifying the Hindrances

MET (Missions Exposure and Training) Students Identified the following as hindrances:

* No awareness on the subject
* Financial problems
* Constitutions governing churches
* Some still think missions is for the Western countries
* Inferiority complex
* No mission structures
* Missionaries never taught missions to the churches in Africa
* Wrong priorities in the church etc
* Selfishness on the part of Pastors and other church leaders

The Black Evangelical Leaders Consultation on Missions held on 14-16 July 1999 in Johannesburg, South Africa identified the following as some of the main obstacles:

* Inferiority complex
* Dependency syndrome
* Black underdevelopment
* Weak missiology
* Identity crisis
* Fragmentation

Explanation and Some Suggested Solutions
Weak Missiology
African evangelical mission theology has been inadequate. Inadequate not only because of the strong Western influence in it, but also because good theological education has been inaccessible to many. Furthermore, African mission theology and practice lacked the vision for world evangelism.

Missionaries Never Taught Missions to Churches
One of the weaknesses of the early missionaries in Africa is that they never sowed a vision for missions. What they sowed is what is being reaped now. Missionaries did not pass on their vision for missions to the churches they started. They felt that there was still a lot to be done in those countries. So they thought that their small, and young churches could not send missionaries to other nations. Other missionaries just felt that African Christians were incapable of doing what western missionaries were doing. As a result their vision for world missions ended with their own work.

We can deal with this problem by sensitising and mobilising churches regarding missions. We must also train and prepare the local churches to send and support missionaries. Experience shows that many churches in Africa do not have the knowledge on how to run mission programs. It is a big frustration to train missionaries while the sending church remains untrained. Many young people have been frustrated by their churches because despite of having a desire and calling for missions, the churches are in no way ready to send and support them. So the church must be trained too.

Black Underdevelopment
The Evangelical church in Africa also suffers the problem of lack of education and resources. Giving for Cross-Cultural missions is extremely low. These are manifested in poor managerial skills, lack of financial transparency in our churches, poor stewardship of resources and lack of accountability. Due to this impoverishment, the African church finds itself unable to be an agent of development and transformation in its own context.

We can deal with the issue of black underdevelopment by promoting, training and preparing African missionaries with affordable, specialized courses on missions. Theological institutions should rewrite their curriculum programs in order to provide adequate training for missions.

Dependency Syndrome
Due to the economic poverty in Africa, there is a tendency to depend on the patronage of those with resources abroad. This leads to the inability of self-definition by the dependent party.

We can deal with the problem of dependency syndrome by tapping into our own resources and develop our own support systems.

Though Africa is a continent characterized by poor leadership, poverty, corruption, civil wars, unemployment, diseases, mismanagement, social problems like crime, drugs, immorality, and HIV/AIDS which is on the rise in some African countries, Africa has a lot of riches. It is a very rich continent in terms of resources. In his paper “What is wrong with Africa,” Bekele Shanko (Sanko: 2000) gives the following amazing facts about African riches:

The country of Nigeria alone has more than 110 trillion standard cubic feet of gas reserve and about 10 trillion cubic feet of oil reserve. In spite of so many plans for oil exploration and gas flaring in Nigeria since the pioneering operation of Anglo-Dutch about 36 years ago, plans had failed because of various Nigerian Governments (Africa Today, special report June 1999, Vol. 5, No.6). The current oil output capacity in Nigeria is 2 million barrels per day, and it is expected to increase to 5 million barrels per day by 2010. But the country has an external debt of $50bn (African Business, May 2000, No. 254). A 1995 World Bank report said that the Niger delta, home of Nigeria's oil wealth, emits about 12 million tonnes of methane every year. But the delta's people are among the poorest in Nigeria with lots of unemployment, malnutrition and very poor or non-existent infrastructure (Africa Today, special report, June 1999, Vol. 5, No. 6). The country of Ethiopia has hundreds of rivers, lakes and natural springs but millions of people die due to a lack of water.

The country of Angola has a proven reserve of oil for 28 years. Current production is about 800,000 barrels per day and is expected to rise to above 1 million barrels per day. But from the country of Angola, UNITA have mined diamonds worth over US$3.7 billion since 1992, and UNITA alone supply up to 20% of the world's diamonds to the global market. The government of Angola mortgages future oil revenue in order to buy arms such as artillery, helicopters, jet fighters and tanks. About half of Angolan children do not go to school; eight out of 10 Angolans have no access to sanitation and six out of 10 do not have safe drinking water. The budget for health and education sectors combined is less than half that of defence (African Business, Feb. 1999, Number 240).

More than 80% of the uranium in the American atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 came from the country of Congo. By 1958, Congo was producing 50% of the world's uranium, 75% of the world's cobalt, 70% of the world's industrial diamonds, and it was the world's largest producer of rubber, but the current Congolese average income per capita is less than 1% of that of America.

Oil revenue in Congo Brazzaville funds fully 80% of the country's national treasury. It is technically the second major producer of oil in Sub-Saharan Africa following Angola, but Congo remains one of the world's poorest countries with an external debt of $6bn. Currently, there are an estimated 60,000 corrupt and bureaucratic leaders in the country of Congo Brazzaville (African Business, July/August 2000, No. 256).

Africa has the second greatest landmass on earth. Sudan alone is larger than the whole of Western Europe; the DRC is larger than the entire European member states combined. But total income of the 48 African countries is little more than that of Belgium.

Africa has enormous untapped potential and hidden growth reserves, but currently only 1% of the total world economic output and 2% of the world trade comes from Africa. It is estimated that to just maintain the current level of poverty, African economies have to grow by 5% per annum (African Business, July/August 2000, No. 256).

Africa is losing 20,000 skilled professionals every year because of economic hardships, instability, the poor handling of human resources, and inability to create an environment, which African professionals will not want to leave the continent (African Business, June 2000, No. 255). In addition to this Africa is the world's most indebted and aid-dependent region with 17% of its GDP flowing out in debt repayments. The whole continent has fewer paved roads than the country of Poland alone (African Business, July/August 2000, No. 256). Africa as a whole is poorer than it was 40 years ago (New Africa, July/August 2000, No. 387).

It is true that Africa's problems are not lack of resources but lack of good leadership and proper management. Most of our leaders are selfish, greed, and corrupt. For example countries like Cameroon, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Ghana, Zambia, Morocco, Malawi, and Zimbabwe are listed among the highly corrupt nations of the world with the 1998 corruption perceptions index ranging from 1.4 for Cameroon (highly corrupt) to 4.2 for Zimbabwe (relatively lower corruption). Kenya alone contributes 6.5% to the continent's corruption.

Unfortunately the church in Africa is not without spots and blemishes in this regard. One can see a manifestation of this in poor managerial skills, lack of financial transparency, poor stewardship of resources and lack of accountability.

Fragmentation
Another problem facing the church in Africa today is fragmentation. As a church, we constantly find themselves deeply fragmented into camps. There is a tendency of individual empire building among us where we often prefer linkages and fellowship with like-minded people in the west. This has the effect of worsening and perpetuating disunity in the body of Christ locally.

We can deal with the issues of fragmentation by promoting partnerships. This is well illustrated by the following Korean story:

“In the village of Chia Lee in Korea lived a not-too-rich young man who was about to get married. On the day before his wedding, his uncle sent him money for a new suit. With great joy, he hurried off to the department store in the big city. He selected a suit, tried on the coat (which fit very well), but he did not try on the pants until he reached home late that night. Then to his big disappointment, he discovered that the pants were three inches too long. Since the wedding was to be held the following morning, there seemed nothing to do but to wear the pants with the legs rolled up.

“The young man had a very kind grand mother who lived with them in the home. Late that night she rolled and tossed as she thought about her grandson, and the humiliation of having to wear a suit with pants rolled up. She finally arose from her bed, slipped quietly into the room where the young man had hung his suit. She carefully took the pants from the hanger and with her big scissors she snipped off the extra three inches. She got out her needle and thread, carefully hemmed up the pants, and neatly hung them in the closet. Then she went back to bed and slept in peace.

“The mother of the young man had a terrible nightmare that night about her son standing before all the people with his pants rolled up, and so about two in the morning she could endure it no longer. She arose from her bed and went on tiptoe into the room where the suit was hanging. She measured carefully from the bottom of the pants and with her scissors snipped of the pants and then hemmed neatly and completely.

“Very early the next morning before the sun had begun to rise the older sister of the young lad arose from her bed. Hers had been a troubled night of sleep. Before anyone else was up, she slipped quietly into his room and removed his suit from the hanger. Using her scissors expertly, she removed three inches from the bottom of the pants, hemmed them carefully, and put them back on the hanger.

You can imagine the astonishment of the young man as he pulled on his trousers later that morning just before the wedding. They barely covered his knees. Even though each of the women intended well and even finished the job, with a feeling of accomplishment, the result was tragic. The story highlights our failure to function as one body.

Lack of Mission Structures
Mission structures like mission agencies do exist in Africa. But these are Western or foreign mission agencies. The problem with them is that for a long time they have not seen the need to utilize the Africans in world evangelization programs. Undeniably, the black people felt unwelcome and unwanted by White mission organizations. It is now that some of them are beginning to open up and recruit Africans for missions.

There is a need therefore for the African church to organise itself and develop its own mission structures. It is true that historically, God has used two structures with distinctive functions in carrying out His redemptive plan the church and the mission agency. The local churches have functioned as the primary nurture structure, and the mission agencies as the primary mission structure. Both are still needed today in order for the Christians to fulfil the Great Commission.

Identity Crisis
Due to dehumanization of the past (slave trade,apartheid like in South Africa, colonialism) many African people developed identity crisis, which hindered their capacity to be an effective contributor in missions. This problem is made worse by the fact that our identity and mission are constantly being shaped by others. This deepens the identity crisis and incapacitates our potential to make our contribution to world missions. However the good news is that as former objects of mission, the black church feels the time has come for us to become subjects of mission.

Inferiority Complex
Due to the legacy of colonialism and racism, the black church found itself the victim of an inferiority complex that incapacitated it from functioning normally according to the God-given calling and potential. In our experiences as black evangelicals in Africa, we continue to be confronted by diverse forms of racism, some subtle and others not so subtle. We can deal with the problem of identity crisis and low self esteem by believing in what God says about us (see Gen. 1: 26-27,31; 9: 6)

Conclusion
My prayer is that the African vision for global vision will be larger than any other involvement of the Black community. Our missionary efforts should not just focus on Africa, but upon all areas of the world. Youth as well as adults should enter into missionary endeavors. This period should witness the increased involvement of short as well as long-term service. The African Church should get actively involved in taking the whole Gospel to the whole world.

References

1. Finely Allen and Lutz Lorry, Mission: A World Family Affair. Christian Nationals Press, San Jose, California, 1981.
2. Shanko, Bekele, What is wrong with Africa? A paper, Christian Embassy of South Africa and Executive Ministry, October 2000
3. Report of the Black Evangelical Leaders Consultation on Missions held on 14-16 July 1999, Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa
4. McQuicken, J. R. The Thailand Consultation by B. Hogard, Mission Frontiers, Vol. 2, No. 8, August 1980.
5. World Christian December 2001, Volume 14, Number 4
6. Operation World 21st Century Edition.

This paper was presented at the 12th African Missions Summit. Contact Details: Peter Vumisa, Inserv, P O Box 8416, Pretoria, 0001, RSA, Email: restrn@inserv.org.za, Tel: (+27) 12 3230915, Cell: (+27) 723392193