Dr Johan Botha
Commission for Witness
Dutch Reformed Church Family
August 2007
Interdependent,co-responsible witnesses in and from Africa today
A fundamental orientation
1. Introduction
This presentation argues from the perspective of our identity rather than from that of our manifold actions. It shares perspectiveson the matter of (unhealthy)dependencyand independence versus interdependence and co-responsibility to stimulatedebate and to help discernthe way forward in dealing with our challenges in thecurrent context. It is clear that this is anexisting and important debate, which surfaced several times at the conference on Tuesday 6 August and several times during the ensuing NetAct business meeting.[1] In the last edition of REC Focus Albert Strydhorst emphasizes, in an enlightening article on the nature of partnerships, that it is in engaging in mission together that an interdependent, reciprocal relationship is best expressed, and in this relationship we give to receive from each other (Dec 2006, vol 6, no 3-4, p93).
1.1. You can’t understand missiology apart from biography[2]
This Alan R Tippert, former professor at Fuller once said. Thus I begin with some autobiographical remarks. My father for many years was a minister and member of the moderatureand my mother served as president of the women’s league in the Dutch Reformed Mission Church (DRMC). The DRMC, the oldest daughter church or first mission field of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), was established as an independent church amongst the so called coloured people of South Africa in 1881.
Of all the many things which I am privileged to indicate that my parents did right in the course of their joint ministry from 1948-1990, a fundamentally important and meaningful one, indicating their own identification with the church, is that theyhad their six children baptized in the DRMCbetween 1950 and 1964 where they served and not in the DRC. In addition they saw to it that we regularly went to the DRC Sunday school and catechism process while we simultaneously attended the worship services in the DRMC.[3]I mention these facts in particular, because it constantlyserved as a fundamental theological orientation point and guideline for my own understanding of the nature of the church, its ministry and consequently of me and my ministry in relation to the church and to others. In February 1978 I was ordained in the DRMC. I served as pastor in two DRMC congregations and in 1982 was inducted as the national synodical director for public witness of the DRMC at the age of 31.
A fundamental missionary or public witness challenge my colleagues and I in this commission and in the DRC Family encountered at the beginning 1980’swas the legacy of the DRC’s ecclesiology and resultant missiology.The latter did not only focus on the indigenization of the Gospel amongst various culture groups within the RSA, but clearly strived for and resulted in the establishment of independent churches.The mother church and her offspringdevelopedlives of their own, next to one another, with the majority having little or no real knowledge of one another, a lack of real involvement in one another’s lives, dislocated on many levels, eventually with disastrous consequences for the teachings, the life and the witness of the churchin public life. Of course the mother, the sender lost terribly – the wonder of intimate koinonia as well as the mutual care and comfort her offspring could offer her. In addition, when we in the ecumenical church had occasion to confront the apartheid prime minister PW Botha, we could not speak with one voice, because our own church home was not in order.
As a result I got involved in one of the most important SA church developmentssince the beginning of the 1980’s, namelythe birth process of the unitedCommission for Witness (CFW) in the Western Cape (inclusive of our public witness).[4]It happened in our struggle for a sound ecclesiology within the apartheid context of the DRMC, the DRC family and the broader ecumenical church in South Africa. At CFW’s foundation in 1991 we stated clearly and openly that we were going to push against the existing barriers and would continuously challenge the wrong ecclesiology.[5]From my perspective the development of our life and witness as CFW was fundamentally influenced by two important complementary factors.
Firstlythe development of a sound ecclesiology, as the Confession of Belhar (1986) for example indicates, helped us to again realise the fundamental vantage points of our mission in the world today. This accounted in particular for our witness about the nature of the church as the one, united, visible body of Christ, really reconciledwith God and one another, with the message of God’s compassionate justice to the challenging contexts around us. The implications of the confession of Belhar for us and its embodiment by us were spelled out in URCSA’s Church Order articles4 and 12. These guided us to understand that the challenges in public life need to be confronted by us as Christ’s united body in conjunction (“aansluiting”) with the state and institutions in civil society.[6]
Secondly our experiences and observations on a visit by the CFWExecutive to partner churches during 1998 brought important questions to the fore about our continuous relationship and the co-management ofour potential and needs. Our CFW Executive, now for the first time in our history comprised of members from the different DRC Family churches involved in the CFW, visited our partner churches in our former DRC mission fields. Other similar visits by CFW followed to our partner churches and congregations inthe CCAP in Malawi, the IRM in Mozambique, the RCZ and CCAP in Zimbabwe(2004), to the regions of Eastern Cape and Kwazulu-Natal in SA (2005) as well asto the NKST (Church of Christ among the Tiv) in Nigeria (2005 & 2007) .[7]
In the process it dawned on us in CFW, on the churches we represent as well as among our partner churches in the mentioned areas that in CFW we bring together the founder church and its offspring, the mother and her daughters, the planters and the planted, the missionary and the missionized, the donor and the dependents - as interdependent, co-heirs of the past and of a shared future, to face our contextual South African challenges together. Closely related are CFW’scurrent and ongoing efforts to buildinterdependent partnership agreements with our partner churches and other role-players in our former DRC mission fields, in view of our mutual witness challenges.
1.2. A growing concern
Against this background I began to wonder whether we and our forebears were historically perhaps of the mark in our drive towards the total independence of the fruit of our mission work? Principles like the three selves,[8] the cultural independence of indigenous groups and nations as taught by leading missiologists, were very much in the focus during my theological training in the beginning 1970’s at Stellenbosch. The ideal was to develop mission contexts to the point where we take our hands off the indigenized, matured ministries we helped to create, expecting them to further run smoothly on their own, with perhaps a little help here and there, while we go back from where we came.The disputable point is the going back, the leaving alone, with the emphasis on building the self.Have we discerned the consequences of such an approach well enough? If we for example think about the difficulties that some fruits of the DRC mission currently face in Africa, having to manage what we have left in their hands (e.g. in Nigeria), can we seriously think that our absence rather than our presence would best serve the interests of these brothers and sisters of ours?Is such action in the best interest of God’s kingdom in general? Should we not perhaps have realised long ago that we were always to reciprocally be there with and to continuously care for one another, and that a profound challenge to us who was send was always to be indigenized within the various contexts where we served, through the transforming power of the Gospel, to die of the self and to become visibly one and reconciled with our new brothers and sisters as Christ’s new creation?
There couldof course be contextual and perhaps complex reasons why we had to leave the missionfield. This in particular was the case with the DRC support of the NKST in Nigeria.[9] But is it not true that ourcurrent sensitivity for and fear of possible developing dependencies and paternalism brought new problems to our table? In Nigeria and Malawi people live with the consciousness that the DRC mission brought four boxes to the people they missionized, namely preaching and Bible translation; medicine and health services; education from primary to tertiary level; agriculture, industry and technology. Yet problems that we often face today are matters such as a lack of clear focus and distinction about what really matters in our ministries as kings, priests and prophets. We experiencean absence of well developed and much needed skills to deal with the maintenance and management of infrastructure in general and the fields of mechanical work and manufacturing in particular.The list of contemporary giants that we are unable to confront effectively could be lengthened. In addition, fears for paternalism as well as the us-you paradigm of thinking, talking and acting, often make it very difficult if not impossible to discuss issues and their probable root causes openly and frankly without uneasiness and compounding or causing divides.
In reflecting on these and related complexities I seriously wonder whether we should not start talking differently. Should we not refrain from the use of the us/we(the planted) and the them/you (the planters) paradigm or the other way around? I propose this as anessential challenge to our orientation or vantage point when we deliberate about the “if” and “how” of our ongoing involvement with one another.
Afundamentalquestion is whether it ever was theologically wise and right to think (visualize) and talk (communicate) and act (work) as if the “us - them” paradigm should be foundational to our thinking and action rather than the overriding theological principle or paradigm of “we together” as brothers and sisters in the one united body of Christ (Eph 4).My own theological sensitivity for this and similar complexities was in general formed in the home of my parents who taught me to call every single person “brother and sister” in the DRMC in particular as well as in the broader Christian church, in opposition to the offensive and insulting names people used for one another in our apartheid society.[10]My own general questioning of the “us-them” paradigmin the mission and inter-church context grew stronger through the 1980’s and within the CFW since that 1998 visit to our partner churches in particular.
Is it not and was it not indeed imperative for us, I began wondering, to from the start think, talk and act aboutour joint business, our joint witness, our co-responsibility to manage, to appropriate the means and resources at our joint disposal, as the credible witness to the world? Is this not the way, the only right way to define and to practically live our relationship with one another within the family of Christ? Is this not simultaneously indicative and imperative that we should as the one body of Christ understand, as did John Calvin in his commentary on Eph 4:4 that we “ought to be united in the same profession of faithand to render each kind of assistance to each other” and that we will also be clear about the “duties which brethren (and sisters - JGB) owe to each other”. Although he said almost nothing about the universal mission of the church and concentrated his energy on the unity and renewal of the church in his day and age,[11]Calvin’s fundamental messagetous is clear: “Oh, were this thought deeply impressed on our minds, that we are subject to a law which no more permits the children of God to differ among themselves than the kingdom of heaven to be divided, how earnestly should we cultivate brotherly kindness!”[12] (my emphases)
2. Essential theological vantage points for our witness in and from Africa today
Within the DRC Family, through the CFW and its national counterpart, we have started to discern the essential theological vantage points for a credible, responsible, biblical witness in public today. I could mention others, but will for the sake of time only narrate one core development within our DRC Family.[13]
In 2004 representatives of our DRC Family across Africa held a very important theological conference at Stellenbosch in South Africa on our call to witness in and from Africatoday. At first we discerned and wrestled with the theology that should undergird our witness/ mission.In our reflections we drew on the ecumenical creeds and the Reformed confessions, inclusive of the Confession of Belhar (1986), which emphasizes that we, as God’s church, called from every nation should strive to establish lived unity, real reconciliation and compassionate justice, in obedience to Christ our only Lord. In addition we revisited our Working definition of Missionas developed by a similar group of DRC Family representatives during April 1986 and reflected on the contents of the 2004 conference papers.
Against this background we affirmed our faith, already expressed in our 1986 Working definition of mission, thatMission is the work of our triune God (missio Dei). Missionflows from the being of the triune God and is the work of the triune God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.In this mission God has the salvation (shalom) of the world in mind and wants to achieve it through the realization of His kingdom. Mission expresses God’s love and compassion to bring salvation to the whole world in all its dimensions.
Therefore the Father had sent the Son into the world to gather his (one) church from all the nations and to send us into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit. We also discerned that the church, as the (one) body of Christ our Lord and Savior, in essence lives as partaker in God’s mission in this world (missio ecclesiae).
The church as a whole and its members are under the commission of God. Dependent on and in obedience to the Spirit we are called tothe ministry of prayer for the world; to minister the Gospel of God’s salvation to all people through word and deed; to conserve and cultivate creation in the name of God and for the sake of all who live in it.
The salvation which Christ achieved is all-encompassing. It includes the forgiveness of our sins, our liberation on all levels of life as well as the liberation of creation. Mission occurs where we as the church, in obedience and in following Christ, have compassion for and serve all the needs of people and the world.
God’s salvation of the world is realized in that God builds God’s kingdom here and now. This kingdom will, however, only come to full realization with Christ’s second coming, when all nations and people will glorify God.
As the legitimate bearer of this Good News (Gospel) the church of Christ is to be one and to live and work in the likeness of the one triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (John 17:11,17,21).The emphasis here is clearly relational.
We added that in relation to our calling to witness in and from Africa today:
1. We together as the body of Christ, in close communion with one another, have to listen carefullyto the Holy Spirit, who teaches us God’s will through the Word, who makes us sensitive to the challenges and the needs of all who live here, and who equips us again today to be His witnesses in and from Africa.
2. We learn from God’s Word thatin order to recreate us as partakers in Christ’s heavenly call (Heb 3:1), the Holy Spirit wants to renew
our faith in our one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit and to express this unity among ourselves and the church at large, so that people in Africaand in the rest of the world may believe (John 17:11).
our love in the likeness of God, who reconciled us with Himself and one another through the self-offering of Christ, to live for one another in the body of Christ as well as for all other people, so that reconciliation and love may abound in andfrom Africa (2 Cor 5:17; Phil 2:1-11).
our hope in the compassionate justice of our triune God, who wants to bring justice and true peace among all humans, who hears the cries of the poor, the destitute, the oppressed, the marginalized, the wronged, and who wants us to follow Him in this, to bring hope and life in andfrom Africa (1 Peter 3:15).
3. Challengesto our witness in and from Africa today
At the 2004 conference we also importantly outlined sevenmajor needs, burning issues that currently challenge us to witness publicly in and from Africa today.
2.1. the need of people who do not know the joy and peace of forgiveness and of a relationship with CHRIST as SAVIOR and LORD and the need of those who are still in bondage of sin and evil powers or live in fear of them. We are called to share the Good News of God’s salvation with them in and beyond Africa;
2.2. the need for RECONCILIATION in all spheres where religious intolerance, racial, ethnic and gender tension and injustice exists. We heard the cry of the marginalized, our oppressed brothers and sisters in countries like Zimbabwe, Malawi and Nigeria. We heard the cry of the refugees/displaced of our continent, about whom some of our leaders lack humility and compassion and practice injustice. We realized our own disabilities and our insensitivity when our fellowship excludes women or men, old or young, or when ethnocentrism and racism causes us to discriminate against brothers and sisters;