During the DTS outreach, I started having a desire to reach out to people who struggled with addictions in their lives. I referred to them as people who were like me, hurting on the inside. My plan was to start a rehabilitation centre for addicts in Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa, straight after my DTS. I started sharing with a few YWAM friends and my pastor who were very supportive but all felt that I was not yet ready for the ministry. After the DTS, I went and worked with my church as an outreach worker for a year and that time was a time of personal growth and mentorship.
My heart for reaching out to addicts kept on growing as I discovered more about God’s heart for people. Through relationships and interactions with fellow Christians, and as time went by my dream to reach others suffering under the bondage of addictions was becoming clearer.
After working with my church for some time, I moved and starting working with a community development organization. I served as a general worker, putting my hands where there was needed. After a year and a half of working with this organization, I was then offered to work as the Programs Director of the organization. This was a great offer as it was going to make me to become famous and influential in society, however, this was also the day that I go my confirmation from God that He wanted me to leave my job and go to Bulawayo for something that He was to show me there. Three months prior to this day, I started sensing that God wanted me to go to Bulawayo. When I asked Him why, He never replied. I accepted the Bulawayo trip.
I have been working full time as a missionary with YWAM since December 2006. I have had groups of people praying for me from the church that I was going. However, that church has since closed and people have just separated and joined other churches. At that church, I had had some conversations with some of the elders of the church about financial support but they did not understand why any person who is not an orphan or widow should be supported financially by a church. It was viewed as laziness. However, my pastor was supportive of the idea of missionaries being supported by church but unfortunately; he had had some bad experiences with other missionaries working. He had witnessed some of the local missionaries who would go on “missions”, only to live on a YWAM centre but not serve in any particular ministry. He viewed that as laziness and so he was not supportive of the idea of me being on staff in YWAM.
As a missionary; I am responsible for raising my own financial support as I serve on the field. I do not have any financial support from the church. So how do I Live? Once in a while I do receive donations from people, (mostly from people that I have never met). People just hear of me and decide to send some support. Sadly, I have to admit that: 99.9% of that is from my western friends but, I am glad to say I have had one Zimbabwean friend sowing a seed in the ministry that I am doing.
To raise support, I write and send newsletters to generally everyone in my email address box (very boring) because it is like spamming. I have recently started running Events of Facebook in a bid to raise support. It has not been as I expected but I did manage to raise a few funds through this. God has been so faithful, through my time with YWAM. I have managed to get to places where I felt led by God, I have never starved or become stranded while on the mission field. The challenges have helped me to be more appreciative of what I have. I have also learnt to give, learnt to be innovative and to use tools like Facebook and YouTube to raise funds.
The challenges are mainly of raising a support team that will pray regularly for me while on the mission field; plus also getting financial support from church or individuals. At times, I have lost focus on the field because of financial crises. As a married person, I think it is 4 times more difficult if one does not have prayer and financial support from the church. Now I cannot just walk the 25 km to go and preach (because I do not have bus fare!) Now I cannot just go to bed without thinking of the next day’s breakfast! My experiences with African missionaries is that: We have a lot of men and women called by the Lord to full time missions but the world view of the African church (not all) is that missionaries are from Europe, Canada, the US and Australia. So, financial and prayer support for the African missionary is very minimal, it is more of an afterthought.
All the easy places have been taken. Only the hard places are left. The African missionary now either goes to the already evangelized places and they have to either disciple or rehabilitate the individual, community and nation, or they go to where the gospel is illegal, and risk being shot at without a bulletproof vest. This needs more support from the church. [xvii]
Chapter 7
Why it’s Africa’s Time
Romans 15:17-22 (ESV)
17 In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. 18 For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience—by word and deed, 19 by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God—so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; 20 and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, 21 but as it is written, "Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand."
A lot of the people groups that are still to be reached are very similar in culture to the African Culture. We have people groups in Asia that practice ancestral worship, believing in spirits of the deceased ancestors are alive, and who are in need of being fed and cared for. Offerings are made to appease the ancestors. Sacrifices are made at significant events such as engagements, marriages, graduations, etc. Witchdoctors help to contact the spirits of the deceased for the living.
We have peoples groups that live in villages, whose houses are made of mud and sticks that are plastered together with cow dung and then whitewashed. These small huts have thatched roofs, dirt floors and home-made furniture. Almost all of the villagers are involved in agriculture. The family structure is very strong. Important decisions are made by the family.
These two descriptions can be of any people groups in Africa, and also fit the following two people groups: The Haka of China, and The Bhojpuri of India. We have strong African Christian believers who have these backgrounds, and God wants to use them to reach out to these people groups. African missionaries going to work in places like these will have a quicker understanding of the culture. The African church has reached maturity, and it is high time it provides culturally qualified missionaries to reach those in the 10/40 window. African Christians understand the spiritual world, and have walked through syncretism. We know how to draw from our cultures the things that are Godly and the things that are not. Most of the people groups that are still to be reached are bound in worship of spirits. They need people who will be able to show them that becoming Christians does not mean forsaking their culture, but rather redeeming those cultural aspects that are Godly, in order to worship God.
Furthermore, political situations in today’s world make some unreached locations off-limits for missionaries from Western countries; though there are also situations that hinder African from going into these areas (which I will talk about later).
As Africans we are better prepared culturally and spiritually to reach the remaining unreached people groups (UPGs) than those in the West. The cultural similarities that exist between the remaining UPGs and the African peoples accentuate the fact that Africans need to play a leading role in reaching the remaining UPGs.
Missions in the 21st Century
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"The command has been to "go," but we have stayed - in body, gifts, prayer and I influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth…
But 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland."
- Robert Savage
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The churches in Africa have grown faster during the last twenty years than ever before. Out of the one plus billion people who live in Africa, about 397 million are Christian believer
s. The growth of the Majority World Church, and its vitality, has transformed it into a new missionary force. For example, The Nigeria Evangelical Mission Association (NEMA), founded in 1982, is formed by 90 missionary agencies and denominations and has more than 3,800 missionaries in 38 countries.
The picture of the 21st Century missionary is changing. We are seeing a number of missionaries coming from Latin America, Asia and Africa. Africa is not just receiving, missionaries now, but we are seeing a trend where African is also becoming a sending force; though with great difficulties and challenges.
In 1972 there were at least 203 third world missionary societies sending out as estimated 3,404 missionaries. By 1980 there were at least 368 third world missionary societies sending out an estimated 13, 000. [xviii]
The African Christian missionary force -Distribution of African Missionaries
A new missionary consciousness and zeal for missionary work among the Christian Churches, over the last two decades of the twentieth century, has led to an enormous increase in the number of missionaries sent out by churches worldwide. It is impossible to accurately say of the total number of new African Missionaries. New local agencies are rapidly coming emerging, and many are not affiliated to any regular networks. Great attempts have nonetheless been made to extract accurate information. African leaders have often complained of inaccuracies in research, yet few have participated in helping with accurate 'on-the-ground-info'. Because emerging movements tend to be more diverse, more decentralized, and less well monitored - accurate numbers are simply not available, and statistics can only be compiled on a very limited scale.
Most of the missionaries from Africa will work in their own countries although they will work under other cultural groups or tribes. In addition, a small percentage will work overseas, under various missionary organisations. Most missionary initiatives of the Church in Africa are “mission agency Driven” - in most cases generating unnecessary tension between mission agencies and denominations/local churches. These mission agencies strongly reflect the influence of western models and patterns of missions. The popularity of the unbalanced “Prosperity Gospel” is, to a great extent, undermining the initiatives by the Church in Africa to send and support her own missionaries. The majority of those who should go (and who should send) have misplaced their priorities and values, exchanging eternity for the temporary gains.
The absence of national mission movements in many countries - especially those with higher potential labour-force for missions - has impeded the mobilization and envisioning process in such countries. Additionally, the obvious difference between the strength of the church in English-speaking countries, compared with their counterparts in the French-speaking countries, is another militating factor in the effort to galvanize the Church in Africa for involvement in missions. As a result of nationalization and indigenization policies of many African nations following independence, Western missions turned over the leadership of denominations to Africans, with little or no envisioning/empowerment for involvement in missions. Maintenance of existing institutions, and structures with limited resources and paternalistic relationships, encouraged continuing dependency on the West; thereby stifling local initiatives.
The current missionary zeal that is emanating from Africa is more or less borne out of self-discovery and self-definition of the nature and the mission of the Church in Africa. There has been a determination to overcome all the limitations and labels imposed upon her, and become a legitimate part of the Body of Christ - as well as fulfil her mandate by God.
By the mid-1990s, non-Western churches were beginning to achieve some degree of success in their missionary efforts, even though they were largely using non-professional missionaries. Many African churches have been evangelizing among westerners and migrants since mid-1980s. While migration continued to provide missionary mobilization, African churches were able to realize their strength within the Christian world; and their missionary activities took on a global perspective! In this way, they moved from the periphery to the centre that had previously been dominated by Western missions.
Phases of Mission’s Evolution in Africa:
In the past, Africans were working as apprentices with limited objectives - and were under western Missionaries as agents, assistants, helpers, etc., (just to carry out pressing tasks, and not necessarily for the purpose of properly integrating them to the team, long-term). This has been the trend we have mostly seen throughout the history of African missions. At the present time, however, we are seeing a rise in organizations that are focusing on training local missionaries, and preparing them for the mission field.
Trends of Missions in Africa:
Some encouraging trends that we are beginning to see, which characterise the mission initiatives and models in and from Africa, are as follows: Whereas formerly the African missions movement were spearheaded and driven by local mission agencies, now denominations and local churches are becoming more aware and involved in missions; thereby taking up their rightful place in the Great Commission, and sending missionaries.
Missions sending and going, in and from Africa, is a very spontaneous affair! Many of those who go, do so when (and as) the Holy Spirit leads them. Consequently, the majority of those who go are not sent, or supported, by any specific group, church or agency in the traditional sense of sending. However, the majority of these missionaries have enjoyed very successful ministries. Additionally, some denominations do not adhere to the conventional sending structures, nor do their policies fit into what is considered as the code of best practice in member-care delivery. Yet they have a steady flow of well-motivated volunteer missionaries, spread across the globe, and are successfully planting churches - first among their own people in the Diaspora, and among the native hosts. Mission agencies, denominations and local Churches involved in missions in Africa are demonstrating a lot of initiatives in defining, structuring and carrying out missions from the African Church perspective. This has been very much evident in the creative ways denominations and mission agencies in Africa defined and determined the target groups they desired to reach, and the best way to reach them – as well as the types and forms of support to raise (and how to raise them); and the type and duration of the training they were to give to their missionaries, in order to accomplish the set goals. This has continued to characterize most of the efforts of the sending churches and mission agencies in Africa today.
Some western missions and global networks are restructuring and repositioning themselves to empower, encourage and support the denominations they have established in Africa; to take initiatives in missions and assuming responsibility for the remaining task of reaching the unreached in their countries and beyond. In many cases, some of Western Missions now define their involvement and role in African missions in terms of how such a role will enhance and strengthen the Church in Africa, in order that she might fulfil her part of the mandate. In fact, the closure of some Arab countries to western missionaries, and the acceptance and success of African and Asian missionaries working among Arabs, has proved to be significant in this process of reverse missions.
Bible translation in Africa
With the decreasing of the expatriate workforce in Africa for Bible translation, there is a recognizably new workforce coming from the student community in Africa.
Increased communication and relationships with student ministries across the continent helps build student awareness of the opportunities for serving in Bible translation. The national churches are generally not aware of Bible translation and related activities. This is a key opportunity for engagement among African Wycliffe organizations and the local and national churches. Their desire is to see the Church in Africa including Bible translation as core to its ministry of evangelism, church planting, and discipleship and compassionate service. [xix]
Tent-making
Tent-making is a growing expression of missions in the contemporary world. It is a way in which members of the body of Christ can use their pro
fessional gifts as a means of taking the gospel to those who otherwise would not hear the Good News. The Lausanne II, 1989 Congress held in Manila defined tent-making as follows: Tentmakers are… ‘Believers in all people groups who have a secular identity and who in response to God’s call, proclaim Christ cross-culturally. Tentmakers witness with their whole lives and their jobs are integral to their work for the Kingdom of God.’ In essence, tent-making in cross cultural mission is undertaken by Christians whose presence in another culture is secured by their workplace identity, and whose intention is to act to share the gospel in that setting. Many, but not all, are self-supporting through their occupations or business activities. Most, but not all, operate within restricted access countries; especially those in the least evangelized world. Tentmakers may be engaged in business activities, salaried employment, aid and development work, tertiary studies and consultancies. Their work and study are important in their own right and of themselves are expressions of Christian values. Some are able to access areas where traditional missions may no longer work. Others work in partnership with existing missions, and the aim is to provide a stronger presence and witness by working together.
The current world situation means that tent-making has become an essential strategy for African missionaries - where there is lack of finances to send them, and restrictions of visas. Tent-making, with its greater flexibility and possibility of financial independence, provides great opportunities for missions in the 21st century.
Globalisation
The challenges of the post-Christian West: religious pluralism as well as religious intolerance, urbanisation, refugees and immigration, and the continuing presence of unreached people groups, significantly impact the church’s ability to undertake missions.
The Whisper That Echoes Through Africa Page 7