The importance of reinterpreting and humanising relationships

The vision of any relevant Christian church in any society is to empower God’s people with ethical values and lifeenhancing knowledge and skills towards the realisation of an abundant life, which is central to Jesus’s declaration: “I came that they may have life and that they have it in abundance” (John 10 verse 10).

One of the gifts of the vision mission has been to review our identity as a church.

Sometimes, part of the difficulty with our heritage as a church is that we have been bequeathed a history whose interpretation comes from a cultural perspective.

The vision for every church must be to re-visit what it means to be a church in the 21st century – and it is a challenge we are yet to fully grasp.

The interfacing of Ubuntu offers us a possibility for a radical reinterpretation of what it means to a church in the 21st century.

In fact, I believe the church is at home in the African context; however, the application that has a hangover of the post-industrial revolution era is the big challenge.

Whilst we should never devalue the importance of the church as the frontline actor in the mission activity of the church, we have to look again at the effect of the Euro-centric interpretation of the church on the life of denomination.

Therefore, the church must reject a hierarchy where decisions and leadership were taken by a select few.

It is important that the church continues to stick to the essential aspects of its heritage, which include the importance of communal discernment in decision-making.

However, this communal discernment means we ought to recognise the local churches as embodied in the life of the denomination.

We must always refuse the tyranny of hierarchies – and in the same manner – we should reject the sectarianism that has been fostered by the emphasis on ‘autonomy and independency’.

We cannot also allow for absolute authority, without any accountability to peers, the community and the courts of the church. The task of mission in the 21st century ought to be about building humanising relationships.

The crux of the evangelistic task is to address the divisions caused by our colonial and apartheid past.

The churches have done a lot of work in this area through various programmes that have been running – and through these activities, churches from across cultural, national and language barriers have shared in learning, worshipping and sharing in each other’s lives.

However, the mission of God has to be a lived experience, and that requires us to work hard to move away from the linguistic and cultural sectarianism imposed by our history of oppression.

Many churches continue to serve only specific cultural groups and are not inclusive of the stranger.

Often, there is not even the sensitivity to accommodate visitors who may not understand the language or the customs of that particular church.

Evangelism takes root when we are kind and hospitable to the visitors who enter our churches week after week.

We become a missional church when we are a welcoming church, when we take time to welcome and greet our visitors, show interest in them and make them feel they are at home in our family.

In a world where people continuously migrate across ethnic groups and national boundaries, churches have to be as organised to meet the needs of locals as those of strangers.

We have to have an English and/ or bilingual order of services; we have to either offer English or translation services in anticipation of the stranger who may walk into our places of worship. Sadly, many churches use language and culture to exclude and perpetuate the racial ghettos, which are a grand design of colonialism and apartheid.

We need to create churches where anyone can walk in any time and feel the warmth, inclusion and invitation of the love of Christ.

One of our greatest theologians H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a little book, entitled ‘The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry’.

The purpose of the Church, he declared, is “the increase of the love of God and neighbour”.

“When all is said and done,” he concluded, “the increase of this love of God and neighbour remains the purpose and the hope of our preaching of the gospel”.

Therefore, the goal of any relevant Christian church to its society must align with the real needs of the people towards enabling a culture of innovation, knowledge ability and industrialisation in the public space.