By Dr. Yaw Perbi, Interim Director, ACMMR
INTRODUCTION OF INTRODUCTIONS
Africa is the most Christian continent in the world today. Since 2018 when that exhilarating fact occurred, there have been numerous overt and covert actions by the Church on the continent and in the diaspora to grapple with this current reality. [1] The formation of the Send Africa Network (SAN) and its flagship annual summit and the African Centre for Mission Mobilisation & Research (ACMMR) are examples of such responses. Send Africa Network’s vision is to see “a catalysed and enabled Church of Africa mobilising effective mission movements to the nations in collaboration with Afro-diaspora Christians.” [2]
In line with the aforementioned realities and activities, exactly a year after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between SAN’s African Centre for Mission Mobilisation & Research (ACMMR) and the Andrew F. Walls Centre for the Study of Early African Christianity (AFW-CESEAC) of the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture (ACI), [3] some leaders of ACMMR were back at ACI to contribute to a successful Andrew F. Walls Conference on Early African and World Christianity on October 23 and 24, 2024, at Akropong, Akuapem in the Eastern Region of Ghana. [4]
GOD IN THE DETAILS
The five sessions over the two days were christened “Under the Tree Reflections,” including the colloquium on the very first day after a ‘Sunrise’ devotional by Prof. Gillian M. Bediako, Deputy Rector of ACI and a keynote address by the immediate-past Rector of ACI, Rev. Prof. Benhardt Y. Quarshie. The christening of these sessions as “Under the Tree Reflections” was itself a creative way to remember the late historian-missiologist Prof. Andrew Walls and his wife Dr. Ingrid Walls who would take long walks in the mountainous terrain around ACI and pause now and then to sit under a tree to ponder a host of issues.
Apart from the first of the two Under the Tree Reflections on Day One that was chaired by ACI’s own Research Fellow in the person of Very Rev Dr James K Walton (ACI), the other Under the Tree Reflections and Keynote Address sessions were chaired by ACI partners: Rev. Dr. Ernestina Afriyie of the Trinity Theological Seminary (TTS) and Dr. Yaw Perbi of the African Centre for Mission Mobilisation and Research (ACMMR).
PROPHETIC INSIGHT
Prof. Bediako’s sunrise reflection, based on the book of Ephesians, re-echoed Andrew Walls reading of Ephesians 4:12-13 that the building up of the global body of Christ “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (NIV) will not happen without all cultural expressions and all nations contributing their quota; different shades of Christ, if you may. In other words, there is no “measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ” (NLT) without every nation, people, tribe and tongue’s piece of and perspective of Christ.
This seems a daunting task, considering that of the 17,400 people groups on earth, approximately 7,400 are still considered unreached with the gospel of Jesus Christ. [5] Not just that, not too many of the 10,000+ reached have significantly been able to turn what is in their culture towards Christ (Wall’s definition of conversion) and then been allowed the time and space, media and platforms by the global Church to have their say or show their way and contribute their quota! Western Christianity, though in the minority today, numerically, unfortunately still largely holds sway over global Christianity.
On the other hand, the notion that global Christianity needs African theologies and missiologies in the latter’s multifaceted and multicoloured genres injects adrenaline into the veins of emerging initiatives like ACMMR as we re-realize that the world and the gospel need us! ACI and ACMMR need to be and do what they’ve been called to be and do because the global body of Christ is not going to become mature or beautiful or even effective, without them! A practical instance of this came out in Rev. Prof. Quarshie’s keynote, in which he seamlessly made an example of Prof. Bediako’s assertion when he brought up an important check and balance of Western philosophy’s hyper-individualism to the extent of making the individual a god whose whims and caprices the rest of society bows in contrast with the communal or collective counter narrative of global South cultures, especially African.
The Andrew F. Walls Conference on Early African and World Christianity on October 23 and 24, 2024 coming exactly a month after the September 22-28, 2024 fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation in Seoul-Incheon, Korea where the theme for the 5,200 in-person as well as another 5,000 online conferees was “Declaring and Displaying Christ together,” it seemed the Lord had spoken twice, twice had we heard. In the words of the Lausanne Movement’s current global executive director and CEO, Michael Oh, at the very opening of Lausanne 4, “The four most dangerous words in the global church today are, ‘I don’t need you.’” [6] Lausanne 4 was all about cooperation and collaboration of the church to close the unresolved gaps in the church’s mission. Now we know that the first gap is in our very being, image and likeness, even before our doing. Imago Dei before Missio Dei, and both for the sake of each other!
NOT WITHOUT EARLY AFRICANS
Thomas Oden and others are bold in stating “how African shaped the Christian mind” [7] in the early years of the Church yet the majority of people today still have no clue about the African contribution to the Christian enterprise, only aware of the more recent receipt and consumption from European heads, hearts and hands 1,500 years later. True to its name, the AFW-CESEAC ensured that some of the great African contributory conversations occurred at the said conference. For example, on the first day Dr. Eric Osei-Akoto (ACI) presented “’Early African Christian Literature speaks to Contemporary African Issues’: the example of Tertullian’s De Cultu Feminarum I&II.” For the uninitiated, Tertullian was an early Church Father from Tunisia (Carthage), who was the same person that divided the Bible into Old and New Testaments and also gave us a word for the biblical manifestation of God in three persons: “Trinity.” [8]
Then there was a bold presentation by Prof. Salim Faraji of California State University on “Exploring the Links between Ancient Egyptian Philosophy and Alexandrian Theology: A Brief Excursus on Chaeremon Egyptian Priest- Philosopher.” It was fascinating to note what early Christianity seems to have borrowed from African philosophy and theology in ancient Egypt. From Egypt, there was a return to Tunisia (Carthage) on Day Two of the conference during the afternoon Walls-Oden-Bediako Lecture in Early African Christianity where Dr. Edwina Murphy went into “Greatly Blessed and Glorious: Biblical Women in the Writings of Cyprian of Carthage (Tunis).” Global Christianity could not have come this far without the African contribution; and it can neither go much further without it. The converse is also true.
It is apt and gratifying that in seeking a renewed African theologizing and missionizing effort from Africa to the nations, ACMMR is harnessed with Akrofi’s centre dedicated to the study of early, pre-colonial Christianity, pivoting itself in confidently authentic African roots with fresh impetus from the wind of the Spirit, who in every era blows however He determines (John 3:8); not controlled geopolitically or by racial bias or of human will.
CONCLUSION
Just like ultimately, there will be no convocation and celebration of the marriage feast of the Lamb without all nations’ contributions, the 2024 Andrew F. Walls Conference on Early African and World Christianity couldn’t have been so beautifully and very successfully pulled off without the various collaborative efforts and chipping in of several parts and partners of the body of Christ in Ghana and beyond, including ACMMR. In fact, at a point when ACI’s video recording glitched, it was the ACMMR-arranged concurrent videography that they had to fall on to save the day. “I don’t need you” is not only the most dangerous phrase in the global body of Christ, but also the most disastrous, even deadly, for without each other, there is no building and maturing of Christ’s body, no attaining to the full measure of the stature of the Christ we claim to love, serve and emulate. There is no declaring or displaying Christ, let alone deploying Christ in the world, without each other. We need every stroke and stripe of us for both a total imago Dei and complete missio Dei; neither without the other, and neither without each other. The full image and mission of God are impossible without You and Me, East and West, Young and Old, North and South, Male and Female, Coloured and White, Able and Challenged, Denominational and Not, Africa(ns) and the Rest.
References
[1] https://lausanne.org/about/blog/africa-to-the-rest
[2] https://sendafricanetwork.org/about-us/
[4] https://drive.google.com/file/d/110KyptSLTw520kA41A0sOdvS0YwW4Yw7/view?usp=sharing
[5] https://joshuaproject.net/resources/articles/has_everyone_heard
[7] Oden, Thomas C. How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind: Rediscovering the African Seedbed of Western Christianity. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2007.
[8] https://dacb.org/stories/tunisia/tertullian/
