20 Questions for the Churches in Africa

As an ordained minister in the Church of Uganda (a local church within the Anglican tradition), and especially as someone who spent two decades ministering through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, I am often deeply troubled by what I see and experience of churches in Uganda, Africa, and beyond. When I reflect on the testimony of Scripture about Jesus’ vision for the community that bears his name and consider the lived reality of churches, both locally and globally, I can’t help but notice a worrisome dissonance.

The convictions we hold about the nature and purpose of the church inform how we engage with the Bible. They shape our understanding of what it teaches about God, the gospel of Christ, and its imperatives for living out our faith in the world.

In God’s Design for the Church: A Guide for African Pastors and Ministry Leaders, Conrad Mbewe explores the subject of Christian identity and community in light of Africa’s complex and rapidly changing social context. As Mbewe, a Baptist minister and scholar hailing from Lusaka, Zambia, explains in his introduction, the book aims “to apply biblical principles to what is obtaining in Africa so that we are drawn back to belief and practice that follows God’s design for the church.” His ultimate goal is equipping “those who lead the church” to “do so in accordance with God’s mind.”

I’ll admit that when I first saw the title of Mbewe’s book and looked through its table of contents, I thought he was making some awfully bold assumptions and ambitious claims. But I always appreciate the chance to learn from other African ministers, even those from outside my own tradition. I was eager to see how Mbewe would determine which biblical principles reflect “God’s mind” for the churches in Africa, which he characterizes as “full of zeal,” albeit a zeal that “sometimes . . . lacks knowledge.”

Belonging to the Body

God’s Design for the Church takes the form of a manual. Each of its 20 chapters poses a question Mbewe regards as essential. The questions cover a wide spectrum of topics, including the nature, purpose, and core work of the church; the guidelines and expectations governing church membership; the qualifications for church leadership; the proper practice of worship, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church discipline; guidelines for fundraising and missions; considerations of church growth (both numerically and spiritually); and the church’s relationship to other churches and to the state.

In each chapter, Mbewe refers to the biblical texts he considers relevant to the question at hand and then suggests how Scripture should address various maladies that bedevil the churches in Africa. Readers can also look forward to one or two stories in each chapter, drawn from Mbewe’s life or from traditional African cultures, that help ground his arguments in an African idiom. What makes this approach especially welcome is that it defies the traditional dichotomy of theology and practice. For Mbewe, matters of theology are always informed by questions of practice, just as practice is always shaped by theology.

Although Mbewe encourages readers to go straight to the chapters that address questions of particular concern, it is evident that not every question carries the same weight. Two early chapters—“What Is the Church?” and “What Is the Church’s Task in the World?”—lay the foundation for the rest of the book. Mbewe points to two New Testament terms—ekklesia, meaning an assembly of those called out from the rest of society, and the body of Christ—as central to an authentically biblical understanding of the church, which encompasses both the saints who are still on earth and those who have gone to heaven. According to the Bible, he argues, the defining marks of a true church are the preaching of God’s Word, the provision of the ordinances (baptism and the Lord’s Supper), and the practice of church discipline.

The book pleads for African churches to place a high priority on distinguishing true Christians from those who merely flock to church services without showing any evidence of a transformed heart and life. Only genuine converts, says Mbewe, should be admitted as members. He writes:

The only people who should remain in the church are those who show genuine faith and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, the great head of the church. This is seen when individuals are doing everything possible to flee from sin and pursue a righteous life. This is also seen in their love for fellow believers and for the God whom Christians worship. Where you have individuals like this filling up the membership of a local church, you can safely say that you have a true church on earth.

Mbewe’s description of the role of church members is instructive: He emphasizes attending church services, sharing in practical fellowship with other believers, participating in the life of the church through exercising gifts of the Holy Spirit, practicing faithful and generous giving, praying for the church, being involved in its various committees, and working toward personal spiritual growth.

These are all, no doubt, vital aspects of belonging to the body of Christ. What’s missing, however, is any sense of how church members should be involved in the wider society, other than preaching the gospel of salvation to sinners. Mbewe doesn’t seem to acknowledge how various forms of work and service outside church walls can be part and parcel of the church’s gospel proclamation. His understanding here draws heavily on Matthew 28:18–20, where Jesus calls upon his followers to make disciples of all nations through preaching the gospel, baptize new believers as a means of formally joining them to the church, and instruct them in Christian doctrine. By “gospel,” Mbewe means “the good news of how God sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to live and die here on earth in order to save us from our sins.”

One gets the sense, from reading, that Mbewe understands the Bible’s view of sin primarily as a matter of personal acts contrary to God’s moral standards. It is not surprising, then, that he treats the involvement of local churches in campaigns of social or political activism as departures from Jesus’ intentions. His comment on churches that work to shape the political direction of their home countries is telling:

Today, we have churches being made to do what Jesus never said in his word that they should be doing. Church leaders sometimes want to use the power of numbers to sway political elections or even to monitor such elections. Is that what the head of the church said the church should be doing? . . . I doubt that Jesus included the swaying or monitoring of elections as one of the purposes of the church.

From this statement, it follows logically that Mbewe would stress the priority of church planting in missions relative to things like caring for the sick and the poor or working to reform unjust social structures. His point is that African pastors and ministry leaders ought to give attention mainly to matters of preaching, teaching, and organizing churches, so as to ensure growth in both the quantity and quality of new members and the multiplication of communities of true Christians. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Mbewe believes the Bible has little to say to African pastors and ministry leaders concerning the social responsibilities of the church. Could perspectives like these go some way toward explaining the dismal social impact of the continent’s churches, in spite of their celebrated numerical growth?

Further Questions

As I read God’s Design for the Church, I found myself wondering why Mbewe focused on the particular set of 20 questions set forth in his chapter titles. Each of these questions, of course, touches upon important issues for the churches in Africa. But there are others worth considering, such as: What is the Bible? What is the relationship between the Bible and the church? What relevance does the story of Israel have to our understanding of God’s design for the church? What is the legacy of Western missions on Africa’s churches? What is the relationship between the church and the family? Or the church and creation care? What about the relationship between the gospel and the surrounding culture? It matters which questions one asks, because they reflect certain underlying assumptions about what the church is and ought to be.

I also found myself wondering how Mbewe, who rightly emphasizes biblical criteria for discerning the nature and purpose of the church, understands the term biblical himself. Does referencing verses from the Bible suffice to make a position biblical, apart from any appeals to the larger body of Christian tradition and thought? It is evident that Mbewe’s perspectives are grounded in a Baptist way of reading and interpreting Scripture. And although he acknowledges his Baptist biases, especially as they bear on the question of baptism itself, they do permeate the entire book—to the point where I questioned whether a more accurate title might be “God’s Design for the Baptist Church.”

Even so, Mbewe’s voice is a resource for pastors and ministry leaders, who must grapple with the reality that in spite of numerous churches across the continent, there is no commensurate social impact on African societies. I hope it will stimulate deeper conversation on “God’s mind” for the churches in Africa (and beyond).

David Zac Niringiye is an ordained minister in the Church of Uganda and a senior fellow at the Institute for Religion, Faith, and Culture in Public Life. He is the author of The Church: God’s Pilgrim People.

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