African Christian Leadership Context

 By Kurai Chitima

The context of the study Chitima (2011) undertook on the influence of Christian formation on leadership development in an African context is looked at from a general African point of view as well as a Zimbabwe point of view below.

Africa Context

            Zimbabwe shares with most of Sub Saharan Africa a history of being both a victim of colonialism and a shining fruit of Christian missionary efforts from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century. As a victim: European countries, in what began as coastal contacts in the fifteenth century, and then in the nineteenth century by treaties and by conquest, scrambled to attain Africa in pursuit of wealth, raw materials, and fame. This inhabitation led to the partitioning of Africa, finalized in 1885 at the treaty of Berlin, into the present day political boundaries (Lloyd 51, 57). Ethiopia, Liberia, Guinea, and Riodeoro are the only countries that remained uncolonized. The colonial settlers forcibly and often brutally took away prime land and reserved the poor land for locals. This discrimination led to the rise of African nationalism from as early as the 1950s. M. Bourdillon notes, “As liberation movements got under way in the twentieth century, they were often supported by leaders in established churches, who saw the injustices of the colonial governments…” (265). Wars between settlers and Africans occurred primarily because of the desire to reclaim ownership rights over resources such as land. By 1993, through international pressure and local resistance, African countries against indomitable odds had received independence from colonial rule. This legacy determined the kind of political leaders in early postcolonial Africa and their priorities such as resistance to what they perceived as new colonial forms. Kofi Appiah-Kubi and Sergio Torres quote Kwame Nkrumah:

[T]he essence of neo colonialism is that the State which is subject to this, is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty, in reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. (156)

Leadership is a product of the ways through which leaders rise or are developed. To them preserving ownership and sovereignty comes before providing food. Ironically, however, the failure to provide food is a threat to the nationalistic ideals in the long term. It presents an unintended opportunity for the erstwhile oppressors to emerge as the final liberators.  Managing the different forces equally is a leadership challenge Africa faces. Without a good balance, self-determination can become self-extermination.

Despite strong postcolonial indigenization forces, external links still play a major developmental role in Africa. The links are valued for bringing ideas, status, and resources. Many of the strong churches in all categories of the doctrinal divide such as Catholics and Protestants, including Pentecostals, benefit directly or indirectly from external sources of some kind (Gifford 308). The relationship, however, evolved from being one of dependency to one of interdependence by the end of the twentieth century. The church in Africa has assumed a high level of autonomy characterized by African leadership and methods. The resources of the more developed continents, however, still play a leveraging role in local African initiatives. The African church continues to receive tools, theology, and practices from abroad, and is maturing in effectively contextualizing them and developing its own tools and practices that others can import.

As a shining missionary fruit, the proportion of Christians in Sub Saharan Africa has grown phenomenally. Great revivals in Europe and America led, for example, by Dwight L. Moody and the Student Volunteer Movement, inspired many missionaries to come to Africa. They were able to take advantage of the knowledge gained from the 1848-1878 explorations by people like David Livingstone who explored, inter alia, the Zambezi River, becoming the first European to see the Mosi-oa-Tunya falls, which he named the Victoria Falls. As large numbers of explorers came to Africa, missions advanced with them. Explorers’ data opened the way for both the colonialists and the missionaries. Christianity became more firmly established after 1890 because of the improved availability of information and a more favorable reception the colonialists afforded the missionary efforts. The Christian History Institute, based on information from the Overseas Ministries Study Center, notes that in the twentieth century the Christian population in Africa grew from eight or nine million in 1900 (8 to 9 percent) to some 335 million in 2000 (45 percent). The advent of Christianity transformed lives and communities through activities such as proclamation of the message of Christ and service work such as establishing schools and hospitals. Musimbi Kanyoro, Andre Karamaga, Modupe Oduyoye stress that “as a matter of fact, the Church in Zimbabwe was a loner in establishing schools and clinics in rural areas. This was also true when it came to teaching people rudimentary skills in modern agriculture carpentry, and construction of better houses” (174).

Despite the rapid growth of the church and education in Africa, the need for able leadership of integrity in Africa has been noted and widely acknowledged. G. Kinoti and others (e.g. Mazrui; Ayittey; Adeyemo) attribute Africa’s woes to lack of effective leadership, not a lack of resources. A multi-sectoral approach addresses this situation. The church has a vital role in the process if not for any other reason than because of its sheer size and growth on the continent. Tokunboh Adeyemo argues, “[O]nly a faithful obedient church can bring change to Africa” (54).

Poor leadership is also prevalent in African churches as Louise Kretzschmar notes:

While it would be foolish to deny that a great many excellent and capable leaders are to be found in many churches, it would be equally foolish to pretend that leadership difficulties are not being experienced in African churches. It would appear that many leaders are uncertain, tentative and ineffective or else they go to the other extreme of acting in a domineering and coercive manner. These inadequate patterns of leadership lead to conflict within churches, splits between churches, ineffective ministry, and the mismanagement of financial, human and other resources. (47)

This reality undermines the church’s qualification as a competent entity to raise alternative leadership.

The church in Africa often described as being “a mile wide and an inch deep” has much more quantity than quality of members. The depth may have improved in many since the beginning of the twentieth century, but the width has outgrown the improvement, effectively resulting in a more unfavorable ratio. This lack of quality makes Christian formation the greatest challenge that the church in Africa faces in the twenty-first century. Proponents of this view include Obed who makes the observation that in the twentieth century the Church, in general, emphasized missions, evangelism, church growth, and church planting, virtually eclipsing effective Christian formation (viii, 15). As a result, notwithstanding success in the emphasized areas, spiritual depth that is essential for sustained vitality as well as personal and community transformation has been scant. He believes the church in this century must rediscover the meaning, importance, and practice of Christian formation. Effective Christian formation is the answer to the key objectives for worship, leadership development, social relevance, evangelism, church growth, and expansion. The primary strategy for combating spiritual decline and stimulating sustainable progress in achieving the Great Commission is effective Christian formation. (Matt. 28:19-20).

Zimbabwe Context

            Zimbabwe is a country of twelve million people in Southern Africa. The country acquired independence from Britain in 1980 after more than fifteen years of armed conflict. Economically, the country has, in the last fifteen  years, faced perennial droughts. Zimbabwe has adopted policy implementation approaches, particularly on land, that critics attribute to severe economic depression between 2000 and 2009. All economic indicators were at a record low making it the only country in Southern Africa experiencing economic decline. Politically, the country is a multiparty democracy that between 2000 and 2010 has had  election results that were bitterly disputed, resulting in violent political rivalry that has accelerated the economic decline. The country of Zimbabwe has resultantly perennially failed to sustain itself and relied on massive food donations and supplies from outside. A government formed in 2009 inclusive of the main political parties has brought hope. The situation in the country however calls for all sectors, particularly the church, to play their part in the development of godly, competent, innovative, and relevant leaders who are able to lift the country out of its current state.

According to a 2002 census by the Zimbabwe Central Statistical Office and an Operation World International research report (Johnstone and Mandryk 689), over 70 percent of the Zimbabwe population call themselves Christians. In Harare, the capital city, the 2002 Central Statistical Office census found that 86 percent of people living in Harare claimed to be Christians. Positively, those who call themselves Christians can be found in virtually all sectors of society. Many Christians who profess allegiance to local churches occupy leadership positions in politics, business, local government, sports, etc. These positions of leadership give them a great opportunity to influence their vocational spheres with biblical values and to affect society. The church must understand the dynamics with which Christian secular leaders have to deal so they will know how best to support them and to intentionally generate more of them.

Three local church planting waves can be identified in Zimbabwe. The first was in the late 1800s and early 1900s by missionaries from outside the country. The second is conspicuous from the 1950s and was fanned by the rise of African nationalism. Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe started churches that were self-governing, self-financing, and self-perpetuating. This wave accelerated after the advent of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. The third wave involved the acceleration of church planting by players from both previous waves. A collective goal was set by over five hundred church leaders at a congress in 1991 to plant at least ten thousand more churches in Zimbabwe by the year 2000. As a result, more than two thirds of the churches in existence in Zimbabwe today were started since the late 1970s, particularly in the 1990s, when the number of local churches in the country is estimated to have more than doubled.

Local church surveys[1] carried out by the Zimbabwe National Evangelism Task and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, however, estimated that less than 20 percent of the population actually attended weekly church services. The studies, among other things, asked church leaders to provide the number of people who attend their main weekly meetings, in most cases held on Sundays. The research included most Christian churches from Catholic, mainline, and evangelical groups. The 20 percent, however, excluded those who attend church erratically or seasonally, and might perhaps have some considerable measure of church influence. This percentage sounds too small given the high proportion that claim to be Christian, but this indication that a small proportion of the population attends church is too strong to ignore. This discrepancy could be the reason why, despite the presence of many Christians in the country, with some in positions of influence, high levels of moral decadence continue to prevail. When people do not attend churches they are less likely to be effective witnesses of Christ. Anecdotal evidence estimates that over 50 percent of those who profess to be Christians ascribe solely or partially to the traditional religion—ancestral worship. Assuming most Christian formation happens in churches, the level of church attendance is important because it reflects that of Christian formation. Church is the Christian formation community where the Christian facet of leadership is developed. Of interest to this study is the question of what difference the church is making to those who are a part of the estimated 20 percent that have made themselves available to local church Christian formation.

            John S. Mbiti’s (262) and Richard J. Gehmann’s (1) description of Africans being “notoriously religious” is also true of Zimbabweans:

[I]n their traditional life African peoples are deeply religious. It is religion, more than anything else, which colours their understanding of the universe and their empirical participation in that universe, making life a profoundly religious phenomenon. To be is to be religious in a religious universe. (Mbiti 262)

Prior to the coming of Christianity, the predominant traditional form of worship in Zimbabwe was ancestral worship. In this form of religion, the spiritual influences every area of life, leadership included. Public leadership development would require spiritual development and integration. Gehman notes that religion permeates all the departments of the African life so fully that isolating its influence is not always easy or possible. (1). If not Christianity or ancestral worship, some other religion will be practiced. E. Bolaji Idowu aptly describes African spirituality when he says that deep in the minds of men and women of every level of spiritual and intellectual attainment is the persistent notion that the deceased still have a part to play, for better or for worse, in the lives of the living (178). In another writing, J. S. Pobee and Gabriel Ositelu note that “the African is radically religious at the core of his or her being” (9).

            Elizabeth Isichei writes that the traditional world was profoundly religious and did not compartmentalize it away from the rest of social life (262). Lee E. Snook noted that religion in Africa is grounded in the whole of reality and permeates all relationships (56). Excluding religion from leadership development processes, social institutions, and community life is unlike the traditional African approach to religion.

REFERENCES

Extract from Chitima, K. An Investigation of Public Leadership Formation in Select Zimbabwe Churches. UMI Dissertation Publishing (BiblioLabsII), 2011

Kinoti, G. Hope for Africa and What the Christian Can Do. Nairobi: International Bible Society, 1994. 

Mazrui, Ali A. The African Condition: A Political Diagnosis. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Lloyd, Peter C. Africa in Social Change: Changing Traditional Societies in the Modern World. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1967.

Snook, Lee E. “Leadership: Cross-Cultural Reflections from Africa.” Word and World Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary13.1 (Winter 1993).

Pobee, John S., and Gabriel Ositelu. African Initiatives in Christianity: The Growth, Gifts, and Diversities of Indigenous African Churches: A Challenge to the Ecumenical Movement. Geneva: WCC, 1998.

Idowu, E. Bolaji. African Traditional Religion: A Definition. London: S.C.M., 1973.

Gehman, Richard J. African Traditional Religion in Biblical Perspective. Nairobi, Kenya: EAEP Books, 1989.

Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophy. Oxford: Heinemann International, 1969.

Johnstone, Patrick, and Jason Mandryk. Operation World: When We Pray God Works. 21^st Century Edition. Waynesboro, GA: Authentic Media, 2001.

Zimbabwe Central Statistical Office. Inter-Censal Demographic Survey Report. Harare. 1997.

Zimbabwe National Evangelism Task. Target 2000 Congress Handbook , 1992.

Obed, Uzodinma. Transformational Discipleship and the 21^st Century Church. ADM Ibadan, Nigeria: Media Publications, 2008.

Kretzschmar, Louise. “Authentic Christian Leadership and Spiritual Formation in Africa.” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 113 (July 2002).

Adeyemo, Tokunboh. Is Africa Cursed? Nairobi: Christian Learning Materials Centre, 1997.

Ayittey, George B. N. Africa in Chaos. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.

Kanyoro, Musimbi, Andre Karamaga, and Modupe Oduyoye. Claiming the Promise: African Churches Speak. New York. Friendship, 1994.

Gifford, Paul. African Christianity: Its Public Role. Bloomington, IN: UP, 1998.

Christian History Institute. Glimpses #151: African Church Growth. Worcester, PA: CHI, 2007. Accessed 2008 <www.chi.gospelcom.net>

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[1] The situation may have changed by 2010. The latest research was in 2000.