Zambia Hunt

From the picturesque thatch-roofed villages to the bustling metropolises, Africa is a study in contrast. On this continent, the number one killer is still mosquito-borne malaria, yet it is also the place where the first heart transplant was successfully carried out. Twenty-first-century Africa is dominated by Islam in the north and Christianity across the central and southern regions, yet African Traditional Religion remains the primary theological grid.

Challenge of Urbanization:

Robert Moffat once told young David Livingstone, “In the north, I have seen in the morning sun the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been.”  That statement lit a fire in Livingstone. He would spend most of his adult life pushing across the southern and central regions of Africa with the gospel of Christ.  In Livingstone’s Africa of the 1800s, there were a few cities in the coastal areas, but the majority of Africans lived in rural village settings.

Not so today. Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing continent in the world, and this rapid urbanization is producing great challenges to the social and cultural fabric of African society. Though traditional village life remains a large segment of African society, it is steadily declining as people move from villages to towns and cities at a rate of 3.5% per year.

Over one-third of sub-Saharan Africans currently live in urban areas, and in the next thirty years, that figure may swell to over half the continent’s population.  The United Nations Population Fund projects that sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population will double between 2000 and 2030.  Of these people, the bulk of African urban dwellers will reside in cities with a population of 200,000 or less.

The face of Africa is changing before our very eyes!  With urbanization comes the challenge of reaching new and rapidly growing cities with the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

Urban challenges for the African church planter:  

First, Africans in urban settings quickly develop an appetite for material things.  Second is the disintegration of the traditional African family structure.  Urban pressures on the traditional African family are immense.  Instead of focusing on family relationships the focus shifts to the demands of a job and the family unit begins to break up, traditional family connections and responsibilities start to disintegrate.  Third, with urbanization comes exposure to education, philosophies, and ideas from the Western world.  Urbanized Africans increasingly embrace a plurality of ideas relating to God. These ideas are often syncretized in one way or another with African Traditional Religious beliefs.  Finally, over time, urban communities buy into the idea that everything is relative, that there is no absolute truth. 

The challenge of strengthening weak existing churches:

Modern missiologists claim that Africa has the fastest-growing church in the world.  Yet a careful look at that claim causes great concern.

Consider the findings of a recent study done among 250 church plants with the Baptist Union in South Africa: (Launching Church Strengthening Movements in Africa, Tim Cantrell, EMQ, October 2006)

1. Over one-third of these churches are pastored by “remote control,” meaning the pastor does not stay locally with their church but either travels there on Sundays/weekends or only visits two Sundays or less per month.

2. Less than half of the pastors believe that preaching verse-by-verse through God’s word is the best food for their flock. Over half say they would instead choose what to preach along more subjective guidelines or just preach evangelistically.

3. Only one-third of the pastors say they are sure the majority of congregants have a good understanding of the gospel. 

4. Over half of these churches still lack a capable pastor or leader who has received or is receiving adequate training (even if it is non-formal).

Sadly, this is not an isolated problem in South Africa. A leader in one of the older evangelical missions in Zambia shared with me that their denomination has 700 churches across Zambia, but only 33 of those churches have pastors (21%). Our movement has far too often failed to produce reproducing indigenous African churches. It could be that the legacy of independent missions in Africa will be church plants that are dependent, unproductive, and slowly dying off.

In his book, The Theological Task of the Church in Africa, African theologian Tite Tienou writes, “Africa has the fastest growing Church in the world; it may also have the fastest declining Church! Numerical growth far outpaces spiritual depth and maturity in African Christianity”.  Tienou later wrote, “I consider the deepening and the nourishing of the faith of those who identify themselves as Christians [in Africa] to be of the utmost urgency.” (Tienou, Tite. 1998. “The Theological Task of the Church in Africa. Issues in African Christian Theology.  Nairobi, Kenya: East Africa Educational Publishers Ltd.   Quoted in “Launching Church Strengthening Movements in Africa”, Tim Cantrell, EMQ October 2006.)

What is the answer?

One theory for developing indigenous solid churches in Africa is for the American church to financially support African missionary pastors for a minimal amount each month. The popular line of reasoning is that this will allow the gospel to be preached and churches to be established across Africa.  The sad reality is that many of these churches join the ranks of the theologically weak that already abundantly exist on the continent.

In the short term, the gospel may be preached, and a church may be established, but most of these churches become “terminal churches” (Heb 5:12).  Their congregations never own the ministry; the people become spectators instead of participants.  All of the teaching and discipleship is left up to the missionary pastor.  New converts are not expected to “teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2).  One church planter in Africa observed, “These churches are like seedless grapes – delightful to taste but without reproductive power. They are neutered churches, delightful and productive in their own immediate context but without the ability to be reproductive.” (VanRheenan) 

Training Leaders for the Task

If the African church is to take up the mantle of planting reproducing churches in the cities, towns, and villages across Africa, a generation of theologically trained African leaders must be prepared for the task. “There is an increasing need, especially as the process of urbanization continues and standards of education rise, for Christian ministers to exercise in the teeming cities of the developing world a systematic expository preaching ministry, ‘to proclaim  the Word . . . with all teaching.’” (Stott, John. “Guard the Gospel:  The Message of II Timothy,” p. 109.)

The training needed to prepare the next generation of African leaders must take three forms:  Formal, Non-formal, and Informal.  Formal training takes place in a structured classroom setting.  Non-formal training is deliberately organized to educate through experience.  Informal training uses life activities as the basis for training in mentoring relationships.  Among the rural people of Africa, most training is done through non-formal and informal methods.  Although formal training is provided, limited access to books and materials, along with poor educational backgrounds, pose barriers.

Our commitment to facilitating healthy reproducing churches must include strengthening existing churches by providing continuing training for the current generation of pastors leading these churches. 

Second, we must commit to training the next generation of African pastors and missionaries by providing a rich, word-saturated classroom experience with real-time ministry opportunities in the context of mentoring relationships.  This is the educational and ministry goal of Central Africa Baptist University.  Our burden is to prepare men for ministry across Africa who have a biblical philosophy of pastoral ministry and New Testament passion for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.  We desire to train men who will plant “germinal” churches across Africa – churches that will become reproducing fellowships of believers.

Africa still needs missionaries who will pioneer and take the gospel to unreached areas, many of which exist in the lower portion of the 10/40 window that runs through North Africa. But the long-term answer to Africa’s spiritual need is African missionary church-planters who have been equipped for the task, sent by African churches that sacrifice to carry the gospel to these needy regions.  

To see truly indigenous reproducing churches across Africa, we must commit to the theological training of God-called African leaders.