God's Design for the Church (Foreword by Glenn Lyons) (eBook)

Introduction

If you are wondering, as you pick up this book, why we should have yet another book on the church when many have already been written, I do not blame you. I was of the same mind when the idea for this writing project came up. Here is the story: I was approached to comment on the distribution across Africa of a very good book on the church. I had read it long before and would recommend it to anyone even today. However, the more I thought about this distribution project, the more I realized that the book would not meet the needs of the church at a practical level on the continent. I commented more or less as follows:

The book flies at 10,000 feet above sea level. It gives us the general principles that ought to guide us in the life of the church. However, what the church here desperately needs is someone to take us through the African jungle by the hand, showing us trees and animals to be wary of if we are going to stay the course.

In other words, the greatest need was for a book that deals with some of the major issues that are hindering the church in Africa from being what God designed it to be.

Let me illustrate it this way. A friend recently told me the story of a man who was tired of people using a footpath along the perimeter wall around his house and urinating on a certain section of his wall. He put up a sign that said, “This is not a toilet. Please do not urinate here.” This did not stop the people from urinating there. He changed the sign to read, “Anyone found urinating here will be prosecuted.” Alas, the vice continued unabated. Finally, he put up a sign that read, “Please urinate here. We need human urine for some rituals.” He said that the vice not only stopped but the footpath was completely abandoned!

I am sure that, for many Western minds, the appeal to simple common sense (“This is not a toilet”) or the appeal to the law (“You will be prosecuted”) would have sufficed to arrest this vice. If it did not, certainly the appeal to superstition (such as witchcraft) would have also failed. Yet, to the African mind, there is something more powerful than common sense and the state—it is witchcraft. This belief is what did the trick in the story I have narrated. It is important for an author to recognize this when writing for an African audience. The world of the spirits is so real and near that it needs to be addressed in order to produce authentic Christian practice.

While I do not agree that Christianity in Africa must be different from Christianity in the East or West, I recognize the need for the application of Christian truth to vices that are peculiarly African. To my mind, these two approaches are different. The first tries to create a divide that the Bible knows nothing about and would not even want to encourage. For instance, it wants us to deliberately and intentionally worship differently from our brethren in the West, many of whom live among us in our cosmopolitan cities. This self-conscious effort is foreign to New Testament Christianity, which tries to bring all of us into one body—“. . . Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). The second, which this book is about, tries to apply biblical principles to what is obtaining in Africa so that we are drawn back to belief and practice that follows God’s design for the church. I am not trying to make the Bible more African; I am trying to get the church in Africa to be more biblical.

Having said all that, there is a lot that is happening in the African church that is very positive and should be encouraged. There is a lot of good that the church on other continents will do well to imitate. Here are a few of these areas.

The church in Africa is growing by leaps and bounds. This is certainly a matter to thank God for, especially when one compares this to what is happening in the church in the West. It is disheartening to any Christian who goes from Africa to, say, Europe, and finds church buildings that have been turned into libraries, museums, restaurants, and bars. It is equally sad to see so many churches with mainly elderly people tottering to their graves and almost all the pews empty. Where are the people? Where are the young people? How can such churches survive? It is so refreshing to return to Africa and find churches meeting in every conceivable place as new churches sprout up almost every week. It is said that the number of Christians in Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century was about 9 million and that by the end of the twentieth century it was about 380 million. Church structures cannot cope with this kind of growth. So, churches are simply meeting in classrooms, in grass-thatched makeshift structures, and under trees—and yet they are still growing! It is also refreshing to see in attendance young parents with their toddlers, teenagers and young adults, all the way to octogenarians. It speaks well for the future of the church in Africa.

The church in Africa is full of zeal, though sometimes this zeal lacks knowledge (Rom. 10:2). This zeal is seen in evangelistic fervor. Anyone with eyes to see cannot miss this, and it is the explanation behind the quantum leap in growth. African society generally is very open to the Christian message, though openness to listening is not the same thing as openness to responding to the message. If they know that you are a pastor who has come to visit their home, most parents will call everyone in the home to come and listen to you. The door of opportunity is still wide open. Individuals whose knowledge of the Bible is still at kindergarten level will soon be found leading a church in a village. Some of them do not even have a full Bible. Yet they are preaching wherever they find ears that are willing to listen. You will find lay preachers in streets and on buses and trains. Personal witnessing takes place in schools, colleges, and universities. There is a desperate need for more training in order to reduce the wildfires being produced by this zeal where knowledge is lacking. The normal “Bible College” structures used in the Western world to train future leaders and pastors cannot cope with this zeal and growth. Other forms need to be brought in that would function more like the combine harvester does on huge commercial farms. All such “problems” aside, however, the church in Africa is refreshingly zealous.

The church in Africa is communal and has respect for authority. This is something that comes largely from African culture, and it is commendable. Later in the book I speak about the ubuntu phenomenon, which captures something of the tendency by the African people to prize human relations more than anything else. This is the fountain out of which relationships in the church tend to run deep and which also means that the elderly and those in positions of leadership are respected. Pastors living within certain distances of each other will have pastor “fraternals,” where they not only meet to listen to each other teach but also share their common lives as pastors and meet each other’s needs. They develop deep relationships in those groupings, and many of these are beyond immediate denominational circles. The “one another” imperatives of Scripture are already in practice in the culture before they are augmented with biblical teaching. People have a greater sense of belonging to churches than they normally do in the West. If there were to be a fault, perhaps it would be that people do not question the actions of their leaders as much as they ought to because of their respect for authority. Some biblical balance may be necessary.

The church in Africa is respected by the community and the state because it often provides for the basic needs of society. In my own country of Zambia, the church provides 60 percent of the health facilities of the entire nation. The church also runs the best schools in the country, in terms of both the physical structures and the holistic development of the students. Even when there has been need for disaster relief, the church has tended to be the vehicle chosen by donors to deliver help at the grassroots level. This has helped the nations of Africa that are on the brink of abject poverty to appreciate the church and to still have hope for the younger generation. The love shown by the church has won the ears of community and state leaders. Therefore, when church leaders express concern about an important matter in society, local and national leaders tend to listen. This means that the church is able to speak into the moral issues of the day and gain a hearing. This is one reason why the leaders of African nations have been able to withstand the pressure from the West to redefine human sexuality and marriage to suit those with a homosexual agenda. This is despite the fact that some Western countries are tying their aid to an acceptance of this agenda. Although some church leaders have abused the listening ear of state leaders for their own personal gain, this relationship still augurs well for the ambience that enables the church to do its evangelistic work. What was true in the Western world some two hundred years ago is currently still true on the African continent.

So, there is a lot to be said for the health and prosperity of the church in Africa. As the reader begins to make progress in reading this book and finds some areas of grave concern being addressed, these positive characteristics of African Christianity should not be forgotten. You would have to be of a very pessimistic spirit to feel discouraged about what God is doing on the continent.

This book is written to give the biblical...