Some reflections

I thought this afternoon I should use this time to also reflect on the many rich experiences I’ve had over the past several weeks. Here’s a few of my thoughts. Most of you, I anticipate, will probably find these thoughts irrelevant and uninteresting. But like I said, I have plenty of time on my hands these days to muse and wax, so you won’t hurt my feelings for skipping this part of my blog!
Note: When I speak of “Africa” or the “African church” I mean “East Africa”. Africa proper is a huge continent where you can find just about anything, and where generalities will have dozens of exceptions. I am only familiar with what I have seen here East Africa. I don’t want my Nigerian friends from West Africa to call me a liar.

Money…that was one thing that continued to surface, again and again, as the “main problem” in the church here. And of course because of my role as an “ambassador” I was the one they told all their problems to: “We need a new church building with a tin roof”, “We need a new pastor’s house”, “We would like to buy land for this church”, “We are building a new school and we need funds”. The diocese in Tanzania I was visiting had a man on the payroll whose title was, “Development Project Manger”. He had a huge chart hanging on the wall of about a dozen projects outlined in red. The diocese has yet to implement one of them…why? Funds. Funds. Funds. Yes, the African church is doing so much more with what they have than the American church, but in other ways it seems to me that they narrow what they think is possible to programs that can raise money. Money is such a huge issue here, that it sometimes seems like they throw up their hands and say, “Well, we can’t do anything until we have money…so we’re just going to sit here and do nothing until some Western organization donates money so we can begin.” There were a few people that did have that attitude, and that colored the way I saw others, even though I tried to recognize my bias. It was also difficult to have the role as the penniless student exposed to so much need and not feeling like there was anything I could do about it. The helplessness and powerlessness that I felt after dozens of people earnestly asking for hundreds of dollars began to wear on me. “I’ll report what you’ve told me,” I repeated over and over to the hopeful eyes of congregations. The experience makes you either break down in helpless confused compassion, or become indifferent and cold to what you see. I tried my best to keep a balance, but probably erred toward the latter.

Africa being the ‘bastion of orthodox Anglicanism”…Africa is NOT the “bastion of orthodox Anglicanism” (as some have put it), but I believe Africa is the “bastion of evangelical Anglicanism”. The discussion surrounding the difference of these terms is tedious, so I’ll be brief: Evangelical Anglicans should be differentiated from orthodox Anglicans, in that Evangelical Anglicans root their ecclesiastical identity in a broadly non-denominational background with some Anglican distinctives added on top, and orthodox Anglicans root their ecclesiastical identity in a more specifically British and intentionally Anglican heritage. I have found little in the way of orthodox Anglicanism in Africa (with a few exceptions), while I have found quite vibrant and enthusiastic evangelical Anglicanism here. There are close to 40 million Anglicans in Africa (out of 77 million Anglicans worldwide) and given Africa’s history with evangelical missionaries and missions here, African Anglicans are strongly evangelical. However, the Anglican church here is only 150 years old at most here, with a small fraction of the budget that Western church has enjoyed for centuries, a culture that is trying to come out of the ‘bush’ and enter the modern global world, and with a fraction of the education level as that of their Western counterparts. The situation and environment that East Africa finds itself has a profound influence upon the kind of Christianity that comes from here.

“What the American church can learn from the African church”… this notion has been plaguing me since I got here. Many people in the American Anglican church believe that Africa will save the American church from the Episcopal Church. This may be true ecclesiastically; however after being here for some time, I don’t believe we should look to the African church to be our “parents in the faith”. I am thankful and have tremendous respect for the Archbishops of Africa, and I believe that this small group of men will make profound decisions about the future of global Anglicanism. However the African church as a whole is still quite new to the faith. Many Christians here are first generation Christians…their grandparents still walk around the village barefoot, and practice ancestor worship. Though the African Anglican church is bold and strong in the faith, like teenager, they still have much to learn about the modern world which they are entering into. They know little about the West’s Enlightenment past and our value of propositional truth over relationships. I believe the African Anglican Church can give American Evangelical Anglicans an ecclesiastical shelter for the time being. The Archbishops of African provinces are all educated in the West and have much better grasp of the situation facing the Anglican Communion, but for most lay people they are just trying to eek out a meager living wage. I think it’s harder for each of the churches to learn from each other because of the difference in values that each church holds. You may remember the anecdote I wrote about, when I preached in Bukoba, and I felt like I was just rambling through the whole sermon…and they loved it. Drama, power, zeal, emotion…these are highly valued in the East African church. That’s a major reason of why the Pentecostal church and a host of other charismatic churches are thriving in this context. Compare this to the values of the West: thoughtfulness, clarity, acuteness, succinctness, working systematically through a myriad of abstract concepts that a congregation is familiar with. They are two different worlds. A sermon that exemplifies these values makes an African congregation fall asleep. Whereas a dramatic, powerful, emotional sermon in the States is usually considered low brow, manipulative, and fake. All this to say, it’s more complicated than just saying: “The American church has so much to learn from the African church”. During my final days in Tanzania I was shocked to learn that one parish who claimed 1000 church members, had only 25 who met for midweek fellowship, prayer, or Bible study. It was then that I sympathized with the saying, “The African church is a mile wide and an inch deep”.

African dependency…I continue to ask myself the question, “If all Western money and sponsorship were to be cut from Africa, what would happen?” I know some people who have endorsed this idea as the only way for Africa to ‘grow up’; otherwise Africa will act like an unemployed teenager always looking for handouts from mom and dad. I personally don’t think this is the solution, but I believe we need to work through these problems with our African brothers in a honest and direct way. We need to be seriously asking, “What are you doing to be sustainable in the future? Is Western money the ONLY way for the African church to develop? How can the church in Africa contribute to building a culture that is going to be financially self-sufficient? What kind of training do you need?” But the West must stop being the big sugar daddy that throws money at ever ugly situation, and thinks that problems in Africa are merely about “funds”. We need to partner and build relationships and teach about stewardship. We have to break the mold and expectation that the Western world is the solution to their problems.