wfn.org | African churches must embrace heritage, evangelist says

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

May 29, 2002  News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212)870-38037Nashville, Tenn.
10-31-71B{236}

By Lesley Crosson*

HARARE, Zimbabwe (UMNS) - The church in Africa ministers on an impoverished
continent ravaged by war and conflict, pillaged and used as a toxic dumping
ground by the West, and dependent on Western financial resources.

With that stark description of a place where the United Methodist Church is
growing rapidly, the Rev. Fernando Simone Matsimbe detailed the roots of and
remedy for the West's "lack of understanding of the context in which the
church in Africa proclaims the gospel."  

Matsimbe, director of evangelization and church growth for the Southern
Mozambique Conference, spoke at a May 14-23 evangelization academy organized
by United Methodist churches in southern Africa and the United Methodist
Board of Global Ministries. The event in Harare was one of several such
training sessions held throughout Africa by the board's evangelization and
church growth program area.   

Speaking to some 30 clergy and lay leaders from Mozambique, Angola and
Zimbabwe, Matsimbe said that Western "arrogance born of socioeconomic
supremacy" led early missionaries to believe that they had discovered in
Africa "a place without hope and without God."  But, he declared, "God was
present in Africa long before the missionaries came, and the Africans knew
it."

The work of missionaries - assisting with education, health and spiritual
ministries - was and continues to be significant, he pointed out. However,
successful proclamation of the gospel in a society "whose cultural and
religious aspirations are not respected" requires recognition by the Western
church that Africans "are not mere objects of mission, but active
participants in the ministry of the church."

The critical task for the church in Africa is to engage in a process of
"understanding itself and finding a way to be both Christian and African,"
he said.

Rather than viewing itself as isolated, the African church must assert
itself as an extension of the global Christian church and a "visible
manifestation of God's presence in the world." The good news on this
continent of enormous need and enormous gifts, he said, is that "God loved
the world, including Africa." 

It remains for African churches to embrace their context and culture by
enriching the practice of Christianity in their churches with traditions and
practices that are unique to Africa and not counter to the gospel, Matsimbe
said.   

He illustrated the point with the observation that Africans have a strong
belief in "mediators," some of whom are ancestors or even witch doctors.
Those mediators take "our prayers and aspirations to God." Rather than
reject that as African and therefore not Christian, "We can use that belief
to explain Christ to Africans as the mediator" through whom they can
petition God, Matsimbe explained.   

Other African cultural values, ceremonies and traditional practices,
particularly around important life events like funerals and weddings, must
be affirmed and incorporated into church liturgies, he said.

Paraphrasing Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, Matsimbe declared, "Blackness is
not a fault or failure of creation, but a gift from God." And so, he said,
"the gospel must be allowed to leave the European vessel it was planted in"
so that it can take root in Africa.

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*Crosson is director of public relations for the United Methodist Board of
Global Ministries. 

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United Methodist News Service
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