The Future of the United Methodist Church in Africa.

   

The mission of The United Methodist Church and its predecessor bodies on the continent of Africa has developed through missionaries, mostly from the United States and from Europe. With the exception of Liberia as a colony for freed slaves, there was no mutual benefit from migration towards and from the U.S. as in Europe or partly in Asia.

The mission of the church in Africa was not limited to the preaching of the Gospel. Two other main elements were part of a holistic

approach: educational endeavors in building up of schools, from elementary schools up to professional and university education; and health care with clinics and dispensaries. Churches, and among them the Methodists, helped to raise a generation of indigenous leaders in church and state. Linked to the poor economic, educational and health conditions, the mission in Africa has remained dependent on outside support in personnel and finances.

The article below from Rev. Dr. Israel Kamudzandu  is a must read for all African United Methodist Congregations  as we begin to gather together to select our new episcopal leaders for the 21st century beginning West Africa Central Conference: December 5 – 8, 2024 – two Bishops; Africa Central Conference: March 13 – 17, 2025 – four Bishops (The Africa Central Conference will also take the final steps to becoming two central conferences i.e. East Africa Central Conference and Southern Africa Central Conference) and Congo Central Conference:

March 29 – April 3, 2025 – three Bishops.)

These new episcopal leaders need to come to terms with the congregations on the continent of Africa who are asking lots of questions concerning the status of the United Methodist Church with regards to its governance as well as its theology and its interpretation of scripture. The just ended 2020 General Conference held in 2024 rattled lots of feathers that resulted with some congregations in the US left the UMC through disaffiliations which were not discussed openly within the central conferences including those in Africa. This is the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed before real healing, trust and Christian fellowship takes place. The church in Africa will raise up and take its place in the world in making disciples for Jesus the Christ!

Hereunder is Rev. Dr. Kamudzandu  and his thoughts for Methodism in Africa; first published by Firebrand Magazine September 21, 2021 ! As President of Theological Voice of Africa, I would recommend this brilliant piece of research to be a learning curve for every congregation in Africa on toxic issues that threaten the very existence of the UMC global family.

African and the Future of Methodism!

Due to years of missionizing and colonizing by North America and Europe, Global South nations are yet to rediscover themselves in terms of their identity, spirituality, faith, culture, and the rich tapestry of their worldviews. The focus of this article is on The United Methodist Church in Africa, and its contribution in preserving, shaping and being the custodian of the denomination’s future. Like Asia, and Latin America, Africa continues to dust itself off from more than 90 years of being colonized and missionized by Western nations.

The conquest, colonization, land occupation, partition, and missionization has resulted in an African dilemma in terms of identity and its contributions to the Global table. Marginalization, repression, and voicelessness, has wounded the African continent in numerous ways. However, one aspect of Africa that was not missionized and colonized was its religious/spiritual worldview. Despite being labeled the “Dark Continent” and “Heathen,” Africa maintained its sensitivity to God, who is known by various names in and around Africa. As missionaries continued to visit Africa, wars of liberation intensified, and most of the indigenous people lost faith in missionaries because both colonizers and missionaries represented western cultures.

In retrospect, it is perhaps justifiable to note that the geopolitical context of Africa’s colonization did not restrain the movement and power of the Holy Spirit, nor did land occupation by Western nations mean that God was the colonizer. God, who false missionaries like Cecil John Rhodes thought was not in Africa, was indeed in Africa before he landed and was at work among people. But blinded by arrogance and a naïve sense of superiority, Rhodes was neither a Christian believer nor a missionary in the true sense. Yet some missionaries, such as Bishop Ralph Dodge, Bishop Joseph Hartzell and his wife Jennie, Mrs. Frank Wolf, and George Odlum, had a faithful calling from God to evangelize and missionize Africa.

The brief history recounted above is to remind readers that Africa did not become Christian after independence, but Africa experienced the presence of God and power of the Holy Spirit in ways similar to Luke’s account of the Pentecost event. Pentecost came with a sound, representing God’s theophany in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit signaled a paradigm shift in terms of God’s dealings with people in every place, nation, and time. God has never acted in a vacuum, but like a melody, God seeks to sing with people, and in some cases, God can choose to sing a counter melody. Pentecost was a counter melody, introduced by God, sounded by God, and breathed onto an oppressed people by the Creator (Acts 2:4).

Development and Growth of The African United Methodist Church

The Holy Spirit visited Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the 20th century in powerful ways. As recounted by the second Bishop of Zimbabwe, Bishop Abel Tendakayi Muzorewa, and known by early Methodist generations, 1918 is called “the year of the Holy Spirit.” This was a contextualized Pentecost experience that gave birth to Methodism in Zimbabwe. Similar events and experiences have been documented in Asia and Latin America. The narration of the original Pentecost event is made strange by Luke’s mention of “all nations of the world,” who were present. Readers are told that Galileans proclaimed God’s wonderful deeds in ways that crossed cultural boundaries. Similar phenomena were experienced by those present at a gathering in 1918 in Zimbabwe.

People spoke in tongues, and others were sent into villages to heal the sick, and even the crippled regained their strength and were given the ability to walk. These Global South experiences continue to reside in the hearts, minds, and souls of 21st-century African United Methodist Christians. They inform, galvanize, and lead the continent to be faithful to the God of Pentecost and to live out the Great Commission, mandated by the risen Lord in Matthew 28:16-20.

Through Pentecost experiences and vernacular translations of the Bible, the continent of Africa, especially the United Methodist Church in Africa, with its many painful journeys of life and its faithfulness to God has experienced the burgeoning of the United Methodist Church.

Spirituality is birthed, fed, and given a life in the crucibles we go through. Faithful Methodist missionaries provided a basis for the growth of Christian faith in Africa, and along the way, Africans still longed for both national independence and an indigenous Methodist Church free from the colonizing mindset of North America.

Africa, like other regions of the Global South, attained independence from colonizers. Yet two critical questions remain for both nations and ecclesial bodies: 1) Did Africa really attain independence from its colonizers? 2) To what extent did the United Methodist Church in Africa free itself from the parent North American church? The truth of the matter is that even after independence, none of the Global South nations were liberated from Western colonial powers. It was independence on paper, but economically, sociologically, politically, and psychologically, Asia, Africa, and Latin America remained colonized.

Both colonial imperialist and ecclesial leaders in North America have perceived Global South nations and church leaders as incapable of doing anything without the approval of Western powers. Imprinted and seared on the minds of colonialists and missionaries was the assumption that barbarians needed a Western messiah. Like Romans in the early Christian church, Westerners viewed themselves as God’s chosen ones whose responsibility was to be missionaries of civilization. Numerous derogatory perspectives were leveled against African United Methodists. Pushed to be submissive sycophants, people of African, Asian, and Latin American descent failed to define themselves.

African United Methodism needs to define itself.

In his work on the growth and revitalization of Christianity in Africa, Andrew Wells notes that the rapid growth of African Christianity invites Western nations to regard it “as potentially the representative Christianity of the twenty-first century” (The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002], p. 85). The United Methodist Church in Africa and its related Global South Christian partners are fully aware of the spiritual growth of Christianity in the continent.

Africa, like other nations in the Global South, are a people with a known history, originality, culture, civilization, religion, spirituality, and a unique way of being human. Cultural anthropologists are aware that Africa is the cradle of all people, a continent that gave birth to humanity, technology, wisdom, science, and philosophy. Yet, on gaining independence from the Western nations, Africa chose not to identify itself as a unique continent. Political independence did not make any difference in the structure of the Church, and even in the structure of academic curriculum.

Neo-colonialism and acceptance of handouts from the Western nations became another form of colonization. Ecclesial conferences were held in North America, and theological education was done mostly in North America.

Regardless of what colonialism did to Africa, the years between 1990 to the present have seen a great paradigm shift in terms of theological training and indigenous church growth in Africa. At some point, during the colonial period, there was a parting of ways.

Missionaries devoted their time to indigenous education and the training of local clergy leaders. Similarly, local seminaries were established to train pastors, evangelists, and teachers of the Bible.

The training of local clergy paved the way for indigenous Pentecostal churches; and even the United Methodist Church in Africa is not like the United Methodist Church in North America.

Africans are deeply spiritual, and they express their spirituality in ways different from North Americans. I will say more about this shortly, but I wish to emphasize the synthesis of African Spirituality and Bibles translated into African vernacular languages. This allowed indigenous people to experience God in ways similar to what we read about in the Book of Acts. In being baptized and converted to Christianity, Africans’ understood their new faith in Jesus Christ in ways conditioned by their long-established religious-cultural beliefs and values. This is still the case. Indigenous African theology is to a large extent influenced by Africa’s religious worldview. Time and space will not allow me to expound more on some spiritual and theological developments taking place in the United Methodist Church in Africa. Nevertheless, the practical and daily events behind the growth of the United Methodist Church in Africa deserve mention with the hope that fellow Christians in North America may appreciate the state—present and future—of the denomination.

Continuity and Prospects of the United Methodist Church in Africa

First, North America must come to terms with the truth that Africa was at one point a missionary field. Missionaries such as Robert Moffat of the London Missionary Society were intentional about missionizing Africans, not for the Gospel but for purposes of promoting their interests among people of African descent. More poignantly, European missionaries wanted Africans to embrace western cultural values in ways that would allow them to control and manipulate indigenous people into cheap laborers. These missionaries equated evangelism and missionary work with civilization. But God had other plans for African Christians. Despite the racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia of the colonists, God was at work among Africans, and manifesting God’s power in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the United Methodist Church was firmly established in Africa. From being victims of western cultural imposition, Africans today are champions, advocates, evangelists, missionaries, and prophets of the Gospel to their own people. The preaching, administration, structure, and teaching ministry of the United Methodist Church in Africa has allowed the denomination to grow in ways not known in North America and even in Europe.

At least two factors have contributed to the growth of the United Methodist Church in Africa. The first is the reception, comprehension, and appropriation of the Bible as the Word of God. African Christian converts have a firm belief in the power of God. As a result, the Bible is found in all formative sectors of life in Africa, including academia, parliaments, and office work-spaces. Today, African clergy in their pursuit of prophetic ministry have come to invite power in the life of the Church. Whereas in America, clergy pride themselves in speaking truth to power, Africans have found a way to have political leaders attend church on Sunday morning, and even during the week.

The Bible is now read more commonly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America than in North America and Europe. African Independent and indigenous Pentecostal churches are growing by the millions in and around the Global South. In terms of the United Methodist Church in Africa, statistics have proved that 100,000 new converts are added to the membership of the local church each Sunday. Scholars have also come to project that, by 2025, “Africa will be the continent with the greatest number of the world’s Christians, at more than 670 million” (Margaret Aymer, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, and David A. Sanchez, eds., The New

Testament: Fortress Commentary on the Bible [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014], pp. 5 – 6.) Belief, and wrestling with difficult passages of Scripture, drives African United Methodist Christians to prayer as they seek clarity on issues they cannot understand.

Second, church attendance in the 21st century United Methodist Church in Africa is not limited to  Sunday morning, but people gather during the week in Wesleyan class meetings. It is in these mid-week class meetings that people fellowship, study the Bible, teach others the spiritual value of tithing, and invite others to join the church. The loss of love and passion for God in North America and Europe is astounding to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The belief in the Holy Spirit, as well as healing and sensitivity to God’s call on one’s life, is actively present among African United Methodists. Africans are not just individuals, but they live in  “relationships of connectedness and communion with spiritual ancestors” (John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy [Kenya: Nairobi, 1969], p. 83).

Prayer meetings and fasting practices throughout the year are a common occurrence within the 21st century United Methodist Church in Africa.

It is intriguing to notice that most United Methodist preachers in North America preach mainly from the New Testament, but African United Methodist preachers preach from the Old Testament and find the New Testament as a fulfillment of the Old Testament narratives.

Undoubtedly, preaching in Africa is coined as prophetic in the sense that it is not academically oriented, but is a proclamation of the Gospel that moves one’s faith into existential living.

While Bible translation was taking place in Africa, hymns were also translated into the vernacular, and some African musicians came up with indigenous songs, a phenomenon common among people of African descent who were brought from Africa through slavery. The so-called “Negro Spirituals” are typical replicas of music in and around Africa.

Hence, UMC worship services are accompanied by vibrant music, whose purpose is to evoke spirituality and healing to the sick. Related to musical vibrancy is the phenomenon of revivals, and these platforms have been and are still avenues of church growth and evangelism in the United Methodist Church in Africa. Healing services are done almost every day in worship, and pastors are even trained to exorcise demons.

Faith healing of all sorts is done in the life of the church. Nature does not get in the way of God’s miracles, and thus there are numerous testimonies of people who were unable to bear children, but when prayed for by people gifted by the Holy Spirit, they were able to carry not just one baby, but twins, and at times triplets. I personally witnessed these miracles. My mother was a gifted and Holy-Spirit-filled woman. In her faith-healing experiences, I witnessed many healings of all kinds. These miraculous experiences are rare in North America, and even in Europe.

Now coming to the divisive challenges within the global United Methodist Church, it is safe to say that the United Methodist Church in Africa is not going to change its position on human sexuality. Part of it has to do with what missionaries taught when they came to Africa, but the larger and much more significant part is that African Christians have come to be independent interpreters of the Bible. They have become their own theologians. As I said before, African United Methodists should define themselves, and in the process, begin to attain a sense of spiritual integrity by celebrating the fact that Jesus Christ, Mary, and Joseph found hospitality among Africans in Egypt. Africa must celebrate its presence in both the Old and New Testaments, especially African ancestors of faith such as Moses’ wife (Numbers 12:1-9), and Zephaniah the African prophet (Zephaniah 1:1-2, 10). Africa must also celebrate the establishment and development of Africa University, built in Zimbabwe for the education and training of global leaders. Africa University is not just training clergy, but leaders who touch every sector of human life. The global United Methodist Church should tap into the wisdom of African Methodism, and Africa’s role in salvation history, and learn to revitalize 21st-century United Methodism in North America and Europe.

Conclusion!

Considering the above brief synopsis of the journey of the United Methodist Church in Africa, I submit that Africa has the obligation of sending missionaries to North America and Europe. Consequently, the Global North should be humble enough to receive and learn from their fellow Christians in Africa. Discipleship, evangelization, and mission work from the lens of the United Methodist Church in Africa must be welcomed and implemented in the Wesleyan traditions, of which North American and European membership is in steep decline. The stone

(Africa) that the builders rejected has become the head cornerstone, and this is the truth with which the global United Methodist Church must reckon.

Rev. Dr. Israel Kamudzandu is Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Saint Paul School of Theology, and an Elder in the UMC from Zimbabwe. He is currently a member of the Great Plains Conference.