Louis BIRA sx
The Extraordinary Missionary Month, celebrated in October 2019 to mark the centenary of the encyclical Maximum Illud, was an opportunity to make a check-up of the situation of evangelization in Africa: its expansion, its challenges and the new chances of its revival. Regarding the expansion of the Christian mission in Africa, the statistics are unanimous: in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, the number of Christians continues to increase[1]. While traditional Catholicism and Protestantism were stagnant, Pentecostalism[2] was not. It spreads quickly and with obvious success.
However, the scale of the Christian fact on the continent must not mask out the resistance it faces; or even its rejection. Thus, it would be mistaken to believe that African Christianity has only a prosperous future. The aim of the following lines is to identify some of the challenges that the first proclamation of the Gospel faces today. Here, I just list two of them: new missionary agents and a mission that holds accountable[3].
1. The challenge of new missionary agents
The theme of the Extraordinary Missionary Month: "Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on a Mission in the World" highlighted the link between the sacrament of baptism and the missionary mandate. Gradually, all the baptized realized that their baptism gave them the right and duty to be missionaries, not only by entering religious institutes dedicated to the mission, or by supporting them through prayer and resources, but also through their own commitment in movements, parishes, in the family, as at the heart of their professional activity[4].
Indeed, thanks to the sacrament of baptism, all Christians are called and sent. This mission which needs the support of all is not without creating uneasiness among the laity as well as among some missionaries by profession. If each baptized is missionary, then what is the need of missionary charism? Is it not a way for ‘professional missionaries’ to absolve themselves of their responsibility on the laity? These questions, often heard among lay people and some religious, indicate that the essence of the Christian mission has often been skewed because of its strong attachment to religious missionaries, with the result: the exclusion of lay people.
In the process of the first proclamation of the Gospel, we can speak about a true "missionary clericalism": religious missionaries considering themselves as "Bosses" of the mission and the rest of God's people, being considered as clients of this mission. Yet the mission that holds the sacrament of baptism as its foundation, to be evangelical, is called upon to consider missionary charism as stimulus of the missionary charism of all the baptized. To borrow the language of football, a missionary cleric is like a "coach." And the rest of God's people are a football "team." The failure of the team is the failure of the coach; bearing in mind that a coach does not exist without a team.
Therefore, from the perspective of the pastoral and missionary conversion of the whole Church, so cherished by Pope Francis[5], we hold from the truth of the Gospel that it is baptism that makes every Christian a missionary-disciple; before being a matter of religious vows of mission or priestly ordination. If missionary charism is meaningful, it is because it serves the baptized as an attractive model and not as a specialized service. The advent of new mission agents then signifies the missionary responsibility of all those men and women present in parishes and other places of the proposal of faith.
In this process, a mark of honor is to be reserved for women according to the proposal already made by Pope Francis[6]. For they are often unfairly sidelined in the service of evangelization because of African traditions that are too patriarchal. Encouraging and supporting the creation of mixed teams where lay, religious and diocesan priests work together for the service of missionary animation in their churches is already moving towards the advent of new missionary agents that Africa so desperately needs today.
2. The challenge of a mission that empowers
The infantilization of the laity is not the only misdeed of the Christian mission tinged with religious clericalism. In the recent past, evangelization has focused too much on the search for salvation without paying attention to the material goods the Church needs for this salvation. The result, according to father Eloi Messi Metogo, is that one of the major problems of the africanization of Christianity is the lack of a material basis[7]. So in order to live, the missionaries had to continually resort to the generosity of the West.
Seeking salvation through the generosity of others, the evangelized of Africa found themselves in a comfortable position of eternal assisted people. This made Eboussi Boulaga saying that their faith in Christ was suspicious. For the goods of the mission were the expression of the faith of others and therefore, for him, the Africans believed by proxy[8]. The conversion that this situation postulates is the transition from the status of the assisted to the status of those responsible for the search for salvation and means for the mission.
Raising the challenge of a responsible mission implies a radical change in the mindset of both evangelizers and the evangelized. Above all, it is a question of convincing ourselves that there is no shortage of material resources for the mission in Africa. What is lacking is the exploration of the African pathways of providence. Fortunately, unintentionally, the decline of Western missionary personnel and the economic crisis affecting traditional donors are forcing the work of evangelization to get a support from African wells. The time is over when to build a church, Christians were waiting for a helping hand of elsewhere.
That does not mean the end of collaboration among sisters-churches. No. It is just to be aware that Christians from Africa are becoming more and more keen of their responsibility for the mission and the work of the mission. This awareness is manifested, for example, by their mobilization to raise funds for Mission Sunday. And in many churches, the results are very encouraging. A case to our knowledge that is worthy of praise is the situation of the Archdiocese of Bukavu/DRCongo where parishes held by diocesan priests manage to mobilize a good amount of money for this occasion. For example, for the Mission Sunday in 2019, the Cathedral, Cahi, Mater Dei and Kadutu parishes contributed US$ 39.730. Oddly enough, parishes like Mbobero, Panzi, Nguba, Birava and Cimpunda, all served by religious congregations, made only US$ 2.413!
Raising the challenge of a responsible mission also involves a change in the lifestyle of religious missionaries and priests. The overly expensive way of life inherited from mission pioneers no longer holds. At the end of the day, it has become scandalous and a real counter-witness. Therefore, empowering lay people means requiring evangelizers to be accountable for their way of life by offering them a proportionate allowance to the means of the community. A diocesan or bourgeois missionary clergy can no longer be tolerated, living off the sweat of the lay faithful who are already exhausted by their own economic and financial problems. Missionary conversion for religious and clerics means among other things: sober life, submission to the common law of work, rational and transparent management, fructifying of the mission's assets...
In short, self-reliance of the mission means that the missionary also learns to take care of himself, to live from the fruit of the work of his hands, in the manner of the apostle Paul who could proudly say, "You know well yourself: the hands here have provided for my needs and those of my companions" (Acts 20:34).
There are other challenges the proclamation of the Gospel is facing in Africa. Nevertheless, our belief is that addressing the two challenges identified above may bring a fresh air in the churches of Africa where all baptized are expected to become responsible missionary disciples.
[1]In fact, according to a study conducted by an American research center, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, looking at the number of Christians in the world in 2012, it appears that the number of Christians is increasing all over the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa because of Pentecostalism. See "Global Christianity. A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population", in www.PewResearchCenter.org.5/6/2020
[2] Pentecostalism is part of the long tradition of the many internal reforms of Anglo-American Protestantism. Born in Los Angeles at the beginning of the last century, it is an offshoot of the American Holiness Movement, itself the result of a movement of renewal that emerged within the Methodist tradition in the second half of the 19th century. See LUDOVIC LADO, "Les enjeux du pentecôtisme africain" in Etudes (Tome 409), 7-8/2008, p. 61.
[3] This article is part of a text that I published in the Cahiers of the African Studies Centre, n. 14 (6/2020), pp. 27-39.
[4] MARIE-HELENE ROBERT, “Evangéliser ‘ de proche en proche’ en temps d’incertitude : la mission à la portée de tout disciple”, in Spiritus, n°235/Juin2019, p.189.
[5] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, n. 25.
[6] Pope Francis said: "There is still a need to expand the spaces for a more incisive female presence in the Church. Because "female genius is necessary in all expressions of social life; therefore, the presence of women in the labour sector must also be guaranteed" [72] and in the various places where important decisions are made, both in the Church and in social structures." Evangelii Gaudium, n. 123.
[7] ELOI MESSI METOGO, “30 ans après ‘La dé-mission’ de Fabien Eboussi Boulaga", in Spiritus, n°179(Juin2005), p. 241.
[8] FABIEN EBOUSSI BOULAGA, “Pour une catholicité africaine. Etapes et Organisation", dans Civilisation noire et Eglise catholique, Colloque d’Abidjan 12-17septembre 1977, Paris, Présence africaine, 1978, p. 347.
The Extraordinary Missionary Month, celebrated in October 2019 to mark the centenary of the encyclical Maximum Illud, was an opportunity to make a check-up of the situation of evangelization in Africa: its expansion, its challenges and the new chances of its revival. Regarding the expansion of the Christian mission in Africa, the statistics are unanimous: in Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa, the number of Christians continues to increase[1]. While traditional Catholicism and Protestantism were stagnant, Pentecostalism[2] was not. It spreads quickly and with obvious success.
However, the scale of the Christian fact on the continent must not mask out the resistance it faces; or even its rejection. Thus, it would be mistaken to believe that African Christianity has only a prosperous future. The aim of the following lines is to identify some of the challenges that the first proclamation of the Gospel faces today. Here, I just list two of them: new missionary agents and a mission that holds accountable[3].
1. The challenge of new missionary agents
The theme of the Extraordinary Missionary Month: "Baptized and Sent: The Church of Christ on a Mission in the World" highlighted the link between the sacrament of baptism and the missionary mandate. Gradually, all the baptized realized that their baptism gave them the right and duty to be missionaries, not only by entering religious institutes dedicated to the mission, or by supporting them through prayer and resources, but also through their own commitment in movements, parishes, in the family, as at the heart of their professional activity[4].
Indeed, thanks to the sacrament of baptism, all Christians are called and sent. This mission which needs the support of all is not without creating uneasiness among the laity as well as among some missionaries by profession. If each baptized is missionary, then what is the need of missionary charism? Is it not a way for ‘professional missionaries’ to absolve themselves of their responsibility on the laity? These questions, often heard among lay people and some religious, indicate that the essence of the Christian mission has often been skewed because of its strong attachment to religious missionaries, with the result: the exclusion of lay people.
In the process of the first proclamation of the Gospel, we can speak about a true "missionary clericalism": religious missionaries considering themselves as "Bosses" of the mission and the rest of God's people, being considered as clients of this mission. Yet the mission that holds the sacrament of baptism as its foundation, to be evangelical, is called upon to consider missionary charism as stimulus of the missionary charism of all the baptized. To borrow the language of football, a missionary cleric is like a "coach." And the rest of God's people are a football "team." The failure of the team is the failure of the coach; bearing in mind that a coach does not exist without a team.
Therefore, from the perspective of the pastoral and missionary conversion of the whole Church, so cherished by Pope Francis[5], we hold from the truth of the Gospel that it is baptism that makes every Christian a missionary-disciple; before being a matter of religious vows of mission or priestly ordination. If missionary charism is meaningful, it is because it serves the baptized as an attractive model and not as a specialized service. The advent of new mission agents then signifies the missionary responsibility of all those men and women present in parishes and other places of the proposal of faith.
In this process, a mark of honor is to be reserved for women according to the proposal already made by Pope Francis[6]. For they are often unfairly sidelined in the service of evangelization because of African traditions that are too patriarchal. Encouraging and supporting the creation of mixed teams where lay, religious and diocesan priests work together for the service of missionary animation in their churches is already moving towards the advent of new missionary agents that Africa so desperately needs today.
2. The challenge of a mission that empowers
The infantilization of the laity is not the only misdeed of the Christian mission tinged with religious clericalism. In the recent past, evangelization has focused too much on the search for salvation without paying attention to the material goods the Church needs for this salvation. The result, according to father Eloi Messi Metogo, is that one of the major problems of the africanization of Christianity is the lack of a material basis[7]. So in order to live, the missionaries had to continually resort to the generosity of the West.
Seeking salvation through the generosity of others, the evangelized of Africa found themselves in a comfortable position of eternal assisted people. This made Eboussi Boulaga saying that their faith in Christ was suspicious. For the goods of the mission were the expression of the faith of others and therefore, for him, the Africans believed by proxy[8]. The conversion that this situation postulates is the transition from the status of the assisted to the status of those responsible for the search for salvation and means for the mission.
Raising the challenge of a responsible mission implies a radical change in the mindset of both evangelizers and the evangelized. Above all, it is a question of convincing ourselves that there is no shortage of material resources for the mission in Africa. What is lacking is the exploration of the African pathways of providence. Fortunately, unintentionally, the decline of Western missionary personnel and the economic crisis affecting traditional donors are forcing the work of evangelization to get a support from African wells. The time is over when to build a church, Christians were waiting for a helping hand of elsewhere.
That does not mean the end of collaboration among sisters-churches. No. It is just to be aware that Christians from Africa are becoming more and more keen of their responsibility for the mission and the work of the mission. This awareness is manifested, for example, by their mobilization to raise funds for Mission Sunday. And in many churches, the results are very encouraging. A case to our knowledge that is worthy of praise is the situation of the Archdiocese of Bukavu/DRCongo where parishes held by diocesan priests manage to mobilize a good amount of money for this occasion. For example, for the Mission Sunday in 2019, the Cathedral, Cahi, Mater Dei and Kadutu parishes contributed US$ 39.730. Oddly enough, parishes like Mbobero, Panzi, Nguba, Birava and Cimpunda, all served by religious congregations, made only US$ 2.413!
Raising the challenge of a responsible mission also involves a change in the lifestyle of religious missionaries and priests. The overly expensive way of life inherited from mission pioneers no longer holds. At the end of the day, it has become scandalous and a real counter-witness. Therefore, empowering lay people means requiring evangelizers to be accountable for their way of life by offering them a proportionate allowance to the means of the community. A diocesan or bourgeois missionary clergy can no longer be tolerated, living off the sweat of the lay faithful who are already exhausted by their own economic and financial problems. Missionary conversion for religious and clerics means among other things: sober life, submission to the common law of work, rational and transparent management, fructifying of the mission's assets...
In short, self-reliance of the mission means that the missionary also learns to take care of himself, to live from the fruit of the work of his hands, in the manner of the apostle Paul who could proudly say, "You know well yourself: the hands here have provided for my needs and those of my companions" (Acts 20:34).
There are other challenges the proclamation of the Gospel is facing in Africa. Nevertheless, our belief is that addressing the two challenges identified above may bring a fresh air in the churches of Africa where all baptized are expected to become responsible missionary disciples.
[1]In fact, according to a study conducted by an American research center, The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, looking at the number of Christians in the world in 2012, it appears that the number of Christians is increasing all over the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa because of Pentecostalism. See "Global Christianity. A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population", in www.PewResearchCenter.org.5/6/2020
[2] Pentecostalism is part of the long tradition of the many internal reforms of Anglo-American Protestantism. Born in Los Angeles at the beginning of the last century, it is an offshoot of the American Holiness Movement, itself the result of a movement of renewal that emerged within the Methodist tradition in the second half of the 19th century. See LUDOVIC LADO, "Les enjeux du pentecôtisme africain" in Etudes (Tome 409), 7-8/2008, p. 61.
[3] This article is part of a text that I published in the Cahiers of the African Studies Centre, n. 14 (6/2020), pp. 27-39.
[4] MARIE-HELENE ROBERT, “Evangéliser ‘ de proche en proche’ en temps d’incertitude : la mission à la portée de tout disciple”, in Spiritus, n°235/Juin2019, p.189.
[5] Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, n. 25.
[6] Pope Francis said: "There is still a need to expand the spaces for a more incisive female presence in the Church. Because "female genius is necessary in all expressions of social life; therefore, the presence of women in the labour sector must also be guaranteed" [72] and in the various places where important decisions are made, both in the Church and in social structures." Evangelii Gaudium, n. 123.
[7] ELOI MESSI METOGO, “30 ans après ‘La dé-mission’ de Fabien Eboussi Boulaga", in Spiritus, n°179(Juin2005), p. 241.
[8] FABIEN EBOUSSI BOULAGA, “Pour une catholicité africaine. Etapes et Organisation", dans Civilisation noire et Eglise catholique, Colloque d’Abidjan 12-17septembre 1977, Paris, Présence africaine, 1978, p. 347.