The Sunday News
WHEN one encounters Pentecostalism in Africa there is the deeper understanding of the phenomenon of the messenger of the Pentecostal message. The name has been developed in many of the local languages to make one understand that it is very personal. It carries a meaning that is very African. Among the Xhosa one would hear them called, “uNyawonhle, Mntu kaThixo, Nto kaThixo or Mthanjiswa!” all very descriptive of a theology that is undergoing some shaping. We also have among the Shona the popular terminology, “Munhu waMwari!” title. I am still to hear a pure Ndebele title which is not a mere translation of the latter as we call “umuntu kaNkulunkulu.”
There are now increasingly different ways of calling the above. We now have the Daddy, Papa and Mutumwa. One can be forgiven to think that we have just modernised the Catholic term “Father” as we move in a new theology.
Someone goes even further to refer to it as attempts by many followers to “daddify/deify” many of these mere mortals, elevating them to superpower and superstar status. The conferment of such status encourages the myths that these men are free from struggles or do not have issues that we mere mortals struggle with on a daily basis.
But there are critics of the same such as one Pastor Mbewe of Zambia who asserts that these names come because in the African Charismatic circles, the “man of God” has replaced the witchdoctor,” endued with special powers and breaking through the barriers of the demonic world and ancestral spirits, which “is also why the heresy of generation curses has become so popular.”
Although somewhat overstated, this is a real problem, and so when the people are not experiencing divine blessing, they run to the “man of God” to pray for them, giving these leaders a stranglehold over the people.
It is the man of God who can bring the “breakthrough,” because of which, Pastor Mbewe further stresses that this form of Christianity threatens the important New Testament teaching of the priesthood of every believer.
There has been the criticism of preachers living like kings while the people that attend the churches live in abject poverty. Being a preacher, as a lampoon in one of the local daily papers has alluded to, is an occupation, not a divine calling. It is my opinion that these abuses are the loud, ugly, glaring exceptions rather than the general rule and norm. There still are humble men of GOD out there who are faithful messengers of the Pentecostal message.
The abuses should absolutely be addressed and exposed and corrected, but they should not be taken as an indictment of African charismatic Christianity as a whole.
True, there are some who have taken the emphasis to the human part of the messenger (MAN) instead of the message (GOD). We are humans carrying a spiritual message. That is why the Apostle Paul rightly states “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God, and not of us.” (2 Cor. 4:7)
Yes the messenger has the message but it is wrong that we transform him or her into the message. The bible does admonish us to respect, celebrate, value and treasure them but not to let them replace the priesthood of the believer.
You as the believer have a priestly mandate to fulfil. It is the same Holy Spirit that works in you that operates in the spiritual leader. It then should not be overstated to the extent that we capitalise the man over God. He is still God and shares his glory with no one else! (Isaiah 42:8) You are a man and he is GOD! That is a theology that we need to emphasise.
Digressing to the witchdoctor metaphor by Pastor Mbewe I think it went too far. Those who take the man of God as such are the miracle hungry, pseudo-Pentecostal who are after the material and tangible which does not translate to a deep transforming spiritual experience. They forget that the messenger of the gospel is like the pedagogus or acolyte of the actual Holy Spirit and not the spirit itself. Uyisithwalambiza (kitchen hand) and not the cook! Even the witchdoctor (as the colonial people would have it) was not considered the actual healer but a medium ethunywe ngabaphansi (sent by the silent ones)!
I would like to reiterate that as Christianity makes its way in Africa there is need for the theologian to clarify such explanations that take a very dark side of our faith. The young preacher who will be the mega-church pastor in the next fifty years needs to find a Pentecostal theology that is not only biblical but also genuinely African.
Something every African can relate to without feeling a transient coloniality within its exegesis and apologetics. In the same manner that Africa was the cradle of many a civilisation I do posit that it will be home to a more genuine and spiritually sensitive Christianity that the world has ever seen. Notwithstanding that will not come without a cost.
The current theological development has to be more thorough than the amorphous, generic and often times shallow presentation of the faith and doctrine. We have to realise that even the Bible does stress that the Word has to outlive all the drama that we see today. There should be something timeless and fundamentally consistent in our Pentecostal theology. A truth that outlives the “ngibanjwe ngumoya” phenomenon.
Imagine what will the little child, who is currently in Sunday school, teach when he/she takes to the pulpit 20 to 50 years from today. Certainly it will not just be the spectacular miracle.
Go back to the large tent days and see what happens today! Christianity has to be more solid than the mere spectacular. Jesus did the spectacle but he left us the beatitudes and more. That is what the early fathers built on to give us what we have today. What will we give to the African church that will still be around in the next 50 years?
Let us pause it there. Until next week Shalom!!
