Millennium Mission for the Americas, a Christian mission to take the whole gospel incorporating good news for body, soul and spirit body, soul and spirit

Perspective | January 21, 2009OUT OF AFRICA—A revolution of spirit, mind, and body

AFRICA: Leading Christianity into the New Millennium

"As a confirmed atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God..."The Christians were always different...their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them.

In the London TIMES, Atheist Matthew Parris explains..
"Before Christmas (2008) I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi...We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted [to Christ] and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall."

"Travelling in Malawi...confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework [inhibiting African transformation]. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the know how that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted [with the gospel of Jesus}."From London Tmes, December 27, 2008

Perhaps the revolution has already begunFrom, "Have Pentecostalism, will travel," by David Martin

David Martin writes, "In Western Europe, Christianity seems a fading residue...remarkable, however, is the advance of Christianity in the developing world, above all Africa, and the displacement of Orthodoxy by Pentecostalism as the largest single sector of Christianity after Catholicism.
Pentecostalism...was pre-adapted to Africa by its fusion of white and black revivalist spirituality. Moreover, its fusion of technological modernity with a lively sense of an inspirited world and the demonic, lifted it across cultural barriers hitherto blocking the advance of mainstream mission.
Whereas its Islamic rival represents the idea of a common religious universe organically related to politics and territory, Pentecostalism represents a decentralized form of voluntary organization operating on an open, competitive market...that is part of its adaptability and its inherent pluralism.
African Pentecostalism is an account of the reverse flow of African Christianity to Europe and North America, and of missions from “south” to “south” which dramatically illustrate how closely a mobile faith like Pentecostalism corresponds to a global flow of “goods” and messages anywhere and everywhere." Times of London Literary Supplement September 17, 2008

"African Christianity is complex in its history, structures, doctrines and practices. Against social science expectations of the withering of religion in modern societies, religion increasingly assert[s] itself in the multiple ways in which Africans engage with the world and with the management of change. There is an optimistic view that the vitality and diversity of Christianities in Africa hold great promise for global Christianity as a whole as already some Africans have engaged in what is now characterised as ‘reversed mission’: the sending of missionaries from Africa to proselytise the frontiers of western societies."

A certain amount of disorder and even chaos accompanies every revolution. Africa is no exception. The commercialization of the gospel is a main concern. Pray for Africa even as we rejoice in a real revival.
"As one Nigerian Pentecostal pastor recently put it, ‘the merchandising of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the primary source of all the problems enervating the spiritual life of the church.󈨆 Certainly, this vitiates the transforming power of an otherwise socially and economically visible strong religion."Asonzeh Ukah, African Christianities: Features, Promises, and Problems
Like I said, pray for Africa, even as we praise God for real revival.