Africa’s prophetic mission today

Over a century ago, missionaries arrived in different parts of Africa. They found no hospitals or schools as they had known them in their own countries. In some places such facilities existed, but not for all – they were for foreign colonial masters, not for the native people.

Missionaries, despite the unfavourable political climate they found themselves in, pioneered the provision of services to the indigenous Africans which governments of the time didn’t find necessary to do. In so doing, missionaries took a stance which was defiant of unjust regimes. In fact, many countries are indebted to missionary schools for educating young people who later took up leadership of the independent countries. Missionaries continued to sustain the young nations even long after independence. In such missionary activities there was much more than providing services. More importantly, it was a creative and prophetic manner of announcing the Gospel.

As the African Church, what is our prophetic action in African society today? Is it necessarily to keep mission hospitals and schools running? Where is the creativity, the originality of the maturing African Church?

Many mission schools or hospitals have been passed to the diocesan bishops. They continue to provide quality service which people appreciate. While governments have come in to share in the cost, there is a financial burden that often continues to weigh heavily on dioceses – especially those in countries where the state’s contribution is minimal.

Such institutions run on budgets that a diocese just can’t bear. Bishops or priests in charge of those institutions run around left, right and centre to source funds.

What are we doing? Why are we doing that? It might seem stupid to ask these questions, and perhaps a waste time to answer them. Still, these are questions we always need to refer back to in order keep direction and a sense of what we are doing. Alternatively, we will end up continuing with institutions that we can no longer sustain simply because we are conditioned to think that the Church has to do that.

In any case, whether we like it or not, the changing picture of the Church in the West on which we have depended to fund such institutions may just force us to reconsider what we do. How does the African Church, with her limited resources, continue her witness creatively? Or does it bow to natural death as foreign financial resources diminish?

Today, in many places, we have plenty of parallel institutions of education or health run by either the government or the Church. Does our prophetic mission still necessarily require us to continue in the same way just because our institutions are better appreciated? Couldn’t there be another way we can relevantly give the same witness, but in a different way?

We are supposed to be, as Scripture and the Synod tell us, the “Salt” and “Light” of the world. In such a way, our mission should consist less in the separateness of Church institutions, manned by the religious, which are lauded in contrast to those of the government. We must rather change the picture so that more religious are qualified to be employed in government institutions and be leaven there. A lot of funds are pumped into government institutions, but often they are badly managed. What better places for active religious to witness to society?

My point is that there are many good things that we can do, but we need a continuous discernment that will enable us to be up-to-date with the most urgent areas of witness within our capabilities, so that we can also break off what may be sheer attachment to traditions.

One observation at the synod was that in Africa today people are poor and live in misery, not because there are no resources, but because of poor management. In this case, it is not by building a parallel Church institution alongside that of the government that will transform society.

Here is where I feel the African Church should rise and take up her pallet and walk: to open herself up to the many possible, urgent areas of witness beyond the traditional engagements. The African Church may not have huge financial resources to run big projects yet, but with a bit of creativity, she can help to educate the people and governments to make a decent living out of the little they have, especially when they open themselves to the mutual enrichment from the mine of their diversity.