Ubuntu-shaped Missiology (Part 3)

I Am Because We Are. Or Am I?

Welcome to my newsletter, “Global Witness, Globally Reimagined.”

I dream here about mission in a postcolonial world. Every week, I share one thought that has spoken to me, two resources I trust will be helpful to you, and three quotes about mission.

I pray one of these will energise you this week.

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1. Thought I Can’t Shake Off

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As a Bantu African, I was raised to believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that human flourishing is only possible in community. Generally interpreted as “I am because we are” or “I am because I belong,” our ubuntu worldview causes us to seek community above everything else, even to a fault. My peoples of southern Malawi have a saying that literally translates; one who is alone is an animal, those who are two are human. No wonder we believe that humans thrive with their communities, not without or in spite of them. Teaching two classes this week, one in the US and the other in the UK, I was reminded once again of the individualistic nature of not only the culture but also of our ecclesiology as well as our missiology. When my students talked about competition among churches, I wondered what would happen to congregations if they realised they needed other congregations to thrive for them to thrive too. Instead of seeking to outdo one another as the best church in town, what would it look like if they believed that, for their own good, they needed other congregations around them to survive? Mission agencies can be just as competitive. How would they behave if they really believed they need one another to thrive? Of course, this proposition has massive implications. In this world of racism, for instance, what would it look like if Westerners believed that they need Africans to be whole for them to be whole as well? And vice-versa? What if a thriving Africa, or a prospering Black Britain, or Black America, is good for us all? In spite of the economic lies that thrive on individualism, there is great truth in the belief that we are better, as a human society, when we are in community with one another. We are because we belong. If, indeed, this is true for you, and had implications for the way you do your work, what would it look like?

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2. Resources I am Enjoying

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• Book: Christian Tsekpoe, Intergenerational Missiology: An African- Pentecostal Charismatic Perspective, (Oxford, Regnum Books, 2022).

Christian Tsekpoe is an apostle in The Church of Pentecost in Ghana. He works at the Pentecost University in Accra, Ghana. His book, Intergenerational Missiology, reflects on the mission models of Apostle James McKeown (1900-1989), founder of the Church of Pentecost. McKeown was an Irish missionary who was sent to Ghana by the Apostolic Church of Great Britain in 1937. He later became the first superintendent and chairman of the Church of Pentecost. In this book, which seems to me a little mistitled, Tsekpoe discusses at length McKeown’s spirituality, mission strategy and the quest to plant an indigenous church in Ghana. It was McKeown’s ability to relate with Ghanaian indigenous people, spiritualities, and culture that, Tsekpoe suggests, led to significant growth in the church. He, then, takes readers on a journey seeking to understand these great works of James McKeown.

The most central piece of Tsekpoe’s argument is what he refers to as “reflective pneumatology,” by which he means each congregation’s need to regulate the use of spiritual gifts by judging each claim of pneumatic experience because every believer — in every generation, including your sons and daughters — is capable of receiving the Holy Spirit and manifesting spiritual gifts. This is Tsekpoe’s key contribution to African Pentecostal missiology. Of course, in line with the title, Tsekpoe recognises the need to further contextualize McKeown's mission models to include younger generations of CoP members. He is wary that the tendency to idealize the past to preserve McKeown's legacy for posterity leads to a rift between the generations of CoP members. This generational rift, Tsekpoe contends, is further widened by a lack of intentional mutual interactions between the generations in the Church of Pentecost. To his credit, Tsekpoe draws from the communal and multigenerational nature of African family systems, that allows for people of all ages to live together. He, therefore, suggests that the Church in Africa should utilize this communal practice to build an intergenerational church.

This book will be a great resource to people interested in the developments in African Christianity, especially as indigenous denominations wrestle with the question of passing the charisma on to the younger generations, which is currently happening all over the continent.

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Podcast: Mission Shift: The Big Shift

In this brilliant conversation, Carita Chen and Josh Irby host Paul Borthwick (US), Carlos Abarca (Costa Rica), Adegbite Olanihun (Nigeria), and Dela Adadevoh (Ghana) to communally contemplate the shifts happening in the religious landscape of the world, with a special focus on the changing face of Christianity. Nations that received missionaries a few generations ago are now sending Christians to serve in mission around the world, some to the very countries that sent them missionaries not too long ago. The contributors wonder if our understanding of contemporary mission is able to acknowledge and reflect this crucial shift. They also highlight various mission initiatives rising from non-Western nations to the rest of the world—developments many could not have imagined fifty years ago.

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3. Quotes I am Pondering

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• … mission and missiology are, of necessity, very context-specific. Thus would-be missionaries need to understand the issues and respond to them in context-appropriate ways without compromising the integrity of the message of the gospel. — Hazel O. Ayanga

• Christians in Britain prayed for many years for revival and, when it came, they did not recognise it because it was black. — Walter Hollenweger

• God is involved in the church and the world, but the church has to participate in his mission (missio ecclesiae). — Anderson Moyo

Thank you, I pray you have a missionally fruitful week.