Prayers of gratitude and intercession

Missional Frontier: Our goal is to share every year one missional frontier with the members of GMF and GASN networks. The idea is to inform, learn, and inspire about the work and challenges that Anabaptist churches and organizations are facing in a particular country.

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Country context in Brief

Kenya Mennonite Church (KMC) is a conference registered in The Republic of Kenya. Kenya has a total land area of 581,309km2. Around 9.5% of this total land area is arable. The population is 48 million with a growth rate of 2.3%. Women constitute 52% while 75% of this population is below 30 years while 8 million are aged between 15 and 24 years. Life expectancy stands at 50 years. Kiswahili is the national language while English is the official language. There are 43 other ethnic and urban youth languages. Adult literacy rate stands is 78% with female rate at 42.7%.

Kenya is a secular state. However, Christianity remains the dominant religion with Protestants and Catholics constituting about 45% and 33% respectively. Islam is at 11%, while Indigenous at 9% and 2% being other minority faiths. The constitution K2010 guarantees full religious freedom. There are twenty-two unreached people groups (UPGs).

Economically, the country is an agricultural producer with light industries. Kenya is also a tourist industry. Nearly 50% of the population survives on less than $1 per day while 40% of labour force is unemployed. Real GDP growth is 4-5% with inflation rate recording 5% as at January 2018.

KMC’s history and mission structures

KMC traces her beginnings from Tanzania Mennonite Church (KMT). KMT inspired evangelists planted pioneer congregations in Kenya from 6 December 1942. Up till 1977 when the Conference was registered under Societies Act of Kenya, the KMT leadership oversaw the congregations. KMC exists to obey the great commandment (Matt 22:36-40) and commission (Matt. 28:18-20). The Church envisions a holistic empowered dynamic and multiplying missional church that impacts God’s shalom in a transformed world. In mission, we evangelize, disciple and equip individuals to witness a Christ centred peace and compassion within our families, across cultures and in public spaces. Our rallying call is “Everybody is a missionary where is and everywhere”.

Structurally, the Church has a hierarchical organization based on seven geographically defined dioceses. The overall authority of KMC is vested in the congregation of voting members at an Annual General Conference. Conference attendees are diocesan delegates, pastoral teams and lay program leaders. The Church organs include: Mission Field Cell Fellowship (MFCF), Congregation, Local and Diocesan Church Councils. A National Executive Council (NEC) is the superior mission and administration organ that runs Conference affairs.

Historical and ongoing mission challenges

KMC celebrates the contradictions manifest in most post-modern Christian church, periods of vibrant growth, stagnation, decline and renewal. The Church has for decades recorded impressive growth with adherents once reported at 35,000 members. This exponential growth witnessed congregations being established beyond the traditional geographical rural regions of Nyanza. However, this growth encountered challenges which include:

Poverty and marginalization:

Congregations are predominantly feminine and rural based with very high incidence of illiteracy, poverty and disease. Despite women membership constituting two thirds, patriarchal traditions continue to marginalize their access to leadership roles. Minority people groups such as refugees have also remained neglected. These fragile conditions diminish the Church’s capacity to adequately resource mission work.

Inadequate Anabaptist theological and Leadership training:

Historically, KMC blossomed under evangelist oriented dual leadership for mission and congregation. The place of theology, academics, structures and systems remain held in suspicion, doubt and contempt. The Pastor’s congregational governance duties has diminished mission to a non-priority business.

Negative ethnicity, clannism and inequalities:

Secular and Church politics share a history of rewarding negative otherness, tribalism and clannism. These factors influence the way both the pews and the pulpit are populated. Congregations tend to emerge as alternate ethnic and clan social security formations with large populations of baptized but nominal and secularized Christians.

Changed environment of Idolatry and youth exodus:

The working class and students have affinity for idols, self-gratification and instant answers to generational life challenges. This group despises the promise of faith and the “Jesus Kingdom”. Instead they have embraced anti-intellectualism, syncretism, legalism and unmitigated human rights narratives. The resulting trend is dechristianization and exiting the Church.

Inter-faith competition, conflict and violence:

Kenya faces the dual challenge of, an aggressive spread of Islam and the threat of insecurity posed by Al-Shabaab Islamic extremists. The terror group trains and arm young Muslims to kill Christians and destroy Churches. Evangelism and mission work, in predominantly Muslim regions, is a high-risk undertaking that few Christians would dare try.

A record of hope and fruit-bearing practices

KMC is celebrating several mission patterns by reaffirming mission as the core business of the Church. The Church established a mission agency styled KMC-SPAN Ministry (Sending Peace to All Nations). The Church confesses that Jesus is the Peace for witnessing in the ever-violent mission context. SPAN undertakes planning and implementation of programs under the NEC’s Secretariat. The renewal outcomes are both a product of faithful prayers and strategic visioning, planning and execution.

The replicable approaches include:

Partnering for synergy and gift sharing in the Body of Christ:

KMC successfully established cross-cultural missions in Uganda and Kenya among the UPGs. Through own initiatives and partnerships, the Church runs several unique community mission and inter-faith interventions.

Everybody is a missionary:

We exploit the job-seeking push and pull factors that drive the work and education migration trends as an opportunity. Members share the gospel and promote the establishment of pre-congregation MFCF in their new cross-culture locations.

Interfaith peace discipleship and contextualization:

Christian-Muslim relations is a priority for the Church’s mission. We conduct specially designed cross-culture, community and school focused mission ministries through Eastleigh Fellowship Centre (EFC) and Centre for Peace & Nationhood (CPN) initiatives in predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods of Nairobi County. These mission programs promote coaching, discipleship and person to person witnessing through trainings, youth sports, business entrepreneurship, community wellness, school peace clubs, inter-faith dialogues, community health and nutrition.

Mapping, sending and relational building:

We respond to Church planting as shared by missional surveys and contacts. Specifically, we take the gospel to UPG areas by directly sponsoring missionaries who to evangelize and plant churches in identified priority cross-culture communities.

Conclusion

In spite of the daunting challenges facing KMC, our confidence rests in the words of Apostle Paul (Phil. 4:13). As the Church gets down to pray, we have prioritized two thematic areas for intervention. These are cross-culture entry and contextualized mission among Turkana County and South Sudanese. Secondly, Anabaptist leadership education for Youth and Women will equip and enhance their access to missional leadership roles for an integrated holistic ministry in a fast-changing world.

By Rev. Patrick J. Obonde (KMC-SPAN Missions)

Like the chambers of a heart, the four MWC commissions serve the global community of Anabaptist-related churches, in the areas of deacons, faith and life, peace, mission. Commissions prepare materials for consideration by the General Council, give guidance and propose resources to member churches, and facilitate MWC-related networks or fellowships working together on matters of common interest and focus. In the following, one of the commissions shares a message from their ministry focus.

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People who are involved in service are typically practical, caring people, people of action. Of course, the motivation for doing service is to follow Jesus and his teaching, to reach out to the weak, to the orphans and widows, and so on (Jeremiah 22:3, James 1:27).

People who have a heart for evangelism may be called people of proclamation. They are concerned with pointing the way to Jesus. They follow the command to go into the world, teach and make disciples.

When accused of not caring about peoples’ souls, the first group might say, but you have to feed an empty stomach first before giving spiritual nutrition.

The others might reply, what good is it to feed people and yet do nothing for their lost souls?

I know this description is oversimplified and polarizing, yet it holds some truth, based on my experience.

A tension

In the past, I sensed a tension between these two groups: the people of proclamation and the people of action. Both would claim their mission to be holistic. Sometimes conflicts developed. Often there was a lot of judgement passed.

When we established the Global Anabaptist Service Network (GASN) within Mennonite World Conference (MWC), there was much discussion regarding the commission in which it should be hosted: Mission or Deacons. The arguments for the one or the other reflected this tension.

It was decided to host it in the Mission Commission. The decision was supported by the desire to overcome the gap between proclamation and service, word and deed.

I was not very happy. As part of the coordinating committee of GASN, I was named as a specialist in the Mission Commission. I do not feel that I am a missionary. I am a servant. Now I had to identify with missions.

A transformation

I was a little lost at first. But over time, I realized that a change was taking place in me. I began to see that my gifts as a servant are as valuable as the gifts of others who are church planters and evangelists and teachers.

God wants all of us in his mission. Only together are we complete.

Since then, GASN has met twice. We had joint meetings with the Global Mission Fellowship (GMF) where we shared stories and teachings with the two groups together, and also had separate sessions.

Particularly as the two groups met separately, I could sense that we still need the Spirit to teach us: together we are called to work in God’s mission according to our gifts, convictions and views.

Empowered by God’s breath (both “spirit” and “breath” are translations for the Hebrew word ruach), we will see change and see God at work.

During the meetings in Kenya in April 2018, one sign of that unity for me was the prayer map (see picture). All GMF and GASN members were invited to take time to identify a country, place a candle on that spot and pray for that country, for the people or for someone we knew there.

During this time of silent prayer around that large map it was obvious: we are one in the Spirit.

—A Mennonite World Conference release by Barbara Hege-Galle, a member of the Mission Commission. She served with Christliche Dienste for 32 years and lives in Bammental, Germany. She also serves the local church there.

 

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Like the chambers of a heart, the four MWC commissions serve the global community of Anabaptist-related churches, in the areas of deacons, faith and life, peace, mission. Commissions prepare materials for consideration by the General Council, give guidance and propose resources to member churches, and facilitate MWC-related networks or fellowships working together on matters of common interest and focus. In the following, one of the commissions shares a message from their ministry focus.

Background

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country located in Central Africa, inhabited by nearly 80 million people, belonging to500 tribes and living on a surface of 2 345 410 square kilometers. The country experienced two waves of evangelism. The first evangelism occurred during the15thcentury through the first European explorers. This evangelism did not produce appreciable results. The missionaries’ collaboration with the colonizers for slavery, the lack of the Gospel in local languages, the fighting between tribes, and the traditional religions were some of the main cause of its failure. As for the second evangelism, it refers to the era of missionary organizations. The American Baptist Mission (ABMFS) was the first organization to launch its ministry in 1878 in the Congo Central, in the west of the country.

Among the missionary societies that followed, one can quote the Congo Inland Mission (CIM), a mission society founded by American Mennonites. The work that CIM started in the Congo in the 19th century has resulted in about 250 000 Congolese Mennonites belonging to three different denominations: the Communauté des Eglises des Frères Mennonites au Congo (CEFMC), the Communauté Evangélique Mennonite (CEM) and the Communauté Mennonite au Congo (CMCo).

Congolese Mennonites initiatives

Anabaptist-Mennonite churches in DR Congo preach a holistic gospel. This is why, everywhere they are established, they build chapels, but also schools, clinics or hospitals, colleges or universities. They are also involved in peace building and reconciliation initiatives with the support provided by Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Mennonite Brethren Mission.

Moreover, Congolese Mennonites are presently active in cross-cultural evangelism. Their testimony goes beyond boundaries especially to Angola, Congo Brazzaville and South Africa.

And in DRC, Mennonites continue planting churches in other provinces and are reaching even hidden or resistant people such as Batwa Pygmies in the Equatorial Forest. Four Batwa pygmies have been already trained at a Bible Institute and three of them are ordained pastors. Thirty-two local churches are established with them and led by themselves. In fact, mission departments are in charge of this important ministry in the Mennonite conferences.

Besides, a program to reach especially Chinese citizens and/or foreign businessmen is already moving through prayers, distribution of Christian literature and other contacts.

Major challenges

In spite of the dynamism of the Congolese local Mennonite churches and the various natural resources in the country, the populations are confronted with poverty and the majority of them, even Mennonites, live in rural areas, below the poverty line. Political instability, wars, corruption, and the activism of the non-Christian religions are the major challenges that Christian ministries and churches are facing in the DRC.

Mvwala C.Katshinga and John S. Fumana

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