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Ministry Focus Paper Approval Sheet
This ministry focus paper entitled
EQUIPPING AND EMPOWERING OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD IN DOING MISSIO DEI IN HIMO PARISH
Written by
GIDEON G. MAGHINA
and submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Ministry
has been accepted by the Faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary
upon the recommendation of the undersigned readers:
______Kurt Fredrickson
Date Received: March 14, 2014
EQUIPPING AND EMPOWERING OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD IN DOING MISSIO DEI IN HIMO PARISH
A MINISTRY FOCUS PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY
BY
GIDEON G. MAGHINA MARCH 2014
ABSTRACT
Equipping and Empowering of the People of God in Doing Missio Dei in Himo Parish Gideon M. Maghina Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2014
The purpose of this project was to create an appropriate strategy that would be applicable in equipping and empowering all members of Himo Lutheran Parish for doing missio Dei in their locale. It is argued that every Christian, as a member of community of faith, is called out of the world and sent into the world to be a witness of Jesus Christ. Witnessing the priesthood of all believers is done individually and collectively, sacrificially and with humility. Himo Lutheran Parish of Northern Diocese of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania was used as the focal point for observation that led to creation of the strategy. The parish is composed of four preaching locations, located in Himo Township, which has 20,000 inhabitants. Himo Township is located thirty kilometers east of Moshi on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. The people of Himo Township are primarily African traditional communal, earning their living by subsistence small-scale farming, husbandry and artisan business. Although the Himo community is of Lutheran tradition, modeled in African communal lifestyle, many members feel they are left uncertain of their faith. As the customary communal lifestyle, supported by both the socialist government and the church setting, it is increasingly challenged by change due to globalization and modernization. Harder questions are asked, but no satisfactory answers are given. Many members of Himo Parish are anxious to know by experience the power of their faith in life. They want to be completely sure if the Christian claim over the truth is still authentic and reliable. It is therefore important to have a new, appropriate strategy that will meet the need.
Words: 269
Content Reader: Kurt Fredrickson, PhD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Church praxis, by all means, is rather a dynamic process of reflective, critical inquiry into the Church’s activity in the world, based on God’s purposes for humanity. Such activity has to be carried out in the light of Scripture and tradition; it also must be done in critical dialogue with other sources of knowledge. The Church’s public proclamation of the Gospel and praxis in the world is faithfully reflected in its nature and purpose given by God: the continuity of God’s mission in the world, authentically addressed to every contemporaneity into which it seeks to serve or minister. And here the practitioner must be held accountable to the truth of God’s revelation in history. It took me four years to complete this project. So, being a huge undertaking I am indebted to thank many who contributed to this project as it has come into shape. Before I do that let me thank God of all abounding love and mercy in Jesus Christ and extended to God’s community. I must say that I enjoyed the interaction I had with teachers, friends and colleagues of Fuller Theological Seminary, because with them I shared many insights in a multitude ways. I thank so much Mr. and Mrs. Sue and Keith Jeson and his company, The African Team Ministries of California, for offering me this international scholarship. I am equally thankful to my church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, through the Body of Radio Voice of the Gospel, Moshi, for allowing me to pursue this scholarship. Moreover, I am deeply and humbly grateful to my wife Grace and children Emmanuel, Victoria, Mary, Jonathan, Melechizedek and Christian for their patience, prayers, support and trust in me to undertake this huge and long project that consumed much time and energy. During this project our three grandchildren were born bringing us much joy and happiness. The grandchildren are Lois and Laura born of Emmanuel and Estaria, and Britteny born of Peter and Victoria. This project has involved many persons, but because of space I will mention only some of them. But I want all to know that I thank them very much and may the God of all blessings bless all who contributed to this project. I am indebted to my reader, Kurt Fredrickson, of Fuller Theological Seminary and the head of the Doctor of Ministry program, for devoting his ample time reading through this document. His comments and corrections are highly appreciated because without them there would not be such a readable document.
iii I especially want to thank Dr. John Hull, the former Associate Director and Adjunct Professor of Practical Theology, Doctor of Ministry Program, Fuller Theological Seminary. His insights, wisdom, excellent suggestions, and thoughtful advice in proposing and writing this project have been central and decisive in the development of it. I must thank Bishop Owdenburgh M. Mdegella of Iringa Diocese of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. His extraordinary mentoring wisdom advice was of great help in constructing this project. I want also want to thank Bishop Erasto N. Kweka, Bishop Martin F. Shao, M/s Anna E. Mughwira, a lawyer; Dr. Peter S. Kijanga, Mary P. Ambarang’u, and Pastor Godwin Mremi who assisted me in convening the Himo parishioners for seminars. Each in different places and times gave very important insights and contributed much to the construction of this project. My acknowledgement would not be complete if I do not thank all Himo parishioners, especially the group of 250 who with their compassionate love assisted my creation of this writing. They did what they did because they were interested in knowing how God works with them. They are now using the knowledge in helping other parishioners participate in God’s doing in and around Himo area.
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii
INTRODUCTION 1
PART ONE: MINISTRY CONTEXT
Chapter 1. TANZANIAN SOCIETY CULTURAL CRISIS 11
Chapter 2. LUTHERAN MISSIONARIES’ INTERACTIONS WITH TANZANIAN SOCIETY 36
Chapter 3. THE LIFE AND WORK OF HIMO LUTHERAN PARISH 57
PART TWO: THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
Chapter 4. REFLECTION ON THE NOTION OF THE “PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS” 75
Chapter 5. CHURCH MISSION AS A PRIESTLY SERVICE OF THE GOSPEL 86
Chapter 6. THE MEANING OF MISSIO DEI CONCEPT 96
Chapter 7. THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH IN THE “MISSIO DEI” 103
PART THREE: MINISTRY STRATEGY
Chapter 8. MISSIO DEI AND THE COMMUNAL GIFT OF PRIESTHOOD 110
Chapter 9. EQUIPPING STRATEGY FOR DOING MISSION IN HIMO PARISH 120
Chapter 10. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW EQUIPPING STRATEGY 140
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 168
APPENDICES 174
BIBLIOGRAPHY 195
v INTRODUCTION
Christians in different congregations here in Tanzania love to sing the following hymn in enriching their faith and life:
The church of Christ, in every age beset by change, But Spirit led, must and test its heritage and keep on Rising from the dead. Across the world, across the victims of injustice cry for shelter And for bread to eat, and never live before they die. Then let the servant church arise, a caring church that longs To be a partner in Christ’s sacrifice, Clothed in Christ’s humanity. We have no mission but to serve in full obedience to our Lord, To care for all, without reserve, and spread his liberating word.1
The same Christians read 1 Peter 2:9: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the might acts of him who call you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”2 However, African Christians across
Africa are aware they are living in overwhelming storms of many challenges. As David
Fick once noticed, “Old Africa is well known for its many challenges. In a 'new' Africa, the continent's challenges will be addressed and overcome with new strategies.”3
The Church in Tanzania faces more challenges than ever before. In preaching and practicing social responsibilities, the Church faces an ever-widening range of issues, coupled with the demanding manifold patterns of diaconical service and ever-increasing competence. Moreover, globalization has sensitized people and even heightened the want
1 Fred Platt Green, “The Church of Christ in Every Age” (No. 729) in The Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1978).
2 All Scripture quoted is from The Holman Christian Standard Bible (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009).
3 David Fick, Africa: Continent of Economic Opportunity (Johannesburg: STE Publishers, 2006), 13. 1 of new things. Some pastors tell me that when Christians come to church for worship and hear the same word “love, and love, and love” they feel bored, fed up and hence want to go to other churches to see if they can find new preaching other than love.
When congregants complain they are bored of hearing preaching on love it does not mean they do not want church or are denouncing their faith. People are anxious, facing challenging problems. Life has many riddles and poverty beats down on Tanzania.
They believe the Church can give satisfactory answers. Africans view the world from a community perspective. It is in community one grows and finds integrity, dignity and freedom. In participating in community, one’s capacity for development is fully reached.
Christianity has influenced Tanzania in a way many felt was good. It answered many crucial life questions. Globalization and modernization have caused questions to evolve.
Across congregations in Tanzania one may find stagnation and observe people are not happy with what is happening. This can be seen in talking with people and observing life and church work. There is uneasiness among the people of God, but most do not know how to remedy the situation. Many Christians see the current reality of doing God’s mission inadequate. Clergy and laity are not coping well with the pace of change in
Tanzanian society. While laity lags behind, clergy, especially pastors, are burnt out. As a result there are observable issues that current theological and pastoral practices hardly impact. Local communities are in dire need of a precise, detailed and descriptive strategy that applies to the ministerial context and its needs.
Christians in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (ELCT) desire to see life as they understand it. For Africans, life is practical solidarity. They value corporate life. The essence of this life is responsibility for building community for a common good;
2 this requires personal sacrifice. The aim of African society is to produce life in their tradition. This desire vibrates in their veins in what is often called “African-ness.”
Jesus Christ is seen as the only true savior who fulfilled the highest religious and cultural aspirations inherited from African traditional religions. Jesus is both the victor and savior and thus supreme over every spiritual rule and authority. He is able to do all things, to save in all situations, to protect against all enemies. Jesus is available whenever those who believe may call Him. While Jesus’ humanity and atoning work are in the background, He essentially belongs to the more powerful realm of divinity, that is, the realm of Spirit-power. This understanding is what makes Jesus Christ at home in the
African spiritual sphere with the accepted terms of African religious needs and longings.
As one prominent African theologian has rightly pointed out:
Our Lord has been from the beginning the Word of God for us as for all people everywhere. He has been the source of our life and illuminator of our path in life, though, like all people of everywhere, we also failed to understand him right. Now he has made himself known, becoming one of us. By acknowledging him for who he is and by giving him our allegiance, we become what we are truly intended to be, by his gift, the children of God.4
African Christians believe that in Jesus they are meeting the one, true living God, who speaks to them in their particular circumstances in such a way they are assured of being authentic Africans and true Christians. Jesus is the Word incarnate, becoming like them, sharing in their humanity. He challenges them into metanoia and calls them to participate in the new humanity for which He has come, died, been raised and gloried.5
4 Nkwame Bediako, Jesus in African Culture: a Ghanaian Perspective (Accra: Asempa Publishers, 1990), 26.
5 The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “metanoia.” Metanoia is defined as, “A change of mind, as it appears to one who repents, of a purpose he has formed or of something he has done.” 3 This understanding of life as practical solidarity is compatible and supported by
Christianity. Christians are to grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ. They are to live
Christ’s likeness in their contexts. As they live, they produce the life of Jesus Christ in others. They do so because they live in accordance to the communal responsibility of nurturing people’s spiritual life, building into them, feeding, protecting, encouraging, training and assisting them in their maturation. It is within the Christian community that every member is given opportunities of learning and growing in spiritual health.
Both Christianity and African-ness are relational, purporting in serving humanity.
Relationships that are broad and deep are the secret of life’s joy and satisfaction. Africans have deep faith in their natural ability to discuss honestly and solve problems together.
African Christians get new enriching power in Christ and add confidence in Him who is their Lord, giving them power to bind and loose in the name of Jesus Christ.
The Church needs an organization that serves as a living organism on African soil; the organization assures Christian claims over truth in life as found in Jesus Christ as evermore valid and reliable, despite life circumstances and problems. The organization must have an appropriate strategy that equips and empowers the Church for doing missio
Dei in the world. The strategy must enable local believers to become participants in doing missio Dei. Christianity is essentially a laos movement.6
The strategy I suggest is “communionizing,” a term stemming from the word
“communion.” The term includes communal sharing and missional concepts in doing missio Dei. The communionizing strategy is resilient in nature. It is an anticipating
6The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “laos.” Laos is defined as, “A people, people group, tribe, nation, all those who are of the same stock and language, or laity.” 4 strategy that assists the Church in constantly adjusting to deep, worldly trends that permanently impair the earning power of core church activity.
The Church in Tanzania seems to be in turbulent times, as societal and cultural crisis is heightened. Since the early-1980s Tanzania has experienced socioeconomic and political changes. The customary communal lifestyle supported by a socialist government and the Church is increasingly challenged by globalization and modernization. Many
Christians, including those in Himo Parish, are anxious to experience the power of their faith in life. It is important to have a new appropriate strategy that will meet the need.
I was once asked: “Why are our churches, (ELCT) seemingly paralyzed?”
Because I did not understand clearly I asked my congregant if she could elaborate more, and she did: “Oh! My Bishop Maghina, can’t you see! The churches are lifeless, no creativity, and we Christians are helpless with no power in our words and deeds, and our faith seems to be empty and incapable. Even our worship services are becoming sterile; they are not touching hearts of people.”7
The Church is not just an institution. It is more than a human organization. It is a communion of saints, a living, functioning organism with Christ as the head. It is called by God for His purpose. The process of becoming the Kingdom of God is not yet. That is, telos,8 the end of creation’s redemption has been introduced, but chronos, time has not.9
The Church is called forth by God to serve Him by participating in doing God’s mission
7 Magdalena Swai, interview by author, Himo Parish, Tanzania, February 2007.
8The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “telos.” Telos is defined as, “End; Termination, the limit at which a thing ceases to be (always of the end of some act or state, but not of the end of a period of time).”
9The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “chronos.” Chronos is defined as, “Time either long or short.” 5 in the world. Jesus says, “My Father is still working, and I also am working” (John 5:17), so is the Church in every place and in every time.
This means that the mission of the Church is the mission of Christ. Congregations emerge from the authentic communication nexus of assembling and uniting through
God’s Word and the celebration of the Eucharist. Thus, a congregation is nothing but a series of relationships, traditions and networks ceaselessly interacting and affecting one another. Moreover, the congregation is interacting with society around it.
The congregation is a functioning system having many complex interactions and expressive engagements when God is involved. Christ’s mission in the world is to be carried out by the entire people of God. Paul M. Miller says doing God’s mission should include the entire people of God: “Theirs is the priesthood for the world. Theirs is the commission to preach the Gospel. Theirs is the mandate to implement Christ’s royal rule in their lives, in their church fellowship, and wherever else people will hear and heed.”10
Christians who grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ have the responsibility of
“nurturing people spiritually by building into them, feeding them, protecting them, encouraging them, training them, and assisting in their maturation so that they can learn to do the same with others.”11 This corporate life has far-reaching benefits provided in a context of mutual relational enrichments that include the equipping and empowering of all members in doing God’s mission in the world. The Body of Christ as a context for relational unity in diversity and oneness in plurality is owed to Jesus Christ in bearing fruit of the Holy Spirit.
10 Paul M. Miller, Equipping for Ministry (Dodom, TZ: Central Tanganyika Press, 1996), 205.
11 Julius K. Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 2. 6 This understanding is correlated to African-ness as explained by Julius Nyerere.
African-ness is the ideal of mutual involvement in the family.12 Mutual involvement has social values such as people’s corporate spirit, life and work for greater service reserving the highest respect and admiration and love of fellow members of the family. In general,
Africans have a situational experiencing mind and the ability to respond to others with their whole person. For Africans, life is no less than participation.
However, they want to live toward that expectation. Just as every individual shares basic responsibility for strengthening the life force of the community, Christians are to enhance communal life within the Church. African societies are a struggling people together with the people of God. They struggle for full humanity, a struggle for the retrieval of conservation and survival of the cultural values of Africans. The African life should be one that is in touch with the culture of oppression and exploitation of the
African people. The voice of the Church must combat dehumanization of the poor, yelling at exploited workers and the groaning of the suffering peasants.
While African Christians are to be aware of what constitutes culture in the
African context, it is not just the traditional worldview, symbols, customs and art. The current African scene is marked by both cultural continuity and change. It includes all of
African existence: politics, economics, religion, pre-colonial worldview and thought forms, philosophy, language, ethnicity, music, arts, sexuality and change brought by modern science and technology.
A holistic view is needed because culture encompasses the sociopolitical and economic, as well as the religio-cultural dimensions of human existence and therefore of
12 Ibid., 7. 7 theological reality. This is a struggle both for liberation of African culture and of integrative vision, solidarity, mobilization of the masses and transformative praxis. As religion is central to African life, penetrating every aspect, it presents challenges. A relevant and authentic strategy for present African life situation is to be employed.
On this basis, this ministry focus paper displays a strategy that is applicable in involving all members of the local church in doing God’s mission in their locale, the focus being on Himo Lutheran Church of Evangelical Lutheran Church, Northern
Diocese. This church is in and around Himo township, located at the junction of the Dar- es-Salaam—Moshi—Arusha—Nairobi highway. There are currently four congregations that make up this parish: Makuyuni, Himo, Kilototani and Ryata. The parish has more than two thousand members, businesspersons, small-scale farmers, cattle herders and other small businesses.
The paper is divided in three parts. Part One examines the three areas of ministry context: Tanzania society’s cultural crisis, the Lutheran Church in Tanzania and the life and work of Himo Parish. As Robert Lewis wrote, “(The) culture gives color and flavor to everything . . . Church is and does.”13 Tanzanian traditional cultural worldview includes a communal lifestyle that is investigated for better understanding the context in which the Church exists and works. Human experience is always found in “structures of creaturely and temporal life.”14 The unity of life in community that has been so fundamental to Tanzanian society for many centuries is no longer valid. There is no longer a concession on values in the community. Part Two examines the theological
13 Robert Lewis, Culture Shift (San Francisco: Jossey–Bass Publishing, 2005) 3.
14 Ibid. 8 notion of the priesthood of all believers as a holistic praxis in doing mission as to strengthen the life of the Church. The mission of the Church functions in the forms of koinonia,15kerygma,16 and diakonia, in each congregation’s locale.17
Part Three concentrates on integration of the holistic praxis of the priesthood of all believers in Himo Parish. The three functional forms of mission: koinonia, kerygma and diakonia, are to be fully utilized because they culminate in missio Dei. In them are power and freedom bound and expressed in and through the community as all members of the community live by sharing the life of Jesus Christ. The visibility of the Church in its impact in the surrounding society can be recognized clearly. In their functional reality these functional forms touch the society in a much deeper and satisfactory way.
Unless witness to the Gospel is the ultimate answer to the needs of all people, the present perplexity will continue haunting the Church. Witness must not be confined to a few. It must involve the grassroots of the Church. This is so because whether functioning in koinonia, kerygma, diakonia or in all three functional forms, the witness must be the incarnation of Christ in the life of the people and the world. The incarnating Christ must be seen in the life of people busy doing salvation and liberation.
15 The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “koinonia.” Koinonia is defined as, “Fellowship, association, community, communion, joint participation, intercourse.”
16 The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “kerugma.” Kerugma is defined as, “That which is proclaimed by a herald or public crier, a proclamation by herald.”
17 The NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, electronic edition, s.v. “diakonia.” Diakonia is defined as, “Service, ministering, especially of those who execute the commands of others.” 9
PART ONE
MINISTRY CONTEXT
CHAPTER 1
TANZANIAN SOCIETY CULTURAL CRISIS
In most of Africa there has been a turn toward Christianity. Every year there are many non-Christians converted and baptized. For African Christians the Church has been, and should remain the director to human aspirations. From this perspective African
Christians believe God’s mission has an ultimate objective of bringing liberation to
Africans in all areas of human existence including political, economic, social, cultural and religious aspects. Its strategy is to give all people of all humanity a sense of identity, self-determination and full self-fulfillment.
However, under present circumstances in Africa and especially Tanzania there are genuine complaints. People have many questions. One elderly member of Himo Lutheran
Parish complained, “Pastor, our long outstanding African traditional family ties are now broken.” She went on, “Young people are flooding in towns, the prices of commodities are hiking, everything is superficial, even political stability is shaking. I am not comfortable with what is happening in our lives. It seems as if there is nothing one can hold on. I am not sure anymore if even the Church can stand the present life situation.”1
1 Resulta Wilson Kimaro, interview by author, Himo Parish, Tanzania, July, 2007. 11
Such complaints are indicators of the challenges the society faces. The rapid change society is undergoing needs new, but satisfactory answers to all uprising problems.
The church in Himo operates in a society that is sieged by political, socio- economic and cultural changes. Tanzanian society is not static. It is viable for influencing and to be influenced by the prevailing waves of rapid change, including globalization.
Tanzanian society is composed of four distinct linguistic groups. The groups are
Khoisan, Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu. Three-quarters of Tanzanian society is Bantu, who are cultivators and herders. Cushitic peoples are herders but more accustomed to the fertile highlands of the country. The Nilotics are nomadic herders from semi-arid plains in East Africa, whereas Khoisans live on hunting and wild fruit collecting in deciduous forests and along Lake Eyasi. The whole Tanzanian population is made of 130 tribes.
Despite being comprised of many tribes, Tanzanian society for many centuries has lived in a common family system structure. Nyerere calls that structure in African traditional society is “African-ness.”2 Family members live symbiotically. The core of this quality of life is interdependence that sustained society through centuries as members shared life necessaries. That is, in this core lied a koinonia spirit that provided education, food, shelter, clothing, fair production and distribution of wealth together with security, freedom, justice, equality, love and unity to all members of the African traditional family.
It is no exaggeration to say this koinonia spirit is an “African uniqueness” that persisted in generations through ages of suppressions and abasements.3 This enabled
Tanzanians of all generations to respond to others with their whole person, as it gave
2 Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, 7.
3 Sebastian K. Lutahaoire, The Human Life Cycle among the Bantu (Arusha, TZ: Makumira Publication, 1974), 7. 12
them a situation-experiencing mind. In this spirit the broad, deepening relationships were established as a secret of life’s joy and satisfaction. It is promising that, strengthened by rewarding relationships, this spirit helps Tanzanians, and other Africans learn life’s joy and rhythm in a world dried up by the pursuit of things and subjugated by machines.
Many African Christians whose faith was built upon the tendency of prizing interpersonal relationships constantly search for vital community and fellowship in the
Church. They are confident that Christ their Lord, the One whose will they sought has only one mind about the change society is undergoing. By their prayers and commitments they assert their faith that Christ would lead them. In their African personality, these
Christians feel deeply that everyone is equal and must be treated that way.
Moreover, they sense tragedy in human existence, but survival comes through their capacity for intensity in moments of devotion and worship. In order to understand this hidden koinonia spirit in African-ness one has to take into account among other things the African traditional worldview and etymology of the following terms: liberation, salvation, unity and diversity.
African Traditional Worldview
African quality of life is better understood in its context of the inherited African traditional worldview. African roots are found in ancestral traditions preserved in tribal and clan life. In ancestral tradition is found entrenched African religion(s). It is in African religion(s) that the heart of African traditional society creates a delicate balance between basic elements of African clans and tribes. To understand African traditional religion is to understand precisely and accordingly the life concepts of typical African clan setting.
13
One can conclude that life for Africans is communal. Life itself is understood as a communal factor in African traditional society. This is a vital communion and bond in which the solidarity of the community is created and sustained. For this vital communion and bond bind together all members of the same family and clan. All members share the same blood, which is the life-force of the family. In African thinking life is not regarded in a deterministic nor fatalistic way. It is to be regarded rather as potency.
African Life Philosophy
Africans have been notorious homo religio-people in their thinking and understanding life.4 As Peter Kijanga said, “System of African thought and feeling is centered upon men’s growth, integrity, dignity and freedom and upon his capacity to be active not only as an individual but as a participant in history and upon the fact that every person carries within himself all of humanity.”5 For Africans life is where people gain self-awareness and as a result both individually and collectively become more responsible in relation to others and their god. This is why Africans generally operate with an integrated worldview that assigns a major place to religious factors and beliefs.6
Africans live by religion. Religion permeates all aspects of life. Thus, religion in
African thinking is a means by which cultures are shaped and social orders, political forms and economic activities take place. John Mbiti is right when he says, “Religion is
4 Peter S. Kijanga, Ujamaa and the Role of the Church in Tanzania (Arusha, TZ: Makumira Publication, 1978), 17.
5 Ibid.
6 John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion (London: Heinemain, 1975), 9. 14
closely bound up with the traditional way of African life, while at the same time this way of life has shaped religion as well.”7
African thinking focuses on life as the ultimate gift of God bestowed to humans.
When honoring ancestors, Africans honor God. In ancestral shrines, Africans sought an increase of life-force that flowed through the mystical body to which both the living and dead belong. For example, the Chagga tribe around Mt. Kilimanjaro believed this highest mountain in Africa was the seat of their god “Iruva.” Any child of the Chagga tribe, on the day he or she was born would be brought out early in the morning and shown to this god by being lifted up toward the top of the mountain thanking god for the blessing. This meant that life was the full participation in God’s life together with the ancestors.
Hierarchy and Participation in African Traditional Communal Life
According to Bénézet Bujo, life in African traditional understanding has an element of hierarchy; for while “life is a participating in God . . . it is always mediated by one standing above the recipient in the hierarchy of being.”8 Ancestors being above living families and clans are models. Life is lived fully when the rules and customs laid down by the ancestors are well kept by the living: “Fullness of life is available only to the persons who look to their ancestors for guidance and inspiration.”9
Clans are made of families of the same ancestral origin. Each family is led by a man; however, families and clans live in the sphere of myriads of spirits who have close contact with ancestors. Bujo explained this hierarchy more clearly when he said Africans
7 Ibid., 29.
8 Bénézet Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1992), 20.
9 Ibid.,29. 15
see life like a network of living relationships with God and nature: “All relationships, between person and person, living and dead, and between persons and nature, are rooted in God and point towards God and towards the end of all things in God.”10
Mbiti also has described this hierarchy but in a participatory way: “In all African families, there is a hierarchy based on age and degree of kinship. The oldest members have a higher status than the youngest. Within hierarchy there are duties, obligations, rights and privileges dictated by the moral sense of society.”11 This hierarchy of African traditional communal life is visualized in a diagram found in Appendix A. Life is of God and all creation participates. One of the tribes in Tanzania, the Nyaturu, calls their god
“Matunda,” which means “god-the-creator for life is creating.” The diagram displays life as understood by Africans. God is the one who creates and sustains life and hence stands above and beneath all of life. Heaven is above and the earth is below; ancestors are above humans. The visible and invisible spirits occupy both spheres of heaven and earth.
The complexity and dynamism of African society is easy to see. This is because of the role religion plays in rites of passage. With the help of a religious text known as
Ikuta Yuva, which means, “Praising the Sun,” used by Nyaturu people when they go for consultation of a divine-medicine doctor, creator-god Matunda is always with the people and creation, busy giving blessings from morning to evening.12 Life has no meaning without God. In the morning creator-god comes to bring blessings to all. In the noon this god stands above the sky making the homestead when god eats food, rests and makes a
10 Ibid., 33.
11 Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 176.
12 Nyaturu tribal oracle to be recited every time a Nyaturu person goes to consult a medicine- diviner. See Appendix D. 16
sacrifice for the creation. In the evening the creator-god goes down to bury all omens and misfortunes in a huge, thick rock. For Nyaturu, life and God are inseparable.
Therefore, for Africans life is all religious, including socio-economic and political matters. Ritual, which is a complex performance of symbolic actions, keeps the social order of the community one lives in. Such possibility is believed to be in place when an individual’s path through life is monitored, marked and celebrated from before birth to death and thereafter. Likewise, the events in community life echo the same cycle.
Ethical Correspondence of African Traditional Life
The African worldview is anthropocentric as it focuses on life. Accordingly,
Africa’s moral philosophy is based on anthropocentric vision. As Bujo said, “African tradition makes it plain that people considered that thoughts and intentions as well as external acts, had a moral character, and deserved to be considered good or bad.”13
Morals and ethics are for social life in the society. The conduct of an individual is always performed within the community. Social conduct is more emphasized compared to individual one. One is understood as a good person only if he or she complies with the community’s ethic. The importance of morals and ethics has to do with strengthening moral life in African traditional community. For Africans religious beliefs, values, rituals and practice are all for a moral purpose. According to Mbiti, “African traditional religion emphasizes the importance of morals and ethics in practice, and insists that they must extend into all areas of life for the welfare of the individual and society at large.”14
13 Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context, 23.
14 Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 181. 17
African Traditional Understanding of Words “Liberation” and “Salvation”
In African conception, life is central to community existence and also sacred.
There is no distinction between the physical or biological life and the spiritual life. There is only one life. All life is singular, undivided and whole. As Bujo says, “Life can only be enjoyed in its fullness when the ancestors are remembered and honored.”15
Many Bantu languages, when speaking on “liberation,” mean some payment made to release something, and that would be normally of very high price. Liberation is releasing something from bondage. But “salvation” means snatching something from danger that threatens life.
While liberation involves deliverance from misfortunes and bondages, bringing someone to original state, salvation is rescuing someone from all danger and bringing her into right relationship with ancestors and living ones. Liberation is to reinstate broken relationship, but without sacrifice. Salvation, however, involves a sacrificial act. As Bujo said, “(The) secret of life is to be found above all in the hallowed attitudes and practices of the ancestors. In their wisdom is to be found the key to a better and fuller life, and it is therefore crucial that the rites, actions, words, and laws which the ancestors have bequeathed to their descendants be scrupulously observed: they are the dispensable instruments of salvation.”16 Africans believe ancestral traditions are the life-giving force without which people are lost into damnation. Liberation is finding comfort by performing ancestral traditions, warding off all ill-fortunes; salvation is enjoying fullness of life available only to those who look for their ancestors for guidance and inspiration.
15 Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context, 21.
16 Ibid., 22. 18
African Traditional Understanding of Unity and Diversity
There was/is an apparent sense among African peoples that life was/is a unity. It is a network of living relationships between God and creation. For Africans, God is not standing afar from the world. Even the present generations of African life is undivided.
Unity
In typical African traditional society life has no distinction. All life is constituted of a single and undifferentiated whole. Although the name for God differs because of language, Africans worship one God-the-creator. Africans hardly speculate about God because living means participating in God through life itself that is mediated by God.
This mediation of life is thought to be transmitted by God through ancestors and elders. According to Bujo, “God and the ancestors, and the elders in their respective positions, take care to lay down rules, in forms of laws and taboos, to ensure the prosperity of the society.”17 In this understanding, Africans see life in unity. As long as the living remain faithful to their inheritance and make their ancestors’ life experience as their own the “living communion both with the ancestors and their own living kin”18 would be continued. Living members have a responsibility for protecting and prolonging the life of the community in all its aspects by keeping long-established ancestral traditions. This responsibility is for all members of the community. Life is an affair of the whole community. Therefore, life is holistic and communal with no dichotomy between private, social, political and religious life.
17 Ibid., 37.
18 Ibid., 34. 19
Diversity
When looking at art, music, dance, singing and craftworks among different tribes, it is vividly seen that undivided life is lived in diversity. This diversity came about from three heritages – historical, cultural and religious life. In historical heritage, every tribe and clan has its own history of immigration, calamities, wars, invasions, hunting, fishing, food-gathering, domestication of animals, farming, mining, metal work and settlement in villages. Some tribes in Tanzania like the Wachagga in Kilimanjaro had tribal chieftains.
In cultural heritage, peoples of Tanzania differed in languages, stories, proverbs, riddles, myths and legends. Besides being records of different histories, these cultural factors spell out different ways of people’s imaginations and creativities. All of them are reflected in different art, craftwork, dances, music and singing among the tribes.
Although religion is bound up with traditional African traditional life, the shape of religious practice differs even within one tribe. For example, the way the Wachagga of
Kilimanjaro worship is different from that of Maasai people. Therefore, though life is undivided, it is not without differences as it involves conflict. As Nyerere writes:
Man’s existence in society involves an inevitable and inseparable conflict - a conflict of his own desires. For every individual really wants two things: freedom to pursue his own interests and his own inclinations. At the same time he wants freedoms which can be obtained only through life in society—freedom from fear of personal attack, freedom from the effects of natural dangers which from time to time hit every individual and which cannot be withstood without help, and freedom to gain rewards from nature from which his own unaided strength is insufficient.19
It is no exaggeration to say Tanzania has more than 120 rich cultures. Tanzania has a population of more than forty million. Before the colonial era these tribes lived in
19 Nyerere, Freedom and Socialism, 7. 20
specific boundaries, independently from each other. However, this is no longer the case as there is a lot of mobility regardless of traditional tribal boundaries.
Key Values and Practices that have Affected Tanzania Culture
Tanzania experienced European colonialism from 1885 to 1961. Germans ruled from 1885 to 1920, followed by the British from 1920 to 1961. The life of Tanzanian people will never be the same after the impact of colonial occupation they underwent.
Colonial values and practices are found in the consciousness of colonized peoples throughout Africa. This is what Michael Kayoya of Burundi wrote in a recent poem:
In 1885 at Berlin our continent was partitioned Without consulting anyone they had pit on our misery They came to save us from earthly misery They came to educate us This ‘Act’ known as the Berlin Act, has humiliated me for a long time. Every time I come across its date, I feel the same contempt still That a man despises you So be it One thinks of it for a day Then it is finished That a people despise you You Your father Your mother Your people That is the last straw The last straw of indignation that a human heart can ‘stomach.’ The worst it is that they taught me this date They made us memorize it For a whole lesson they named all the participants in this Berlin Act. Their exceptional qualities Their diplomacy The motives which urged the one and the other. Before our impassive faces they displayed the results obtained The pacification of Africa The Benefits of civilization in Africa The courage of the explores Disinterested philanthropy
21
And no one Absolutely no one pointed out this injury This shame which followed us everywhere That a man! An equal! Should meddle in your affairs without consulting you at all It is flagrant lack of courtesy which any well-bred heart resents.20
Colonialists fulfilled self-interests and plundered Africa. As John Illife said, “The general attitude of the whites was that there was nothing in Africa which really deserved the name of ‘human.’ . . . Africans were just cheap labour tools which the colonizers could use to become rich.”21 Without consulting the people, colonialists introduced a capitalist system that benefited them. This was so because, “Imperialism attempted to separate direct producers from their means of production to pave way for the dominance of the capitalist mode of production so that new economic demands could be made.”22
This was carefully crafted by colonialists as Illife observed: “While the peasant was required to produce for the capitalist market, the kinship was retained to take care of his production requirements so as to enable imperialism to obtain super-profits from his labour. This was so because the costs of social production of the peasant are shifted to the pre-capitalist organized society, making the peasant a no cost producer to the colonialists.”23 There were three tools used by colonialists toward suppression and exploitation in Africa: education, money and communication infrastructure.
20 Michael Kayoya, “The Consciousness of the Colonized,” in Bujo, African Theology in its Social Context, 38.
21 John Illife, A Modern History of Tanganyika (London: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 5.
22 Anza Amen Lema, Partners in Education in Tanzania (Arusha, TZ: ELCT, 1972), 29.
23 Illife, A Modern History of Tanganyika, 5. 22
Introduction and Establishment of Formal Education
Formal education was introduced in Tanzania from the beginning of colonial rule.
This education was different from tribal/clan education, contrary to the communal spirit of the peoples of Tanzania. It was by nature a subversive force capable of breaking up the traditional life of the tribe by uprooting young people and producing a class of homeless isolated from the life of their own community. As Anza Lema wrote, formal education introduced and established in Tanzania emphasized “the development of the individual’s drive for power for its own sake and give a little or no consideration to the individual’s role in the society or the individual’s relationship with others” in the community.24
Introduction of Money Economy
The barter system of African traditional society, changed to a new money and market economic system. This system was introduced in three ways. First, they used a long-distance trade methodology. There were rivers and other possible paths used in reaching the hinterland. For many years, “Families would exchange certain items they produced for other items they were short of in their subsistence requirements. Things like iron, salt, and livestock became important for exchange both internally and with neighboring peoples, such as Chagga, Maasai and Shambaa.”25 However, this had to change when “the coastal traders were bringing industrial commodities such as cloth, beads, and guns, and were demanding things which were not of use-value in society.”26
24 Lema, Partners in Education in Tanzania, 4.
25 Isaria Kimambo, Penetration and Protest in Tanzania (Dar-es-Salaam: Tanzania PH, 1991), 2.
26 Ibid. 23
The new trade system weakened the communal organization of labor as locals engaged in hunting for the purpose of obtaining items like ivory, animal skins and natural minerals.
The second method used was colonial invasion. The German colony in Tanzania was established in February 1885. It took five-to-eight years for German colonialists to incorporate local communities and societies in colonial administration. The whole process involved troop enforcement because of native resistance to foreign domination.
During that invasion community leaders were converted into colonial agents.
Masses of cultivators were converted into producers for the benefit of colonialists. The colonial invasion was able to disown individuals in such a way that they lost command over production and became more of a peasantry force. Surrendered African community leaders worked as puppets of the colonial administration, recruiting laborers in their areas for colonial settlers’ estates of maize, beans, rice, coffee, tobacco, sisal and cotton.
The third method used was introducing a capitalist economic system. Africa’s economy depended wholly on agricultural and pastoral activities, owning the land communally by patrilineages in accordance to their local settlement. Patterns had to change due to colonial occupation. The colonial structure, which oversaw the economy, was well-connected for the benefit of colonial masters in Europe.
The overseas economy consisted of a metropole and periphery. According to Jim
Ault: “The metropolis (i.e. Germany or British ) was the locus of product elaboration and disposal and the source from which the system was provisional with capital, managerial skill and other ancillary services needed for production.”27 That is, the metropolis became a locus of initiative and decision as a “critical linkage point between international
27 Ibid. 24
demand and supply and the nexus through which the pattern of resource combination was determined” as Ault said.28 On the other hand, the colonized country, which in this case was a periphery, was “merely an entity for supplying raw materials, land and labor, propelled by specific demands from its metropole, and in return, receiving the supplies needed to fulfill these demands.”29
In this structure monetary arrangements had to be adopted by the colony in the form of metropolis currency. The currency of Tanzania is the shilling, adopted from
British currency whereas francs are a currency of The Congo adopted from Belgium. The colony had no choice but to be tied up in and to the use of metropolitan financial intermediaries, the maintenance of free convertibility with metropolitan currency at a fixed rate of exchange and with that the assurance that liabilities of financial operators in the colony were fully matched by metropolitan assets. The effect was to ensure that the colony’s assets were realized in terms of metropolitan supplies of goods and services.
Building of Communication Infrastructures
The last tool used by colonialists in suppressing and exploiting Africans’ wealth was the communication infrastructure. The central railway line built between 1905 and
1907 stretched from Dar-es-Salaam harbor on the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria’s shore in the north and branched to Kigoma port at Tanganyika Lake. This line was to service the transportation of cotton produced in plantations farmed in the Lake Victoria basin and also to connect the landlocked Burundi, Rwanda and Congo (DRC) for colonial benefits.
28 Gustav Stolper, Germany Economy 1870 – 1940: Issues and Trends (New York: Reynot & Hitchcock, 1940), 43.
29 Julius Nyerere, Man and Development (Dar es Salaam, TZ: Oxford University Press, 1974), 44. 25
Another railway line was from Tanga port on the Indian Ocean coast. This line was built at the same time with that of central line. It stretches from Tang to Moshi and
Arusha in the northeast of mainland Tanzania. The railway line was used to transport all produces of sisal and coffee estates along the mountains of Kilimanjaro and Meru.
Gustav Stolper commenting on Germany’s affluence at the turn of the twentieth century said, “The industries affluence and exporting capacity of the country were entirely dependent upon the importation of raw materials and foodstuffs, which by far exceeded the exports of finished goods.”30 The colony became a resource of strategic raw materials for master’s industrial manufacturing in Europe and a market of master’s industrial goods. Colonialism brought in competition that heightened individualism.
The Influences of Modernization and Globalization in Tanzanian Society
Since political independence in 1961, Tanzania has tried to build a modern nation.
The national self-consciousness has been that of human development as Nyerere writes:
We have been oppressed a great deal, We have been exploited a great deal, And we have been disregarded a great deal. It is our weakness that had led to our being oppressed, Exploited, and disregarded; We now intend to bring about a revolution which will ensure That we are never again victims of these things.31
Tanzania as a free society from colonialism tried hard to develop and emerge into a modern society. The intent of new Tanzania is toward human progress and betterment.
However, this is not easy to achieve as society has to engage in a new revolutionary
30 Stolper, Germany Economy 1870 – 1940, 43.
31 Lutahoire, The Human Life Cycle among the Bantu, 1. 26
battle, harder than previous nationalism. This new battle is against poverty and economic backwardness. Such a fight has to be carried out by Tanzanians, dealing seriously with problems that concern Tanzania in their own way; exploiting to the greatest possible advantage such opportunities as were available.
Thirty Years of Attempting of Building African Socialist Society in Tanzania
From independence, Tanzania determined to build a socialist society based on
African roots. As Nyerere said, “We have deliberately decided to grow as a society, out of our roots.”32 By “our roots” he means the African traditional society’s life where people care for each other’s welfare. The proper notion for development must be that of freeing people from the shackles of poverty and economic backwardness. Such development must meet two needs—change and stability. By change the society was to aim at human freedom and developing human’s self-awareness. By stability the society was to remain masters of their own destiny, defending their national freedom.
The core of this attempt was the spirit of African traditional “family-hood” known as “Ujamaa” where the self-reliance policy arose. It is easy to misinterpret this concept as self-isolation, but in truth this is human interdependence, in which human dignity, liberty and justice based on true liberation and freedom a society can hold on.
Politically, Tanzania is independent but economically it is dependent. Freeing itself from the yoke of colonialism in the early-1960s, Tanzania remained dependent as it inherited the cash crops trade, traded mainly with former colonialists, declared socialism and the self-reliance policy, nationalized major means of economic production, created
32 Nyerere, Man and Development, 2. 27
395 public companies for industry, agriculture and services, saw an average 4.9 percent annual growth rate between 1967 and 1972, per capita was USD 309 (the highest since independence), saw the gap between the rich and poor narrowed from 1:50 in 1961 to
1:15 in 1974, and made education, health care and safe water guaranteed for all.
Tanzanian had to react to both capitalism and communism, which created a tension between the Western and Eastern worlds of the time. Strategically, the public sector was the way of fulfilling objectives of self-reliance policy in Tanzania.33 As F.L
Limbu and O.J.N. Mashindano point out when examining the agricultural sector in relation to poverty eradication in Tanzania, the family-hood and self-reliance policies earned Tanzanians three gains: first, ownership of major means of production through nationalization, influencing a great deal the decision-making process in the country as people participated in country’s economic activities.34 Second, establishment of a huge public sector created equal opportunities of employment to many. And third, the government of the people of Tanzania was able to provide what was called “free” basic social services like education, health, water and the like in many parts of the country.
Between 1977 and 1985, Tanzania experienced economic shocks. This included the fall of commodity prices in the world market, the oil crisis in 1983 drained 60 percent of export earnings, severe drought, breaking of the East African Community that served as an economic joint venture of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, the challenge of building new infrastructure due to the break of EAC, and the war between Iddi Amini of Uganda
33 F.L Limbu and O.J.N. Mashindano, “The Agricultural Sector and Poverty in Tanzania: the Impact and Future of the Reform Process,” in The Nyerere Legacy and Economic Policy Making in Tanzania, eds., Amon Mbelle, G.D. Mjema, and A.A.L Kilindo, (Dar-Es-Salaam: Dar-Es-Salaam University Press, 2002), 45.
34 Ibid., 48. 28
and Tanzania in 1978/79. Internally there were a huge government and political ruling party bureaucracy, mismanagement of public institutions and corruption
These shocks showed that the two core development policies of family-hood and self-reliance had many weaknesses. Limbu and Mashindano mentioned some of the weaknesses that have incapacitated Tanzanian society. Such weaknesses include:
Tanzania not developing a skilled workforce to manage the shared public sector; reducing the gap in income caused most low-paid executives in misappropriating public funds; in turn, employees in the public sector were not adequately remunerated; both economic and business sectors were not well addressed, political interests overrode economic and business interests; income generated by most public enterprises was not ploughed back, thus these enterprises tended to be dilapidated; though decision-making process was intended to be of the people, by the people and for the people, this was not the case as it turned into a bureaucracy. As a result the present affairs are coupled with abject poverty, formidable corruption that impairs both economic growth and policy credibility and low agricultural productivity with weak rural infrastructure tempering agricultural growth.
Modernization Effects on Tanzanian Society
To transform Tanzania into a “modern” society, Tanzanians tried to maximize the physical power and productive capacity by making use of available natural resources to increase the of standard living.35 A process of freeing people’s potential by maximizing their ability to share in the goals of Tanzanian society and participating creatively and effectively in the realization of those goals would help this process. For fifty years
35 Colin Legum and G.R.V. Mmari, eds., Mwalimu: the Influence of Nyerere (London: Africa World Press, 1995), 36. 29
Tanzanian society has engaged in changing its backwardness and underdevelopment. The term “modern” in Tanzanian development means transforming African traditional ways of life, which were mainly tribal and clan, into national dimensions.
Under Tanzania’s development vision of the 1960s and 1970s the social and agricultural sectors were given much emphasis. There were three factors that promoted modernization in Tanzania. One was the role of education. Education served the interest of the Tanzanian people. Tanzanians were able to acquire knowledge and skills needed for developing themselves. Education had to be responsible to the society.
Second, was national integration by establishing social institutions, democratic institutions, government institutions and civic organizations open to all Tanzanian citizens. This was successively done through the Kiswahili language.36 Kiswahili has promoted the ease of mobility. The other facilitator of modernization in Tanzania was industrialization with objectives of supporting the development of agriculture.
These efforts established peace, unity, political stability and human dignity.
However, the fight is far from over. The agricultural sector remains a challenge for
Tanzanians. The agricultural sector remains the backbone of the economy of Tanzania.
Agriculture is a rural sector involving more than 80 percent of the population, focusing all endeavors in developing the society. Moreover, poverty remains a rural phenomenon that continues to demand agricultural modernization.
Kiswahili became the national language for Tanzania in 1961. Tanzania has more than 120 tribes with their own languages but Kiswahili is an official language of the country. This development was beneficial because it has fostered the unity of the nation.
36 Ibid., 28. 30
Globalization Effects in the Life of Tanzanian People
Globalization evolved into what is known as neo-colonialism in Africa.37 This complex economic system started after World War II and perpetuated colonial oppression and exploitation of masses in third world countries. Under it the economic systems and political policies of independent territories were managed and manipulated from outside.
This was done by international monopoly finance capital in league with indigenous elite.
Strategically, neo-colonialism used balkanization, ensuring economic monopoly continues through exploitation and oppression by means of communication, banking, insurance and other key services controlled by its masters. The capital invested in the recipient country was not for benefit, but instead for exploitation, increasing the gap of income between the rich country and the poor. Neo-colonialism, like its predecessor colonialism created wealth for colonizers, not local peoples. The wealth gained through neo-colonialism was used to mitigate class conflicts in the capitalist countries.
This was not the case as profits made from such investments ended up in pockets of the capitalist class instead of workers. Neo-colonialism increased the rivalry between owners and workers, heightening the rivalry between great powers provoked by colonialism. To avert this rivalry in the capitalist world a new international economic relationship had to be invented. The aim of globalization is to engage in economic growth and sustainable progress toward a poverty-free society around the globe.
The terminology neo-colonialism explicitly explains yet another way of domineering another countries’ economy. According to Nkwame Nkrumah, “Neo-
Colonialism as a last stage of Imperialism is an economic system that always assures
37 Nkwame Nkrumah, The Revolutionary Party (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 310. 31
foreign economic control is sustainable. And as for now such economic domineering has evolved into what is known as globalization.”38
However, globalization has different meanings to different people. In Kiswahili culture, globalization is translated as “Utandawazi,” a term that has a connotation of a spider’s web. This is so because globalization interweaves many processes including social, economic, political, cultural and religious dimensions of human life. The ultimate aim is to remove all barriers and frontiers of economic, business and technologies from one country to another. Rogate Mshana defines globalization as an historical evolution of humanity that brings forth shrinkage of space and time, growing interdependence, development of science, technology and communication, spread of human rights, ideas, and skills and progress in international law.39
Under the initiatives of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, globalization adopted liberalization and privatization policies in the form of highly competitive market economies leading to deregulation, deflation and devaluation activities. The key elements of globalization are economic growth engineered by private enterprise, free trade by removing trade and business barriers usually maintained by government regulatory control structures and deregulation by dismantling all other regulatory structures between peoples. The other elements are transnational corporations and monopolies, which control
70 percent of world trade, 80 percent of foreign direct investment, 70 percent of patents and technological transfers, privatization arising from government’s failure to control the key enterprises like transportation and economic development.
38 Ibid.
39 Rogate R Mshana, Unpublished article delivered at Religious Leaders Consultation on The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) held in Moshi, Tanzania, May 12-15, 2003. 32
Market fundamentalism is thought to solve problems, and technological advances facilitated by both computer technology and communications. Computers have eased the standardization of national economies; fax, cellular phones and the internet, increased the speed by which companies and individuals communicate with one another. There are also national dependency, free market and democracy. This does not remove tension between the market and democracy as the influence of money on politics or the undemocratic nature of most workplaces is rarely explored. The last element is transparency in what is called rule by the law as necessary for proper functioning of the market.
In reality, globalization is much the same story. Africa is a privilege parade- ground for the economic struggle of global forces and even the new battleground for multi-nationals as well as urban minority elite interests. The result of globalization is obvious. The poor, rural, semi-literate woman of Himo Township has been promised a liberal economy, free trade, industrialization, privatization, encouragement of foreign investors with which her life will be greatly improved. She and her little children have been told they will soon be provided with clean drinking water, better health care, more and better food and a future filled with hopes of prosperity and a longer life.
Notwithstanding, she does not recognize herself in this story. She does not yet see any substantial signs of improvement in her life. In fact, she has not experienced relief in her life, even when official reports continue to celebrate growth of the Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) and foreign investors appreciatively the marvelous economic revolution is not taking place. To be sure, however, she is bewildered by billboards for so many advertisements, promotion of soft drinks like Coca-Cola©, provision of condoms, luxury products from industrial countries and even fake products covered with plastic bags.
33
Globalization has sidelined a majority of poor in countries like Tanzania. The following are effects of neo-liberal globalization: health services are too expensive for the majority, 34 percent of Tanzanians are unable to send their children to secondary school, no protection of local businesses from foreign or overseas imports, widening gap between rich and people in poverty, 50 percent of Tanzanians in poverty, increased unemployment because of privatization of 333 of 395 public institutions, entrenchment of government employees and farmers continue to receive low income due to lack of subsidies.
There are needs in society that should be addressed. Sustainable economic growth through accelerated integration into the global economy was expected to bring life improvement. However, under the neo-liberal paradigm this move is not a panacea for poverty eradication in Tanzania. Free and open trade actually tends to increase poverty.
The open trade and export-oriented market economy ignores policies that were supporting subsistence farming and small-scale production for local markets. Loss of tradition accelerates poverty among the rural population in Tanzania including Himo area. It affects the most vulnerable and marginalized groups like women, who are responsible for raising and nurturing the families of most African households.
There is a big effort undertaken for marketing good governance. But it is done in order to entice donor support and likely to erode the social and political fabrics, which for many years shaped and cultivated a unique African identity. It is obvious that though globalization has brought in good things, it has not brought in expected rewards for
Africa. It has alienated to some extent the government from the realities of the people it claims to serve. The government is seen to advocate for foreignization of the economy of the country.
34
Though Africans have often been victims of forces from outside, they must take responsibility for their own doing. Africans must create a culture of accountability.
Africans and their leadership must see that peace, security, democracy, good governance, human rights and sound economic management are conditions for sustainable development needed in Africa today. There must be a strategy in which all would work both individually and collectively for the common good.
Because Christians are called to be stewards of God’s world and priests of the royal rule of the Kingdom of God through Jesus Christ, African Christians must take that responsibility seriously. Africans must be honest. They must play a prophetic role in assisting society emancipate from corrupt life and abject poverty. Hence the goal must be liberating from its history of underdevelopment, poverty, war and corruption the activity that is initiated from the grassroots of community. A mutual involvement strategy must be employed without isolating Africa from active participation in the world economy and political and social development.
While globalization has increased the ability of the strong to advance their interests to the detriment of the weak, especially in the areas of trade, finance and technology, Christians must speak and advocate a kind of development that favors the poor and marginalized masses. Globalization offers great opportunities but at present its benefits are quite unevenly shared. Pro-poor development is essential in this advocacy; the Church can assist in its ministry. For Jesus Christ is deeply concerned that human physical and spiritual needs are met and His Church is called to participate in doing His mission of creating new a creation in Him.
35
CHAPTER 2
LUTHERAN MISSIONARIES’ INTERACTIONS WITH TANZANIAN SOCIETY
It took seventy years for mission work to bear the fruit of creating an indigenous
Lutheran Church in Tanzania. Missionaries sent by different societies of Europe and
America endured weather hardships and diseases such as malaria, diarrhea, bilharzias, smallpox and other tropical climate conditions. They covered long distances on foot through rough and forested areas to reach people living far in the hinterlands of Africa.
Interaction between Lutheran missionaries and the indigenous people of Tanzania was long coming and complex. Missionaries overcame physical difficulties to encounter deep cultural dimensions. In general, missionaries came to a completely different world.
Moreover, their hosts, African natives, were taken by surprise because they did not know these missionaries. They had suspicions. It was much harder for Africans to easily accept missionaries because of their relationship with colonial rule. Such relationships created a crux among Africans and at times provoked reactions from them.
In order to understand this encounter two things must be understood: the origins of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania and the kind of Lutheran Church that was born. The good thing is this encounter produced a lasting new thing—the Evangelical Lutheran
36
Church in Tanzania. Second, Africans saw something different in European missionaries during that encounter. The missionaries were the same race as colonialists, which could easily confuse Africans and even prevent them accepting faith.
Origins of Lutheran Church in Tanzania
A letter of recommendation written by the Sultan of Zanzibar in 1844 reads, “This letter is written on behalf of Dr. Krapf, a good man who wishes to convert the world to
God. Behave well to him, and be everywhere serviceable to him.”1 This letter indicates missionaries were not native. Moreover, the expedition diary of Johannes Rebmann proves that: “This morning we saw clearly the Chagga Mountains than ever before. At ten in the morning I saw one of the peaks that covered with a white cloud. When I asked one of my porters/guards about it he told me that the white thing covering the peak was very cold and seats there forever. But as for me I am sure that white thing is nothing but a snow.”2 This demonstrates that Christianity was brought from Europe.
European and Northern American Missionary Activities in Tanzania (1893 – 1958)
The ELCT is a product of seventy years of missionary work. There were earlier
Lutheran mission attempts between 1844 and 1884: “Lutheran mission organizations began their activity in Tanzania only after the country had assumed conditions of political dependence upon Germany.”3 European powers had a strategy to rule local masses of
Africa by civilizing them using commerce and Christianity. By commerce the lives of
1 Henrik Smedjebacka, Lutheran Church Autonomy in Northern Tanzania 1940-1963 (Abo, FI: Abo Akademi, 1973), 34.
2 Johannes Rebmann, “Travel Journal,” The Church Missionary Intelligencer 1:1 (May 1849).
3 Smedjebacka, Lutheran Church Autonomy in Northern Tanzania 1940 - 1963, 29. 37
people were improved and by Christianity native masses were quieted and subdued.
These were dependent on colonial government. So while commercial companies accompanied the process of colonization, Christianity was brought with them.
According to Rudolph C. Burke, there were eighteen Lutheran mission societies that sent missionaries to Tanzania. The German societies were Bethel Mission Society,
Berlin Missionary Society, Leipzig Mission Society, Dutch Lutheran Church, Lutheran
Church of the Netherlands, Lutheran Church of Schleswig-Holstein and Berklum
Mission. The first three societies sent missionaries to Tanzania in 1886, 1891 and 1893.
The rest sent missionaries in the 1950s.
The societies from Scandinavian countries were Swedish National Mission
Society (1939), Church of Sweden Mission (1947), Norwegian Lutheran Mission (1948),
Finnish Mission Society (1951) and Danish Lutheran Mission (1952). From the United
States of America (US), missionaries were sent by Augustana Lutheran Church (1924),
Evangelical Lutheran Church (1925), American Lutheran Church (1948), Lutheran Free
Church (1952), Suomi Synod (1952) and United Lutheran Church in America (1952).
Missionaries sent by Bethel Mission Society began work in the Dares-Salaam and
Tanga regions in northeastern Tanzania and later in northwestern Tanzania. Missionaries of Berlin Missionary Society established mission work in the southern highlands later in the Dar-es-Salaam area. Leipzig Mission Society sent missionaries to northern Tanzania before going to central Tanzania. Mission societies from Scandinavia and the US came to support and expand mission work, or open new areas like Mbulu and Kigoma near Lake
Tanganyika in Tanzania. These missionaries were accompanied by the Church
Missionary Society, London Mission Society and Moravian missionaries from Germany.
38
These Lutheran mission societies were wrapped with pietistic and revivalism awakening in Europe and America. Leipzig missionaries were exceptional because they were more Lutheran confessional oriented. They believed that mission had to be “based on national and natural customs.”4 That is, mission work was to be of education and nurturing with a non-aggressive conversion approach.
From the start Lutheran missionaries had a holistic mission that even involved new converts. They soon discovered African peoples had their own culture. From time immemorial religion in Africa “occupied an extremely central in all the different communities . . . constituted an integrated part of the entire complex of living to which the individual belonged.”5 The missionaries learned about the culture because they went directly to live in their villages. Burke wrote, “Lutheran missionaries have been sharing the Good News in Africa, training their African brothers in faith and godliness. The
Africans have been good students, learning a way of life that includes customs and social mores as unnatural to them as domestic service was to the cat. And now, almost without warning, the African has seen a mouse.”6 This was contrary to what other European missionaries assumed that Africans were poor and ignorant.
Such comments are important in observing encounters with Africans. Mission work was an immense undertaking; despite facing danger like killer diseases, Africans were illiterate with a communal lifestyle quite different from Western individualism. In addition, natives were deeply embedded in their tribal/clan traditional religion that was
4 Ibid., 30.
5 Ibid., 35.
6 Ibid., 36. 39
distinct from the missionaries’ religion. While there was no distinction between the spiritual and physical world in African thinking, “The Western religious thought regards the supernatural as that which is extraordinary, mysterious, unknown or unexplainable in terms of natural or ordinary phenomena, and as such as the opposite of natural.”7
Since many missionaries were inexperienced in African-life, they encountered a complex problem: understanding the natives’ culture and traditional religion. They gave inadequate names to traditional religion like animism, idolatry, paganism, heathenism, fetishism, witchcraft, magic, juju and primitive religion. Such names are confusing and have negative connotations. This could be one of the reasons missionaries neglected and even dismissed everything about African culture, something that was not fair at all.
While missionaries appreciated communal life, profound fear overwhelmed the natives. Life was hidden in language and custom, which were buried in “mysterious religion.”8 There were three basic fears. The first was physical; Africans feared tribal war, battles and fighting because of the danger in losing land, plundering and looting.
The second was more emotional, as people feared persons thought to be witches.
In African thinking the universe created by God ought to be harmonious, balanced and good. They believed evil powers disturbed this order of creation. Such evil powers are said to originate not from the breaking of taboos or other life laws but from spiritual, mystical powers at work in the universe. Witches were thought to possess evil power and knowingly and selectively used it to harm others for their own purposes. Supernatural evil power was incarnated in the witch, making witchcraft part and parcel of the mystery
7 Rudolph C. Burke, Uncommitted Continent (Rock Island, IL: Augustana Book, 1959), v.
8 Ibid., 2. 40
of him or her. It was central to the understanding of morality and ethics among African people. In African mentality everything happening wrong or bad in society originates in witchcraft. All illness and other hardships in life ultimately are caused by witchcraft.
Consequently, this kind of fear created an attitude of living in suspicion among.
The third level of fear was religious, concerning the spirits of the dead and other invisible supernatural forces. Fear of the spirits of the dead was more serious as people believed all life’s misfortunes and blessings were brought by these spirits, known as ancestors. The spirits bring misfortunes or blessings depending on keeping ancestral traditions. As obligation natives practiced sacrificial living – living by sacrificing in order to appease the spirits of the dead, cooling them and begging them for blessings.
Missionaries realized the holistic approach was most appropriate doing mission work in Tanzania: “Missionaries in different professions, together with African evangelists, teachers, medical workers, elders and others.”9 Lutheran missionaries lived with villagers. This mutual living created opportunity for missionaries and African
Christians to learn from each other. While missionaries learned African life, African
Christians learned the moral life of missionaries in line with Christian life.
Missionaries opened their work by building a mission station. African converts would work hand-in-hand with missionaries in carrying out the work. The mission center was low profile, composed of evangelistic, educational and medical works. One missionary said, “The unsung missionaries of Africa are these families and young couples who volunteered to leave home and move into new areas to plant the Good News
9 Elmer R. Danielson, Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania: 1928-1968 (Rock Island, IL: Lutheran Church in America, 1977), 20. 41
among non-Christian populations. It is people like these whom God has used to bring about such miraculous growth.”10 These African Christians were loyal and cooperative.
The motivation behind native Christians spreading the Gospel was Africans needed health, life and education. They were convinced the Church provided these needs.
African Christians distinguished the similarities and differences between Christianity and
African Traditional Religion (ATR). The two religious systems held similar beliefs: God alone is Supreme Being and Creator of all, methodology in religious practices maintained communion with God through sacrifices in the form of offerings and worship, belief that
God was all powerful, all beliefs have intermediaries, equality, brotherhood and love among all people as children of God and it was harmonious with African way of life.
Notwithstanding, the two faiths differ in many respects. In Christianity Jesus
Christ is the sole solution to humankind’s needs; African Traditional Religion sees life as a continuous gamut embracing all nature; all sacred and secular, material and non- material objects form a wholeness worthy of human respect for they are potent, virile and alive. Christianity stresses that Jesus Christ is the only savior and object of adoration and prayer while ATR worship is idolatrous with no single savior. While in Christianity personality is a matter of individuals, in African Traditional Religion it is understood within the context of the community. Christianity had creeds, dogma and beliefs of one’s choice, while none these are factors in ATR. For Christians, salvation by Jesus is awaiting the people who have lived righteously and punishment awaits the unrighteous by death in hell fire. In ATR praise and reward are accorded those who comply with and live within the prescribed moral code of the African society.
10 Ibid., 74. 42
Despite close relationship between missionaries and colonial government in
Tanzania that created a crux in African hearts, the goal of mission work during these seventy years was successful. The purpose of Lutheran mission work in Tanzania was to create a new church that was more indigenous in character: “The rules of the Leipzig mission contained a paragraph to the effect that the aim of the work should be the creation of an autonomous Church, with its own pastorhood and own constitution.”11
The goal of mission work in Tanzania was to create “young Lutheran churches in the mission fields.”12 This materialized slowly. Although some African converts were invited in doing mission work, they were of lower profile. They would only work with missionaries by assisting in preaching and teaching in vernacular languages as well as reaching people at their homes and attending the preaching places in village areas.
This meant missionaries remained experts who provided leadership, teaching and supervision, but early converts were sent out as evangelists/lay preachers and teachers to reach African masses in different villages. For the first twenty years of mission work in
Tanzania many local congregations, schools and dispensaries were established in mission fields. However, African Christians were not involved in church decision-making. This shortcoming challenged African Christians in taking care of the embryonic church left by missionaries due to defeat of German colonial rule in Tanzania after World War I.
According to Smedjebacka, when “German missionaries were repatriated . . .
Africans themselves had to step into the missionaries’ shoes, and assumed responsibility
11Smedjebacka, Lutheran Church Autonomy in Northern Tanzania 1940-1963, 38.
12 Ibid. 43
for the tasks previously handled exclusively by foreign missionaries.”13 Although evangelistic campaigns continued well during and after the war, education and medical works suffered a great deal for “indigenous Christianity had no chance of maintaining school and medical activity without help from outside.”14 The question of church self- governing and self-supporting arose. After World War I, Augustan missionaries signed an agreement with Leipzig Mission Society to take care of orphan missions in Tanzania.
In 1922, German missionaries were allowed to return and worked together with African
Christians in creating an autonomous, indigenous church in Tanzania. This meant organizing the new emerging young had to be taken seriously.
Two developments were made in organizing the indigenous and autonomous church. First, establishment of congregations’ rules led to creating church constitution.
This resulted in training African pastors in 1933. The development was appreciated by
Africans: “Now you missionaries have given us also the last thing reserved for you, the office of pastor. You have not withheld anything from us, but have given us the whole treasure of the Gospel.”15African pastors now worked hand-in-hand without reservation.
The second development was financial self-supporting. Financial stewardship was introduced and taught locally. The aim was helping congregations by improving their incomes. Individual Christians were first helped in improving their individual incomes so they could contribute to the church. Leipzig introduced church taxes whereas Augustana introduced voluntary contribution. Church taxes were easier to arrange but hard to collect
13 Ibid., 50.
14 Ibid., 52.
15 Ibid., 57. 44
because of poverty and no backing in church understanding. Despite this difference, financial support was achieved as congregations supported evangelistic expenses.
These developments were influenced by policies introduced by British colonial governor Donald Cameroon. One policy allowed African local rule under the chiefdom system supervised by the central colonial government. The nationalistic movement of the
Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) motivated mission work to establish a participatory strategy that promoted involvement of African Christians. Seven Lutheran churches were fully established by 1958. The churches were Iraqw Lutheran Church in
Mbulu area, and the Lutheran Churches in the northern Tanzania, northwestern Tanzania, central Tanzania, southern Tanzania, Usambara-Digo area, and Uzaramo-Uluguru area.
Each Lutheran church had its own constitution with African leadership. The only thing they had in common was the inherent mission from the missionary activity, for
Since the war, the Lutheran Churches had cooperated within the framework of a federation. The first task of common interest was the training of pastors, which gradually resulted in the establishment of the Theological School at Makumira. Other important joint projects included the Lutheran Secondary School in Arusha, the Medical Assistants’ Training Centre at Bumbuli, Usambara, and the Vuga Mission Press, also in Usambara.16
This shared spirit was further strengthened by the Federation of Lutheran Churches in
Tanzania; formulated to replace the Lutheran Mission Council. This federation nurtured the spirit of unity that resulted in the birth of one Lutheran church in June 1963. After several federation meetings between 1959 and 1962, the churches united in 1963.
Signing of this unity gave birth to a new Lutheran church in Tanzania known as
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. It reads:
16 Ibid., 63. 45
In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Remembering that it is the will of the Lord that His people be one as He and the Father are one, and believing that it is the will of God that this unity be manifest in church order; we, the Lutheran Church of Iraqw, the Lutheran Church of Northern Tanganyika, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Northwest Tanganyika, the Lutheran Church of Central Tanganyika, the Lutheran Church of Southern Tanganyika, the Lutheran Church of Usambara-Digo, and the Lutheran Church of Uzaramo-Uluguru, who have hitherto worked together in common task through the means of the Federation of Lutheran Churches of Tanganyika, adopt this constitution to govern our common life in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanganyika in the hope that the Lord of the Church may thereby lead us to an expression of wider Christian unity in East Africa.17
This historic signing was done during the Church Assembly of June 16 to 21, 1963.
The Indigenous Lutheran Church in Tanzania (1958 – 2008)
The fifty years of indigenous Lutheran Church in Tanzania known as the ELCT has been successful in its mission. This church has grown quantitatively as well as qualitatively. As a consolidation of seven churches, the ELCT stood as a nationwide church from the beginning of the new nation of Tanganyika (1961) that was soon to unite with Zanzibar to form the United Republic of Tanzania in April 1964.
The new nation of Tanzania was the product of a nationalistic movement led by
TANU in Mainland Tanzania and the Afro-Shiraz Party (ASP) in Zanzibar. African nationalism was a recovered sense of identity that included awareness of resources and the rising tide of expectations that contributed to change. The motto of development was to build a nation of African identity based on the immemorial traditional sense of human oneness expressed in Tanzania’s accent ujamaa, which extended familyhood and exercised mutual concern. The aim was building a socialist society where the economy was owned by the people through their one-political party system.
17 Danielson, Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania, 196. 46
Building a new nation was not easy. Though the peoples of Tanzania had never been a nation before colonialism, colonial rule did not provide opportunity due to its political principle of divide and rule. As Danielson wrote:
The strong forces in bringing unity to a highly diversified people included the Swahili language (transcending local dialects), the new political party, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi 1977 formed by a merger of TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) and ASP (Afro-Shiraz Party), and a common will cultivated as an educational process by the born teacher (Mwalimu) and a political leader, Julius Nyerere, president since 1961.18
They were employed in all political, socio-economic and cultural development drama in
Tanzania for thirty years. Because of economic stagnation Tanzania changed economic development tactics. The nation opened doors to private enterprise. By doing so much socialistic policy was discarded. This move changed building the nation in a more liberal pattern. Tanzania entered a new epoch mixed economy.
In 2008 the ELCT reached five million members, served by two thousand ordained African pastors assisted by many evangelists, teachers, parish workers, medical workers, elders and the like. Many African Christians learned quickly, realizing the missionaries were “simply in love and service to the people with the Good News of Jesus
Christ.”19 The missionaries did that by living with rural people with whom they spread the Gospel. Missionaries put their efforts to learning and using the native languages to translate the Gospel and other essential Christian literature in the vernacular language.
The leadership of ELCT continued church mission in the country following the missionaries’ model. Each congregation that joined ELCT had its own constitution,
18 Ibid., 194.
19 Ibid., 80. 47
vernacular translated Bible or part of it, Lutheran Western liturgy and hymnals, Martin
Luther’s Small Catechism and other writings. Each Lutheran church was indigenized to a particular culture. For example, the Lutheran Church in northern Tanzania comprised of cultures of Chagga, Pare, Meru, Maasai, Arusha and Sonjo tribes. The Lutheran Church in central Tanzania was working among Nyiramba and Nyaturu tribes. The Lutheran
Church of Iraqw in Mbulu area had Iraqw and Barbaig tribes. The Lutheran Church in northwest Tanzania had Haya and Nyambwa tribes. The Lutheran Church in southern
Tanzania was Bena, Nyakyusa, Hehe, kinga, Safwa, Sangu and other small tribes. The
Lutheran Church of Uzaramo-Uluguru was comprised of Uzaramo and Luguru tribes.
And the Lutheran Church of Usambara-Digo had Sambara, Digo and Zigua tribes.
However, the leadership together with the new church had to do more. On one hand they worked to strengthen unity of the church, on the other to strengthen mission work within respective former Lutheran church areas. To strengthen unity the former
Lutheran churches became either synods or dioceses. Churches that became diocese were the Northern Diocese, Northeastern Diocese (Usambara-Digo) and Northwestern
Diocese. The other churches became synods: Coastal and Eastern Synod for the Lutheran
Church of Uzaramo-Uluguru, Southern Synod for the Lutheran Church in southern
Tanzania, Central Synod for Lutheran Church in central Tanzania and Mbulu Synod for
Lutheran Church of Iraqw in Mbulu. The ELCT operated from one office in Arusha, and through its synods and dioceses continued the propagation of the Gospel enhanced by education and medical works within and without their respective areas.
It is worth noting the overwhelming success of the ELCT. During this period, membership rose from 400,000 to over five million. There was expansion into twenty
48
dioceses with over three thousand congregations. Ordained ministry rose from 244 pastors to over 2,000. By 2008, the church owned one referral hospital, twenty hospitals, hundreds of dispensaries and secondary schools and one university. The church, through its dioceses engaged in other social works like caring of the disabled, water supply and agricultural projects assisting the government. Moreover, the church has several common institutions that assist in its mission work. These include the Theological University
College, one junior seminary for secondary school education, a radio ministry and disabled place. Some of its dioceses own Bible schools for the recruitment of evangelists,
Christian education teachers, parish workers and other low-church profile servants.
The ELCT created a kind of African Christianity that went beyond Western attitudes of quietism and pietism. The church from the beginning actively challenged communication of the Gospel, making it passable to every generation. The church based its mission and ministry on the congregational level. By defining strategies for mission that resulted from experiencing communities of faith at the congregational level, ELCT freed itself from the shackles of traditional colonialism, neo-colonialism, oppression and globalism and at the same time freed itself from African traditional rural living that was
“dominated by subsistence economy that victimized people in such a way that they submit themselves to existing conditions of poverty and misery.”20
As long as African Christians are allowed to be properly confronted by the Gospel in their community congregations, they will always have opportunity for drawing insights and vitality from the Christian faith, rooted and embedded in God’s revelation in, under
20 Peter Kijanga, “Mission within Patterns of Social Change: Some Reflection on Mission in Eastern Africa,” Africa Theological Journal 8:2 (1979), 14. 49
and through Jesus Christ. And from this base is enabled to emerge by shaking off the chains of oppression and victimization, fighting against forces of dehumanization. Peter
Kijanga wrote, “In the light of Christianity, Jesus is the word made flesh to reconcile humanity with God, and to save by feeding the hungry and by giving it dignity.”21 The
ELCT has experienced the translatability of the Christian message taking into account the biblical text and the Tanzanian context as “the main source of transmitting Christianity into and across cultures.”22 The successes of the ELCT prove that the Christian faith is capabile of being translated into African terms without injury to its content.
As Kijanga writes, “Jesus brings into the hearts (individual persons) of people quite unheard of revolution, that is, a new heart ‘not of stone but of flesh.’ He makes people to serve their fellow humans unselfishly. Human being is seen as significant not only in virtue of his role as an agent of change but because his infinite value as a person cannot be replaced by anything.”23 The means of revolution was language translation of the Christian message strengthened by the Swahili national language of Tanzania.
The Kind of Lutheran Tradition Inherited by the Evangelical Lutheran in Tanzania
The ELCT has understood the Gospel that motivated and moved Western missionaries to come to Africa and compassionately spread it to Africans has become the
African Christians’ story to tell. This is what Diane B. Stinton has witnessed:
Our Lord has been from the beginning the Word of God for us as for all people everywhere. He has been the source of our life and illuminator of our path in life, though, like all people everywhere, we also failed to understand Him right.
21 Ibid., 15.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid. 50
However, now he has made himself known, becoming one of us, one like us. By acknowledging him for who he is and by giving him our allegiance, we become what we are truly intended to be, by his gift, the children of God.24
The Lutheran Theological and Ecclesiological Heritage
The ELCT has relied on a holistic approach in doing its mission that heightened the dynamic character of Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith alone. The aim of theological training had been training “pastors who could at the same time remain faithful both to the Lutheran Confession and to the traditions of the African culture.”25
This means the inherited reformation theology of the sixteenth century with the principles of sola gratia – by grace alone, sola Christo – by Christ alone, sola fide – by faith alone, and sola scriptura – by scripture (word) alone. This is a more Pauline means of grace. The Gospel proclaims what God has already done in the person of Jesus Christ,
God’s only Son. It is therefore true that faith only takes what is laid out already by God.
ELCT membership proves many Africans are attracted to Lutheran faith. They are likely attracted because they found a gracious God who is not found in either African traditional religion or Islam. For Africans, the Lutheran church is a church of the Gospel.
And by faith alone one receives gracious salvation revealed in and through Jesus Christ.
However, this inherited Lutheran theology has remained quite Western. European and North American literature remains dominant in theology. Being so theology is more of a determination in thinking, taking little consideration of values and commitments found in African communal and rural living that is comprised of communal ways of life
24 Diane B. Stinton, Jesus of Africa: Voices of Contemporary African Christology (Maryknoll, NY: OrbisBooks, 2004), 32.
25 Ibid. 51
where religious and ritual life matter most, communal mode of production and communal social structure and leadership. On this basis theology has met with several hindrances including moral character, intellectual origin and social in kind and political awareness.
Thus theology has been unable to resolve completely the following problems: polygamy, tribal customs in relation to biblical ethics, bride price and industrialism in the country.
The constitutional Lutheran churches that united different mission fields were led by missionary pastors and brought together to formulate what was known as Federation of Mission Church in 1937, crystallized in 1940. German missionaries came up with the idea of organizing the church involving indigenous Lutheran Christians. For example,
“The Leipzig missionaries regarded it necessary along with the representatives of the local congregations to discuss the question of the organized church.”26
This federation developed into the Federation of Lutheran Churches of Tanzania.
It involved more African Christians and became a body with institutions to administer and a common fund. This federation was composed of Lutheran churches of different mission fields. Each church had its own form of government, its own mother mission overseas and its own missionaries from the same mission society working in the area.
Moreover, each church had its educational and medical patterns of work and other supporting missionary work that extended the spread of the Gospel. All were for one purpose: nurturing and developing influence that would lead to a gradual but complete people’s own church in Tanzania. With the help of missionaries as experts of church matters, the Church Rules for the congregations were constructed and used. This development led to the formulation of federation constitution.
26 Ibid. 52
The ELCT inherited an ecclesiological federation set-up rooted in Lutheran confessions. The constitution of this church, together with the constitutions of the then synods and dioceses of ELCT were constituted from one confession of faith that states:
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, which is built on one foundation Jesus Christ, confesses that the Word of God as it is in Old Testament and New Testament is the unique foundation and unaltered for its teaching and life. Again for the unity of one Church in the world, the Church confesses the universal creeds of Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasius and also accept the confessions of the Lutheran Evangelical Churches especially the unaltered Augsburg Confession and Small Catechism of Martin Luther is true explanations of the Word of God. This Church will in all its witness and its life ever align to this foundation.27
The underlying concern was the concept of the priesthood of all believers to govern church life. This concept conforms to Lutheran understanding of the nature of the church not as an external organization but a spiritual fellowship through faith in Jesus Christ.
However, the ELCT does not consider any one type of New Testament church polity to be essential; she has since functioned with Episcopal and congregational types of government. Congregations have been and continue to be the base of mission work of the church in Tanzania. From them the recruitment of students for ordained ministry is obtained and even other personnel of the church is recruited easily. But the congregations get assistance from the diocesan and the nationwide church of ELCT.
After studying the life and work of ELCT, with special reference to Iringa
Lutheran congregation in southern Tanzania, Hance Mwakabana writes of the reasons for growth in Tanzania.28 Such reasons are the role and task of a pastor in the congregation.
The sermon together with related functions executed by a pastor played an important role
27 Ibid., 63.
28 Carl Erik Salberg, From Krapf to Rugambwa (Nairobi: Evangel Publishing House, 1986), 164. 53
in church growth. Another important reason is the congregation as a spiritual fellowship.
There have been fellowships where Lutheran church members meet together for spiritual edification and thus make closest friendship among them. Most of these fellowships took place in homes of Christians making familiarity of Christianity to local people.
A third reason is promoting fellowship small groups created in a congregation.
Groups like women, youth, children and even choirs were formed and allowed to meet for spiritual matters. These groups promoted the mutual sharing of life in Christ. A fourth reason is laity. Missionaries used new converts in spreading the Gospel and found it the right approach. Most Lutheran congregations give importance to using laity in mission work which became a great resource for congregational outreach in its various forms.
Also there is an evangelical and Christological approach. The Lutheran churches at the level of congregations are bible-centered and Christ-centered. That encouraged various groups to become good witnesses of their Christian faith through word and deed.
And as they did they grew in faith and understanding. Finally there is openness to the
Holy Spirit. Lutheran Christians are somewhat practicing Pentecostals in daily life but teach Lutheran doctrine. This means that Lutherans have been open to the Holy Spirit.
Effects of Dependence Syndrome in Church Mission in Tanzania
Despite the fact that the ELCT has succeeded in its mission, there has been at least one haunting challenge: a dependence syndrome. This dependence, as Kijanga writes, is “The question of self-employment was not raised, when there were financial problems, converts were helped by the missionary church and this was done in a personal relation between the missionary and the convert concerned. That type of aid left people
54
dependent and therefore the whole question of both human and economic developments was not raised.”29 This is the present situation of ELCT when critically observed.
This syndrome is an outcome of the duality that existed between Western mission societies in their respective mission fields in Tanzania and the emerging indigenous church that persisted after the newborn ELCT. Some missionaries, like Danielson of
Augustana, noticed this: “This duality had to be guided until, in God’s right time, the
Mission was completely integrated into the emerging Church.”30
The devolution of mission by the indigenous church was delayed due to absence of adequate education. As Danielson explains this delay was inevitable: “If the Christian
Church was to meet the growing, changing problems, as Africa moved into its place in the modern world, its leaders, whether pastors, or teachers, evangelists, nurses, doctors, or other kinds of leaders, would have to have the very best in higher education.”31
Moreover, this dependence syndrome was deepened by the poverty of the society of Tanzania. Missionaries did not address the root cause of poverty. Poverty seemed to be ordained by God as part of the divine ordering of life that some people are by nature rich and others poor. Though the missionaries’ aim was to create an indigenous and autonomous African church, the church created was dependent. This started when the question of foreign missionary’s fund position came forth. That is:
The major and important question for the Church in this connection was to decide about the use of the foreign funds. Should they be considered as contribution to the local congregations for the promotion of congregational activity, and to enable
29 Peter Kijanga, Ujamaa and the Role of the Church In Tanzania (Arusha, TZ: Makumira Publications, 1978), 57.
30 Danielson, Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania, 117.
31 Ibid. 55
the payment of reasonable remuneration to pastors for the evangelists, or should the money be employed for the development of educational and medical work?32
This syndrome was coupled with missionaries’ theological negligence in dealing with a number of cultural problems. Colonial powers dismissed everything African as useless and backward. This same attitude was seen in mission work. African culture was made inferior to European culture.
This resulted in a continuity of interpretation of Christianity in Western terms, failing to relate the Gospel to the indigenous idea systems. This has been a deeper problem for the present church to solve for its mission and life. To ignore African traditional beliefs, attitudes and practices only mean to uproot Africans and thus lose their identity. In this way Christianity would be meaningless to Africans.
The Church is called out of and into the world to do God’s purpose. But the world itself is full of uncertainty, complexity and is in constant and rapid change. However, in practical reality, the Church has to make a vital impact on individuals and community.
Thus, the mission of the church in Tanzania today must include social aspects of life by bringing a new heart through all the activities of the Church (Mt 9:35-38; 11:1-6). This approach of doing mission has to take into consideration the present African social consciousness in which the desire for freedom is vividly seen, freed not only from inherited conditions of all foreign dominance in Africa but also from the uncritical and unreflective traditional African world-view in regard to people’s place in the universe.
32 Stinton, Jesus of Africa, 43. 56
CHAPTER 3
THE LIFE AND WORK OF HIMO LUTHERAN PARISH
In this paper “parish” is used as often as “congregation,” though they are not synonymous. A congregation, besides being found in a local place, can be defined as a family of Jesus Christ where one belongs in wholeness and wellbeing. The congregation is a visible community of faith that reflects its life and works through worship, learning, creativity, curability and sustenance in its doing of God’s mission in the world.
It is understandable in Tanzania that a congregation invites growth to balanced personhood of its members and provides basic survival needs. The quality a congregation realizes in its worship and learning forms creativity in the community. Creativity is human as it defines the nature of intimate relationships of individuals in community.
Such relationship is realized in creativity, curability and sustenance of the community. In this way the congregation becomes a network connection of believers who are knit together by a web of covenants that connect persons and nourish or enable healing.
Therefore, a congregation like Himo Lutheran Parish is a worshiping, learning, creative, curative and sustenance community of faith committed to covenantal relationship with the living God. Such a congregation has six characteristics: interaction
57
and interface; intensity and involvement; acceptance and affirmation; instrumental and material; mutual and reciprocal; and history and continuity. In order to get acquainted with the Himo Lutheran Parish the background of its Christianity must be explained.
Christianity was brought to Northern Tanzania by the Leipzig Mission Society in
1893. Though Leipzig was an independent society, it always had an affinitive relation with the Lutheran Church in Germany because “it regarded itself as representing the
Lutheran Church.”1 Because of this affinity “It considered its function to be that of creating young Lutheran Churches in the mission field.”2 The mission society came into the mission field and worked directly with local people in their rural villages, establishing mission stations. In these mission stations missionaries opened schools for boys and girls sent by their parents after the command of the chiefs of the respective areas.
Such schools also had catechetical classes. Those who accepted the faith were baptized and sent to spread the Gospel to their families and clans because they were able to read the Bible, preach and teach the Gospel in their own language. As baptized
Christians increased new congregations were formed. This was made possible because the first missionaries studied the native language and used it for both speaking the Good
News for Christian literature including the Bible, books and hymns.
For three years Gerhard Althaus, Robert Anton Fassmann, Emil Mueller and
Franz Albin Boehem under the leadership of Traugott Passler opened mission stations at
Machame, Mamba Kotela, Old Moshi and Mwika. Later, more German missionaries joined. By 1913, work expanded to Pareland, Meruland and Arusha – Maasai lands. This
1 Stinton, Jesus of Africa, 44.
2 Ibid. 58
was missionary Christianity, served by missionaries as its experts and low profile leadership like evangelists, teachers, medical workers, nurses and other itinerants. From the beginning grassroots ministry was applied, which proved beneficial to the spread of the Gospel. This grassroots ministry was mostly a sacrificial service and witness of the
Gospel made by African Christians to their fellow Africans.
Himo Lutheran Parish was one of those grassroots ministry products. It was “the transformation which was taking place through leavening power of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ” that brought forth living congregations in Tanzania.3 Danielson says, “Grassroots work that was done by a corps of unpaid or underpaid African pastors, evangelists, teachers, medical workers, and other lay people.”4 These African Christians were confident of the Holy Spirit’s working through Christ’s African Christian leadership.
Ryata, Himo, Makuyuni and Mandata formed Himo Lutheran Parish in 1967.5
However, spreading the Gospel to Himo area started before 1948 when Samson Mnyasa came from the Mwika mission station and started work in Ryata. In Chagga, Ryata means
“a forest place.” People in that place were known as “forest people.” Mnyasa brought the
Gospel, fulfilling not only his call but also the indigenous church’s constitution of 1948, which was understood as a uniting framework of the “grassroots” parishes into a living church that God could use as his instruments in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ among all people living in northern Tanzania and elsewhere.
3 Danielson, Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania, 20.
4 Ibid., 28.
5 The eight workshops and ten Seminars and interviews with different congregant groups of Himo Lutheran Parish held in years 2008-2012. See Appendices D, E, F. 59
As a result of his evangelistic work a village chapel was built at Ryata in 1948.
From this chapel the spread of the Gospel in Himo area was carried out. These efforts of spreading the Gospel bore fruit when Himo Chapel was built in 1955, Makuyuni in 1965 and Mandara in 1971. Before these village chapels organized into a parish they were under the jurisdiction of Mwika Parish founded by Leipzig in 1906.
Assessment of Himo Lutheran Parish
In order to understand the mission work carried out today in the parish’s location, ministry and feasibility must be examined. Like other Lutheran parishes/congregations
Himo Parish has its own mission to do in its area. The survey of Himo Parish reveals what God is doing in this particular area.
Location of Himo Lutheran Parish
Himo Lutheran Parish is thirty kilometers east of Moshi on the southern slopes of
Mt. Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania. The parish is in and around Himo Township, which is seven thousand feet above sea level with a population of over 20,000 inhabitants. Himo area is located at latitude 3.42S of Equator and 37.40E of Greenwich.
Himo Township was a sisal plantation opened by German settlers in 1890, with financial assistance of the colonial government. The government brought forced laborers from as far as Tabora, Shinyanga, Singida, Dodoma, Kigoma, Arusha, Kilimanjaro and
Tanga. The estate attracted laborers from Taveta and Mombasa in Kenya.
These forced laborers were put in camps on the plantation. They were very lowly paid so they could pay the government tax demanded. They were crudely and mercilessly
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exploited. Even after paying the government tax many did not return to their families.
They settled in the estate camps and lived submissively with their new families until
Tanzanian independence. After independence the estate was nationalized. The laborers’ lives were improved by good government payment for several years. When world sisal prices went down, the government of Tanzania abandoned the crop and the estate and settled laborers were divided to different individuals for private use. This changed not only the mode of production but also the lifestyle of the inhabitants of Himo.
The present Himo inhabitants are a mix of many tribes with different religious backgrounds. Some inhabitants are tribal traditionalists, some are Muslims, some
Christians, yet others practice Hinduism and other religious beliefs. Moreover, Himo
Township is still a mixture in lifestyle of cosmopolitan and rural. Half of its population is
Chagga tribe whereas the other half belongs to people from different tribes who came from different parts of Tanzania and even Kenya, Uganda and Somalia.
The paved highway that goes through Himo Township is one of the busiest highways in Tanzania. It is estimated that more than a hundred buses and seventy heavy semi-trailer trucks travel on this highway every day. It also benefits from the tourist industry as it is located on the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro and its National Game reserve lying thirty kilometers north of Himo. In addition to these transportation connections, a railway line runs through it from Tanga Harbor at the Indian Ocean to Arusha tourist city.
Himo Township has attracted not only a good number of persons inhabiting, but also many in-transits including tourists from Europe and America. This has given rise to shops and hotels in the Township besides common farming work. Such small-scale
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business engages in providing accommodations, food and retail goods for tourists, passengers, truck-drivers and other visitors. Some Maasai people live near the vicinity of the township for their herds. They supply meat and cow milk to the town.
The Ministry of Himo Lutheran Parish
A parish is different from a congregation. Himo Parish is made of five congregations. The congregations are Himo with a membership of 1,670, Ryata 340 members, Makuyuni 670 members, Mandata 430 members and Kilitotoni 530 members.
Himo congregation is the head and the rest are subordinated to it for ministry activities.
Each congregation is located in a different community far apart from one other.
Each congregation is led by an evangelist. An evangelist is a lay preacher who has fundamental doctrine teaching especially at Mwika Bible School. Working under the pastor of the parish this evangelist voluntarily preaches, teaches and performs preliminary counseling and limited leadership of the congregation. Every evangelist performs Sunday services in his or her congregation unless the pastor is present.
The evangelist is assisted by a number of elders elected for an interval period of years by congregants in accordance with the Diocesan constitution to care for the congregation. The duty of the elder is to make sure the Word of God is preached in accordance to the church calendar, catechetical class held every week and every Christian lives accordingly and participates in all directed church activities in the congregation.
Himo Lutheran Parish ministry is twofold—evangelizing and nurturing. The parish sends out evangelists to visit non-Christians. It holds a week of open Gospel rallies and meetings every year to which many hundreds of non-Christians are invited. Church
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festivals like Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, Harvest Day, Women, Youth and Children
Week, Adult baptism and Confirmation Services are also venues for evangelization.
Christians are asked to invite their friends, relatives and neighbors for every Church event. This kind of evangelization ministry is rather a proselytizing ministry because new converts are taught in catechetical classes for a number of months and then baptized.
The second kind of ministry is nurturing. There are Bible and seminar programs performed twice a month for all members of the parish. The parish also has organized home prayer groups where every Christian is to participate. Some members with the assistance of parish worker teach Christian education to pupils at schools.
The ministry carried out in Himo Lutheran Parish is hierarchical. The parish is under jurisdiction of the Northern Diocese of the ELCT. Its ministry is performed by persons entrusted by congregants in accordance to the diocesan constitution. Members of the parish participate in ministry mostly by bringing offerings and other church collections for the ministry as directed by the higher authority of the diocese. Much of the decision-making, directives and leadership activities are determined by the diocese.
Feasibility Study of Himo Lutheran Parish
Twenty percent of Himo Parish is under 14 years of age, 25 percent between 14 and 17, 15 percent between 18 and 24, 10 percent between 25 and 34, 10 percent between
35 and 44, 10 percent between 45 and 64, 5 percent between 65 and 74 and 5 percent over the age of 75. Himo Township is comprised of about 20 percent Lutherans, 20 percent Roman Catholic, 10 percent Pentecostal, 10 percent Islam, 25 percent African traditionalists and 5 percent ascribe to various religions including Hinduism.
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Himo Township is 60 percent Chagga tribe, 20 percent Pare tribe, 15 percent other tribes and 5 percent non-Tanzanian. In the Himo Lutheran Parish 80 percent of the people are from the Chagga tribe. Within the parish 50 percent of adults are married, 20 percent single, 20 percent separated or divorced and 10 percent widowed. Fifty percent of adults have less than a secondary education or none at all, twenty percent are secondary level, 15 percent have a graduate degree and 15 percent have a trade or vocation.
Most people walk to hear preaching at Himo. Of those 10 percent walk less than five minutes, 10 percent ten minutes, 30 percent twenty-five minutes, 30 percent thirty- five minutes and 20 percent walk less than sixty minutes. In terms of employment, 40 percent of the parish are farmers, 30 percent run small-scale businesses, 10 percent civil servants, 10 percent unemployed and the remaining 10 percent various occupations.
Observation of Himo Lutheran Parish revealed a clear picture of its life and work.
Himo conducted two special workshops with one hundred parish members. Each leader was assigned a questionnaire concerning parish health. The aim was to find out the health of the parish. Guidelines were taken from Stephen A. Macchia’s Becoming a Healthy
Church: Workbook.6 In order for the congregation to be healthy ten characteristics should be present: God’s empowering presence, God’s exalting worship, spiritual disciplines, learning and growing in community, commitment to loving and caring relationships, servant-Leadership development, outward focus, wise administration and accountability, networking with the body of Christ and stewardship and generosity.
A congregation is an assembly of people of God who are “oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for display of God’s splendor” (Isa 63:3). The parish/
6 Stephen A. Macchia, Becoming a Healthy Church (Grand Rapids, IL: Baker Books, 2001), 13. 64
congregation is so as long as it remains open and willing to be transformed by God. All members of a congregation both individually and collectively continue becoming more
Christ-like as long as they remain in intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.
Taking Jesus as Mighty Oak of the universe, his followers are destined for God’s purposes to be planted near Christ’s trunk, interlocking with his loving tender roots, will always grow under the shadow of his protective covering displaying God’s splendor and multiply themselves for God’s glory. On this understanding, the workshops performed focused on the health of Himo Parish and found the following results.
Characteristics of Himo Parish.
Weak Good Excellent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 CHARACTERISTIC 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1. God’s empowering X presence 2. God-Exalting X Worship 3.Spiritual Disciplines X 4.Learning and X Growing in Community 5.A Commitment to X Loving and Caring Relationship 6.Servant-Leadership X Development 7.An Outward Focus X 8.Wise Administration X and Accountability 9.Networking with the X Body of Christ 10.Stewardship and X Generosity
The parish is excellent in God’s empowering presence, God-exalting worship, an outward focus and stewardship and generosity. That is, Himo Parish is healthier in areas 65
of worship and mission. Second, Himo Parish is in good health in wise administration and accountability and a commitment to loving and caring relationship. This means that the Parish is in good health in areas of service and fellowship.
However, Himo Lutheran Parish is weak in spiritual disciplines, learning and growing in community, servant-leadership development and networking with the Body of
Christ. This weakness displays the areas of discipleship, service and fellowship. The results should give insight to leaders of Himo Parish on a purpose-driven model.
The Diagnosis and Prognosis of Himo Lutheran Parish
The information in the above table was not actually helpful in assessing the condition of the parish. The leaders of Himo Parish struggled to gain clear understanding from this information. It was not as clear as originally expected. Upon further examination, leadership decided to try an alternative approach: diagnosis and prognosis.
By diagnosis it was decided to focus on the present facts of the parish. This was a three-month process of examining symptoms of the present condition of the parish and carefully analyzing in an attempt to understand. This examination went hand-in-hand with prognosis of those symptoms. The focus was on understanding the information so a way forward for the parish could be grasped. Using prognosis the probable cause of the condition and the chance of changing or transforming can be made.
After five long sessions of discussions and consultations leadership managed to come up with the following explanations. The congregation/parish is more than an organization because it is sharika, a fellowship where much sharing of prayers, Bible study, exhortation and service are done in the spirit of Jesus Christ as revealed in the
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Gospel. The congregation is an “event,” under the power of the Holy Spirit with which the primary relationship of believers is drawn by the Holy Spirit, sharing a variety of worship, learning, witnessing and serving responses to God’s call in Christ.
Also, the congregation as a church is a mysterious thing, both divine and human.
A congregation is a pure Body of Christ because of Christ, but also a human institution with irregularities, corruption, crises, division and weaknesses arising from the sinful nature of humanity. As Bishop Mdegela wrote, “It suffers from nominalism, backsliding, and perversion of the word of God, apostasy, idolatry, turmoil, shame, and disgrace.”7
The third finding was that Himo Lutheran Parish is strong in areas of worship and evangelism and average in areas of service and fellowship. The weakness of Himo Parish is in areas of discipleship, service and fellowship. A church is purported to magnify God in Jesus Christ, assist in maturation of believers’ lives, qualify the membership, minister the Gospel and do God’s mission in the world. These purposes of church are to be understood in the perspective of spiritual growth, which is about growing a relationship with God through a commitment to and deepening relationship with Jesus Chris.
General Indicators of Himo Parish
The above findings spell out different indicators that can be demonstrated. These general indicators are divided into three major categories. First, the human resources indicators show the membership is of youth and children. Sixty percent of members are between the ages of one year to twenty-four. Himo is a young church. Second, in material facilities, all five small or sub-congregations of Himo, Ryata, Makuyuni, Mandara and
7 Bishop Owdenburgh Moses Mdegela, personal interview, January 2, 2008. 67
Kilitotoni have title deeds for their plots. They have church buildings for services. And third, Himo Parish has pastoral-leadership and lay-leadership.
Specific Indicators of Himo Parish
The following indicators tell the kind of community of faith of Himo Parish has.
First, it is building a community of faith because of its worship. As observed, Himo
Parish has strong characteristics of God’s empowering presence, God-exaltation worship, is mission oriented and fellowship loving. Moreover, corporate religious life and fellowship express themselves in songs and rhythms displayed in every church service and festival. Himo parishioners are celebrants with warm singing and dancing. They are also friendly persons who invite non-members to church events.
The Parish-dominant System of Himo Lutheran Parish
Himo Lutheran Parish is similar to other ELCT congregations/parishes. It is governed by a bureaucracy, which is a parenting system. The bureaucracy is a controlling system with a hierarchical structure. The pastor is seen as a parent who does most of the work in the parish because he/she is constitutionally invested almost all parish authority.
The Himo Parish Hierarchical System
Parish/Congregation Office
Parish Council Members Pastor, Evangelist, Elders, Treasurer
Sub-congregation Elders Evangelist and Elders
Quarters – Mitaa Elders
Individual Members and Families Family Leaders
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The hierarchical system indicates church affairs are handled and run managerially as opposed to by delegation. The pastor is the overall leader of the parish who does both administrative and pasturing. Evangelists’, elders, treasurer and parish worker in each sub-congregation assist the pastor as allocated in the Diocesan constitution.
Himo Parish Spiritual Life Growths
On observing the attitudes and behaviors it was found that personal commitment in faith varied among members. The emotions/feelings and motivations toward loving
God as well as loving their neighbors were observed. Also, observed were behaviors that make people choose things to do in their lives. The level of emotional commitment to the faith expressed attitudinal responses, but behavioral responses were realized in choices people made in doing things in accordance with their commitment in faith. Such responses include serving at church, Bible study, attending church services, joining church small groups, prayers and solitude. It was discovered that 50 percent of the interviewees were in the stage of exploring Christianity, 30 percent were growing in
Christ, 15 percent were close to Christ and lastly 5 percent were Christ-centered.
These differences of commitment reveal the level of spiritual life in Himo Parish.
Most are exploring Christianity or growing in Christ. This means that Himo Parish is still in dependent spiritual life growth because its members are more youth and children.
Organizational History of Himo Parish
Bishop Martin F. Shao, the leader of the Northern Dioceses of the ELCT said:
Many of Christians of this Diocese has a spirit of spreading the Gospel to every place they happen to be. The missionaries of Leipzig right from the start taught
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new converts wherever they went and sent them out for spreading the Gospel to their neighbors. I think this is something good we inherited from missionaries. It should be promoted intensified for church’s benefit. I would like to suggest that present pastors to sustain this kind of spirit for the church life and work.8
Shao is convinced involvement of all believers in doing church work is an essential factor in the life of the church. The laity being involved in doing God’s mission is significant for both the church as a community and individual Christians to grow and mature.
Early work by Leipzig missionaries initiated the kind of organization utilized by the indigenous church. In 1928, missionaries and indigenous leaders worked together to form Church Rules for local congregations. In 1930, those rules were formulated and put into use. These rules were a significant step toward an organized church because by them
“The Church was thereby constituted.”9 These rules became regulations that nurtured and helped the mission church develop into “people’s own Church.” Accordingly, the rules produced a new church organization accurately described by Smedjebacka:
In the 1930s, the new the new Church was subordinated to the Mission Board in Leipzig and the missionaries in the field. No African was given a senior talk of leadership in the Church, since no experienced African pastors were available. The African leaders served as evangelists, teachers . . . and congregational assistants to the missionaries . . . assisted the missionaries in preaching, and in questions related to the cure of souls.”10
Organization is a social structure that serves as a means to an end. It is designed in such a way that a “goal-oriented pattern of expectations and relationships that sets a context for what people do together” because in any organization people act in relationship with one another in “designated positions according to predetermined
8 Martin F. Shao, Personal Interview, January 17, 2010.
9 Smedjeback, Lutheran Church Autonomy in Northern Tanzania, 42.
10 Ibid., 72. 70
expectations.”11 In this way organizational capacities are filled by qualified persons. In
Himo Parish, the bureaucratic organization was designed so that specialized roles like evangelist, teacher, elder, committee member, treasurer and supervisor are performed by persons thought to qualify for these roles. This set-up has prevailed to the present in most
ELCT constitutions. This means that authority of the church is from top to bottom.
In this organization elders’ leadership is empowered at the level of the parish.
Along with this, council and committee leadership play a predominant role in parish leadership. In this way the hierarchical organization works predominantly in the parish.
Interaction of Himo Parish with its Context
Himo Lutheran Parish interacts well with its context. The divine service, which includes baptism, confirmation, weddings and funerals render valuable interactions that benefit both Christians and non-Christians. Africans love corporate religious life and fellowship regardless of differences in religious and tribal backgrounds. Many non-
Christians attend services whenever they are performed. Himo Parish has a good reputation in the community because it provides a nursing school and pre-primary educational facility for all children regardless of background. The parish provides economic assistance by creating a community-based cooperative known as SACCOS for all people in Himo area.
Missing Links in Practicing Ministry in the Parish
After discussion with leaders of Himo Parish about any missing links in practicing ministry several were found. Missing links include a healing ministry, which has to do
11 Ibid. 71
with restoration not only of bodily health but spiritual wholeness and wellbeing. The parish is seen to be weak in this area. Little is done. Also, there is a lack in weekly logos teaching. There is a good effort at supplying teaching material for the parishes of the
Northern Diocese. But the way this is done does not meet the needs of congregants.
There is poor attendance to Bible studies that take place in homes midweek.
There is a lack of fellowship at Himo Parish. What is referred to as fellowship is colored by Pentecostal understandings. Fellowship is a legalistic leaning against the grace of Christ. Finally, there is a lack of renewal and charismatic revivalism. Although every leader realized that renewal and revivalism are part and parcel of church life, legalistic approach has overshadowed true revivalism and renewal the church needs.
As a result spiritual matters are belittled. Discipleship is never taken seriously.
Praxis theological approach is minimal in church life. This is unhealthy to both individual members and the collective church. Because of this shortcoming, the following are lacking in Himo Parish: spiritual formation/spiritual growth, spiritual disciplines are hardly practiced, utility of spiritual gifts in mission work is limited and a teamwork approach of the ministry has been neglected for so long.
Major Opportunities for Future Mission of Himo Parish
Upon reflection, it was discovered that the Church is needed in Himo Parish as it offers a need to the lives of the people—Jesus Christ. The leadership examined both the
SWOT and SMART results in analyzing mission opportunities in the Himo area.
In the midst of globalization and widespread poverty, leadership asked, “What next?” This remains the question as life conditions have radically changed. Something
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had to be done so that the Church can match the present situation. The concern has been the way forward for mission work in Himo area to meet the present needs of the Church.
After a long examination of strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities, Himo
Parish leadership came to an agreeable conclusion of opportunities for future mission work: communication network surrounding Himo; present prototype groups as venues of developing spiritual growth; inhabitants like hearing the Gospel; Himo inhabitants trust
Himo Parish as their hope-center of life; the local government, several NGOs, and other recognized social groups are open to cooperate with the parish in serving people; globalization combined with poverty forces people to worry about their future and therefore many look for safety—many consider the church the hope for them; diaconical services provided by the parish are trustworthy compared to other providers; parish policies, constitution and leadership are promising; present parish facilities are fulfilling needs; parish membership make up a good human resource; social and economic services availability; and the parish being Lutheran has a rich theological tradition.
The Role of Leadership in Bringing Congregational Change
Himo Lutheran Parish, like any other congregations/parishes in the Lutheran
Church is a family with obligation to participating in missio Dei in its locale. However, in order to do so Himo parish leadership has to play an important role in the whole life and work of the parish. The reason behind this is that leaders are agents of transformation of the communities they are leading. Anna Mughwira was right when she said the issue that pastoral leadership has to be a “creative one.”12
12 Anne Mghwira, personal interview, June 14, 2009. 73
PART TWO
THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION
CHAPTER 4
REFLECTION ON THE NOTION OF THE “PRIESTHOOD OF ALL BELIEVERS”
For Kijanga, baptism is the basis of the priesthood of all believers because by virtue of it all believers have been baptized into a family of God and hence are to live their faith in this world.1 Agreeing with this Mdegela says, “The priesthood of believers is a Christian endeavor that carries the meaning of incarnation and a doctrine which every true Christian should acknowledge as the citadel of salvation story and church history.”2
Himo Lutheran Parish, like any other congregation/parish as a family of God has to participate in doing the mission of God in its entirety in and around its surroundings.
Congregations/parishes exist for this mission. The Gospel has power to transform each and every life it touches and thus creates a duty of performing service to others.
Biblical Understanding of Priestly People Doing the Church’s Mission
In both the Old and New Testament there is mention of a special community known as “people of God.” In the Old Testament such special people are called yam
Yahweh – people of God (Dt 7:6; 16:2, 18; Nm 23:9; 1 Sm 8:4-22). The Israelites were a
1Kijanga, Personal Interview.
2 Owdenburg Mdegela, Leading a Confessional Church to Revival: Affirming the Priesthood of all Believers in Tanzania Lutheran Context (Pasadena, CA: Fuller Theological Seminary, 2000), 19. 75
chosen people of Yahweh for a special service. In the New Testament this phrase is translated into Greek as laos tou theou – people of God as a special people, for a special purpose. People of God are a covenant community made by God with particular people.
This special community of God is called the Church. The meaning of church is expressed in the Greek term of ekklesia (Mt 16:16-18; Acts 5:11; 8:1, 3; 9:31; 15:41;
20:28), which is a combination of two words: ek-meaning “out,” and klesia meaning
“called.” Accordingly, ekklesia of God is a true congregation (community) of God and therefore the true eschatological people of God.
The Meaning of the Community of Faith as the Body of Christ
Biblically, the community of faith is a covenant people of God who live as a family of God (Eph 2:19) and as such exist as a body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12-13; Eph
4:12; Col 1:19). That is all believers make up the Body and Christ is the head of this body. Christians are a community of faith as long as they remain in community where the preaching of the Gospel and administering the sacraments is done correctly. The Gospel is where Christ and believers are stationed together.
The Body of Christ expresses that the Church is a living organism (1 Cor 12:12-
26). This body is made of different parts; members differ in gifts (charismata), services
(diakonoon) and tasks (energematoon) that can be used for the common good (Eph 4:12).
The community of faith living in the form of a Body of Christ is unified in diversity and diverse in unity, functioning in a sacrificial way for the sake of Jesus Christ (Rom 12:1-2;
1 Cor 4:1-2; 1 Pt 2:9). They live that sacrificial life because they are given the Gospel and are anointed by God. Hence, they are bound to confess, preach and spread the Gospel.
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Biblical Understanding of the Kingdom of God in Relation to Priestly People of God
By nature the Church is an instrument of the Holy Spirit doing God’s mission in the world. Other instruments include God’s direct action as the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, and angels (Heb 1:14) as hosts of the Lord. Others are the Word of God—the
Bible, the conscience (Rom 2:14-16) and nature (Pss 19, 148, 149; Rom 10:18; Acts
14:17). These instruments are useful for the Kingdom of God. In the New Testament the
Kingdom of God is called basilea tou theou, which is the sum total of blessing bestowed by God in Jesus Christ. The vision of Jesus’ mission in the world was the basilea tou theou, was his central message in the Gospels: in Matthew it is mentioned fifty-two times, in Mark nineteen times, in Luke forty-four times and in John four times. This means the basilea tou theou is the axis around Jesus Christ’s preaching and teaching.
Being a community of faith, the people of God called and set aside for a special purpose means Christians act with God in covenant. They do so with their bodies: with their strength, talents, appearance and sexuality. Moreover, they act with God in their own physical powers of thought and creativity, personal relationships and influences and power over groups, and with the co-operation of their individual kingdoms.
The role of the Kingdom of God is power and authority (Lk 10:9-11); the present reality of life is found in the reality of God’s presence (Lk 11:20) and living God’s life in righteousness, peace and joy (Rom 14:17). As said in 1 Cor 6:12-20 the Body of Christ is a fragrance and the aroma of Jesus Christ, charged of the Kingdom of God.
Along with these biblical texts comes a need for clarification. The underlying question concerning the biblical explanation on the priestly people of God is, “What does
God want His people to do?” The following biblical texts address this question.
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Genesis 12: 1-3 is the call of Abram, promising him to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. This is the blessing of Abraham that was offered to him by King
Melchizedek, the priest of God: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand” (Gn 14:17). Exodus 19:3-6 says that the Israelites were to be made a priestly
Kingdom of God and a holy nation as long as they obeyed the God who had called them.
Matthew 5:13-14 states that members of the church are the “salt” and “light” of the world. Mark 10:35-45 says this is the model of Christian service modeled in Jesus’ service. According to Acts 1: 6-8, the mission of the Church is to be the witness
(martyria) of Jesus Christ to the world for the Kingdom of God. This means the Church is an instrument of the Holy Spirit in witnessing Jesus Christ in the world.
Romans 12:1-13 communicates sacrificial life that is holy and acceptable to God should be modeled in Jesus’ sacrificial model of ministry in the world. Martyria of the
Church is to be realized in sacrificial living of all members of the community. According to 1 Cor 4:1-2, all Christians are to be ministers/servants/stewards of God’s mysteries in
Christ. Revelations 1:5-6, 9-10 says that Jesus Christ bought saints from all places and all times and made them priests to serve God. Finally, Rev 20:6 says Christians, by virtue of their baptism, always share in the life of resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is a new life in Christ and so have become priests of God and thus share in the Reign of God.
Jesus Christ is the inaugurator of a new kind of priesthood of God, different from priesthood of the Aaronic order. Christ’s priesthood is eternal, spiritual, and final, working efficaciously in the lives of all believers, bringing the salvation of God to all. It does so because Christ’s priesthood is sacrifice of himself (Heb 7:1-14; Ps 110:4).
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The biblical texts tell a lot about this kind of priesthood. In 1 Pt 2:4-5 and 9,
Christians are “living stones” (Ez 37) built into a spiritual house, offering acceptable spiritual offerings to God through Jesus Christ. Therefore, the priesthood of all believers is collective and participatory. This gift is given to all Christians for the priestly service of the Gospel (Rom 12:1). All Christians are to present their bodies as a living sacrifice.
Priesthood and Royalty Belong Together
Priesthood has to do with sacrificial service, while royalty has to do with kinship.
In Ex 19:5, God promised the Israelites would be God’s Kingdom of priests only if they obeyed. Those who share God’s dignity would be a people holy to Yahweh (Dt 7:6). In Is
61:6 it says that priests are ministers of God. In Matthew 5:23, these priests minister by offering themselves. Jesus’ teaching on authentic discipleship found in Mk 10:35–45; Mt
20:20-28; and Lk 22:24–30 speak of life lived by all Christians in humility, service and suffering. This kind of life is priestly living and therefore is priesthood in character.
Paul says: “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of
Christ” (Gal 6:2). According to Luther’s understanding of Communio Sanctorum, priesthood has to do with acceptance of the unacceptable: “For the sake of love Christians ought to accept not only the loss of external goods of this life but also the abomination of sin.”3 This means priesthood is a law of Christianity because “When Christ bears our burden and intercedes for us with his righteousness, he does the work of a priest: mutual bearing of burdens and ‘good works of love’ in Christianity is also priestly activity.”4
3 Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 313.
4 Ibid. 79
A Notion of Priesthood of All Believers as Understood by ELCT
One of the missionaries’ legacies to the ELCT is entrusting indigenous Christians in spreading the Gospel to their fellow people. Shao said Christians of his diocese are highly evangelistic in spirit because whomever they reach, they tell the story of Jesus and try to convert them to the Christian faith. In this way Christianity spread in Tanzania.
Biblical stories like Mk 1:40–45, concerning the leper who was miraculously cured by
Jesus inspire indigenous Christians in spreading the Gospel freely to their fellows.
By virtue of Baptism, Christians are all called to serve the Gospel in the world.
Baptism in Rom 6:1-11 is dying and rising with Christ. Baptism into Christ means to participate in the baptism of Jesus himself (Mk 1:9-11). In this baptism one goes into the water with Christ, the Holy Spirit descends and the voice of God the Father calls this one a beloved child of God, a participant in the Body of Christ. The Christian arises from the water of baptism to participate in world-changing, witnessing and communal assembly around the Crucified One with those who are in him.
Ted Peters explains this event of dying and rising with Christ: “Through the combination of the word proclaimed and the administration of water, the baptismal action witnesses to the work of the Holy Spirit in personally appropriating to the individual believer the universal saving work of Jesus Christ.”5 As said in Ro 6:4 and Col 2:12,
Christians die to their estrangement from God and rise to everlasting fellowship.
This baptism is not merely a symbolic event. For it is a divine making of
Christians-in-community in such a way that the act itself becomes a life-long pattern of
5 Ted Peters, God—the World’s Future: Systematic Theology for a New Era (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 2001), 288. 80
living. This new community in Christ recognized as a priestly people is molded by being led through the baptismal water to Word and Eucharistic table and to witnessing life in the world, to identification in love with all peoples.
Luther confirmed baptism is not symbolic death but rather an “actual death and resurrection.”6 Baptism signifies two facets of the Christian life: death and resurrection, which are a full and complete justification (Ro 4:25). The newness of life means a baptismal life in which Christians are daily dying to sin and being raised to live before
God. Moreover, this newness of life is the fellowship (communion) of the Holy Spirit:
“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God (the Father), and the communion
(fellowship) of the Holy Spirit be with all of you now and forever” (2 Cor 13:13).
“In the Spirit’s fellowship,” says Moltmann, “The Holy Spirit . . . enters into the fellowship with believers and draws them into his fellowship.”7 In this fellowship,
Christians open themselves, giving one another a share of themselves. This is a primal meaning of fellowship that is both reciprocal and mutual with the purpose of being witnesses of the Gospel in the world. This is understandable in an African context because community is the center of life where individuality is found in community.
However, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is far better because the life drawn is that of the divine source: “God’s Spirit is very closer to our inner being than we ourselves.”8 In this closeness “God is experienced, not as the liberating Lord but as the well of life.”9
6Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 313.
7 Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 218.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid. 81
Christians are Consecrated Priests through Baptism
Baptism establishes the communion of all believers: “There is one body and one
Spirit, just as you are called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all” (Eph 4:4-6). Baptism’s foundation is found in
Genesis 12:17, where God made a sacrifice for God’s people. Kijanga said this is “the beginning of priesthood of all believers.”10 He emphasized that the “circumcision of men performed in Genesis 17:9-14 was only a physical sign of the covenant.”11
The Body of Christ is a charismatic community of functioning. Mughwira says
Christians are priests to each other citing Romans 1:17, “Faith begets faith.” She believes if Christians know this, life will be different because they will help each other: “To live is to live for others not just for yourself.”12 The priesthood of all believers is part and parcel of the priesthood of Christ Jesus in the world (Rom 12:1-3).
Misunderstanding of Priesthood
The nature of the priesthood of all believers is a medium. Expression of the priesthood by Jesus Christ engages lives in proclaiming the Gospel and doing the ministry of reconciliation. Though it is only implied, the ELCT recognizes the universal gift of the priesthood of all believers. However, there is an attitude of hesitation in full application of the gift. Miller writes,
The Lutheran pattern of ministry places “the functioning Word of God” central, going out through preaching and deeds of love, to perform God’s reconciling ministry. The Gospel itself is the final authority, and office-bearers partake in this
10Kijanga, personal interview.
11 Ibid.
12Mughwira, personal interview. 82
authority if they are faithful in helping the living Word of God to function. Lay people have vital function in the ministry of God’s Word from “mouth to ear,” person-to-person.13
He indicates one cannot clearly see the collective function of all believers. Instead the division between clergy and the laity is preferred.
Gunda says the Church does not practice this understanding for fear of church anarchy. Many leaders in the ELCT think this would cause the demise of church order.
However, this misconception of the priesthood of all believers was caused by two factors: first, confusion between office and function in the Church. The priesthood of all believers is not an office but rather a function of the whole Body of Christ. The Church is a ministering people. As a community of faith, the Church has a duty to perform.
This does not mean that ordained ministry should be dismissed as useless. In reality ordained ministry as an office has a special place in the Church: equipping the priesthood. The danger is when ordained ministry is overemphasized in expense of the open, universal gift of priesthood of all believers. The second factor is that leadership fears the prevailing influence of Pentecostal Revivalism in East Africa. The ELCT, as a confessional church, functions as an institution. The church is thought to be an organization where constitution, hierarchy and structure dominate. The emphasis here has been organization rather than organism. Mdegela writes, “The need for order is essential to an institution but the need for renewal shapes an organism.”14
It was necessary for the ELCT to organize itself into organization/institution because it wanted to “shield itself from heresy, schism and misinterpretation of the Word
13Miller, Equipping For Ministry, 128.
14Mdegela, Leading a Confessional Church to Revival, 43. 83
of God.”15 Such a move empowered the clergy and “left the laity to serve either under orders of the clergy or from the directives of council.”16 This opposes the influence of
Pentecostal revivalism in East Africa.
Experiencing Priesthood
Danielson writes, “But no honest observer could deny the transformation which was taking place through the leavening power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The pagan and the Muslim and the Asia and the European were all affected to one degree or another.”17 Despite the few numbers of missionaries and limited financial support from missionary societies, the spread of the Gospel in Tanzania was like a wild fire burning in an open jungle. This was only possible because new converts participated in the process of evangelization of the indigenous masses.
On answering the question “Why this Lutheran growth?” Mwakabana said, “The role played by the lay members of the congregation is perhaps the greatest resource for the congregation’s outreach in its various forms.”18 Lutheran Christians realized early on that their Christian life was very much enriched in the communion of believers who have gathered together to serve and support one another. They realized that life was serving others in love because the Gospel they received was for a public witness.
Over the years ELCT laity handled many church activities. Such activities include home visitation, dispensaries and hospitals, prisons and other places. Church members
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Danielson, Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania, 39.
18 Mwakabana, The Life and Work of the Lutheran Church in Urban Tanzania, 162. 84
through their groupings served others in their surroundings by witnessing the Gospel.
Church leadership and the laity work together in the ELCT promoting church growth.
This incorporation of leadership and the laity reflects the priesthood of all believers in which every member of the church experiences life.
As Kenneth Boa says, the community of faith:
Provides a context for: Relational enrichment and commitment; Trust, love, and acceptance; Mutual submission out of reverence for Christ; Encouragement and accountability; Forgiveness and reciprocal confession under the cross; Physical, psychological and spiritual healing; Nourishment in the life of scripture, meditation and prayers; Participation in a corporate calling and purpose; Love for neighbor as an essential expression of the spiritual life; Ministry and service; Expression of unity in diversity; Guidance and sustenance in spiritual disciplines; Support for those in physical, emotional, and financial need; An environment of growth and transformation; Celebration of one another’s gift; and Existence for others.19
Priesthood in its essence is a way of life in which life for others is offered for the sake of Christ. As Boa writes, “True community in Christ is not created by attempts to make it happen; instead, it is a by-product of other-centeredness, and this in turn is a by- product of finding our lives by losing them for Christ’s sake.”20 Christians are daily dying to sin and rising into the life of God’s Kingdom as priests.
19 Kenneth Boa, Conformed to His Image (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 424.
20 Ibid., 427. 85
CHAPTER 5
CHURCH MISSION AS A PRIESTLY SERVICE OF THE GOSPEL
The mission of the Church is the extension and promotion of Christ’s mission in the world. There is a distinction between Christ’s mission and Church mission. Following the explanation found in Matthew the differences between the mission of Christ and the mission of the Church are shown below based on Mark Powell’s God with Us.1
The Missions of Christ and the Church MISSION OF CHRIST MISSION OF CHURCH To save people from their sins – Mt 1:21 To bear good fruit – Mt 13:23; 21:43 To preach God’s reign – Mt 4:17,23; 9:35 To preach God’s reign – Mt 10:7; 24:14 To forgive sins – Mt 9:6; 26:28 To forgive sins –Mt 6:11; 18:21-25 To conquer and plunder Satan’s household – To conquer the gates of Hades – Mt 16:18 Mt 12:29 To die on the Cross for many – Mt 20:28; To take up the cross and deny oneself – 26:28 Mt 16:24 To be raised from the dead – Mt 16:12; To tell people Jesus Christ has been raised from 17:9,23; 20:19 the dead – Mt 27:64 To fulfill the Law and Prophets – Mt 5:17 To do the will of God – Mt 12:49-50 To live a sacrificial life in the form of a slave – To live a sacrificial life in the form of a slave – Mt 20:28 Mt 20:25-26 To translate the Law in authority –Mt 5:21,48; To bind and loose in authority - Mt 16:19; 7:28-29 18:18 To build the church – Mt 16:18 To lead the church – Mt 13:23 To make disciples – Mt 4:18-22 To make disciples – Mt 28:19 To call the sinners – Mt 9:9-13 To seek the sinners – Mt 18:12-17 To reveal the Father – Mt 11:27 To acknowledge the Son of God – Mt 10:32-33
1 Mark Allan Powell, God with Us (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 4. 86
The role of Christians is linked to their call. Christians are called to serve God in the world. The priesthood follows Christ’s principle of ministry, explained by Paul: “And what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well” (2 Tm 2:2). The spiritual gifts are given by the Holy
Spirit in order to facilitate this multiplication principle of the ministry of Jesus.
Extent the Spiritual Gifts are Utilized in doing Church Mission
According to Mdegela, the priesthood of all believers has two perspectives. First, the Christological perspective, which emphasizes, “Christ himself is (the) foundation of the priesthood of believers and that the Holy Spirit is of primary concern in leading a church.”2 The priesthood of all believers has its foundation in Christ because Christ is the
Word of God and high priest. Under the venue of the Gospel preached and baptism the
Holy Spirit distributes the spiritual gifts to all priests according to God’s will.
The ecclesiological perspective deals with the Church as Body of Christ. This
Body of Christ as a corpus mixtum “is always surrounded by the destructive, corrupt, satanic world and evil powers that will always trying to deviate the truth of the Word of
God.”3 On this weakness of the Body of Christ, the Holy Spirit who indwells in the
Church renews and empowers Christians. This happens when Christ is put at the center so, “The qualities of Jesus Christ are manifested in the body of believers where he is seen as an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, an intercessor and a servant of all.”4
2Mdegela, Leading a Confessional Church to Revival, 63.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 64. 87
One of the biblical principles in guiding and enriching the practice of discipleship is the concentration to Jesus’ principle of multiplication. Christ by building his life into believers, equips them. As ministers, Christians are called to participate in doing God’s mission. They do so by multiplying influence due to their respective spiritual gifts given by the Holy Spirit. Many witnesses receive the apostles’ teaching and training for the purpose of transmitting such things to the following generations and even their neighbors.
C. Peter Wagner’s definition of a spiritual gift is sufficient: “A spiritual gift is a special attribute given by the Holy Spirit to every member of the Body of Christ, according to God’s grace, for use within the context of the Body.”5 There are three elements in this definition. First is the charisma, which means “spiritual gift.” Other
Greek words used synonymously are pneumatikos (spiritual things) and domata (gifts).
These Greek words explain “the relationship that spiritual gifts have to the grace of God in the working definition of spiritual gift” (Eph 4:7).
The second element is “the context of the Body” which informs the design of the body. The Church is the Body of Christ, as an ekklesia is God’s design. Every member is to minister with his/her spiritual gift. However, the function of the spiritual gifts depends on leadership utilization. In order for the congregation to succeed in ministering, every spiritual gift of every member of the church must be in place.
Power and Significance of Spiritual Gifts in Relation to Church Mission
Every Christian ministers in doing God’s mission in the world. But to minister means to utilize God-given spiritual gifts in serving. In Romans 12:1-6, each believer has
5 C. Peter Wagner, Your Spiritual Gifts (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2012), 33. 88
a special or even unique function in the Body of Christ in unity with the Triune God. In this way the Church grows in its complexity.
Believers live in Christ as Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now lives in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God”
(Gal 2:20). Such life in Christ is life in the Spirit (Rom 8:9). The life believers live is inseparable from power. More precisely this power is redemptive, enlivened spiritually by God’s power for the purpose of victory over sin and death (1 Tm 6:12).
Thus, spiritual gifts are an important functional component of the Church.
Believers benefit from the gifts because when in use believers grow spiritually. The gifts are functional not authoritative. They are for ministry as summarized in Scripture “Each one should use whatever gift he/she has received to serve others, faithfully administering
God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Pt 4:10). Spiritual gifts are essential for ministry.
Christians who know their spiritual gifts tend to develop healthy self-esteem –
“And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would make it any less a part of the body” (1 Cor 12:16). Humility becomes the chief
Christian virtue because the use of spiritual gifts is a way of being thankful for them.
Another benefit of using spiritual gifts is growth for the Body of Christ. When gifts are used for edification, the whole Body matures “to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13). Moreover, God is glorified whenever the spiritual gifts are put into use: “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 4:11).
89
Congregations/Parishes as Storehouses of Power that can be Utilized and Unleashed
Boa writes, “The Church is not primarily a socioeconomic institution, but a spiritual organism that must depend on personal and collective visitations of the Holy
Spirit for its continued vitality.”6 Being an organism, the Church consists of believers who encounter the divine Spirit in a variety of ways.
Paul writes every Christian is given one or more spiritual gifts: “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. . . . All these are activated by one the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses” (1 Cor 12:
7, 11). Christians are equipped for ministry: “Of this Gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God’s grace that was given me by the working of his (God’s) power” (Eph 3:7). Spiritual gifts exceedingly transcend talents. As is written in James 1:
17, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is a variation or shadow due to change.”
Parishes are storehouses for gifts and transmitters of their power. Just as Boese wrote, “The power of God . . . was laying dormant simply because it was not being utilized. . . . Congregations are storehouses of power waiting to be mobilized and utilized.”7 Boese has witnessed “lives change as people become aware of spiritual gifts.
Individuals on the periphery of congregational life or getting burned out are being reborn as a whole new world opens up and God uses them in ways never foreseen.”8
6 Boa, Conformed to His Image, 427.
7 Neal Boese, Spiritual Gifts: the Power that Drives the Congregation (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing Company, 1995), 23.
8 Ibid. 90
Ray Stedman defined ministry as, “The sphere in which a gift is performed.”9 In ministry there is a degree of power executed because the Holy Spirit works through spiritual gifts. Christians need to discover and develop their respective spiritual gifts.
The discovery of these spiritual gifts is found in Christian roles. Roles are more doing than being, and spiritual gifts are more task-oriented, so they are closely related. In
Scripture spiritual gifts are often followed by words on the fruit of the Spirit. The explanation in 1 Corinthians 12 is followed by an explanation of the fruit of love in chapters 13 and 14. This is also seen in Ephesians 4:11-16, 17-32, Romans 12:1-8, 9-16 and in 1 Peter 4:9-11. Christian roles are both privileges and responsibilities. In all activities of serving one another (Gal 5:13), exhorting one another (Heb 10:25) and witnessing Jesus Christ (Acts 1:8) the spiritual gifts are in operation. Being so dynamic the spiritual gifts can be easily unleashed for effective operation in a local congregation.
Every congregation is a charismatic community. While God provides these gifts,
Christians are expected to use them in doing God’s mission. Christians develop these gifts as was intended by God (Lk 10:27; Rom 12:2; 2 Pt 3:18). This is what Melvin
Steinbron insisted when he wrote, Christians “are responsible for nourishing and nurturing them from their undeveloped beginnings to full-bodied potential.”10
The Classless Church as Revealed in the New Testament
The question of what organizational structure the Church should have is of great importance in understanding and practicing priestly service. Steinbron says it is an error
9 Ray Stedman, Body Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 1972), 43.
10 Melvin J. Steinbron, The Lay-driven Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1997), 43. 91
for the Church to continue sustaining a hierarchical structure since it is not biblical.11
Since the fourth century the Church abandoned the biblical Body model and adopted instead a class model where the pastor was elevated above other church positions.
All believers are to offer “spiritual sacrifices . . . through Jesus Christ” (1 Pt 2:5).
“This means that all believers have a priestly function,” says Hans Küng.12 This priestly function is the new order and structure that better serves the Church because it reflects its true nature. Such understanding of the common function of all believers is supported by the biblical metaphors of the Church being a Body of Christ (1 Cor 12) and a spiritual building (1 Pt 2:5). Steinbron writes, “The whole people (laos tou theou), filled by the
Spirit of Christ, becomes a priesthood set apart; all Christians are priest.”13
The Balance between Office and Function of the Church
The Kingdom of God (basilea tou theou) is the sum total of divine blessing bestowed by God consisting in the highest life in which all believers are truly at home. So central to Jesus’ preaching and teaching, the Kingdom of God is the axis around which
Christ’s mission revolves. For the reign (Kingdom) of God is what God wants done.
Looking at the practical implications of pastoral writings in the New Testament the Church office has to do with the apostolic authority of guarantor, teacher and guardian of true faith and practice as stated in 2 Timothy 1:11-14:
For this Gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the One in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that He is able to guard until that day what I have
11 Ibid.
12Hans Küng, The Church (Garden City, New York: Image Books, 1976), 474.
13Steinbron, The Lay-driven Church, 43. 92
entrusted to Him. Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Jesus Christ. Guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.
The office of the Church deals with supervision, administration, responsibility, teaching and guarding the Church. This means the Church had to establish authority where some few Christians specialize in serving the Church. For example, earlier on there were elders
(presbyteroi) and bishops that had authority over their communities.
To balance the office and function one has to look at Jesus’ servant-leadership.
There there are several principles that determine priestly service. Jesus was a servant of all though he was Lord of all (Mt 20:28; Rom 8:9; 1 Cor 2:16). He excelled in serving in his teaching, preaching, prayer, healing and serving (Acts 20:35). Jesus was egalitarian
(classless) for he thought of his disciples as sisters and brothers (Mt 12:49; Jn 15:15).
As George Fihavango writes, “All believers are servants of God, but the leader is a servant of the servants of God. Leaders have more responsibilities. To them much is given and much is required (Luke 12:48).”14 There has been a necessity for ordained ministry in the Church from the beginning. The particular roles of ordained ministry are public and continual responsibility for pointing to the Church’s dependence on Jesus
Christ, providing focus for unity, and holding specific authority and responsibility.
Believers of Christ in the New Testament are known as disciples or apostles (Mt
5-7; 28:18-20; Acts 1:8; 1 Cor 15:3-11). The only difference between apostles and the rest is that they were eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ and his earthly ministry (Acts 1:15-26), whereas believers afterwards come to faith through the apostolic witness.
14 George Fihavango, Jesus and Leadership (Arusha, TZ: Makumira Publication, 2007), 159. 93
David Bartlet explains this interrelationship of clergy and laity well: “Any member of the body may share in proclaiming and teaching the Word of God, may contribute to the sacramental life of the body. The ordained ministry fulfills these functions in a representative way, providing the focus for the unity of the life and witness of the community.”15 This clarity is vivid in the celebration of the Eucharist, in which
“the ordained ministry is the visible focus of the deep and all-embracing communion between Christ and the members of his body. In the celebration of the Eucharist, Christ gathers, teaches, and nourishes the church.”16 Office and function are well balanced for ministerial authority, which is from Christ and acknowledged in the community of faith.
The Models that call upon Priestly Participation
The priesthood of all believers participates in this priesthood of Christ. Kijanga says this notion has two aspects: sociology and theology.17 Sociologically, the Church is a group of people in a particular place actively facing socioeconomic, political, cultural and even environmental problematic challenges. Theologically, all members by virtue of their baptism are legitimized to participate in the priesthood of Jesus Christ as they are empowered and commissioned to serve God in this world.
Jesus’ ministry empowers all believers (Acts 20:35; Mt 9:34). God gives his people the Gospel, then the Church and then the ministers. Under this understanding the
Gospel is preached for the redemption of the world. The Church exists for the world’s sake in service of the Gospel.
15 Bartlett, Ministry in the New Testament, 9.
16 Ibid.
17Kijanga, personal interview. 94
Küng wrote that the concrete content of the priesthood of all believers is comprised of several attributes.18 The first is direct access to God. All members of the congregation/parish have legitimate, direct access to God because of their faith in Christ
(Gal 5:2; Eph 3:2; Heb 10:22). Another attribute is spiritual sacrifice. This includes the offering of lives of all members of the congregation/parish as told in Romans 15:16 and
Philippians 2:17. Küng also includes preaching of the Gospel. Christians are to preach the
Gospel for the salvation of people in the world (Heb 13:15; 1 Pt 3:15; Mt 5:14).
Christians are also to administer baptism, the Lord’s Supper and the forgiveness of sins. All Christians are commanded and thus given power to baptize, to administer
Eucharist and to forgive sins (Mt 28:19; 1 Cor 11; Mt 16:18). Finally, all believers are called to be mediators. As a community of believers Christian priestly service is toward the world, for the sake of Christ. This mediation has to be between God and the world, revealing the hidden works of God and making effective God’s acts of power.
The following models or metaphors are appropriate for this notion. First, the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12; Rom 12), in which every member participates in community activity and life. The collective members serve God, but also each other. Second, is the vine (Jn
15). Christians are equal before Christ because they receive the same eternal life from the same source—Jesus Christ. They all bear fruit of the Holy Spirit.
With these models, one can understand all members have accountability and responsibility in their new lives. As a people, Christians are privileged to the same honor.
As Peter wrote, “Once we were not a people at all, but now in Christ, we are ‘a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God’” (1 Pt 2:9).
18Küng, The Church, 373-381. 95
CHAPTER 6
THE MEANING OF MISSIO DEI CONCEPT
Missio Dei means the Church is called to participate in divine activity in the world. The Christianity introduced in Africa by Western missionaries has found a home in Africa. African Christians have differentiated between inherited traditional faith in gods and the Christian faith. Africans clearly understood the heart of Christianity is none other than Jesus Christ whom they experienced in the true presence of the Triune God.
From the beginning African Christians grasped their obligation in Church activity.
Despite the missionaries’ shortcomings, new converts realized Jesus Christ took them in his arms and wants them to share his life and work. Danielson worked in Tanzania for forty years witnessed this truth saying, “But it was evident that African Christians were showing us that Christ belongs to them and that they could move forward with Christ’s work without our pre-war paternalistic attitudes. This was inspiring to behold!”1 He wrote this as he saw vividly “Despite the problems, the Good News of Jesus Christ seemed to forge ahead in making disciples and as a leavening power in all of life.2
1 Danielson, Forty Years with Christ in Tanzania, 26.
2 Ibid. 96
What Danielson observed was natural for mission work whenever the Gospel is introduced to a new land. Africans were caught up in the Gospel similar to New
Testament believers. Missionaries regardless of poor methodology realized “there was something in God’s love in Jesus Christ which simply won people, young and old. It was impossible to trace just how the Holy Spirit would enter into some hearts and mind and transform that person or persons into catechumens and family into baptized Christians.”3
Mission is dynamic moving character. An invitation with the Gospel demands a response to those invited. All-in-all mission is an activity. As Stott wrote: “The word mission . . . is properly a comprehensive word, embracing everything which God sends his people into the world to do. It therefore includes evangelism and social responsibility, since both are authentic expressions of the love which longs to serve man in his need.”4
Because mission involves people of all times and places, it remains a sole framework for empowering and equipping all believers for doing mission in the world.
In order to fully understand missio Dei as a framework for empowering and equipping, missio Dei itself must be addressed. As Bosch writes, “Christians are the agitators of the coming of God’s kingdom by creating here and now the ‘signs of God’s new world.’”5 Martin Kaehler warns academicians “mission is the mother of theology.”6
Theology is not primarily a way of thinking but rather living into a new way of thinking.
3 Ibid.
4 John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World (London: Falcom, 1975), 23.
5Bosch, Transforming Mission, 176.
6 Ibid. This is Bosch’s translation of Martin Kähler from his 1908 work, Schriften zur Christologie und Mission. 97
God chooses to accomplish God’s mission by kenosis (emptying God’s self) as
Paul explains in Philippians 2:5-11. This kenosis explains divine vulnerability as a gracious activity God is doing in the world. Thus, missio Dei is God’s doings that include the entire world, including ordinary things like a cup of cold water, prison visits, clothing and a welcome mat (Mt 25:42–46). The goal for missio Dei is not only healing but transforming life. Mission is what God is doing through the Church, and even without the
Church, to bring creation to the unity and fullness of Christ (Eph 1:22-23; Col 1:15-20).
This is more understandable considering missio comes from the perfect participle mitoo/mittre meaning “to send.” However, missio Dei is in an attributive genitive that explains, “God becomes not only the Sender but simultaneously the One who is sent.”7
Therefore, missio Dei contains all that is within the Triune God who is the Sender, the
Sent and the Sending (Jn 15:26; 16:5-16; 17:18; 20:21-23). In missio Dei there is mutuality in sending that always expresses divine communion as a communion of mission overflowing from divine love in creating, sustaining and renewing the kosmos.
Missio Dei as God’s Own Character and Purpose
God-self is a missionary God who goes forth (ekstasis) emptying God’s self
(kenosis). That is, the source of the missionary movement is in the living Triune God.
This is God’s self expressed in Jesus Christ and is a missionary movement because God- self risks all divine prerogatives for the sake of sustaining relationship with creation.
With that understanding missio Dei is a divine power of the Gospel that is rightly recognized in divine vulnerability. Missio Dei is properly interpreted within Christology,
7 R. Paul Stevens, The Abolition of the Laity (London: Patermoster Press, 1999), 194. 98
soteriology and the doctrine of Trinity because mission is derived from “the very nature of God” and thence belongs to the Triune God’s activity. Bosch writes of this, “God the
Father is sending the Son, and God the Father and the Son sending the Spirit, and God the
Father and the Son and the Spirit sending the church into the world.”8
The Biblical and Theological Understanding of missio Dei
In the Old Testament, God (Yahweh) has important character. Yahweh is the One who goes before the people leading them through, the warrior God who never fails.
Missio Dei is told in a threefold categorical understanding: incarnational, the sending of the Son by the Father; eschatological, the Father and the Son sending the Holy Spirit; and apostolicity, the Church sent into the world. The following verbs are used in the sense of missio Dei: creating, calling forth into existence, sustaining, blessing, electing, promising, saving/redeeming/restoring/liberating, gathering, sending and empowering.
Theologically, missio Dei is best understood in terms of Christology, soteriology, pneumatology and the doctrine of the Trinity. More precisely, missio Dei is God’s activity in love. Bosch writes, “God is a function of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission.”9
Missio Dei Institutes Missiones ecclesiae
Missiones ecclesiae can be translated as missionary activities of a church’s small groupings.10 To function accordingly missiones ecclesiae has to be directly consequential to missio Dei. Missionary activities are authentic only insofar as they reflect the Church’s
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. 99
participation in missio Dei. Missiones ecclesiae essentially serves missio Dei by witnessing to the fullness of the promise of God’s reign and participates in the ongoing struggle between the divine coming Kingdom and the powers of darkness and evil.
Empowering Activities of Missio Dei
In its entirety missiones ecclesiae is a service to the mission of God by
“representing God in and over against the world, pointing to God, holding up the God- child before the eyes of the world in a careless celebration of the Feast of Epiphany.”11
This is how missio Dei establishes or constitutes missions ecclesiae by sourcing it. In
Kiswahili, a language of Tanzania, the word “empowers” is translated as kuvikwa nguvu, which means “to put on or to clothe with power.”12 In the Swahili milieu, empowering is to be given power by one who has that source. Power is that ability to do something. It is a capacity to influence the behavior of others, emotions or the course of events.
According to biblical understanding, there are two kinds of power: worldly and divine. Worldly power imposes itself on others. It looks over them. It is power that builds the self at the detriment of others. Whereas, divine power is power that renders the self capable of suffering for the sake of another without expecting anything in return (2 Cor
4:11-12; 1 Cor 4:20; 1 Thes 1:5; Eph 3:16; Col 1:11; 2 Tm 1:7-9). This kind of power is the very being of the community of believers of Jesus Christ.
As Paul says in Romans, the Gospel is dynamis. Dynamis means power efficacy in its operation. The Gospel is a gift of God that empowers every believer for the sake of
11 Ibid.
12 This is precisely Swahili milieu understanding of empowering all over Eastern Africa. 100
others. Peri Rasolondraibe explains there are three components of missio Dei activities empowering believers.13 First is through the Word of God (Col 3:16). Believers are empowered when they partake in evangelizing, preaching, teaching, Bible studying,
Christian educating, counseling, healing and even regular conversations. In these engagements believers receive divine power and sharing that power of life with others.
Second, they are empowered through prayer (Eph 6:10, 18). This reality is found in the activity of praying. This activity includes interceding, healing, exorcising and accompanying. The final empowering activity is diakonia (Mk 10:45; Mt 25:42-46).
Diakonia means servicing as well as touching the untouchable. This activity follows the principle of Jesus Christ: “Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus for he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). The Church is surrounded by the needy. It is said two-thirds of the world population lives in extreme poverty and unspeakable misery, facing incurable diseases of HIV/AIDS, TB, cancer and even malaria. The Church needs to be empowered when tackling these extreme difficulties.
Humanity must comply with Missio Dei
As a missionary movement in the world, “The church is essentially the workshop of the Holy Spirit” endowed with tools of the Word, Sacraments, natural and acquired skills, and spiritual gifts of all believers that affirm the grace of God.14 On top of this, the
Church is a “partaker in healing the sick, in caring for the handicapped, the blind, the lame, advocating for the renewal of creation and reconciliation among warring nations,
13 Peri Rasolondraibe, “Ministry of Empowering,” Lecture, Consultation on Renewal Movements in Lutheran Churches in North and South, Moshi, TZ, June 9-12, 2002.
14Mdegela, Leading a Confessional Church to Revival, 47. 101
ethnic groups and sphere of economic imbalances.”15 This means that humanity owes
God for its existence and therefore must comply with missio Dei. For in participating in
God’s mission the whole of humanity and creation are embraced by God.
Missio Dei is a Promise where the Church Stands or Falls
Missio Dei as an activity of God in the world is a turning toward the world for the sake of creating, caring redeeming and consummating. Mission is the intention of God of letting be, that is, “to actualize the potentiality of our being; to be or become existentially who we are essentially; to overcome the barriers to our fulfillment and make good the promise of our being.”16
The purpose of God in missio Dei is to exalt humanity back to its original place in creation. For being and meaning are inseparable in God’s mission in its essence: “Behold,
I make all things new” (Rv 21:5). Basically, missio Dei is a wonderful gift endowed by
God with a purpose of serving, reaching out and sharing life with others and helping them fulfill their destiny in God.
Thence, missio Dei makes congregations catalysts for mission that ensures abundant life to their members, invites people to hear the story of Jesus and train and equip them for the furtherance of missio Dei in the world. The heart of any congregation lies in the proclamation of the Gospel and nourishment of the Body of Christ around the sacraments. Any congregation that stops doing this obligation would cease to exist.
15 Ibid.
16 Douglas John Hall, Professing the Faith (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 275. 102
CHAPTER 7
THE NATURE OF THE CHURCH IS ROOTED IN THE MISSIO DEI
It was mentioned above that congregations are divinely ordained to be catalysts for the mission of God in the world. This is so because the congregational mission always reflects Jesus Christ’s mission in the world. This congregational mission actualizes, first,
Jesus’ incarnation activity of awakening all members of the congregation into mission.
Second, in Jesus’ cross (death), all members are invited to sacrificial mission, and in
Jesus’ resurrection all members claim the gift of missio Dei because it is eternal.
The Church is called into existence by God, through Jesus in order to live out missio Dei revealed in divine vulnerability. In mission the Church is the body and blood of Christ poured out for the sake of the brokenness of the world. It thence envisages the mission of God by living in proclamation and invitation to the Gospel for it:
Centers on the vulnerability of God who in creation becomes vulnerable to the powers of the material chaos, who in history becomes vulnerable in relationship to Israel (people of God) and who in eschatological future becomes vulnerable to the powers of death, decay, and entropy, and who signals the power of this vulnerability precisely in the death and resurrection of the divine Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth.1
1 Tim Huffman, “A Faculty Goes Missional,” Trinity Seminary Review 31:2 (Summer 2010): 80. 103
The Church in its being is therefore rooted in missio Dei, makes it a missionary community movement with a missionary faith. Being a missionary bears martyria of
Jesus Christ by living a life that oscillates within discipleship and apostleship of all believers of Jesus Christ.
The Local Church is Essentially a Missionary Movement
Althaus notes that the lives of individual Christians are a treasury.2 When stimulated this potential lives out suffering, giving them freedom in Jesus Christ. In a simultaneous gift and task, grace and calling all goods of Christ and of other Christians become one’s goods, burden, trouble and sin as the law says in Galatians 6:2 and 1
Corinthians 12:22-26. Althaus continues, “Notice that we thus so become one loaf with
Christ that we enter into a community with him in which we share his possessions and he enters he enters into a community with us in which he shares our possessions.”3
In the new covenant Christians will never be Jesus’ disciples without sacrificing their lives for Christ’s sake. This is why Paul wrote, “So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us” (1 Thes 2:8). In reality, giving oneself completely to one’s neighbor is extremely hard. It is a costly thing, but without doing so there is no discipleship. However, loving God gives believers the power to love others exactly as God wants. God does so because all believers are divinely commissioned to display and reproduce the life of Jesus Christ in the lives of others (Rom 1:17).
2 Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 305.
3 Ibid. 104
The Local Church with Others
The visibility of a church is actualized in either a local congregation or parish, which have geographical boundaries. It is a community assembled in a particular place for sharing the Gospel. It is a fellowship where the people of God participate together.
It is in the local church that the mission of the Church is embodied in its corporate life for the sake of Jesus’ mission in the world. And in this way mission is the praxis of
God, practiced through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. God has designed the
Church by calling every believer to be part of God’s doing in the world. Believers, however, do not work individually; they are called individually but are to live and work collectively for the sake of the world. Their lives are congregational, participating in doing God’s mission for they are corporately given the power of God, the Holy Spirit.
In reality, each congregation is not only a workshop where God’s purpose can be fulfilled but also a storehouse of divine-human power of the Gospel.4 The congregational life of the local church is nothing else but a responsible life lived for the sake of others.
The local church is a Christian community living responsibly in a visible way.
The Local Church has a Prophetic Role in the World
Besides being God’s workshop and storehouse, the local church is a “social continuum of incarnation, the social drawing of the mystery, the social flowering of the
Word into any changing present” in its missionary nature.5 Bosch emphasizes, “It is mediating the love of God the Father who is the parent of all people, whoever and
4Boese, Spiritual Gifts, 23.
5Bosch, Transforming Mission, 493. 105
wherever they may be. It is epiphany, the making presence of God the Spirit, who blows where he wishes, without us knowing whence he comes and whither he goes (John 3:8).”6
The local church, from the praxis of Christian discipleship, has to act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly as Micah wrote: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God!” (Mi 6:8). Such living is explained in the beatitudes of Jesus’ teachings on the God’s Kingdom in Matthew 5:1-12. The Church has been called to serve the cause of justice renouncing the forces of evil, the devil and his empty promises. It is through the congregation the people of God stand as a sign of God’s Kingdom that people recognize the divine presence because God’s grace (Ti 2:11) prompts believers to give up everything that is against the will of God and all human (flesh) ambitions and moves them to want to be a people with ambition only of doing good in the world.
Missio Dei and the Matrix of Life Participation in the Local Church
By matrix of life in the perimeters of missio Dei, the relational dynamics in congregational life work should well coordinate giving differing functions in a unity that pleases God. The community of believers in congregational life is all but a dynamic interaction of persons who happen to know that they are accepted and beloved in Jesus
Christ. For on calling people, God molds them into a vital organism for others.
This vital organism is organic in nature keeping congregational life rooted and grounded in Jesus is of symbiotic living.7 As a family of brothers and sisters, members of
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 427.
106
the congregation live by ministering to each one through fellowship (koinonia). As believers come to know Christ and embrace his cross by losing their lives to find him, they individually come to let God’s love in them through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Of course, this is an enigma that is resolved in Jesus’ priesthood: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his suffering by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain (an arrival) the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:10-11).
Despite being frail, full of failures and personal deficiencies, a Christian should give him/herself solely to being like Christ and thus can find oneself. Christians’ lowly lifestyle in Christ is the power that overthrows the world. Living in Christ means God is giving “the power of an indestructible life” (Heb 7:16) to believers to accomplish Christ’s work in the world and to raise them above the power of death.
Missio Dei as Revealed in Jesus Christ
In Jesus Christ, God desires to create a community of spiritual people to whom
God can reveal God-self, from whom God can receive the glory, praise and honor due to his name, and with whom God can give and receive love as said by Paul in Ephesians
1:4-7. The spiritual life made possible in Christ is “the life of Christ reproduced in the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit in obedient response to the Word of God.”8
This is a spiritual family (Gal 4:4-7; Eph 2:19; Col 1:18) in whom members can love and be loved and also can accept and be accepted in eternal fellowship (Rom 8:38).
It is with and through this spiritual family that Jesus Christ, who is the head, can rule all creation, because he is the hub who orders and integrates every spoke of life. This is the
8 Ibid. 107
only realistic option for a follower and servant of Christ to rely on. This praxis of missio
Dei revealed in Jesus Christ (Jn 17), saves humanity from sins (Mt 1:21) by becoming a servant of all (Mt 20:26-27; Mk10:45; Jn 13; 1 Cor 9:19). Likewise every believer is entrusted this great divine work as a privilege of being adopted into God’s family.
Missio Dei in Relation with Personal and Social Transformation
Believers come to faith in Christ as individuals but grow in community, which by the power of the Gospel has been molded into a spiritual familial relationship, focusing on the dynamics of life within the influence of the Holy Spirit. In this context, the essential source of spiritual health and maturity is obtained—life in Jesus Christ.
Thus, this community of faith living a congregational life is a social entity too. As
Boa explains, such a community has a reciprocal mission of Jesus among other benefits it provides.9 In its dynamic life of this divine-human organic communal living there are many social benefits including relational enrichment and commitment that builds trust, love, acceptance, encouragement and accountability. Love for neighbor is an essential expression of the spiritual life, intensified and hence enriches the love for God.
This means the Church is of great significance, for in it believers’ personal lives together with Christ are supported and fed by the corporate life. Each member of the congregation needs a rhythm of solitude and community, withdrawal and engagement, intimacy and activity, being served by and serving others, and personal and corporate growth. All this is a relational and social transformation within the doing of God’s mission, resulting in spiritual life that is shared in the community (Mt 16:25).
9 Boa, Conformed to His Image, 427. 108
PART THREE
MINISTRY STRATEGY
CHAPTER 8
MISSIO DEI AND THE COMMUNAL GIFT OF PRIESTHOOD
Communality of missio Dei is found in the sharing of Jesus’ suffering as believers participate in doing God’s mission in the world. As a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation and God’s people, the Church is communally commissioned by Christ to spread the Gospel. This goes hand-in-hand with calling. Christians are commissioned and called. The new order of life in Christ has to be nurtured and nourished in the corporate life of a congregation for the purpose of transforming the lives of its members. God has designed and put all believers of Christ in congregations for the purpose of life-growing in Christlikeness and the reproduction of the life of Christ into others can take place.
The purpose of the church is to proclaim God’s presence (1 Pt 2:9). This purpose needs a continual and creative engagement to that which is. This means that both missio
Dei and the communal gift of priesthood of all believers are correlated and concretely manifested in living fellowship and intimacy with God and others. In its essence the
Church is always a divine-human communal organism that belongs to God with its own
110
identity. As Bosch says, “The church is a spiritual family of brothers and sisters whose personal and corporate identity is rooted and grounded in the love of Christ.”1
The members of the community of Jesus Christ gather together as a family in order to minister one another through didache (teaching), koinonia (fellowship, communion), sharing prayer (Acts 2:42), mutual service and encouragement (Heb 11:23-
25), exercise of spiritual gifts (Rom 12, 1 Cor 12-14; Eph 4), the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor
11:17-20), giving thanks and worshipping (Eph 5:19-20). This ministry is an organic interactive relationship because the church’s essential life is symbiotic.
Faces of doing Church Mission Patterned with Six Major “Salvific Events”
However, the Church is of Christ in its life and work. This essence of the Church has to be genuinely expressed in salvific events of Jesus Christ revealed in his life, death and resurrection. Tere are six major salvific events, which are best at identifying the interrelated faces of the Church’s mission in the world.2 These salvific events are the incarnation, the cross, the resurrection, the ascension, Pentecost and the Parousia.
The Incarnation3
Jesus Christ is the incarnate Word of God offering life for the world (Jn 1:14). As such, the Word of God continues to happen whenever it is proclaimed. It is through the
Church’s activity the Word of God incarnates in every culture. In every communication of the Gospel, Jesus’ life and ministry reveal divine involvement in the life of the world.
1 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 493.
2 Ibid., 512-518.
3 Ibid., 512. 111
The Cross of Jesus4
The cross of Jesus signifies God’s coming down and meeting the world in the death of Jesus. It is in the cross the deepest divine agony and wounded heart of God is reached. Jesus’ cry: “Eloi! Eloi! Lama sabach-than! (My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?),” depicts God in tremendous pain, groaning, grasping and panting because
“until humanity is made whole, God will be restless. God cannot be detached from grieves and suffering of humanity.”5 God is heartbroken until the prodigal son returns.
In regards to this suffering, God will only be saved when humanity is saved for
“God needs human beings if God’s salvific history initiated with creation is to be fulfilled.”6 This is the position of God in crucifixion. The cross is God’s unshakable love for God’s own creation. On the cross God is residing in the deepest center of the self.
Kenosis is but God’s offering of God’s eternal life to the world and the Church is called to assists God in offering this life.
The Resurrection7
I was once rewarded a special gift by one of congregations in my diocese. That gift was a small placard with “Jesus is the answer” written on it. These are comforting words as they tell a lot but more importantly say who Jesus is. Jesus is life itself, he is the source of life, he is the giver of life and therefore he is the fountain of all life.
4 Ibid., 513.
5 Ibid.
6 Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 123.
7 Ibid., 515. 112
Christian lives are built upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ. By the resurrection of Jesus, true and complete confirmation of life erupted into this decaying world. Christ risen now challenges the evil captive power of darkness in this world that has vanquished it for so long. This resurrection of Jesus has the ascendency and victory over the cross.
Therefore, by virtue of the resurrection of Jesus Christ eternity has evaded time and thence true and real life (Jn 10:10) has triumphed over death by conquering it completely. Consequently, the Church, is called to live resurrection life as the conquering life here and now, a sign of contradiction against all forces of death and destruction.
The Ascension8
The language of the ascension of Jesus Christ is of enthronement of the crucified but risen Jesus. The ascension of Jesus is exaltation, a glorification of Jesus Christ being given all authority in heaven and on earth. Now Jesus Christ lives and reigns over all.
Such divine reign is real but yet incomplete. It must be realized in justice and peace in the social realm. Believers are not inaugurating it but make it visible for the world to see, tangible so the world can touch. As Bosch writes: “The proclamation of
God’s reign is the announcement of the new order which challenges those powers and structures that have become demonic in a world corrupted by sin against God.”9
Nonetheless, this glorification of Jesus as Christ remains intimately linked to the divine agony of the cross. The writer of Revelations writes: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughter to receive power and the wealth and wisdom and might and honor and
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 516. 113
glory and blessing” (Rv 5:12). This is an extreme striking image of Jesus being a sacrificial Lamb who was slaughtered yet lives sharing the throne with the living God.
Pentecost10
Pentecost is the divine activation of life giving. Disciples of Jesus are promised an empowering Spirit of witness. This Holy Spirit is the Spirit of boldness in the face of adversity and opposition. The Church, by the power of the Holy Spirit is empowered to intensify Christ’s mission in this world by being part of the message it proclaims.
Parousia11
The Church is not only a waiting community of Christ, but lives in hope because the risen Christ still has a future for the nations. In this hope of Jesus’ returning, the mission of the church remains to respond to the vision of the coming victorious Kingdom of God. It is an eschatological vision of God’s ultimate reign of justice and peace, which stands within the life of the community of faith as a powerful magnet to all people. The
Church’s mission as derivative of the wholeness and indivisibility in God’s activity in the world is a priestly service of the Gospel “to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentile in the priestly service of the gospel of God” (Rom 15:16).
In missio Dei there is an authentic mutuality in sending that expresses “the divine communion as a communion of mission,” which leaves its mark on the Church.12 Mission begins as the overflow of God’s love in creating, sustaining and renewing the universe.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 517.
12 Ibid. 114
The Functional Forms of Koinonia, Kerygma and Diakonia
Missio Dei is best understood in terms of Christology, soteriology, and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity because mission is an attribute of God. In essence, “Mission is, primarily and ultimately, the work of the Triune God, Creator, Redeemer, and
Sanctifier, for the sake of the world, a ministry in which the church is privileged to participate. . . . Mission has its origin in the heart of God. God is the fountain of sending love. This is the deepest source of mission.”13 How this works must now be addressed.
By reading keenly the New Testament one realizes that the fundamental functioning of the Church is threefold: koinonia, kerygma and diakonia within the realm of the Kingdom of God. These functional forms are well understood in Church martyria in the world.
Acts 1:8 says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witness in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” All church business in the world should be that of martyria. Believers serve as Jesus’ evidence by being who they are in Christ. Their character, deeds and speech witness to the new reality Christ brings about involving their total being. Martyria is only possible through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
The church mission is a continuity of Christ’s mission through the power of the
Holy Spirit. Christology in academic disciplines is to be transformed into Christopraxis for practical discipline.14 Christopraxis is both a mission and ecclesial activity because it precedes and creates the Church as well as the praxis of God through the power and presence of the Spirit of Christ.
13 Ibid., 390.
14 Ray S. Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology: Empowering Ministry with Theological Praxis (Downers Grove, IL: InterVersity Press, 2001), 29. 115
These three forms when practiced in the community of believers of Christ better position participating in the Christ-event in the world. On one hand the inner life of the
Church is energized through praxis within the interaction of God’s mission in the world; on the other the existence of the Church as a missionary community is located between the scriptural text and tradition involving the ongoing experience of church mission.
Christopraxis is a form of practical wisdom in which what the Church does is informed by its understanding of what God is doing through its life and mission.
Christopraxis has a hermeneutical significance in relating the effects of Christ’s contemporary work with Scripture. Christopraxis, which is the praxis of the Spirit as discerned in the ministry context, is not determined by cultural relevance or pragmatic expediency. The work of Christ becomes the criterion in praxis of the Holy Spirit.
Koinonia Function of the Church
Koinonia, translated as fellowship or communion, is best understood in the context of the Christian benedictory formulary reading in 2 Corinthians 13:13: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and the fellowship (koinonia) of the
Holy Spirit be with all of you.” Grace, love and fellowship are essential to the Triune
God and are conferred to all believers of Christ. Koinonia as fellowship and communion is an intimate relationship that involves God and humanity.
The deeper meaning of koinonia as intimate relationship is a space where the
Holy Spirit is not only the giver: “He himself enters into the fellowship with believers and draws them into his fellowship or of community, of sociality.”15 This means that
15 Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 217. 116
everyone is open to another, giving one another, sharing of themselves. It is both a reciprocal participation and a mutual recognition: “Fellowship comes into being when people who are different have something in common, and when that is in common is shared by different people.”16 Therefore, from the eternal, essential nature of the Holy
Spirit self, the Holy Spirit is the One who “issues from inward community of the triune
God, in all the richness of its relationships, and it throws this community open for human beings, in such a way that it gathers into itself these men and women and all other created things, son that they find eternal life.”17
Koinonia of the Holy Spirit is thence a life-giving Spirit that works out “the network of social relationships in which life comes into being, blossoms and becomes fruitful.”18 In its wholeness, koinonia is the Spirit’s activity of creating a community of
Jesus Christ in which the “richer and more complex the communicative relationships between human beings become, the more vitally and abundantly life unfolds.”19 By koinonia all believers are invited to discover the possibilities of life as they discover the depth and richness of the grace of God. This can be actualized in worship activity.
The church as a communion/fellowship in worship becomes a locus and space of
God’s salvific act in the world. The Church, in worship act, is where divine salvation is enacted on earth. It is the earthly space of reconciled life that is intended to draw in all humankind (2 Cor 5:19-20). This is the place where God’s gift and human task intersect.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 219. 117
Kerygma Function of the Church
Kerygma is a public announcement (Mt 12:41), public inculcation, hence a public preaching (1 Cor 2:4; 15:14). It is an announcement made openly and publicly (Mk 1:4;
Lk 4:18). Kerygma is a participle of the verb kerusso (to proclaim, to announce, and to preach publicly). It is a proclamation of the Gospel to the world. The community of
Christ has a story to share with the world. The story to be told by the Church is that the
Gospel of God must be spoken into every concrete historical time just as it was spoken in time of biblical writing.
Maimele explains the New Testament forms of ministry and the Lutheran concept of ministry indicate kerygma as the highest function of the Church (Acts 6:1-4), as it involves the ministry of the apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and all disciples of all times and places for the purpose of edification of the congregation and extending the
Gospel to neighbors.20 It is an activity that furthers the salvation of Jesus Christ to others by rendering service. It bears God’s creative and redeeming Word of God to all worlds.
Kerygma includes preaching, teaching, performing miracles and baptizing. This also involves translation and interpretation of the Gospel. For proclaiming Jesus, the
Church engages in delivering the wisdom of God, the reign of God present and coming.
This delivery of wisdom of God is no different with the prophecy of Ezekiel upon dry bones as summarized in a poem wrote by Libby Bunch: “Abandoned bones characterized desolation Ezekiel foretells God’s hopefulness integrating juxtaposing known lifelessness metamorphic noisily oxygenates pulsates quickly regenerating sinews totally uniting
20 Simon S. Maimela, “The New Testament Forms of Ministry and the Lutheran Concept of Ministry,” Africa Theological Journal 11:2 (1982): 121. 118
vertebrae watering xeriscaping YHWH’s zoe.”21 By kerygma the Church becomes an eschatological function of witness of Jesus Christ before the world because it publicly announces spiritual wisdom that outsources divine wisdom, which is God’s secret plan for deliverance of all people (2 Cor 2:4). Divine wisdom means divine vulnerability for the sake of the world, this wisdom has divine power that brings salvation to all.
Diakonia Function of the Church
Diakonia is a devoted activity that furthers the Kingdom of God. The main purpose of diakonia is to build up, edify, nourish and care for the community of Christ through the spirit of sacrifice and humility in serving others. This term has to do with rendering service to another. Thence, in its deeper level, diakonia plays a bigger role compared to the other two; it sums up koinonia and kerygma.
In diakonia, the Church is called to reach beyond itself with courage everywhere, not intimidated by dangers and discomforts and sometimes a hostile reception. The
Church is invited to touch the untouchable in the world. By doing so the Church is led to a new level of relationships of edifying that can be a vibrant and active communion. In diakonia, the Church helps people develop themselves in the light of the Gospel so they become agents of their own development. Such development should be positively working for justice, peace and other values for the purpose of intensifying the establishment of the Kingdom of God.
21 Libby Bunch, “Poetry A to (e)Zekiel,” Trinity Seminary Review 33 (2012): 6. 119
CHAPTER 9
EQUIPPING STRATEGY FOR DOING MISSION IN HIMO PARISH
Himo Parish is among many parishes of the ELCT founded in confessional ecclesia evangelii tradition based on the sixteenth-century Reformation movement:1 “The
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania is a church that has a foundation in Jesus Christ and confesses the doctrines of the Lutheran tradition.”2 However, the confessions that the
ELCT relies upon are only of dogmatic nature. They are only proposals that contribute to the life of church functioning as a guard against disruptions and distortions.
The ELCT as a community is a special story lived by this evangelii (confessional) tradition. Its reality is “the hermeneutic event of the move from hearing to telling.”3 Each and every member of the Church is “the one who hears from others and then speaks to others.”4 These confessions are significant in the Church’s life and work because they make these people of God a people who live by confessing Jesus Christ before the world.
1 Eric W. Gritsch and Robert W. Jenson, Lutheranism: the Theological Movement and its Confessional Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 8.
2 Mdegela, Leading a Confessional Church to Revival, 40.
3 Gritsch and Jenson, Lutheranism, 8.
4 Ibid. 120
Naturally, a confessional church is a committed, gathered community of Christ ruled by God that “in every aspect, constitute an instituted organism rather than human organization.”5 As a Body of Christ the ELCT lives and functions as an institution with order of a new life that needs protection from corruption and a decaying world. ELCT has two remarkable things in its framework—the order in its structural organization and the renewal (reforming) in reshaping its organism form for the sake of the Gospel.
Under the tradition in its essence, imagination, creativity, ferment, disorder and conflict are involved in church life. For the vitality of any congregation or parish there must be beliefs, attitudes and practices when subjected to change remain key. So far congregations/parishes of ELCT, including Himo Parish, are built upon three factors: the
Lutheran tradition, African Christianity and bureaucratic-and-paternalistic organization.
Times have changed and Tanzanian society sees itself in a new life-situation that needs a rethinking to meet new problems and needs. Modernization, coupled with globalization, reinforced by the market free economic forces, affects society to a greater extent than one could imagine. As a result present Tanzanian society is in turmoil of social and moral decay promoting secularism of its kind.
The present situation is a great challenge to the Church. Existing structures and traditions must be checked and even transformed to serve God for the sake of the world.
This is possible when the Church becomes a creative, curative and sustainable community. In such a community a network of significant others knit together a web of covenants connecting persons, nourishing health or enable healing. The individual-in- community is well attended and thus the proper unit of humanness is satisfied and the
5Mdegela, Leading a Confessional Church to Revival, 43. 121
positive community is able to invite growth to balanced personhood. Group identity is as crucial to humanness as personal identity.
This means that there is to be a new strategy of doing God’s mission that has to result from church self-examination. The present traditional way of propagating the
Gospel and the bureaucratic-and-paternalistic structure of the ELCT have to be examined to see if there are other ways of changing for the betterment of doing God’s mission. As
Emmanuel Martey writes, African reality has an “overriding common denominator” that he called the “anthropological pauperization of the African person.”6
According to Martey this anthropological pauperization of the African person has surfaced in twofold aspects: political socio-economic and anthropological religio- cultural.7 This has deeply affected Africans to become who they are and what they have.
Therefore, the hermeneutical praxis must be missional, as it takes seriously the holistic viewed strategy of the Gospel as an anthropological, religio-cultural-and-political, socio- economic liberating force that sets people free to live new life in the Holy Spirit.
Practicing the Presence of God
Psalm 73:26 says, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” What matters in practicing the presence of God is nothing human but God-self: “To worship is to experience Reality, to touch Life. It is to know, to feel, to experience the resurrected Christ in the midst of the gathered community.”8 It is
6 Emmanuel Martey, African Theology: Inculturation and Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 38.
7 Ibid.
8 Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline (San Francisco: Harper Books, 1978), 157. 122
said that by praying, fasting, meditating, retreating or celebrating, believers remind themselves of the constant, pervasive nearness of God. In fact, “The problem is not that
God is distant and needs to be wooed or badgered into coming near; the problem is that
God is ever present, ever-near and that some of us seek ways to escape. . . . God does not need to be invoked, we do. We need to be called to our senses, to be as present to God as
God is to us.”9
Therefore, practicing the presence of God means to train Christians to hold still by desiring God’s presence, to run toward God, not away, to have the scales fall from eyes, and always, everywhere, to behold God. As said in Hebrews 1:1–3, God is contained in
Jesus Christ who is the mercy seat. Christ is alone the sanctuary and mercy seat where
Christians have access to God. He is the meeting place for God and humans. This is so because Jesus’ humanity is the place where divine–human meeting takes place.
Worship as Christ-centered Communal Living
Worship is an act that is too deep for words because whenever one encounters the divine presence they never remain the same. For example, Zechariah in Luke 1:5-20 was speechless after he was confronted by the divine presence; so were the women who left the empty tomb of Jesus in terror and speechless early morning of first Easter (Mk 16:8).
In worship God speaks to the people and the people speak to God and to others. People listen to God for assurance, correction, forgiveness and hope whenever they worship. In worship people speak to God of their yearnings, concerns, burning needs, passions, joys, fears and gratitude.
9 Jim Herrington, R. Robert Creech and Trisha Taylor, The Leader’s Journey: Accepting the Call to Personal and Congregational Transformation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 139. 123
Worship is simply an engagement where all participants are actively engaging in dialoguing: “Through prayer, praise, thanksgiving, the Word, and the sacraments, worshippers meet and interact with the Divine.”10 However, such encounter is not an empirical one for “God’s presence cannot be seen or measured, calculated or quantified in any way.”11 God presides at worship by enacting the command to speak, baptize and commune at the Lord’s Supper. As agents of God’s activity, humans only participate in
God’s self-performance because faith in Jesus Christ resides in the heart of God: “Thus, when people meet God in worship and when God interacts with people in worship, the exchange is one that takes place at the soul-deep level of experience.”12
In worshipping God individual members as well as the community of Christ are empowered and prepared to become God’s instrument/vehicle/agent in the world. In worship “a church is concentrated on Jesus Christ’s salvific, redeeming, liberating and reconciling work, which brings people together and forms them into a communion.”13
Worship is a chosen place where “God’s mighty deeds are central to human beings’ response in thanksgiving, praise and witness that characterize Christian worship.”14
10 Clayton J. Schmit, Too Deep for Words (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 19.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Hans-Peter Grosshans, “Introducing the Theme: the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as Realized in Lutheran Churches,” in Like “Living Stones:” Lutheran Reflections on the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, eds. Hens-Peter Grosshans and Martin L. Sinaga (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2011), 18.
14 Elieshi Mungure, “Lutheran Catholicity in Worship: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania,” in Like “Living Stones:” Lutheran Reflections on the One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, eds. Hens-Peter Grosshans and Martin L. Sinaga (Minneapolis: Lutheran University Press, 2011), 119. 124
Discipleship as Practicing Spiritual Disciplines
According to Luther, discipleship has to do with the freedom of Christians. It is a question of living a justified life that is dual in nature. He explained this duality when he wrote, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”15 A Christian is transformed by being healed, set free from death, sin and evil and then put into action. That kind of action is not a burden as such action is done out of spontaneous love in obedience to God.
This is known as disciplined spirituality, contributing to spiritual formation. As
Paul writes, spiritual life is both divine and human activation: “Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil 2:12-13). What
Paul says is God is the source of good will, works, obedience and salvation.
On the human side, Christians are responsible to work out their salvation; while on the divine side God initiates that responsibility by giving desire and empowerment to accomplish his purpose in life. Paul uses the word “walk” when talking about spiritual life referring to life in its totality as well as referring to a step-by-step process of daily life. Boa writes, “Just as Jesus walked in total dependence upon the life of his Father (Jn
6:57; 14:10), so Christians must rest in the same source of power. Christians were never meant to create life but to receive and display Christ’s life in us.”16
15 Theodore G. Tappert, ed., Selected Writings of Martin Luther (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 20.
16 Boa, Conformed to His Image, 76. 125
God designed each person in a unique way that physical substance of life flows in and out of his/her heart all the time (Ps 139). This is true in the spiritual arena: “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prv 4:23). God did so because he longs to express something through human beings for his desire and pleasure.
Spiritual disciplines are central to experiential Christianity, concerned with the depth of life. They are an inward and spiritual reality of the inner attitude of the heart that experiences a life of relationship and intimacy with God. As James writes, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the
Father of lights, with whom there is no variation of shadow due to change” (Jas 1:17).
These spiritual disciplines are not human earnings (Col 2:22-23). They are God- given grace, an inner righteousness divine gift given by God for the transformation of lives. Paul writes, “If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ”
(Rom 5:17). Richard Foster is correct when he writes that these spiritual disciplines are venues in which God works well within us: “God has ordained the disciplines of the spiritual life as the means by which we place ourselves where God can bless us.”17
Jesus calls and invites Christians to walk with him (Mt 11:28-30). Anyone who longs for God, finds God already works in his/her life: “It is the Trinity’s action within that fans the small flame of desire motivating us to keep company with Jesus.”18 For the disciplines give the Holy Spirit space to brood over the souls of believers, birthing the
17 Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 7.
18 Ibid. 126
ever-fresh Christ-like life within. The Spirit knows the spiritual practices, relationships and experiences that best suit unique communion. According to Adele Ahlberg Calhoun there are sixty-two spiritual disciplines.19 If, by chance, these spiritual disciplines equated to an acronym of the word “worship” they would appear as presented in Appendix B.
At the core of worship believers profoundly experience the presence of God personally and corporately. Moreover, such an experience is more vividly kindled in a communal act where four fundamental elements of vitality are involved: encountering
God’s holiness (Is 6:1-8), experiencing God’s grace (Acts 2:24-47), embracing unity (Jn
17:20-23) and engaging the community (Mt 5:13-14).20
Small Groupings for Equipping
Christian life is life in Christ. It is spiritual growth because it is more eschatological alignment than anthropological preservation. This new birth of the believers is to be held fast in the faithfulness of God who never forsakes believers regardless of their weaknesses. God remains faithful to believers for he has wrapped
God-self in his promise. Moltmann wrote spiritual growth is “a growth in faith and a growth too in the new life of the Holy Spirit to which people are born again.”21 Together with this understanding, spiritual growth has its stages with each its own character and crisis so that faith continues growing as the person grows.
19 Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices that Transform Us (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2005), 21.
20 Jim Herrington, Mike Bonem and James H. Furr, Leading Congregational Change: a Practical Guide for the Transformational Journey (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000), 19-25.
21Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 94. 127
In order for spiritual growth to prevail the Church has to be proactive. It seems that small groupings have proven useful for they are “a primary vehicle for growing church spiritually and numerically.”22 Humans function better in groups as Macchia writes: “God places all of us in families, and those family relationships, if wisely developed, encourage, empower, protect, and direct all of us.”23 Moreover, whenever
Christ calls people, they are called into a family of God. The reason for congregational organization is “in order for us to fulfill God’s calling in our lives, we have to be able to relate to and connect with others in a healthy way.”24 As Macchia says what is important in having such small groupings is to create “an ability to build empowering, wholesome, constructive relationships that would advance God’s call and purpose.”25
As Luke writes, there is no solitary Christianity: “Now all who believed were together” (Acts 2:44). Small groupings help the Church create a congregational favorable environment in which creativity in sharing, learning and supporting alongside the life of
Christ as found in the New Testament emerge under the impact of the Holy Spirit.
In small groupings believers of Christ can be equipped for ministry. Greg Ogden suggests three ways of equipping believers: mending/restoring, establishing/laying foundation and preparing/training.26 But Marva Dawn, in The Sense of Call, mentions
22 James J. Berkley, Leadership Handbooks of Practical Theology: Vol. 2, Care and Outreach (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing, 1994), 247.
23 Stephen Macchia, Becoming A Healthy Team (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2005), 184.
24 Ibid., 185.
25 Ibid.
26 Greg Ogden, The New Reformation: Returning the Ministry to the People of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1990), 110. 128
seven ways of equipping believers.27 For Dawn the seven ways of equipping believers are providing a vision of the Kingdom of God, centering in Jesus, becoming theologians, motivating, cultivating teleology, subverting present cultural and societal structures and doing eschatological ministry by self-enacting God’s Kingdom on earth in Lord’s Supper.
Teaching28
Teaching creates a new worldview rooted in the reality of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as a foundation of Christian life. In teaching believers are made to depend upon Jesus Christ. That is, directing people to find their lives and future in Christ himself.
Reproof29
On confronting the sinfulness in believers’ lives and setting them on the right course believers are restored by fixing all that is broken, brought back into proper alignment of intimacy and accountability. Moreover, they put back together so that they may be useful channels in God’s service.
Connection30
By establishing a fixed, immovable solid foundation in Jesus Christ (Heb 13:20-
21; 1 Cor 3:11), false teachings must be exposed so that a pure heart can be created. God is the only one who will set his people on their feet and strengthen them for service. As
Peter wrote, “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has
27 Marva Dawn, The Sense of the Call (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2006), 231-249.
28 Ogden, The New Reformation, 110.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid. 129
called you to his eternal glory in Christ, who himself will restore, support, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Pt 5:10). God invites people to participate in this activity by constantly pointing to the all-sufficient Christ to whom each member of the body is connected.
Training in Righteousness31
Believers are equipped both with the knowledge of Christ and with Christ’s own manner of being and way of life. This is training in righteousness; walking morally upright with heart, mind and spirit harnessed in devotion to God. In this believers are helped and encouraged to discover, develop and exercise their spiritual gifts, enabling them to be a servant people who minister actively but humbly according to their gifts.
Strengthening Healing Ministry
Healing ministry is given to the Church by Jesus Christ: “And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons, they will speak in tongues, they will pick up snake in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them, they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover”
(Mk 1:15-16). This ministry includes preaching, teaching and healing (Mt 9:35). All threefold ministry is of one reality: the breakthrough of the Reign of God into the world.
As Francis McNutt writes, “Where the king Jesus is present and reigning, there is preaching, teaching and healing.”32 Healing always goes with prayer because Jesus Christ is “moved by the real hurt of people and responds to heartfelt prayer.”33
31 Ibid.
32 Francis Macnutt, Healing (Ft. Bend, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1974), 18.
33 Ibid. 130
In healing the Holy Spirit is doing three things: first, transforming individuals into a real personal relationship with Christ through baptism. Second, healing relationships and building community, bringing about inner transformation. Third, transforming society by healing relationships of injustice and oppression. What is missing today in healing ministry is a realization of the abundant goodness of God.
MacNutt writes that healing makes Christianity relevant today.34 The basic message of Christianity is that Jesus saves. This means Jesus is the one who frees people from sin, ignorance, weakness of purpose, disoriented emotions and physical sickness.
Jesus destroys all that lessens humanity in order to give them new life, a new relationship of love and union with his Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Preaching the Gospel by healing is influential in people’s lives. Larry Dossey writes, “Prayer is a medical and scientific issue.”35 As said in Matthew 9:1-8, it is the church’s duty to do everything it can to help people come to Jesus’ feet for healing and then let him (Jesus) do what he, in his compassion and wisdom, choose for them. There are three factors concerning healing ministry: the broken world needs fixing, the healing ministry of Jesus Christ is given to his Church (Mt 8-9; Mk 16:15-16), and among the known sixty-two spiritual disciplines fourteen are prayer disciplines.
Pastoral Care Ministry
Pastoral care ministry is about spiritual growth in Christ. Robb Redman says it is of twofold purpose: transformation (metanoia) and maturity (teleis). He writes,
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., 19. 131
“Transformation and maturity are goals and processes, means and ends.”36 While metanoia is a work of God changing a person’s psychological and spiritual function, pastoral care affirms conversion of turning toward Christ and embracing new life in
Christ. Psstoral care encourages and guides persons through and through. It “is the outworking of the orientation under the guidance of the Spirit in the context of the
Christian fellowship. The apostles’ ministry was aimed at guiding and directing persons, through conversion, into spiritual ministry in the Christian community.”37
Redman writes, “As a process or means, metanoia indicates an ongoing evolution in which the person is always being transformed by the renewing of the mind (Rom
12:2). Ongoing conversion is thus a process of reorientation to the source of wholeness, that is, to Christ himself.”38 Maturity as a goal and process also ultimately moves toward
Christ (Eph 4:13). Under the activation of the Holy Spirit it is continuous growth both corporately and individually toward completeness in Christ.
Therefore, the primary modes of Christian pastoral care ministry as depicted in the New Testament and throughout history consist of mutual edification (oikodome), encouragement (paraclesis), and a mutual discipline (Mt 18:15-17), regarding it a work of whole people of God. However, at the same time the New Testament recognizes the unique calling of pastors, elders, bishops, evangelists, prophets, teachers and many others. Pastors-teachers, elders and bishops are the ones given a ministry of oversight and supervision metaphorically known as shepherding.
36 Berkley, Leadership Handbooks of Practical Theology, 208.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid. 132
Missional Discipling39
The Great Commission found is the heart of the Church’s mission in the world.
The commissioned persons are called disciples. The term “disciple” appears in the
Synoptic Gospels as follows: Matthew – seventy-three times, Mark - forty-six times, and
Luke thirty-seven times. This indicates that commissioning meant that the followers of the earthly Jesus have to make others into what they themselves are: disciples
Ogden defined discipling as “the process of intentional modeling whereby God uses to exhort, correct and build up a disciple(s) in love in order to produce maturity in
Christ.”40 This definition is not far from what Paul says in Romans 1:17: “For in it
(Gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith as it is written, ‘the ones who are righteous will live by faith’.” That is, like begets like – faith begets faith.
In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark there are no mentions of the ascension or the outpouring of the Holy Spirit: “Jesus’ abiding presence is intimately linked to his followers’ engagement in mission. It is as they make disciples, baptize them, and teach them, that Jesus remains with those followers.”41 So, “I am with you always” (Mt 28:20) means Jesus’ resurrected life is with his followers wherever they go in mission.
In other words, discipling is a long-term investment of life into life. Someone who believes in Jesus Christ invests his/her life in the life of another to guide him/her into the breath of new life in Christ. This is being in a relationship where one is encouraged by another to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. At its core, discipling is a process of
39 Ogden, The New Reformation, 114.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 77. 133
equipping, training and encouraging another in his/her discipleship to Christ. A good example is the relationship between Paul and Timothy. Discipling is a journey, helping another grow in knowledge as self, as in the virtues and character of Christ. Just as in
Acts, the Holy Spirit turned the world upside down through the lives of Jesus’ disciples, today Jesus is looking for disciples and the Holy Spirit is still able to do the same.
Disciple-makers assist in making disciples by introducing people to Jesus Christ.
Presenting a New Paradigm in doing missio Dei in Himo
The parish is organized in a bureaucratic and paternalistic structure in which the power and authority of the church hang more on leadership of the bishop and pastors. In such an organization the paradigm of doing missio Dei is that of parenting because of its hierarchical chain of command, having some specialization, organized by function with uniform rules coordinated from above. The order and stability of the parish is a goal of the church. As a result, a major barrier to church growth and renewal emerge.
This paradigm of bureaucratic vision has to change if Himo Lutheran Church is to move forward. Discipling is living in the Kingdom of God by applying it for the benefit of others, making it possible for them to enter themselves. Living in the eschatological reign of God means believers are followers of Jesus Christ. They follow Christ by learning from him. That learning is participatory – participating in Christ’s life and doing.
However, the life of followers of Christ is a communal one. As a sign that the
Kingdom of God has begun and thus the presence of the future is made evident to the watching world. Therefore, the new paradigm of life and work for Himo Parish should be that of life of service by all believers (parishioners).
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Establishment Missional Change Model for Himo Parish
The appropriate model for Himo Parish is that of family systems theory because it focuses on the interrelatedness of things as a whole.42 Moreover, family systems theory is more biblical in nature and fits the strategies for systems thinking in building learning organizations.43 A combination of the two systems can create a new system, which is a
“transforming system,” in which the raw materials taken from the environment are converted into energy that the parish needs to survive and carry out its mission given.
This transforming system is comprised of four components. The first is that of mission of the congregation/parish. In mission the parish/congregation understands itself and its purpose and reason of its existence. The second is the spirituality and vision in which the programs, covenants and disciplines are checked. The third is organizational design. Various combinations of people, properties, finances, by-laws and policies are made. The last component is human relationships that include the quality of human relationships within the parish/congregation and the morals of people.
The aim of transforming systems is utilizing potential of the congregation/parish for the purpose of service. The criterion for the praxis of the Holy Spirit as discerned in the ministry context is never determined by cultural relevance or pragmatic expediency.
It is the work of the risen Jesus Christ that becomes the criterion in praxis.
The mission of the Church is to embody corporate life and ministry because God has endowed it with spiritual gifts, natural talents, call, spiritual disciplines and life. In
42 Ronald Richardson, Creating Healthier Church: Family Systems Theory (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 41-170.
43 Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1994). 135
mission there are four movements Christian praxis has to encounter: to be moved from sin to salvation, from darkness to light and from brokenness to wholeness; to be enabled in stepping into service; to move closer to Jesus Christ in order to share his life and suffering; and to tie a knot with Jesus Christ, to be in union with Christ in loving him intimately and unconditionally.
The transforming system model is for building effective systems to serve people in and around any congregation/parish. By utilizing this model the congregation/parish is in a good position to follow the message of Jesus about the coming of the Kingdom of
God of sacrificial and self-denial, out of which would come joy and fruitfulness.
Grappling with the “Principalities” and “Powers”44
Although today there is an attempt to deny the existence of invisible forces that work against humans, it is a reality in the Bible, cultures and history. In African traditional life it is believed that there are hidden but very powerful forces that can be consulted and used in harming other people. In accordance with the Bible there are invisible spirit beings that are corrupted into malevolent agents and have become enemies of the person and purposes of God. These spiritual forces of evil are vividly mentioned in the Bible – serpent (Gn 3; Ps 74:14; Is 27:1), evil spirits (1 Sm 16:14-23; 18:10; 19:9), deceiving spirits (1 Kgs 22:21-23), demons (Lv 17:7; Dt 32:17; Ps 106:37), powerful territorial beings who are opposed to God’s angels (Dn 10:13, 20-21), Satan (Jn 8:44; Lk
4:1-13), demonic spirits (Mk 1:23-27,34, 39; 5:1-20), the devil has his hierarchy of evil rulers and authorities (Eph 3:10; Rv 12:3-4,7-9), and Satan and his angels (Mt 25:41).
44 R. Paul Stevens, The Abolition of the Laity (Cambria, CA: Paternoster Press, 1999), 215-239. 136
Biblically, there are dynamics of spiritual warfare that all Christians are to be engaged: the world, the flesh and the devil. Boa writes, “As followers of Christ, we are engaged in a cosmic conflict.”45 Angelic and demonic powers are real in the spirit world:
“From the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New Testament, the Bible reveals the existence of the vast, highly ordered, and complex spiritual world that exists between God and us.”46 Boa writes that in the Bible “human rebellious against the rule of
God was prompted by a powerful evil being who had previously turned against God.”47
Dawn writes about these so-called “principalities” and “powers” as “the obstructions to ministry are not mere blood and flesh (Eph 6:12), but larger forces that are often interrelated” that we need to discern and combat them in the power of Jesus.48
According to Jacque Ellul there are six functions of these “principalities and powers:” deception, money, power, accusation, division and destruction or death. These evil functions are at work turning the world together with authorities, rulers, institutions, laws, all different cultural elements away from created purposes into causes of harm.49
Today there are “Struggles against evil have reached new dimensions in our time because we live in a technicized and global village.”50 Thus, there needs to be a return back to the basics of the Bible to learn the skills of the Kingdom of God and be equipped for the battle against evil in the world for the sake of Christ.
45 Boa, Conformed to His Image, 325.
46 Ibid., 326.
47 Ibid., 327.
48 Dawn, The Sense of the Call, 146.
49 Ibid. Dawn cites Jacque Ellul in this section of her book.
50 Ibid., 152. 137
Establishing an Outward Focus of the Parish
Believers are called to join hands in the struggle against principalities and powers in the world. The best way of overcoming such subtle cunning devilish powers is to engage in communicating the Gospel to all people by demonstrating the love of Christ.
This of course is to offer God’s authentic life and wholeness as revealed in Jesus Christ.
This is mutual involvement in the suffering of Jesus. It is learning to cease listening to the world. It is not without consequences. However, believers are not alone in that battle. Erasto Kweka of ELCT once said that Jesus Christ is faithful and will see through his Church as stated in Matthew 16:18.51
Living out Stewardship and Generosity
Stewardship and generosity are Christian responsibilities. It is involvement in world needs and providing for needs. As Paul Stevens writes, “Because God is already at work, human beings respond actively, participating cooperatively in what God is doing in the world . . . fulfilling the commandment to love in its various forms out of an underlying understanding that God is eschatological active.”52 By this, believers of Christ become God’s priestly kingdom and a holy nation (Ex 19:6, Pt 2:9; Rv 1:6).
Mark Powell explains stewardship as a giving to God in the sense of “turning total control of our lives over to God.”53 Greever wrote, “Christian stewardship is the practice of the Christian religion. It is neither a department of life nor a sphere of activity. It is the
51 Erasto Kweka is a retired bishop of the Northern Diocese of ELCT. He served in office for twenty-six years. He believes Jesus is fighting for his people until the end in accordance to his promises.
52 Stevens, The Abolition of the Laity, 204.
53 Mark Allan Powell, Giving to God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2006), xii. 138
Christian conception of life as a whole, manifested in attitudes and actions.”54 For
Powell, “Stewardship is not just a way of life; it is a good way of life.”55 The goal of this stewardship life is “to find the life that God wants us to have, in confidence that this will be the best life we could possibly have.”56 The essence of stewardship is faith in Christ.
However, the “essence of faith is worship and the essence of worship is sacrifice—giving of ourselves in devotion to God.”57 The giving is the outcome of the desire (love) to do so. So stewardship has to do with love and giving in serving God.
It is believed that generosity is a way to spiritual maturity because proactive giving is willingness of the giver. As Paul writes, “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor
9:7). Therefore, living out stewardship and generosity is about living a generous life before God. It is a living out of justice, mercy, kindness, humility, faith and love.
54 Ibid., xiv.
55 Ibid., 3.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 5. 139
CHAPTER 10
THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW EQUIPPING STRATEGY
The life of the community in accordance with fundamental biblical teaching is life in Christ. Such new life is a vital communion because it has a firm bond that creates solidarity. To help the Church remain in the center of believers’ lives an appropriate strategy must be designed. The strategy must equip and empower the congregation and cater to the presence of the Lord Jesus. The prayer of Moses for the divine presence is significant in this regard: “Now if I have found favor in your sight, show me your ways”
(Ex 33:13). Yahweh answered, “My presence will go with you” (Ex 33:14). The same is granted when Jesus says “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).
The Church is a divine phenomenon as it is a Christ-event happening in the world through history. It is a special community with its own social entity that ever happens with a special mission in the world. Biblically, the Church is a communion of saints, the communion that involves God who commands its existence for a special mission.
The Church’s activity as a martyria (witness) is manifested in threefold functional form of koinonia, kerygma and diakonia (Acts 1:8). These functions of the Church are the root of unleashing potentiality to the community of faith whenever utilized properly.
140
The center of the Church’s communal life is worship, making it primarily a worshipping fellowship rather than an institution or organization. This fellowship in its relatedness creates a context of priestly act of reconciliation. This involves the notion of the universal priesthood of all believers. All Christians are priests through their new birth in baptism, through the work of Christ all alike are God’s people called to serve God and proclaim God’s Word to each other (1 Pt 2:9; Gal 3:27 – 28).
The “Communionizing” Strategy for Equipping the Church
The Church’s life and work must anticipate strategy, so it can constantly adjust to deep, worldly trends that can permanently impair the earning power of core church activity. The proposed strategy is called a “communionizing” strategic model because the solidarity of true humanity is firmly established in communion with triune God. This strategy when properly applied strengthens personal growth in faith in Jesus Christ. This strategic model has to follow Jesus’ model of ministry as revealed in the New Testament.
Communionizing is an attempt of utilizing divine wisdom known as hokmah in the Old Testament, as revealed in Jesus Christ 1 Cor 1:18. Hokmah is the art of living with each area of life under the dominion of God. It is an ability to use the best means at the best time to accomplish the best ends. The Church is a faithful community that lives by waiting. The church has to be a missional community for the sake of the Gospel. The the Church has to be a practicing community, building effective systemic structures that serve people, making it a living, functioning organism with Jesus Christ as the head.
This hokmah under-utilization is mentioned in James 3:15–17. Without relating to this divine source of wisdom, Christians remain in human shrewdness and craft. Divine
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wisdom bears the fruit of order, goodness, beauty and fulfillment as written, “She
(wisdom) is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her, those who hold her fast are called happy” (Prv 3:13). For this reason the community lives a new order of life, wholly embodied in the social context or interrelationships and becomes a learning organization.
By building systemic structures this community revitalizes its missionary attitude.
However, this divine wisdom is not possessed naturally. It can only be cultivated and developed in the manner of parental exhortations for the pursuit of hokmah that is priceless and practical of all skills by fearing the Lord God. For, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (hokmah), and the knowledge of Holy One is insight” (Prv
9:10). The treasure of wisdom rests in the hands of God.
Communionizing has to remain conscious of this fear of God. It recognizes that
Christians are endowed with spiritual gifts that are from God and every aspect of their lives needs to be under God’s dominion. As John writes, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). God demands his people to live an alternative life: “He
(God) has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mi 6:8).
Communinionizing, which is all about participation, aims at enriching the growth of all Christians in wisdom as they daily cultivate the attitude of awe as they humbly walk with God. Both reverence for God and a humble attitude of radical trust and dependence upon God in every aspect of life are true foundations upon which true skill in the art of living is built. However, communionizing (derived from the Latin communio) is complex as it involves God and humans.
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According to Luther, communion is the sharing of goods among believers, giving and receiving of members to and from each other, becoming one with all others, and working for one another (Rom 12:13).1 This strategy is both communicational and participation because it gathers and is an act of mutual sharing. The community of faith is involved in the assembly of those who believe in Christ. In that living, the give-and-take relationship the community holds everything in common. According to Hebrews the lives of all believers are a treasury because they live, suffer and do everything for each other as members of one body. In serving one another Christians are freed to serve others.
While participating in the community of faith involves every member in simultaneous gifts and tasks, grace and calling, it is also true that all “the goods of Christ and the believers are my good; yes, my burden, trouble and sin now belong to Christ and all believers of Christ.”2 Participation goes deeper as Christ’s righteousness atones for human sins and Christ and all his believers intercede before God so that sins may not be imputed to the living according to God’s judgment. In this communion the lives of members of the community of faith are shaped not by the lordly form of ownership but by the form of a servant engaged in sacrificial service.
Church mission is everything that God sent believers to do, not only individually but, more importantly corporately. This includes preaching, teaching, converting, evangelizing, healing and social responsibility. God designed a place where this can be fulfilled: the local church. In this very place the nurturing, nourishing and equipping of members takes place for witness and service (koinonia, kerygma and diakonia).
1 Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, 305.
2 Ibid. 143
Jesus Christ, for the ELCT is the true divine active reality in the world. This reality is like powerful waves on a shore that change both water and land because in Jesus
Christ, God is involved with the Church. In martyria the community of believers bears witness to God by participating in God through the Holy Spirit. The complexity of this participation is found in the Lutheran understanding of who a Christian is: “simul iustus et peccator” (Christians are simultaneously sinners and righteous).3 This means only the justified can recognize themselves as sinners for only light makes aware shadow. In this complexity God empowers and equips the Church for the sake of missio Dei in the world.
The diagram below explains this complex relationship found in communionizing members of the congregation/parish within the sinner-justified people of Christ.
Figure 1. Communinizing members of Himo Parish
3 Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Public Church: for the Life of the World (Minneapolis: Ausgsburg Fortress, 2004), 4. 144
The above diagram demonstrates the underlying communionizing strategy model. It is called communionizing strategy because its innermost side includes communal and missional conception in doing God’s mission in the world.
The Cycle of Koinonia
The koinonia cycle means the life of the congregation is centered in the Word and sacraments because through them, a congregation remains in continual existential interaction with the presence of Jesus Christ in handing down the Gospel. It involves a continual breaking-down and building-up. For this communication (interaction) is done in the power of the Holy Spirit in and through liturgy, Eucharist, baptism, preaching of the Gospel, counseling, Bible study and individual and corporate works of mercy that result in breaking-down what is performed by the Law in the building-up done by the
Gospel that lies at the heart of the faithful community of Jesus Christ.
Stephen Bouman says that a congregation in its concrete sense is to be defined as a “collective incarnation in the world of the Word of God, committed to the truth, committed to the Holy Spirit’s work of breaking-down and of building-up so that Christ is present in each believer’s heart.”4 Thus, the congregation remains and continues to be
“the community of Law and Gospel when it is the community of Word and Sacraments.”5
In this way the charismatic vitality of the new life is actualized because ministry and community are always more theological and praxis orientated. As for the koinonia cycle, cybernetic (supportive) charismata are of great help because the first in faith, presidents,
4 Stephen Bouman, From the Parish for the Life of the World (New York: American Lutheran Publicity Bureau, 2000), 116.
5 Ibid. 145
shepherds/pastors, bishops, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors-teachers, include gifts for peace-making and building up community are for the well-being of the community.
The Cycle of Kerygma6
The kerygma cycle in the diagram above reveals that the Church is called out and sent into the world to bear witness to Jesus. The Gospel preached is the message – a story, which is to be told to the world. The news is good because God in and through
Jesus Christ has done something good for humanity. He has died and was raised from the dead and reigns as Lord. He now offers the forgiveness of sins and liberating gift of the
Holy Spirit to all who repent and believe.
Evangelism is the proclamation of the Gospel—the kerygma of the evanglion, purporting in dealing with how to become a Christian. The Church is commanded by
Jesus to evangelize the world. In order to fulfill this divine command believers are given the Holy Spirit and appointed to go into all of the world as Christ’s ambassadors entrusted with the message of reconciliation (Acts 1:8; 2 Cor 5:18–20).
It is worth noting that in the New Testament the appointment and message entrusted were given not only to good communicators but to the people described by the
Gospel writers as depressed, afraid of those outside their group and struggling with unbelief. This communicates one simple truth: all believers are commanded to tell the world the message of salvation, but it is not their responsibility, but God’s to produce the results. Christians follow while God works through them to bring in the catch (Mt 4:19).
6 Darrell Johnson as quoted in Berkley, “Leadership Handbook of Outreach and Care,” 8. Johnson says that witness has four key words: 1. Christians are in trial just like Jesus was in trial. 2.This is the being of all Christians in Christ- their character, deeds, and speeches. 3. Christians become witnesses after when Jesus has done something upon them 4. So, Christians are not told to be out there for they are already out for Christ’s sake. 146
It is necessary to know that evangelism is simply the initiative effort to share the
Gospel and leave the results to God. As such the kerygmatic charismata of apostles, teachers, evangelists, exhorters, as well as inspiration, ecstasy, speaking in tongues and other similar ways of expressing faith are to be applied in spreading the Gospel.
The Cycle of Diakonia
As for the diakonia cycle displayed in the diagram above, the diaconical calling of the Church is explained as a responding of the Church to natural disaster, hunger, diseases, poverty, climate change, air pollution, illegitimate debt, political oppression and socio-economical victimization, poverty and the similar. Diakonia means walking daily of the Church with people in their pain, suffering and struggles.
This walk can transform the Church into a listening, compassionate community, enabling believers to reach others. This is a church/s prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread/ give us day to day our bread” (Mt 6:11). Diakonia is a way of Christians supporting one another at the same time they as a community support others around them. Healing and feeding people are fulfilled in this diaconical activity of the Church.
However, diakonia is Christians’ freedom for serving. The freedom to give all before God, becomes the freedom to be given up for the life of the world. This giving demands discipleship of Christians in Jesus Christ. The diaconical charismata would include persons who nurse the sick, who give alms, who take care of widows, orphans and the less fortune. Also special gifts too, like the healing of sick bodies, exorcism, the healing of memories and other kinds of help. On top of this, it is empowering them by giving them knowledge and resources for their use.
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The Core Cycle: Spiritual and Relational Vitality
The innermost center of the three intercepting cycles of koinonia, kerygma and diakonia of the diagram is called the “Spiritual and Relational Vitality.” This innermost cycle is centered by a cross labeled “worship.” Worshiping God opens oneself to God as one relinquishes the false and idols of one’s heart and at the same time shares his/her life with others, hearing the Word of God, incarnating Christ’s love for the world and praying to God. By the power of the Spirit people are gathered around the Word and sacraments and thus gather the incorporation into “communion” (koinonia) of the Church. Here the four worshipping elements are involved: encountering God’s holiness, experiencing
God’s grace, embracing unity and engaging the community of faith. By this innermost core of the threefold functional form divine-human drama of interaction occurs.
Practically, spiritual and relational vitality is based on the Great Commandment
(Mt 22:35-40); love (agape) calls the people of God into discipleship. Such a call radically reorders lives around the true living God and God’s claim to their lives. This encounter in God’s beauty, power and majesty (Is 6:1-8) is more effective when the practices of spiritual disciplines and employment of spiritual gifts are in place. This encountering of God’s holiness opens up a new experience of God’s grace and gives
Christians a new perspective of humility in life.
In this humility, Christians come to recognize equality among them in such a way they embrace the spirit of unity which is God’s desire for them: “God has equipped us to live in this community by giving individual believers different gifts and responsibilities.”7
However, that unity in diversity is meant for engagement. Herrington, Bonem and Furr
7 Herrington, Bonem and Furr, Leading Congregational Change, 25. 148
write, “Community is experienced as sinful, broken, and highly diverse people joyfully pursue this mission in ways that reflect the character and spirit of Jesus.”8 In worship all believers in congregational gatherings are put in a position to become missionaries of
Jesus to people living in and around their community.
Thence, “Spiritual and relational vitality is the heart and energy source of the transformation process.”9 Worship demonstrates concrete connections between body and spirit, worship and world, faith and action, learning and mission and therefore is interconnected to missio Dei in the world. In worship, authentic New Testament community is built and becomes the salt and light of the world. Worship builds up the potentiality of the congregation/parish in doing missio Dei.
The Church, as a community of the Holy Spirit is engaged in serving God as a new possibility in life. God invades human space and encounters people. He is here, ready and willing to rule human lives. Thus, vita Christiana comes from God and belongs to God, and de-patriarchalizes the picture of God, resulting in de-hierarchalization of the
Church. So an authentic practical Christian community life pervades all of human attitudes and actions is created as result of the communionizing process.
This strategy aims at facilitating the covenantal relationship of the community of faith in Christ and becomes a catalyst that stimulates interaction within the development of the integrated lifestyle of Christian community. The strategy is in line with God the
Father because with appropriate reverence the believers of Jesus Christ open the door to enter the world of Jesus Christ’s communion with the Father. As the Word of God
8 Ibid., 26.
9 Ibid., 19. 149
explains, the whispers between the Father and the Son affect the fate of billions of people
(Jn 17:3, 5, 21; 15:10-20). Believers can enter into this arena only because they are graciously invited, entered by and through Jesus Christ.
Communionizing is based on obedience of the Son of God to the Father’s will (Jn
18:11). Such submission grows out of a secure relationship grounded in love because
Jesus knew the Father’s love was always complete (Mk 1:11; Mt 17:5; Jn 17:5). The
Church is essentially a community of discipleship in which the individual-in-community tension becomes a more proper unit of humanness. Moreover, group identity is a crucial factor to humanness as personal identity is affirmed. Christian life has to do with living in relationship to, in and with Jesus Christ, partaking and sharing real life in the world.
This is important in African contexts as what is needed is not for African
Christians to write theology but bring change to their society; change from impoverished and backward life to gracious life; change that is compatible to the will of God revealed in the Word of God. This is only possible through the mission of Jesus Christ – the divine purpose behind Jesus’ coming and witness fulfilled in his life, ministry, death and resurrection. This mission focuses on building community because it makes disciples.
Individuals are called and shaped into a community—Jesus Christ’s own family.
This mission is continued through the Church because in the very life and mission the Church remains present and active in the world. The mission of the Church in the world is to bear fruit. The role of the Church is not to be innovative but to produce fruit that the mission of Jesus will inevitably bear. This is the appropriate response to the coming Kingdom of God, to participate in its establishment. Moreover, to bear fruit is to exhibit the ethics of the Kingdom of God that are a qualitative sign by which God’s
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people are known. And last to bear fruit is to contribute to the numerical increase of the eschatological community that embodies these ethics.
The individual is inseparable from the community. While the individual is for that community, the purpose of the community is to serve that very individual. Now this individual is called the “new self” as Paul writes: “And to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph
4:24); and “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalm, hymns, and spiritual songs to
God” (Col 3:16). This “self” it is said to be “raised with Christ” (Eph 2:5 – 6). The raised self is devoted to self-actualization and realization of one’s deepest longings and eternal joy through the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is so as long as believers love God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind, and neighbor as themselves, (Mt 22:39) as the intrinsic quality of personal life is created and sustained by God.
Fortunately, God has done something about this sinful inclination of humanity in and through Jesus Christ. Thus, the redeemed individual is free from self-entanglement and now is defined in relation to others. When the self comes into relation with another, a mutual will is formed which results in a psychic and spiritual unity in Hebrew called nephesh (Ps 33:20). The community becomes a “collective” person. The life of the self finds its boundaries in others and the life of a person is only fluid to some extent because these boundaries of self expand and shrink, going through changing and shifting commitments; the center of the self remains constant, even in its growth and change.
Therefore, the achievement of community of persons is grounded in actions that embody intentionality to share a common nephesh, history and destiny. The development
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of the self is an integrative process through which the ego-self and the social-self maintain a differentiated, yet unified center of self-identity. It is this differentiation that is depicted in the meeting of the self with another constitutes a social matrix for the self.
Biblically, while each person is fully endowed with the image of God, this divine image is experienced in the self’s differentiation through encounter with others. That is, self-consciousness is mediated through the encounter with other selves rather than the self’s reflection in isolation. The primary orientation of the self, however, is toward the other as an act of self-consciousness and intentionality (1 Cor 5:4-5).
The self, being intrinsically social is differentiated from other selves in such a way that personal existence involves a spiritual interchange with God and others.
Spirituality is grounded in sociality. By mentioning spirituality one must take into account life in Spirit of God. Metaphorically, the life of this new self is said to be new in the Spirit becoming the divine “wellspring of life” in a human that flows as stated: “But those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14).
This new life is experienced and lived in the Spirit of God. The Spirit however is not the object of experience but the medium and space for experience. The Spirit is a standpoint and a broad plain in which those who believe in Jesus Christ experience the life of freedom desired by God. For the Spirit is experienced by human selves not as the liberating Lord but as the “well of life” being so given birth, nourished, protected, consoled and loved empathically and somatically.
This mutual intimacy between the divine Spirit and human self is expressed in the threefold function of koinonia, kerygma and diakonia in the business of doing martyria.
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The Church in its true existence embodies Christ’s new life seen in the world. The
Church is a fellowship of the divine Spirit carrying out a given story.
The Long-term Strategic Planning
In implementing communionizing one needs to do two things: cultivate the life- giving power of the congregation/parish and lay down the change process. In cultivating the congregation’s/parish there must be willingness and flexibility within the challenge of changing circumstances. Change in life is inevitable so it is futile to fight it. Biblically, people can go through transition because they are endowed with principles of life that can lead them. There is a longing in the human heart that will not stop until one finds God (Ps
42:1-3; 139; Prv 13:12; 16:29; Eccl 3:9-15). However, this cultivation has its aim in
God’s vision and mission. Spiritual and relational vitality is realized in the process of learning that unleashes the potentiality endowed by God in the community of faith.
In laying down the change process the eight-stage process of creating major change has to be utilized. According to John Kotter, the eight-stage process includes establishing a sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering board-based action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing more change and anchoring new approaches in the culture.10
Assessment of Himo Parish by Using SMART Tool
On answering “Why the Lutheran church in Tanzania is rapidly growing” Hance
Mwakabana says, “The role played by the lay members of the congregation is perhaps the
10 John P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1995), 33-158. 153
greatest resource for the congregation’s outreach in its various forms.”11 The involvement of parishioners/congregants in the mission of the Church in Tanzania has great impact in spreading the Gospel including choir singing, women group work, youth and children groups works, evangelist itinerant church festivals, weddings and funerals.
The process of assessing Himo Lutheran Parish was carried out between 2009 and
2010. The aim of the process of assessment was to find out the spiritual needs of the parish for the sake of laying down the long-term planning of engaging in a process of spiritual transformation. This assessment was to help the parish do its self-examination to change accordingly in doing the mission of God in and around the Himo area.
The assessment employed the SMART tool in examining the parish.12 The
SMART tool can help lay down goals that the Holy Spirit is leading the parish to strive for to enhance doing mission. The word SMART is an acronym of specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented/realistic and time-dated/bound. By this tool one can measure the ministry’s effectiveness and monitor its strategic planning process.
In order to achieve this purpose, five workshops were used. A selected group of
250 persons was involved in these workshops.13 The group was composed of ten Sunday school children between ages ten and thirteen, twenty-five youths between sixteen and thirty, fifty women between thirty-four and fifty-five, and thirty-eight men between thirty-four and fifty-five; 150 leaders: 120 from the church itself, and thirty from different government departments and civil groups in Himo but members of the parish.
11 Mwakabana, The Life and Work of the Lutheran Church in Urban Tanzania, 162.
12 Macchia, Becoming a Healthy Church, 79.
13 With the permission of Shao, I was able to work with Himo Lutheran Parish for five-and-a-half years, from June 2007 to December 2012. 154
The five workshops were organized in koinonia, kerygma and diakonia under the martyria as a mission of the Church in the world. The first four workshops concentrated on these Greek terms. The last workshop was on paradosis (tradition from Adam and Eve to Paul and Priscilla and beyond which sums up the continuity of God’s salvation), so that evaluation of parish engagement in doing its mission in Himo area.
The first workshop was held in February 2009 at Himo parish headquarters. The aim of this workshop concentrating on koinonia was for members to experience parish wellbeing in caring, concerning, contacting interacting and nurturing/nourishing. A lot of worshipping activities were conducted and examined by the members of the workshop.
The second workshop was held in August 2009 at Makuyuni, six kilometers from the headquarters. This workshop concentrated on kerygma with the aim of experiencing: reading Scripture, telling biblical stories, evangelizing, preaching, teaching, training and testifying. The purpose of the experience was so members could see the contributions of each one bringing the Gospel to others, enhancing their own spiritual growth.
The third workshop that concentrated on diakonia was held in March 2010 at
Njia-panda. The aim was to experience the prophetic voice of the Church in serving the needy and poor, providing social services like education, health, water supply and agriculture, advocating for the voiceless and less fortune in society and supporting. In this activity members were put in a position where they saw the benefits of serving others.
The fourth workshop was a brainstorming in the form of martyria in September
2010. The aim was to brainstorm development of holistic long-range planning. The holistic mission plan ensures all components head in the same direction. Such a plan informs and shapes a parish’s shepherding, worship, groupings and leadership.
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The workshop looked on interrelationships of the following components of the parish: purpose/goals culture/shared values, technology, external/environment, structures and people. In brainstorming, members got a chance to look closer at issues of spiritual need and growth in faith and new life in Christ so the Church continues being a vehicle and instrument of the Holy Spirit in effecting and transforming the world.
Out of this, each member gained insights about the Church in its congregational form. All agreed they learned a lot; especially that Christians who continue to learn from
Jesus Christ and are called to become disciplers of others. They realized that all members of the Church are called into a world of uncertainty, complexity and rapid change.
However, practically any collective has a responsibility of making a vital impact on individuals as well as on community. In order to do so any congregation/parish has to have a plan. Planning involves wisdom, judgment, vision, common sense and prayers.
Thence, they came together to start working on a draft strategy. After facilitation in these workshops, members were inspired and realized that church mission has its enigma. Paul says “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:10-11). He says that despite his own weakness, failures and even personality deficiencies, he knows his life power is in Jesus Christ as long as he himself has given solely to being like Christ and therefore found himself.
Workshop participants realized this. They realized that from the Christians’ lowly lifestyle in Jesus Christ comes the power to overthrow the world. Living in Christ means
God gives “the power of an indestructible life” (Heb 7:16) to accomplish the work of the appointed ministry and raise them above the power of death.
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Under this hidden life in Christ communionizing can equip all members of any
Christian community. As Jesus prayed: “I in them (disciples) and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:23). In these words there is a vital union of believers and Christ, a communion visualized in the congregation.
On this basis the workshops opened eyes to observe rightly healthy church characteristics and pinpointed the real spiritual needs of Himo Parish. Moreover, they identified the closeness of participants to Christ as their spiritual growth in faith and in new life in Christ. This closeness indicates the spiritual growth of members. God “has made everything suitable for its time; moreover God has put a sense of past and future into their minds” (Eccl 3:11). By saying “a sense of past and future” it means God has planted eternity in the human heart so that as long as one is drawn closer to God, he/she begins to experience a dramatic change in how he/she lives and related to others.
This working group formulated a preliminary draft of the communionizing strategic plan. The draft was for testing this communionizing strategy. The eight-stage process was taken as a procedure in testing the strategy, which is found in Appendix C.
With the help of SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunities, threats) analysis, workshop participants realized many people were Gospel hungry. The Gospel is needed more than ever because society feels insecure, unstable. The group formulated a plan of short-term style based on worship services, spiritual disciplines, spiritual gifts’ examination, evangelizing, teaching Christian education to different groupings and social action for serving the poor and less fortune in the area. Activities were carried out by teams given a period of two years that then brought their results back.
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Thus, the fifth workshop was in October 2012. The aim was examining results from the teams and using them to formulate a seven-year, long-range strategic plan. They realized a congregation/parish is where God decisively interacts with humans for the sake of salvation. Therefore, mission is not only for a specialized group, but all believers. It is the entire Church’s mission to understand both as spiritual and social action. This is so because under the law and Gospel hermeneutic all life is to flourish. The problem was that believers did not know how.
They also realized that the present leadership style could not meet the needs of the parish. A fitting leadership was equipping believers. The paradigm of managerial control had to change into holistic outlook. Many who participated in performing their assigned activity realized their responsibility to be important in church life and work. They recognized their potentiality in the life and work of the Church. For in their responsibility they found that life is such a searching where philosophy and perspective of life is built.
Therefore, this workshop consolidated the long-term strategic development plan of the parish. Participants engaged in changing systems, structures and policies that were not fitting together, nor fit the transformation vision of the parish. They suggested new hiring, promoting and even developing persons whom were thought would implement the new vision. The parish was put into a position of re-inventing itself. In this way the parish anchored new approaches within the cultural context. In order to reinvent the parish participants did the following: examine parish standing and stature, determine the primary direction of the parish, equate parish strengths with several of the major characteristics of church effectiveness and lay down those principles for developing the strategic long-term plan. The results of this deeper observation are as noted below.
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Table 3. Key Indicators Key Indicators Current Numbers Percentile Ranking Average Sunday worship 2100 84.0 attendance Average Festival Services 2340 90.0 Attendance Average Adult Baptism 854 34.0 Service Attendance Average Confirmation 1000 40.0 Service Attendance Average Attendance in 2452 94.5 Funeral services Average Attendance in 270 18.0 Small Groups for Bible Studies Average Attendance in 1460 58.4 Public Gospel preaching Average Attendance in 632 21.26 Other Church Teachings and Retreats
Participants learned that the majority of parish members are fond of worshipping.
Himo Parish is among the largest parishes in the district. A majority of parishioners attend church services.
However, when participants examined the number of non-members that would attend church services it was found to be only stable. This was fewer numbers of non- members would attend church services. Himo Parish has over the years not realized its missional potentiality. For five years the parish has served around 450 out of 6500 non- members. But if the parish utilizes its potentiality many more persons within Himo would be served and thus increases church growth. After keen discussions of analysis and diagnosis of relational and functional characteristics the participants were able to come up with the following characteristic ratings.
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Table 4. Himo Characteristics STATUS RELATIONAL FUNCTIONAL 1.Corporate, Dynamic 1.Solid Financial Resources Worship 2.Several Competent 2.Significant Relational Programs and Activities Strengths Groups 3.Open Accessibility 3.Solid, Participatory Decision Making 4.High Visibility 1.Specific, Corporate 1.Adequate Space and Missional Objectives Facilities
2.Strong Leadership 2.Adequate Parking, Land Weakness Resources and Landscaping
3.Pastoral and Lay Visitation
In order to improve Himo Parish effectiveness the following central characteristics were selected and put in tentative timeline for the coming seven years.
Table 5. Timeline for upcoming change Characteristic Year 1 Year2 Year3 Year4 Year5 Year6 Year7 Corporate, Dynamic X X X X X X X Worship Significant Relational X X X X X X X groups Solid, Participatory X X X X X X X Decision Making Solid Financial X X X X X Resources Several Competent X X X X Programs and Activities Open X X X X Accessibility High X X X X Visibility
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The planning team took many considerations over central characteristics and selected five as key objectives to advance: corporate dynamic worship, significant relational groups, solid participatory decision-making, solid financial resources and several competent programs and activities. These five key objectives were chose because it was believed the problems the church faces are not outside, but instead within the church itself. Working on these key objectives the church would be in position of influencing the world in and around its vicinity. These can be seen in Appendix D.
The Layout of the Long-Term Strategic Planning
The workshop laid down a long-term strategic plan. The underlying goal was to ground changes into a corporate culture in which connections between human behaviors/ attitudes and organizational systems are active and effective for intentional growth of the parish. The workshop agreed that a congregation/parish is a complex social system containing holistic entities with many interactive parts and subsystems. For this reason parish leadership has to master understanding of how congregations/parishes function.
Creating Teamwork for Implementation
Besides being African Christians accustomed to African communal life, they felt something new happened that changed their lives. A majority of local non-Christians testified that Christians are peaceful people who truly love each other with a like-mind and are passionate with their faith. They also said that Christians are forgiving and loving people that they feel comfortable being around.
Moreover, from early on many in Himo Parish felt it was their corporate obligation to spread the Gospel to all people. Many volunteered to preach, teach and pray
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for people wherever they went. Some of these volunteers became evangelists (lay preachers-teachers) who today have become significant leaders in the church. As time went by the participatory leadership of the church condensed into centralization with committees and councils. This minimized the spirit of volunteering in the church.
However, the spirit of participation in church life and work has not died. When the workshop was introduced to ministry participation almost all agreed, but the problem was how to do it. The workshop tested a participatory model when the members were divided into four teams with each assigned a special responsibility to perform for four months. A pastor testified that the ministry of the church has become an easy task to do.
After such experiences the workshop formulated and organized three principal groups under the threefold functional form of the church: Koinonia Group, Kerygma
Group and Diakonia Group. The layout of these three groups is demonstrated below.
Table 6. Group Formation Koinonia Group Kerygma Group Diakonia Group Vision: To have an Vision: To grow in divine Vision: To be with the enriched worship wisdom suffering
Mission: To practice the Mission: To train in Mission: To do justice, divine presence witnessing skills and use kindness and humbly walking with all
In order for these groups to operate effectively, the workshop decided to divide into nine operating teams. Each team was assigned a special responsibility. These teams were carefully arranged so that each member of a team could consciously know his/her part to play in the whole Body of Christ and at the same time mobilize and encourage the parish/congregation as a whole to begin functioning with its members working together by the power of the Holy Spirit helping it to grow well, which can be seen below.
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Table 6 Himo Parish Sub teams Koinonia Group Kerygma Group Diakonia Group
Worship Team Preaching- Administration-Stewardship and Teaching Team Generosity Team
Church Music Team Evangelizing Team Leadership-craftsmanship-artistry and Writing Team
Spiritual Gifts Prayer Team Helping and Performing Signs and Utilization Team Wonders Team
The goal of these teams is to catalyze the spiritual growth of the church in faith and new life in Christ. Through these teams parishioners are opened up to involvement in mutual ministry of the church. This communality of doing missio Dei is found in the sharing/participating in the suffering of Jesus Christ. In this communality a corporate life in Christ finds a vivid expression of new order lived in Christ through the Holy Spirit.
Setting Goals and Tasks of Implementation
Communionizing is a catalyst that stimulates and speeds up proper development of the integrated lifestyle of a Christian community under the leadership of the Holy
Spirit. In each congregation/parish there is something mysterious (divine) going on that
God gives as a wonderful gift of mission. It is a marvelous purpose of serving, reaching out and sharing life of God with others, helping them fulfill their destiny in God.
On this basis the congregational/parish mission is always reflecting Jesus’ mission in the world that is elaborated in Jesus’ incarnation (koinonia), Jesus’ cross (kerygma), and Jesus’ resurrection (diakonia). The communionizing strategy follows the same pattern of performing the church’s mission in Tanzanian societal context. The setting goals and tasks of implementation of this kind of strategy can be found in Appendix F.
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Many pointed out that the inherent organizational structure and leadership could be a difficult problem the parish faces when implementing a team-working system. They suggested that it should not be brushed away. Instead it should be enhanced, by introducing the team-working system. This seems to be a correct assumption.
Forming teams for ministry and mission of the church is a hard undertaking. One reason is it is not easy to do. It is human to hide some of one’s personal things. People have a tendency of hiding their things—not open to each other. The second is Christians are not used to it. Himo Parish Christians depend almost on the directives of leadership.
The structure of parish leadership is that of committee-leadership.
Again, it is difficult to build teams. Among the reasons is the inherited tradition and mistrust among the people. Himo Lutheran Parish is a confessional church that lives by this tradition as a committed community of Christ ruled by God. It is their stand. It is a directive of how individual Christians could live in communion with others.
Tradition in its essence involves imagination, creativity, ferment, disorder and conflict. Himo Parish is firmly built upon the evangelii-tradition with its beliefs, attitudes, and practices, keys of its vitality. Moreover, this tradition has translated and accommodated African cultural patterns. A confessional tradition besides being a statement of beliefs, articles of faith and creeds that guard the church from disruptions and distortions, has shielded its organizational order and the renewal (reforming) attitude that reflects the hermeneutics of the relationship between the law and the Gospel.
As the workshops were underway it was discovered that the tradition of the parish has been taken for granted. Parishioners were afraid to challenge it fearing being considered a heretic and facing excommunication. Talking with some pastors of Northern
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Diocese (ELCT) about the tradition of the church many felt it is an iceberg that needs to break if the church wants to advance. Joseph Mwakapi pointed out that the structure of the church (ELCT) is what matters most in extending mission in the Tanzanian context.14
The ELCT inherited a structure set by missionaries from Europe and North America. He went further admitting that even today the word “empowerment” is unknown in the
Tanzanian church vocabulary. He continued, “This is because there are no books on
Church Leadership in our theological training centers.”15 This means pastoral leadership depends heavily on individual leadership abilities. So the church suffers a theological leadership deficiency called “PTDS” – Practical Theology Deficiency Syndrome.16
However, many participants in the workshops were convinced that there is a need to re-think and even re-work this denominational tradition in light of the Gospel and parish experience. They assume if that takes place the parish will create a valid web of practices that transmit its identity, nurturing and cultivating mature spirituality by advancing the church’s mission. This is possible as long as the church’s inherited tradition is not wrongly both disestablished and detraditionalized.
Instead the grassroots of the church, the congregation/parish should be examined, and devoted to Christian practices in life together. As Diana Butler Bass points out these practices are categorized into three divisions, moral ascetical and anthropological:
Moral practices – activities like hospitality, healing, dying well, stewardship, doing justice, and caring – stress communal formation in virtue. Ascetical practices including contemplation, silence, and union with God – things that may be achieved by a variety of means in the form of spiritual exercises – emphasize
14 Joseph Mwakapi, personal interview, November, 2012.
15 Ibid.
16Anderson, The Shape of Practical Theology, 12. 165
deep connection with God and personal Christian maturity. An anthropological approach to practice resists fixing such actions. Rather, Christian practices are just the things Christian people do – eating, meeting, and greeting – as they negotiate their faith in relation to the larger culture.17
The best way to fulfill this is to take a missional perspective. The ethos of this perspective is sending: to go meet people in their ordinary life and baptize them and continue teaching them. In this way the congregation/parish remains a center of the divine vulnerability (divine wisdom) revealed in Jesus Christ.
In order to do so successfully the church has to adopt the team’s style of doing work. Importantly, the team’s style has to be that of Jesus’ multiplying ministry as mentioned in Paul’s letter, “And what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well” (2 Tm 2:2). This recruiting and sending involves the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as Manas Buthelezi believes,
“As the way by which God planned to facilitate the multiplication and repetition of incidents of miracles, healings and other signs and wonders beyond the age of Jesus
Christ’s time and space bound earthly ministry. The aim was that these miracles, these signs and wonders, might be repeated at all times and in all places.”18
By teams Jesus closely connects the Holy Spirit in methodology of ministry as:
A divine strategy by which the Holy Spirit empowers weaklings with His gifts, in order for them to be more productive in their ministry and to be agents of the repetition of the apostolic tradition of performing signs and wonders, which Jesus Christ initiated. . . . Through the gifts of the Holy Spirit God empowers sinful, human weaklings to be effective agents of what He wants to be accomplished.19
17 Diana Butler Bass, The Practicing Congregation (Herndon, VA: Alban Institute, 2004), 65.
18 Manas Buthelezi, “The Gifts of the Holy Spirit for the Healing of the World,” Consultation on Renewal Movements in Lutheran Churches in North and South, Moshi, Tanzania (June 2010): 12.
19 Ibid., 13. 166
Team ministry reveals the truth told by Paul: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor 4:7). So, “through the grace of God, and through the charismata or the gifts of the Holy Spirit, we become effective carriers and deliverers of the treasure of God’s grand plan of salvation.”20
This is practical. As special capabilities with which the Holy Spirit discreetly equips individual believers for mission in the world, charismata (gifts of the Spirit) are conferred to all baptized in the Triune God and therefore have their lives led and guided by the Holy Spirit. These charismata are for proclamation of the Gospel, service to the people, releasing/performing special powers for bringing awareness of God’s power in the midst of the people and for prayer, so that the divine will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God has blessed Christians with inborn natural talents, acquired skills and charismata so they can fully participate in missio Dei in the world. All this treasure is well utilized whenever believers organize themselves in ministry teams under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Hence, the quality of Christian life due to spiritual qualities known as fruit of the Holy Spirit will prevail.
20 Ibid., 14. 167
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
I started this paper by pointing out that Christians in Tanzania are not happy with what is happening among them. They seem to believe the Church no longer helps them though they still admire it very much. They feel choked spiritually by what is happening around them. Besides order and organization due to church growth, the Church needs a paradigm shift that enables it to remain the center of life of its members. When I say the
Church should remain the center of life I mean the Word of God should remain the final authority on matters of faith and life of all Christians no matter what.
Tanzanian society has changed and is still changing. The tribal and clan systems that controlled society for thousands of years are no longer effective. They are now loosened and the people of Tanzania more mobile. This huge change in society was initiated by the introduction of colonial rule in Tanzania between 1888 and 1961. It has been yet accelerated by the introduction of modernization and recently the globalization.
As a result Tanzanian society was disfigured and continues to be so. Instability, insecurity and other social upheavals are heightened and create uncertainty. Many people in the country live a perplexed life. They are not certain of their life. It is in this context the ELCT works. Many Christians because of the overwhelming impact of globalization are desperate looking for substantial answers. Life seems to be difficult and diminishing for many and hence lose hope. They seem not to understand the Christian claim over truth in life. They are anxious in knowing by experience the power of their faith and life.
Moreover, though the Church is doing everything possible to remedy the situation, many Christians feel that there is something missing. As far as the Church in
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Tanzania is concerned many attempts that have been made. The Church has attempted several ways to serve society including carrying out social services of education, health, water supply and alleviation of poverty and relief projects. All these are good deeds but are not satisfactory solutions to the spiritual hunger people experience.
As analysis has gone by it was discovered that the ELCT lived in bureaucracy limbo for too long. The Church in accordance to the New Testament has been given authority—“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go . . . and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:18-19).
The Church has divine authority so it is expected to remain strong in its mission.
Being the case then I think it is proper to say that the problem of the Church being pushed around today lies in empowerment and equipment. The Church is not aligning with Jesus’ ministry of empowerment as revealed in the New Testament. Jesus Christ being the source and proto-model of all life is to be taken seriously in every case of life.
He is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6). Under any situation, condition, and/or circumstance Jesus Christ remains the final answer to all.
Accordingly, this paper has provided a strategy known as communionizing, aiming at utilizing Christopraxis, which is the continuity of Christ’s ministry through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Christopraxis focuses on missio Dei. This divine praxis through the power and presence of the Spirit of Christ is never determined by cultural relevance or programmatic expediency because it is the work of the risen Jesus.
This praxis is an action that includes ultimate purpose. On this basis praxis is the Gospel because it is life that begets life in its process, life that is mature, perfect and meaningful.
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This communionizing strategy is based on Jesus’ consecrated prayer:
And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. . . . So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. . . . Now they know that everything you have given me is from you . . . that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (Jn 17:3, 5, 7, 21).
This strategy has to do with mission and ministry. Mission is sending in the prerogative of God-self. That is, mission is an overflow of God’s creating, sustaining and renewing the universe. It is a divine activity. It is a divine communion that has gone on even before creation. Within this divine communion God in three Persons serve each other for the benefit of all divinity.
God in his sovereignty created a space for humanity to participate in this divine communion. Through baptism all baptized are incorporated into this communion and thus made heirs and servants of God. Christians are called into service in fellowship with
Jesus, the servant of God. Jesus Christ is the outgoing of the innermost Being of God toward humanity in an active sympathy and compassion, which is the boundless mercy of
God at work in all existence. Christians in an assembly known as congregation/parish become a Christodiakonic (Christ-like service) community in which God continues to serve through Christ in the power and presence of the Spirit, self-emptying for the benefit of others. This means that the ministry of Christians is participatory and personal communion with God through Christ.
Christians by virtue of their baptism are ministers who have put themselves at the disposal of God for the benefit of others and God’s world. For example, Adam and Eve in
Genesis 2 are seen as kings-priests who offer their worship through their work in the
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sanctuary-garden of Eden, which is the center of the world. Christians are members of the laos (people) of God belonging to one another, ministering to one another, needing another and contributing to the rich unity and ministry of the whole (Rom 1:12).
However, this divine mission-ministry commissioned to all members of the Body of Christ is a priestly service for the Gospel (Rom 12:1-2; 15:16; 1 Pt 2:9; Rv 1:6; 5:10;
20:6). This priestly service is always interwoven into the universal ministry, universal empowerment in the Spirit and universal calling. So the priestly service is a universal priesthood – priesthood of all believers. That is, all Christians are priests by virtue baptism. Their priesthood is of the order of Jesus. Christians have to know this. They are full participants in the continuing priestly ministry of Jesus Christ (Heb 10:24-25).
The validity of this priesthood of all believers is well understood: “Therefore
Jesus also suffered outside the city-gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.
Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse be endured” (Heb 13-12-13).
Christians are people called and sent into the world because they have access to God.
Stevens says the meaning of the above biblical text is “the deeper we enter the sanctuary the further we will penetrate the world.”1 Jesus says those who lose their life for him will find it again (Phil 3:10). Whenever Christians do what has been commanded by God they are worshipping God. And as they continue serving God by benefiting others they continue getting deeper into the divine and therefore find their true life.
The main objective of this priesthood of all believers is to build both the community of believers of Jesus Christ and human community in general. It serves God in serving the world. This is so because missio Dei is always directed to the whole society
1Stevens, Liberating the Laity, 175. 171
including its structures of common life, bringing righteousness, justice, the empowerment of the poor and releasing the oppressed (Lk 4:18).
The mission of God is concerned with all creation, conservation, sustainable development and renewal of the earth (Jer 22:29; Ez 36:1-17). Christians are called to participate in this mission. In this way the Church exists for mission. In a society like
Tanzania where witchcraft and the spirits of the dead are insurrecting and the resurgence of Islamic religion coupled with new human cultural interactions due to globalization, the
Church has to take its true position of service.
The Church takes its true position in serving the world whenever it engages in discipleship. Discipleship involves placing all of life under the lordship of Jesus Christ. It is learning from Jesus and acting with him. I know one thing about the church in Africa: it has long remained Western and narrow-minded in terms of receiving and depending on the Western Church. More effort is needed in eradicating this condition I call a
“dependence down syndrome.” And the best way of doing so is engaging in discipleship.
Discipleship invites believers to re-root in the community of faith as a mission strategy that leaves plenty of room for the wind of the Holy Spirit and gifts of the parishioners/congregants to work interactively. Eschatologically this is how the Church lives and works in an interim period known as “already . . . yet not” Kingdom of God
(Mk 1:14-15) characteristic with the hermeneutics of the law and Gospel. By this communionizing strategy believers have been saved for the works of God in the world:
“For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Eph 2:10).
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In Appendix G I display the communionizing strategy model of missional congregation. From this model we can recognize the position of the Church in the lives of people of God. The Church exists for mission by occupying the center of people’s lives, shepherding them in communal living that is molded by worship. In so living Christianity envisaged by the Church is communal, rooted and belonging to the community of all believers of Christ. Thence, the Church’s action, implementation and reinforcement of momentum make a complex world into simplicity.
In all humility, the Church has to intentionally kneel down and come to where
Christ is located. A congregation/parish is a local church that has joined the crowd and messy—the smelly, disordered crowd comprised of rich and poor, widows, widowers, orphans, victims of every kind, hungry, thirsty, downtrodden and outcasts. The Church has to “see” small things, small events, small needs, small differences and the like in their actuality of being messy, uneven trivialities of everyday contradictions of rural life in villages, small towns and squatter streets.
In this manner of life, the Church has a chance to stand for the people because it has something to offer. It tells stories of increasing marginalization, exploitation, shameful and scandalous prosperity of a tiny segment of the population and at the same time the corresponding pauperization of the poor, the deep chasm between capital cities and countryside, the elite and the masses, rampant unemployment and homelessness. The
Church here is to challenge liberal economics and other related human systems that dehumanizes and degrades and instead give an alternative story that sustains a genuine
Christian praxis grounded in communities that live by the Christian story.
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APPENDIX A
GOD Creating
HEAVEN
Ancestors
Human beings
Sustaining GOD
From this diagram the earth is flat, but without end. The circle is the dome with dotted line as it approaches the flat earth to mark unending edge. Above the dome of the sky lives God-the-creator and underneath the flat earth the same God standing as God-the- sustainer. Between the heaven and the earth stands the human world, where humans are at the center, above them are the ancestors but surrounded by the visible and the invisible spheres. 174
APPENDIX B
Geo location of Himo Parish
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APPENDIX C
W -Worship God – the disciplines that would go with this are: Celebration Gratitude Holy Communion Rule for life Sabbath Worship
O -Open myself to God – the disciplines are: Contemplation Examen Journaling Practicing the presence Rest Retreat Self-care Simplicity Slowing Teachability Unplugging
R -Relinquish the false self and idols of my heart – the disciplines are: Confession and self-examination Detachment Discernment Secrecy Silence Solitude Spiritual direction Submission
S -Share my life with others – the disciplines are: Accountability partner Chastity Community Covenant group Discipling Hospitality Mentoring Service Small group Spiritual friendship Unity
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Witness
H -Hear God’s Word – the disciplines are: Bible study Devotional reading Meditation Memorization
I -Incarnate the love of Christ for the world – the disciplines are: Care of the Earth Compassion Control of the tongue Humility Justice Stewardship Truth telling
P -Pray to God – the disciplines are: Breath prayer Centering prayer Contemplative prayer Conversational prayer Fasting Fixed-hour prayer Inner-healing prayer Intercessory prayer Labyrinth prayer Liturgical prayer Prayer partner Praying scripture Prayer of recollection Prayer walking
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APPENDIX D
1. A sense of urgency:
After examining the present set-up of Himo parish it was discovered that the society of Himo was undergoing changes that necessitate new ways of doing mission work in the area. Cultural crises, rise of crime, impoverish of the society and the similar problems call the church to change tactics in doing mission.
2. Creating a guiding coalition:
This was critical moment because after realizing that there was a need of change in doing mission in Himo area the working group became anxious wanting to have a strong leadership. So under the leadership of Pastor Godwin Mremi, the senior pastor, the group created a team of twelve members for the task of directing the group in working out necessary changes.
3. Developing Vision and Strategy
After brainstorming the coalition guiding team wrote down the vision of Himo parish as follows: “We are a community of Disciples of Christ living and doing God’s mission.” That is, Himo Lutheran Parish is a Christian community where all members are becoming disciples of Jesus Christ by living and doing God’s mission.
Along this vision the team went on prioritizing the needs of the parish. The priorities were categorized into threefold strategic order: first the relationship with God, second the relationship within the community of faith and third the relationship with the society in and around Himo area.
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4. Communicating the Vision and the Strategy:
This was the walk the talk that meant leading by examples. Several vehicles were used in communicating the vision and the strategy. These included seminars, memos, large group meetings, posters and informal one-on-one talk. However, communication is two-way traffic. For that reason the communication became a tool for the emphatic listening where listen and be listened occur. Communication then is to ask right questions, challenging, and arguing so that people can be acquainted with the vision and the strategy.
5. Empowering broad-based Action:
There were barriers that had to be overcome if anything can happen. The barriers include the structures, tradition, skills, systems and managerial manner of the church.
Deep down into these factors of organizations lay the interrelationships that have been there for quite some times building habits that resist any other introduced ideas. On touching them the group found out that they have invited fear of the unknown, loss, surprise, uncertainty, and even become insecure and confused.
The best way of dealing with these barriers was to provide needed training. The group figured out the new behavior, skills, and attitudes that were needed for changing the parish in doing mission. They also learnt simple fact that in this engagement there were resisters and promoters of a change. Some persons in the parish would like to fight all new ideas for the sake of stability of the parish. But there were some who were good promoters of new ideas.
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6. Generating a short-term Wins:
This is an activity of converting the write vision and proposed strategy into reality. The nature of short-term wins has three characteristics: the visibility, unambiguous, and clarity. By applying SWOT (=Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis the group was in a position of laying down the strategic plan where short-term objectives were to be performed.
After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of Himo parish, the group engaged in writing down the plan under the short-term wins. This was possible after identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats as follows:
Strengths of Himo Parish:
- The long establish parish (since 1967) - The Lutheran Tradition - The membership of over two thousand (2,000) - Good church infrastructure - Constitution, by-laws and policies defining governance structure - The institutional leadership - Inspirational worship - The open communal spirit of members (loving community)
Weaknesses of Himo Parish:
- The ministry of the parish is leaning more to the clergy - A low use of technology - Majority of parishioners have little resources for Bible studies - The majority of the young generation are unable to integrate their faith and their normal life - The hymnal book with many of songs of European origin is treated with some suspicion
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Opportunities of Himo Parish:
- Easier transportation for the parish is situated along highway Dar-es-Salaam- Moshi- Arusha- Naoirobi. - Easier access to the Moshi town and church headquarters - Himo parish has prototype groups for spiritual exercises. These are weekly small groups meetings for prayers, devotions and bible study taking place in one of parishioner’s home. - A tourist township (rich interactions)
Threats/Barriers of Himo Parish:
- Poverty is entangling the parish. While income per capita is USD 340, the purchasing power is getting less and less as the years roll by. Majority of the members of the parish are subsistence farmers with very low income. - Deforestation has taken its toll for some quite time resulting in drought. - Powerful influences of globalization have brought new ideas of life that threaten the familiar church life
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APPENDIX E
Characteristic: Corporate, dynamic worship. Its current average rating is 8.
Objective: To nurture the corporate, dynamic worship
Activity: Articulate a clear understanding of who God -Create enthusiasm about being part of the kingdom of God - Encourage leaders to be change agents under God’s guidance - Desire the fruit of the Spirit for all its members - Seek the spiritual gifts given to each member - Enhance the God-exaltation worship
Characteristic: Significant relational groups. Its current average rating is 6.
Objective: To promote significant relational groups
Activity: Exercise spiritual disciplines - Form small groups for training, caring and learning - Help all members to discover and use their God given gifts
Characteristic: Solid, participatory decision making. Its current average rating is 6.
Objective: To make a solid, participatory decision making system
Activity: Create an environment in which believers are developed to serve - Ensure that ministry is not one person show but a collective service - Develop a broad based system of supporting members in ministering
Characteristic: Solid financial resources. Its average current rating is 7
Objective: To enhance solid financial recourses
Activity: Teach on the biblical foundation on stewardship - Teach on generosity and financial planning - Share facilities and programs with others - Give generously to the annual budget of the parish - Provide abundantly for those in need within the fellowship
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Characteristic: Several competent programs and activities. Current average rating is 6.
Objective: To establish several competent program and activities
Activity: Develop ministry special teams for parish tasks - Establish and sustain the relationship between churches in Himo - Have selected joint celebrations with other churches in Himo - Communicate with one another through new technologies
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APPENDIX F
VISION of Himo Lutheran Parish
To become disciples of Jesus Christ who enjoy serving him for the sake of world.
MISSION of Himo Lutheran Parish
To live missional a life that moves back and forth between discipleship and apostleship.
STRATEGY of Himo Lutheran Parish
Communionizing has to do with the partaking in divine vulnerability that is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is living in relation to, in, with and under Jesus Christ partaking and sharing this real life in the world.
The Goal and Tasks of Implementation
Each team by making use the multiplication principle for Jesus’ ministry adopted by the apostles (2 Tm2:2) set goals and tasks of implementation for the long-term strategic plan of Himo Lutheran Parish. The layout of the plan is aligned with the formation of different teams. The 250 members of the workshop were asked to choose teams that were preferable to them. The teams were as follows:
Koinonia Teams Worship Church Music Spiritual Gifts Utilizing
Kerygma Teams Preaching-Teaching Evangelizing Prayer
Diakonia Teams Administration-Stewardship and Generosity Leadership-Craftsmanship/Artistry and Writing Helping, Performing Miracles and Signs
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Each larger team had small groups underneath working on specific assignments and reported to the large team. Every member of the large team was involved in a smaller subgroup. This arrangement worked well because each member could play role in doing whatever was assigned to them and was accountable. Each member felt good to see that one’s contribution was taken to be important in the overall team’s work.
I therefore hereby summarize the setting of the long-term strategic plan that was resolved by the workshop. Himo Lutheran Parish has adopted this plan for its mission for seven years period.
THE LONG TERM STRATEGIC PLAN FOR HIMO PARISH: 2013-2019
Koinonia Teams Team - Worship Objective – Worship God Goal – To Practice the Divine Presence Tasks/Tactics - Train on the meaning of exalting, pouring, thanksgiving, adoring and professing; Highlight the meaning of Christian symbols of faith and worship; Demonstrate different kinds of church services; and Practice spiritual disciplines. Activities - Involve members of the parish in worship services by using different activities like drama, singing, poem, etc. Responsibilities - Pastor, evangelists, parish workers, members, and worship team members Time Span - From 2013 to 2019 Resources Required - Worshipping kit, Bibles, liturgy, videos on worship Estimate - $6,000
Team – Church Music Objective – Enrich singing and other forms of praise Goal – Enhance church singing, choir singing by training and purchasing music instruments Tasks/Tactics – Train staff notion to choirmasters; Give trainees some exercises of composing their own formulated music; Create occasions for music concerts; Record and produce audiovisual cassettes, discs, etc. Activities – Engage all members in praise and singing to God Responsibilities – Music teachers, choirmasters, choir groups, pastor, evangelists, parish workers, all members of church Time Span – From 2013 to 2019
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Resources Required – Musical books, Bibles, paper, musical instruments - both traditional and modern Estimate – $30,000
Team – Spiritual Gifts Utilizing Objective - Utilize spiritual gifts in building the community Goal - Create an atmosphere for all members to learn and know their spiritual gifts; Demonstrate how to use spiritual gifts for service of the church Tasks/Tactics - Do intensive seminars and workshops on the Word of God; Urge all members to engage in private study of the Word of God and private devotions Activities - Learn how to listen emphatically to the Word of God and also have groups for mentoring and coaching Responsibilities – Bishop, pastors, evangelists, parish workers, mentors, counselors, Christians Time Span – From 2013 to 2019 Resources Required – Text books for spiritual gifts training, Videos, discs, computers, paper, Bibles Estimate - $3,000
Kerygma Teams Team –Preaching/Teaching Objective – Train on God’s wisdom as revealed in Scripture Goal – Learn the Word of God and Christian doctrines Tasks/Tactics - Teach by engaging respective church groups of children, youth, women, men, couples, elderly and others; Organize different camps for training; Have home Christian teachings Activities - Encourage Christians to form groups for training; Prepare biblical lessons for the groups Responsibilities - Bishop, pastors, evangelists Time Span - From 2013 to 2019 Resources Required - Bibles, liturgical text books, paper, catechism Estimate - $0
Team –Evangelizing Objective – Evangelize people Goal – Reach out to non-Christians with the Gospel Tasks/Tactics - Form teams for evangelization; Organize open Gospel meetings; Visit non-Christians at their homes; Teach catechumens; Baptism Activities - Encourage members to form teams for evangelization; Encourage Christians to testify about their faith in Christ Responsibilities - All Christians, pastor, evangelists, parish workers, non- Christians, choirs, teams for evangelism and prayers Time Span - From 2013 to 2019 Resources Required - Bibles, paper, Christian videos and films, songs discs, Estimate - $0
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Team – Prayer Objective - Pray Goal - To pray especially for evangelization and healing ministry Tasks/Tactics - Exorcise whenever needed; Comfort and encourage all who are inflicted, victimized and suffering Activities - Touch the sick and afflicted by laying on of hands and praying; Counsel those who are in need Responsibilities – Bishop, pastors, evangelists, gifted volunteers, counselors Time Span – From 2013 to 2019 Resources Required – Text books for spiritual gifts training, videos, discs, computers, paper, Bibles Estimate - $0
Diakonia Teams Team –Administrative-Stewardship and Generosity Objective – To help people in helping themselves Goal – Establish and sustain education, health, economic and ecology social services Tasks/Tactics - Build facilities for SACCOs, pre-school and primary school, clinic, tree garden, and josho services; Monitor the services and evaluate them Activities - Involve members to plan projects; organize project implementation Responsibilities - Pastor, evangelists, parish workers, planning team Time Span - From 2015 to 2019 Resources Required - Building materials, furniture, water supply, electricity Estimate - $60,000
Team –Leadership-Craftsmanship/Artistry and Writing Objective – To influence and engage people in managing their joint effort in living in Christ Goal – Sharpen and strengthen the skills of members Tasks/Tactics - Sensitize members’ different natural abilities; engage members to serve all people in need; Advocate for the voiceless Activities - Have seminars and workshops for training; Practice the knowledge gained; Do analysis, supervise and manage Responsibilities - Facilitators, pastor, evangelists, parish workers, members Time Span - From 2014 to 2015 Resources Required - Bible, business and management books, paper Estimate - $5,000
Team –Leadership-Craftsmanship/Artistry and Writing Objective – To touch of all walks of life by discerning and serving the needs of the people in and around the congregation Goal – Serve the poor and needy Tasks/Tactics - Provide services needed, i.e., food, clothing, shelter; Counsel and encourage all who are in need
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Activities - Collect material things including money for the needy; Distribute evenly the collections to the needy Responsibilities - Pastor, parish workers, volunteers Time Span - From 2013 to 2019 Resources Required - Material things including money Estimate - $12,000
After completion of this plan I wanted to find out the reaction on what we achieved. I asked members of the workshop what they felt. Many were positive about the outcome of the work we were doing. The majority agreed on the following:
1. I am more confident myself now than before. 2. I have come to realize that every member has something to contribute 3. My faith is more grown than before – I am far sure in what is my faith all about 4. My understanding of life is now more expanded than ever. I understand myself better and my call 5. I have come to know my fellow Christians better than I expected 6. I have come to realize that we are now more open to each other 7. I have realized that each Christian has been called for service in the church but he/she is not given that chance
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APPENDIX G
The Model of Missional Congregation
5
3 2 1 4
KEY:
1. SPIRITUAL AND RELATIONAL VITALITY: As a heart and energy source of constant change, this vitality is facilitated by learning disciplines coupled with the Eight-stage change process. The cross stands for the person and work of Jesus Christ that catalyzes church activities in doing God’s mission in the world.
2. KOINONIA: In celebrating the vulnerability of God the faithful people of
God would be empowered in hearing and doing the Word, for in worship the search for meaning is reached which is the purpose of it.
3. KERYGMA: Proclamation of divine wisdom revealed on the Cross bears
God’s creative and redeeming Word to all nations. The Church being an eschatological function in the world remains a witness, sign and bearer of the reign of God.
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4. DIAKONIA: Acting as an invitation vehicle, the Church extends the
Gospel by touching all life creating an environment or condition for the divine merciful touch to the broken world and heals it.
5. MISSIO DEI: The Church’s mission is to participate in missio Dei by becoming the body and blood of Christ poured out for the sake of the brokenness of the world and so captive people by that mission as to draw them into it by proclamation and invitation. In its essence missio Dei is the power of the Gospel revealed in divine vulnerability. In this vulnerability God is the one who risks all divine prerogative in order to sustain relationship with the cosmos and all creation.
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APPENDIX H
The Nyaturu Ritual Invocation Known as “Praising the Sun” as translated by Marguerite Jellicoe:
O Sun, Creator, you have appeared. You are praised by the cock and by the morning warbler, by the male donkey and male got, by the land in the forest, a wild animal grazing on the leaves of the muntumba tree. Since you went down we have no bad omen, we have heard no funeral cry, and no one has died. Sun you have appeared well.
Now you have thrown white butter of blessing on the mountain and baobab tree. May we be cool. Sun place four sticks one in the west and one in the south and the one in the east. At the midday pause over a homestead with ten houses, spread out your blessing there, to a homestead with only one house send blessing. Do not be too hot do not burn us.
In the evening return safely those who have gone herding and those travelling in the forests. Take with you to the west poisonous snakes, rhinoceroses and lions. Take with you all fever of our people and our herds, take them to your homestead in the west, to the deep chasm of the brasses palm, and bury them there under a flat stone.
Now eat cool in your homestead, do not eat hot food. Go take from your herd and sacrifice a steer, a black ram a big elephant. Put the chime in a grain trough of a heavy wood, the chime of these three, together with a pester of light wood and iron bradawl. Now go to the east with your coolness, carrying the skin bracelet of an infant and the tail of the wildebeest, breathing saliva of the blessing. Scatter the chime on all large trees, pool, forests, cattle-paths and millet field, cleansing them.
You who are my grandmother, you who are my grandfather, creator, our great God, give me goodness. Put the root of a tree across the path to my homestead that no trouble maker may come. See that no sleeping child is caused to fall into the fire. I have finished, Sun.
O moon, Creator, give birth to two children, a boy and a girl. Let them grow up and marry, let them look after each other as a herdsman looks after his flock. Bear a male calf and a female calf, a male lamb, and a female lamb, a male goat and a female goat. A male donkey and a female donkey, a female chicken and a male chicken, a female puppy and a male puppy, a female kitten and a male kitten, give to the forest many wild animal, bearing two of each one male and one female, For it is good that all creatures should multiply. I have finished with you moon.
You Pleiades (Kiimia) you suckle us, you are grandmother, give us food. Let my grain swell, my people increase, and my flock also, let my homestead grow larger.
Kiimia, your flower is a bride, with white beads and cowries shells on her head and baby carrier on her back. Your flower is a worrier who has killed a lion sends flowers, to sort of millet- bulrush, long headed sorghum, short-headed sorghum, red sorghum, white sorghum, pumpkins, cowpeas, sunflowers, castor, crown with your flowers, kiimia. We will keep their good seeds and throw away the bad seed. Send flower to all trees, the fig-tree and the candelabra tree let them
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bear fruit that we may eat. If we find that some of the fruit ere beater we will leave them for the birds. Let there be flower everywhere. Let a lion be born with a strong paw, to kill buffaloes so that we may make shoes from the skins. Bring bees to hives that we may eat honey. Let white ant built their hills on good soil where man may build houses where their children may be born if the soil is bad, and wants to kill people so that the houses will fall down let a river spring from the hill so that people will not built there, let a young woman become pregnant and give birth to a son and a daughter. Let the blacksmith make axes, adzes and digging sticks. Let the brawny castrator produce oxen that are big, enormous, let the porter make pots, so that we may brew bear.
I have finished with you, kiimia.
I have finished with you, Sun!
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APPENDIX I
Guidelines for field research of this Ministry Focus Paper to find a suitable strategy in equipping and empowering the people of God in doing missio Dei in Himo Parish of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania, June 2009 to October 2012. Questionnaire is among the several techniques used in doing the research on a suitable strategy of equipping and empowering all members of the church in doing God’s mission in the world. The focal point of my research was the Himo Parish of the Northern Diocese of Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania. The following questions were used in research:
General questions (a) What do you understand whenever you hear the words “congregation”, “parish”, “church”, and “diocese”? (b) What do you know about the mission of the church in the world? (c) It is said that the church is currently sidelined. Do you agree, if so, how? (d) Do you know anything about the notion of the “priesthood of all believers”? (e) Is the notion of the “priesthood of all believers” applicable to church today? If so, how?
Specific Questions A. The Himo Parish spiritual needs assessment (i) What Christian life parishioners of Himo Parish long for? (ii) What is the present overall level of Christian life in Himo Parish? (iii) By using the four elements of Christian life describe the intensity of Christian life in Himo Parish! (iv) What are the unresolved issues that are affecting the present life impasse in Himo parish? (v) Does the Himo Parish have a sufficient Christian life to sustain? If there is, then, how and why?
B. Spiritual growth of the Himo Parish (i) What life situation of the present reality of Himo Parish? (ii) What do we “see” concerning the future of Himo parish? (iii) Is there a way or means of moving forward for Himo Parish from the present reality? (iv) The utilization of spiritual gifts in doing God’s mission has to be practiced inseparably with the practices of spiritual disciplines. How is this done in Himo Parish?
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C. The Himo Parish Self-Assessment so as its effectiveness can be recognized (i) There are two types of characteristics of the church to be effective in its mission: Relational and Functional Characteristics, so determine the strengths of these characteristic as appear to be in Himo Parish today. (ii) What areas or characteristics of Himo Parish seem to be strongest? (iii) What areas or characteristics of Himo Parish seem to need the most attention at present?
D. Leadership Development in Himo Parish (i) In what ways did Jesus empower his disciples? (ii) How is Himo Parish organized in accordance to constitutional structure and Lutheran Tradition? (iii) How far the gifts, skills, and calling of all members of Himo Parish are utilized for a priestly service of the gospel? (iv) How can the leadership of Himo Parish unleash the potentiality of this common gift of priesthood of all believers?
E. The Functionality of this Communal Gift of “Priesthood of All Believers” (i) What do you think about the possibility of applying this communal gift of “priesthood of all believers” in these times of globalization and modernization? (ii) Is there a room for this communal gift of priesthood of all believers in Charismatic character of the church? If there is, how? (iii) How can the communal gift of priesthood of all believers be equated within the matrix use of the threefold functional form of koinonia, kerygma, and diakonia in the realm of God’s reign?
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